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Chapter Text

There was no glory in this death.

No last stand. No honorable sacrifice.

Just a blinding flash of pain, a lot of shouting, and then-

Crying.

A lot of crying.

Not from them, of course.

They were professionals.

They didn’t cry.

…Except maybe now they did.

***

Simon Riley opened his eyes to a light so offensively bright it felt like God had slapped him in the face with a flashlight and a grudge. His head lolled to the side with all the structural integrity of a half-cooked noodle. Alarm bells rang in his skull. His neck wasn’t working. His arms were flopping like overcooked sausages. His legs twitched with the violent impotence of a man used to drop kicking doors and now reduced to gently flailing in place like an angry rainbow trout.

No tactical control. No muscle memory. Not unless you counted the phantom echo of breaching a room with a flashbang, which had apparently been overwritten by the horrifying new experience of peeing himself mid-scream.

He was in a cot.

A cot.

Covered in pastel blankets. Wearing a onesie with a duck on it.

And some deranged, cheerful person was cooing at him.

“There’s our little man, aren’t you strong!”

Strong?

STRONG??

He had killed men in the dark with nothing but a knife and poor impulse control. He had survived torture, betrayal, and a complete psychological collapse in a bathtub at 3am with only whiskey and spite to keep him company.

And now he was being called a “little man” by a man who thought peekaboo counted as a tactical maneuver.

Simon Riley, formerly known as Ghost, elite Tier One operator and human embodiment of ‘do not perceive me’, let out a shriek that could only be described as a multi-layered symphony of pure, unfiltered rage; the kind of existential horror you feel when you accidentally open your front camera; and a shrill, desperate “WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK” in B-flat.

From somewhere in the distance-possibly the kitchen, possibly hell- his new “mum” laughed.

“He’s so vocal!”

Vocal?

He was screaming for his life.

He tried to yell “WHERE THE BLOODY HELL AM I,” but what emerged from his mouth was “WaaAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!”

Which only confirmed it.

He wasn’t hallucinating. He wasn’t in a coma. He wasn’t being tortured in some weird MK-Ultra sleep regression chamber.

He was a baby.

A small, soft, baby.

In a duck-covered onesie.

Who had just pissed himself and couldn’t lift his own head.

“Christ,” he thought furiously, eyes wide with horror, “this is it. This is hell. This is divine punishment. This is purgatory, but with rattles.”

He flailed again. Useless. Tiny fists batting the air like a malfunctioning Roomba. He wanted a gun. He got a pacifier. He tried to sit up. He rolled. His body squeaked.

Unacceptable.

“Babies,” he thought, unblinking, “aren’t stupid. They’re just trapped.”

He stared at the fuzzy mobile above his crib, the soft tune of Twinkle Twinkle playing like a funeral dirge for his dignity. The spinning sheep mocked him. The pastel clouds laughed. One of the plush stars looked suspiciously judgmental.

“They remember,” he thought darkly. “They remember dying. They remember taxes. They remember the mission that went wrong in Kazakhstan. They remember crying, not because they’re helpless, but because they know they were once gods.”

And now?

Now he couldn’t even hold up his own fucking head.

But the worst part- the absolute cherry on this cursed sundae-

He was alone.

No comms. No backup. No squad. No Laswell barking orders. No Soap mouthing off. No Price.

Just him, his existential spiral, and a stuffed giraffe with dead eyes.

And so, Simon Riley-operator, monster, myth- lay back in his duck-patterned prison and let out a howl that shook the nursery.

***

Kate Laswell realized something was wrong the moment the mobile above her crib started playing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star in what could only be described as Morse code for “you’re fucked.”

Not literally, obviously, but close enough. Her brain, still hardwired for encrypted signals and clandestine radio chatter, locked onto the rhythm instantly. Dot-dot-pause. Dot-dot-dot. Long pause.

She stared. The sheep rotated. 

“This is a message,” she thought grimly. “A coded warning. Possibly a curse. Definitely a mistake.”

Her instincts screamed recon, extraction, possible sedative exposure. But then she tried to sit up only for her hand to miss her face, her elbow to collapse and punch herself in the eye with the floppy grace of a drunk puppet.

Her first full body assessment came to a single horrifying conclusion: She was small. Squishy. Coordination-challenged. She was a baby.

A whole-ass, full-sentience, tragically sober baby.

She took a breath. Inhaled like she was about to yell at a senator. Exhaled like someone trying to not flip a table in front of Congress.

“Okay,” she told herself. “You’ve done worse. You’ve done undercover ops in North Korea. You’ve survived five hour briefings with Soap. You once had to negotiate arms trade with a warlord while wearing a blazer from Target. This is just another long-term assignment.”

One with diapers. And formula. And the inability to speak without screaming like a haunted violin.

She tried again to sit up. Failed. Flopped. The crib mocked her.

To make matters worse, she’d discovered something else, something more dangerous than her soft spot and lack of teeth: magic. Real, honest to god, magic. 

Apparently, when she glared at her toy wand hard enough, it lit up. Now her pureblood parents were calling her “a prodigy” and weeping with joy every time she levitated her socks by accident.

“Wonderful,” she thought, flatly, as her bottle floated past her head and smacked into the wall. “I’ve been downgraded from CIA liaison to gifted toddler.”

The worst part? She’d already created a threat matrix for the household:

The house elf was sus. The nanny had weak ankles. The grandfather clock in the hallway was definitely cursed.

Laswell sighed. It was going to be a long, humiliating mission.

***

Eris Kane opened her eyes, immediately took in the embroidered crest above her crib that screamed House Hale, and decided calmly, and efficiently that this was a hostile environment and she would need to escape by Thursday.

She was in a crib. An actual velvet lined crib with runes etched into the railing and the house crest in gold thread. In short? A prison, but make it pretentious.

She moved to sit up and failed so miserably it offended her on a molecular level. Her body betrayed her, her spine had the structural integrity of soup, her arms wiggled, her legs kicked out like angry noodles, and had just drooled on her own collarbone.

Unacceptable. Unforgivable. Humiliating.

Above her, a crystal chandelier sparkled with ancient money and inherited arrogance. The entire nursery screamed “old blood and older ideology.” The mobile above her crib had lace. Lace. Someone had monogrammed the burp cloths.

Ancient and Noble House of Hale.

Of course. Of course she’d get reborn into a cult with a family motto like “Power in Purity.” She was surrounded by silk, opulence, and ancestral eugenics.

Yeah, fuck this.

She shifted until a rattle rolled into her hand. Instinct kicked in.

Target: acquired. Objective: chaos.

She threw it with all the rage of a woman who once destroyed a blacksite with a rusty spoon and pure unfiltered rage.

The rattle shot across the room, hit the wall, and exploded in a shower of pink sparks and glitter.

The nursemaid clapped. “Oh! She’s already showing signs of wandless magic! Such talent!”

Eris- formerly the world’s most efficient knife in the dark, current baby with drool on her chin- locked eyes with the nursemaid and calculated the fastest way to fake an allergic reaction and get reassigned to another family. Or another continent.

Pureblood. Witch. Delusional. Possibly armed. Threat level: moderately punchable.

She looked down at her ruffled sleeves. The lace-trimmed booties. Her expression went flat.

“I will kill someone before I wear a frilly headband again,” she thought grimly, already plotting how to set the wardrobe on fire using sheer rage and one enchanted teething ring.

She scanned the walls. Noted the door hinge placement. Counted seconds between the nursemaid’s rounds. Calculated the physics of launching herself off the changing table and using the curtains to rappel to freedom.

The only thing stopping her was her complete lack of neck control and the fact that, moments ago, she had tried to lift her head and instead just angrily blinked at the ceiling for twelve full seconds.

Fine. She would wait.

Rubber bones: 1 Eris: 0

The moment she could walk, talk, or chew through an anti-apparition ward? She was out of here.

And if they tried to braid her hair into ringlets again, she’d burn the estate to the ground with her pacifier.

***

Elsewhere across the world, scattered like emotionally damaged confetti, the rest of the former special ops team were beginning to realize with mounting existential dread, that something was deeply, cosmically wrong.

John Price, former Captain to the most elite task force worldwide, now age three weeks, glared at his own reflection in a fuzzy crib mirror and thought, with military precision and the weight of betrayal: “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

His scowl was undercut by the fact that he had just spit up on his own chest. His arms refused to cooperate. His body felt like a half set pudding. And worst of all?

He had dimples.

***

Phillip Graves tried to crawl and failed so violently that it looked like someone had punted a sack of flour across the nursery rug. He ended up face down, legs kicking uselessly behind him like an angry shrimp.

His new father- an overly patriotic wizard from Arkansas with a shotgun on the wall and a wand in his belt- cheered from the corner.

“That’s my boy! Look at him go! He levitated that pacifier outta pure spite, I swear to God.”

Graves, who had once committed fraud, treason, and a deeply personal betrayal with a charming smile and a cigar, now looked like a pissed off rotisserie chicken in a camo-print onesie.

He tried to flip him off and ended up blowing a spit bubble instead.

***

König opened his eyes in a quiet Austrian nursery and froze.

He was back.

In Austria.

In a crib.

With magic.

He stared at his hands: small, soft, helpless.

He screamed into a pillow for three solid minutes, muffled and guttural, like a warhorn trying to weep. The mobile above him spun in slow, mocking circles. One plush bat made eye contact. He screamed harder.

***

Alejandro Vargas kicked his legs so violently the tiny training broomstick toppled off its stand and smacked into a wall.

“¡Mí hijo va a volar joven!” his abuela gasped, delighted.

Alejandro, currently foaming with fury and betrayed by his own coordination, tried to curse in Spanish. Instead, he swallowed his entire fist and sneezed.

He swore vengeance through tears. His abuela kissed his head.

***

John “Soap” MacTavish broke a lamp just by existing near it. He hadn’t even touched it. One minute it was there, the next it shattered.

The look on his face said, “I regret nothing.”

Then he made a fart noise with his mouth and screamed because it startled him.

***

Kyle “Gaz” Garrick stared at a sock for six full seconds, narrowed his eyes, and willed it out of existence.

It vanished.

It did not reappear.

He screamed. He had plans for that sock.

***

Rodolfo “Rudy” Parra floated his bottle into the air in a moment of triumphant glee and then immediately dropped it on his own forehead. It bounced. He blinked. Then calmly closed his eyes like he was rebooting.

***

They were scattered across time zones and continents, each one haunted, furious, and utterly convinced they were alone in this magical hellscape of diapers, onesies, and emotionally manipulative adults cooing at them like they weren’t trained killers.

No comms. No backup. No team.

Just cursed mobiles, suspiciously sentient house elves, and the growing dread that this wasn’t a mission.

It was punishment.

They didn’t know the others were alive.

Didn’t know the team had made it.

Didn’t know, somewhere across the map, there were nine other battle-scarred war criminals learning how to hold a spoon again and plotting violent revenge on whoever cursed them with tiny, chubby hands.

Fate has a cruel sense of humor.

Eventually-eventually- once day they would find each other. 

You know, once they got through potty training first of course. 

Chapter Text

Simon Riley is three years old now. 

Well, physically anyway.

Mentally? He’s thirty-something, emotionally scorched, and holding a grudge against God, fate, and whatever petty cosmic intern thought reincarnation would be a hilarious new venture to pursue.

Emotionally, he’s basically a black hole in footie pajamas.

He remembers everything.

Every bullet. Every betrayal. Every burning building and bleeding teammate. Every time he duct-taped a superior officer’s phone to a passing drone just to be an asshole. Every order given, every mistake made, every soul-crushing therapy session he didn’t attend because feelings are for civilians. 

Now, he’s in a body that can’t reheat chicken nuggets, can’t hold a fork without dropping it, and can’t reach the goddamn counter to steal the bourbon he’s knows is hidden behind the flour jar.

He once infiltrated a fortified compound with nothing but a lockpick, a half broken comm, and sheer spite. Now he needs an adult to cut his grapes in half so he doesn’t “choke and die.”

This is hell. 

Or, more accurately, it’s karmic retribution wearing a fuzzy dinosaur onesie with little foot claws.  

Which, honestly, tracks. Because if anyone was going to be karmically punished with magical reincarnation, it was going to be Ghost. 

And if toddlers are known for saying cryptic, eldritch things like “I remember when the bad man came,” or “This isn’t my real face,” then Ghost is the undisputed world champion of scaring babysitters into early retirement with statements like “The flames took everything,” or “When I was big, I did things I’m not allowed to say.” But spoken in the deadest most monotone voice imaginable while clutching a stuffed dragon.  

It always earned him that special look adults give when they chuckle nervously and scramble to change the subject. 

Fine by him. He takes the wins where he can find them, even if it means delivering unsettling power trips to feeling slightly better about needing help wiping food off his face after every meal.  

Except for him, it isn’t some imaginative toddler phase.

He remembers the op that went sideways. The moment Roach hit the ground and never got back up. The way his own heartbeat roared in his ears louder than Shepherd’s gunfire. The gasoline. The fire. The stench of blood and cordite.

And now he can’t open a yogurt cup by himself.

Life really does come full circle.

His accidental magic started last month. Wild, unpredictable, and as spiteful as he is. So far, his toddler resume includes: Incinerating a pacifier (possibly on purpose, but good luck proving otherwise in wizard court), detonating the toy chest with one(1) sneeze, and summoning a stuffed rabbit into the air just to stab it repeatedly with a teaspoon in an act of preemptive psychological warfare.

His parents are already cooing about him being a “natural-born wizard”. 

Yeah, because that’s exactly what’d you want, really. The soul of a government sanctioned murder machine trapped in a squishy, unstable toddler body with the emotional range of a rabid landmine. 

Honestly, he tries not to question the universe too much in both this life and the last. Divine judgment? Sure. Karmic cycles? Okay. Cosmic irony? Whatever. He’d made his peace with all of it sometime around betrayal number seven and eight, possibly nine if you counted the time someone replaced his rations with cat food.  

But this time he’s reasonably confident the universe is high off its divine ass. Like, celestial bath salts in the heavens level of wasted. Just absolutely blitzed, handing out second chances like party favors at a fever dream.

Because there’s no sane reason to look at someone the Simon “Ghost” Riley who was voted the walking embodiment of intrusive thoughts in high school and say, “Yeah. Let’s put that one into a toddler that can do magic.”

And yet, here he is, all three feet of him, wearing footed dinosaur jammies, and holding a juice box. 

The universe is on crack and he’s the cautionary tale. 

***

Johnny “Soap” MacTavish is pretty sure none of this is normal. 

He’s three now. A sturdy, loud, suspiciously strong three, but a three year old nonetheless. 

He doesn’t know why but this feels like a personal attack. 

Actually, he doesn’t know much about anything that’s going on. He remembers grabbing Makarov to save Ghost, feeling the bastard twist his arm, the cold barrel pressing against his temple, and then a one second of pain, followed by a whole lot of nothing. Then he woke up reincarnated as some sort of aggressive Scottish with hair that sticks up everywhere.  

So yeah, he’s pretty sure that’s not normal. Then again, neither is the magic. 

Because apparently, when he gets mad, like really mad, the kind of mad where you’re not allowed to use the words you want to say in polite company, well… things just sort of… happen? To say the least.  

Like the time he exploded a sippy cup, turned all of his bedtime stories into feathers, and levitated a bowl of porridge only to dump it on his own head while screeching like a feral goat. 

Not to mention the time he woke up from a nap to find all his furniture on the ceiling. 

His parents are no help at all. Both of them love Soap, they do, truly and deeply, with the exhausted affection of two people who have realized they are catastrophically unqualified for whatever the hell is going on. 

But every time they catch him doing something weird like levitating the cat (accidentally), or melting the toaster (also accidentally), or opening all the cupboard doors simultaneously just to see if he could, they both go completely, unnaturally pale. 

Like, the color drains out of their faces and doesn’t come back for a solid ten minutes. They exchange this silently, glassy eyed look that says ‘If we pretend it’s not happening, maybe it’ll stop.’

And they have recently adopted a bold, revolutionary parenting philosophy that boils down to ignore everything and go lay down for a nap. 

Yesterday, Soap set a dish towel on fire by glaring at it too hard. His dad had walked in, went bone white, whispered “Nope,” turned around, and left the room. His mum had sighed, patted his head while dunking the smoldering towel in the sink, and said in a voice that sounded like she was trying to convince herself, “He’s just very… spirited.”

And then also went to lie down. 

So yeah, he basically has zero context for any of this. 

He used to be a perfectly respectable, grown-ass adult with a job description that included words like ‘counterterrorism’ and ‘explosive enthusiasts’ but now, he can’t seem to go five minutes without doing something that makes his parents consider calling the clergy. 

Yesterday, his mum tried practicing counting with him. He made it to three before the air filled with bubbles that took the shape of the numbers.

“Coincidence,” his mother said, with the manic optimism of someone clinging to the last nerve she had left. 

He’s… not so sure about that. 

Also, he can’t tie his own shoes, which feels incredibly unfair, considering he used to dismantle IED’s with his bare hands and a set of tweezers. 

Now, he has to stick his tongue out and focus on making little bunny ears loops and hope they don’t catch fire while he does so. 

He would like to formally file a complaint with whatever cosmic HR department is in charge of reincarnation. Because if this is some sort of divine prank, he’d like to opt out.

Immediately. 

***

Konig doesn’t cry. 

Not because he’s too tough, or too stoic, or too terrifying. But because he’s already surpassed the known limits of emotional collapse and has transcended into a state of permanent, high functioning dread. 

He has no idea why he’s three years old again. 

Three years ago, he was a towering specter in a balaclava, a human battering ram, a whispered legend who could end a man’s entire career with a single well placed punch. 

And now, he is approximately the size and shape of a disgruntled garden gnome. He has to look up at people to see their faces. He hasn’t had to do that since he was twelve (the first time around anyway.) 

It’s ironic that he’s in Austria again. 

Out of all the goddamn countries in the world, why Austria?

It was as if the universe had looked at his old life, flipped through the cosmic travel brochure, and said “Ah yes. Let’s respawn him right back where the trauma started. For aesthetic consistency.”

He could have reincarnated anywhere. France. Canada. A charming cottage in the English countryside. And although he draws the line at America, he could have woken up anywhere that didn’t make his entire soul feel like it was curling up into a bitter little pretzel. 

But no. 

As if being three feet tall, emotionally compromised, and forcibly reincarnated wasn’t humiliating enough, he also has to do it here. 

Every morning, he wakes up in his aggressively quaint bedroom, the one filled with salt lamps he uses as nightlights, hand stitched quilts, and stuffed lambs, and thinks ‘This is karmic performance art. This is psychological warfare. I am being personally bullied by the universe.’

There is nothing anyone can say that will convince him otherwise. Because only a malevolent cosmic force would look at Konig, once a mercenary, a living nightmare, and certified Too Large For Most Doorframes, and say, “Put him back where it hurts the most: Austria. And while you’re at it, stick him in a bonnet.”

So, here he is. Again. Back in the Alps where it all began. Only this time he’s curled up with a blanket with tiny embroidered edelweiss and plotting how to disappear the whole damn country if he can figure out how to work his magic without spontaneously combusting. 

It’s fine. 

He’s fine. 

He’s just going to lie under this embroidered blanket, face down, radiating the kind of energy you normally only see in tax audits and haunted attics, and scream internally until someone explains why reincarnation has to be so aggressively ironic. 

***

Alejandro Vargas had always considered himself a reasonable man.

Yes, he’d once threatened to strangle a cartel lieutenant with his own tie. Yes, he had a tendency to smile in a way that made grown men nervous while he envisioned creative uses for his combat knife. Yes, he sometimes narrated firefights in his head like a dramatic telenovela. But overall? He was reasonable, grounded, practically serene by comparison to the maniacs he used to call colleagues.

That personal mythos lasted precisely twenty seconds into magical toddlerhood.

He had tried- he really had- to approach reincarnation with professionalism and to treat it like any other black-ops assignment in unknown territory: Establish the perimeter. Catalog resources. Gather intel. Blend in.

That plan disintegrated the moment he realized that being three years old meant he had the muscle tone of a damp paper towel and the attention span of a concussed ferret with the emotional stability of an overstimulated raccoon in a restaurant dumpster.

And then there was his family. Sweet merciful mother of God, his family.

He had made peace with a lot of things, such as dying violently, reincarnating, the humiliating inevitability of nap schedules; but nothing could have prepared him for the deranged circus that was his extended family. 

His grandmother- who moved through the house like a five foot tall dictator in orthopedic shoes- had declared he would be the “pride of the Vargas line.” She said it in the same tone he’d once used to announce they were about to breach a drug lord’s compound. Except this time, the “compound” was his childhood, and he was the weapon of mass destruction. His aunts and uncles treated him like a holy relic, a magical prodigy born to elevate the entire bloodline, as if he hadn’t just spent twenty minutes earlier that morning sobbing because he couldn’t figure out how to get his thumb out of a goddamn sippy cup.

But nothing- nothing- could prepare him for the broom incident.

His abuela, her heart no doubt in the right place, had presented him with a toy broom the size of a garden rake and insisted he was destined for greatness. He’d attempted, with all the diplomacy left in his shriveled little soul, to explain that he had no prior experience with flying household implements. She had smiled beatifically, told him “You are special,” and given him a firm pat on the head that felt uncomfortably like a benediction.

He’d been special, all right. A special brand of disaster.

The instant he sat on it, the broom launched itself toward the ceiling at a velocity he was pretty sure violated international law. He distinctly remembered the exact moment he became weightless, because he had time to reflect on every bad decision that led him here including, but not limited to, being born a second time. The broom performed an unprompted barrel roll, dumped him into a decorative vase, and then proceeded to pinwheel itself across the living room, screaming like a banshee possessed by NASCAR.

From his vantage point face down in shattered pottery, Alejandro had sincerely considered just going back to being dead.

Three years into this surreal nightmare, he’d learned exactly two things: first, magic was an unpredictable, petty force of nature that delighted in his suffering. Second, the Vargas family had the collective sense of self preservation of a paper bag in a hurricane and were absolutely, unequivocally out of their fucking minds.

They called him prodigious and exceptional. A “blessing.” He called himself visibly deteriorating and hanging on by mere threads.

Every day, he woke up determined to be normal- just for one morning, one hour, five goddamn minutes. And every day, the universe caressed his face tenderly and said, “No. Fuck you.”

Everytime he tried to do something normal like read a book, brush his teeth, or pet the cat it ended with something catching fire or levitating out of the window. At this point, the cat simply left the room whenever he entered, and he couldn’t blame her. 

Alejandro had survived so much in his previous life being a Colonel in the Mexican Special Forces. He had survived wounds of every kind, betrayals from every type of double agent and ally, and all manner of battlefields that still gave him nightmares and left him shaking and sweating when he woke up with the memory of screams echoing in his mind. 

But he was starting to suspect that nothing in his old life could have possibly prepared him for this. For tiny hands that sparked when he sneezed, or the way his family cheered when he summoned a cookie from the top of the fridge so aggressively it took out a lamp to get to him. It certainly didn’t prepare him for the reality that he could take down a compound in the dark but couldn’t successfully eat a sandwich without it turning into confetti if he got excited. 

At this point, Alejandro had stopped asking why. He simply accepted that existence was an elaborate prank being orchestrated by a cosmic entity with a vendetta against his dignity.

The worst part of all of this was that somewhere deep down, he knew he’d acclimate eventually, because he was nothing if not adaptable. 

Today, he sat on the nursery floor in a tiny sweater that smelled like lavender, legs crossed and face blank, as the remains of the broom smoldered at his feet. He was three years old. He had died, been reborn, and was now apparently a magical demigod with all the finesse of a particularly volatile grenade.

Somewhere, in some dimension, he imagined God pouring a glass of wine and whispering, “This one’s my favorite episode.”

He missed being dangerous in ways that didn’t involve spontaneous combustion. And if this was his second chance at life, he sincerely hoped the universe had a refund policy. Because the only thing more humiliating than his last death was the knowledge that he would absolutely do this again tomorrow, because apparently, he was that kind of idiot. 

***

John Price is not having it. Three years in, and he is absolutely, categorically, spiritually over it.

He has survived too many things to be impressed by this nonsense. Wars. Betrayals. The time Ghost tried to rewire a detonator with a bobby pin and a prayer. The day Soap and Gaz single-handedly brought down an entire comms tent because they thought it would be “funny.” The existential horror of realizing Eris was allowed to file paperwork.

But nothing- absolutely nothing- could have prepared him for the unique humiliation of being three years old, stuck in a half-blood wizarding household, and forced to endure the daily theatre of “look how clever our little John is!”

He has… opinions.

First of all, there is nothing “clever” about accidentally levitating the entire tea set because you sneezed and then crying because the biscuits were out of reach. Second, the word “precocious” has been weaponized against him so many times it should be classified as a war crime. Third, and most importantly, if one more adult tries to ruffle his hair, he’s going to bite them.

Respectfully, of course, he’s a Captain, not an unhinged gremlin with no manners.

His parents- bless them- are the sort of earnest types who think a chalkboard with “MAGICAL MILESTONES” written in sparkly letters is an appropriate way to chronicle their child’s slow descent into feral sentience.

They love him, of course. But they also insist on narrating everything he does like it’s a live football match: “Oh, he’s practicing his wandless control again!”, “Look at him levitate the toy soldiers! So advanced for his age!”, “He’s so serious all the time. Such a little man with an old soul!”

Yes. He is serious.

But that’s only because he still remembers everything.

He remembers being forty-something and perpetually  tired. He remembers chain smoking behind supply crates and swearing he’d retire when this was all over. He remembers thinking, “Just one last op.”

Only, retirement never came. Instead, it ended with a bomb going off, a building collapsing around him in a roar of pulverized concrete and steel, the sickening lurch as he fell several stores, and the impact of hitting a slab of rubble hard enough to shatter his femur. For one breathless moment, he thought that was it. But then something massive came crashing down from above-

…and he was waking up, naked, freezing, and being unceremoniously handed to a sweaty woman who promptly burst into tears and told the man leaning over the both of them that Price was beautiful.

He didn’t recall much after that, just a blur of screaming, bright lights, and the disorienting realization that he was extremely naked and apparently someone’s son again. Then, somehow, three years later, here he was, living proof that the universe had a sense of humor best described as cruel and unnecessary. 

Yesterday, he tried to have a stern internal monologue about discipline and resilience. Five minutes in, he realized he was wearing a jumper with a dancing Puffskein embroidered across the chest. The Puffskein winked at him.

Price contemplated his life choices with the solemnity of a man considering treason.

This morning, he attempted to drink his milk with dignity. He propped it carefully on his tiny wooden table, adjusted his grip, and took a measured sip. It floated out of his hand mid-gulp, did a lazy pirouette, and dumped itself down his front. His mother clapped like he’d performed a solo recital at the Philharmonic.

He didn’t cry. He simply closed his eyes, exhaled through his nose, and reached deep into his soul for the last shred of patience he possessed. He found none.

He was officially out of any and all patience. 

He was out of patience with the squeaky-voiced neighbors who insisted on visiting to coo at him like he was a rare species of owl. Out of patience with the toy wand that shot sparks every time he looked at it funny. Out of patience with the universe, karma, fate, and whichever divine comedian had decided reincarnating John Price was an appropriate hobby.

Later, when he was put down for his afternoon nap- a ritual he’s found he doesn’t mind after decades of being Too Tired All The Bloody Time- he lays in his little bed, stared at the ceiling with the thousand yard stare of a man who has seen too much, and decided that if this was his second chance, he was going to make damn sure he used it properly.

***

Kyle “Gaz” Garrick does not, in fact, know what the fuck is going on.

It’s been three years, and every single day has been a new episode of What In the Existential Bullshit Is This.

Nobody gave him a manual. Nobody gave him a pamphlet. Nobody even had the courtesy to show up in a dream with a powerpoint presentation explaining why sometimes, when he’s upset, the living room lamps explode.

He is three years old, he is tired, and he’s ninety percent sure he’s living in an interdimensional sitcom that only gets weirder every season.

For the record, he was already pretty damn good at handling chaos. He was the guy you called when everything went sideways and when the plan turned into no plan. Like when Ghost started growling like a feral wolf, when Soap began building pipe bombs out of kitchen appliances, and when Eris decided the solution to any logistical problem was to vanish for forty eight hours and return covered in someone else’s blood.

He survived that so he can survive this. 

Probably. 

Maybe. 

He’d be a lot more confident if he had any idea what this even was. This is a level of surreal no military training prepared him for. 

He lives in a perfectly normal semi-detached house on a perfectly normal street in London. His mum is a nurse and his dad works at the post office. They are, by all accounts, extremely average humans. 

And yet, yesterday, when Gaz was brushing his teeth, his reflection waved at him. 

He then proceeded to scream so hard he got a nosebleed and had to be bribed out of the linen closet with chocolate pudding. 

Then there was the incident with the wallpaper. 

He’d been in the middle of a tantrum (small, controlled, and very dignified thank you very much) when the wallpaper had simply peeled itself off the walls in one giant sheet, rolled itself into a tube, and thumped him lightly on the head, like it was trying to scold him for being difficult. 

Both parents and Gaz had been very confused before his dad had decided that it had to have been shoddy glue and laughed it off as nothing more than a coincidence. 

Gaz doesn’t buy it.  

Because last week a cup scooted across the counter when he really, really wanted juice. It startled him so much the cup had spilled onto the floor only for the juice to rearrange itself to spell CALM DOWN in blocky wobbly letters YOU’RE FINE.

No. He was not fine. 

He was three years old again, his food was communicating with him, and his parents had adopted the coping strategy of permanent vacation from reality by trying to explain away everything that had occurred with logic and science. 

Today, he tried to tie his shoelaces. That’s it. That was the whole mission. And when he couldn’t do it, he got frustrated, yelled “For fuck’s sake!” in his tiny child voice and the shoes tied themselves.

He nearly blacked out.

It’s not even the magic that bothers him the most; it’s the lack of explanation. If he’s going to be a baby warlock or a cursed Victorian child, someone should at least tell him. Because he’s three years old, he has no frame of reference for this, and he’s starting to suspect he might be a mutant, or a meta human, or whatever the fuck the X-Men were. 

The thought makes him want to lie down. 

Tonight, he’s sitting on his little bed with his soft fuzzy blankie pulled up to his chin, staring at the ceiling and trying to manifest an angel or a fairy godmother or literally anyone who can tell him what the hell is going on. 

But no. The universe remains committed to this elaborate practical joke. 

He’s three, he has no income, and no plan, but he’s prepared to walk straight out the front door and start a new life if it means the wallpaper will stop judging him. 

Because there’s only so much a man can take and he is, by any metric, maxed out. 

***

Rodolfo “Rudy” Parra is three years old and, regrettably, used to this by now.

He remembers everything. Not in the way that makes him angry, though there were a few weeks, early on, when he’d had to lie face down on his little pillow and breathe through the knowledge that he had died and woken up in a body so small he could barely hold a cup. But acceptance is funny. It creeps up on you when you’re too exhausted to resist.

So now, he simply accepts things.

Magic? Sure. Why not. He’s seen stranger things. Once, he watched Eris Kane calmly break into a government archive and walk out with classified documents and a cup of coffee that wasn’t hers. He’s seen Ghost pick locks in total darkness while Soap narrated like it was a football match. He’s seen Alejandro walk through fire because he was too stubborn to go around.

A little unexplained levitation? A touch of spontaneous plant growth whenever he hums? Honestly, it’s fine.

His lovely parents are not quite as calm. They’ve tried to rationalize it, to tell themselves it’s all just a phase. But Rudy is perfectly aware this isn’t a phase. This is his life now.

Yesterday, he went to water the window box herbs, and the thyme sprouted two full inches under his hand. His mother shrieked, dropped the watering can, and called his father in a trembling voice. Rudy just tilted his head, considered the possibilities, and made a mental note to be more careful about humming around basil.

The day before, he woke up to find a small circle of white flowers blooming around his bed. No explanation. No fuss. He simply gathered them up, put them in a cup, and carried on with his morning.

He doesn’t tell anyone, but he likes the way it feels; like there’s something gentle beneath his skin. Something alive. Something that hums in his veins, warm and patient.

At night, he dreams of old voices and older friends: Price’s quiet steadiness, Gaz’s exasperated humor, Eris’s ruthless competence, Soap’s unkillable cheer, Ghost’s silence that always meant more than it seemed, Laswell’s dry intelligence that could cut through any crisis, Alejandro’s fierce loyalty that burned hotter than any fire, Konig’s anxious kindness tucked behind his massive shadow, and Graves’ easy confidence that somehow made even terrible plans sound sensible.

He wonders sometimes if any of them are here, too but he doesn’t ask.

Instead, he goes about his little routines with the kind of unflappable pragmatism that has always kept him alive. He folds his tiny clothes. He helps in the kitchen, even if he has to stand on a chair. When something strange happens- a book floating off the shelf, the teapot pouring itself- he just nods politely and says, “Gracias.”

Because if magic insists on being part of his day, he figures the least he can do is have good manners about it.

His parents watch him sometimes, eyes wide and worried. He wishes he could explain that he’s not afraid. That he’s been afraid before and this isn’t it.

This is just…life.

Another mission and another place to adapt and if he has to do it all again, start over and learn everything from scratch, he will, because Rodolfo Parra has never been afraid of new beginnings.

Even if it now comes with magic.

***

In Kate Laswell’s professional opinion, this entire operation is a catastrophic failure of oversight.

Three years of observing it firsthand has only confirmed her initial suspicion: magic is real, and magical society is deeply stupid.

Not in the “lack of knowledge” sense. No, no; wizards are frighteningly well informed about cauldron thickness and the precise etiquette of naming your third-born child. But when it comes to basic logistics, rational planning, or literally anything resembling coherent crisis management?

Absolutely hopeless.

The first time she watched her extended pureblood relatives spend an hour arguing about the correct color of a baby’s first wand ribbon, she had to physically bite the inside of her cheek to stop herself from explaining, in detail, how to conduct a strategic withdrawal.

But she is three years old and she is not allowed to say “If you can’t coordinate a family gathering without tears, you have no business managing an entire hidden society,” out loud.

So she doesn’t.

Instead, she sips her juice, adjusts her little cardigan, and silently judges them all with the calm disdain of a woman who once ran intelligence networks spanning multiple continents.

She’s gotten quite good at keeping her face neutral when things get weird. Like when the ancestral tapestry spontaneously re-sorted itself because she thought, “I could do better.” Or when she accidentally set off every enchanted lock in the house after a particularly frustrating afternoon listening to her Aunt Honoria drone on about “the sacred duty of the bloodline.”

Kate doesn’t have time for sacred duties. She has plans.

Her nursemaid thinks she’s just an advanced child who likes stacking blocks in suspiciously perfect formations. What she doesn’t know is that Kate is mapping every possible escape route from the manor. Not because she intends to run yet, but because the idea of not knowing makes her itch.

Her parents are kind, if a little overinvested in her “tremendous magical promise.” They don’t know she can already read flawlessly and that she’s spent the last six months quietly deciphering every document she can get her tiny hands on. She files it all away in her mind: family alliances, political rivalries, the unwritten rules no one bothers to teach you because they assume you’ll absorb them by osmosis.

She has no intention of absorbing anything by osmosis. She is going to weaponize this knowledge the first chance she gets.

At night, when she’s tucked into her impossibly soft bed with embroidered pillows and a house elf crooning lullabies, she lies awake cataloguing every name she remembers from Before.

Price, with his steady, quiet leadership. Soap’s irreverent optimism that never quite died, no matter how dark things got. Ghost’s long silences, which meant more than any speech. Eris, who could look you in the eye and tell you to do the impossible and you would. Alejandro’s blunt warmth, König’s towering gentleness, Graves’ reckless charm, Rudy’s calm steadiness, Gaz’s dry commentary that always made her want to smile even when everything was on fire.

She misses them in a way she doesn’t have words for yet.

She knows, logically, there is no reason to believe they’re here too, but a small, stubborn part of her believes it anyway.

And if they are? She will find them.

Preferably before someone tries to betroth her to a cousin she’s never met in the name of “preserving the bloodline.”

Because she is Kate Laswell, age three, and she has already survived worse than this and if wizarding Britain thinks it’s going to break her spirit, it has profoundly underestimated her.

***

If you ask Phillip Graves, this whole magical rebirth thing is actually going pretty damn well. 

He has a plan. Actually, he has several plans. He is three years old, approximately two feet tall, and currently possesses the world’s chubbiest, most pinchable cheeks, and he intends to exploit these resources ruthlessly and without remorse. 

See, reincarnation was initially a little inconvenient. Death? Dramatic. Waking up tiny, helpless, and dressed like an extra from a medieval-themed greeting card? Even more dramatic. But Phillip Graves, Texan charmer, expert liar, and entrepreneur of questionable things, has never let a good crisis go to waste. 

The day he realized he had magic and was reborn into a half-blood family wealthy enough to have real silverware but humble enough to avoid any weird blood superiority complexes, was the day he realized the universe had finally recognized his talents and handed him the biggest blank check in history. 

At age two, he perfected the art of strategic crying. It wasn’t emotional manipulation, it was a tactical choice. His mother, sweet and practical and fond of kissing his forehead, melted at the slightest lip wobble. His father, easygoing and amused, was charmed by any gesture of precocious stubbornness. Graves had that in spades.

By age three, Graves had developed a thriving bartering economy with his siblings: candy in exchange for silence during important parental interrogations, toys in exchange for timely magical distractions. He’d discovered that his accidental magic wasn’t accidental at all, just responsive. So responsive, in fact, that he could summon small, shiny objects at will, particularly coins, jewelry, and once, inexplicably, someone’s lost pocket watch.

He returned it promptly, of course. For a finder’s fee.

He’s not stealing. He’s… facilitating redistributions. Unclaimed shiny things were simply fair game.

Phillip Graves is three, wears bowties unironically, and has amassed enough treats under his mattress to buy a small nation.

The first family gathering he attended, a cheerful, chaotic affair where distant wizarding relatives wore mismatched robes and debated the best Quidditch team, he quickly established dominance through charisma alone. He politely inquired about investments, family trusts, and casual wizard real estate opportunities, all while innocently clutching his stuffed dragon, Mr. Sparkle.

By the end of the evening, Aunt Matilda had promised him first refusal on her vacation cottage in France, Uncle Reginald had written him into the will, and Great-Aunt Prudence- ancient, cranky, and previously unreachable- had finally smiled at him and muttered something about “good breeding.” Graves wasn’t thrilled about the last one, but he took the compliment. He also took a cookie directly out of her handbag, just to test his skills.

(He succeeded. Obviously.)

He wasn’t bothered by reincarnation or magic or any of the existential nonsense. He’d been through worse. Hell, he’d worked with Ghost, survived Eris’s knife-point sarcasm, and managed to convince Price- twice- to let him handle negotiations. He’d charmed his way through military tribunals, corporate espionage, and once, memorably, an attempted coup that ended with him smugly drinking coffee in someone else’s private jet.

Magic? Toddlerhood? Being adored by adults who believed every dimpled smile and batting of eyelashes?

Honestly, it felt like cheating.

And Phillip Graves, reincarnated hustler and future menace to wizarding society, was perfectly fine with that.

***

Eris Kane, formerly known as the living embodiment of “absolutely fucking not”, has always been a menace to any society unfortunate enough to host her.

And some poor dumb bastard upstairs accidentally sent her soul to reincarnate instead of just putting her in purgatory where she could have at least been contained,  and now, she has a fresh opportunity to terrorize a whole new demographic of people.

Eris is three years old and already considering the pros and cons of committing arson. 

Not in a casual, experimental way, but with clear and precise intention. She’s spent her entire second childhood systematically assessing exactly how much lace and velvet it takes to turn a rational human being into an actual homicidal maniac, and the Hale family manor is, so far, exceeding all expectations.

The Most Ancient and Noble House of Hale, as her family never tires of reminding literally anyone who will listen, is prestigious. Old. Powerful. Also very, very flammable, which Eris sees as a significant design flaw. But nobody asks her opinion, because she’s three and technically shouldn’t be capable of coherent murder plots yet.

She’s been a menace to society since she could crawl. The first time a house elf cooed at her, she growled at it with so much genuine hostility that it hid in a laundry basket for six hours. The nursemaid learned quickly not to dress Eris in ribbons unless she wanted to discover firsthand what a magically propelled teacup to the kneecap felt like. Her mother, Lady Hale, has already begun drafting apology letters in advance for future social events.

Eris does not care.

She does not care about etiquette, lineage, or the fact that the embroidery on her dresses costs more than the average mortgage. She doesn’t care that she’s supposedly destined to uphold a legacy she didn’t sign up for. She barely tolerates the constant barrage of lessons on posture, elocution, and something called “proper wand placement” that sounds suspiciously like a euphemism.

She’s more interested in watching everything burn. Not literally. (Yet.)

Instead, she listens quietly, absorbs everything, and files away names, faces, and allegiances like she’s preparing for a very tiny coup. She listens to Great-Aunt Theodosia’s rants about blood purity and considers turning her tea into vinegar. She catalogues Uncle Percival’s ramblings about wizard superiority and contemplates how hard it would be to levitate him directly into the rose bushes. Every casual mention of “mudbloods” makes her tiny fists itch, and the resulting magical bursts usually result in shattered porcelain, exploded clocks, or sudden localized thunderstorms inside the nursery.

(Her nursemaid insists the thunderstorms are adorable. Her nursemaid is incorrect.)

By three, she is well on her way to becoming either the greatest magical revolutionary of her age or the reason her entire bloodline finally snaps. Possibly both. She can live with that.

And tonight? Tonight she is stuck at yet another mind-numbingly pretentious gala. The ballroom is huge and sparkling, a glittering prison of silks, ribbons, and politely disguised blood-supremacist rhetoric. Eris stands stiffly in her pale green dress, looking like a violently resentful cupcake, plotting the most efficient way to escape without murdering anyone.

Yet.

Lady Greengrass drones on beside her, waxing poetic about the purity of magical bloodlines. Eris, deciding to preserve her rapidly dwindling sanity, tunes her out entirely and turns her gaze to the ballroom floor, scanning for potential allies or particularly flammable targets.

And then-

She sees him.

A boy near the refreshments table, clearly as irritated as she is, dressed in a waistcoat and a bowtie that’s hanging off him like he lost a fight with it. His pale blonde hair catches the light in a way that feels alarmingly familiar, and he’s glaring at a floating cupcake with enough intensity to incinerate it on sight.

Something in her chest clenches, snaps tight. She knows that look; the flat, exhausted annoyance of someone seconds away from causing a diplomatic incident purely out of spite. She’d know it anywhere.

She opens her mouth before she can think, before caution or logic can stop her, and says with breathless disbelief, “Ghost?”

His head snaps up, fast enough to give whiplash. Their eyes lock across the room, his sharp, wary, painfully familiar. Time freezes, hangs suspended in disbelief, recognition, and the dawning realization that if he’s here, then everything is even more fucked up than she thought.

Eris feels her tiny heart stutter in her chest because if Ghost is here, then maybe she’s not alone in this madhouse after all.

“Holy shit.”

Chapter Text

It starts with a stupid floating cupcake in some rich person’s horrifically overdecorated ballroom. 

A stupid, overly-frosted, aggressively pink cupcake doing pirouettes in the air like it’s auditioning for Swan Lake. It was probably enchanted by some pureblood trophy wife with too many galleons and not enough personality. It has sprinkles, sparkles, and floats just out of Ghost’s reach like an over sugared bastard. 

He hates it deeply, personally, and if he’s being honest, philosophically in the same way he hates clowns, improv comedy, and people who say “irregardless.”

He’s three years old, his bow tie is crooked, his vest is itchy in places he didn’t known existed, someone tried to slick back his hair but now it just crunches every time he turns his head. His juice box is warm, the room smells like entitlement and lemon polish, and this floating whimsical abomination has the audacity to taunt him from just out of reach. 

He glares at it. 

It’s the glare of a man who’s killed with his bare hands and didn’t blink. The glare of someone who’s been elbow deep in gore and didn’t flinch. The glare of a man who once ate Soap’s cooking and lived. 

The cupcake quivers slightly. 

And that’s when it happens. 

Somewhere across the ballroom, past the crystal chandeliers that serve no real function, the ice sculptures that screams “compensating”, and the wizards wearing monocles unironically, he hears it. 

“Ghost?” Soft, distant, and horrifyingly familiar. 

He freezes, his eyes snapping up. 

Then-

blue screen

Nothing.

Not a single god damn thought in his head. Just white noise and static. 

Like the kind of blankness that hits you when the teacher asks you a question and you forget, not just the answer, but your name, your birthday, and the entire concept of math. The kind of mental void that occurs when you walk into a room and suddenly forget why you ever came in there. 

His entire internal monologue goes: 

‘A critical error has occurred. Simon_riley_brain.exe has stopped working. Please wait while he attempt a hard reset.”

Somewhere deep in the recesses of his mind, there’s a single spark as two neurons rub together, followed by a soft, metallic ping. The dial up internet startup noise plays faintly in the background of his mind as a Windows 95 loading bar begins to flicker.

He’s staring, slack jawed. Absolutely zero thoughts, brain empty, head full of pink cupcakes and the emotional whiplash of seeing her again. Eris. The holy shit of all holy shits. The chaos engine. God’s original sin in combat boots. 

And she’s… wearing ruffles? Satin bows? A dress that looks suspiciously like his great grandmother’s curtains? 

And she’s walking up to him. 

“Ghost?” She says again, recognition flooding behind hazel eyes. She recognizes him. This tiny, terrifying, now pocket-sized menace of the battlefield remembers who he is. 

And he, elite trained operative, shadow in the dark, once an apex predator to more than just pink cupcakes-

-he just blinks.

Once.

Twice.

Nothing. 

Just the hollow reboot tone of a man whose brain fell down an elevator shaft. 

‘bzzzrk. :( simonriley.exe ran into a problem that it couldn’t handle, and now it needs a restart.’ 

He opens his mouth and tries for something sharp and clever. Something like “affirmative” or “are you injured?”. Anything. Something. Words. Vowels. Maybe a whole sentence if the gods are being particularly generous for once. 

What comes out instead is, “…uh.”

Just ”uh” in the smallest littlest whisper you’ve ever heard from someone who once held the entirety of the 141 together through sheer fear and intimidation tactics alone. 

He scrambles internally. Strategize, soldier. Say something commanding. Say something that reasserts your dominance over the cupcake, the room, and the gods. 

His mouth says, “You’re small.”

Eris blinks, tilts her head, and narrows her eyes. 

Someone in the static of his brain, Ghost thinks, ‘Well done, dumbass. She’s going to strangle you with one of those ugly bows and mount your head next to the cursed cupcake.’

He wants the floor to open up and swallow him whole. He wants to spontaneously combust. He wants to get drafted into another war, right now, immediately.  

This is all the cupcake’s fault. None of this happened until that frosted bastard showed up. Clearly, the cupcake is cursed. 

Eris’s narrowed eyes soften slightly, shifting from “I’ll kill you with a napkin ring” to “you’re an idiot but you’re my idiot” in half a second flat.

“You’re small too,” she finally retorts, voice cool and dry as she glances meaningfully down at his shiny shoes that squeak a bit when he moves.

He scowls, tries to cross his arms but fails spectacularly, gets them stuck halfway across his chest in the stupid dress shirt, elbows sticking out like disgruntled chicken wings.

“Not my choice,” he growls.

“Not mine either.” Eris huffs, pulling at the ruffles on her dress. “This whole reincarnation thing is bullshit.”

Ghost nods solemnly, shifting awkwardly as he eyes the floating cupcake again. “Didn’t exactly ask to be magically yeeted into diapers and dinosaur onesies.”

Eris rolls her eyes so hard he’s impressed she doesn’t sprain something. “They curled my hair and put ribbons in it.”

The look of genuine disgust on her face makes Ghost snort, sharp and involuntary. The sound startles them both and he coughs to cover it while she pretends not to notice, and they both silently vow never to mention it again.

“C’mon,” she sighs after a second, grabbing his sleeve with alarming confidence and dragging him toward the edge of the ballroom. “Let’s go somewhere quieter before one of these inbred elitists decides us talking is a good enough reason to draw up a betrothal contract.”

He lets her drag him, mostly because he’s still rebooting mentally, but partly because Eris Kane grabbing his sleeve and hauling him around feels distressingly normal.

They find refuge behind a giant decorative fern. At least Ghost assumes it’s decorative, though given the current situation, he wouldn’t put it past the rich assholes to enchant a sentient houseplant to spy on their guests.

Safely hidden, Eris drops her skirt and promptly flops down onto the marble floor with the resigned exhaustion of someone who’s absolutely done with this entire goddamn life cycle. Ghost joins her a second later, sitting down with the careful dignity of a soldier who knows his joints will betray him if he’s not careful. Learning he could walk again without the near constant agonizing pain in every single one of his joints had been the single silver lining of this whole fucked up reincarnation accolade. 

They stare at each other for a moment, quiet and awkward, before Eris finally breaks the silence. “So you died.”

“Mm.” Ghost nods his head, lips pressing together into a thin line, and then offers without her asking, “Pretty standard death if you ask me. Gunfire. Explosion. Betrayal. Got to punch a superior officer, though. Highlight of the week.”

She nods knowingly. “Nice.”

“And you?”

Her expression darkens briefly, lips twisting into a grimace. “Bird shot down over hostile airspace. I fell and wasn’t wearing a chute.”

They lapse back into silence, a small oasis of quiet solidarity hidden behind the massive plant. Ghost tugs irritably at his bowtie, considers ripping it off but decides it’s not worth the potential parental hysterics it might trigger. Eris glares at her shoes.

He clears his throat. “Think the others are here?”

She glances at him sharply, eyes narrowing thoughtfully. “Wouldn’t put it past the universe to reincarnate the whole damn team just for shits and giggles.”

Ghost nods solemnly. “Yeah. Sounds about right.”

Another silence. Ghost eyes the plant suspiciously. Eris pokes at a loose thread on her dress like she’s trying to unravel the whole damn thing right there in the middle of the ballroom with no regards for the concept of common decency. 

Ghost shifts uncomfortably. “So. Magic, huh?”

“Yeah,” Eris sighs, throwing her head back dramatically against the marble column behind them with a dull thunk. “I set fire to my crib by accident. Twice.”

Ghost snorts softly, a faint smile tugging at the corner of his lips. “Blew up my toy box.”

Eris grins, just a little. “Turned my nanny’s hat into a pigeon.”

Ghost nods approvingly. “Nice. Accidentally yeeted my father’s monocle into the fireplace.”

Eris’s smile widens. “Respect.”

They sit quietly for another second, digesting their shared absurdity. Finally, Eris sighs deeply, blowing out her cheeks. “So what’s the plan?”

Ghost blinks at her. “The plan?”

She arches a brow, dryly amused. “Yeah. The plan. We find the others, make contact, overthrow the bourgeoisie, stage a rebellion, or are we just gonna sit here until someone comes looking for us?”

Ghost opens his mouth, closes it again, recalculates. Finally, he shrugs. “Fuck it. Let’s find the others, then overthrow the bourgeoisie.”

She smiles, bright and sharp, the kind of smile that historically precedes violence and explosions. “Glad we’re on the same page.”

Ghost’s internal monologue sighs in relief. His brain is finally back online, neurons functioning normally. Or as normal as they ever do when Eris Kane is around.

And for the first time since waking up as a tiny, magically inclined menace, Ghost feels something close to hope.

…Or possibly indigestion. It’s hard to tell.

***

John Price wakes up like a man being summoned back to the frontlines.

It’s not slow or gently, or in that soft, pastel filtered way toddlers are supposed to wake with their eyes fluttering open to sunshine and lullabies and some maternal figure singing about stars and dreams.

No.

He shoots upright like he’s just been launched from a trebuchet, drenched in toddler sweat, limbs flailing beneath a blanket covered in smiling hippogriffs and moon phases. He grips the edge of the bed knuckles white, eyes wide, heart hammering. His breath is heaving like someone just screamed “SOAP HAS AN IDEA” into the cosmic void.

He doesn’t know what time it is and frankly doesn’t care. Time has lost all meaning ever since he was reborn into this frilly prison of coordinated color palettes and gentle enchanted lullabies. He can’t read the enchanted star clock on the wall because it’s in fucking Elvish or some shit and no one will teach him because he’s “just a toddler” and “should focus on english first.”

But he knows.

He knows.

Something is wrong.

No, not just wrong. Something… something stupid is happening.

Deep in the pit of his soul, in the ancient, war hardened corner of his brain reserved for instinctively bracing when Ghost goes quiet for too long, or when Soap starts a sentence with “So I was thinking-”, he feels it. That creeping, horrifying itch at the base of his neck.

The sixth sense of a seasoned CO who knows his team well enough to feel the fuckery before it’s even begun.

Somewhere out there, in this sparkly, wand-waving, magic-infested fever dream of a world, his men are about to do something deeply, irreversibly stupid.

He doesn’t know how and he doesn’t know why, but he feels it in his bones. The same bones that, in a previous life, had been shattered by IEDs and melded back together with vast amounts of whiskey and a shoddy splint. The same bones that once helped him scale a cliff during a monsoon just to drag Gaz out of a tree.

Now those bones are crammed into a three year old body that smells faintly of chamomile lotion, wrapped in a onesie with dancing dragons embroidered on the ass.

He sits there, gripping the railing of his bed with tiny furious hands, sweat beading on his forehead like he’s about to deliver a keynote speech to the UN, and glares into the darkness. He doesn’t need proof. He doesn’t need reports. He doesn’t need debriefs or Laswell dryly announcing something catastrophic in the background. His soul simply knows.

One of them is here and they’re awake. 

And not just awake, but conscious, operational, and plotting. Possibly interacting with another one of his men, which statistically increases the chances of apocalyptic property damage by at least 300%.

Price groans loudly with the world-weary sigh of a man who already knows he’s going to be the one cleaning up whatever diplomatic, magical, or structural catastrophe they cause.

“Fucking hell,” he mutters in his tiny gravelly voice, pressing his forehead against the bed railing, and wishing he had a cigar to smoke because even in death and rebirth he, apparently, doesn’t get the luxury of escaping the little shits that are his subordinates. 

Despite the fact that he’s no longer John Price, Commander of Task Force 141. He’s just Johnny, age three, child of a well-meaning magical mom and muggle dad, both of which keep trying to feed him mashed peas and tell him “how special he is.” They think his scowling is adorable. They think his accidental levitation is a sign of magical prodigy.

It’s not prodigy, it’s PTSD, and now his instincts are screaming at him, blaring like an air raid siren no one else can hear.

It’s coming.

The chaos. The dumbassery. The inevitable chain of events that begins with a cupcake being destroyed in public and ends with someone getting yeeted across the Ministry of Magic. He doesn’t know what, he doesn’t know when, he doesn’t know who. But John fucking Price knows that no matter how many lives he lives, no matter how many times the universe decides to hit Ctrl+Alt+Rebirth, he will always be the poor bastard responsible for containing them.

He collapses back into his bed with the dramatic resignation of a man who has just accepted that fate is, in fact, making him it’s little bitch. He burrows under his hippogriff blanket and glares at the ceiling like it personally orchestrated this rebirth just to spite him.

“Why can’t Laswell be the one babysitting them?” he mutters to no one except the dancing dragon embroidered on his ass. 

He closes his eyes, but he knows sleep won’t come, not now, not when there’s a Chaos Alliance that has likely been reestablished and world peace is now on a ticking clock.

Merlin help them all.

***

Fortunately, for the fate of Magical Great Britain, Eris Kane and Simon Riley are toddlers.

Which, to the untrained eye, might look like two exceptionally quiet, well dressed children sitting politely in an over decorated sunroom surrounded by lace doilies and pastel throw pillows that smell like overpriced essential oils. But to anyone with a shred of tactical awareness, or even a survival instinct honed from spending years navigating black-ops chaos with the maniacs that make up the 141, it is painfully obvious that these are not ordinary children. These are war criminals trapped in baby bodies. These are apex predators forced to attend tea parties and color inside the lines. These are two gremlins biding their time until the magical underage trace come off and they can commit several high level felonies.

There’s no recon, no tactical maneuvers, no late night raids or infiltration drills. There is only a rotating schedule of playdates, which is somehow worse than any high stakes op mostly because you can’t stab a playdate, you can’t blow up a playdate, and you can’t fake your own death during a playdate and then escape across country boarders using a forged passport and a bag of suspiciously acquired cash.

Instead, you can only sit there, drinking apple juice from a teacup that’s probably definitely a racist heirloom, while some five year old with finger paint on his forehead tells you about his pet kneazle for the eighth fucking time until your growl enough that they fuck off in terror. 

There’s a tension in the room that shouldn’t exist when finger sandwiches are being served on a tray shaped like a swan. 

Eris is doing her best no to combust, which is impressive, really, considering she’s dressed like a sentient macaron and being force fed socializations by Lord and Lady Hale like it’s a goddamn mission objective. Her spine is straight, her expression flat, and her hands are folded in that way that Ghost recognizes as her suppressing the urge to turn the nearest loose object into a flying projectile. 

They don’t speak and the air between them vibrates with mutual rage and secondhand embarrassment. They should be destroying property and biting Ministry officials, but instead they’re stuck inside a gilded playroom, being wrangled by two very committed sets of magical parents and a strict nanny rotation schedule. 

Lady Hale (read: terrifyingly beautiful in that “I might own a pet basilisk” kind of way) and Lord Riley (who, despite being vaguely haunted, is also the first man in both of Ghost’s lives to attempt to gentle parent someone who once waterboarded a diplomat) are responsible. Tragically, irritatingly, responsible. 

Which means Eris and Ghost aren’t not allowed to do anything. 

No slipping away during garden parties, no sneaking into the study to decode blood wards, no biting, no potion-mixing unsupervised, and absolutely no initiating combat drills during play dates even if the other kids started it, even if it was just a light tap with her first, and even if Ghost tried to claim “This is just how Eris expresses trust.”

They are supervised at all times, constantly. 

There is always a nanny in the room, a house elf hovering nearby, or a parent watching from the shadows like some sort of magical, monogrammed KGB. 

There are safety charms on the doors, surveillance runes hidden in the flower arrangements, and wards around fucking everything. The windows don’t even open unless an adult says the correct twelve-syllable phrases in Latin. There’s even a curfew. 

A curfew. 

Like they’re rebellious teenagers instead of war criminals reincarnated into the bodies of angry cherubs. 

They get tucked in and receive little kisses on their forehead and goodnight spells that smell like chamomile and lavender. 

They are trapped. 

They know the others are out there somewhere, probably confused, and having the audacity to commit violence without them around to cheer them on. They’re definitely making someone’s life harder. Eris and Ghost should be out there, coordinating, rescuing, reestablishing contact, and rebuilding the Coalition with sheer force of will, trauma, and a vast amount of unhealthy coping mechanisms. 

But no. 

They are three feet tall and not allowed past the front gate without sunscreen and a magical hat. 

Every plan to escape, to attempt to sneak out and steal an owl to search for signs of Price or Laswell or Soap or- God forbid- Graves, is met with a knowing smile and a casual redirection from their parents like they’re the problem. Like they’re the feral ones. Like they are the reason the sugar tongs were melted that one time when they were left alone in the room with them for two minutes. 

Every time they plot, someone hugs them. Every time they throw a tantrum, someone validates their feelings. Every time they start drawing blueprints in chalk on the floor, Lord Hale walks by, says, “Good problem solving, you two,” and asks if they want help mapping it out to scale. 

It’s infuriating. They were trained for interrogations, for war, for chaos. And now, their only weapons are passive aggression and the raw, simmering rage of being denied unsupervised time outdoors. 

They know the others are out there. Gaz is probably losing his mind trying to google “magical reincarnation support groups.” Soap has almost definitely discovered his magic through an explosion. Graves is likely already running a secret resistance cell from a high chair. 

And yet, here they are, being read stories about brave little hippogriffs who learned to use their words. 

Ghost has never wanted to commit arson more in his life. 

Eris continues to sit there, stiff as a board, as she plans their ninth escape route, this time involving a decoy made out of stuffed animals and a repurposed charm for fart noises that she reconstructed into a sound based distraction device. 

And then because the universe is drunk and vindictive and loves adding chaos to soup like it’s salt, it deicides to throw them a bone out of misplaced pity and a visitor abruptly arrives after Eris and Ghost successfully scared all the other pureblood boys and girls away.

At first, it’s nothing. Just the familiar tinkle of the front bell, the muffled shuffle of house elf feet, the low hum of Lady Hale offering a welcome in that tone of voice that says, “I am deeply polite but will absolutely duel you with a butter knife if necessary.”

But then there’s a voice, feminine, but still calm, measured, if a little confused. “I don’t mean to intrude,” she says, “but my daughter insisted we come. She’s been… researching. Bloodlines, mostly. Said she found Eris Hale in a registry, got very quiet, and then asked if we still had her dress robes.”

”Of course, come in. She’s in the play room with little Simon Riley, though. Play date.”

”Oh, that’s quite alright, he was next on my list.” A familiar voice says, drawing close to the playroom. 

Eris goes still and across the room, Ghost’s spoon stops halfway to his mouth.

Lady Hale responds in her usual cool, detached aristocratic voice but Eris doesn’t hear what she says because her ears are ringing and her soul is howling and her fight-or-fight instinct (there is no flight) is kicking in because someone found them.

Ghost is already scooting forward in his chair, legs dangling off the edge, arms tensed like he’s preparing to dive into open combat. Eris grips the handle of her teacup so tightly it cracks at the base. Neither of them breathe, or blink, or even move. Their eyes fix on the doorway like it’s about to explode.

And then-

She walks in.

A small girl, sandy blond hair pinned back with unnecessary efficiency, her cardigan crisp, her shoes shined, and her eyes colder than arctic steel dipped in bureaucratic apathy.

Kate. Fucking. Laswell.

She takes three steps into the room, looks directly at them and says, as casually as if she’s announcing the weather, “Simon. Eris.”

There is a moment- a long, agonizing, soul rattling pause- where nothing happens.

Then Eris makes a choked, feral noise like a cat discovering God. “Holy shit, you’re tiny.”

Laswell blinks, deadpan. “So are you. Unfortunately.”

Ghost opens his mouth. Closes it. Makes a gesture that’s somewhere between a salute and a seizure. “You found us.”

Laswell shrugs, already scanning the room for listening charms and weak spots in the warding. “Bloodline registries are public record,” she says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world and not the Rosette Stone of magical surveillance. “Your names popped up and I put two and two together during nap time. Frankly, I’m disappointed it took this long.”

Eris drops her teacup entirely. It shatters on the enchanted carpet with a poof of rose-scented steam and glitter because apparently even failure is an aesthetic in this godforsaken household.

“Of course,” she groans, dragging both hands down her face like she’s trying to scrub off her own stupidity. “The bloodline registries, why didn’t we think of that?”

There’s a pause as Laswell squints at the two of them, expression unimpressed and vaguely maternal in that ‘do I have to do everything?’ Sort of way. “I didn’t know you two were capable of that.”

Which is… fair, honestly.

Ghost grunts from where he’s collapsed against the armrest like a war veteran discovering a new level of bureaucratic pain. “We were busy.”

”Doing what?” Laswell asks, arching a brow making both of them flinch. It makes her look exactly like she did back in the bazaar in Kandahar when Ghost, Soap, and Eris thought they were going to die in a crate of mangoes. Laswell is three and somehow still capable of murder by eyebrow judgement alone.

Eris gestures wildly to the room, her frilly sleeves puffing up in indignation. “Surviving, Kate. Tea parties, play dates, being forcibly parented by people who think gentle affirmations are a tactical parenting advantage. I’ve been wearing lace, Kate. Lace!” 

Laswell doesn’t react. She plucks a biscuit from the tray, inspects it for a moment, and takes a bite. “Sounds like a skill issue.”

Eris and Ghost make noises of deep spiritual offense while Laswell takes a seat, crosses her legs, and starts mentally drafting a mental dossier on which magical libraries they’ll raid first. 

“…You weren’t sure it was us,” Eris accuses, squinting.

Kate smiles slightly. In any other universe that smile would immediately be followed by a knife and a closed-circuit camera feed. “Didn’t need to be. I figured if there was a Simon Riley and an Eris Hale and someone had called the Department of Magical Emergencies already with those names attached to the reports, it was probably you.”

Which, okay, fair. Because three weeks ago the DMLE had to respond to what they politely referred to as a “minor magical disturbance” and what everyone else refers to as “The Incident,” where a toddler with a blanket stare and murder in his aura (Ghost) had gotten into a disagreement over a toy dragon at Magical Story Time, refused to yield ground, and ended up magically reinforcing a plastic castle with such unbreakable shielding that it trapped twenty seven children, two teachers, and a startled fairy inside for four hours. During that time, Eris had managed to hotwire the floating chalkboard, declare herself “Queen of the Occupied Zone,” and attempted to rewrite the daycare rules using enchanted crayons that bit anyone who tried to erase them, resulting in one Aurora having to file a report titled “Diplomatic Negotiation's with Hostile Toddlers” while covered in applesauce. 

Both Ghost and Eris avoid looking Laswell in the eyes, which is just confirmation enough for the former CIA station-chief. Laswell just folds her little hands in her lap like she’s about to chair a summit of the G8.

“We’re alive,” she says calmly, voice low, serious, terrifyingly capable. “We’re toddlers. We have magic. We are currently surrounded by people who think we can be tamed with applesauce and ribboned hats. I’ve been awake since day one. You two?”

“Day three,” Eris mutters, still shell-shocked.

“Day one,” Ghost confirms, rubbing his face like he’s trying to scrub the reality off it.

“Good,” Kate says. “Then it’s time to find the others.”

Eris blinks. “So they’re here? I figured, but I didn’t want to get my hopes up…”

Kate levels her with a look that could fillet fish. “Oh, they’re here. You think the universe would only curse us with rebirth and not the rest of them?”

Ghost groans into a pillow. “Price is going to lose his shit.”

“He already knows,” Kate says, looking eerily satisfied. “I felt a ripple of suppressed dad-disappointment in the cosmic background several weeks ago. He’s awake. And he knows.”

Eris starts giggling. It’s high-pitched and horrifying. Ghost joins in. Kate allows herself the barest smirk. Together, they sit there, three magical toddlers surrounded by lace and sugar and soft furniture, basking in the calm before the apocalypse.

Chapter Text

It’s been three months since Laswell’s met up with Ghost and Eris and The Department of Magical Law Enforcement has had to issue an internal bulletin. It’s labeled HIGH PRIORITY: MINOR THREAT. It’s thirty-two pages long, laced with redacted names, minor burn marks, and something that looks suspiciously like pixie glitter, and includes full page warnings entirely in bleeding capital letters.

It opens with: DO NOT ENGAGE THE HALE-RILEY-LASWELL CHILDREN UNLESS YOU HAVE BACKUP AND AT LEAST THREE YEARS OF UNSHAKEN AUROR EXPERIENCE.

The rest of the memo is a bureaucratic fever dream of contradictions, footnotes, and auror testimonies ranging from “They somehow enchanted the stickers to spell our run” to “He just stared at me until I cried.”

The official recommendation is to avoid eye contact, stay out of range, and under no circumstances allow the three of them to collaborate without magical restraints of adult supervision.

Unfortunately, the magical world is very bad at following instructions.

It’s Tuesday. A calm, blue-skied Tuesday with birds singing and magical aristocrats sipping spiced tea in a garden, entirely unaware that in one particular west facing drawing room, nestled inside a lopsided blanket fort reinforced with an anti eavesdropping charm Laswell put in place from a wand she stole off her mother and a pentagram drawn in jelly, three tiny war criminals are actively rebuilding Task Force 141 using a crayon coded manifesto and a dry erase board stole from Eris’ tutoring room.

Ghost is pacing in a circle like a caged tiger in tiny dragon scale slippers, gnawing on a biscuit. He’s worn a groove into the carpet. Every time he passes the snack tray, he grabs another biscuit. He doesn’t eat them, just gnaws on them, like a man trying to process his emotions through shortbread.  

Kate Laswell is sitting cross legged, dead center in the fort, surrounded by a stack of scrolls, bloodline maps, and a glowing enchanted quill that auto records everything she says. It’s already running out of ink and Laswell hasn’t blinked in twenty minutes. Her eyes are bloodshot, and she’s actively muttering to herself in three different languages.

Eris, who may or may not be actively fermenting chaos in her bloodstream, is lounging with the posture of a retired general and the expression of a feral raccoon mid tax evasion. She’s colored her lips entirely with vermillion crayon and currently has three more shoved behind her ear like smuggled cigarettes. She has declared herself “Director of Field Recon” and is now sketching battle plans on the back of an old teacake box with the unblinking focus of someone who once broke international laws.

They are all three deeply, cosmically unwell.  

The Plan(TM) is scrawled in blocky toddler handwriting on the whiteboard in six different colors and is already half filled with squiggly diagrams, aggressive arrows, and at least one extremely anatomically incorrect drawing of a hippogriff labeled “GRAVES???”.

It includes the following bullet points: locate the rest of the unit (check halfblood and muggleborn records?), (amended from above) break into Ministry archives, recruit Price (check for recent permits granted to build underground bunkers, as if that would keep us out), acquire more crayons, world domination(??)

Ghost stops mid-step and slaps his tiny palm against the wall of the fort. “We’re running out of leads,” he growls, bits of biscuit flying “Muggleborns don’t show up in the same records. We need something more… traceable.”

Laswell doesn’t look up. “Already ahead of you. I’ve started cross referencing Magical Pediatric Incident Reports with known high damage areas. Anywhere something’s exploded, been melted, or turned into a sentient loaf of bread? Potential target.”

Eris nods solemnly. “Soap definitely turned something into bread.”

“Or turned bread into something,” Laswell adds. “Either way. It’s him.”

Ghost sits down with a grunt, arms crossed, expression dark. “I miss when we could just trace someone’s phone and kick in a door.”

Eris rolls over onto her back, stares at the ceiling, and sighs like a woman who’s seen the abyss and was asked to use her inside voice. “I miss blacksites. I miss wet work. I miss being able to legally stab people.”

Because here’s the thing, you can’t brute force your way through a society held together by bureaucracy, fear, and bloodline-based encryption spells when your magical signature is classified as “small child” and your only sanctioned magic item is a glow-in-the-dark star wand that squeaks when you drop it.

They’ve tried everything. Eris attempted to sneak into the Ministry archives under the guise of “Take Your Child To Work Day,” only to be redirected to the Magical Daycare Wing, where she was forced to participate in a sing-along about kneazles. Ghost tried to “accidentally” trigger a false emergency in the bloodline registry department, only for a very kind, deeply suspicious witch named Miss Twycross to hand him a lemon square and ask if his “big feelings” came from a place of insecurity. Laswell, who once took down a smuggling ring via satellite relay and political blackmail, was denied access to the Floo Network Department’s files because she couldn’t reach the counter and also, apparently, needed a “Floo License” just to request the form to request the form to apply for access.

It’s infuriating.

They are surrounded by ancient, magical red tape wrapped in child locks.

Wandless magic? They’re not powerful enough yet. Not for anything useful. Eris can maybe set fire to a biscuit if she concentrates really hard and screams internally. Ghost once managed to levitate a block of cheese before throwing up. Laswell can only summon her sippy cup and that’s on a good day.

They are magically inept.

Add in the fact that half-blood and muggleborn archives are entirely locked down due to the recent fall of Voldemort a year prior- archivists citing “security protocol,” “trauma shielding,” and “you’re literally three please stop yelling”- and the Unholy Trio finds themselves exactly where no one ever expected them to be: completely helpless.

Laswell pins a crayon map to the fort wall with shaking hands. “This is the dumbest op I’ve ever led.”

Eris throws a baby shoe at the wall. “This is bullshit. I used to be a war criminal.”

Ghost just curls up under the dry erase board and mutters, “I miss knives.”

In their past lives, they were brilliant, dangerous, and at least had more pull than someone whose only advantage was having their own library card at such a young age. In this life? They have to wait.

Wait until their magic grows. Wait until they’re eleven. Wait until they get their wands. Wait for Hogwarts, where the system might finally stop underestimating them and start fearing them properly.

This is complete and utter bullshit.

***

Eight Years Later…

Diagon Alley is disgustingly cheerful. The cobblestones sparkle, the shop windows sing, and the crowds bustle like nothing bad has ever happened here. Like no one’s ever died in Knockturn Alley, or watched a cursed toffee kill a man in front of Fortescue’s. Eris is deeply uncomfortable with how wholesome everything looks.

She’s wearing all black- somewhere around seven years old she threatened violence if she had to wear one more lacy, ruffley, satin thing- which clashes with the pastel explosion of Flourish & Blotts’ seasonal window display. There’s a floating book on beginner wand care that keeps trying to snuggle her shoulder. Ghost swats it away with a glare so sharp it makes a nearby wizard jump.

Laswell sighs, adjusting her new wand (ash, 10 inches, dragon heartstring) and muttering under her breath about “minimum security oversight for underage fieldwork.” Neither Ghost nor Eris interrupt her because she hasn’t stopped since breakfast.

They’ve been here all day. Thanks to a preemptive letter from Lord Hale, Lord Riley, and Lady Laswell, informing him of their children’s coming of age, Ollivander was able to reinforce his shop with three layers of protective runes, upgraded fireproofing, and reportedly had a team of curse breakers on standby. They were not needed. But Eris did somehow find the wands for both herself and Ghost in under two minutes with zero fanfare, zero explosions, and absolutely no emotional closure.

They’ve gone to the robe shop (Eris complained about the fabric, Ghost threatened to blackmail the tailor, Laswell stole three pins), the apothecary (Laswell licked a root and the clerk screamed), and even the magical pet store (Ghost stared at a snake until it slithered away in fear).

And yet, no one else. No Price. No Rudy. No Graves, even though this would be prime Graves territory. It’s all just background nobility and overexcited eleven year olds, none of whom are worth the attention.

“Maybe they were born different years,” Eris mutters bitterly, eyeing a group of snotty girls in matching hair bows. “Maybe the timeline’s fucky.”

“I’ll throw myself in the Thames,” Ghost says without looking up.

“I’ll push you,” Eris offers kindly.

Laswell is holding a chart titled ‘Magical Reintegration Theory and the Emotional Damage of Lost Unit Cohesion’ and looks five seconds away from drafting a letter to Merlin. 

It’s bullshit. This whole thing is bullshit. They should’ve all been here by now. If this were a dramatic, well paced narrative with a competent author and basic respect for emotional payoff, the whole damn team would’ve collided into each other in some explosive, chaos-fueled reunion outside Quality Quidditch Supplies.

Instead? Ghost’s just stepped in a puddle and his sock is wet. And then-

“Wait,” Eris says, freezing mid grumble. Her head snaps toward the crowd and her eyes narrow.

Laswell looks up. “What-”

“Konig!”

There, above the swarm of bodies, rising like a majestic eldritch cryptid in clearance rack robes three sizes too small, is a mountain of a hulking child, visibly sweating, and holding an ice cream cone while looking like he’s about to go into cardiac arrest.

He freezes before slowl, he turns.

His eyes land on Eris. Then on Ghost. Then Laswell. Then back to Eris.

His ice cream falls to the ground in a tragic, creamy death.

“Oh scheiße,” Konig breathes.

And then Eris sprints toward him at full tilt, dragging Ghost and Laswell with her like a possessed kite string pulling a trio of well-dressed goblins, because they found him.

Konig has exactly five seconds to brace himself.

Which is unfortunat because he wastes the first two staring at the melting corpse of his ice cream, as if it might somehow shield him from the oncoming storm. The third second is spent blinking in disbelief, because surely the three feral cryptids barreling toward him aren’t his teammates, reincarnated, wand-wielding, eleven year old nightmares in formal school robes. Right?

Wrong.

Second four: he mutters “Oh no,” in the voice of a man who once stared down death and survived but has never survived any of said teammates with a sugar high.

Second five: he tries, he genuinely tries to turn and flee. But it’s too late.

Eris launches herself like a goddamn heat seeking missile, collides with him at knee height, and wraps her arms around his legs like a sentient bear trap made of nostalgia, sarcasm, and unchecked violence.

“Konig!” she shrieks again, like she might cry or start a knife fight, possibly both.

Ghost slams into him next with the force of a small car crash, scowling like he’s mad that this is emotional, but still clinging to Konig’s side like static cling made of trauma bonding.

Laswell just walks up, squints at him, and says flatly,“Congratulations, you’ve been reactivated.”

Konig just stands there with one arm still outstretched from the ice cream loss, eyes wide, soul ascending like a Germanic telephone pole being mugged by gremlins.

And then he breathes, “Ich bin nicht bereit dafür.”

He is not. He never will be. But it’s too late now.

Chapter Text

The Hogwarts Express rattled northward, each compartment a box of bubbling nerves and sugar buzzed chatter. 

Eleven year olds swapped Chocolate Frog cards and debated whether tawny or barn owls made better post carriers; their excitement fogged the windows. In one compartment, however, the air felt markedly colder. 

John Price occupied the compartment alone, boots braced, arms folded, a flat cap- somehow acquired in the half hour between Platform Nine and Three Quarters and the conductor’s whistle- pulled low enough to shadow the constant threat assessment flicker in his eyes that he never seemed to have grown out of even though it had been eleven years since he was a soldier. Reflections in the corridor glass served as makeshift mirrors; he marked the tell tale fidget of a boy who’d crumble in a duel, the swagger of two future hallway bullies already circling easy prey. 

For the bright eyed kids, this train was a fairytale prologue. For Price it was simply the next are of operation. He wasn’t here for wand lore or pet gossip; he was waiting for the moment someone barked an order. The longer that moment failed to arrive, the more the silence ground against him like grit in a rifle’s bolt.

The door slid open with a smooth clatter, a rush of corridor noise bleeding into the quiet of the compartment. Price didn’t look up at first, it was just another kid, probably, in search of an empty seat or someone to trade Fizzing Whizbees with. He didn’t care, not unless the kid had explosives. But then-

“Sorry, ye mind if-?”

That voice.

God, that voice. 

Familiar, unmistakable, and thick with a lilt that seemed to stop time. It cracked something open in his skull and reached back through it, grabbing him by the spine and dragging him through years he hadn’t had time to mourn. His head snapped up with such force that his cap flew off, landing forgotten on the seat beside him.

And there he was.

A boy stood in the doorway, framed by the flickering corridor lights like a photograph come to life. His dark hair was sticking out at sharp, chaotic angles like it was trying to escape his scalp entirely. There was a smear of soot across one cheek, the kind of accidental war paint that came from sticking your nose too close to a spell gone sideways. His uniform robes were rumpled, sleeves pushed up like he’d been in a scrap already, and he dragged behind him a battered old trunk that looked like it had been kicked down a flight of stairs or two. A broomstick that was splintered and dented with one bristle tied up with spell-o-tape, was slung under one arm. 

And he was grinning. A wide, lopsided, shit eating grin. The exact kind of grin that said I know something you don’t and yes, I did set the storage closet on fire, and no, I’m not sorry.

It was him.

Not just similar. Not just close.

Him.

Price’s lungs stopped working for a second. Air caught somewhere in his chest like it didn’t trust what his eyes were seeing.

“…MacTavish?”

The name barely escaped him, hoarse and raw and paper thin. A plea and a curse and a prayer all wrapped in disbelief.

The boy blinked once. Twice. The grin faltered like a record scratch, falling away in pieces until there was just wide eyes and a face gone pale.

“…Captain?” It came out small and quiet like he was afraid to say it louder, in case it wasn’t real.

For one long, suspended moment, neither of them moved but the world outside the compartment world fell away. The train could’ve derailed and they wouldn’t have noticed. Time folded in on itself. Eleven years old and still carrying a lifetime of ghost stories between them.

And then Price moved.

He surged to his feet in one fluid, furious motion, crossing the compartment in two long strides and grabbing the boy by the shoulders like he expected him to disappear if he blinked. Fingers curled hard, half checking for substance. For weight. For proof.

“You’re supposed to be dead,” he said, voice barely human. It wasn’t anger or relief, but shock. It was grief being ripped inside out, old wounds torn open under the fluorescent lights of a Hogwarts Express compartment that smelled like candy and old leather.

Soap didn’t flinch or pull away, just looked up at him, eyes glassy and voice cracking, and said, “I got better.”

They didn’t hug, they weren’t built like that, but they stood there, fists knotted in each other’s sleeves like lifelines, like maybe if they held on tight enough they could stop the world from shifting under them again. 

It wasn’t tender or gentle but white knuckled, two ghosts gripping the only other person who remembered what dying felt like. A death grip- literal and otherwise- because it didn’t feel real, and God help them if it wasn’t.

Soap exhaled finally, like he’d been holding it in for eleven years and the weight of it had been dragging behind his ribs this whole time. “Bloody hell,” he muttered, voice rough with disbelief. “Thought I was losin’ the plot. Been tryin’ tae work it oot for years. One minute I’m fightin’ Makarov, he’s got the drop on me, turns the gun my way, and the next thing I ken I’m in a fuckin’ crib. Screamin’ an’ covered in some powder that made me sneeze.”

Price let out a breath that might’ve once been a laugh, but came out more like a grunt sawed off at the edges, all humorless and brittle. “Yeah. Welcome to the club.”

Soap glanced around the compartment, like maybe someone else was waiting behind the next seat cushion. “Anyone else here? Ah mean, from the team?”

“…Not sure yet.” Price hesitated, which in itself was rare enough to register as a red flag. “But if you’re here… then there’s a good chance the rest are too.”

Soap looked down at the wand in his hand; thin, dark wood, still unfamiliar, awkward in his grip like a weapon he hadn’t trained with yet. He turned it over once. It didn’t feel like a gun, but it had the same kind of promise.

“Well,” he said, raising his gaze back to Price, “what now, sir?”

Price bent down, scooped up his cap from where it had fallen, and gave it a rough shake before settling it back on his head like it was his war helmet. He moved slow, measured, grounding himself back in the moment with the ritual of it. Then he leaned back against the seat, tipped the brim forward to shadow his eyes, and exhaled through his nose.

“Now?” he said, voice low and steady. “Now we find the bloody rest of them.”

***

It took them exactly five minutes to find the first group and they hadn’t even needed to leave the compartment. During the time it had taken for Soap to stash his trunk and other luggage in the overhang, the corridor outside the compartment had been gradually escalating in what could only be described as a magical clusterfuck with sound effects. 

There was thumping, there was curing, and there was something that sounded suspiciously like a cat being launched at Mach speed out a window. 

Soap had already glanced at the door twice, squinting like a man deciding if he wanted to join in because throwing hands was always his first, second, and third instincts and he was almost offended he wasn’t involved in whatever was occurring or if he wanted to focus on more important tasks like finding their team. Price hadn’t moved, still sitting in his seat like a man who had seen too much already and refused to be affected by anything until someone started bleeding. 

And then came the clincher. 

“-and if you touch me again, I swear to every god above and below I will rip your fucking face off with a sugar quill and feed it to your owl.”

Silence. The kind of dead, anticipatory silence that happens right before someone gets slapped with a chair. 

Soap blinked. “Sir-?”

Price’s brows lifted. “Was that-?”

Soap didn’t answer, he was already at the door like a nosy neighbor watching a domestic dispute between the husband and wife that lived across the street. He slid it open, stuck his head into the corridor, and-

Froze. 

Completely stopped move, mentally buffering, blue screen, the works. 

“Sir?” He called over his shoulder, voice gone all high pitched with that special kind of disbelief one only reserved for alien invasion and surprise audits. “Think I found some o’ them.”

Because down the corridor, in a scene that could only be described Chaotic Good, Chaotic Evil, The Murder Dad, and The Intelligence Analyst Who’s Too Tired For This, stood the exact disaster lineup of his dreams and nightmares. 

Eris Kane was in full nuclear meltdown posture, “fight me, coward” mode engaged. She didn’t have a wand in her hand but she did have a fistful of sugar quills and the kind of raw energy that said she was ready to commit a felony or five with them.

Ghost stood beside her like a sleep-deprived handler from hell, one arm casually slung across her torso in a “please stop committing crimes with witnesses around” gesture while his dead eye stared locked onto the aristocratic Slytherin in front of them. 

Konig loomed behind them like a teenage tank with anxiety, resting one hand on Eris’ shoulder, muttering “Maybe… we do not do murder before dinner, ja?” while his other hand hovered awkwardly, halfway between ‘comforting headpat’ and ‘yeeting a child into the ceiling.’ 

And then, casually leaning across the corridor wall like none of this was her goddamn problem, stood Kate Laswell. Reading a book, turning the pages, not a single ounce of concern on her face. 

Meanwhile the poor aristocratic bastard looked like he’d just pissed in his expensive robes and wasn’t sure whether to run or faint. 

Soap took it all in with wide, slightly feral eyes. Then slowly, mechanically, ducked his head back into the compartment. 

“It’s Kane, Ghost, Laswell, an’-bloody hell, Konig looks like he could bench press the trolley witch.”

Price stood up so fast the cap fell of his head again. “Finally!”

They stepped into the corridor just as Eris hissed “Try me, you inbred little slug. I was committing war crimes when you were still learning how to piss straight.”

”Eris,” Laswell muttered, not even looking up from her book. “You’re eleven again, don’t give yourself away that easily.”

”You’re also eleven again” Eris snapped, not breaking eye contact with her would be victim. 

“And yet,” Laswell said with the serene smugness of someone who’s soul is made of blackmail material and strong espresso, “I’m not the one screaming about cannibalism in a crowded corridor.”

Ghost looked up to clock the mixture of first years panic and upper years rubbernecking out of their compartments. His gaze swept the hallway and locked onto Price and Soap. For half a heartbeat, maybe less, something shifted behind his stare. A flash of something tender, almost relieved. Then it was gone, buried beneath the usual death glare and quiet readiness to ruin someone’s life. 

“Eris.” He said, shaking her gently. 

Eris, mid-snarl, followed his gaze and blinked. Her mouth stopped moving and her whole posture flickered from ‘feral alley cat’ to ‘suspicious crow recognizing it’s murder.’

She straightened. “No fucking way.”

Soap grinned, all teeth and manic Scottish disbelief. “Hello tae you too, princess.”

Eris let out a breath sharp enough to slide through dragonhide. “Oh thank fuck. I was about five minutes away from stabbing my way through every bloodline registry until I found someone who didn’t make me want to choke on my wand.”

From behind her, Konig made a low, affirming noise. 

Price looked over all of them, these bite sized disasters of strategic warefare and unresolved trauma, packed into children’s robes and first year nerves, and gave a single heavy nod. 

“That’s six,” he muttered, voice low like gravel in thunder. He glanced down the corridor, where the noise of adolescent chaos still buzzed in the air like static. ”Let’s find the rest. Move out.”

The second Price gave the order something primal activated in the four of them. Some ancient Task Force 141 subroutine coded deep in the meat and gristle of their souls sparked to life. All at once, Eris, Ghost, Soap, and Konig snapped to attention like tiny, murderous soldiers being reactivated for duty. No words were exchanged, no plans discussed. They simply moved.

Eris Kane stormed the corridors like a wrathful cryptid finging open compartment doors without knocking, leaned in like an interrogator, and barked, “Have you seen a blonde bastard?” If no one answered fast enough, she’d narrow her eyes and add, “No? What about a flirting bastard?”

She was scaring people. She didn’t care. Somewhere on this train were four men who probably thought they were still alone in this cursed second life, and she was not going to let them be emotionally vulnerable unsupervised. She knew what happened when that occurred. Paperwork. Arson. Existential breakdowns. Again.

Ghost, ever the minimalist, drifted down his own corridor like a wraith. His strategy was opening the door, staring in complete silence for five seconds before saying: “Dark hair. Tall.” That was it. No emotion. No elaboration. No context. Just vibes and haunting aura. 

He ghosted from compartment to compartment, scaring the ever loving shit out of everyone he passed, occasionally pausing to mutter “Not him” before moving on like a disappointed poltergeist.

Konig, meanwhile, was the complete opposite: Gentle, polite, and effective. Every bit the terrifyingly tall boy in too-short robes and an apologetic hunch, softly knocking on compartment doors before asking with genuine earnestness, “Have you seen someone with dark, soft hair und very kind eyes? His name is Rudy. He might be… worried about someone else more than himself. Or, ehm… Alejandro. He is loud. Handsome. Smiles a lot. He might be… how you say… challenging someone to a duel, or trying to flirt, und it is… very intense. Graves is American. Blonde. Suspicious. You will know him… if you feel like someone near you is trying to sell you a black-market wand. Und Gaz is-” he paused, thinking, “-Gaz is sharp. Smart. Quiet until he is not. Sarcastic. Also likely pretending to be fine even if he is not.”

He even thanked people afterward, which only added to the surreal horror of a boy who looked like he could throw a troll being this soft.

Soap, bless him, absolutely meant well but was already off the rails. He barged into a compartment of very confused second years and shouted, “OI, YOU SEEN A BLOKE WITH A FACE LIKE A PUNCHABLE TURNIP AND THE ATTITUDE OF A SPICY WALLABY?”

“…What does that mean?”

“HE KNOWS WHAT IT MEANS.”

While their pint-sized berserkers turned the train into a low-grade war zone, Kate Laswell and John Price opted for the sane approach… well, sane by Task Force standards. 

They set off side by side, neither rushing nor raising their voices, stepping neatly around panicked first years and the occasional sentient chocolate frog. As they strolled, they exchanged the strangest catch up conversation ever held in a school corridor: ten uninterrupted minutes of concise intel dumps about pureblood guardians, accidental magic incidents, and the staggering boredom of being tucked in every night by well meaning parents. 

Price spoke in clipped, soldierly bursts; Laswell answered in dry footnotes, like two field officers updating a shared dossier while strolling through a botanical garden.

Their calm made them excellent spotters. One compartment revealed Gaz hunched over a puzzle book, rolling his eyes at two giggling girls arguing about dress robes; Laswell rapped once on the glass, tilted her head, and he went stock-still before whispering, “Ma’am?” and that was all the confirmation they needed. 

Further along they discovered Alejandro Vargas midstory, regaling a cluster of wide eyed first years with an exaggerated retelling of a magical mariachi duel; Price slid the door back, folded his arms, and Alejandro’s grin cracked into stunned recognition. 

In the next carriage Rudy Parra sat quietly at a window, coaxing a terrified barn owl into eating a treat; one raised eyebrow from Laswell and he answered, “Captain, Ms. Laswell-thought it was just me.” 

And at the very end, Philip Graves had taken over an entire luggage alcove, charming spare trunks into formation like toy soldiers while flirting shamelessly with a harried prefect; Price cleared his throat, and Graves’s smirk froze, then split into a relieved, “Well I’ll be damned.”

No shouting, no broken glass, no threats of sugar-quill dismemberment, just two veterans walking a straight line, collecting wayward operators the way a conductor punches tickets, until all ten names were finally accounted for and the real trouble could begin.

Price doesn’t say a word. He just lifts two fingers to his lips and lets out a whistle so sharp it could slice through steel.

It echoes down the corridor like a war cry wrapped in authority, bouncing off compartment walls and straight into the spinal cords of four highly unstable eleven year olds with too many memories and not enough supervision.

Instantly, there’s thudding.

Something crashes. Someone screams.

And then, like chaos summoned on command, the storm rolls back in.

Soap appears first, skidding into view at full tilt, red faced and breathless, muttering something about an “absolute bastard of a prefect” and possibly a minor hexing incident. He doesn’t elaborate. 

Ghost follows two seconds later, silent, stock-still, but his expression makes it clear he absolutely committed a felony in the last fifteen minutes. He’s cradling a suspiciously bent wand that may or may not be his.

Konig lumbers into view like a tactical freight train, ducking under the doorframe, utterly unfazed. He’s carrying a cat. Not his cat. Not anyone’s cat. Just a cat tucked under one arm.

And finally, Eris comes strolling in last, unhurried and unapologetic, sleeves rolled, face smug, and chewing on what is definitely not candy. She pauses only to kick a smoldering sugar quill out of the hallway and toss a cheerful, “Did you know the trolley witch is an unregistered animagus? Because I do now.”

Price doesn’t flinch.

He just waits.

And sure enough, they all fall into step, out of breath, disheveled, and utterly unrepentant as they round the corner and come to a halt in front of him.

All ten of them.

The full set. The whole bloody Coalition.

Together.

At last.

The train lurches forward, humming with magic, unaware that it now carries the most volatile group of students Hogwarts has ever admitted. Somewhere in the distance, Severus Snape, potions master, feels a chill go down his spine and the sudden, violent urge to quit and take a long, extended vacation to the Bahamas. 

Price just crosses his arms, smirks faintly, and mutters, “About damn time.”

Chapter Text

The reunion had devolved into what can only be described as a war crime against spatial awareness and basic decorum.

Nobody meant to all cram into the same train compartment, okay? That wasn’t the plan. But the second Price blew The Whistle(TM), the same one that had every single one of them barrelling back like feral cats being summoned by the sound of a tuna can opening, they all crammed into the same compartment. It just happened, nobody wanted to be alone, not after everything. Not after realizing they’d all died and somehow miraculously came back and found each other again. 

So now there were ten fully grown military grade souls stuffed into a Hogwarts Express compartment designed for a max of six emotionally constipated British eleven year olds to awkwardly eat Pumpkin Pasties in silence but now held all ten of them. There was no air and no personal boundaries but limbs and trauma and repressed feelings and the occasional Scottish cackle echoing off the glass.

Laswell had claimed the window seat, perched with her knees to her chest, mentally assessing the structural weak points in case this whole thing went nuclear. Ghost was crammed diagonally in the corner like a cursed mannequin someone had folded in half. Konig, after releasing the cat he had found back into the hallway, had gone full vertical in the corner, looking like a tranquilized jungle cat that had outgrown every inch of his enclosure. Soap was sitting on Alejandro, Price, and Rudy at once and nobody had the heart (or core strength) to make him move. Gaz was pushed against Konig and was trying to wiggle the elbow out of his face. 

Graves took the floor and had just been staring into space with the thousand yard stare of a man who watched his own death in 4k. He hadn’t blinked in five minutes and might’ve been buffering.

And then there was Eris.

Eris was standing in the doorway like an avenging god with a superiority complex and clinical rage disorder. Her fists were clenched and her eyes locked on Graves like a predator who had just caught the scent of something exceptionally stupid.

“Eris-” Graves started, stupidly.

Which was a mistake because then she lunged.

Full body, no hesitation, just grabbed him by the collar like she was selecting which part of him she wanted to throw out the window first and headbutted him like a Glasgow legend so hard you could hear the impact three compartments over.

“You bastard!” She shrieked, straddling him like Death herself in a pleated uniform, shaking him, “You absolute fucking basard!” 

“Eris-!” Graves choked, not out of dignity (he’d long since lost the right to that), but from the horrifying realization that this was, in fact, how he was going to die for a second time. Not in battle, not in glory, but by being curb stomped in a magical train compartment by a reincarnated war goddess with a vendetta and no sense of deescalation techniques. 

“Eris,” Price groaned, rubbing his temples, exhaling slowly like he was trying to breathe through a migraine summoned by Satan himself. “You’re gonna snap his spine like a glow stick, get off of him.”

”I will not,” she snarled, now gripping Graves by the tie like she was about to tie it into a noose. “He wasn’t supposed to be dead! He was supposed to have left me! I had hoped he had left-“

And just like that, her voice cracked. The fight drained out of her like air from a popped balloon and she slumped forward into Graves’ lap, hands still clenched in his shirt, trembling. 

“I hoped…” she whispered, barely audible now, “that you ditched me. That you were drinking cheap whiskey on some shitty ranch in Texas and pretending I didn’t exist anymore. That you got out and you moved on and you were happy- I wanted you to have left me, because the alternative was-“ She choked, jaw clenching, her next breathing shattering against his shoulder. “Because the alternative was-“

She choked, biting back the rest of the words, but she didn’t need to finish it.

Graves didn’t speak as one arm came up, wrapping tightly around her waist, the other threading through her dark hair, palm splayed on the back of her head as her breath shuddered against his neck, head tucked beneath his chin, and for one impossible moment, the whole fucking train car held its breath. They stayed like that on the floor, in a pile of limbs, legs, and too many people with too much history and the awkward geometry of childhood reincarnation.

Nobody said a word until Soap, in true Soap fashion, shattered the moment of emotional fragility with, “So… we just… all trauma cuddle now, or what?”

Laswell didn’t even blink, her voice flat and lethal. “Johnny, I swear to God, if you touch me, I will transfigure you into a quiche and drop you off the Astronomy Tower.”

“The what-?” Soap sputtered, eyes wide in alarm. He twisted to Price with the frantic energy of a man who’s accidentally skipped a mandatory mission briefing. “We’ve got a bloody astronomy tower?”

“Hermano,” Rudy mumbled, wedged upside down between Gaz and Konig’s elbow like a sacrificial offering, “we’ve all missed the briefing. At this point I’m just rollin’ with it.”

Soap’s confusion intensified visibly. “Hold on, hold on-are you lot tellin’ me that this whole magic school thing wasn’t just some weird metaphor for a boardin’ school institutionalizin’ childhood soldiers ? Like- there’s actual magic an’ towers now?”

Laswell stared at him, her expression briefly betraying regret at letting him survive this long. “Soap. What did you think Hogwarts was?”

He blinked. “Some sorta fancy, child soldier trainin’ camp with daft robes?”

Price pinched the bridge of his nose like he was trying to crush out an oncoming aneurysm. “Christ alive, Johnny. Bloodlines-who knows what theirs are?”

Soap raised his hand like a kid in a very confusing math class. “Scottish! Mostly feral, Catholic, an’ ready tae fight God behind a Tesco’s at 2am!”

There was a silence. The kind of silence where Konig covered his face, and Gaz shook his head slowly, whispering, “God, we’ve adopted an idiot.”

“Johnny,” Laswell started again, very carefully, “are your parents magical?”

“Magical? Nah. Ma mam chucked my Hogwarts letter in the bin an’ sprinkled holy water around the kitchen. Thought I was possessed. Then she went an’ laid down for a nap.”

“So that’s a no,” Laswell said, checking a box on a list no one else could see. “That makes you a muggleborn.”

Soap frowned. “Muggle-what?”

“Muggleborn,” Eris sighed from her emotional puddle on Graves’ chest, raising one finger in exhausted emphasis. “Magic, but from regular ass people. Who else is muggleborn here?”

Gaz, Rudy, and Konig all raised their hands. 

“Wait, Konig?” Soap, who could only see Konig from his location, whipped his head around so fast to look at the boy, it was amazing his neck didn’t snap. “You’re muggleborn?”

Konig shrugged shyly, apologetically hitting Rudy with one massive elbow. “Ja. My mother fainted when the owl appeared. Father chased it out with a broom, yelling something about ‘cursed German birds.’”

Soap nodded sagely. “Relatable.”

“Halfbloods?” Laswell continued patiently, like an exhausted teacher taking roll call on a sinking pirate ship.

Price, Graves, and Alejandro raised their hands at the exact same time, accidentally performing the saddest synchronized swimming routine in wizard history.

“Purebloods,” Laswell concluded, making a sweeping gesture towards herself, Eris, and Ghost.

Eris raised her hand lazily, not bothering to lift her head from Graves’ shoulder. “Ancient and Noble House of Hale. It’s terrible. My mom makes me attend dinners with people who use words like ‘verily’ and ‘indubitably’. I hate everyone.”

Ghost raised his hand minimally, more like twitching a finger in disdain. “Riley. Pureblood. My family tree is a circle, and it’s on fire.”

Laswell didn’t even raise a hand. She just gave Soap a flat, intimidating stare. “Laswell. Pureblood but you won’t find us on a registry because they’re all Unspeakables. That’s like intelligence officers, but magical. Imagine the CIA, except worse.”

Soap swallowed loudly. “Somehow, ah’m no’ surprised.”

Silence again. Eris sniffed, finally extracting herself from Graves enough to sit upright, eyes still red. Soap clapped his hands abruptly, a man deciding he was done processing emotions and trauma for at least six months.

“So, tae summarize! Eris is violent magical royalty, Ghost is generational trauma wearin’ a person suit, Price is a grizzled halfblood general that probably eats nails for breakfast, Alejandro probably duels folk before breakfast, Rudy an’ Gaz are lost an’ confused muggleborns like me, König could probably bench-press a dragon but would apologise tae it after, Laswell’s magical CIA, an’ Graves… well, Graves is a bastard.”

Graves blinked. “Hey, now, I resemble that remark.”

Eris reached over and patted his head sympathetically. “Don’t worry. Your family crest is probably a burning helicopter over crossed whiskey bottles.”

Graves nodded solemnly. “If it wasn’t before, it is now.”

Then she squinted at him, leaning in, suspicious. “Also. Why the hell does your accent sound like a cowboy who got lost on the way to a moonshine distillery and ended up on a Florida swamp tour?”

Graves let out the kind of long, exhausted sigh that carried the weight of two lifetimes of being relentlessly bullied by this woman. “I never lost the Texas drawl, alright? But this time around I was born in Arkansas. They blended. It’s not my fault I sound like I deliver sermons and sell used trucks out of a gun range.”

Eris opened her mouth to reply but then, without any warning, the train jolted forward, violently enough that Rudy fell onto Gaz and Soap ended up upside down halfway in Konig’s lap. A cheerful, overly calm voice amplified by a Sonorus charm originating from somewhere in the train spoke:

“Attention students, we will be arriving at Hogsmeade Station in ten minutes. Please change into your robes and securely stow your emotional baggage. Unresolved trauma will not be permitted beyond curfew. Have a magical day!”

Silence. Shock. Gaz made a strangled noise. Konig quietly whispered, “Is that… standard?”

Soap twisted desperately around again, eyes wide, upside down. “Price…mate… ye sure this isn’t basic trainin’ all over again?”

Price just buried his face in both hands, deeply regretting every choice that had led him to this compartment, this train, this second cursed life, and muttered with profound despair, “God help this fucking school.”

***

There’s a fog when they step off the train. A thick, creeping, horror movie fog that clings to the skin and makes everything feel like a slow descent into a goth novel, except instead of tragic lovers and family curses, it’s ten fully grown ex black ops agents trapped in the bodies of eleven year olds, trying very hard not to break cover by water boarding a rowboat. 

“Firs’ years! This way! No more’n four to a boat!” The giant man (Hagrid, they’ll later learn) called cheerfully, waving his lantern around like a lighthouse keeper on meth. 

“Jesus Christ,” Soap whispered, clutching Rudy’s arm like a Victorian maiden spotting a ghost. “Is that a boss fight?”

Eris narrowed her eyes. “Why does he have a lantern? Why is he that big? Why is he-“

”Konig,” Graves blurted out. “Is that your dad?”

Konig turned his head slowly, staring at Graves like he was trying to decide whether murder is frowned upon in his second life or not. 

“… I am Austrian,” Konig said finally, voice flat. “He looks like a Bavarian folklore warning poster.”

Soap wheezed and Price bit his knuckle to avoid laughing. Laswell muttered. “You’re going to get sat on by a giant, Phillip. I’m not bailing you out.”

Graves just shrugs, unrepentant. “I’m just sayin’. He’s got the same vibe. Like he could pick up a cow and yeet it into orbit.”

”Do not antagonize the woodland demigod,” Ghost muttered from under his cloak.  

Meanwhile, Hagrid is still waving his lantern, cheery as hell. “Firs’ years this way! Mind the squid!”

”… mind them’ what,” Soap says. 

“I think that’s our cue to get into the boats,” Eris answered. “Before one of us ends up turned into a flesh light by a kelpie.”

They stumble toward the lake, each in varying stages of denial and damp socks. The lantern light reflects off the dark water, which is unsettlingly still for something that definitely houses at least three kinds of sea monster.

“Four tae a boat?” Soap repeats with an edge of panic, spinning around like a mall toddler separated from his parent. “There’s ten of us.”

“Why is that your issue right now?” Ghost mutters, already grabbing the back of his cloak before Soap can try to climb into someone else’s boat sideways like a gremlin.

Price ends up in a boat with Soap, Gaz, and Rudy, who immediately begin arguing about whether kelpies are just Scottish alligators.

Graves and Alejandro commandeer another boat, mostly because Alejandro wanted to sit at the bow and look noble and Graves wanted to see if he could splash Eris with lake water.

Konig, Laswell, Ghost, and Eris pile into the last one. Well. Eris piles. Konig kneels like he’s preparing for ritual sacrifice, Laswell folds herself into the corner like she’s bracing for a tactical breach, and Ghost sits so still he might be trying to astral project somewhere else.

The boats push off all at once, drifting into the inky dark like they’re on a doomed ferry ride to Trauma Island.

And then someone says it.

“Bit eerie, innit?” Soap calls across the lake, just loud enough to echo.

Eris groans. “Did you just jinx us by saying that while on a haunted body of water?”

“I will capsize this boat,” Ghost threatens.

Before he can make good on his threat, a giant tentacle breaks the surface of the water in the distance, curls like a polite wave, and then sinks back down again.

Silence falls over all ten of them.

“…So that was normal?” Rudy asks nervously.

“No,” everyone says in unison.

The castle looms into view above the mist, all towers and windows and glowing golden light like the beginning of a fairytale, if the fairytale included PTSD, wand based war crimes, and the very real possibility that someone in their group is going to be banned from the Astronomy Tower by Christmas.

As they reach the far shore and step out of the boats, Eris tightens her cloak around her shoulders and looks up at the spires of Hogwarts with narrowed eyes. “Well this is dramatic and gaudy.”

The grand double doors of Hogwarts entrance groaned open with theatrical flair, like the castle itself was aware it had an audience and was hellbent on making a first impression. The interior smelled like ancient wood, warmed stone, and magical hubris. Candles hovered in midair, a suit of armor twitched in the corner like it was ready to square up, and the air practically buzzed with centuries of poor decision making involving minors and access to physics defying magic. 

As the first years filed in, damp, wide-eyed, and emotionally undercooked when there was a sudden click of heels and a shift in the atmosphere that could only be described as Respect Her or Die.

Professor Minerva McGonagall descended upon them like a Scottish thunderstorm in tartan. Robes crisp, expression unreadable, glasses glinting like they’d seen every sin a child could commit and were prepared to prosecute on sight.

“Welcome,” she said, voice calm but with the bite of iron beneath it, “to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.”

Several first years flinched. Ghost did not. He just looked at her like she was a new kind of landmine while Konig attempted to hide behind him. 

”The start-of-term banquet will begin shortly, but before you take your seats in the Great Hall, you will be sorted into your houses. The Sorting is a very important ceremony because, while you are here, your houses will be something like your family within Hogwarts. You will have classes with the rest of your house, sleep in your house dormitory, and spend free time in your house common room.” 

She droned on about the four houses, the house points, and the house cup before McGonagall’s sharp eyes scanned the crowd, and then landed precisely on the three individuals pretending not to exist.

“Before we begin the Sorting Ceremony,” she continued, tone cool and clipped, “I would like to formally acknowledge the arrival of Miss Hale, Mr Riley, and Miss Laswell.” A pause. “I did, of course, receive your parent’s letters warning us of your arrival as well as the Ministry’s Incident Files and Memoranda regarding you three.”

Laswell suddenly found the ceiling fascinating, Ghost seemed to develop an intense interest in his shoelaces, and Eris straight up turned around and tried to start walking back out the door like she’d taken a wrong turn into a consequence before Price reached out and grabbed the back of her robes and hauled her back to the group. 

The rest of the first years stared and whispered while a few edged away.

McGonagall’s nostrils flared just slightly. “The potential heads of your respective Houses and I have also been fully briefed on your… shall we say, unique contributions to magical society over the years.”

Soap leaned toward Graves and whispered, “What the hell did they do?”

Graves didn’t blink. “If it’s what I’m thinking it is… my Dad said there’s a forty page Ministry memo and three restraining orders involved.”

“Ah,” said Soap. “So vibes.”

McGonagall cleared her throat and the whispers died so fast it felt like the hallway itself had winced.

“I trust,” she said, voice like a guillotine dropping, “that we won’t be needing any repeat performances this year.”

Ghost didn’t speak, he just slowly, deliberately nodded.

Eris smiled with all the teeth of a child legally banned from thirteen apparition exam centers and half the Floo Network. “Of course not, Professor.”

Laswell gave a diplomatic thumbs up and whispered to Price, “She’s bluffing. She can’t legally exile minors anymore.”

McGonagall’s expression didn’t change. “I heard that, Miss Laswell.”

“Respectfully,” said Laswell, smiling like a fox in a henhouse, “you always do.”

Price sighed, Soap cackled, Rudy whispered a quiet prayer, and Konig, calm as ever, just asked, “Are we going to be Sorted now or… do the gallows come first?”

McGonagall, to her credit, didn’t flinch. “This way, please.”

And like the emotionally repressed trauma bonded messes they were, the Coalition followed her with heads high, backs straight, and absolutely no plans to behave, through the double doors. The Great Hall unfurled before them in all its enchanted glory: floating candles, enchanted ceiling mimicking the sky outside, banners hanging like house sigils in a particularly dramatic Game of Thrones reboot. 

Soap and Rudy immediately craned their necks up, jaw slack. “… That’s not real sky, is it?”

”It’s an illusion charm projected via spatial displacement magic and atmospheric illusionary glamours.” Laswell muttered to him. 

Soap blinked at her. “So… no.”

Eris squinted at the floating candles like she was calculating the structural risk of setting the entire ceiling on fire. “I give this place a month before I snap and rip the ghost out of the walls.”

”You can do that?” Konig asked, a little too interested. 

They were ushered down the aisle like mildly feral boarding school students who had somehow escaped their handlers, eventually coming to a stop near the front, where rows of watching students already seated at their respective tables were whispering, pointing, and most definitely making bets with each other. 

The ten of them stood in a rough semi circle, because they all independently refused to stand next to strangers and were now clustered together like a cursed boy band.

”Welcome to Hogwarts,” boomed the Sorting Hat from its perch on the stool, mouth tearing open like sentient tweed. “Before we begin, a song.”

And then it started singing. 

A full music number, with verses, and rhymes, and emotional motifs, and at one point, a weird little bridge about inter house unity that made absolutely no one believe that unity had ever occurred. 

Half the Coalition immediately tuned it out. 

Soap blinked hard. “Is the hat rapping?”

”No,” Alejandro muttered. “It’s worse. It’s doing spoken word.”

Gaz closed his eyes. “If it starts beatboxing, I’m throwing myself into the lake.”

Price rubbed his temples. “How is this the most undignified briefing I’ve ever received and I once got one during a live firefight.”

Eris stared directly at the Sorting Hat with murder in her eyes. “It’s sentient, that means I can kill it.”

Ghost gave her a slow nod. “You’ll need backup. I volunteer.” 

The song, blessedly, ended. 

Professor McGonagall swept forward, parchment in one hand, quill in the other, glasses catching the candle light. She cleared her throat, and the Great Hall snapped to an expectant hush broken only by the distant clatter of ghosts staking out balcony seats.

“Abernathy, Delilah!”

Tiny blonde.  Hat barely skimmed her curls before shouting “RAVENCLAW!”  Polite applause.  A couple of first years sighed with relief like they’d just avoided jury duty.

“Branstone, Sullivan!”

Two seconds of hemming, one muffled hmm, then “GRYFFINDOR!”  The Gryffs whooped and someone banged a goblet.

Price watched without blinking while Soap was muttering odds under his breath and Eris looked like she was rating each child on a ten point threat scale and none of them were passing.

McGonagall kept reading, voice slicing the air in neat, impeccable lines.

“Garrick, Kyle!”

Gaz inhaled hard enough to pop a rib.  He marched up to the stool, back straight, chin up like he was in formation again, though his eyes were wide like please don’t embarrass me in front of these psychopaths.  The Hat hit his head, twitched, twirled, and in under four beats bellowed:

“HUFFLEPUFF!”

The Hufflepuff table exploded in cheers.  Gaz blinked, stunned, then offered a shy half salute to the Coalition before shuffling off, quickly buried in hugs and highfives. Soap pumped a fist.  “Atta boy, Gaz!  Free cookies for days!”

Eris smirked. “Soft boy house. Suits him.”

Ghost grunted approval while Konig whispered something about “loyalty is strength.” 

Then McGonagall’s eyes flicked down the list and the entire hall seemed to lean in.

“Graves, Phillip!”

Swagger wasn’t a walk until Graves invented it: hands in his pockets, grin wide enough to file a lawsuit, wink tossed at the nearest group of third years.  He hopped onto the stool, slapped the Hat on like a novelty ten gallon, and waited for his coronation.

One Mississippi.

Two Mississippi.

Three… His smile twitched.

Four… Forehead creased.

Five… He was clearly arguing in whispers none of them could hear, jaw clenched, shoulders stiff.  The Hat’s brim rippled like it was swearing back.

Six-

“Slytherin!” the Hat roared.

Everything- sound, motion, even the floating candles- seemed to pause on a single breath for The Coalition. 

“No.” Price’s fingers stopped mid tapping, Soap’s grin calcified, Eris’s eyes went knife sharp. Ghost’s posture shifted almost imperceptibly into combat ready stillness. Konig’s huge frame went still as a statue. Rudy and Alejandro exchanged a flash of unease.  Gaz, halfway into a Hufflepuff hug, looked up like someone had yanked the floor out from under him. Laswell’s eyes slid closed as if never having considered the fact that they could be divided into different Houses and only just now realizing the fact of that. “No, no, no, no, no-!”

Graves stood, face blank now, that confident swagger drained into something brittle.  He shot a glance back at The Coalition- apology? Warning? Both?- then forced a cocky salute and made for the green and silver table amid cautious applause.

The moment stretched taut as a tripwire.

Price exhaled slow and controlled as a silent steady on rippled through the group. And then McGonagall cleared her throat again, parchment rustling like thunder breaking the spell.

“Hale, Eris!”

The hall inhaled.

The game had officially changed.

Chapter Text

The ceiling was enchanted. 

There were candles floating beneath it like little tiny flaming death omens, bobbing just out of arms reach while the four color coded House tables glittered beneath them, groaning under the mountains of dangerously welcoming food. It was clearly intentional, as if it was meant to lull and bribe nervous students into a carbohydrate coma before the staff sprang whatever educational horrors came next onto them.

And in the middle of all of that, the Sorting Hat was being a little bitch. 

Eris sat at the Slytherin table, arms crossed so tightly her knuckles popped, glowering at the front of the hall with the raw intensity of someone planning high treason over mashed potatoes, her gaze sharp enough to curdle the pumpkin juice. 

Across the room, Price sat stiffly at the Ravenclaw table, arms folded, cap tilted slightly in a way the Coalition interpreted as “I’m not happy, but I’m also not surprised by this bullshit.” It was the kind of disapproval usually reserved because of them and not for them which did help boost their collective morale by 3%. 

He exchanged a look with Laswell, her posture composed but her face etched with the kind of weariness that only comes from decades of dealing with government incompetence both magical and non, and now, apparently, included sentient haberdashery as she sighed and tried not to hex the Sorting Hat into the next millennium.

“Why the actual hell are we being split up?” Eris hissed, hazel eyes flickering across the sea of tables. 

Next to her, Ghost, also freshly christened a Slytherin, shifted just enough to mutter, “Apparently magical hats are bureaucratic assholes too.”

Before she could respond with violence, Graves moved from his spot further down the table to drop into the seat next to them like a late entry to a bar fight. 

“He called me ambitious like it was an insult,” he said, scowling. “Like that’s not just the bare minimum you need to survive late stage capitalism.”

”I told it I didn’t want to be in Slytherin,” Eris said, vibrating with rage. 

Ghost tilted his head slightly, lazy curiosity in his voice. “What’d it say?”

Her eye twitched. “ ‘Yeah, that tracks.’”

Graves whistled low and pitying, “Clocked you faster than the IRS, sweetheart.” 

Meanwhile, at the Gryffindor table, Soap looked like he was about five seconds away from committing a war crime with a dinner fork. 

“You’re telling me I’m here-“ he hissed, violently gesturing with said dinner fork towards the red and gold banners, “-and Ghost is over there?”

His eyes locked onto the Slytherin table like was trying to summon Ghost with sheer willpower. Across the room, Ghost didn’t even blink, just met Soap’s pout with a bored one, lifted a single eyebrow, and then with all the audacity of a spec ops Lieutenant reincarnated into a magical child’s body, stole a bread roll from Eris’ plate without breaking eye contact. 

Soap made an inhuman sound. 

Alejandro, sitting next to him with the calm resignation of a man who’d accepted chaos as a permanent roommate, patted his shoulder. “At least we’re roommates, hermano. Silver linings, no?”

”Mate,” Soap muttered, stabbing at a piece of roast chicken. “Ah am no’ emotionally equipped tae deal wi’ eleven year old lions. They’ve got the self-preservation instincts o’ a wet mop. One o’ thae red-haired twins just tried tae set his sleeve on fire. On purpose.”

Alejandro nodded sagely. “Si. Very brave. Very stupid. Much like you.”

Soap narrowed his eyes at him. “Bitch.”

Back at the Hufflepuff table, Rudy was the embodiment of quiet dignity and internalized panic while he politely helped a first year unpack his napkin. Every now and then he’d look around, wide eyed, as if trying to confirm that yes, this was real life, and yes, that was Konig attempting to fold himself into a child sized bench and failing miserably while Gaz watched him and tried not to cry from laughter. 

Konig was looming. That was the only appropriate word for it. He loomed like a haunted cathedral, hunched low, knees practically to his chin. His eyes kept darting over his shoulder towards the other tables, towards the team, the familiar chaos, the people who wouldn’t blink if he said he was going to suplex a banshee and might actually join him in attempting to do so. 

Gaz elbowed him lightly. “You good, big guy?”

Konig didn’t respond at first, just blinked slowly in much the same way someone trying to process IKEA instructions would, and muttered in a small voice. “… I want my team.”

”Same,” Gaz agreed, upending his goblet of pumpkins juice like it was tequila. “I don’t even know what a badger’s supposed to do in a fight. Hug the enemy to death? Bake them a pie and hope for mercy?”

Konig nodded gravely. “Maybe… emotional support.”

”Through the power of love and friendship,” Rudy murmured, deadpan. 

Price, over at Ravenclaw, sipped his goblet and looked over the sea of kids like a war general who’d just learned this command had been split up by a drunken logistics officer and a supply sergeant had shipped half his platoon to the wrong continent. 

“This is going to be a bloody nightmare,” he muttered. 

Across from him, Laswell dryly replied, “Not our worst deployment.”

”Close second.”

Just as the Great Hall began settling into a tentative rhythm of carbohydrate induced denial and pumpkin juice fueled coping mechanism, the dessert course manifested.

Literally. 

Plates shimmered into existence like sugar summoning eldritch portals. Pies the size of baby hippogriffs appeared with a pop, puddings quivered in giant bowls trying to escape over the rim, and cakes stacked themselves with the quiet efficiency of magical pastry interns.

Gaz visibly flinched when a treacle tart appeared too close to his elbow. “Do they have to teleport it?” he asked no one in particular. “I don’t like when my food phase shifts.”

Soap had just made the emotionally devastating decision between ice cream and cake when a sudden drop in temperature made the hair on the back of his neck stand up.

“…why is it cold?” he whispered.

Alejandro, mid bite of pie, glanced up. “Oh. Ghosts.”

“Ghosts??”

“Si. The ghosts.”

Soap squinted. “Ghosts? Like actual ghosts? Like spirits and souls?? Ghost-ghosts??”

“I heard Hogwarts is full of them,” Alejandro said, like that was just a thing and not cause for panic.

Soap stared at him. “This is a school.”

Alejandro shrugged. “They live here.”

“They’re dead.”

Before Alejandro could argue the logistics of afterlife residency, all hell broke loose.

All at once, the Great Hall was filled with a collection of ghosts. A translucent woman in Elizabethan ruffles swooped through the table like a deranged soap bubble, laughing at absolutely nothing. A knight clanked by, giving a cheerful wave and sending first years muggleborns scrambling. And then a man with an arrow through his head floated upside down past them, singing Greensleeves in falsetto.

Soap set his fork down with the wide, horrified eyes of a man staring at a traffic accident in slow motion. “Why are we lettin’ dead folk vibe wi’ bairns?”

“They’re nice dead people,” Rudy offered, from the Hufflepuff table behind the Gryffindors, as if that clarified anything, waving back at one of the spirits.

“They’re literal floatin’ corpses!”

“They’re ghosts,” Gaz corrected gently.

“That’s just a corpse wi’ hobbies an’ a wifi signal!”

A nearby ghost blew a raspberry in their direction and vanished through a fruit bowl causing Konig to jump so violently he nearly knocked over an entire tray of eclairs.

Over at the Slytherin table, Eris hadn’t moved. She watched the chaos with the calm, focused intensity of someone who’d already accepted that this was her life now.

“If I die again,” she muttered, “I’m becoming a poltergeist.”

Ghost raised a brow. “To torment the living?”

“To make it everyone’s problem, forever,” she said, scooping mousse onto her plate. “I will be in your walls. I will rearrange all the stairs. I will whisper incorrect spell pronunciations during exams. No one will rest. There will be no peace. Only me.”

Graves, licking custard off his spoon, added, “If I go, I’m rigging the toilets to play country music every time someone takes a piss.”

“That’s your legacy?” Ghost said blankly.

“Damn right,” Graves said around a mouthful. “Every time someone pees, it plays ‘Take Me Home, Country Roads.’”

Across the room, Laswell sipped her tea like none of this was happening and quietly added a mental bullet point to her “Reasons We Don’t Let Them Die Again” list.

By the time dessert was thoroughly annihilated (except for the mousse, which had started vibrating ominously and was declared a security risk by unanimous vote), the Coalition was drifting somewhere between sugar crash, existential dread, and that uniquely British form of bureaucratic confusion where everyone pretends they understand what’s happening and quietly dies inside because they don’t.

And then the headmaster stood, half moon spectacles twinkling, robes shimmering like someone had tie dyed a nebula, and spread his arms in a benevolent cryptic way. 

“Welcome, welcome to another year at Hogwarts,” he said in a wizened voice, amplified across the enchanted hall. “Before we all retire to our dormitories for the evening, I have a few start-of-term announcements.”

The Coalition, despite being scattered across four different tables, went instantly alert. Nothing like a briefing to make ten black ops souls sit up straighter than the rest of the room. 

“First, all students should familiarize themselves with Hogwarts’ extensive list of rules, available in the student handbook. However, I shall reiterate the most important of them here.”

Eris, seated between Ghost and Graves, leaned toward them and whispered, “I’m actually banned from the full version. Apparently I ‘annotated’ it too aggressively.”

“You rewrote half of it in blood red ink and called it ’survival edits’ before mailing it to the board and calling them all stupid bitches.”

“Practical survival edits and I stand by my comment.”

“Second,” Dumbledore continued, “Mr. Filth has asked me to remind you that magic is not to be used in the corridors between classes.”

Soap leaned towards Alejandro and whispered, “So corridors are the new ‘no fire zone.’ Good tae know.”

Alejandro nodded gravely, already planning ways around it. 

“Thirdly, ah yes.” Dumbledore’s gaze swept the hall, lingering on the set of red haired twins at Gryffindor. “The Forbidden Forest on the grounds is, as its name suggests, strictly forbidden to all students.”

Which is exactly when Gaz- sweet, gentle, emotionally stable Kyle Garrick- scrunched his nose and raised a hand. “Sorry, sir, did you say Forbidden Forest?”

Hundreds of heads turned to look at him and Gaz nearly froze, but he’d already committed, so he plowed on. “It’s, uh… that’s just a name right? Like a fun deterrent? A euphemism. Like ‘Keep out, path slippery’, that sort of thing?”

Dumbledore blinked once, then smiled in a way that said I love curious children and I’m definitely withholding horrific information, “No, my boy. It is forbidden because it is filled with extremely dangerous magical creatures that will almost certainly maim, dismember, or devour you alive should you step foot within it. Acromantulas, centaurs with arrows, the occasional homicidal tree- it is quite inhospitable after dark.”

Gaz’s hand slowly lowered, his mouth worked soundlessly while Konig whispered “murder forest,” under his breath, eyes shining with equal parts dread and gruesome curiosity.

“…So,” he said, blinking, voice high pitch, “you built a school for children next to that?”

A sharp cough from McGonagall. Several professors looked away.

Graves leaned forward, undeterred. “That’s prime real estate. Keeps the housing market competitive.” 

Soap leaned back in his seat and muttered, “Nah, mate’s got a point. If our base commander plonked the barracks next tae a nest o’ serial killer spiders, we’d mutiny.”

Konig whispered, “Is the forest sentient?”

“Probably,” Rudy replied grimly. “It waved at me earlier.”

Alejandro was frowning hard now. “What kinda lunatic builds an elementary warlock bootcamp next to a murder menagerie?”

Ghost carefully set down his goblet. “Strategic deterrent. Cheaper than walls.”

Price, who had clearly reached the fifth stage of denial, just said, “It’s negligence dressed up as tradition. This country’s health and safety regulations are a joke.”

“Wizards don’t have OSHA,” Laswell whispered.

“I knew this was a death trap,” Eris muttered, dragging her spoon through what remained of her custard with the mournful expression of someone already planning their obituary.

Soap raised a brow. “Alright but, like… on a scale o’ one tae Bear Grylls, how likely are we tae end up in that forest?”

Ghost said flatly, “You and I are definitely going in there before Halloween.” 

Dumbledore cleared his throat in a gentle but commanding sound that sliced clean through the ongoing Coalition-led think tank on the ethics of building a school next to a forest that’s first, second, and third instincts were to actively try and murder humans and whether firebombing sentient trees counted as murder or arborist centered war crimes. 

Across the Great Hall, hundreds of students and most of the staff were frozen in various states of horror and disbelief, having just born witness to ten feral first years casually strategizing counterinsurgency tactics like they were planning a bake sale. 

With a twinkle in his eyes like he hadn’t just heard someone say “we could just napalm the forest and call it population control,” Dumbledore beamed. 

“Before we trot off to bed,” he said, as if nothing had happened. “Let us sing the school song!”

***

The descent into the dungeons should’ve been ominous.

Cold stone walls, flickering green torches, a chill in the air like something dead was exhaling against the back of your neck. The kind of ambiance that screamed “villain origin story,” or at the very least, “mild haunting by something with claws.” But the second the new Slytherins crossed the threshold into the common room, the mood was immediately ruined.

“Okay,” Graves said, spinning in place to get a good look at everything. “Who thought it was a good idea to put a children’s common room under a fuckin’ lake.”

“I have so many questions,” Eris snapped, cloak still damp from the boat ride and her patience running on fumes. “Like, is the mildew cursed? Are the walls waterproofed with hexes? What’s the mold situation? Am I breathing in magical asbestos right now?”

“The acoustics are terrible,” Ghost muttered, because of course Ghost was annoyed by the echo. “And the light quality is garbage.”

A prefect stepped forward with a scroll and a practiced, polite smile. “If I may-”

“You may not,” Graves cut in. “This place is moist.”

“We’re literally under the lake,” Eris hissed, spinning around to gesture at the enormous, eerie green windows that lined one side of the room. Murky water churned beyond them and in the top left one, a tentacle drifted past. “We’re one miscast spell away from a drowned child reenactment of The Little Mermaid: Extended Murder Edition.”

“The merfolk don’t watch us,” the prefect offered weakly.

“Why would you even say that?!” Eris turned on him like he’d just suggested skinning a unicorn. “I wasn’t even thinking about being watched while changing, but now? Now it’s in my head. Forever. Thanks. Fantastic. Can’t wait to disassociate while some gilled voyeur judges my bra from outside a porthole.”

Ghost, slouching against the wall like the physical embodiment of dry sarcasm, tilted his head. “You think merpeople care about bras?”

“They might have standards!” Eris shot back. “And maybe I don’t want to be the reason an underwater society develops fashion criticism!”

Graves, meanwhile, had walked over to one of the damp stone pillars and was knocking on it like he could manifest a contractor. “This whole thing’s gonna sink. Mark my words. One day we’re gonna wake up, and there’s gonna be a grindylow spooning someone.”

“I hate it here,” Ghost said calmly, voice hollow behind his mask. “This is how horror stories start.”

“This is how group therapy sessions start,” Eris snapped. “If we survive this school, we’re unionizing.”

The prefect, still holding the scroll, slowly lowered it and backed away into the shadows, muttering something about “just wanting to explain the bed schedule.”

And then- 

The door burst open with the gothic dramatics of a Victorian novel, and in swept a man who looked like he’d been sculpted out of spite, black wool, and left over bat wings. His robes billowed in a way that defied normal airflow, equal parts vengeful ghost and haute couture funeral drapery. Greasy dark hair framed a face set permanently to solidified contempt and came to a halt in front of the group of students. 

“Good evening,” he said, in a voice that had definitely once given a child nightmares about cauldrons. “I am Professor Snape, your Head of House. Henceforth you will address me as Professor or Sir. Anything else will cost you points before you even earned them.” 

Eris blinked slowly. “Cool. Love the cryptkeeper vibes.”

Snape ignored her like a practiced professional, his gaze slithering across the cluster of first years, lingering on Ghost’s blank stare, on Graves’ half cocked smirked, and on Eris’ predatory posture, his lips curling. “I will be overseeing your progress during your years in Slytherin. If you are expecting leniency, I suggest you transfer to Hufflepuff immediately. We pride ourselves on ambition, cunning, and unity.”

“Unity?” Ghost asked, eyebrow raised.

Snape’s eyes narrowed. “In the hallways, yes. In public, Slytherins stand together and present a unified front. No matter what petty grievances you may develop in this room, you are expected to act with dignity and solidarity outside it. Bicker, duel, maim one another to your heart’s content within these walls-“ a flick of his wand indicated the damp stone, the green-lit windows, the eldritch shadows. “-but once you exit this room, you travel as one. Attacks on a lone snake invite bigger predators. I do not tolerate bigger predators.”

“That’s so ominous,” Graves muttered. “Is that code for ‘get ready to lie to professors together’?”

Snape ignored him too. “Second, this common room is exclusive. Gryffindor bravado, Ravenclaw arrogance, Hufflepuff… exuberance- none of it belongs here. Socialize with them in the library, during lessons, on the Quiddich pitch if you must. Bring them through my door and I will relocate it after it closes behind you.

The room went silent.

Eris blinked slowly, Ghost sat forward like he’d just been told his dog got drafted, and Graves opened his mouth, then closed it again, jaw clenched.

Snape glanced between them, a small curl of amusement at the corner of his mouth. “Yes. I’m aware that might be… inconvenient for some of you.”

“Inconvenient?” Eris echoed, voice flat. “Sir, our team just got hit with a magical custody battle.”

Snape’s lecture slalomed on: curfew at nine, no after hours brewing without at least a prefect present, speak to him about “ethical acquisitions” before launching black market endeavors. It was all background noise to the three operatives who were suddenly reevaluating every recon plan they’d sketched on napkins. 

Because library and lessons weren’t enough. Soap wouldn’t sit still long enough to read a footnote; Konig would probably barely fit between the shelves; Gaz practically lived on sarcasm and kinetic energy. And the idea of Price forced into study group politeness? A cosmic joke. 

Eris’ mind raced: no midnight briefings in the tower alcove, no cross-House bed checks, no op center blanket forts with Laswell and her contraband maps. Their unit had been amputated by an animated hat and was now being cauterized by a man who probably bled vinegar. 

Graves leaned sideways, whisper hissing out the side of his mouth. “Tell me you got a workaround for this.”

Ghost didn’t answer, just kept staring at Snape like he was mapping pressure points through the professor’s robes. 

Eris muttered. “I’ll find a workaround or die annoyed.”

”Is there a problem, Miss Hale?” Snape drawled having heard her from across the room. 

Eris offered a smile so sweet is should have been evidence. “No, sir. Just breathing.”

Snape’s eyes narrowed before turning on his heel with a swirl of fabric and swept toward the door. “Lights out in one hour. Do try not to curse each other before breakfast.”

The door slammed shut behind him like a coffin lid leaving the dungeons five degrees colder.

Silence.

Then-

“I hate it here,” Eris muttered.

“We’re in a snake themed prison under a haunted lake,” Ghost said. “Of course we hate it here.”

Graves nodded solemnly. “I already miss Rudy.”

“Rudy?” Eris snorted. “I miss Soap. At least he makes stupid decisions with flair.”

“I miss Alejandro,” Ghost said, almost wistfully.

“…Do we sound like exes right now?” Graves asked.

“Yes,” said Eris and Ghost in unison.

They sat there in silence, sulking in their rich green prison of ambition and betrayal, until one of the windows creaked as a grindylow pressed its face up to the glass.

Ghost raised a hand and flipped it off. The grindylow returned the gesture.

“This year’s gonna be awesome,” Graves lied.

Chapter Text

The Great Hall was a crime against humanity and basic decency. 

It buzzed with artificial morning cheer; first years giggled over porridge, upper years argued about Quidditch, and somewhere near the Hufflepuff table, someone was actually humming. Humming. At seven in the goddamn morning. Like a psychopath. 

At the Slytherin table, all the students looked exactly how one should after surviving Night One of Hogwarts: a little traumatized, a little awed, and very much unprepared for the fact that wizard children woke up earlier than Satan himself. 

Eris was dying. 

Not in the dramatic ‘swoon on a chaise’ kind of way (though, if someone did conjure a chaise, she wouldn’t be opposed), but in the soul-slowly-leaking-out-through-her-socks kind of way. 

She sat slumped at the Slytherin table like a cursed scarecrow that had been dunked in a lake and left to rot. Her hair looked like it had been electrocuted by a particularly vindictive house elf, her tie was crooked and hanging over her shoulder, and she was swaying slightly in her seat in a rhythmic motion that suggested her soul had temporarily vacated the premises. 

Her forehead hovered dangerously close to the edge of her plate, and the only thing keeping her face from becoming one with her plate of scrambled eggs was Graves’ hand on the back of her neck, fingers splayed like he was scuffing a particularly uncooperative kitten. 

“You’re gonna drown in breakfast,” he muttered, not looking up from his own plate. His voice had that special cadence of someone who’d been awake for exactly twelve minutes and was already regretting all of his life choices. 

Eris made a noise that could charitably be described as a grunt but sounded more like a dying whale trying to communicate through morse code. “S’fine,” she slurred, eyes still closed. “Eggs… good way to go.”

Across the table, Ghost sat like a particularly ominous gargoyle, sipping his tea in a mechanical way that suggested he was running on autopilot and spite. His uniform was immaculate, his posture perfect, and he looked infuriatingly composed for someone who’d nearly bitten the prefect’s hand off last night for stating ‘lights out’ was not a suggestion. 

He caught Eris’ bleary gaze and raised his teacup in what might have been a salute or possibly confirmation that he too, was dead inside. 

Eris lifted one finger in response. It may or may not have been a friendly gesture. 

Graves’ thumb rubbed small circles at the base of her skull in an unconscious gesture that was part muscle memory and part too many nights spent keeping each other functional while bullets flew past their heads and explosions rang in the distance. “You didn’t sleep.”

It wasn’t a question. 

“The girls dormitory,” Eris mumbled into her eggs. “Sounds like a Victorian tuberculosis ward. All echo-y stone and aggressive snoring. Also, one of my roommates kept whispering about bloodlines and someone’s uncle who works at Gringotts.”

”Riveting.”

”I hate them.”

”I know.”

”M’gonna murder the sun,” Eris yawned. 

“Get in line,” Ghost replied into his tea. 

It was into this quiet, vaguely threatening atmosphere that Professor Snape swept in, his black robes billowing for dramatic effect in a way that made Graves suspicious he’d been practicing that in front of the mirror.

He looked down at the three of them his expression that of a man who’d been personally insulted by their very existence. Or maybe that was just his face. It was hard to tell. 

Without so much as a “good morning”, he placed a piece of parchment in front of each of them.  

Eris cracked one eye open finally and glared in focused hatred of someone who’d been personally victimized by the concept of morning and would fistfight the sunrise if given half a chance. “Wh’zzat?”

“Your schedules,” Snape sneered, voice carrying the emotional warmth of a damp sock. “Try not to set anything on fire before lunch.”

”Thank you, Professor,” the three of them chorused, less out of politeness and more out of a deeply ingrained survival instinct, like saying thank you to a wild animal after it sniffs you and then walks away. None of them, however, made any promises about avoiding arson.

Snape, having caught that unspoken clause, narrowed his eyes only to be met with three matching smiles, all suspiciously angelic. After a long, tension filled pause that screamed ‘I will be keeping my eye on you feral gremlins’, Snape stalked off to go terrorize the next group of unsuspecting victims with a swish of disdain and cryptic elegance. 

Eris reached for the parchment, cracked her neck, skimmed-

-and paused. 

She blinked at the parchment like it was written in ancient Sumerian, stared at it, brain clearly buffering. Her eyes narrowed, focused, scanning the neat lines of text with increasing intensity.

She tilted the paper. Then she tilted her whole head, trying to make the words look different if viewed from another angle. 

They did not. 

Her posture straightened incrementally with each line, like someone slowly realizing they were about to be executed by bureaucracy. Graves’ hand tightened slightly on her neck as her entire body went from limp noodle to coiled spring in the span of three seconds. 

“Wait,” she said, voice gaining strength and clarity with each syllable. “Wait, wait, wait.”

Ghost lowered his tea, going on alert at her sudden alarm.

”Each week, we have…” Eris’ voice cracked slightly as she did rapid mental math that would make Laswell proud and Price want to drink heavily. “Six hours with Gryffindor, four and half hours with Hufflepuff, and six hours with Ravenclaw.”

 Graves leaned over her shoulder, eyes scanning. “What the fuck.”

She looked up at the two of them with eyes that had gone from sleepy confusion to dawning horror to the sharp kind of mental clarity that historically preceded war crimes. 

“Sixteen hours,” she whispered, her voice carrying the kind of devastation usually reserved for realizing your parachute had been replaced by a hive full of angry wasps. “Sixteen hours a week out of how many hours in a week? We’re not just separated by House, they scheduled the separation!” 

Graves did his own mental math, jaw clenching as the numbers aligned into a pattern that spelled out cosmic injustice in twelve-point font. 

Ghost calmly folded his schedule in half, set it on fire with the tip of his wand, and let it burn into his teacup. 

The three of them sat there, reaching a level of tired that surpassed exhaustion and dipped full body into a rage fueled alertness. It was the kind of secondhand adrenaline that only kicked in when you were running on three hours of sleep, emotional spite, and one (1) enemy hat that had orchestrated the social equivalent of a hostage situation. 

The Great Hall continued its cheerful morning bustle around them, completely unaware that three former black ops specialists were currently having a collective breakdown over elementary school arithmetic. 

Eris was still staring at her schedule personally insulted, Graves looked like he was five seconds away from challenging the entire Hogwarts administration to single combat, and Ghost was sipping the burnt tea from a cup that now held the smoldering ashes of what used to be his academic future. 

The three of them sat there, marinating in their collective misery. They were spiraling. The kind of spiral where the only two outcomes were dissociation or violence, and judging by how Graves had gone unnervingly still and Ghost was not sharpening the edge of a butter knife against the table, dissociation was losing the vote. 

And then, salvation. Like a single beam of divine light crackling through the storm clouds of their collective meltdown, came a sound so pure, so warm, so Scottish: laughter. 

Eris’ head snapped up, eyes narrowing towards the Gryffindor table. Across the hall, Soap was doubled over laughing, something clearly hilarious exchanged between him and Alejandro, who sat beside him grinning like a smug bastard. Their heads were thrown back, carefree and joyful, completely oblivious to the psychological apocalypse unfolding on the other side of the room. 

They clearly hadn’t gotten their schedules yet. 

Eris felt a tightness in her chest so intense it bordered on spiritual. Her hand clenched the edge of the table like she was about to flip it WWE style and despite herself, her eyes glistened, not with tears (she was too emotionally constipated for that), but with the raw ache of homesickness and murder. 

“No,” she muttered. “No. Fuck this.”

Ghost, without even looking at her, sighed into his tea. “Don’t cause a scene.”

”I am the scene,” Eris hissed, already on her feet. 

Leaving behind her cold eggs like a tragic metaphor for her abandoned dream, she stalked across the Great Hall, cutting through the tables on a warpath. The hall began to quiet slight, students picking up on the incoming hurricane in Slytherin green making a beeline for the Gryffindor table. 

Historically, Slytherins approaching the Gryffindor ended in hexes, duels, detentions, or Snape getting called into yet another disciplinary hearing where he pretended not to be delighted a Gryffindor had sprouted something unnatural only to secretly giving said Slytherin five points for “innovative hex work.”

So when Eris marched over, jaw set, eyes burning with all the rage of a woman denied cuddles and group murder for the unforeseen future, it was only natural for several students to duck or hide under the table in preemptive defense. 

Soap and Alejandro glanced up, registered her expression, and smiled, entirely too fond towards someone doing a murder walk in their direction. 

Eris didn’t break stride, she stopped directly behind them, eyes locked onto the two of them. “Scoot over.”

They both blinked. 

She gave them exactly zero seconds to comply, instead opting to drop into Alejandro’s lap, steal a piece of bacon off his plate, and started chewing like she was reclaiming stolen territory. 

Alejandro, to his credit, didn’t even blink, he just reached around her waist with one arm to steady her and continued eating his breakfast like she hadn’t just invaded his personal space, remaining unbothered, hydrated, and thriving. 

A fourth year redhead (she vaguely recognized from her childhood in wizard society, but couldn’t, for the life of her, remember the name of- Peter? Patrick?) sputtered. “You- you can’t just do that!”

Eris turned her head slowly, chewing. “I did just do that.”

Red (Paul??), who was clearly moments away from filing a complaint with the Ministry, looked like he might explode into rulebooks. “You’re a Slytherin! You’re not allowed to sit here- there are rules! House boundaries exist for a reason!”

“House rules?” Eris scoffed, twisting around in Alejandro’s lap to better glare at Pierce(? No that wasn’t it either.) “What are we, twelve? This isn’t boarding school politics, it’s breakfast. I’m going to sit where the food and my emotional support idiots are.”

“You’re eleven,” Pablo(?) snapped, his voice going shrill with righteous fury.

Over at the Hufflepuff table, Rudy looked at the commotion. “Is she allowed to do that?”

Konig blinked. “I don’t think so.”

Gaz, not looking up. “Since when has that stopped her? Or us, for that matter.”

There was a few seconds of silent mental calculus as the Coalition factored in how much effort it took to walk across the hall versus how much they gave a shit about house tables, before coming to a unanimous decision. 

Nah. 

They were sitting with their unit. 

Konig was the first to stand, tall and slightly menacing, looming like a Slavic monolith over the Hufflepuff table before he picked up his plate and wordlessly followed Eris like the world’s most terrifying duckling. Graves and Ghost, seeing Konig get up, looked at each other, shrugged in perfect “fuck it” harmony, and began the long dramatic walk across the hall. Rudy followed, carrying both his plate and Konig’s juice like a mom at a PTA meeting who just about had it, and Gaz, after snatching the best looking toast off the pile of it in the center of the table, joined the migration. 

Soap, seeing them all approaching, lit up like a golden retriever who’d just seen the mailman pull into the driveway. He spread his arms wide like a Scottish messiah. “The table is open, the bacon is warm.” He paused for effect, patting his own thighs, “premium lap space, lads.”

He looked directly at Ghost with hopeful desperation. “LT, you could sit righ’ here, mate. Prime location. Great view. Climate control’. All the emotional support a brooding murder machine could want-”

”Absolutely not,” Ghost said instantly, veering left without hesitation and sitting across from them like he hadn’t just murdered the hope in Soap’s heart.

Soap, undeterred by this brutal rejection, pivoted with the tactical flexibility of someone who’d been emotionally devastated in at least seventeen different countries already and had developed coping mechanisms as a result. 

“Graves?” he called out. “My American friend? My blonde bastard? My cowboy companion?”

Graves gave him a look, raised one perfectly sculpted eyebrow, and said, “My dude, you would fold like a paper plate under all this ass.”

“Aye, fair enough,” Soap said mournfully as Graves slid into the seat next to Ghost with the smugness of someone who had absolutely never skipped leg day.

“Rudy?” he called out, voice climbing into the range usually occupied by teenage girls at boy band concerts. 

“Hermano, I am holding the juice,” Rudy replied, somehow managing to sound like a saint and a mob boss at the same time.

“Ye didnae say no!” Soap called after him, still clinging to hope like a drowning man clinging to a pool noodle.

Before anyone could respond to this increasingly unhinged plea for physical affection, another redhead materialized out of the Gryffindor breakfast chaos like a ginger apparition summoned by the sheer force of Soap’s emotional breakdown.

But where Palmer(?) had been radiating the kind of inflated superiority complex usually found in people who peaked in middle school, this new redhead wore a prefect badge that gleamed like the Eye of Sauron and possessed the weary, battle scarred aura of a summer camp counselor who had just discovered that the children had somehow managed to set the lake on fire. Again.

“What” He asked, hands on his hips, eyes sweeping the scene in the universal stance of Authority Figure Who Has Seen Some Shit, “in the name of Merlin’s saggy left testicle is going on over here?”

“Nothing. Just the sound of fragile power structures collapsing.” Ghost replied, deadpan. 

“Love that for us,” Gaz added as he approached next, toast in hand. Soap’s eyes lit up.

“C’mon, Garrick. Ye and me. Lap buddies. We can make a thing of it. Matchin’ t-shirts! Secret handshakes! Emotional vulnerability!”

Gaz just took a bite of toast and said, flatly, “We already share trauma. That’s enough.”

The prefect, who was clearly regretting every life choice that had led him to this moment, tried to reassert some semblance of control over the rapidly deteriorating breakfast situation. “This is the Gryffindor table. Six of you are categorically, definitively, absolutely not Gryffindor. You belong at your own tables. With your own houses. Following your own ancient traditions that have existed for literally centuries-”

Eris, not even glancing up, took a sip of someone’s coffee she’d stolen and flatly stated. “Do I look like I belong anywhere?”

Alejandro nodded solemnly behind her. “Can’t argue with that, mi amiga.”

”You can’t do this,” Perry(?) burst out from behind the prefect like a jack-in-the-box powered by pure bureaucratic rage, clearly approximately thirty seven seconds away from having a complete nervous breakdown. “We have a system in place! Rules! Regulations!”

”Your system is flawed,” Konig said, stepping up behind them. 

Soap whipped around so fast he nearly gave himself whiplash, eyes lighting up with renewed hope. “KONIG! Yer a bonnie giant! Ye’ll say yes, aye?”

Instead, Konig settled down on the bench and took an aggressively delicate bite of his scone before looking at Soap with something approaching sympathy. “Nein.”

“But I’ve got thighs!” Soap said, bordering on scandalized. “Workin’ thighs! Battle-tested thighs! Pure bred Scottish thigh meat!”

“They are…small.” He replied, not unkindly, just… honestly. “Du bist… zu klein.”

Soap made a sound like a deflated accordion and clutched dramatically at his own chest. “Eris gets tae do it!”

”She is terrifying, ja.”

Graves reached over and gave Soap a consoling pat on the shoulder that somehow managed to be both sympathetic and condescending. “Sorry, mate. You’re a lap-only zone for emotional crises and near death experiences.”

”I can do both!” Soap protested while Konig reached over and gave him a sympathetic head pat. “I am built fer chaos an’ near-death Tuesdays!”

Gaz raised a brow in weary resignation. “Why are you like this?”

“I crave closeness!” Soap wailed, theatrically grabbing his heart. “I am th’ soft, squishy, emotionally available center o’ this murder huddle of repressed military disasters and ye’ll respect my need for physical affection!”

“Absolutely fucking not,” came the immediate, unanimous response from multiple Coalition members.

Soap slumped back in his seat with a huff that could have powered a small wind turbine, muttering something about betrayal and the decline of human decency while Parker(?) made a noise like a dying walrus and looked about thirty seconds away from making a citizen’s arrest.

“You can’t all sit here!” He sputtered, whipping out what looked suspiciously like a pocket copy of ‘Hogwarts: A History, Rules and Regulations, Volume 1 of 47, Revised Edition, Now With More Bureaucracy!’

”We can and we did,” Graves said, mouth full of toast. The surrounding tables had all gone quiet, watching this slow burn of social anarchy unfold like a historical event. 

“Table separation is outdated and emotionally damaging,” Eris said around what was definitely someone else’s straw. “If I wanted to go back to being isolated during meals, I’d go back to being a solo mercenary.”

”Same,” Ghost murmured. 

Soap, lap still tragically empty, his dreams of human contact lying in ruins around him, pointed desperately at Rudy. “Please. I will buy ye crisps! I’ll write yer bloody essays!”

”There is no homework yet, Johnny.” Rudy pointed out with the patience of a Saint. 

”Preemptive offer!”

”Still no.”

“You can’t do this!” Presley(?) yelped. “The Houses are separated for a reason! Centuries of tradition! Ancient magical law! The very foundations of wizarding society!”

“Yeah,” Gaz said, casually snatching the last blueberry muffin before Graves could grab it, triggering what looked like the beginning of a minor international incident, “and we’re separated from giving a single, solitary shit about any of that.”

By now, Pippin(?) was practically foaming at the mouth, one hand raised like he could physically command order into existence. “You are breaking centuries of tradition! This is anarchy! This is the collapse of inter-house cohesion. This is-!”

”Breakfast,” Eris interrupted, reclining against Alejandro’s chest like she was on vacation. “Calm down, C-SPAN.”

”My name is Percy!” Oh. Right. His name was Percy. Well, she’d been close enough. 

The redhead prefect looked skyward, muttering something that definitely included the phrase “fucking Merlin’s left nut,” and dragged a hand down his face in the universal gesture of Complete and Total Defeat.

And then, cutting through the chaos like a hot knife through butter, came a voice that could probably stop a charging dragon in its tracks. “What in the bloody hell is going on here?”

The effect was instantaneous; all eight members of the Coalition snapped to attention with the synchronized precision of soldiers hearing their CO’s voice across a battlefield. Spines went ramrod straight, heads turned in perfect unison, and the collective aura of barely contained chaos transformed into something that could only be described as ‘respectful terror mixed with genuine relief.’

There, standing in the entrance to the Great Hall like an avenging angel in school robes, stood John Price and Kate Laswell, both looking unimpressed like they knew some fuckery was happening and knew, without a shadow of a doubt and zero evidence, that their unruly children were the cause of it. 

Laswell looked at the table. Looked at the Prefect. Looked at the traumatized redhead. Looked at her coffee. Sighed.

Price’s eyes swept over the scene with the methodical precision of someone conducting a damage assessment: his team scattered across the wrong table like beautiful, chaotic confetti, Percy looking like he was about to file seventeen different complaints with the Ministry, the redheaded prefect looking like he was reconsidering every life choice that had led him to this moment, and several hundred students watching this unfold like it was the most entertaining breakfast theater they’d ever witnessed.

“Explain,” he said, voice carrying that special tone of authority that could make grown terrorists confess their sins and cry afterwards.

The Coalition blinked up at him, expressions of men who had been caught red handed but wasn’t entirely sure what crime they’d committed this time, which was honestly a reasonable state of confusion given their track record.

“Sir,” Eris said, attempting something that might have been professional composure, “we discovered that house scheduling is a systematic attempt to psychologically separate unit cohesion through tactical meal isolation and bureaucratic warfare.”

“She means they’re only giving us sixteen hours a week together and she had an emotional breakdown about it,” Graves translated helpfully, because subtlety had never been anyone’s strong suit. “Also MacTavish keeps trying to get everyone to sit in his lap.”

“Sixteen hours,” Laswell repeated, ignoring that last part, to pull out what looked suspiciously like a pocket notebook and began to take what were definitely not notes but probably intelligence assessments. “Out of one hundred and sixty eight total hours per week.”

“Roughly nine komma five percent of total time,” Konig added quietly, because he’d clearly been doing math in his head and the results had been devastating.

“That’s…” Laswell paused, pen hovering over her notebook, “actually quite concerning from a psychological standpoint.”

Percy made a strangled noise like someone had just suggested that Quidditch should be played with live dragons. “It’s not psychological! It’s traditional house structure! It’s been this way for centuries!”

Price turned his attention to Percy with vague polite interest. “And you are, son?”

“Percy Weasley,” the redhead managed, voice climbing into ranges that violated several noise ordinances. “Gryffindor fourth year! And they’re breaking approximately seventeen different school regulations, possibly more if you count the emotional terrorism!”

“Emotional terrorism?” Soap perked up. “Aye, that’s brilliant. Sounds proper menacin’ that.”

“It’s not a compliment!” Percy shrieked.

Laswell stepped forward with the smooth confidence of someone who had once convinced three different governments that war crimes were actually ‘enhanced diplomatic outreach programs’ and that everything was perfectly legal, thank you very much.

“Charlie Weasley,” she said, addressing the prefect with a smile that was both diplomatically warm and subtly threatening, recognizing the second eldest Weasley from her time studying various wizarding bloodlines. “I’m Kate Laswell. I believe our… classmates… are simply engaging in pioneering cross house unity initiatives.”

Charlie blinked, clearly trying to process how his morning had gone from ‘normal prefect duties’ to ‘international diplomacy crisis management.’ “Cross-house what now?”

“Inter house cooperation protocols,” Laswell continued with the smooth authority of someone reading from a prepared statement that had been approved by seventeen different lawyers. “Fostering relationships across traditional institutional boundaries, promoting cultural understanding between different house demographics, building bridges through shared communal dining experiences. I believe Headmaster Dumbledore himself has spoken extensively about the paramount importance of unity within the school environment.”

She paused, tilted her head slightly, and added with casual precision. “In fact, I’m quite certain that actively discouraging student cooperation would be viewed as counterproductive to the educational mission statement.”

Percy opened his mouth to argue, then closed it, then opened it again. His brain was clearly performing emergency calculations as he realized that arguing against unity and cooperation would make him look like a massive authoritarian asshole in front of the entire Great Hall.

“I…” he started, then stopped, clearly trapped in a logical corner that Laswell had constructed with the efficiency of someone who’d once made a living out of making impossible arguments sound reasonable.

“The school does promote inter house unity,” Charlie said slowly, like he was testing each word for explosive potential. “That’s… actually in the official handbook.”

“Exactly,” Laswell agreed in a satisfied tone of someone who had just won a chess match in four moves.

Charlie looked between Laswell and the chaos clustered around the Gryffindor table, then sighed with the deep, soul weary exhaustion of someone who had learned to pick his battles carefully after growing up the second eldest in a houseful of kids which included Fred and George Weasley. “As long as none of you get into a fight…”

“Understood,” Laswell said with professional satisfaction of having successfully navigated bureaucratic warfare while wearing a school uniform.

“Define ‘fight,’” Eris asked with genuine curiosity.

“No,” Price said immediately, because he knew that tone and it never led anywhere good.

He turned his attention back to his team, expression that of a man who loved them dearly but was also seriously considering the benefits possibly witness protection.

“Kane,” he said, voice carrying just enough command authority to make several nearby students flinch. “Get out of Vargas’s lap and have some dignity, for fucks sakes.”

Eris looked up at him with a flat, unimpressed expression as if she’d been asked to explain quantum physics while drunk and upside down. “Sir, my dignity died in that op in Sarajevo. We had a proper funeral for it. You gave the eulogy. There were bagpipes and everything.”

Price stared at her for a long moment, and for just a second, something that might have been fond exasperation flickered across his face like sunlight through storm clouds.

“That was your sense of self-preservation, Kane. Your dignity died in that clusterfuck in Prague.”

“Right, Prague,” Eris agreed with the solemn gravity of someone acknowledging a fallen comrade. “Different op, same result. The point stands that I’m operating without backup dignity protocols.”

Alejandro, who had been quietly enjoying this entire exchange while serving as human furniture, finally spoke up with the cheerful helpfulness of someone dropping a conversational grenade: “To be fair, mi Capitán, she’s not heavy. And she’s warm. Like an angry, murderous cat that’s learned to use weapons.”

“I will bite you,” Eris warned, but there was no real heat in it, more like a lazy threat issued by someone who was comfortable enough to make idle violence promises.

“You already did,” Alejandro replied voice filled with fond nostalgia of someone recounting a treasured memory. “On that op in Málaga, around breakfast time. You left a mark.”

Ghost looked up from his tea with mild interest. “Did she break skin?”

“Si. Little bit.”

“No’ bad, that,” Soap said approvingly, like they were discussing proper knife handling instead of human bite wounds. “That’s proper aggressive affection, that is. Full respect.”

“It’s not affection,” Eris protested, “it’s threat assessment.”

“Same thing with you,” Graves pointed out reasonably.

Price looked around at his chaotic, murderous, emotionally constipated family of professional disasters and felt the familiar weight of responsibility settle on his shoulders like an old, well worn coat that smelled faintly of gunpowder and poor life choices.

“Right,” he said finally, with the resigned authority of someone who had learned that damage control was better than damage prevention. “Eat your damn food. Try not to traumatize any more prefects. And for the love of all that’s holy, someone explain to MacTavish that offering his lap to every man in this unit is not an acceptable breakfast protocol.”

Chapter Text

Price stares at his class schedule as if staring hard enough will somehow make the words rearrange themselves into something less horrifying.  

It’s an innocent little thing: just some parchment that Professor Flitwick had handed him with a cheerful smile with neat house crests in the header and his class schedule underneath. But Price knows psychological warfare when he sees it, and this piece of academic parchment might as well be a declaration of war against his sanity.

Captain John Price, age 11 physically, age “Get off my damn lawn” spiritually, stares at the schedule for exactly fifteen seconds before experiencing his first nicotine craving in over a decade. His eleven year old lungs have never touched tobacco in this life, but his soul is screaming for a cigar.

He read it several more times just to be sure there hadn’t been a misprint.

But no, there it is, printed in cheerful little letters like the god damn lovechild of Murphy’s Law and his worst nightmares: Gryffindor/Slytherin Joint Classes across nearly every single core subject.

Which means- and Price’s eye actually twitches as he processes this- that Ghost, Graves, Alejandro, Soap, and Eris will be locked in the same room together. Repeatedly. For hours. With access to volatile potions ingredients, learning various forms of magic, and using whatever medieval torture devices pass for “educational materials” in this godforsaken castle.

And absolutely no fucking safeguards.

Price stands there mentally calculating the exact number of Geneva Convention violations that could occur between morning Defense Against The Dark Arts and afternoon Potions.

Was this his problem? Was this even his job anymore? Technically, they were all children now. Technically, the professors had “authority.” Technically, none of them were allowed to carry firearms on school grounds which significantly reduced the likelihood of someone getting hurt or killed by 2.3%

And yet.

And yet.

Price knows his team, and he knows that technicalities are just suggestions to this particular collection of barely contained war crimes.

It wasn’t a question of if something would go wrong. It was a question of how loud the explosion would be. 

See, there’s a reason Price hadn’t died of stress induced cardiac arrest before his actual, literal death, and that reason had names: Kyle Garrick, Rudolfo Parra, Kate Laswell, and Konig. The Coalition’s internal disaster prevention squad, the voice of reason, and the emergency brakes on the chaos engine.

Without them, the other five weren’t a team: they were a self-sustaining natural disaster with opposable thumbs that was the equivalent to an open flame in a room full of hydrogen.

Ghost, Soap, Graves, Alejandro, and Eris together operated with one shared brain cell that they definitely weren’t using for critical thinking and he was positive was set permanently to airplane mode. 

Individually, they were elite powerhouses. Ghost was a surgical strike in a balaclava: quiet, methodical, unnervingly efficient, and his dossier was thick enough to beat a man to death with. Soap was the human equivalent of duct tape and C4: useful in any situation, unpredictable, and the kind of guy who could make a bomb out of chewing gum and fishing wire. Graves operated with the smooth charm of a Southern politician, had the morals of a starving rat in a locked pantry, and could spin any black ops story for Congress to make himself or others look good even with blood on his hands. Alejandro could sweet talk intel out of your grandmother while holding a knife to your throat while smiling for the cameras and somehow made war crimes look dashing. And Eris was the government’s answer to the question, “What if we weaponized spite, sarcasm, and killer instinct, placed it all in a five foot seven package, and then gave her absolutely no off switch?” Each one was a fully trained, highly disciplined asset.

But if any of the five of them were grouped together in any capacity without one of the other five buffers around to reel them in, then they were like Voltron if all five lions were piloted by raccoons with PTSD and a caffeine addiction. Together they evolved into some kind of multi headed cryptid that could only be contained with duct tape, holy water, and a cease-and-desist from NATO. They operated on vibes, mutual dare escalation, and the unspoken rule that if one of them said “watch this,” the others immediately stopped watching and joined in instead. The only thing more dangerous than them being together… was one or more of them being bored

At the time of Price’s death, nearly a quarter of all the military’s safety briefings, protocol updates, and regulations were either a direct result or heavily influenced by something they did, said, or attempted. Entire field manuals were burned and reissued because somewhere in the world, one of them had said, “What if we just…” and another had answered, “Fuck it, do it.”

And now Hogwarts, in its infinite wisdom, had taken all five of them, stuffed them into the two most combative Houses, and scheduled them for long term exposure to cauldrons, wand based explosives, and emotional instability. With zero supervision from the responsible half of the unit.

Price ran a hand down his face and considered reenlisting. Or defecting. Or maybe just walking into the Forbidden Forest and letting whatever the hell the Headmaster had been telling them the night before that lives in there just put him out of his misery.

Because he knows, with the certainty of a man who’s watched Soap try to “improve” a flashbang with glitter, that it’s only a matter of time before someone says “bet you won’t” and someone else responds with “hold my butterbeer and watch this.”

No Gaz to drag them back to reality with perfectly timed sarcasm. No Rudy to distract them with aggressive kindness and functional decision making. No Laswell to make them feel like badly behaving children with nothing more than an eyebrow raise. And certainly no Konig to silently loom behind them like a disappointed Slavic fridge.

No, just pure, unfiltered chaos in human shaped packages who could either be tactical geniuses or agents of reality breaking mayhem, depending entirely on their caffeine intake, their mood, and whether anyone had made the mistake of telling them something was “impossible”.

Price’s blood pressure climbs steadily as his imagination runs wild. 

He glares at the schedule again, hoping his patented Captain Stare(TM) might intimidate it into spontaneous combustion.

It doesn’t work. The words “Gryffindor/Slytherin Joint Classes” continue to mock him with their cheerful font.

Price muttered a string of curses so dark even the portraits looked concerned. He spins on his heel and marches toward the staff lounge like a man walking to his own execution.

By the time he makes it up to the staff lounge he has zero patience, his jaw is tight and steps are sharp. Without hesitation, he knocked, firm and deliberate, and stepped back to wait. It cracked open a second later.

Professor Sprout peered out, her hands covered in dirt, blinking down at the small (but very intense) eleven year old boy.

“Yes, dear?”

Price straightened. “I’m Captain-” He stopped. Shit. No. John. Just John. “I mean- John Price. Ravenclaw. I need to speak to the faculty.”

“Oh… um. I suppose…” She tilted her head, mildly concerned. “Are you quite alright, dear?”

“No,” he said flatly. “I’m not.”

Within moments, the entire Hogwarts staff was looking down at him in varying degrees of confusion, mild concern, and politely repressed amusement. 

“I need to address something regarding the class schedule,” Price said, taking a deep breath. “Specifically the decision to pair Slytherin and Gryffindor together.”

McGonagall folded her arms. “That’s how it’s always been, Mr. Price.”

“Yes. And I am respectfully asking that you change it. Immediately.”

“And why would we do that?”

“Because the Gryffindor/Slytherin pairing this year includes five students that should never be in the same room unsupervised. Simon Riley, John MacTavish, Phillip Graves, Alejandro Vargas, and Eris Kane- I mean Hale. Eris Hale.” He corrected. 

Septima Vector arched an eyebrow. “You’re telling us five first years are so dangerous that the entire class structure should be changed to accommodate them?”

“They are insufferable,” Price hissed. “And dangerous. And you’re teaching them magic.”

“We teach all our students magic,” Dumbledore said gently. “This is a magic school, after all, my boy.”

“Yes, but most of your students haven’t orchestrated an international arms deal using only a vending machine, a false identity, and one of their friend’s underwear.”

There was a beat of stunned silence.

Professor Flitwick blinked. “That’s… oddly specific.”

“Well, they haven’t done that yet, not for another couple decades,” Price amended. “But it’s only a matter of time. Look- these five feed off each other. One of them has a bad idea, the others enable it. They don’t stop each other. The egg each other on and then make it worse.”

McGonagall narrowed her eyes. “And how, exactly, would you know this?”

Price opened his mouth to automatically say he was their CO in a past life and had trained the little shits, but that would open up a whole new line of questioning he didn’t have time for, so he settled for. “I’ve met their type.”

Dumbledore chuckled softly. “I’m sure we can trust our professors to handle a few energetic students.”

“No. You don’t understand. You think you’re dealing with children. You’re not. You’re dealing with a extinction level event split across five bodies and given the emotional regulation of a boiled potato.”

“Enough,” McGonagall said gently, as if soothing a toddler mid tantrum. “The Sorting Hat’s wisdom is absolute.”

“The hat,” Price repeated, eye twitching.

“Indeed.”

A rustle as Snape glided into view like a depressed bat. “If the children are done fear-mongering-“

Price bristled but took a deep breath before he reenacted that one incident in Prague. “Look,” he said, voice exhausted. “I’m simply suggesting strategic redistribution of a balancing influence: myself, Kate Laswell, Rodolfo Parra, Konig, or Kyle Garrick-“

“Redistribution,” Snape sneered, cutting him off. “What is this, Quidditch draft day? Off you go; class starts in fifteen minutes and some of us are still trying to eat breakfast.”

Snape’s robe swished, door slammed, and the brass STAFF ONLY plaque rattled in its frame like the castle itself was laughing at him.

Price stared at the polished wood for a heartbeat, jaw clenched so tight it creaked. Then he exhaled through his nose, eyes drifting shut in the world weary way of a man who’d just tried to negotiate peace with a brick wall.

“That’s it, then,” he muttered to no one in particular, stepping back and down the hall. “I’ve issued the warnings. Whatever happens next is squarely between the Hogwarts faculty and whatever deity handles their collateral damage claims.”

Price rounded the corner to find Laswell learning against the corner, arms crossed, lips tugged up into one of amusement. “Feel better, John?”

“Like a man who’s tossed a flare into a fireworks factory and walked away,” Price said, straightening his tiny Ravenclaw tie. He clapped his hands once, the crisp pop barely audible over the hallway din. “Right, Kate. Side bets. How many minutes into Transfiguration before McGonagall regrets her entire career?”

Laswell considered. “Seventeen. Twelve if Soap tries crowd work.”

“Optimistic.” Price started walking. “I’m banking on six and a half. Eris will instigate, Ghost will escalate, Soap will narrate, Graves will monetize, and Alejandro will-”

“-smile and ask if anyone’s got a light for the dumpster fire,” Laswell finished as they stepped into their Charms classroom where they immediately spotted Rudy, Konig, and Gaz in the back.

Price paused in the threshold, tiny captain’s shoulders squared.

“I tried,” he whispered to the universe. “It’s on the record. Godspeed, Professors.”

***

The stairs had moved.

This was, in theory, not a surprise. They’d all read ‘Hogwarts, A History’ like any other field manual and it had explicitly stated in chapter twelve, page one twenty seven: The stairs connect to 142 corridors and are prone to shifting to connect to all of them at least once a day. The schedule’s randomized but there’s a system. Probably.

The “probably” should have been their first red flag, but hindsight was twenty-twenty and foresight was apparently not in their collective skillset.

But when the staircase groaned beneath them and lurched to the right, taking the five of them away from the corridor they actually needed, the one that led to Defense Against the Dark Arts, where they were supposed to be learning how to defend against things instead of becoming the things people needed defending from, something stupid in the group gave way.

It was the exact moment when five military trained minds simultaneously thought: Fuck the class, this is way more interesting.

“Right, well. That’s shite,” Soap announced, arms thrown wide in a gesture of pure Scottish indignation. “We were right fuckin’ there! Ah could see the bloody door! Had a wee brass plaque an’ everythin’!”

“That’s cute,” Graves said, already halfway up the next landing with the kind of purposeful stride that suggested he’d spotted an opportunity for either profit or chaos. Possibly both. “But look at that hallway.” He pointed into the gloom ahead. “It’s dark, it’s ominous, and it’s got that whole ‘abandon hope all ye who enter here’ vibe. I want it.”

“You want the creepy corridor?” Eris asked, raising an eyebrow.

“I want to own the creepy corridor. There’s a difference.”

Alejandro followed after Graves, boots thudding against ancient stone, squinting into the darkness. “You think there’s treasure down there? Secret passages? Hidden armerías?”

“There better be. I didn’t get shrunk down into a prepubescent war criminal just to be punctual to fucking school without some sort of benefits,” Graves called back, his voice echoing off the walls with the kind of confidence that suggested he’d never met a bad decision he didn’t want to make worse.

Ghost paused at the landing. “Anyone else notice the stairs specifically moved away from where we needed to go? Like, actively? With intent?”

“The castle’s definitely sentient,” Soap agreed, bouncing slightly on his toes. “An’ it’s got opinions about our schedule.”

“Maybe it’s trying to save the professors from us,” Eris suggested with a grin. 

“Or,” Alejandro said thoughtfully, “maybe it knows something we don’t, no?”

They all spilled onto the landing together, five tiny figures with the collective wisdom of seasoned operators and zero impulse control. The soft, creeping chill of the hallway ahead licked at their ankles, and the ancient portraits on either side were either empty or their inhabitants suspiciously asleep.

Too conveniently asleep, Ghost noted. Like they’d all suddenly developed narcolepsy the moment five chaos magnets had wandered into their vicinity.

For a moment, no one moved. They stood there in formation without meaning to, while their tactical instincts warred with their common sense.

Common sense was losing. Badly.

Ghost tilted his head, squinting into the dark. “This feels haunted.”

“It is haunted,” Eris said matter-of-factly. “The entire castle is haunted. That’s a baseline operational fact. We’ve got ghosts in the toilets, poltergeists in the halls, and something called a ‘bloody baron’ who looks like he was either a war criminal or had a really unfortunate kitchen accident.”

Soap peered into the gloom, his Scottish sensibilities apparently fine with supernatural nonsense but personally offended by poor lighting. “Ye think there’s somethin’ nasty lurkin’ in there? Somethin’ wi’ teeth?”

“There’s a poltergeist in the bloody toilets,” Ghost said dryly. “At this point I’m assuming there’s a banshee doing admin work in the filing cabinets.”

“God, I hope so,” Graves said enthusiastically. “Do you think ghosts can be leveraged? Like, financially? What’s the exchange rate on ectoplasm?”

Alejandro turned and leaned against the bannister, his arms crossed. “So the real question is… do we go down it?”

The group stood in loaded silence, five pairs of eyes fixed on the corridor like it was an amusement park rather than a hallway that probably led to either certain doom or detention.

“We’re meant tae be in class,” Soap offered weakly, with all the enthusiasm of a grown ass adult who’d been reincarnated into a child’s body and forced to retake primary education. Even if it was a magic school this time, that didn’t negate the fact that it was, fundamentally, still a school. 

“Price isn’t here,” Graves pointed out, like this was a legal loophole rather than a temporary absence.

“Laswell isn’t here either,” Eris added, shrugging one shoulder casually. “Neither is Gaz.”

“Konig’s busy lurking somewhere like a cursed Eastern European nursery rhyme,” Ghost added. “Probably judging us from a distance.”

“And Rudy,” Alejandro said, gesturing vaguely behind them toward where responsible decisions lived, “he’s got that whole functional moral compass thing going on. He would definitely say no. Probably in three languages. With that disappointed cara he does.”

They all turned their attention back to the corridor, the collective silence heavy with temptation and poor life choices. Somewhere in the distance, a clock chimed, reminding them that they were now officially late for Defense Against the Dark Arts, which seemed ironically appropriate given that they were about to become the dark arts people needed defending against.

“So,” Soap said slowly, the word drawn out. “That’s like… five solid reasons no’ tae go down th’ spooky murder hallway.”

Eris’s smirk was the kind that should be classified as a weapon of mass destruction. “And not a single one of those reasons is here to stop us.”

“Exactly!” Graves clapped Soap on the shoulder with enthusiasm “That’s practically written permission to do whatever we want. It’s like the universe is encouraging poor decision making.”

“The universe,” Ghost said dryly, “is probably placing bets on how spectacular our inevitable detention is going to be.”

“Even better reason, hermano… we make it memorable,” Alejandro grinned.

They exchanged the briefest look, five tiny heads bobbing in agreement. 

“Good enough for me,” they chorused in unnatural unison, and plunged into the darkness like lemmings with security clearances and a collective death wish.

Behind them, several portraits cracked one eye open to watch them go, already composing the incident reports they’d need to file with the castle’s administration. There’s always at least one group of trouble makers every generation…

The first twenty paces are, unfortunately, boring and normal. It isn’t until the light from the hallway fades and the sconces on the walls light up suddenly that Soap begins to realize this hallway might actually be a health code violation of catastrophic proportions.

That was Soap’s professional opinion, at least. Not because he was an actual professional in any relevant field (not unless you counted “explosive ordinance disposal” as architectural critique) but because the corridor ahead looked like something an architect designed mid nervous breakdown while a health inspector screamed about liability waivers before quitting forever and moving to a nice farm upstate.

The walls were crooked in ways that defied both physics and good sense, the torches flickered in a way that was definitely a fire hazard, and the smell was best described as “haunted mildew.”

“Okay,” Soap whispered, stepping over what looked like either ancient bloodstains or really aggressive mold, “if I get fuckin’ tetanus just f’ breathin’ the air in here, ah’m suin’ this castle for emotional distress.”

“You are eleven years old,” Ghost deadpanned, ducking under a low hanging cobweb that still got caught in  his hair, “and legally dead in your last life. Who exactly is gonna represent you in court? One of the bathroom ghosts?”

“I was thinkin’ Eris,” Soap replied, gesturing at her while she poked something slimy with the tip of her wand. “She’s got big ‘unlicensed courtroom brawler who wins cases through intimidation an’ property damage’ energy.”

“I’ll allow it,” Eris said cheerfully, hopping over a suspicious puddle that hissed at her. “I’ve never lost a case. Mainly because I’ve never taken a case, but the principle stands.”

“That’s the spirit we need,” Graves called from ahead, having turned around to walk backwards down the hall with his arms spread like he was leading a museum tour through the seventh circle of hell. “Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to what I’m choosing to call the Restricted Hallway of Deep Regret and Poor Life Choices. On your left, you’ll see damp stonework with what appears to be ancient curses still active. On your right, a decorative skull with something growing out of it that’s either a fungus or a tiny demonic arm.”

Alejandro leaned in toward one of the portrait frames. “The people in the paintings are missing,” he said, frowning. “Lo ves? Empty frames, hermano.”

Soap peered at a frame where a wizard was supposed to be according the to faded name at the bottom. All that stared back was dust, crackled varnish, and one lone cobweb auditioning for Cirque du Soleil. “They all did a runner, mate. Sensible wee oil people.”

“I think this frame is made of actual gold,” Graves said, stopping in front of the tallest portrait yet. It was a floor-to-ceiling monstrosity that had probably been grand once but now looked like it belonged in a haunted estate sale. “I wonder what the resale value is on cursed magical artwork.”

“Smells like bloody asbestos,” Soap muttered.

The canvas was almost blank: just faded marble columns, a shadowed archway, and dust so thick you could probably sign your name in it and have it notarized by whatever supernatural entity was clearly squatting in this hallway. Nobody inside the painting, no movement, just desolate background. 

Graves stepped closer, eyes squinting at the base of one of the painted columns where something faint caught the light. “Huh,” he muttered, reaching up with two fingers to rub at what he thought was a faded signature. The dust came away to reveal a greasy smear of a symbol.

Ghost exhaled. “Creepy but disappoint-”

Graves didn’t hear the rest.

He's an adult again, knees gouging marble as masked figures drag him forward by restraints biting into his wrists. Blood slicks his tact vest; a gag salts his tongue with copper. Chanting ricochets off cathedral arches, Latin warped by wandfire, syllables hammered into a cadence that feels like artillery fire. The sigil blazes on the dais ahead, hungry, impatient. Someone fists his hair, forces his chin up; the world smells of hot brass and candle wax, his hindbrain scream in recognition of predators and death.

A blade slides across his throat.

Graves watches his own arterial spray spatter the symbol, turning the grooves molten red, turning alive. The runes ignite one by one, pulsing like a heartbeat, pulling at something in his chest, in his soul-

“You okay there, cowboy?” 

A hand on his shoulder jerks him back into the present with an inhaled gasp. He turns his head to see Eris, her sharp hazel eyes flickering over the sudden pallor of his skin with the kind of assessment that meant she’d noticed way more than she was letting on.

“Graves…?” She asks quietly, and there’s something careful in her voice.

He drops his hand away from the painting and steps back on legs that feel unsteady. “It’s nothing. Thought I saw something.”

She searches his face again with skepticism before gesturing with her head to further down the hall. “Come on, Texas, the others found a hidden passageway they want to explore.”

He nods and steps after her, following her away from the painting on autopilot, muscle memory carrying him when conscious thought feels like static. Just before he turns the corner, some compulsion makes him look back at the empty canvas.

And for one heart stopping second, he swears he sees the symbols carved into painted stone begin to glow the color of fresh blood.

Chapter Text

Transfiguration was supposed to be a foundation of magical discipline. A serious class, the kind of subject Hogwarts usually used to weed out the weak like Advanced Calculus or that one step in IKEA furniture where you need a master’s in engineering, a PhD in applied physics, and a literal act of God just to attach one (1) shelf bracket without summoning Satan.

Professor McGonagall was the kind of woman who could probably intimidate a rampaging dragon into behaving itself with nothing but an eyebrow raise. She surveyed the room, took in the usual first year jitter, and then her gaze stalled on five small apocalypses sitting together in the back of her classroom. 

She set a matchbox on her desk. “Transfiguration is complex, precise, and dangerous,” she said, voice crisp. “Anyone foolish enough to cause trouble will leave and not return.”

Five tiny heads nodded with the sincerity of people who had absolutely no intention of doing that and were already mentally drafting their defense statements in multiple languages. 

McGonagall transformed a goblet into a bird and back again. The entire class ‘ooh’ed and ‘ahh’ed like they’d never witnessed basic violations of thermodynamics before.

Soap slapped both hands on the table hard enough to rattle everyone’s inkwells. “OI, THA’S BRILLIANT! Professor’s a bloody Transformer!”

“Focus,” Ghost murmured, eyes already cataloguing the wand motion with the intensity of someone planning a heist. “Switch, flick, tap. Vocal component carries the weight. Muscle memory suggests-”

“I give it a week before one of us is furniture,” Graves interrupted, leaning back with the lazy confidence of someone who’d probably sell his own grandmother if the profit margins were decent. “And I’ve already got a business plan for magical furniture rental.”

“I could be a very pretty chair,” Alejandro said, tugging his tie looser and flashing a smile that had started three separate international incidents in his past life.

“Dibs on Chair-Alejandro,” Eris added without looking up from where she was sketching what appeared to be architectural blueprints for a small explosive device in her textbook margins.

McGonagall’s eye twitched. “Today, you will attempt to transform a match into a needle. Even simple  transfiguration requires absolute focus and-”

“WAIT WAIT WAIT.” Graves’ hand shot up. “What’s the thermodynamic conversion rate? Are we talking molecular restructuring, matter displacement, or straight up ‘fuck physics’ territory? Because if this is some equivalent exchange situation, I’ve got a business proposal that could revolutionize the entire magical economy-”

“What happens if we mess up?” Soap interrupted, bouncing in his seat. “Like, really Mess Up(TM)? D’ye get antimatter? Nuclear fusion? A wee black hole?”

“Could we transfigure something into food?” Alejandro asked with genuine concern. “Because the breakfast situation here es una ofensa to my heritage. ¿Quién solo come frijoles con tostadas?”

“What about people?” Ghost said quietly, which somehow made that statement infinitely more terrifying. “Hypothetically.”

“Can we transfigure abstract concepts?” Eris looked up from her definitely-not-a-bomb-blueprints with bright, curious eyes. “Like, could I turn my crippling anxiety into a butterfly? Or my PTSD into a houseplant?”

“Please raise your hands and wait to be called on before speaking!” McGonagall’s voice cut over them. “You will transform matches into needles. The spell is Acus. The wand movement is a simple circular motion and a jab. You will not experiment, you will not improvise, you will absolutely not attempt to transfigure anything else and if I hear even a whisper about weaponizing this magic, I will personally ensure you spend the rest of term as actual furniture in Filch’s storage closet!”

“So what you’re saying,” Ghost said with deadly calm, “is that we should definitely not see what happens if we combine spells?”

“Or cast ‘em backwards?” Soap added with the enthusiasm of someone who’d never met a rule he didn’t want to suplex.

“Or in rapid succession?” Graves chimed in, dollar signs practically visible in his eyes.

“Or while doing interpretive dance?” Alejandro suggested, already doing a little shoulder shimmy that made three girls in the row in front of them giggle.

“Or with the explicit intent to cause maximum chaos and probably summon at least one minor demon?” Eris finished sweetly, tucking her not-bomb-plans away.

The class stared at them. McGonagall stared at them. “You may begin.” She said, grimly. 

She distributed matches, pausing at the back row, and feeling like each match she handed to them was less like a learning tool and more like a tiny wooden harbinger of doom.

For exactly seventeen seconds, they attempted the assigned spell.

Then reality had what could generously be called a complete nervous breakdown.

Ghost swirled the wand and jabbed, exactly as McGonagall showed. His wand movement was perfect, his pronunciation flawless, his focus absolute. The match did not become a needle. 

It ceased to exist. 

Not transformed, not exploded, just gone, like it had been edited out of reality by some cosmic delete key. He was staring at the empty space on his desk with fascination.

“Interesting,” he murmured, poking at the air where the match used to be. “Conservation of mass suggests this shouldn’t be possible.”

Eris leaned over. “Where did it go?”

Ghost looked up at her with those dead, dark eyes that had probably seen too much and definitely done worse. “I don’t think it went anywhere. I think it just… stopped being.”

Eris blinked once, processed this information, and then lit up like Christmas morning. “Ooh! Do you think you can do that again but like… bigger?”

“What scale are we talking?”

“Hassan.”

“Done.” Ghost said with the same casual tone most people used to agree to pick up milk from the store.

Eris beamed. 

Alejandro had apparently decided that needles were beneath his dignity and had somehow produced an entire bouquet of red roses from thin air and was now gliding around the classroom like some kind of preteen Casanova, distributing flowers to every girl in the room with devastating charm.

“Para ti, hermosa,” he said, offering a perfect rose to a blushing Gryffindor. “A flower for a flower.”

She actually giggled and tucked it behind her ear.

“Mr. Vargas,” McGonagall asked carefully. “where did those come from?” 

“From the heart, Profesora,” Alejandro said with a sunbeam smile. “Magic is passion, no? The soul calls, the heart answers, the flowers… they just appear when love is near.”

“You’re supposed to be turning your match into a needle.”

Alejandro looked genuinely confused. “Needles are for sewing. Roses are for romancing. I know which is more important.” 

He winked at a Slytherin who flushed from her collar up to her hair line and slid slowly under her desk. But now half the class was swooning and the other half was taking notes.

“Mr. Vargas, that is highly inappropriate-”

“Soy un romántico, Profesora! The heart wants what it wants. When you have a gift, you must share it with the world!” He spun dramatically, somehow producing three more roses mid-twirl and held them out to her. She looked unimpressed. 

Graves had approached his match with the confidence of someone who’d never met a problem he couldn’t monetize. One confident flick, a crisp “Acus!” and his match began to transform. 

It became a needle. A needle with the structural integrity of overcooked spaghetti. He lifted the floppy, rubber like thing and it drooped like a sad noodle, completely defeating every possible purpose a needle could serve.

“Well, this is aggressively useless,” he observed, waving the gummy needle. “Can’t pierce fabric, can’t keep form, actively defeats the purpose of being itself.” A beat. His eyes lit with capitalism. “However… Child safe sewing kits! No pricks, no lawsuits. Patent pending, zero liabilities. New market vertical unlocked.”

“Mr. Graves,” McGonagall said slowly, “I will deduct points every time you monetize pedagogy.”

“With respect, Professor,” Graves replied while calculating profit margins, “literally everything can be monetized if you’re creative enough. This is just applied entrepreneurship.”

Eris had started off so well. Her wand movement was precise, her incantation clear, and for a brief, shining moment, her match became a perfectly normal needle.

Then it kept growing.

And growing.

And growing.

“Um,” she said, staring at the needle that was now the size of a small sword, “how do I make it stop?”

She tried the same motion and incantation in reverse. The needle doubled in size to the dimensions of a lance now threatening to knock over the next desk. 

“Oops,” she said cheerfully, and without missing a beat, slid the lengthening nightmare under the bench with one foot and kicked it down the aisle.

McGonagall’s shadow fell over as she approached them and Eris fixated the teacher with an innocent expression. 

Thankfully, she was more focused on Ghost, who was still poking the void where his match had been. 

“I think I might have opened a small rift in spacetime,” he observed with the same bland tone most people used to comment on the weather. 

McGonagall inhaled to begin something: a lecture, a prayer, an obituary-

And then Soap happened. 

Soap had actually tried, he really did. He held his wand properly, said “Acus” with careful pronunciation, and gave it the precise flick McGonagall had demonstrated. For a brief, shining moment, his match began to shimmer and elongate like it might actually become a needle.

Then it exploded.

But not just any explosion. Oh no. Soap’s match had apparently decided that if it was going to stop being a match, it was going out in the most spectacular way possible.

The match shrieked joyfully and began vomiting miniature fireworks: crackling comets, sizzling bees, an aggressively patriotic sparkler that shouldn’t exist in the UK. A shower of glittering stars ricocheted off rafters and portraits and someone’s dignity.

“BLOODY BRILLIANT!” Soap howled over the chaos, eyes ablaze with manic glee. “Did ye see the trajectory on that wee rocket? The dispersal? THE SYMMETRY!”

Students dove for cover, scrambling under desks and fleeing toward the door as the miniature fireworks turned the classroom into a show. Half the class was already in the hallway, pressing their faces against the windows to watch the spectacular disaster unfold.

A tiny rocket took a left turn, buzzing through McGonagall’s hat, and head butted a Vervain off its hanging hook by the window. The plant performed a perfect swan dive, saluted, and died on the floor.

Another sparkler set a house banner on fire. Ghost lazily flicked it out of the way with the same energy most people used to swat flies. Eris batted a screaming fire-bee out of the air with her textbook without even looking up from her notes. Alejandro tried to choreograph the comets into a waltz; two of them actually complied, and one left its number.

Graves had somehow produced protective eyewear from thin air and was selling them to panicked students for two Sickles a pair.

“FINITE INCANTATEM!” McGonagall roared, her wand cutting through the air like she was conducting the world’s most violent orchestra.

Sudden, profound silence.

Scorch marks decorated the walls like abstract art, dust drifted down like ashfall, and a portrait of some medieval duke coughed delicately and peeked out from behind his frame to check if the coast was clear.

McGonagall, hair a single strand out of place (which the class would later speak of in hushed tones), placed her wand down carefully on the scorched desk.

Her gaze moved slowly and deliberately towards the back to the five students before her.

Ghost met her stare with the bland innocence of someone who’d definitely never accidentally deleted part of reality.

Soap offered a tiny thumbs up from behind his smoking chair, grinning wildly.

Graves twirled his rubber needle and smiled, pocketing his emergency eyewear profits.

Alejandro tucked a rose behind his own ear and somehow managed not to wink (a feat requiring superhuman self control).

“Matches,” McGonagall said at last, voice quiet and catastrophic, “become. needles. Not firework displays, not rose gardens, not interdenominational portals. Needles.”

A beat.

“Yes, Professor,” five liars chorused, already planning what else a match could become if you bullied reality hard enough.

McGonagall inhaled deeply, preparing to deliver the lecture that would end all lectures, the speech that would be carved into the walls as a warning to future generations-

CRACK.

Everyone turned.

The far wall bulged.

Stone dust powdered the air as mortar popped out of the seams and then, with all the finesse of a Greek god throwing a javelin while drunk, a giant needle punched through the wall, schunk-clean, shining metal spearing through the wall in one go.

Then it kept going. The tip burst into the corridor beyond and continued its rampage by spearing directly through a priceless tapestry depicting what used to be a tasteful stag hunt.

The tapestry, now featuring an unexpected needle motif, emitted a deeply offended “WELL, I NEVER!”

The Earl of Something’s portrait, now sporting a needle through his tricorne hat, clutched his chest dramatically and fainted directly into his frame with a thud that echoed.

In the classroom, a tidy rain of grit pattered over the desks and the entire class sat in absolute silence, watching stone dust settle on their desks.

“Wow,” Eris said with the bright, innocent tone of someone commenting on nice weather, “that’s so weird! I wonder who left that giant needle there? What are the odds?”

Every single eye slid, in excruciating unison, to her. 

Very calmly, very quietly, with the supernatural control of someone who’d spent decades preventing magical teenagers from accidentally ending the world, Professor McGonagall spoke. “Miss Hale.”

“Yes, Professor?” Eris chirped.

“Is that your needle currently embedded in my classroom wall, extending through the corridor, and- if my ears do not deceive me- impaling what appears to be a historically significant tapestry?”

Eris considered the philosophical implications of ownership. “It is… adjacent to my academic journey.”

Which was exactly when a particularly large chunk of stone plummeted to the floor, exploding on impact and sent debris skittering across the classroom.

Everyone held their breath and looked up at McGonagall with the collective expression of people watching a bomb timer count down to zero.

McGonagall did not blink. She did not breathe. She existed in a state of pure, transcendent fury that was somehow more terrifying than actual screaming.

“Spiritually adjacent to your academic journey,” she repeated slowly, like she was tasting each word and finding them wanting.

“Yes,” Eris said sweetly, absolutely refusing to acknowledge the dust still sprinkling onto her desk. “Deeply adjacent. Spiritually, even. Academic experimentation. Hypothesis testing. Unintended consequences of enthusiastic learning, if you will.”

McGonagall’s voice could have frozen hellfire. “Wands. Down. Now.”

Thirty wands hit their desks fast. 

A beat of silence that lasted approximately seven eternities.

“Not you, Miss Hale.”

Eris steepled her fingers like a tiny evil mastermind. “I can explain!”

“No,” McGonagall said with finality, “you can reverse it.”

Soap leaned over, stage whispering, “Want me to provide encouraging commentary? I’ve got some brilliant material about structural engineering!”

“It would not help,” McGonagall said without looking at him, her voice suggesting that his encouragement might result in him becoming a very small, very quiet toad.

Graves propped his chin on his hand, dreamy with entrepreneurial possibility. “Think of the industrial applications though. Wall quilting. Load bearing embroidery. Needle driven demolition-”

“Mr. Graves,” McGonagall said, “if you attempt to monetize one more educational catastrophe, I will conjure a ledger the size of a telephone book and personally ensure you spend the rest of term alphabetizing it. By candlelight. In the dungeons.”

She inhaled for exactly three seconds, held it for exactly one second, and exhaled through what remained of her professional composure.

“Miss Hale. Remove your… architectural modification. No collapses. No additional perforations. No pyrotechnics. No interpretive dance. No abstract concepts. No poetry. And if you somehow manage to make this worse, I will personally ensure you spend the next century as actual furniture in Professor Binns’ office.”

Eris squinted at the gleaming destruction, her brain visibly calculating angles and magical physics. “Controlled retraction via density manipulation, micro incremental reversal, directional recall with gravitational assistance. Easy peasy.”

Ghost’s quiet voice drifted over l. “Don’t fight the ward resonance. Follow the magical signature. Eleven degree compensation drag to your right, cast on the exhale. Intent shapes the magic, movement guides it.”

“Look at you being helpful,” Eris murmured fondly, remembering similar instructions whispered through comms in darker times, usually followed by something exploding in a completely different way.

“Look at you making me,” Ghost replied, and somehow managed to sound both exasperated and proud.

“Just like old times, eh LT?”

She placed her wand tip against empty air where the needle had emerged and began the reversal sequence.

The needle shivered and began to shrink, the wall groaned in relief, and dust rose into a soft cloud. 

From the corridor, the tapestry emitted a deeply offended “hmph” as the point eased free of the Earl’s painting and slid, sulking, back through ancient stone. The class watched the silver shaft retreat along the baseboard as if reeled by an invisible hand, shrinking as it traveled.

It popped onto Eris’s desk with a prim tink.

She picked it up and tucked it behind her ear like a pencil, as if impaling historical architecture was just another Tuesday.

“See?” she said brightly. “Completely controlled outcome. No permanent damage whatsoever.”

The silence that followed was biblical.

***

Price didn’t bother with pleasantries like “hello” or “how was your day” because he was a man whose soul had vacated the premises approximately thirty minutes ago when he’d heard about The Incident(TM).

“How,” he asked calmly, sliding into the bench at the Hufflepuff table for dinner “did you morons manage to earn detention on your first goddamn day.”

“Allegedly,” Graves said, gesturing with a chicken leg.

“On principle,” Ghost added, because apparently deleting things from reality was a matter of personal philosophy.

“Artistically,” Alejandro grinned, reaching for more roast chicken with the grace of Michelangelo stealing communion wafers.

Soap stabbed a potato with enthusiasm. “It wisnae even our fault! We were being educational!”

Gaz set down his goblet and took a deep breath. “Start from the beginning. Use small words. Pretend I’m an idiot.”

Eris pointed accusingly with her dinner roll. “Soap made unauthorized pyrotechnics.”

“I made art,” Soap corrected with the indignation of a misunderstood genius. “Wee Roman candles! Patriotic fireflies! A teensy light show! Cultural expression!”

Rudy blinked with the patient saintliness of someone who’d definitely dealt with this energy before. “And did the instructions specifically mention fireworks, hermano?”

“…Well, nae, but like… in spirit?”

“In spirit,” Laswell repeated slowly. “Which part of the word ‘needle’ is shaped like a fireworks display, MacTavish?”

“The pointy bit!” Soap said, absolutely delighted with his own logic. “Explosions are just very enthusiastic points! It’s all about perspective!”

Konig tilted his massive head. “Das ist… not how geometry works, mein Freund.”

Graves raised his hand while aggressively chewing. “And I innovated. Rubber needle technology. Market disruption at its finest. Think of the child safety applications! The insurance savings! The pure capitalistic beauty!”

Gaz stared at him. “You invented… a noodle.”

“A needle with feelings. A needle that cares about workplace safety.”

Konig tried to be helpful. “Gummi Nadel! Is cute marketing name, ja?”

“See? Konig gets it,” Graves said, pointing enthusiastically. “This is why we’re friends.”

Alejandro leaned forward with a smile that could probably end small wars. “And I improved classroom morale through strategic flower distribution and targeted emotional support.”

“You flirted with literally everyone in sight,” Laswell said flatly.

“Sí!” He kissed his fingers to the air like he was blessing the very concept of romance. “Extremely effective morale boosting! Academic emotional wellness! Therapeutic roses!”

“I heard one of the prefects say that McGonagall called it ‘highly inappropriate romantic harassment,’” Price said.

“McGonagall has impossibly high standards,” Ghost muttered darkly. “She is technically correct, which is the worst kind of correct.”

Eris reached across Gaz to steal his carrots. “I created a unique educational opportunity through applied architectural modification.”

“You impaled a wall,” Gaz said with exhausted patience.

“Architectural acupuncture,” Eris said with serene confidence. “The castle’s energy flow feels much more balanced now. It’s probably grateful.”

All five judges and jurors of the Coalition looked at her like she was full of shit. 

Price massaged his temples, trying to physically prevent a migraine through sheer willpower. “Ghost.”

Ghost, who had been consuming soup silently, efficiently, and was hyperaware of every fork within a ten meter radius, set down his spoon with ceremonial gravity.

“I followed instructions perfectly. Textbook wand work. Flawless pronunciation. The match…” He paused, searching for words. “…exited consensus reality.”

Laswell blinked slowly. “Come again?”

“Did not explode. Did not transfigure incorrectly. Simply… was. Then was not. Deleted from the universe’s database.”

Rudy considered this with the gentle concern of someone used to hearing confessions. “Did you… attempt to retrieve it from wherever it went?”

“Negative,” Ghost said with finality. “I interpreted its departure as a message from the universe.”

“A message about what,” Price asked, giving him the dead eyed stare of a man who had thought death would free him from this level of bullshit and had found himself deeply betrayed by the universe instead.

Ghost met his gaze with those dark, fathomless eyes. “Potential.”

Price closed his eyes, inhaled deeply, and briefly regretted every life choice that had led to this moment.

“So,” Laswell said, mentally ticking off points on an invisible list of crimes against education, “to summarize: unauthorized pyrotechnics, aggressive flirtation, rubber based fraud, architectural assault with a deadly weapon, and localized reality deletion.”

“When you put it like that,” Graves said thoughtfully, “detention seems almost harsh.”

“We’re being punished for innovation,” Alejandro agreed, his dignity wounded.

“And creativity,” Eris added, like they were martyrs for artistic expression.

“And patriotism,” Soap offered, because apparently nationalism was involved somehow.

“And applied theoretical physics,” Ghost finished, because he knew exactly how much that would hurt to hear.

Gaz stared down the table at all five of them with disbelief. “And not one of you- not a single one- thought to maybe, possibly, just this once… not do any of those things?”

Five tiny, perfectly synchronized shrugs rippled down the table like a wave of pure, concentrated mischief.

Rudy folded his hands and gave them a disappointed expression that hurt more than any stab wound ever had. “Did you at least attempt to follow the actual directions?”

“Seventeen seconds,” Ghost said,  promptly.

“That’s a personal record!” Soap announced proudly, like this was something to celebrate.

Konig processed this information slowly. “Detention… on first day of term… is probably school record, ja?”

Graves perked up like a hunting dog catching a scent. “Is that verifiable? Can we get documentation? Because records have marketing value-”

“Nein, but…” Konig considered this seriously. “Statistically very probable.”

“Put it on a t-shirt,” Eris murmured while swiping Price’s roll with the casual efficiency of a professional pickpocket. He let it go with a resigned sigh and pushed the butter dish toward her, because he’d learned to pick his battles.

Laswell pinched the bridge of her nose hard enough to leave marks. “You’re all reporting to Filch at nineteen hundred sharp.”

“Ugh,” Eris said with deep, existential disgust. “Cat man.”

“Mrs. Norris likes me,” Alejandro said with sunny optimism that was somehow more terrifying than outright threats.

“She likes the idea of your grave,” Soap said ominously.

Rudy pointed a fork at them. “Be polite. Do not argue with him. Do not attempt to charm your way out. And por favor, do not sell him anything.” His gaze laser focused on Graves with surgical precision. “Nada.”

Graves clutched his chest. “I can’t just… turn off excellence. It’s like asking the sun not to shine!”

“MacTavish,” Price said wearily, “absolutely no fireworks during detention.”

Soap made the most heartbroken face in recorded history. “But… what about wee ones? Tiny sparklers? Miniature Catherine wheels? Pocket-sized-”

“Especially wee ones.”

Konig buttered another roll with the solemn ceremony of someone attending a funeral. “I will… light candles for Herr Filch. He will need divine intervention if he is to survive this.”

Chapter Text

Three of his children were not in their beds. 

Severus Snape did not hope his snakes would be; he was not a man who frittered away energy on optimism, hope, or other useless human emotions. He merely verified. A habit, honed over years: first week back, count your snakes. The littlest ones were the slipperiest, “first years” in the ledger and flight risks in practice. 

Too many of his snakes came from homes where the shadows never stayed in the corners and the shouting never stopped at the walls. The first week always dragged their nightmares to the surface; small bodies curled under sheets, breathing sharp and panicked, eyes glassy with memories that had followed them here.

(The seventh years were no better. He always checked them next. Their nightmares resurrected after years of dormancy, sharpened by the knowledge that they would soon graduate and could no longer use school to hide. Next year, the world would have them again, and the world rarely played kind. It was always in that knowledge, that inevitability, that the nightmares came back.)

Earlier in the week, he’d found Simon Riley sitting stiffly upright in the common room after curfew, motionless in the green-gloom glow, staring at the carved serpent mantel 

“I don’t like snakes,” the boy had answered without looking away from the hearth. 

“You are in Slytherin,” Snape had replied with his usual bedside manners. “The walls, the carpets, the escutcheon are snakes.”

“Ironic, innit,” Riley had murmured, a brittle little curve in his voice that wasn’t a smile, finally turning those unnervingly flat eyes onto Snape. “Karmic punishment.”

Snape had left him with a halfhearted warning to get to bed and the unenthusiastic admiration one reserves for obstinate steel. Children don’t usually speak like that unless something terrible trained them to.

Tonight, after days of adjustments and approximately forty-seven memos, three beds stared back, empty. No Simon Riley. No Phillip Graves. No Eris Hale.

An unholy trinity if he ever saw one. 

Riley, he’d expected; the kid had “chronic insomniac with trust issues” written all over him. Hale… he’d expected more, actually. He had read the Ministry’s Incident Files and Memoranda which read like a highlight reel of “How to Traumatize Authority Figures Through Creative Problem Solving.”

HALE, ERIS (predictable only in her unpredictability, apparently highly allergic to restraint), RILEY, SIMON (discipline laser focused through deliberate disobedience, presence defined by his absolute refusal to yield even when it would be easier), and now GRAVES, PHILLIP (capitalism in human form, could probably monetize his own funeral.)

The American boy had met the other two on the train, it seemed; bad luck, good chemistry, and here we were. He knew what the first two could do and while Graves was new, the magnetic pull of catastrophe did not care about résumés.

Graves had made his bed that morning with military corners one could bounce a coin on and made a House Elf weep with awe. It remained untouched even at this late hour. Riley’s bed was equally pristine, sheets cold as his personality. In the girls’ dormitory, Hale’s bed looked occupied at first glance: bulky shapes under covers, a convincingly tousled halo on the pillow.

Snape plucked back the blankets and discovered a rolled cloak, two spare robes, and a surprisingly lifelike decoy wig. He did not look impressed. 

His mouth almost twitched. Almost. 

Standing in the green black underwater light filtering through the lake windows, he let the silence settle like sediment, felt the room breathe around him, and began his hunt.

“Homenum Revelio,” he whispered.

The spell pricked through the dormitories like tiny white needles, mapping the sleeping students in their beds. Beyond that, Hogwarts gave him its usual supremely unhelpful response, which is to say, it heard him perfectly but decided to be mysterious about it.

The old castle loved its games. Snape fucking hated games.

Fine. Time for detective work.

He traced a finger along the dormitory archway, feeling for the telltale magical residue of a Disillusionment Charm. Nothing. He swept the common room rugs with a nonverbal dust-lifting charm. Dust rose, whorled; three small distortions marbled the air near the stone steps, in the shape of hurried feet that had paused: one set heavier, one light on the toes, one almost noiseless. 

The footprints led to the stairs and then… up.

The staircase under his feet pivoted. The banister shuddered, like a cat shifting its weight just out of reach. Snape’s expression did not change. “Don’t,” he told the stairs, in the tone he reserved for improperly bottled toxins.

The stairs, being stairs and therefore immune to threats, did.

He stepped off just before the pivot locked and took a hidden route behind the tapestry of an auburn witch with a balalaika instead. Stone gave way to narrow brick, then to the quiet of the second floor gallery where portraits with powdered wigs lowered their voices to gossip in his wake.

“Looking for the tots, professor?” a courtier whispered to a duchess, absolutely vibrating with delight at having drama to discuss.

Snape stopped and turned. The courtier stared up at him with bright painted eyes.

“I trust,” Snape said softly, “you have something more useful than an epithet.”

The portrait tittered, delighted at being seen at all. “Oh, I shouldn’t say-”

“But you will,” Snape said, and let the quiet press of his magic lean, just enough to make the paint itch.

The duchess, who had been pretending to faint since 1723, sat up. “I heard whispers in the north wing an hour ago,” she blurted, then added. “Adolescent hubris is utterly unbecoming of a castle with standards.”

He held her gaze another heartbeat, then inclined his head the barest fraction for her useful information and headed towards the north wing. 

Halfway there, Mrs. Norris materialized from the shadows like a furry little nightmare, tail upright, eyes glowing with the otherworldly malevolence that only cats can achieve. 

“Not now,” Snape murmured. Mrs. Norris blinked her lambent eyes accusingly, considering him, then padded away with the air of a subcontractor who did not, in fact, take direction.

Filch’s lantern bobbed into view moments later, like an ugly firefly.

“Professor,” Filch hissed, delighted. “Got word o’ footsteps. Tiny ones. Scurrying.”

“Everything here is tiny,” Snape said, patience already thinning. “It is a school.”

Filch’s smile curdled. “Nasty little buggers upstairs. Been movin’ at all hours. That Peeves says they’re his- what did ’e call ’em- junior poltergeists.”

“Peeves is a professional liar.” Snape brushed past, already bored of this conversation. “Search the east wing. If you find anyone who’s supposed to be unconscious and isn’t, drag them to my office. Try to keep them mostly intact.”

Filch visibly deflated at the “mostly intact” requirement but nodded, already fantasizing about detention paperwork and the good old days when students could be legally chained to walls.

The portraits were no help. 

“Students?” he inquired to a painting of three gentlemen playing at cards, all nose and lace and seventeenth-century grievance.

“None!” lied the one with the moles.

“Three!” blurted the one with the ostrich plume, then flinched. “- perhaps two? Perhaps- oh, don’t scowl so, sir, you will curdle the varnish- ”

Snape leaned in, voice dark. “If you intend to be useful- ”

“Down the corridor!” squeaked the third one, the quiet gentleman with eyes like river stones. “And then gone! Not through any door we could see!”

Snape set his jaw and continued his hunt, because apparently everyone in this castle had decided to be maximally unhelpful tonight.

Peeves found him two corridors later, orbiting upside down. 

“Professor Baaaaaaatsy,” Peeves sang, delighted. “Looking for your doom-darlings? Your adorable catastrophe children? Your pocket-sized apocalypse squad? Little wrigglers, little gigglers, little stabbers-”

Snape aimed his wand at Peeves’s forehead and let a bead of scarlet hang there, humming. Peeves squinted at it, cross eyed and pleased. “Temper,” he sighed dramatically. “How I do love a man with a properly developed homicidal streak!”

“Where,” Snape said, “did they go.”

Peeves pirouetted in the air. “Where all bold little beasties go, naturally! Forward! Sideways! Through! Up! They’re very, very good at not being where they appear to be!”

The poltergeist spun until he was nose-to-nose with Snape, and for one crystalline moment, the mischief in his eyes flickered and died as it hit something much older and infinitely more dangerous.

“They’re clever, these ones,” Peeves said, suddenly almost respectful, which was probably the first time in recorded history. “They ask the castle what it wants. And it…” He paused, considering. “It likes them. Quite a lot, actually.”

“WHERE,” Snape asked again, because his patience had officially left the building.

Peeves rolled until he was upside down again, grinning at a ceiling gargoyle. “Away!” he breathed with maximum unhelpfulness, then hurled himself through the nearest wall while cackling.

Snape’s lip curled. He hated when the castle took sides. It had terrible taste in favorites.

***

The next morning, Severus Snape stalked into the Great Hall with the focused intensity of a heat-seeking missile programmed to destroy tiny liars. His robes billowed behind him like the wings of a particularly vindictive bat, and his expression suggested that several people were about to have their life expectancy dramatically shortened.

He spotted his targets immediately: Riley, Hale, and Graves, sitting pretty as you please at the Ravenclaw table like butter wouldn’t melt in their lying little mouths. They were nestled among what appeared to be their growing coalition of fellow chaos agents- the group of ten students he’d been keeping tabs on who seemed to move through Hogwarts like a tiny organized crime syndicate.

He wasn’t interested in their little friendship club this morning. He had bigger fish to fry. Specifically, three fish shaped liars who’d spent the night playing hide and seek with a man who had exactly zero patience for games.

Snape descended on their table like the Angel of Death, his presence causing several Ravenclaws to suddenly develop intense interest in their breakfast porridge.

“Mr. Riley. Miss Hale. Mr. Graves,” he said in the tone most people reserved for delivering terminal diagnoses. “I trust you all slept well. In your beds. All night long.”

Three pairs of eyes looked up at him with expressions of such perfect, angelic innocence that it was practically criminal.

“Yes, sir,” Ghost replied with the flat honesty of someone who’d never told a lie in his short, traumatic life. “Slept like the dead.”

“Absolutely knackered, Professor,” Eris added with bright eyed sincerity, buttering her toast like she was performing a religious ceremony. “Out like a light the second my head hit the pillow.”

“Full eight hours,” Graves chimed in helpfully, already calculating the sleep-to-productivity ratio. “Proper rest is essential for optimal academic performance and long term cognitive development.”

Snape stared at them with the expression of a man watching reality actively dissolve around him.

“Fascinating,” he said with deadly calm. “Because I distinctly recall checking your dormitories last night and discovering that your beds were empty. Completely, utterly, suspiciously empty.”

The three of them exchanged glances of such perfectly choreographed confusion that it would have impressed professional actors.

“Empty?” Ghost tilted his head like a puzzled puppy. “That’s… odd.”

“Very strange,” Eris agreed, frowning with concerned bewilderment. “I definitely remember going to bed at curfew. Had a lovely dream about butterflies and tax evasion.”

“Must have been a clerical error,” Graves suggested with the helpful tone of someone solving a minor administrative mix-up. “Bureaucratic oversight. Happens in the best organizations.”

Snape’s eye developed a twitch that suggested imminent violence.

What made it infinitely worse was the complete and utter lack of surprise, suspicion, or curiosity from the other seven students at the table. Price, Konig, and Laswell sat there methodically eating like nothing unusual was happening. Garrick and Parra continued reading what appeared to be their Charms homework without looking up. Soap and Vargas were building architectural monuments out of their food with focused intensity.

None of them looked shocked that their friends were being accused of nighttime wandering. None of them demanded explanations or expressed concern. They just… sat there. Eating breakfast. Like this was to be expected.

Which meant they’d all been involved. Every last one of them.

“I see,” Snape said, voice glacial. “And I suppose the rest of your… associates… were also fast asleep in their appropriate dormitories all night long?”

“Oh, absolutamente,” Alejandro said with a dazzling smile while somehow making eating fruit salad look like performance art. “I had the most beautiful dreams… roses and conquistadors. Very relaxing.”

“Slept like a bairn, so ah did,” Soap added cheerfully, not looking up from his bacon castle. “Didnae hear a thing all night. Peaceful as ye like.”

“Dead to the world,” Price confirmed with the authority of someone who definitely hadn’t spent any time organizing covert student operations.

König nodded solemnly. “Ja, very good sleep. Dreamed of… uh… mathematical equations und… butterflies?”

“Butterflies seem to be a common theme,” Snape observed with lethal politeness.

“Si, they are muy relaxing,” Rudy offered helpfully.

“Scientifically proven to promote restful sleep,” Gaz added without looking up from his book.

“Market research supports the correlation between butterfly imagery and improved sleep quality,” Graves contributed, because apparently even when lying about curfew violations, he couldn’t resist a business angle.

Snape stood there, surrounded by ten tiny faces radiating such concentrated innocence that it was practically blinding, and felt his sanity make a small, defeated whimpering sound.

“Remarkable,” he said finally. “Absolutely remarkable. A castle full of eleven year olds, and apparently every single one of you achieved perfect, uninterrupted sleep simultaneously.”

“Good sleep hygiene is important,” Eris said earnestly. 

“Proper rest supports academic achievement,” Laswell added with the solemnity of someone reciting a health pamphlet.

“Growing children need their sleep,” Rudy concluded serenely.

Snape looked down at them- these ten tiny agents of chaos masquerading as concerned students-  and realized he was dealing with something far more dangerous than simple rule breaking.

They were organized. They had alibis. They were probably taking minutes.

“I see,” he said with the kind of calm that made smart people update their wills. “Well then. Since you were all so well rested, I’m sure you’ll have no trouble with a surprise Defense Against the Dark Arts practical examination. This afternoon. All of you.”

Ten faces looked up at him with expressions of polite confusion.

“But Professor,” Ghost said respectfully concerned, “we don’t have Defense Against the Dark Arts with you.”

“You do now.”

“Is that… academically sound?” Graves asked with genuine curiosity. “Because interdepartmental examination protocols typically require advance notice and proper documentation for liability purposes-”

“Mr. Graves,” Snape interrupted sharply, “if you mention liability one more time, I will personally ensure you become intimately acquainted with the liability of detention until Christmas.”

Graves considered this cost benefit analysis and wisely closed his mouth.

“Excellent,” Snape said with the satisfaction of someone who’d finally found the right weapon. “I look forward to seeing exactly how well rested you all truly were.”

He swept away from their table with the dramatic flair of someone who’d just declared war, leaving behind ten students who were either completely innocent or the most accomplished liars in recorded history.

“So,” Eris said conversationally, spreading jam on her toast, “anyone else think we might have pissed off the wrong professor?”

“Nae,” Soap said, adding another bacon turret to his edible fortress. “He’s just bein’ friendly.”

“Zat was Professor Snape being friendly?” König asked with genuine concern.

“That was Professor Snape actively plotting our educational demise,” Price corrected grimly.

“Should we be worried?” Rudy asked.

Ghost considered this philosophical question while calmly drinking pumpkin juice. “We were always going to get caught eventually. The only question was whether we’d make it memorable.”

“Mission accomplished,” Graves said with professional satisfaction.

“Did anyone else notice he never actually proved we weren’t in our beds?” Eris asked thoughtfully.

“Burden of proof lies with the accuser,” Gaz observed, finally looking up from his book. “Basic legal principle.”

“So we’re technically innocent until proven guilty,” Alejandro concluded with a bright smile.

“I love magical law,” Eris said happily.

*** 

The next day, there were ten children sitting in the Headmaster’s office.

Thanks to Snape’s warning the night before, the other heads of houses had conducted their own dormitory patrols and discovered a grand total of twelve students out of bed. 

The Weasley twins had been caught immediately because they had all the stealth capabilities of a small brass band, but the other ten- Price, Laswell, Gaz, Ghost, Soap, Alejandro, Rudy, König, Graves, and Eris- had remained mysteriously absent until sunrise, at which point they were “escorted” to the Headmaster’s office. 

Eris caught sight of the Sorting Hat perched on its shelf and narrowed her eyes at it like she was mentally calculating exactly how flammable centuries old magical millinery might be.

The Coalition sat in a neat little row of chairs that had been conjured specifically for this tribunal, radiating the kind of angelic innocence that typically preceded either miracles or mass destruction.

“We were in our beds,” Ghost stated with the flat honesty of someone who’d never told a lie in his tragically short life. “Every night. Regulation sleep schedule.”

“Following all curfew guidelines,” Graves added with the helpful enthusiasm of someone citing company policy. “Proper rest is essential for academic performance metrics.”

“Fast asleep by twenty-one thirty,” Eris chimed in sweetly. “Sometimes I even count sheep. Very educational sheep.”

Professor McGonagall looked like she was seriously considering whether transfiguring them all into actual furniture might solve several problems at once. Professor Snape radiated the kind of barely contained homicidal energy usually reserved for Death Eater interrogations. Professor Sprout wrung her hands with the worried expression of someone watching her prize plants get trampled by rhinoceros. Professor Flitwick practically vibrated with scholarly curiosity, like he’d stumbled across a fascinating new species of magical creature.

Dumbledore, meanwhile, sat behind his desk looking absolutely delighted with the entire situation, his eyes twinkling in mischievous glee that suggested he was enjoying this far more than any responsible adult should.

“I see,” he said, all grandfatherly warm. “And you maintain this position unanimously?”

“Absolutely,” ten voices chorused in synchronized precision.

“Fascinating,” Dumbledore mused, then reached into his desk and withdrew what appeared to be a small, crystalline device that looked like someone had crossed a snow globe with a mood ring. “Then you won’t mind if we verify this? Quite harmless- simply glows blue for truth and red for deception.”

The heads of houses perked up with the collective interest of professors who’d finally found a foolproof way to catch lying students.

“Of course not, sir,” Price said in polite respect of someone who definitely had nothing to hide and certainly hadn’t spent the previous evening coordinating what amounted to a tiny military operation.

Dumbledore held up the device. “Were you in your beds, asleep, from curfew until dawn?”

“Yes,” ten voices replied in perfect unison.

The crystal blazed brilliant blue.

The silence that followed could have been bottled and sold as “Essence of Administrative Confusion.”

McGonagall’s eye developed a twitch that suggested her faith in magical law enforcement was rapidly crumbling. Snape looked like he was personally considering whether dark magic was worth it if it meant getting straight answers from eleven year olds. Sprout blinked rapidly, as if hoping this was all a very strange dream. Flitwick leaned forward with the fascination of someone watching a particularly complex puzzle solve itself.

“Well,” Dumbledore said cheerfully, “there we have it. Mystery solved!”

“But-” McGonagall began.

“Headmaster-” Snape started.

“How is that-” Sprout attempted.

“Absolutely fascinating magical theory at work here-” Flitwick contributed excitedly.

“I think,” Dumbledore gently interrupted, “our students have been quite clear about their whereabouts. Haven’t you, children?”

“Crystal clear, sir,” Eris said with the earnest helpfulness of someone who’d never caused a single moment of trouble in her entire life.

For just a moment, Price felt Dumbledore’s gaze land directly on him, those ancient blue eyes twinkling with something that felt less like grandfatherly warmth and more like… recognition? Understanding? The beginning of a migraine started building behind Price’s temples as those knowing eyes seemed to look straight through him and catalog every secret he’d ever kept.

Then Dumbledore smiled.

“You may go,” he said warmly. “I believe you have classes to attend.”

The Coalition reacted with the lightning fast reflexes of people who’d been trained to recognize opportunity when it knocked. They scrambled out of their chairs and toward the door with the coordinated efficiency of a tactical retreat, because they were many things but they weren’t stupid.

“HEADMASTER,” McGonagall’s voice cracked like a whip as the door closed behind ten rapidly escaping figures. “You cannot seriously be letting them go without explanation!”

“Those beds were empty!” Snape snarled with the fury of someone whose detective work had just been completely invalidated. “I checked them personally! Multiple times!”

“But the Truth Detector- ” Sprout began uncertainly.

“Cannot be fooled!” Flitwick squeaked in excitement. “The magic is absolutely foolproof!”

Dumbledore leaned back in his chair with the satisfied expression of someone who’d just watched a particularly entertaining magic show.

“Indeed,” he said mildly. “Quite foolproof. Which leads us to only one logical conclusion.”

The four heads of houses stared at him expectantly.

“They were telling the truth,” Dumbledore concluded.

“HOW,” McGonagall demanded angrily.

“Magic,” Dumbledore replied unhelpfully, “and children are often more creative than we give them credit for.”

And somewhere in the corridors of Hogwarts, ten small figures exchanged glances. 

After all, they really hadn’t lied. Every one of them had, in fact, gone to bed.

They were sleeping in their beds, just like the Hogwarts rules said.

What the Hogwarts rules failed to specify, Laswell had discovered a few nights ago, was where those beds needed to be.

So if the ten of them happened to lug their mattresses through half the castle, stack them into a cozy landfill of linens and limbs inside an abandoned Divination classroom, and pass out in a blanket fort made of stolen duvets, well…

That sounded more like a logistical issue than a disciplinary one.

Chapter Text

Hogwarts, in all its ancient glory, had a tragic blind spot: no PE.

It had a subject where you hurled yourself at the sky on a bristle bundle and called it didactics, yes. But flying, although thrilling and majestic, was only once a week, where the primary muscle group engaged was your desperate need to look cool on a broom while clenching everything together in pure terror.

But running? Calisthenics? An adult who barked “faster!” at you before dawn and made you hold a plank until you saw God? Nothing. Nada. The wizarding world had somehow invented moving staircases but not jumping jacks.

The school day was a parade of chairs and curses. Sit for Transfiguration. Sit for Charms. Sit for History and try not to astral project out of your body while a ghost read war reports from 1612. 

Your wand was a stick; it built no stamina. Quidditch might have done it, but they couldn’t try out until next year, and in any case “sport” here meant ritualized aerial homicide with house points.

Price lay in the dog pile of his disaster children (plus Laswell, who was never one of his men, but always one of his people), eyes on the Divination classroom ceiling they’d… reassigned. 

The room smelled like stale incense, dust, and the faint ozone tang of tea leaves. On the shelves, crystal balls judged them from their velvet plinths like spherical HOA presidents: no noise after ten, no shoes on the carpet, no spectral manifestations without prior approval.

Around him were the soft snores and  a king sized heap of elbows and knees, and the ruinous intimacy of people who’d once fought together, died alone, come back miraculously, and decided to inconvenience a different century. 

Everyone in the dog pile had settled into a tangle of survivalist instinct disguised as sleep. Arms draped, legs thrown over, foreheads pressed to shoulders, like a knot of wolves who’d forgotten they were supposed to be human children. Even Ghost, who treated personal space like a religion and eye contact like a war crime, had one arm hooked across Soap’s ribs and a foot shoved against Rudy’s ankle. Even in sleep, these humans-made-weapons couldn’t stop being codependent on each other.

Each of them, in their own unconscious way, reached out to anchor themselves to at least three others, as if their bodies refused to believe in safety unless they could feel the steady rise and fall of lungs around them. As if the subconscious whispered: they’re still here. they’re still alive. breathe.

Price breathed in, breathed out, and did the math in his head. The Professors were about to have these menaces for seven years- seven years of chairs and wands and feelings and the occasional hallway collapsing under friendly fire. seven years of these gremlins terrorizing professors who thought a stern talking to could stop a man who’d been professionally, legally, spiritually, and morally dead. The staff, Snape included, would eventually crack faster than Soap’s voice explaining why the bathroom exploded. If he didn’t throw them a bone now, he’d spend the rest of eternity soothing fires, literal and metaphorical.

Fine. Structure fixes gremlins. You poured chaos into a routine until it stopped sloshing, grabbing it by the throat and making it do push ups until it behaved. He could do structure in his sleep. He frequently had.

Price sighed. The crystal ball on the nearest shelf seemed to sigh back, fogging slightly, as if even prophecy had cardio anxiety.

“Right,” he told the ceiling, and the ceiling, being Hogwarts, pretended not to hear him while absolutely taking notes.

Price extricated himself from the heap the way a bomb tech disarms a live device- slowly, carefully, and with the bone deep certainty that one wrong move would set off the whole pile. He pried himself free one limb at a time, muttering under his breath the entire time until he slipped free and quietly began to get ready for his day. 

Satisfied (well, resigned) he stepped back into the incense damp air of the Divination classroom, regarded the sprawl of sleeping bodies tangled together on the floor, put his fingers to his lips, and let out a sharp whistle. The sound cracked through the room like gunfire.

Bodies exploded from blankets like the world’s most violent jack-in-the-box.

“Drills!” Price announced, far too cheerfully for a man who had died once and learned nothing.

He waited exactly one beat, just long enough for the word to sink its teeth in, and watched dawning horror bloom across tiny criminal faces like sunrise over a crime scene.

Soap shot upright, hair at war with gravity. “Drills?!” he yelped, then, smaller: “Are burpees involved? Sir, me knee’s allergic tae burpees- medically.”

Ghost didn’t rise so much as appear upright, boots already laced. “Route,” he said, voice flat, as if he had expected this and wasn’t surprised when it happened.

Eris rolled over, dragged a pillow on top of her head, and declared, muffled, “Unionizing. Effective immediately. I demand hazard pay and a nap.”

Graves groped for his nonexistent reading glasses like a besieged CEO. “Is there a waiver for this? My retainer doesn’t cover cardio without brand synergy.” He checked an invisible watch. “We could monetize the suffering- premium tier gets fewer stairs.”

Alejandro flung a robe around his shoulders like a cape and sat up radiant. “Vamos, bebés, we run, we shine, we become legends.”

Gaz rubbed sleep out of his eyes, already exhausted. “We are eleven,” he informed the universe. “This feels illegal. Child-laborly illegal. Medieval, even.”

Laswell didn’t bother looking surprised; she sat up like royalty and clapped once. “Up. Hydrate. Boots. Teeth. You can hate after the second lap.”

König unfolded from his radiator corner like a polite siege tower, enormous and aggrieved. “Guten Morgen… ich hasse das.” 

Rudy was already moving, passing out water. “Agua. Despacio. Respira,” he coached, soothing by reflex. “Laces tight, corazón.”

Price let a small, wicked joy curl at the edge of his mouth. Structure had them by the scruffs now. Chaos on a leash.

“Shoes on, robes straight,” he barked, already counting them with his eyes. “Wands sheathed. No spells. We run the inner loop, stairs, greenhouse path, back here for core and wand control. Ten seconds.”

Soap flailed into his shoes like they were on fire. Eris sat up, squinted at him, and pointed. “Sir, your tie is crooked.”

“Drills fix ties,” Price said, and blew his whistle again. “Formation. Now!”

The answering groans were symphonic to Price’s ears.

***

Breakfast at the Gryffindor table looked like a mass casualty event. Eight out of ten bodies currently housed zero brain cells. Ghost ate porridge like he was a programmed depressed robot. Gaz had the shakes of someone who’d personally fought gravity and lost. Rudy distributed water bottles like a hospice nurse. König wheezed like a broken accordion. Graves stared into the void where his dignity used to live. Alejandro buttered toast with the grief of a man attending his own funeral. Soap’s soul had evacuated the premises. Eris face planted into the wood and only moved to breathe.

Price? Whistling. Laswell? Taking notes. Psychopaths.

Two identical redheads slid onto the bench across from them, flanking a third boy with an afro and a smirk. 

“Morning, corpses,” said one redhead.

“Terrible morning for law-abiding behavior,” said the other.

“I brought curiosity,” said the third. 

Eris slowly raised her head, saw two more gingers, and immediately dropped it again. “They’re multiplying,” she whispered into the wood. “Do redheads spawn mitotically? Is this a budding situation? First the prefect. Then that other one with the pocket rulebook. Now two more. At this rate the castle will be 60% redhead by Christmas. I can’t do this. Kill me again.”

“I’m not a Weasley,”Not-Redhead offered, delighted.

“Friend of a ginger. Ginger-adjacent,” Eris muttered. “Counts.”

“Lee Jordan,” said the smirk, offering a hand to no one in particular. “Live coverage of questionable life choices. This your… cardio cult?”

Price took a sip of his tea with dignity. “Breakfast.”

“Y’look like you lost to breakfast,” Lee said cheerfully.

“Fred and George Weasley,” said the twins in stereo, palms out like salesmen of chaos. “Independent contractors. R&D. Results not guaranteed.”

Around the bench, the Coalition did a weary roll call like defendants at arraignment: “John Price.” “Kate Laswell.” “Kyle Garrick- Gaz.” “John MacTavish, ye can call me Soap.” “Ghost.” “Phillip Grave.” “Alejandro Vargas.” “Rodolfo Parra, but I like being called Rudy, es más fácil.” “König.”

Then Eris, lifting a thumb in lieu of her head, said “Eris Hale, but my friends call me Eris Kane.”

“Why Kane?” one of the Weasleys blinked, bright as a crime light.

Eris, who had chosen that exact moment to faceplant into her eggs, gurgled something that might have been “long story” and slid a yolk comet down her cheek instead of answering. 

Lee Jordan whispered, impressed, “Breakfast baptism. Bold.”

“We had a question,” said Fred(?), apparently done with the introductions and moving onto the real reason they were accosting the Coalition during their dramatic death reenactments at breakfast.

“Several, really,” said George(?).

“Legally distinct questions.” Lee leaned in. “How are you getting away with not sleeping in your beds every night?”

Five heads lifted an inch, three heads didn’t bother.

“How d’you know we aren’t?” Gaz asked, voice dry enough to desiccate a raisin.

“Trade secret,” the twins chorused, angelic.

“Trade secret,” Eris echoed, incredulous. “What are you, a hedge fund?”

“Family business,” Right said primly.

“Mutuals with the castle,” Left added.

Lee drummed his fingers, enjoying the theater. “Let’s say we’ve got… sources.”

“Portraits gossip,” said Left.

“House elves hear things,” said Right.

“The staircase union refuses to confirm or deny,” Lee added solemnly.

Laswell’s eyes didn’t lift from her plate. “OPSEC. No operational details to unknown variables.”

“OPSEC?” Left perked up like a meerkat. “Is that new coursework?”

“It’s how you avoid detention,” Price said.

“Ah,” said both twins, clearly filing the word under Useful Scam Vocabulary.

Soap tried to sit up straighter and failed. “We sleep,” he said, proud of the truth. “In beds.”

Lee’s eyebrows went on a small journey. “Not in the right rooms, though, yeah?”

“Trade secret,” Graves copied quickly, clutching his toast like it was an NDA. “Proprietary knowledge. Patents pending.”

Left squinted, “What’s your number? Galleons or- ”

“Absolutely not,” Laswell interrupted, not looking up. “No commerce before carbohydrates.”

Soap groaned into his plate. “Burpees… took pieces o’ me. Small, unimportant pieces. Like my will tae live.”

“Burpees are… good for the whole body,” Gaz tried weakly.

“Burpees are war crimes,” König murmured gravely. “Unterschrieben.”

“Burpees are consequences,” Laswell said. “You brought this on yourselves.”

“Burpees are love,” Price said. Eight  people made the exact same dying walrus sound.

The nearest redhead squinted at their collective state. “You lot look… properly fucked.”

“Dead,” Alejandro corrected. “We are dead. This is a wake. Bienvenido.”

Lee peered under the table. “Any ectoplasm?”

“Only Soap,” Ghost said. No one asked what he meant.

“Back to the beds question,” Lee said, relentless. “How?”

“Good sleep hygiene,” Alejandro said gravely.

“Excellent duvet management,” Rudy added.

“Compliance with the letter of the law,” Graves said, perking slightly.

Lee’s smile sharpened. “Not the spirit.”

“Spirits are busy,” Price said. “History has them.”

“Aw,” Left cooed. “He’s funny.”

“Tragic,” Right agreed.

“Spirits,” Soap echoed, then frowned. “What’s spirit again?”

“The bit we never follow,” Eris said.

The twins did a synchronized lean, eyes glittering. “So you’re not sleeping where you should be.”

“Allegedly,” Ghost said, which wasn’t a denial so much as a legal cloud.

“Define ‘should,’” Eris said, already combative with existentialism.

“Define ‘sleep,’” Graves said, trying to invoice Reality.

Fred (or George) drummed fingers. “We’ve got experience in nocturnal logistics.”

George (or Fred) smiled like a promise. “Perhaps we could… collaborate.”

Lee nodded, sage. “We do enjoy a robust extracurricular program.”

Price, without looking, said, “No.”

Laswell, also without looking, said, “Absolutely not.”

The three newcomers looked personally offended by the concept of boundaries.

Eris leaned over the table, eyes narrowed to combative slits. “Speaking of interrogations. Are there more of you?” she asked the twins. “Like, if I blink, is a third going to appear? Do you bud like sea anemones? Is there a summoning circle?”

“Only if you say ‘new prank idea’ three times in a mirror,” Lee said.

“Focus,” Laswell murmured to Eris. “Protein. Breathe. You’re spiraling.”

“I’m dying,” Eris whispered, dramatic. “And in my final moments, the last thing I’ll see is a red-headed hydra.”

Ghost finally spoke, voice level. “They’re twins.”

“That’s worse,” Eris hissed. “Twice the chaos at half the accountability.”

“Hypothetically,” Lee tried, “if one left their dorm- ”

“-you’d get caught,” Gaz finished. 

Soap nudged Price with the dull terror of a man who just remembered stairs exist. “How many burpees, Sir? Asking for me tendons.”

“None if you eat faster,” Price said.

Rudy nudged a plate into Soap’s orbit. “Pan. Huevos. Eat.”

König, who had invented a very gentle, very personal relationship with jam, whispered to Laswell, “Is this… every morning?”

“Now it is,” Laswell said, tone bright with the administrative joy of making other people hurt.

Lee craned his neck to take in the whole shambles. “So you run before sun, then you show up here and die publicly. Respect.”

“Respect is not the word,” Gaz said, chewing like a man being paid by the bite.

“Why the drills?” Fred asked, fascinated the way boys get about explosions they didn’t cause.

“Because Hogwarts teaches while in  chairs,” Price said. “I teach not exploding while in those chairs.”

“Correlation between sweat and fewer detentions,” Laswell added. “Preliminary data set: us.”

“Peer-reviewed by pain,” Eris said into her straw.

The twins considered them: wrecked, sweaty, organized chaos that now moved in formation. Suspicious. Terrifying. Attractive, in a disaster way.

“Trade you a secret for a secret,” George (probably) offered.

Price and Laswell responded with “No” at the same time Graves, curious, asked “What kind of secret-”

“No!” Gaz reiterated, kicking him under the table.

“Practical question,” Right said. “If you’re not in your dorms, who covers your alibis?”

“Trade Secret,” Several voices chorused.

Left grinned wider. “We trade too. Prank logistics. Safe corridors. Lock bypasses.”

“Timed prefect distractions,” Right offered like a handshake.

“Portable fireworks,” Lee said innocently. “Not that we have those.”

Price coughed once. “You don’t.”

“Allegedly,” Lee agreed, nodding.

Eris squinted at him, one eye bloodshot, one soul gone. “You sound like Soap,” she accused.

“Aye!” Soap said, delighted. “A kindred spirit!”

“God help us,” Gaz murmured.

Alejandro peeled an orange, ignoring everyone’s “no” from earlier. “Hermanos, what do you trade for knowledge on how to disappear?”

Left’s gaze flicked to the eagle on Price’s tie. “We bring… plausible deniability.”

Right leaned in. “And a willingness to pretend we never met you.”

Lee tapped the table. “Also: we know when Charlie’s on patrol.” A pause, savoring Eris’s immediate flinch. “And Percy. And various redheaded cousins, real and honorary.”

Eris pointed a trembling fork. “There are cousins?”

“Dozens,” Left said.

“Swarm,” Right said.

Eris took a breath usually reserved for battlefield morphine. “I have died again,” she announced, staring at the middle distance. “And this is my punishment.”

Alejandro patted her knee. “Cálmate, gatita. Breathe in the jam. Breathe out the twins. Left and Right.”

“Left or Right?” Left asked amused. “We answer to both. We also answer to ‘Oi you’ and ‘Stop that.’”

Price placed his cup down. “Enough,” he said mildly. “We are not teaching minors to circumvent safety protocols.”

“Sir,” Graves said, swallowing a bite, “with respect, we are minors circumventing safety protocols.”

“Not helpful,” Laswell said.

“Real question,” Gaz cut in, pointing his fork at the trio. “Why do you care if we sleep somewhere else?”

Left said, “Intellectual curiosity.” At the same time Right said “Professional development.” And Lee answered. “Because if you can dodge Snape’s bed checks, I want to hire you for a caper.”

Ghost looked at Lee. “Define caper.”

“Nonviolent redistribution of property for educational purposes.”

“So… thievery.” Ghost said dryly. The trio pretended to be absolutely enamored by the jam and refused to elaborate further. 

Eris pointed at the fruit bowl. “If I eat that orange, do more of you appear?”

“That’s not how pigments work,” Laswell said.

“It does in Scotland,” Soap whispered.

“Anyway,” Fred said, undeterred, “bed logistics aside, what’s your schedule? You all look peaky.”

“Peaky?” Soap echoed, wounded. “Ahm radiant.”

“Radiant like a dying star,” Gaz said. “Loud. Brief.”

“0600,” Price added. He looked at the twins. “You, too, if you’re joining these conversations.”

Left clutched his chest. “Voluntary gym? At dawn? Impossible.”

Right smiled. “We’re allergic.”

“Trade secret,” Lee said.

Eris narrowed her eyes. “What even is your trade? Did your mother register you with the ministry as a small business.”

“She tried,” Left said. “They sent a fruit basket and a cease-and-desist.”

“Which we ate,” Right said. “And ignored.”

“God I respect that,” Graves muttered, then caught Price’s look and sat up straighter like an employee the moment HR walks in.

Across the hall, Percy and Charlie strode by and for a moment there were four redheads in a row. Eris locked up like a malfunctioning animatronic.

“Not multiplying,” Gaz told her firmly. “Just parading.”

“Statistically,” König offered helpfully, “the red hair is recessive but prominent in clusters.”

“That’s not better, König,” Rudy said gently.

“Oi,” Soap said, revitalized by the presence of kindred chaos. “Trade a secret for a secret?”

Left blinked. “Tempting.”

Right mirrored. “What’ve you got.”

Soap pointed both thumbs at his chest. “Ah can whistle three notes that make Peeves do a backflip.”

Lee’s entire face lit up. “Exclusive content.”

Laswell didn’t look up. “MacTavish, if you whistle those notes inside this building, you will hold a wall sit until the marble cracks.”

“Copy,” Soap whispered, chastened and horrified.

Price tapped his knife twice on the table. The tiny sound snapped every Coalition spine a millimeter straighter. “Final offer,” he said to the twins and Lee, pleasant like a locked door. “You didn’t see us. We didn’t see you. If you’re smart, you’ll never know how we do it. If you’re clever, you’ll figure out your own way and never tell a soul.”

The twins glanced at each other, delighted. “Challenge accepted,” they said together.

Eris, finally surrendering to the universe, pushed her plate away and put her face on the cool wood. “If I open my eyes, will there be more of you?”

“Statistically-,” König began again.

“No,” Rudy interrupted, patting her shoulder. “Eat a grape.”

She ate a grape. It did nothing. She ate another out of spite.

At the staff table, McGonagall watched the lot of them with the horrified expression of a woman who had just realized her school had a feral startup incubator. Snape wrote something in a ledger without looking up. Dumbledore stirred his tea like he’d planted the grape.

The bell rang. A groan earthquake passed through the Coalition. They rose in installments, gathered wands. Price and Laswell stood last, bright as knives.

“Pleasure doing hypothetical business,” Fred said.

“Tell your abs we said hello,” George added.

“Condolences on your mortality,” Lee finished, saluting. They vanished into the chatter.

Price took one last sip of tea. “Tomorrow,” he said, serenely, “we add stairs.”

Eight former-soldiers-now-students froze.

Laswell smiled without warmth. “Mountain climbers, too.”

Soap laid his forehead gently on his plate. “Goodbye, cruel porridge.”

Eris slid her goblet to Ghost. “If I flatline, you can have my knife collection.”

“I already took it,” Ghost said.

“See?” she sighed. “Teamwork.”

Chapter Text

The faculty lounge had gone very, very quiet in the way forests do right before something large and toothy steps out of the trees.

Eris, Ghost, Graves, Soap, and Alejandro sat in a crooked little row on a threadbare sofa whose springs dug into their bony bits with the enthusiasm of tiny sadists. Across from them: Snape, vibrating at a frequency normally reserved for cursed artifacts or that one setting on a washing machine that makes it sound like it’s trying to escape. Along the wall: McGonagall, Flitwick, Sprout, Hooch, and Madam Pomfrey maintaining a distance like zookeepers who’d seen the big cats figure out door handles.

Snape’s voice came out soft, which was so much worse. “Explain,” he said, “why fourteen students slid past my classroom door at a velocity typically associated with broom accidents, why three portraits were overheard delivering sincere compliments to me as if under Imperius Curse, and why- ” his cheek twitched “-this lounge still smells like roses and… bacon.”

Soap tried, and failed, not to grin like a man who’d just set fire to something beautiful. “That last bit’s ma fault, sir.”

Graves cleared his throat like the world’s slimiest lawyer defending someone who was obviously guilty. “Before we begin, I’d like to state for the record that our intent was safety forward innovation, improved user experience, and monetization.”

“You brewed a slip-n-die,” Madam Pomfrey snapped.

Snape’s robes flared with a billow so aggressive they should’ve had a rating. “Begin. At the beginning.”

The dungeon smells like damp stone, burned rosemary, and something acidic. Cauldrons line the benches like squat little kettles of doom; greenish torchlight makes everyone look seasick. Snape glides past rows of first years, robes trailing like a storm front about to sue.

“Boil Cure,” he says, voice flat enough to iron shirts. “Standard recipe. No alterations. No ‘creative improvements.’ If you attempt to innovate, the only thing cured today will be your delusion that you are special.”

Five tiny disasters glance at each other at the back bench: Ghost dead eyed, Soap buzzing like a battery, Eris bright in that “this is how buildings learn to fall over” way, Graves vibrating in entrepreneur, Alejandro already handsome at a cauldron somehow.

“Right,” Soap whispers, cracking his knuckles. “We dae the standard. We behave.”

“Absolutely,” Graves says, rolling his shoulders like he’s about to pitch snake oil. “We behave… efficiently.”

Alejandro opens his kit like a magician about to romance gravity. “Standard,” he promises, producing a sprig of rose from nowhere because of course he does.

Eris sets ingredients in a neat line. “Base, heat low, clockwise stir,” she mutters. “No chaos. No jazz.”

Ghost measures dried nettles so precisely the scale blushes.

Across the room, Snape’s voice drifts: “Clockwise, five stirs at a time. If you splash, I will put you in the jar and label you ‘Mediocre: Student Edition’.”

The cauldron blooms a nice, calm teal. For seven whole minutes, the gremlin bench is a miracle of compliance.

Ghost looks mildly uncomfortable with success. This has never happened before. It feels wrong.

Then Graves leans in. “Field kit, team. Boil-Cure’s thick. Sticky. Slow to dispense. What if- hear me out- scalability.”

“No,” Ghost says without looking up.

“Yes,” Eris says, already intrigued.

Soap grins. “Aye.”

Alejandro, thoughtful: “We improve morale. We make healing beautiful.”

“We elected to improve it for field conditions,” Graves said, as if confessing to charity. “Scalability. Rapid dispersal. Long shelf life.”

“No,” Snape said, just to get it on the record before his aneurysm.

Alejandro lifted a gentle finger. “We were very professional.”

“You added rose oil,” Eris pointed out.

“Morale booster,” he said, offended. “Smell is memory. Herbs are medicine.”

“Continue,” McGonagall said with the careful calm of a woman braced for a chandelier to fall.

Graves palms a thimble tin under the table, pops it open. Floo powder glitters faintly, treacherous as spilled stars.

“Micro dosing,” Graves murmurs. “Trace. Not ignition- distribution. Think aerosol. A healing mousse.”

Eris’s pupils dilate like she’s just seen God and He’s holding a bunsen burner. “A mousse.”

Alejandro, reverent. “A souffle of salvation.”

Soap, all in, beams. “A foam o’ feelin’ better! Like medicinal whipped cream.”

Ghost sighs the sigh of a man who knows he is the designated adult and also knows he will fail. “Cadence will shift. You’ll excite the ward resonances if you fluff the matrix. The dungeon’s already haunted- don’t make it worse.”

Ghost ticked events off like he was listing kit. “Standard base, clockwise stir, heat low. Then Graves suggested ‘microdosing Floo powder for aerosol distribution.’”

“Scalability,” Graves said again, smiling like a man pitching a war crime to a board.

Snape’s eyelid developed a seismic event.

“Soap aerated,” Ghost went on, betraying his friend with clinical accuracy.

“Gently!” Soap protested, wounded. “Barely a bellows- just a wee puff tae give it

“Only a tickle,” Eris says, confident, already crushing a Puffapod seedpod into the mortar. “Foam stabilizer. We add Sneezewort- tiny pinch- for dispersion. It’ll carry through air currents.”

She drops a whisper of powder. “Done.”

Soap grabs the bellows from the bottom shelf. “Gentle aeration. Chef’s kiss.”

Snape materializes out of nowhere like a nightmare in velvet, eyebrow raised to orbital altitude, and all five of them rapidly adopt the look of angelic innocence last seen on Victorian cherub paintings.

Soap freezes, bellows halfway raised. “Ah wis nae- ’twas just tae- aesthetic purposes- ”

Snape’s gaze hits him like a hex to the kidneys. “Put. It. Down. Now.”

Soap sets the bellows down. Soap does not step away from the bellows. Soap exists at a molecular level beside the bellows.

Snape drifts to the next bench to terrorize a Gryffindor into stirring slower.

“Go,” Graves hisses.

Soap bellows once- pft- a baby puff. The surface of their potion shivers like it’s waking up from a nap… and then starts to lift.

Teal turns lavender, then vivid amethyst, then a color that doesn’t have a name. Tiny bubbles form, glittering like someone carbonated magic. The potion rises in a glossy dome, peels gently off the cauldron rim like a magnetic cloud changing its mind.

“Oh, she’s alive,” Alejandro whispers, delighted. “Hola, preciosa.”

“Mr. MacTavish,” Snape said, “you froth-whipped a potion.”

“Texture sells,” Graves murmured, admiring.

Eris lifted her hand. “To stabilize the foam I added- ”

“-what,” Snape said, dread threading through the word like poison through tea.

“Powdered Puffapod,” she chirped like she was discussing cake. “And the tiniest pinch of Sneezewort for dispersion- ”

Pomfrey adds ‘Puffapods??’ on her clipboard with forensic horror.

“- and then Ghost adjusted the cadence eleven degrees to match ambient ward resonance,” Eris finished, proud. “Textbook.”

Six professors inhaled sharply; none of them knew why, but whenever these children said ‘ward resonance’ something structural got ideas.

“Result?” Snape asked, very politely, as though the story might change retroactively.

“Pretty,” Alejandro said, and smiled at the memory. “Purple. Sparkly. It… lifted.”

“Lifted,” Hooch echoed, dead.

“Like a mousse,” Graves said. “A premium souffle of healing.”

There is a pop like a cork, a whoof like a soft exhale, and every hair on every head in the room stands on end.

It slides over the lip. It lands on the flagstones with a soft plup.

It… keeps going.

“What’s it doing,” Eris asks, fascinated and possibly taking notes.

“Becoming omnipresent,” Ghost says, reverent and breathless like he’s witnessing a religious experience.

The blob elongates, divides like a lazy amoeba, and roll-glides toward the next bench. It touches a Slytherin’s shoe.

Eris pinched the air. “Then it kept lifting. Out of the cauldron. Across the floor. Familial, really- like it wanted to be everywhere at once.”

“Expansion factor: catastrophic,” Ghost noted.

“An’ then,” Soap said, positively glowing, “the backlash hit.”

There was, for a heartbeat, genuine faculty curiosity. Magical backlash is a professional hazard; you don’t expect it to be… fun.

“Objects touched by the foam developed a temporary Squeak Aura,” Eris said, cheery. “Every step, squeak. Every grab, squeak. The cauldrons squeaked. The benches squeaked. Snape’s robes squeaked. Like a choir of outraged mice.”

Silence. The entire staff slowly, respectfully, looked at Snape’s robes as if they might start squeaking right now out of spite.

“They do not squeak,” he said, in the tone that makes milk curdle.

“Not anymore,” Ghost allowed.

The shoe squeaks. Loudly. Like a rubber duck confessing.

The Slytherin yelps and skids a foot. The blob splits again, brushing three more shoes- squeak, squeak, squeak- and suddenly fifteen feet of floor turns into an ice rink designed by a sadist. Children begin to slide. Benches begin to migrate. A cauldron executes a graceful pirouette.

“NO RUNNING!” Snape shouts, which is funny because nobody is running; they are all sliding beautifully against their will.

And then the second effect hits.

A Gryffindor smacks into a pillar, bounces like a pinball, and gasps, “Professor Snape, sir, your posture could command navies.”

The room blinks as one traumatized organism.

“What,” Snape says, flat as a gravestone.

“The foam learned feelings,” Eris said, solemn. “Anyone it touched got hit with a five minute Compulsory Compliment Hex.”

“Compulsory-” McGonagall repeated, strangled.

“Couldnae lie, only praise,” Soap said reverently, like describing a miracle. “Like a wee honesty charm that only goes in one direction. Beautiful.”

McGonagall’s nostrils flared. “That would explain why Professor Binns informed me my ‘scowl is an economy of line worthy of Botticelli’ as he slid past my door.”

Flitwick clapped, traitorous. “A complex emotional-affective overlay! On a friction hex! Fascinating.”

“Fatal,” Pomfrey corrected. “Five sprains, one dislocated shoulder, two cases of acute ego inflation. And Miss Bell told Mr. Vaisey his hair looked like ‘a tragic hay bale attempting a comeback.’ I had to conjure tissues.”

Snape closes his eyes for the briefest possible moment, perhaps to pray that a meteor would do mercy. It did not.

“Also,” Eris added, voice hollow with horror, “it turned anyone within range Weasley-red for twenty minutes.”

The mousse keeps rolling. It kisses a Slytherin ankle- squeak- and blasts them ginger from scalp to toe like a Weasley filter. The Slytherin looks down at their arm, freckles blooming by the second. “I- I- I feel… brighter?”

“Temporary melanocyte modulation,” Eris says, horrified. “We invented gingering.”

“Fix it,” Snape says, voice very calm, which is when he is most dangerous.

“Working on it!” Soap chirps, absolutely not working on it.

Two Gryffindors shoot out the door of the classroom like penguins. A portrait in the hallway shrieks, “Good heavens- ” and then, as foam kisses the frame, smiles beatifically. “Professor Snape, your hair has the gloss of a raven at midnight.”

Snape blinks like he’s missed a step on a staircase. “I will burn this school down.”

Eris pressed a hand to her heart. “I thought they were multiplying. I almost passed out twice.”

Graves steepled his fingers. “Marketing note: we can probably sell the hair effect.”

“Mr. Graves,” McGonagall said, “if you attempt to create a Draught of Ginger, I will have you copying Hogwarts: A History by hand until your wrists beg for death.”

“Noted,” he said, already pricing quills.

Snape grabs for a bench. The bench squeaks and skates away. He rasp-steps, murderous, snatches his wand- “Finite-”

A lavender ribbon of foam floats up and boops the wand tip; the wand squeaks. Snape stares at it, betrayed anew.

Across the room, Madam Pomfrey appears in the doorway like a storm in an apron and gets instantly carried two feet sideways on the enchanted slip. She stops herself on a doorjamb, eyes going nuclear. “What is going on!? Two students ran into the infirmary and said there was an emergency!?”

“Medical trial,” Graves says, still somehow salesman-smooth while clinging to a table leg for dear life. “Unintended social benefits. You look radiant, Madam Pomfrey. Aggressively competent.”

Madam Pomfrey blinks, caught by the hex, and snarls at her own mouth. “I- thank you?” She shakes it off like a dog. “No running in the lab!”

“Still not running!” a Gryffindor screams, sliding past at forty knots.

Alejandro, skating in slow figure eights because he is constitutionally incapable of not making this a dance, offers a hand to a terrified first year and spins them safely into a corner. “Tranquila, corazón, breathe, breathe. Compliment the floor, it likes that. Give it positive affirmations.”

“The floor is… doing great,” the first year sobs, uncontrollably polite through tears.

McGonagall set down her teacup. “Why,” she asked with the lethal sweetness of a guillotine wrapped in tartan, “did you not simply brew the assigned Boil-Cure like everyone else.”

Five small disasters looked at each other and, with the unified brain cell of a gremlin hive mind, shrugged.

“Optimization,” Graves offered.

“Curiosity,” Eris shrugged.

“Field practicality,” Ghost deadpanned.

“Art,” Alejandro grinned.

“Science!” Soap declared, as if that settled it.

“Detention,” Snape said, voice like a closing door.

“Wait,” Soap leaned forward, hands spread in supplication. “Hear us out- what if we weaponize the foam jus’ a wee bit. Imagine it: ye breach a room, everyone inside is suddenly tellin’ ye how stunning yer jawline is while slippin’ aboot like newborn foals. Non-lethal! Humane! Ethical-ish!”

Flitwick brightened. “It would reduce dueling injuries- ”

“Filius,” McGonagall said, scandalized.

Sprout sighed and looked at Snape with the weary solidarity of gardeners everywhere. “Severus, perhaps we consider the accidental social benefits. The compliments were… kind. For five minutes, Hogwarts was very supportive.”

“There were sonnets about my cheekbones,” Snape said, and if the ground had opened to swallow him, he would have thanked it.

Ghost clocks the room like a tactician under fire. “We need containment. Vent it up.”

“Windows don’t open,” Eris says, and then squints. “But vents do. Dungeon flues. Froth it thinner and it’ll float to the ceiling. Compliments for the rafters.”

Snape makes a sound like a kettle about to weaponize. “Hale- ”

“On it,” she chirps, and flicks her wand in a tight circle. “Diluo.”

The mousse obligingly climbs, like fog in reverse, up the walls, squeaking as it goes. Boots regain friction. Children collapse into sticky piles, breathless, still blurting compliments like broken typewriters.

The last of the foam kisses the vaulted ceiling and spreads in a thin, shimmering film like lavender frosting. Glitter drifts. The squeak aura begins to fade; hair starts inching back from Weasley-red to normal hues. The room is a disaster of toppled stools, bruised pride, unexpected sincerity.

Silence drops in wary increments.

A single remaining bubble detaches from the ceiling. It drifts down with the dignity of an elderly soap bubble… and lands on Snape’s shoe.

Squeak.

Snape’s left eyelid attempts to leave his face.

Snape pivots back and fixes the gremlin couch with a look that could cauterize arteries. He inhales. He has a speech. He has a thesis. He has a decade and a half of teaching trauma to channel. 

“Before you begin,” Graves says, hand up politely, “do you want the mitigation formula?”

Around the room, necks cracked as six heads swiveled toward him.

Snape blinks once, slow. “There is a mitigation formula,” he says, not a question, a eulogy for his afternoon.

Ghost taps the page in Eris’s open notebook where she has, of course, already written Reversal Hypothesis: Density Reduction + Noiseless Finite + Counter-Cadence.

“For… the foam,” Ghost clarified. “And the compliment effect. For disposal. Mitigation. Or… weaponization.”

“Mitigation,” Pomfrey barked, before Snape could say weaponization with his eyes.

Flitwick hopped once on the paper stack, delighted. “For study,” he added, committing scholarly treason in real time.

Snape stared at them- the five small goblins who had turned his lab into a musical skating rink of emotional vulnerability and bacon fumes- and did the arithmetic of catastrophe management versus just letting the school burn.

“You will give me the recipe,” he said at last, voice deadly calm. “And then you will never speak of it again. You will never- ever- EVER- attempt to put Floo powder in anything, for any reason, even hypothetically, even in fiction, even in your fever dreams.”

Eris raised a finger. “What about- ”

“NO,” three adults said in perfect harmony like a very angry choir.

“Copy,” Eris said, delighted to have found the line and immediately plotting how to cross it later.

Pomfrey stabbed a finger toward the sofa. “These five will be in my infirmary this evening, volunteering. If they like foam so much, they can mop it. With rags.”

Graves raised a hand. “Counterproposal- ”

“Denied,” six professors said in chorus, their voices achieving something close to divine judgment.

Snape inhaled, exhaled, and smoothed his face into something like a verdict. “You five will scrub cauldrons until I can see your reflections and you can see your shame. You will inventory my stores of Puffapods, Sneezewort, and- Merlin help me- rose oil. You will write me an essay on why we do not introduce flammable network powder into anything that is not a fireplace.”

“Thousand words?” Eris asked, hopeful.

“Five thousand,” Snape said.

“Collectively?” Graves asked, more hopeful.

“Each.”

Soap slumped so hard the sofa wheezed.

Alejandro lifted his chin. “Podemos negociar, Professor?” 

“We cannot,” Snape said, and his robes (did not) squeak.

“Points,” McGonagall said crisply, because someone had to do the ledger dance. She looked at them, at the glitter still lodged stubbornly in Sprout’s eyebrow, at Hooch’s betrayed boots, at Flitwick vibrating. “Gryffindor and Slytherin will each lose twenty points for endangering students, property, dignity, floors, and the structural integrity of our sanity.”

All five gremlins blinked at her.

“However,” McGonagall went on, and the word hung in the air like a threat, “Gryffindor and Slytherin will each gain… five.” She grimaced at herself like the words physically hurt. “For the temporary improvement in… interpersonal communication and unplanned team building.” She swallowed the word compliments like a wasp.

Snape rolled his eyes skyward. The ceiling, wisely, did not help him.

“Dismissed,” he said at last, with the exhaustion of a man who had aged ten years in an hour. “If I see a single bubble before Christmas, I will replace your wands with spoons.”

They stood. The sofa sighed in palpable relief.

At the door, Eris paused, peered back in at the assembled adults, and because she wanted to see if she could make a vein stand out in Snape’s forehead said, “For what it’s worth, Professor… your cheekbones could cut glass. Industrial-grade glass. Diamonds.”

“OUT,” Snape snarled with the fury of a thousand dying suns.

They went, trying very hard not to squeak.

They failed.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

***

“Report,” Price said, gravel calm.

Five gremlins arranged themselves in front of their commandeered dorm like a delinquent chorus line.

“Potions,” Ghost said, no elaboration.

“Exploratory R&D,” Graves offered.

“Community outreach,” Alejandro added, dimples a war crime.

“Applied science,” Soap beamed.

Eris twirled her wand. “Unexpected outcomes. Learning occurred.”  

Laswell stared at them for a measured second like she was lining up a tranquilizer dart. “You’re all mopping Pomfrey’s floors for a week.”

“Already emotionally prepared,” Eris said, not emotionally prepared.

Gaz poured. “Anyone going to say the actual nouns?”

“Later,” Price decided. He’d been alive long enough to recognize the shape of a story that would only get worse in the telling. “If I make it to bedtime without a migraine, you can all write me an essay about your crimes.”

Soap perked. “Five thousand words or- ”

“Do not finish that sentence,” Laswell said.

Eris, who was physically incapable of leaving well enough alone, tipped her chin at the ceiling. A faint lavender sheen still clung up there, like the room was frosted. “Wanna see a party trick?”

“No,” said five sensible people in perfect harmony.

“Yes,” said everyone else.

Eris smiled the kind of smile that makes future case studies. She touched the air with her wand, listening. Ghost hummed once, low, finding the castle’s throat-note; she tuned to it like a lockpick to a tumbler.

“Here, princess,” she coaxed the magic, soft and smug. “Come down gentle.”

The mousse shivered loose from the plaster and ribboned toward her wand in a lazy, pearly swirl, well-behaved, delicate, almost dainty about it.

“Look at that control,” Gaz admitted, grudgingly impressed.

“Mitigation protocol works,” Ghost murmured, arms folded, already half in the next hypothesis.

The ribbon drifted, docile, obedient, then did what all their projects did at the one yard line: made a choice.

It wobbled. Split. A playful little dollop peeled off like a bad idea saying “surprise!” and bonked Graves squarely on the shoulder.

Plup.

There was a beat where nothing happened.

Then the mousse flash dried with a glitter snap and the after hex bit down- not the praise one (thank every saint), but something more feral and sideways, the kind of backlash you get when you pour honesty into a centrifuge: compulsive disclosure with zero tact.

Graves inhaled to say something flippant.

“I was killed by wizards in our last life,” he blurted instead, voice bright and clean as a bell.

Silence knifed the room.

Graves blinked, horrified, tried to swallow the rest. The rest did not care about his plans.

“And I think it’s my fault you’re like this,” he heard himself say, fast, helpless, like a confession being yanked out by a hook. “All of it. The-  the second chance. The reset. I pushed it. I- ”

He slapped a hand over his mouth so hard it thunked.

Nobody moved. 

Price didn’t breathe. Laswell’s pen hovered and didn’t dare write. Gaz’s cup stopped halfway to his mouth. König went statue still. Rudy’s eyes flicked to Alejandro, to Ghost, to Soap, to Eris, back to Graves.

Eris’s wand tip dimmed. She stared at Graves, expression flat, voice soft as a garrote.

“Graves,” she said. “What the fuck.”