AN: next chapter is last chapter, other than a couple of extra bits and pieces that I may or may not publish. I did warn you that it was the beginning fragment of something longer that is unlikely to ever be written.
The scream rang around the house followed by a very loud, 'Oh god, oh god.'
Lenalee, her brother, and Lavi were over at Tiedoll's place to hang out with their friends. Komui, Marie and Daisya were talking to Tiedoll around the table, and Komui had yet to let go of his sister's hand. At the sudden noise all of them went racing to Allen and Kanda's bedroom, as that was where Lavi had last been seen and the voice belonged to him. Lavi was known to push the two boys, often a bit further than he should, and bets had been made in the past about how long it would be before they retaliated properly. However, no one had thought the boys were capable of causing him to scream quite like that.
The first thing everyone saw when they walked in the room was Allen and Kanda, sitting on the bed, with mild looks of interest on their faces. Allen had book open on his lap, but no one could read the title. They followed the two boys' eyes in the hopes of finding Lavi.
The sight was a combination of amusing and horrifying; Lavi was dangling from the ceiling by one ankle. His arms and one of his legs were waving wildly, and his eyes were open further than anyone could ever remember seeing them before. His head band lay on the ground, and his hair was obeying gravity. A few seconds later his hands came to his mouth and the 'oh god' changed to 'I'm going to be sick.'
'Yuu, put him down, now!' Tiedoll was mad, he wasn't mad often, but he was now.
'Che, don't call me that old man, and he deserves it.'
'Kanda-kun, I don't know what he did, but you should let him down. Keeping people upside down can cause brain damage, if you leave it them that way long enough. The blood rushing to the head over oxygenates the brain.' Komui, ever the mild voice of reason, even got Allen interested.
'That's not a problem, Komui-san, I made sure that the only thing that would happen to him would be nausea, much to Kanda's annoyance.' That smile sent shivers down everyone's spine, how a six-year-old could be so frightening was anyone's guess.
'How did you manage that, Allen?' this timid voice was Lenalee, she liked the boys and she liked magic, but this was a little unnerving.
'I used magic to trick his internal systems into thinking he was laying on the floor, but his senses are telling him he is dangling in mid-air, the conflicting information makes him dizzy, while the spell stops the blood from rushing to his brain. The only danger he's in is the possibility of throwing up.'
'Usagi, if you throw up I am dropping you in it,' Kanda threatened. Lavi briefly wondered if getting down would be worth being covered in vomit, and he had to admit the idea wasn't as unappealing as he would have thought. Marie finally spoke up from his place with the other 'younger' people, despite being closer to Komui's age than Lenalee's.
'I would argue that there is no such thing as magic, but Lavi's position kind of makes that impossible.' The two 'adults' and Lenalee went a little pale. It would be useless to deny the truth at that point, and that would make the next conversation a little … embarrassing.
'Well, it would appear that we all need to have a very long conversation about what has just happened. We will do so after Lavi is safely on the ground again. His Grandfather is a little overprotective of his only grandchild,' Komui said, his voice filled with the fake cheer he used when he was about to pass of the blame, that rightfully belonged to him, onto someone else.
'Che,' was Kanda's only reply and Allen stayed silent, but Lavi soon found his feet back on stable ground. He then proceeded to kiss said ground with many proclamations of love. The crowed of people began to make their way to the lounge room to get comfortable for what promised to be a long talk. On the way out of the room, Lenalee asked Allen a quiet question, as he was more likely to answer than Kanda.
'What did Lavi do to deserve that?' she asked, proud her voice didn't shake. The reaction was a rather extreme one, especially for Allen to take part in, he normally just ignored their red-headed friend. She wasn't entirely sure she wanted to know, but curiosity begged her to ask.
Allen got that smile again, the dangerous one. 'He insinuated that Kanda and I were in an incestuous relationship as a "joke", we didn't think it was funny.'
Everyone in hearing range shuddered. Once before someone, an outsider, had asked if Allen and Kanda's relationship was "healthy", to use their words. The person had kept on saying things like, the boys were too young for that kind of "experimentation" and other rather pointed comments that made it very clear what they thought was going on. Allen had reacted rather … extremely. It was the only time they had seen the white haired-child lose his composer. He had made it quite clear that he would never allow someone to touch him like that, even Kanda.
During the whole incident, the only thing the adults could think of, but would never say out loud, was the condition Allen had been in when Kanda found him. The subject had been unanimously deemed taboo after that, and normally they were smart enough to leave it that way.
While they walked to the lounge room, Tiedoll sent a message to the Bookmen explaining what had happened and that he would probably end up explaining to their son about Magic. Lavi, after all, was the only one of the five children standing before him that Tiedoll didn't have parental rights over.
Finally, they were all sitting in the lounge room, and the wizards and witch present were left in a rather awkward silence. Because Komui had suggested the conversation, they were waiting for him to start it, but he wasn't sure how.
As those who knew of magic saw it, they had two choices; one, come clean about years of lies, or two, Obliviate all their memories and forget everything that had happened. The three of them were leaning towards the latter option, less embarrassing, except that wouldn't work because of Allen and Kanda. They needed answers from the two boys about how they were doing magic with such precision when they weren't even supposed to have Magic in the first place, let alone be able to control it at there age. Finally, Tiedoll decided to take control, as the oldest present and because Komui didn't seem to be interested in doing so.
'There have always been people who have been born with the power to do things, things that most people would consider out of the ordinary, and this ability tends to run in families, though there are exceptions to this rule. The power is commonly called magic, and the people who used it are referred to as witches and wizards. A few centuries ago it was decided that it would be best if the fact that magic was real was kept from those that couldn't use it, to try and avoid persecution.
'The Lee's, the bookmen, and my family are all old magic families; Komui and I are both Wizards and Lenalee is a witch. The Lee's parents and all Lavi's family are Wizards and Witches, but Lavi was born without magic so he is what is commonly referred to as a squib.
'The reason you four, and Lavi, were not told of this was partly because of the laws of secrecy, but mostly because we didn't want you to feel left out or different from us. We all wanted to act like a normal non-magical family. Obviously, that is out the window now that Allen and Kanda have shown us their little display. So now we need to move to the second half of this conversation.' Kanda and Allen both raised an eyebrow, a silent request to continue.
'The Magic community has ways of finding people who perform accidental magic as children and keeping track of them. Neither of you have been found, meaning that should have been your first time performing magic, however your control and the way you spoke of what you did makes that unlikely. So, we would like to know exactly what experience you have of magic, how much you know, and how you found out.' This was Komui, if he could shift the attention to something else, maybe no one would think about how long they had been lying for.
It was Allen who answered, like always. 'Kanda and I have always known about, and messed around with, magic. We decided that must be what it was as there was no other explanation. We found out about more specific aspects of it after we found books on it.' Having said that, Allen lifted the book he had been holding the whole time so they could see the title, The Standard Book of Spells, Grade 2, it was Komui's old text book from school.
'Allen-kun, how did you get that book? All of our books on magic are locked in our offices.' Komui sounded slightly strained. a six-year-old practicing spells from a second year book undetected? This was exactly what their systems were supposed to prevent. Kanda snorted.
'Never lock something around the Moyashi, he sees it as an invitation.' At everyone's looks he elaborated as Allen had turned rather pink and wasn't speaking. 'You're all idiots, Moyashi can pick locks quicker than most people can open them with keys. When he was younger, he ended up with a compulsion to unlock anything that was closed, how have none of you idiots noticed? I learnt in the first week that if I had something I wanted to keep away from him, then an open door was more effective than any padlock.'
'Allen picks locks?' that was Daisya's input, one that was mirrored by everyone present. Except Komui, who was thankful someone else was guilty of something.
'He has picked and relocked absolutely every door, cupboard, draw or box, every time it was locked by someone else since the second day he got here. You're all idiots.'
'Why?' This was Lenalee, the idea that every time she locked something a boy a year younger than her went around unlocking it and looking inside was slightly disturbing.
Kanda glared at Allen who had a very strange look on his face, somewhere between embarrassed and the pained look he always got when his past was brought up. After much nudging and glaring from Kanda, glares that would have broken most Giants, Allen finally muttered out a response.
'A woman who tried to "adopt" me once had a locked door, I found out later that she kept some … not nice things in there. I found out when she went to use them on me. After that I leant that it's what people don't want you to know that will hurt you, and it's usually what's behind locks. Never really broke the habit of checking.'
The reactions of the people present were varied; pain, anger, embarrassment, and one case of understanding. They didn't know what they should direct these emotions at though, what Allen had lived through or the fact that he didn't trust them. Or that nearly everything they had thought was safe behind locked doors was really out in the open with "look at me" sign attached.
'I can't believe that you don't trust us, or that you went through all our private stuff. Seriously, Allen-Chan, why didn't you just stop after the first few times when you realised that it had nothing to do with you?' it was Komui, if blame was redirected it couldn't land on him, unfortunately this time it backfired as Daisya snorted.
'Except he had every right to all of that because you guys have been lying to us the whole time we've lived here and, as they showed, it did have something to do with them,' Daisya said rather loudly.
'Yeah, moving passed this interesting thing about Allen and locks, let's get back to the original conversation. Magic and you guys being liars, and that Allen and Kanda found a way to cheat your system without knowing it existed.' Lavi was showing that he was, actually, annoyed that his family had lied to him his whole life, or at least as long as he could remember. He could come back to Allen's irritating habit later.
'Yes, we lied,' Tiedoll was talking again, 'and we will make it up to you, all of you, later. However, at the moment the problem with Allen and Kanda needs to be the priority. When accidental magic is used by someone under seventeen it is registered by the ministry, and the "trace" is cast to keep track of all magic performed near that person until they turn seventeen. We have checked the ministry records nearly every day to make sure none of you had magic, and now you tell us that you have been practicing it for years. Don't suppose either of you can explain that?'
'Maybe cause it wasn't accidental.' Kanda replied.
'What?' Komui was wondering what the boy was implying. Allen took over.
'Neither me nor Kanda have ever performed magic without knowing exactly what we were doing. If your "trace" thing is activated by "accidental" magic, maybe because all of ours was performed with purpose it never registered us as underage?' It sounded like a semi reasonable explanation.
'Perhaps, if that is the case this should be fairly simple to resolve. We just need to get some ministry official over here to see if one can be applied manually, after that everything should be fairly straight forward.' Komui was pretending he was in charge, like he often did. He was smart, a genius, just not as smart as Allen and Kanda.
Little did they know that things weren't as simple as the adults hoped, and were about to get even more complicated than anyone could have guessed.