OOPS! Not sure how the weird HTML stuff came to be, but I think and I fixed it. :)
"Avada Kedava."
Voldemort's green eyes were on Devlin as he said the words and as the green light swelled at the side of their vision. As a child, Devlin would have stared at the magic, but he was no longer a child; he did not need to see to know. Felix was dead. His deep brown eyes were staring at nothing and everything. His lips were losing their color. His fingers turning cold. Whatever it was that kept people tethered to reality had left him quicker than he could have blinked.
"You should have let me do that," he said, knowing and not knowing, all at once, why he had. Voldemort frowned and Devlin thought of how sometimes, skin and bones and muscle did not always convey the differences which lay beyond. Even so, Devlin was a little disturbed by how their facial expressions mimicked so perfectly one another. He shifted the muscles across his lips and above his brow until his expression was that nothing, nothing, nothing. He pulled forward that sense of knowing without knowing, and brought it into his eyes. This was the expression Voldemort had always appreciated the most.
Voldemort did not say anything. He stepped closer. Devlin could see the sheen of moonlight as it reflected off his perfectly-parted hair and as it illuminated the deep green of his eyes. He was studying him; the same way he had studied him as a small child weighed down by blankets and healing potions. Devlin waited for the judgement.
Death or Life? Tangled or Untied? Here or-
Voldemort lunged forward and grabbed at his scalp, pulling his eyes up to meet his gaze by his hair. Exposing his neck.
"Look at me," he demanded. Devlin almost did something stupid and looked away, but he was not stupid or foolish. He looked; fully aware of the possible consequences but unable to truly avoid them.
Devlin knew he had nothing to fear. Devlin may as well have been on the ground with Felix, for how much he felt like he imagined death to feel: nothing, nothing, nothing. Surely Mind Magic didn't work on dead things. So Devlin killed himself. He imagined he was falling backward in his mind, like he would if he were giving control up to the sharpness, but instead he imagined it was Dubhán who stepped forward, obscuring Devlin's memories and thoughts.
It was like a cool mist, curling and stretching under the doorframe into his mind. It seeped into his lungs, in through his eyes, and twisted inside of him like a barbed vine. But Voldemort was only inside of Dubhán and Dubhán had never been Harry's anything. Dubhán had nothing to hide from Voldemort.
When he had been young, the fog had always been deceptively gentle, prodding and poking so as to get what it wanted without harming him as a whole. Now, it was like Snape's magic had always been; fast and brutal. It was good he was holding him up, because Devlin's body wanted so badly to sink to his knees. He focused all his visual attention on the clasp holding Voldemort's cloak closed. It was an almost opaque white; solid and yet not quite. Unicorn horn? It seemed like a joke Voldemort would enjoy.
His nose was bleeding by the time Voldemort was satisfied - and probably because he wasn't quite satisfied.
He tried not to gasp for air as Voldemort dislodged himself from his mind, but it didn't quite work. Apparently he had been holding his breath, and the air spilled out of him as a relieved groan. Voldemort let go of his hair and it took every muscle in his legs to keep him upright.
He tried to breath normally. As Voldemort brandished his wand at him. The blood cleared itself up from beneath his nose.
"I have always been convinced you were just like me," Voldemort said. "They try to change us - to ruin us, but we are superior to them."
Devlin wanted to cry in relief. They were still tangled together. He would not die.
OoOoO
Andrew was not quite certain what had happened.
Magic, his mind whispered, first trying to process the fact that Devlin had just been there. It was the voice inside his head that had always been perfectly logical when Andrew did perfectly illogical things. Like race faster than his sixteen year old brother. Like lock his door so that even the key didn't work. Like jump onto a tree branch. Like make his pocket-sized race cars race on their own. Like-
He stopped the reel of memories. Yes, Devlin had just disappeared. Magic.
The disappearance wasn't the important part, he seemed to know. The reason it wasn't was, at the moment, escaping him. He turned to look at Watson. Maria, Devlin called her. She was staring at the space Devlin had just been with almost identical disbelief, which had Andrew wondering if this whole disappearing magic wasn't an unusual sort of magic. Maybe his disbelief was warranted and not just because he was new here.
"Where is he?" Andrew asked, half hoping they both lacked the knowledge and half hoping she knew more than him. Everyone seemed to know more than him.
She swallowed. Her eyes were full of terror and soon-to-be tears.
"Gone," she said, gasping.
Gone. The word sat uneasily in Andrew's stomach. It brought up the fact that Devlin hadn't just disappeared, but disappeared with someone else. A Prefect. Head Boy. Surely he was someone to trust.
Andrew knew all about blokes one didn't trust. His mum had left one he wouldn't have trusted as far as he could throw him - which was saying something terribly bad, because Andrew couldn't throw him at all, even when he'd tried to use the 'illogical' part of him.
"Miss Watson...where has he gone?"
She had turned back to where he had been.
"They took him back," she said. She gasped and her whole face turned grey. Her breathing quickened with terror and she stuck her hand in her mouth like a small child. Andrew's little sister did that, sometimes. He frowned.
"Took him? Took him where?"
She shook her head and he didn't know if she didn't know where they had taken him or if it was too terrible to talk about. He had a sinking feeling in his stomach and he wished, now more than ever, that he knew more about magic and what had just happened.
He couldn't help but think of the scars lining his friend's back - some no bigger than his knuckle, some as long as his hand.
Scorpius suddenly appeared between them, pushing into their shoulders and breaking whatever closeness there had been. The blond boy had a sharp haughty tongue, as his mother might have said, but Andrew thought he was just rather spoiled. Obviously, no one had ever told him how to lie with a smile or say nice things that really meant horrible things. He had all the features to be charming, but he simply wasn't.
"He was kidnapped, you stupid Mudblood," Scorpius said, his voice sharp and impatient.
"Kidnapped?" Andrew asked, a whisper of disbelief. "But that was Felix!"
"Just because I called you a stupid mudblood doesn't mean you actually have to be one," Scorpius interjected. The small crystal dragon that he wore around his neck glittered in the sun.
Andrew was better than the type of boy who reacted to such an insult with vengeance. He was a Slytherin and he wasn't rash or foolish, but calculating. He narrowed his eyes at Scorpius.
"Why would he kidnap Devlin?"
Scorpius huffed.
"Do you really think now is the time to teach you the basics of our political system or our current history?" He grabbed at Andrew's hand. Andrew wanted to recoil, but he wanted to see what Scorpius had planned, more. "Are you coming, Watson?"
She narrowed her eyes at him, her face scowling in a way Andrew hadn't thought was possible for such a tiny demure girl. For once, she looked like a Gryffindor.
"Coming where, Malfoy."
The Gryffindor's all spat Malfoy's name with such viciousness; as if he were a criminal. He was only eleven, though.
Malfoy's lip curled up.
"To get help, silly girl." She looked at him and he looked at her and Andrew wondered where he should be looking. "Or do you want them to mess up more than his pretty hair?"
Maria swallowed, and the feud seemed to shatter around them. She nodded and linked hands with Andrew. He had the funny sense that Malfoy would rather touch him than Maria and that Maria would rather touch him than Malfoy. Perhaps a mudblood was better than whatever Maria was...
Malfoy raced with them back to the castle. Their next period would be starting soon, but hadn't quite yet, so their frantic trip didn't catch much attention. Perhaps they were simply late.
"We should go to the Headmaster," Maria said, over the sound of their footfalls. Malfoy turned his head and gave her a vicious scowl over his shoulder.
"You're more an idiot than him," he was talking about Andrew, of course. Nevertheless, he paused for a moment in a dark corner to spare a few words. They were nearly in the dungeons. "Do you honestly think Felix was the only one behind this? And don't you think they knew where you would go? To the nice kindly Dumbledore. That's a horrific idea. That is, unless you want to go back too, Ms. Watson?"
If it were possible, Maria looked even more grey. Andrew wished he knew where there was, or who they were. He wished he knew anything.
Maria nodded.
And that, he supposed, was sort of how they ended up at Snape's door. Snape was an agonizingly firm head of house and even though Andrew hadn't had the misfortune to be called to his office, the second years had whined about him enough to make Andrew uneasy.
OoOoOoO
They were back at the little cottage with the collapsing roof, but instead of stopping there, Voldemort urged him onward, toward a house at the top of a hill. Devlin wanted to ask, but he kept his lips pressed together.
"There was a man who looked just like me, who lived here once," Voldemort said, almost conversationally. His shoulders were relaxed and his face open and friendly. His gait was quick but unhurried; long legs with large strides as they began to progress up the hill. Devlin looked at him, and he looked at Devlin, and Devlin thought there was something about his friendly open expression that seemed made of cold wax; meant to impersonate the truth and failing so little that one had to look closely for the flaw. Devlin wondered if this was how his own expressions appeared when he did not feel them genuinely. He looked side-long at Voldemort and he suddenly chuckled. "Our similarity is uncanny."
"I did suspect so," Devlin said, choosing his words carefully, "when I frightened my Transfiguration Professor the first day of class. I had not quite understood at the moment why she looked at me as if she had seen a ghost."
It was a calculated move, but then everything was. He had to share something, and this felt like a topic both of interest and safety. They were nearly at the house. Devlin could see how poorly it looked on the outside - but magic made people look at the outside of things differently than he supposed muggles would have. With magic, grandeur could be hidden behind rubble.
Voldemort smirked. When he had been the red-eyed monster the smirk would have made him look sadistic and beast-like, but now it was layered with bemusement and charm. It was difficult, not to relax a bit.
"Minerva - yes I remember her. She was Head Girl at the same time I was Head Boy. I had thought, at the time, that perhaps she would make more for herself than a professor. She did not appreciate my views on many things..."
"Everyone seems alright with me, except for her and Ginny Weasley," he said, because so far the topic hadn't resulted in any screaming on either of their parts. He watched Voldemort's face closely; trying to familiarize himself with how his old expressions appeared on his new face.
Voldemort chuckled and his lips opened slightly in a cruel smirk as he did. Devlin watched and frowned.
"Yes, I suppose she would," he said. He turned to Devlin for a moment; his brow raised. He was smiling, and for once it seemed genuine. Devlin was a little thrown aback. He hadn't thought there was anything so interesting about Professor Weasley.
They stepped through the enchantments on the house. They were old and subtle. The magic felt like Voldemort's and yet not at all. Devlin felt the residue on his skin like a lingering chill.
"It recognizes me," Devlin whispered, mostly to himself, as he felt the magic linger longer - marking him as something familiar rather than foreign. It burrowed into his skin, dark magic layered with tainted light magic. Devlin realized, as he felt it in his chest, that this magic was Voldemort's old magic. Tom Riddle's magic, his sharpness interjected, reminding him, as it always did, of the name he feared so much.
Voldemort looked a him from the peripheries of his vision; Devlin was struck how alike the look made them appear. One of his eyebrows furrowed slightly, and he smiled smally - unrevealing.
"So it would seem," he said. He paused for a moment, as they approached the building. "Did I ever tell you about the Chamber of Secrets?"
OoOoOoO
It started in his chest - a distinct sort of tightening that he would know anywhere as familiar fear. He put the cup down firmly, bracing himself against the table as it twisted further - reaching his gut. His pulse was racing, his mind rushing, his-
He gasped for breath.
Sirius Black looked up from his lunch.
"You choking or something?" He asked, making no direct attempt to intervene.
He shook his head hollowly, the world streaking with the movement. His shoulder was on fire, the pain all he could think about. Then there was a tug at his navel, and suddenly Geoffrey was vomiting all over Sirius Black's kitchen table as Remus Lupin rushed from the stove to help.
"Dubhán!" He managed to gasp at the end. He tried to orient himself. Sirius rushed to his feet, barreling toward the floo. "PORKEY!" He shouted after the man, as the puzzle of the symptoms came together.
His shoulder no longer hurt, but now his neck ached dully.
Geoffrey felt a fear he knew was only half his own.
oOoOoOo
"We should go to the Headmaster," Maria said, as Malfoy raced away and she followed him; she wasn't quite sure why. Perhaps it was because, like Devlin, he had unfrozen her. Malfoy turned his head and gave her a vicious scowl over his shoulder.
"You're more an idiot than him," he said. Maria assumed he was talking about Andrew. Unfrozen, she felt hot and angry and something in her gaze must have made him pause. He pushed them into a nook made up by a short hallway that led to a singular door - it looked abandoned. The chill of the dungeons bit into her exposed skin. "Do you honestly think Felix was the only one behind this? And don't you think they knew where you would go? To the nice kindly Dumbledore. That's a horrific idea. That is, unless you want to go back too, Ms. Watson?"
Maria felt a bit of ice creeping into her stomach, threatening to freeze her. She swallowed hard, her warm saliva breaking apart the ice. Malfoy's eyes were hard and determined and when she looked at the set of his shoulders it was to notice how similar it was to Devlin's.
Andrew was already nodding, as if this all made perfect sense to him. As though he could see the deadliness around the corners that she never could. She looked between the two boys and wondered what in their brain made them so much like Devlin. What made them able to see the worst in everything and use it to protect themselves? She thought enviously that if the worst just wouldn't surprise her, it wouldn't be quite as potent to her. Maybe then she wouldn't freeze.
"Fine," she said, a word she borrowed from Devlin, along with his begrudging, guarded tone. Malfoy nodded. Andrew nodded. They continued their harried race to Snape's office.
She supposed they had never run that hard in their life, but she had and the fear, that never truly left her, leapt with her heart in her chest. She ran with the fear-fueled conviction she had that night through the woods, pushing past Malfoy and Andrew.
Snape was in class. A group of fifth year Ravenclaws and Gryffindors greeted her eyes as she slammed the door open. For an instant there was impulsive anger in Snape's eyes; dark and endless and so like that man with his hands on her. She shivered but did not move. Don't you even think of going anywhere, the bad man had said to her then. Every time she was frightened, she would hear him again and she would freeze for him. Terrified.
An instant later and the impulsive anger had been replaced by practiced cruelty, which didn't really hold the same potency as the first.
"Why, Ms. Watson, are you in my classroom?"
His voice was like polished dark glass marbles, slipping against each other. Deep and dark with little pockets of space between the marbles in which other emotions were allowed to live. His step toward her like the prowl of a big cat she had once seen at a muggle zoo.
"He's gone," she said. She was frozen again, but somehow he had understood. He lifted his wand and Maria fought back tears, willing the bad mans face away. A blue fog seeped form his wand and crawled into each of the caldrons.
"You will find your work has been placed under a stasis charm. Pack up your belongings and report to your respective dorms. Read chapter nineteen. Meticulously."
His hand guided Maria out into the hallway and he shut the classroom door. Andrew and Malfoy had finally made it, their cheeks flushed and their bodies breathless.
"In my office, now."
oOoOoOo
Harry Potter didn't look at all like Devlin. Andrew studied him, wondering if he had missed an inkling of resemblance. Harry's hair was messy; Devlin's was perfect each morning. Harry's eyes were like the expensive jewelry his mother loved but could never afford; Devlin's were like a green you could find outside in the shade of a tree. Harry's lips were thin and plain; Devlin's were full and handsome - the sort of lips a girl might want to kiss. Then he found the similarity; uncertainty swelled the same in their eyes.
"What happened, Maria?"
Andrew watched him and wondered if this was the man who had put the scars on Devlin's back. Was he a werewolf too. Briefly, he regretted not doing what Devlin had suggested and looking his friend up.
He slunk back toward Malfoy, who had gone quiet and ashen when Snape had summoned Harry Potter (and accompanying entourage) to his office. When Harry Potter had strode through the fireplace Malfoy hadn't looked surprised in the least, only well predicted terror. If Andrew labeled the expression, Scorpius was bound to be offended by him. Still, it did look a lot like bravery to him. He'd learned the difficult way that Slytherins, while brave in their own way, did not find the term empowering but belittling. Cunning, he had learned to say instead.
"Whose he supposed to be?" He asked Malfoy, leaning close to whisper. Just the motion seemed to attract Snape, like a hungry beast looking for the most delicious prey.
"Pardon, Mr. Mire?" His voice was like the silent rush of water from far away. Andrew glanced back at him.
"I- ah -"
"He's a muggleborn," Malfoy supplied. "He doesn't know Harry Potter."
Snape cocked his head at a sharp an angle, leaning down further.
"He is an arrogant Auror with a brain the size of a pea. By whatever misfortunate miracle, he is also Head of his department and one of the most powerful Wizards of our time."
"What makes him so powerful?"
"The Dark Lord is terrified of him," Snape said. "If you understood the current climate of your new world, that would be well enough for you to understand. I deeply recommend a good quality newspaper, Mr. Mire, for someone in your dangerous situation. No Daily Prophet rubbish."
Andrew looked across the room at Harry Potter. With his round glasses, wind-whipped hair, and unsupposing features, he suddenly made Andrew think of Spider Man from his comic books. Always brave. Always helpful.
The spark of familiarity, however false, made me brave enough to step forward. Maria had her hand in her mouth again.
"I can tell you," he said, "I was walking back to the castle with him."
Harry's green eyes turned to him, jolting Andrew with their intensity. He nodded to make Andrew start talking.
"It was our Prefect - Felix. He had his wand here," he illustrated with his finger at the side of his head, just behind his ear, "I didn't see him come up to us and neither did Devlin. But he was there and his wand was here and-" he furrowed his brow as he tried to recall the details of that single moment. "Watson was going to scream for a teacher and Felix' looked...annoyed..." it took a moment to locate the right emotion, isolating the visual information from the memory and separating it from his own internal emotions. "Devlin looked at Watson and told her not to scream. Felix didn't look so bothered after Watson closed her mouth. Then he said something weird - about smudging - and then he was just gone."
Andrew's mind lingered on that last moment, still attempting to process that bit of magic.
"Portkey, Apparition - what?" Harry's voice wasn't exactly mean, but it wasn't kind either. Everything about him was tense - from his knuckles to his neck.
"Uh-"
Snape's hand was suddenly on his head, almost reassuring in it's weight.
"Andrew is, I'm afraid, a muggleborn." Then, Snape's hand was snaking behind him and pulling Scorpius up by the collar. "Mr. Malfoy is not, however. Scorpius, by which method do you believe Mr. Potter was kidnapped?"
Scorpius looked as though he might vomit. His hands shook in front of him and his head was going back and forth, back and forth, as though it were a pendulum. Snape leaned down, his lips nearly touching the boys ears, and whispered something that made Scorpius almost green. Andrew swallowed and hoped whatever it was only applied to Malfoy.
"Portkey," Malfoy said. "His other hand was in his pocket."
OoOoOoO
The floors creaked as they stepped onto the white-washed porch. Over the railing, Devlin could spy a small muggle village. When he turned back, Voldemort's gaze was on him, his head tilted, and his eyes full of warning. Devlin was no longer nine and Voldemort needn't have worried; the hill was steep and clear of any trees, the muggle town so visible below that someone with exceedingly good aim could stun him from the deck the moment his foot touched the first bit of muggle made road. It would be more than foolish to try.
It hit him then, as Voldemort flicked his wand and opened the door, that Geoffrey would not be on the other side. He would not stand between Voldemort. He would not whisper words of advice when Voldemort was out of earshot.
There would be no one but himself.
Voldemort made him go first. With any other person, Devlin might have thought they were being kind, but with Voldemort it made Devlin aware of the prisoner he was. Inside the old wooden floors were polish - so clean and beautiful that Devlin knew it had been magic. The walls were a pale white, free of dust, dirt, or smudge - magic again. Only magic had the ability to breath life into a place as quickly as it had the ability to erase all signs. The front room was wide and inviting, and a large staircase stood at the center, curving as if to guide the stepper upward. Voldemort did not guide him toward the stairs, however.
"You must be hungry," he said after a moment of silence; as though he had written himself a list and this offer were simply one that had to be made. That was always how Voldemort had treated food - absentmindedly. Except something about this offer seemed stilted and purposeful.
He remembered how he had waited days to eat at Harry's house, because he had been terrified it was poisoned. I'm not a fool, he had told Harry. Then, he had thought only Voldemort would protect him. It felt strange, now, to worry about poison here.
He wanted to shake his head. Wanted to say 'not for anything you'll feed me'like he had said to Harry all those years ago. He swallowed the words, feeling them trail sickly down his throat and land with a nauseating flop in his belly.
Everything seemed muted and blurry, and he wished he could gather around him the vision he'd used to have. Dubhán would have looked at this room and noted the position of each thing that could be used as a weapon - for him or against him. Dubhán would have been thinking, thinking, thinking, but as Devlin he was trying terribly hard to do the opposite. Nothing, nothing, nothing.
He was falling, crumbling - succumbing to the most basic-
When he had been small, Grandfather had said "if you tell a fool something often enough, they believe it". Not for the first or even the second time, Devlin hoped he had a bit of a fool in him. Not afraid, not afraid, not afraid!
He steeled himself with Emma's face.
The fact was, however, that Devlin did not need to say anything at all. He was all tangled up in Voldemort's head and his real emotions and actions did not have much weight against the reality Voldemort had already envisioned. So he did his part, and he played along.
"A little bit," he managed to say, his voice perfectly calm and even.
OoOoOoOoO
Geoffrey was not quite sure to make of Harry Potter, sitting across from him. He's gone, Harry had said to him as way of pleasantries. His green eyes were dead and Geoffrey was left thinking once more how uncertainty sat unwell in his eyes; like a disease that one though would infect the world. He swallowed again, exposing all the tension in his neck. His hands were grasping the edge of the table.
"You have to understand," Geoffrey said, trying to make his voice even. Like he would have spoke to the boy, all those years ago. He was keenly aware that the only reason he remained alive was the trivial emotional attachment the boy had with him that Harry found far from trivial. These days, Harry largely ignored him and Geoffrey knew he was here only to ensure the Ministry didn't get their hands on him and create any difficulty for Devlin. "Voldemort did not want me to know things. I was in control of Dubhán and that meant I was restricted. I stopped going on raids the instant he placed Dubhán in my control. He did not want me captured. He did not want me interrogated. As you know, I was not supposed to be on the raid that lead to my capture."
Harry Potter bit his lip. Geoffrey looked away as the man collected himself. Geoffrey had no idea where Voldemort might have taken Devlin. If he had, he would have died trying to tell Harry Potter, because he did not have a good feeling of Voldemort being alone with Devlin. The boy was too jumbled. It had been too long since he had needed to be what Voldemort wanted. He had friends now that were just children and Geoffrey swallowed the bile at the idea that they might have rubbed off on Devlin at all. Devlin could not be just a child. Not yet. Perhaps not ever.
"But you had the right to travel with him. You said so. Where were you supposed to go if we ever raided that camp?"
Geoffrey searched his face.
"Voldemort said the boy would know."
OoOoOoOoO
The walls were whitewashed, the bed a plain wood with plain white sheets, the floors the same polished wood, and the desk scraped of any personality. The window across from the door looked out across the front lawn, like his own bedroom at Harry's house did. It was silent and dimly lit. The air smelled like nothing at all. Nothing bad. Nothing good. Nothing, nothing, nothing.
Devlin sank onto the stiff bed. He wanted to scream or punch at the mattress, but he did not allow himself the freedom to do what he wanted. Instead, he went through the motions of removing his shoes and sliding under the covers. He tucked the top edge beneath his head and bent his legs, so that he had a small space between his head and his legs, in which to breathe. It was only here, where Voldemort could not see his eyes, that he let himself truly process what had happened.
He had been kidnapped.
The idea rusted on his tongue, becoming more and more dissatisfactory the longer he left it there. It tasted familiar yet foreign, and it was with nearly frantic fear that he realized he had practically forgotten how to be the kidnapped boy.
He had been kidnapped. Felix was dead.
Better him than me, came the reflexive thought. Harry would look at him oddly if he'd said aloud, but Harry was not here, and Voldemort might have laughed.
He had been kidnapped. Felix was dead. Maria was probably terr-
He wouldn't think about that. He wouldn't, wouldn't, wouldn't.
He had been kidnapped. Felix was dead. He had no idea where he was.
Except he must be in England, because they had passed the ramshackle hut that Voldemort had brought him to visit when he was small. Who this house had belonged to, he had no idea. Perhaps simply some unsuspecting muggles. But Voldemort had said a man that looked just like him had lived here, once. Not Voldemort - he'd been an orphan.
He looks like his muggle father, Harry had said once. You don't have to keep thinking about how you look like him - maybe it would be better to think that you look like your great grandfather.
It hadn't been, of course. His great-grandfather had left his grandfather in the orphanage. Perhaps cruelty ran in their blood. Perhaps his mother had just been exceedingly fortunate not to end up like them.
He had been kidnapped. Felix was dead. He had no idea where he was. He had only six days worth of his potion.
That thought made him gulp. To be at the mercy of Voldemort for something so basic. Perhaps the man had forgotten Devlin's weakness. It was a weakness of which Devlin would not out-grow or over-come. One way in which he would not ever be better than Voldemort or small orphaned Tom Riddle.
Calm down, the sharpness growled, because getting worked up would only mean those vials disappeared faster. He was never more thankful for that shrunken backpack.
Go to sleep. Go to sleep. Go to sleep.
Somehow, he managed.