Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The sun never rose here. It came and went, there one minute and gone the next, but never rose or set as it should. Sometimes it was bright and yellow and sometimes it was red and massive and other times still it was black and cold and small. At least Icarus didn’t have to worry about staring at it here. Nothing worked as it should, not in dreams, and even the sun would not burn him, no matter how large and near it might appear. When awake, Sev had to tell Icarus not to stare at the sun, warning him he’d go blind—but he couldn’t help it. What if it changed? What if he was still dreaming? His dreams were so long and his days were so short, Icarus never could really be sure whether he was awake or asleep.

Until he fell off the bed.

“Ow…” Icarus lifted himself off his hands as his eyes adjusted to the sudden gloom. It didn’t make any sense that his eyes would need to adjust simply because it had been bright in his dreams, but nothing about his dreams made any sense.

“Get off my wormwood, you prat.” Severus didn’t wait, sliding his little brother across the wood boards of their shared bedroom, more or less rolling him out of the way. Icarus was small even for six, eleven years younger than his seventeen year-old brother.

“What’re you making?” Icarus was still rubbing his eyes, but he could smell the potion brewing in the cauldron Sev had set up between their beds. The cauldron, and the rest of his stuff, took up most of the cramped room.

“Something to put you to bloody sleep. Maybe then I’ll get some bloody rest.” Severus gave him a withering, exhausted look, and cursed as he elbowed a vial of something floral smelling.

“No, it’s okay, Sev,” Icarus flushed—he was always inconveniencing everyone, Sev, his parents, with his sleep. No one believed him about the dreams, or why he didn’t ever want to go to bed.

“Me not getting any sleep for the entire summer because you thrash in your sleep all night is not okay.” Severus hissed, keeping his voice down so not to wake their parents across the hall. His school things were all over the cramped room, books and parchment and a million other things spilling out of his trunk: a telescope leaning against the wall by the window, some scales half buried beneath his bed, dragonhide gardening gloves.

Severus had some important exam or something when he went back to school next year. Icarus wasn’t sure, except he was pretty sure Severus had exams all the time and he didn’t know why this one was so different, but even his mum had shouted at him earlier to leave him alone when he’d been bugging Severus to take him to the playground all morning. He’d gone to sulk on the stoop in their barren garden and wait for his dad to come home and tried his hardest not to look at the sun.

“’M sorry.” Icarus mumbled and Severus scoffed. Something was off with him, had been since the moment he got home from school. He was angry all the time and he and their dad could barely be in the same room together—their dad had even threatened to throw him out and Severus was halfway out the door, dragging his trunk behind him when his mother had snatched his wand out of his hand and magic’d the front door shut. She’d grabbed Severus by the arm and they disappeared with a bang and there was a second loud pop above his dad’s head. Eileen had come stomping back down the stairs and she and his dad then yelled at each other for over an hour.

Icarus didn’t stay and had left in tears. He’d found the door to his and Sev’s bedroom shut and missing a doorknob, like it had always been a knob-less slab of wood. He’d tried to talk to him through the crack beneath the door, but Sev had dropped their blankets in front of it like he did whenever he smoked by the window. Severus had barely left the room since. He was pretty sure his mum still had Sev’s wand, but they had a doorknob again at least.

An owl appeared at the window and Icarus jumped to his feet, backing away from the window to cower in the corner, “Sev, Sev—”

“Keep your bloody voice down!” Severus snapped, getting up. “It’s just an owl.”

“Don’t let it in, don’t let it in!” Icarus whimpered. It was too small to be the monster in his dreams, but its face was so similar that all owls frightened Icarus. He wanted his mother and reached for the doorknob—

“You open that door and I’ll lock you in my bloody trunk!” Severus hissed, opening the window and taking a letter from the beak as Icarus whined. The bird flapped on the windowsill, trying to hop by Severus but he waved it off. “Go, go on, you can’t come in.”

The owl looked miffed, but flew off. Icarus stayed by the door, his heart pounding in his chest. Severus returned to the floor, muttering, “Can’t even receive a bloody letter without you falling to pieces.” He ran a hand down his face, stirred the cauldron a few times and added the wormwood he’d chopped, before tearing open the letter to read it. Severus frowned. He looked worried about something.

“Who’s it from, what’s it say?” Icarus edged closer, eyes on the window, just in case the owl came back.

Severus wasn’t listening and Icarus peeked over his shoulder—but couldn’t make out any of the words. Whoever sent it wrote in a flowy cursive and Icarus couldn’t read cursive. He could read, his mum had taught him, but he couldn’t read so well when all the letters got pushed together. He couldn’t even read his mum’s handwriting, passing her list to the shopkeeps whenever he got sent to fetch things for her. He preferred to read books and the newspaper, where all the letters were printed neat and orderly. His father would pass him a page whenever he was done with one and Icarus would put them all back in order and hand it back to his dad, and then he’d tousle his hair and tell him he was a good lad. Icarus was pretty sure Sev and dad wouldn’t fight so much if they read the newspaper together.

“Do you mind?” Severus pushed him and Icarus stumbled back from where he’d been leaning to squint over his brother’s shoulder.

“What’s it say, who’s it from?” Icarus asked again, rubbing his shoulder where Severus had pushed him.

“Nothing of your concern.” Severus said stiffly, folding the letter up. He talked different sometimes, like he was from somewhere else and not Cokeworth. Maybe that was how people talked at Hogwarts. Icarus stuck out his tongue at his brother.

“Well, tell her she’s shite with a pen.” Icarus said, assuming it was from a girl. A girl would write all over the page for no reason.

“Say that a little louder and maybe mum will only feed you soap for a week.” Severus warned, but he was smiling at him. His brother liked him better when he did and said things he wasn’t supposed to—which was really inconvenient, Icarus felt, and he thought things would be a lot easier if everyone in the house could agree on what made Icarus a good lad.

“Only if you tell her.” Icarus shrugged, “That from your wench then? Da’ says you’ve been needin’ a wench.”

Severus scowled at him and rolled his eyes and didn’t answer his question. Icarus didn’t know if that meant it was or wasn’t from a wench. He wasn’t completely sure what made a wench different than a girl or what separated a girl and a lass either, but his dad only laughed when he asked.

“Here.” Severus said, ladling a potion into a chipped beaker, “Drink.” He held it out to Icarus. He edged close, and leaned in to sniff it. It was pale purple and smoking slightly.

“Smells like flowers.” Icarus wrinkled his nose. He wasn’t going to drink flowers.

“Just drink it, will you? It’ll stop the dreams and we can both get some sleep for once.”

Icarus’ eyebrows nearly shot off his head—stop the dreams? Was that possible? He wondered if he could take it for the rest of his life. Then, he wouldn’t have to have dreams that seemed to last days and weeks and even months, he wouldn’t have to watch the sun change or run from the owl monster—Icarus took the beaker eagerly and downed it in one. It was awful tasting but he was practically vibrating as he leapt back into bed, excited to finally sleep without dreams.

Severus had lied.

Icarus didn’t know how many days it had been. It felt like a million and one, but he could never tell. He was bored. That was the worst thing about the dreams. The landscape shifted all the time, so occasionally there was something interesting to look at, but for the most part he was waiting. Waiting to wake up or waiting for the next nightmare to begin. Three times now he’d outrun the owl monster, first through a shifting forest, then across the surface of a still, black ocean, and finally, he’d climbed a mountain and fallen into a volcano before turning up here: in yet another hedge maze, but at least the owl monster was gone.

A tall wizard—or he was initially tall, but he got smaller as the conversation went on—had appeared about a year ago to tell him that the owl monster was called a kikiyaon. The Soul Cannibal, which Icarus didn’t understand, but it sounded terribly spooky. He’d given Icarus a great deal of information on it before shrinking out of existence. He’d asked his mother about them and she’d said he was very creative and a good lad.

He wished the wizard would come back and tell him more, like how to stop the dreams. People very rarely appeared in his dreams and when they did, nothing was right about them. Once he met a lady with her eyes sewn shut and another who spoke in a language Icarus had never heard. She sang him a song then burst into flames.

When Icarus did wake up, it was warm and daylight. A summery breeze tousled his hair—still short from when his mum had shorn it all off when he’d gotten the magic gumballs Severus had brought him back from school stuck in his hair at the beginning of the summer. He looked a lot like his dad now, though his dad said Icarus looked like his dad, what with his pale blue eyes no one else in the house had. His dad didn’t seem terribly happy about that and he hadn’t answered when Icarus asked why he’d never met his dad’s dad. Icarus shot out of bed to shut the window, remembering the owl from the night before, but heard Sev and his mum arguing in the back garden.

“I don’t know, take him to St. Mungo’s maybe? Do anything?” Severus said.

“The boy dreams, what of it? What can a healer do for dreams?” Icarus’ face fell. They were arguing about him. About taking him to a hospital, it sounded like.

“That’s the thing, he shouldn’t still dream when I’ve given him Dreamless Sleep—”

“You gave my baby what?!” Eileen whirled around, her dark, limp hair nearly whipping Severus in the face. She looked about ready to actually whip Severus in the face with the linens she was washing in the big pewter tub.

“Mum, it’s—”

“Are you a healer? Are you a mediwizard? No, you’re seventeen and you drugged a six year old boy!” Icarus was straining to hear as Eileen had lowered her voice to a hush. “Don’t you ever give him a potion without my knowing, you hear me, Severus Snape! What were you thinking!?”

Severus was rolling his eyes, but also backing away out of reach of whatever wet garment she was wielding, “Yeah, alrigh’, relax, I’m sorry, I was just—it can’t be good for him to thrash around like that all night. Would you please take him to St. Mungo’s and just have him looked at?”

“I’m not going all the way down to London just to be told he’s fine and has nightmares! What if the place gets blown up?!” Eileen snapped. Icarus cocked his head. Who would blow up a hospital of all places? Why would anyone blow up a hospital?

“Mum, please, I think—I don’t think Ic is all there—he sent me this mad letter about something called a kiki-something-or-the-other and asked me to see if I could find a book on them at the library—he drew this picture of some kind of owl and—”

“He’s got an active imagination, Sev, that’s all. You were much the same, you know; you and that Evans girl used to pretend you were giants stomping around ant hills.”

“He thinks he’s being hunted by dream monsters, it’s not the same!” Severus was turning red as he hung up the shirt she handed him on a drying line. “You should be more concerned than this.” He snapped.

“Don’t you raise your voice at me, Severus, or tell me how to raise my children—he has nightmares. He’ll grow out of it. You also thought he’d never stop wetting the bed either but look at him now.” The back of Icarus’ neck warmed. He wished she’d stop bringing that up. “He’s fine, you just worry about your exams, alright? Go on, I’ll finish here, go study.”

Severus scoffed, “If I don’t pass out from exhaustion. He also keeps me up all night, if that will make it suddenly a concern for you.”

“Severus.” Eileen warned and Icarus watched his brother stalk back into the house and listened to him come up the stairs. He shut the window before the door opened.

“You said the dreams would stop.” Icarus said accusingly. He knew that his brother thought they would, but he was upset at listening to him and his mum argue about him.

“When I said it, I thought it was true.” Severus said, grabbing a large book off the rickety nightstand between their beds. “Mum says I can’t drug you anymore.” He added. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine.” Icarus said. It wasn’t fine, but it shouldn’t be anyone else’s problem. “You, um…didn’t find a book about the kikiyaon at school, did you?”

Severus peeked over the book at him. He stared for a long moment. “Where did you even hear about this thing?” He asked.

“A wizard told me about it—”

Severus paled, “Where the hell did you meet—”

“In one of my dreams. He shrunk and then disappeared, but he told me about the kikiyaon before he vanished.”

Severus exhaled in visible relief. Icarus didn’t know what would be so bad if he did run into a wizard. He talked to people all the time, at the grocer, the butcher, walking down the street; there were always people to talk to.

“Look…don’t tell mum or da’ I told you this or they’ll think I’m having you on, but the only thing I found out about the kikiyaon was in a book on mythological creatures.”

Icarus grinned. Severus had looked into it for him! He thought for sure he’d not bothered when he never heard back. “What’s mytho—mythowhatever mean?”

“It means not real. Something from myths.” Severus said.

“It is real!” Icarus’ face fell. He pulled his knees up and wrapped his arms around his legs. No one ever believed him. “You said you’d seen a unicorn at your school and people say those aren’t real too!” He sulked.

“Right, but when all the wizards also agree that something isn’t real, then it’s really not real, isn’t it?”

Icarus frowned. Tell that to the monster trying to eat him night after night.

“The book also said that they’re dream creatures. They live in the dream lands—a place of myth, supposedly where people go when they dream, though there’s a lot of different myths about such places. Anyway, Ic, are you sure you didn’t hear about it somewhere else and then you started having nightmares about it because you were scared?”

“I’m sure!” Icarus said hotly. Severus thought he was dumb, but he wasn’t dumb. He could make change faster than their parents could. “The wizard told me.”

Severus sighed, “What’d this wizard look like anyhow?”

“Long white hair and beard, purple robe with stars on them, pointy hat and shoes. You know. A wizard-looking guy.”

“That sounds almost like Dumbledore…” Severus muttered, flipping a page. He wasn’t really paying attention anymore.

“Who’s Dumbledore?” Icarus asked when Severus flipped another page, wishing he’d thought to ask the wizard’s name in his dream.

“Headmaster of Hogwarts.” Severus said flatly.

“Really? Will you ask him about the kikiyaon for me!?” Icarus asked excitedly.

“No.”

Icarus deflated, “But, Sev—”

“I’m not asking Dumbledore for anything ever, not after—” Severus snarled and shut the book, flinging it to the side. He grabbed a jacket off the floor and produced a half-crumpled pack of cigarettes from a pocket.

“Sev, please—”

“Ic, get out of bed and come down, I need to run you off up the way!” A shrill voice called from downstairs.

“She thinks you’re distracting me from studying,” Severus said, sticking a cigarette in his sleeve and stashing the package back in the jacket. Sure enough, Eileen was at the door a moment later. “You’d get some air in ‘ere if you cracked the window and left the door open now and again. Come on, Ic, leave your brother be and come give me a hand, I need you to run that Adelaide’s dress back to her.”

“Her dress and an abortion in a bottle.” Severus mumbled.

“Quiet, you. Why’s that book closed? Get it open. Come along, Ic.”

Icarus slid off the bed and followed his mother downstairs, “Go and get it off the line, it’s the blue one with the white flowers.” Icarus had to flip a bin and stand on it to reach the line and get the dress off. When he brought it back to his mother, she was ladling something pale reddish-pink, like water mixed with milk and blood, into a small glass vial. She stoppered it, took the dress from Icarus and folded it around the vial.

“You be careful with that and take it all the way down Spinner’s End. Take a left and Adelaide’s at number seventeen, alright?”

“Number seventeen.” Icarus repeated. His mother didn’t think he understood unless he repeated things back to her.

“She’ll give you ten pound, and I want you to take that to the shops and buy everything on this list.” She handed him a list covered in illegible cursive scrawl. Her handwriting matched Sev’s.

Ten pounds? Either his mother had mended the girl’s dress with gold or whatever potion she’d brewed was worth a fortune. Icarus had never held ten pounds in his life, not all at once. Maybe over the course of all the money he’d ever held.

Maybe.

“Ic?”

“Um, that’s a lot.” Icarus said stupidly.

“Aye, but not so much as babies cost. She’ll pay. You got everything there?”

“Dress. Abor-shin. List. Ten pound. Number seventeen.” Icarus said, repeating what Severus had said.

“Now, don’t you go saying that word, alright?”

“Alright.” Icarus said. “But what is it?”

“Never you mind, off you go. There’s a good lad.” Eileen steered him out of the house and shut the front door behind him. He started down Spinner’s End, careful not to drop the most expensive potion in the world. At number seventeen he banged on the door, too short to reach the brass knocker.

“Oi!” He shouted up at an open upstairs window. “My mum sent me up with your dress!”

“Alright! Don’t tell the whole bloody street!” The door snapped open and a fat, blonde girl, probably near Sev’s age, glared at him, looking up and down the dirty cobbled street. She reached for the dress, but Icarus was too quick and jumped back out of reach.

“Ten pound.” He said.

“Ten pound?!” She hissed. Icarus shrugged.

“Ten pound.”

“Why’s it ten pound?”

Icarus shrugged again, “Why’re you fat? Go an’ ask my mum if you like, but I’m not handing this over ‘til I’ve got it.” The girl huffed and mumbled a disgruntled wait here, and stalked back into the house. Icarus leaned to the side to look through the open doorway into the kitchen and watched the blonde girl dig through a purse, looking over her shoulder every now and again. She returned, folding the note to hide the number before handing it to him. Icarus took it, unfolded it to check if it was anything but a ten pound note, then handed her the dress and the potion. He slipped the note into his pocket alongside the list his mother had given him.

“It’ll work?” The girl asked, feeling the vial through the folded dress.

Icarus didn’t even know what she had, but knew his mother wouldn’t sell a faulty potion; who’d buy from her then? “Sure as grass grows green and cows have tits—’ave a good one!” Icarus ran off up the lane toward the high street.

At the grocer, he handed the list to the shopkeep and the large man mulled it over, leaning on the counter and fingering his thick mustache.

“This won’t come cheap—you need a roast too, from the butcher’s opposite…what’s your mum doing with all these herbs anyhow?”

“Um, some kind of herb sauce my da’ likes, I think, I dunno.” Icarus stood on a step stool and leaned over the counter to look at his mother’s cursive with the grocer even though he couldn’t read it. A lot of them were probably potion ingredients, replacing what she must have used up that she could buy at a grocer. Fennel and dill and thyme and walnuts and all the other things that were magic if you knew what you were doing. She’d send Sev after everything else, either down in London or off into the woods past the river.

“Your family having a party? That brother of yours make fifteen GCSE’s or something?”

“Exams next year.” Icarus shrugged. “But she don’t like to see him without a book open anyhow.”

“I’ll bet…what’s Toby payin' to send that lad up to Scotland year after year?”

“Nothin’.” Icarus shrugged. “He’s got a scholarship they tell me.” They did tell him that, told him that was what he was supposed to tell people and not that he and Severus were wizards going off to wizard school.

“That so? Guess your mum knows what she’s doing then. She could tutor for good money if she can get her sons into private school on her own—you going to get yourself a scholarship too, then?”

“Maybe.” Icarus shrugged. No one told him how to answer that question.

“I’ll ’ave to start making you read these to me, Ic, no matter how long it takes; make your mother wait if we ‘ave to. You’re just as smart as that brother of yours, I know it—I’ve ‘ad part-timers that don’t make change as quick as you.”

Icarus mumbled, embarrassed as he fished out the ten pound note, “This’ll get it all, won’t it?”

The grocer raised his bushy eyebrow, “Yep. That it will.”

Icarus returned home with three shopping bags hanging off each arm. He had the meat tucked under his arm, wrapped up in brown butcher paper where the butcher had put it when Icarus couldn’t hold everything in his hands. He’d dropped it twice waving to the postman and then the milkman. There was a little soot and dirt on it now, but he thought his mother wouldn’t notice.

“There you are!” She pulled him into the kitchen and started pulling bags off his arms and putting things away in the pantry. She hung the herbs to dry and all the other ingredients went into the dark brown chest she kept at the bottom of cupboards, behind the potatoes. She took the meat and stashed it in the icebox. His arms felt like jelly and Icarus collapsed in a chair at the kitchen table.

“Anyone ask any questions?” Eileen asked.

“Grocer wanted to know what you made with all the herbs.”

“You told him herb sauce?” Icarus nodded. “He look like he believed that?” Eileen flitted over to the window and peered past a soot-stained curtain.

“Yeah.” Icarus didn’t know why she and Sev got so out of sorts over people suspecting there was something strange about them. Muggles, they called people like the grocer, the butcher, the postman and milkman, and also his father. Icarus thought it a weird distinction. They weren’t any different then other people just because they couldn’t do magic—it was like the difference between the words girl and lass. Icarus was pretty sure there wasn’t one and felt that people should just choose one word to use. Eileen put peppercorns in a mortar and set it and the pestle on the table in front of him.

“For the meat.”

Icarus’ arms still felt wobbly but he knew better than to complain. Grinding things was an important potion skill apparently, and so he needed to learn by grinding everything his mother told him to grind until his hands fell off or he got sent off to school so he could grind things there. Whichever came first.

Severus came down later when the smell of roasting meat had filled the house, armed with a book because he knew better than to look like he stopped studying. “Can I take this back up when it’s done?” He leaned against the door frame. Icarus was cracking walnuts and grinding them and the shells into powder. He sorted the powders into separate piles weighing five and ten grams using some tarnished brass scales his mother kept at the bottom of the pantry. He could barely close his fists and he was pretty sure his hands would start bleeding soon.

“You’ll eat at the table.” Eileen said, turning to glance at Severus, who raised the book a little closer to his face when her eyes narrowed.

“Nevermind, I’m not hungry.” He turned to leave.

“Sev, just do it, be a good lad—you know how he gets. This sort of thing helps your father appreciate what we can do.”

“Yeah, money does that, don’t it?” Severus snarked. “Shame we can’t ever save anything since we have to bribe him—”

“It’s not bribery, Severus, it’s dinner. We can have a nice meal once in a while. It’s a good thing, it’s a nice thing we get to do as a family—so everyone’s going to be nice and enjoy their dinner, alright?” She turned around at the stove where she was stirring something, looking back and forth between her sons. Icarus didn’t know why he was getting looked at here. Icarus was always nice.

“Sure, I’ll be nice—so long as he is.” Severus said darkly.

“Sev—”

But his brother stalked back off to their room, book in front of his face. Eileen sighed.

“Can I be done now?” Icarus slid the last of the ground walnuts and shells into their little containers and put all of the little containers into wooden chest.

“Aye, here.” Eileen pulled a couple of coins out of her apron. Icarus bit back the groan, realizing he was being given something else to do as she pressed them into his palm and closed, “Run and fetch us some ice will you, love?” Icarus stood up and pull the heavy latch to open the ice box. He pointed at the slabs of ice at the bottom, keeping things cool. Eileen smiled bracingly, dusted her hands off her apron, then steered Icarus out of the kitchen and through the front door.

“Don’t be smart, now go on, there’s a good lad.” She nudged him out onto the stoop, smiled fondly, and shut the door in his face. Icarus groaned, stuffed his hands into his pockets, turned on his heel and started up the street.

Icarus was reconsidering whether it was worth being a good lad and if he shouldn’t think about an alternate career path as he hauled a five pound bag of ice over his shoulder back to his house. Being six, Icarus knew from the social workers who came through Cokeworth every now and again that he was just shy of forty pounds last it was checked, and that he was therefore lugging around over an eighth of his own body weight as it slowly melted against his shoulder.

Sev oughta be doin’ this, not me. He thought begrudgingly. There was a time Icarus recalled where he just followed Sev on all these errands of his mother’s. When did he start doing them all by himself?

“Stupid exams…” Icarus muttered, hiking the ice back into place to get a better grip on it.

“Lookin’ a tad heavy there.” A man called from behind. Icarus spun on his heel and nearly fell over, the weight of the ice pulling him off balance.

“Da’!” Icarus grinned and Tobias grinned back at him. He had one hand in his pocket and another held a lit cigarette. His workman’s suit had oil stains on them. Tobias Snape worked at the factory, on the machines when they broke down. Icarus had been along with him in the past. It was fun. The men there all joked around all day as they worked on machines, not that Icarus understood even half of the jokes they made, only that he was never, ever supposed to repeat them around his mother or anyone else for that matter.

“Go on, hand it over then.” Tobias freed his hand from his pocket and lifted the ice one-handed onto his own shoulder.

“You sure?” Icarus asked and Tobias laughed.

“Get to my age and five pounds of ice on your shoulder after work’ll be the best part of your day.” He lifted the cigarette to his lips and started past Icarus toward home.

“Guess what, guess what, mum’s making a roast.” Icarus said, running by Tobias’ side, feeling suddenly energetic now freed from his cold and heavy burden.

“Is she now? Is that meant to be a surprise, Ic?”

Icarus shrugged. “She didn’t say it was.”

“What’d your mum say it was, then?”

“A nice meal, we can have a nice meal once in a while, she said, it’s a good thing, a nice thing we get to do once in a while.” Icarus said excitedly, realizing how hungry he was now. He hoped the food would be done soon.

Tobias took a drag off his cigarette. “Once in a while…” He said it slowly, drawing the syllables out. He glanced down at Icarus, who beamed up at him. His father sighed, “I guess we do, don’t we?” He glanced back at Icarus’ hands, frowning. “By the looks of it, though, you put this meal on the table, not her.”

Icarus flushed. He shoved his hands in his pockets. They were tender now that the ice wasn’t numbing them. “I just helped.”

“Boy your age should be swimming in the river and hopping fences all day long, not running all over town at his mummy’s beck and call. Next, she’ll have you mending girl’s dresses and making lace too.” Tobias had a nasty snarl on his face, but that didn’t sound so bad to Icarus. Couldn’t be any harder than grinding things for hours at a time. If girls could mend clothes and make lace, it couldn’t be that hard, could it?

Icarus shrugged, “I dunno how to swim.” He jumped a puddle and his foot caught on an uneven cobble. He put his hands out in front of him, but Tobias grabbed him by the elbow before he could fall.

“Mind yourself.” He said, releasing Icarus once he’d found his feet again.

“Aye.”

Tobias sighed. “Six years old and can’t swim…well, we’ll just have to change that…though maybe that’s best, come to think—I don’t like the way that river looks these days.” That was true enough. The river that ran by Cokeworth was full of garbage. Severus said it was a sign Cokeworth was a dead-end dump for people who had nothing going for them. Icarus thought it was just a river full of garbage and that if you took all the garbage out, it would just be a river. He didn’t tell his dad what Severus thought, on account of being a good lad and all.

“You’re a good lad.” Tobias confirmed it, tousling Icarus’ short hair, “Wish I had ten just like you.”

“You have two.” Icarus offered and Tobias scoffed.

“I have one.”

Icarus didn’t know what to say to that, except that a good lad probably shouldn’t say anything.

Dinner had gone well, so Icarus thought. His dad was smiling at his mum. Severus ate at the table and didn’t say anything or make eye contact with anyone, a book open in his lap. Eileen had taken the ice from Tobias and put some in a short glass with some dark, amber liquid for him. The food was very good and afterward, Icarus sat on the sitting room rug at his father’s feet while the man read the newspaper. He did his best to read each page after his father passed it down to him from his armchair, where he was having another glass of whisky as he read.

“A lot of people still missing. More missing, too.” Tobias said. “Lights in the sky.” Icarus stood and went to the armchair’s side to look over—there was a small, black and white picture of the night sky, with what looked like glowing clouds.

“That almost looks like a face…” Icarus turned his head to look, “…or a skull. Maybe they’re fireworks?”

“Maybe.” Tobias said. Out of the corner of his eyes, Severus snapped his book shut, stood from the sofa, and disappeared up the stairs. That was a bad sign. Icarus didn’t know how Severus could tell something was about to go bad. He thought about following his brother upstairs.

“C’mere Ic, lend me a hand with this.” Eileen was mending Severus’s clothes, and was trying to untangle several balls of yarn from each other. Icarus glanced toward the stairs, but turned toward his mother. He didn’t get very far as his dad caught him by the wrist.

“He’s helped you all bloody day, Leen, let the boy relax.”

Icarus’ heart began to pound and he froze. Shaking his father off was wrong, but so was not doing as his mother asked.

“Well,” His mother sounded flustered, “Fine, but don’t let him read that, Toby, he’s just a boy.”

“What? Afraid he’ll figure out it’s your people doing it?”

“Doing what?” Icarus asked.

“They’re not my people, Tobias, they’re just—it’s nothing to be concerned about.”

“What’s nothing to be concerned about?” Nobody was listening to him.

“Nothing to be concerned about?” Tobias folded the paper and tossed it aside. “People go missing all over the country and we’re not supposed to be concerned? When no one tells us what’s really going on out there? My own wife won’t even tell me what it is I shouldn’t be so concerned about.” He hissed. He sounded exactly like Severus sometimes.

“Stop it, Toby, you’re frightening Icarus.”

“Maybe he ought to be scared, Eileen, how could I possibly know?”

His father stood, releasing Icarus. Vaguely, Icarus thought it strange they could fight about him and yet not even notice as he slipped from the room and disappeared up the stairs. The door was shut, the blankets stuffed up against the crack, but Icarus opened the door and shut it behind him. They were yelling now and it didn’t make much of a difference.

Severus smoked at the window. The room was dark and the burning end of his cigarette was the only light in the room besides the moonlight.

“Sev, what’re they arguing about?” Icarus asked.

“Muggles getting murdered by wizards.” He said flatly.

“What?!” Icarus didn’t understand. “But—but why?”

“Some people think it’s unfair witches and wizards should have to hide from Muggles just because they outnumber us. They think Muggles ought to know about magic—and fear it.”

“That’s horrible.”

“Is it? We’d be a lot better off if dad was afraid of mum, you know.” Severus took a drag off the cigarette.

“No, we wouldn’t!” Icarus said, not really sure if he understood what Severus meant but knowing he didn’t want it to be true.

“You don’t understand, Ic, you’ve never been to Hogwarts, never lived without having to hide from Muggles. Just look at this place.” He snarled at the window, “Every Muggle place is just like Cokeworth, but Cokeworth is the worst of them, the Muggles who live here the worst of them too.”

“I like Cokeworth! I like the people here too, the grocer, the butcher, and everyone else!” Icarus felt tears sting his eyes. Cokeworth was his home. It was Severus’ home too. Severus sighed and looked at him like he pitied Icarus.

“You only think that because you don’t know any better. You’ll understand when you’re older, when you can see this place and these people for what they really are.”

“Would…would you ever hurt a Muggle?” Icarus asked. Severus would never be one of those wizards, he was sure of it. Those wizards probably had nothing better to do and Severus had exams and other things going for him. He was bright and had a bright future, his mum said so, everyone said so, even if they didn’t know it was bright future as a wizard.

Severus shrugged. “No, I suppose not, unless I had to in say, self-defence or to protect you or mum or…someone else…but I can’t say I particularly care what happens to them either. That’s why this is happening. A lot of us just don’t particularly care. We prefer not having to think about Muggles. Obviously, there are those it matters a lot too…Muggleborns, for instance—” Severus said the word like it was poison.

“They have Muggle family, after all. But there’s many witches and wizards who never think about Muggles if they can help it.”

“We have Muggle family.” Icarus said. How could Severus forget?

“Tsch,” Severus blew a bunch of smoke out the window. “You can’t say they haven’t brought it on themselves. The whole reason we’re hiding from them is that Muggles lack the capacity for nuance—they get violent when they don’t understand something. It’s extremely predictable that magical people would grow to resent this arrangement. So, if you want to blame someone, blame the people who first conceived the Statute of Secrecy and those that yet defend we should have to cater to the violent whims of people who are overwhelmingly morons.” Severus stubbed out his cigarette, ending his rant.

Icarus didn’t know what to think, climbing onto his bed and pulling his legs close. He’d never heard his brother talk like this before. When did he start caring so much about having to hide his magic? His brother bounced his knee and tapped his fingers against the windowpane.

“Forget it.” Severus said. Icarus saw Severus glance toward him, but he couldn’t make out his brother’s face in the dark. “I hope this is all sorted, one way or another, by the time you’re at Hogwarts. If not,” Severus turned back to the window and the moon outlined the profile of his face. “I dunno, but I can’t imagine Mum wanting to send you into a war zone. She doesn’t even want to take you to London to—” Severus cleared his throat. “Nevermind.” He clearly didn’t want to bring up that he thought Icarus needed to be seen at a hospital. “You’ll go. She has to let you go. You have to get out of here, Ic, we both have to get out of this place.”

Downstairs, his parents had stopped yelling. No one had come stomping upstairs, so it must have simply ended. That happened sometimes. Their fight just…fizzled out. They were family after all, his parents married, which meant they loved each other. No one in his family hated each other or so Icarus was pretty sure anyway. They just got upset sometimes.

He was pretty sure.

* * *

Chapter Text

It was almost Halloween when the kikiyaon found him. This argument hadn’t fizzled out—it had exploded. Broken glass and spilled whisky, the contents of his mother’s potions chest strewn across the kitchen into the sitting room, the lid hanging off one of the hinges. Icarus had fled upstairs, but now they were fighting on the stairs and he was trapped up here. Severus was away at school. He was alone, and he could feel it coming—a pitch black doom that made the air heavy and hurt his lungs to breathe.

Icarus thought it came through the door, but he could see it through the monster, still closed; the creature was made of shadow, or thick, dark fog. His father stopped screaming mid-threat and went down a step, putting himself between Eileen and the kikiyaon without even having the time to understand what he was looking at.

Icarus screamed from the top of the stairs, but the sound was drowned out when the kikiyaon opened its beak and let out a blood-curdling shriek, sending Eileen to her knees. With a single slash of its talon, Tobias was dead on the floor and in the next second, so was Eileen, half-turned around to flee up the stairs. She looked surprised, and Icarus watched the light leave her eyes. He screamed, turned and tried to run to his parent’s bedroom, but the floor fell beneath his steps and he was falling, falling, falling—falling through a sky where the sun kept changing.

“Sir.” Severus said stiffly. He hadn’t been back in Dumbledore’s office since he’d been bound to silence about Lupin’s condition. Dumbledore looked grave and was staring at him. With pity, no less.

“Black started it.” Severus said immediately. It was true, Black had been the one to fling dragon manure at his head—Severus dodged, but it caught Mulciber full in the face and there was no standing by once Avery had drawn his wand. Black was quick, but a good chunk of perfectly coiffed hair he spent so much time on was littering the floor of the greenhouse. Still, it hardly seemed the sort of thing that demanded the Headmaster’s intervention, not that Severus was surprised. Merlin forbid anyone lay a wand on the hair of his favorites.

“This isn’t about that, I’m afraid.” Albus said, softly. “I’ve just received word from the Ministry where they’ve been conducting their investigation since the disturbance was first reported last night.”

Severus kept quiet. This sounded like entrapment. Trying to make him fess up what he knew about the meetings Lucius was running down in Hogsmeade, maybe.

“Once news travels from Cokeworth, I fear it will spread fast in this climate and in a way that will almost certainly be distressing for you—I’m so sorry, Severus, but your parents were found dead late last night. The Ministry arrived some hours later—”

Severus had gone rigid. “Dead?” He couldn’t have heard him right. “I don’t understand.”

Albus removed his glasses, wiped the lenses clean and replaced them. “Neither does the Ministry, or so it seems to me. Their initial findings were there appeared to have been a domestic incident of some kind in which both of your parents were injured and then both succumbed to their wounds. Having read these findings, I found there are some notable irregularities, and I would urge you not to jump to conclusions until investigators have accounted for them. Forgive me, Severus, but I feel obliged to inform you of such even though I expect the minute details of this tragedy are of little concern to you right now. I simply wish to protect your grief; I am so very sorry, my boy.”

Severus blinked for a moment, his ears ringing, like every word was falling apart against his eardrum, a battering ram that kept failing to breach. And then it shifted, every cell in his body on fire all at once, “Where’s Icarus, where’s my brother?! Is he alright, is he safe? Let me go to Cokeworth, Headmaster, please, sir! My brother—he’s only six, he won’t understand!”

But Albus’ face fell even further and he seemed to dab at the corners of his eyes with his sleeve. “Oh, Severus, I wish I could. The good news is that young Icarus was not also discovered dead, but I’m afraid he has yet to turn up and there is very little, if anything, to suggest where he has gone or why. You may rest assured the Ministry is looking for him, and I know they will be here soon to question you as to where he might go—”

For the life of him, Severus couldn’t think of a single place to look. Where would his brother go if he was terrified and scared and his parents had just murdered each other? But just thinking about the fact his parents had killed each other made him feel like he was falling through the sky; he couldn’t think straight.

“I have to find him.” Severus jumped to his feet and immediately fell to the ground, his legs giving out under him as the room spun. Dumbledore appeared at his side and was chanting at an incantation of some kind, and a wave of calm washed over Severus. It was still horrible, he was still reeling, but the room stopped spinning and Severus could think a little clearer.

“No, Severus, you’ll stay here where we can watch over you—you are…as unwell as is to be expected. But when your brother is found, you will be reunited as quickly as can be managed. I can promise you that much, as well as the support of the staff, and my own. You are not alone, Severus, despite what you have lost. You will realize that, if only in time. I am sorry. I am so very sorry, my boy.”

Severus didn’t understand why he kept saying that.

“My brother…” Severus sat up on the ground. He wanted to hyperventilate, but something about whatever spell he’d been put under was forcing his breath to come slow and even, “He…has dreams. I think he…I think he might be mad. He talks about an owl monster…dreams that seem to last days—whoever’s looking for him—make sure they don’t hurt him, please, he’s…he’s not like me.” Severus felt faint and the room had begun to spin again.

“He’s a good lad,” He said as the room spun into blackness.

Icarus was trapped. He thought he’d dreamed it all at first, for awhile, but he had nothing but time to think about and now realized he never fell asleep. Thus, it wasn’t his dreaming mind waiting for his body to wake up anymore. He was here, had fallen here, body and mind, into the land of dreams he’d spent most every night of his life. If his body wasn’t asleep, then he would never wake up—he was trapped.

Most things were as they’d been. Icarus didn’t need to eat nor sleep and the world kept changing around him; that was the same. While the kikiyaon was still here, it did not hunt him anymore through the dream. It would turn up, an owl the size of a compact car with razor sharp talons and blade-like spurs protruding from the folding joint of its wings, and watch Icarus. Its shadowy body would manifest like mist then dissipate after a time. Icarus thought it was waiting for him to die. Why not? He was doing the same.

But Icarus didn’t die. He didn’t need to eat or sleep and it occurred to him eventually he probably couldn’t die, at least not on his own. He wasn’t sure he wanted to—but he didn’t want to be here anymore, alone with the monster he watched murder his parents. Sometimes, he screamed at the kikiyaon and once, he’d charged the beast, but it had taken wing and disappeared. He started to wish the kikiyaon would kill him.

He wondered about Severus, at school. Stupidly, he worried how this would effect his exams. He cried about his brother a lot. His brother was all alone, no parents, no little brother. Icarus was only six, but he knew Severus didn’t really dislike him, not even a little bit. He’d looked into the kikiyaon for him, wanted his mother to get him looked at—he’d tried to take the dreams away for him, even if he didn’t believe Icarus about what his dreams were like. But now he was at school, all alone and must be wondering what had happened to his little brother.

Since realizing he was here here, Icarus thought his body must not be lying in the hall in Spinner’s End, like his parents on the staircase. Icarus must be missing. He thought of people looking for him, down by the garbage filled river. Would they question people? The grocer, the butcher, all the people in Cokeworth who knew Icarus? Who knew his father who worked on the machines in the factory, his mother who was said to help unlucky girls to make a little money on the side, his brother who was the sharpest kid in Cokeworth and went to a fancy private school in Scotland on scholarship?

Icarus thought about them all, about what they’d have to say, and watched the sun morph and warp, again and again, wishing it could kill him too.

Severus walked up the high street into the greengrocer’s. He hadn’t been here in the two years since his mother started sending Icarus by himself, when he was four. Severus had followed him anyway, making sure his brother didn’t toddle off the road into a ditch or fall down the embankment and drown in the river. He’d still been a baby at four. He was still a baby now. He didn’t understand how his mother could send a baby into a place like Cokeworth all on his own, though he was starting to understand. His mother, his father, they didn’t care about their sons. There’d been an illusion of care, yes, one that grown very transparent as Severus grew older, but it wasn’t real. They’d killed each other, and abandoned them. Severus would manage on his own, but Icarus…if is brother was even alive, what would become of him?

He had turned up the collar of his jacket—his father’s jacket, too big on him—against the November wind. It had been nearly a month. His brother was almost certainly dead. His parents quite literally couldn’t get along to save their own child’s life. He wondered what they’d been fighting about, not that it mattered, he supposed.

He turned the collar back down as he walked into the shop. “Severus.” The grocer said the moment he crossed the threshold. He was huge, with a mustache that covered his entire mouth. Small wonder the man still recognized him, but the Snapes, unfortunately, all resembled each other. Except Icarus, with his blue eyes. Even his parents, though obviously unrelated, looked like they belonged together. Albus had gone to Spinner’s End and found some photographs for him. He’d told him, but he hadn’t given them to him.

He must know what Severus would do with them. It was fine by him if the Headmaster kept them forever; he didn’t want them—he never wanted to see his parent’s faces again. Unfortunately, they were everywhere, and so was Icarus’. He’d never seen the Prophet cover a story like this—lingering on the front page for weeks, the slow trickle of new superfluous details somehow demanding repeat visibility. Lucius had said something about the paper in a letter, an editor being sacked, a replacement, but Severus had thought nothing of it at the time. Was that why?

Severus came up to the counter, eyes everywhere. There were no less than a dozen posters bearing his brother’s face and a number for a police tip line—doubtlessly connected to some Ministry department. Icarus was a wizard and if Muggles found a young, frightened wizard, the chance of the Muggles being exposed to unintentional magic was high. Severus knew the Ministry had already been by, disguised, to do exactly was Severus was about to do, but he wanted to hear it himself. The Ministry wasn’t telling him everything.

“My…brother…he didn’t come here, that night, did he?”

The man shook his head. For such a massive man, Severus was surprised to see how emotional he looked. Why did he care so much for Icarus? Sure, he must’ve been in here three times a week, if not more, but so was nearly every housewife and eldest daughter in Cokeworth.

“We searched the town, every bin, every dumpster, every alley, the lads at the factory what knew your father, us who run the shops, and not a day has passed we’re not all checking out the window a dozen times an hour hoping to see that dark head of hair scurry by. They put a winch on a boat and dredged the river—”

Severus nodded. He’d heard all this from the Ministry too. He…hadn’t really believed it. The police maybe, especially if they’d brought some in from outside Cokeworth, had looked. He didn’t actually think the people here had looked for his brother. But the grocer wasn’t lying, Severus could tell; wandless Legilimency was simple on Muggles. He supposed that’s why they hadn’t found him too. Muggles were so limited.

“They say your folks—” the man swallowed thickly, unable to say what it was his parents had done to each other, “Don’t you believe it, Sev. Something’s not right, something’s not been right, people turning up dead, strange lights in the sky, kids going missing—your parents were good people, so don’t you believe that shite.”

No, they weren’t. Severus thought, but he couldn’t argue with everyone in Cokeworth. They’d killed each other, abandoned him and his brother, assuming they hadn’t gotten him killed already. Severus nodded his thanks and turned to leave. He checked his watch and went into an alley. He needed to be back at Hogwarts before Transfiguration. They let Severus alone, so long as he turned up to class and the Great Hall for meals, though he could go to the Hospital Wing too, if it was all too overwhelming. If he didn’t do that, they kept him in the Hospital Wing under observation, taking his wand, worried he’d hang himself or something.

Severus Apparated from the alley into Hogsmeade. He climbed the gate to the grounds and fell back down on the other side, then started up the trail to the castle, turning up his collar against the wind once more. He wasn’t exactly being subtle, sneaking off the grounds, but no one had stopped him yet. He supposed that must be Dumbledore’s doing, part of his grief or whatever. Maybe he should go back to Spinner’s End and hang himself, if only to make Dumbledore feel a fool for letting him out of sight.

There were people lingering by the lake, some kicking leaves. Severus ignored them as he walked up the footpath, until he noticed one had broken with the group and was jogging toward him, red hair snapping in the wind—Lily. Severus froze, thinking he was hallucinating it. Behind her, he realized now, was Potter and all his friends and all her friends, all standing there and watching him as Lily crossed the grounds to him. Had she told them to stay behind? He wanted to run, away or toward her, he wasn’t sure, but he was completely frozen.

“Severus.” Lily said, a little winded as she jogged to a halt. He’d forgotten what it sounded like, voice speaking to him without contempt. Part of him wanted to break down and cry—but Severus didn’t. He didn’t say anything, didn’t nod, he just stared at her, wondering what she wanted. To express her condolences? That had been happening a lot recently. Severus had ignored them all, except the one’s he couldn’t, like Lucius and Narcissa, who’d come to check in on him in the Hospital Wing before he was released.

“Severus, I’m sorry—”

“Stop it.” Severus didn’t want to hear it, he realized. He’d begged for Lily’s forgiveness after calling her a mudblood, and realized suddenly he did not want to hear an apology—not for this, not for anything, his temper flaring and his breathing becoming uneven.

“Severus, please, listen to me: you have to do something about these insane rumors—people are getting so worked up, the Prophet frames it as your Muggle father murdering a pureblood witch, there’s op-eds every day that it’s evidence wizardingkind and Muggles shouldn’t marry—”

“What do you want me to do, Lily?!” Severus snapped, furious, “The Prophet is reporting facts, Evans, in case its escaped your notice! Has it occurred to you that maybe my brother would be alive and well and safe if his parents hadn’t murdered each other?! But I guess I’m just supposed to suck it up and be responsible for what the world thinks about how my parents died, is that it?”

“Severus, I know you’re upset—”

“My entire family is dead, Lily!” Severus roared, drawing his wand. He didn’t raise it, but he saw the flock gathered by the lake jump into action and start running over, Potter in the lead. “My brother is—he’s—he’s six!” He cursed the way his voice cracked, “Stay away from me.” Severus snarled, “Just stay the hell away from me. You and your fucking boyfriend and all his fucking friends. I don’t have a whole lot to live for right now, if you haven’t noticed, and it would be a really bad time to pick a fight with me—you tell them that for me, will you?” Severus turned away.

“Get away from her!” Potter shouted, closing in. Lily turned, drew her wand in a flash and sent Potter, Black and Lupin flying back a dozen feet toward the lake with a flick of the wrist.

“Severus, wait!” She ran after him and grabbed his wrist—Severus tore it away and gripped her wrist tight, then sent her sprawling into the fallen leaves.

“Last. Warning.” Severus said, voice low and dark, wand raised and eyes pleading, begging her to back off.

“I—Okay. Alright.” The tears in her eyes sparkled liked emeralds and the wind carried her apology to his ears as Severus ran away up the path, heart racing in his chest.

What did I just do? He asked himself all the way back to the dungeons, where he locked himself in a stall in the boy’s lavatory and vomited. He missed Transfiguration and when they found him on the bathroom floor, they took him to the Hospital Wing and didn’t let him out for another week. They added another two weeks when he started screaming.

Severus had sobered some during his stint in the Hospital Wing. He no longer felt like he was a spark in a room full of flammable gas. The potions helped with that, the ones Madam Pomfrey made him take. She wouldn’t tell him what they were but he knew enough to know he was on mood stabilizers and would be on them at least until he left school.

He passed his eighteenth birthday while in his little lockdown and something had broken, or perhaps had mended itself, while he was under strict observation. He no longer felt the need to hear the people of Cokeworth tell him about his brother, his parents. They didn’t know anything of consequence. They didn’t even understand themselves. They believed themselves a close-knit community that looked out for its own, but they weren’t. They believed themselves hard-working, salt-of-the-earth people, but they weren’t. Being an idiot wasn’t some kind of ideal, anyway. Severus didn’t want to hear Muggles talk about his brother, didn’t want to hear them whisper about wasn’t right and what Severus shouldn’t believe.

“You are looking a little better.” Lucius said softly. He leaned over the table in the pub and turned Severus’ chin to the left and the right. “Need to eat more.” He concluded. The blonde leaned back in his seat and threw his arm over the back of it. He pressed a finger to his lips, watching Severus.

“I’ve been thinking…” Severus said, voice still a little hoarse. Thank Merlin for soundproofing charms, or he didn’t think any of his classmates would feel safe in the same room as him. Not that they should. “About what we spoke about. When I came of age.”

Lucius nodded knowingly, pale eyes gleaming for a moment. “Good, good, excellent…I can see how what you’ve been through might…influence you. But I must urge you not to make any rash decisions, Severus. Your well-being is paramount, of course.”

Severus nodded. “I know, but I…can’t just stand by anymore. You understand, right? I have to do…something. Anything.”

Everything.

Lucius nodded. “Of course, of course, you must feel so very…but well, you might resent me for saying so, but you’re not Crabbe and it would actually be quite a loss for you not to finish school. So, in the spirit of not doing anything…impulsive, why don’t we call this tabled. For now. Or on deck, if you like. What’s coming next, yes? School first…and then…” Lucius waved a hand through the air, fingers communicating what was going unsaid.

Severus nodded. He’d expected that. Lucius wanted his potions talent after all and Severus would need his N.E.W.T. to pursue it after school. At any rate, he didn’t want anyone’s charity; he’d support himself, work for an alchemist perhaps, or in an apothecary. Something a little less demanding than running his own business, so he could pursue whatever would be expected of him, when the time came.

“Good.” Lucius said, smiling at Severus’ nod. “Very good…I’m so pleased you’re doing better, my friend. Narcissa will be overjoyed to hear it, and all our other friends who’ve left school. Family…comes in many forms, though I understand that must be little consolation. But know you’re not alone, Severus.”

Severus rather doubted all of that. He fully believed Bellatrix, for instance, must have laughed maniacally when she heard what happened to Severus’ parents. It didn’t matter. Purebloods were purebloods, and that would never change. Other things could be changed though, and Severus was no longer willing to wait for them change on their own.

Time was either moving faster than normal or Icarus had truly lost all sense of time’s passage. He was taller. He thought he was imagining it at first, but he couldn’t deny it anymore. His pajama pants only came to mid-calf and we’re tight at the knees. He was…taller. Somehow. Even without eating or sleeping, Icarus was aging, which didn’t make any sense. He’d had dreams in the past he perceived as lasting weeks, even months, but his body never changed. Icarus couldn’t say how much time had passed, but he felt it hadn’t been even a year, or even as long as his longest dreams had lasted.

Maybe it was different, since he was in the dream for real now. Like the kikiyaon, which still didn’t hunt him, maybe time was opposite too. Moving faster than he perceived it to be. Icarus couldn’t be sure how tall he was exactly, nor could he estimate how much he was aging. Severus had his height marked against a wall in the back garden—but Icarus was always falling behind Severus, at least he was all the times his mum had taken his measure before. At six, Severus had been more than two inches taller than him. Sev was as tall as their dad now, but Icarus always feared he’d never get so tall. He supposed he’d never know now.

He told the kikiyaon about it.

He hated the owlish monster, but there was no one else to talk to. People appeared and disappeared, but most couldn’t talk or spoke nonsense and something strange was always happening to them. They never really seemed to know he was there or that they were talking to someone. Only the kikiyaon was constant. Icarus suspected it was the only other thing here that was real, like him. Everything else came and went and shifted constantly, except him and the kikiyaon. Well, except now Icarus was growing, but at least he wasn’t disappearing. As constant as a growing boy could be, he supposed.

Icarus sometimes thought the kikiyaon might be trapped here too. He’d asked, but it never made a sound. Icarus wasn’t sure if he was grateful or not for its silence. The shriek the kikiyaon had made before it cut down his parents had been the most frightening sound he’d ever heard. Sometimes, he thought he heard an echo of it, but could never be certain he wasn’t imagining it. He heard a lot of strange things here. Whispers and plots. Things he’d overheard before; ladies gossiping, people haggling. His mum’s voice. The yawning groan of steel and screams, then crunching, always accompanied by the smell of blood. Once, he heard his father tell him to go home—he’s screamed at the sun for a long time, telling his dad he needed help.

Sometimes, the sun grew a mouth and teeth and told him he was a good lad in a low, booming voice that shook the world around him.

Icarus started to notice things like that after awhile, that his memories and experiences seemed to influence the world around him. Once, it started to rain shopping lists but there was nothing but scribbles all over them. Another time, a mountain of raw roasts blocked the horizon, all caked in dirt and soot and with maggots crawling all over them. A river had appeared, all garbage and no water at all. Wormwood and other ingredients would sprout around his feet. He’d pick them and they turned into snakes.

He walked a lot. The landscape never changed as he walked, and Icarus felt like he was walking in place. But when he was walking and the landscape changed on its own, Icarus had a brief moment where he felt like he was going somewhere, or had arrived at a new destination. It made him feel less trapped, and it was something to do. It helped him think too, of something besides wondering if he would ever die. Of escape. Of home.

It had all been for naught. Lily was dead. Severus wanted desperately to die. But he’d given Albus his word, and would aid him however he needed to help protect Lily’s son. Which meant returning to Hogwarts and taking up the Potions post, as well as head of Slytherin. Why Albus trusted him with this, he didn’t know. He couldn’t protect Lily, he couldn’t protect Icarus, he couldn’t protect anyone. But sure, he’d protect Potter’s son or die trying. At least he would get to die then, having failed everyone.

Severus ran a hand—shaking, his hands always shook now, but Albus said it would pass—against the dark, varnished wood of the desk. This was his office now. His prison cell. He’d evaded Azkaban, thanks to Albus, but it tasted and burned like smoldering ashes in his mouth. Severus knew he deserved prison for what he’d done, even before he ever brought the prophecy to the Dark Lord and inadvertently painted a target on Lily’s back. All the violence he’d gone along with, all the destruction. He’d found something almost meditative in watching Fiendfyre reduce a building to embers back then. Now, he vomited whenever he smelled smoke and even lighting a cigarette made him shake and he’d found himself forced to kick the habit, which didn’t help with the shaking. At night, he dreamed of flames, the sound of them churning loud enough to drown out the screams.

And what had it all been for? His family was still dead. Lily was dead too now. And Severus was completely alone. All his anger had produced an orphan, and nothing more. For the life of him, he couldn’t remember what it was he’d wanted that day in the pub with Lucius. Only that he’d felt empty and unfeeling. It had seemed like he’d finally he regained control of himself and his emotions, and could think rationally once again. He’d known what he had to do, but now Severus couldn’t name it if he tried; he didn’t know anything about himself.

Severus didn’t know what drew him to the library that day. Term would start soon, he needed to figure out how to put a lesson together and teach still, but he found himself staring at the spine of An Encyclopedia of Mythological Fauna & Their Habitats. He pulled it off the shelf. According the card in the front, Severus himself was still the last person to check the tome out. He thought now, if he could go back in time, he would copy down every word about the monster his brother dreamed about so Icarus could read it himself…or have Severus read it to him when he got home, seeing how his brother hadn’t been able to read very well.

He had to look through the table of contents to jog his memory of what the monster had even been called, but it stood out to him clear as day once he saw it: kikiyaon. He read the entry…and a line stood out to him this time: one of its cries has been likened to that of a man being slowly strangled. Severus blinked, unsure what he was even feeling as he read the line again and again, until it finally hit him. The neighbor opposite his family on Spinner’s End had initially reported they’d heard Eileen throttling Tobias. Yet his parents had been found with large knife wounds. Of course, it had been assumed the neighbor simply meant they heard the sounds of people dying.

The weapons were never found, Severus remembered. Which hadn’t meant much to Severus at the time, but he knew it had been tremendously puzzling to the Ministry. Eileen’s wand had been found locked in her old school trunk up in the attic. Some Ministry officials had even theorized it had been his brother that killed them, with the kind of magic only the very young and untrained could produce. It was rare such magic could harm people, much less kill them, but Severus couldn’t imagine it was impossible. It would explain why his brother had fled, but Severus hadn’t been willing to entertain the thought back then.

Regardless, it didn’t make sense. What would prompt such magic? His father was a hardass, but even he’d never belted Severus until he was ten and started talking back. Moreover, he liked Icarus better than he ever liked Severus. His mother had been extremely demanding and was constantly working them both ragged, but Icarus almost never complained like Severus did when he was his age. He couldn’t imagine Icarus getting himself in trouble enough to prompt his parents to really punish him the way they would have to force that kind of magic out of him. Most evident though, was that his mother knew better what kind of magic might come out of a frightened, hurt child and she wouldn’t let anything risk their family being discovered by Muggles. Short of assaulting Icarus for no reason, it was impossible.

And his parents loved Icarus. Begrudgingly, Severus skated around the fact they loved him too, albeit doubtlessly less so as he’d grown up. He and his father never got on after he’d returned from his first year at Hogwarts. His mother expected a lot out of him, but she too, cared about him and Icarus. Kill each other, Severus could believe that. Kill Icarus or even attempt to harm him, no. He couldn’t. Severus took a deep breath; what was the most logical reason there was no weapon at the scene?

Well, Icarus might have taken it with him when he fled Spinner’s End.

Severus didn’t check out the book—he’d deal with Madam Pince later—stealing back to the dungeons with it. Somewhere, in his barely packed trunk, was the copy of the case file he’d been given when the Ministry had ended its investigation, the case going cold. There were no suspects, thus nothing was classified; he’d tossed it in his trunk and not thought about it since, but now, Severus was thinking, trying to figure out his brother’s mind—where would he have gone, why, and how?

Flipping through the file, Severus read the description of the position of the bodies on the staircase, feeling very detached from what he was reading. He examined it as clinically as he could. Bodies on the stairs, eight and ten feet from the door, locked on arrival—locked? Severus blinked at the word. Locked?

How had Icarus gotten out of the house? He supposed he might have taken the house key with…but why? Would a six year old have the presence of mind to take house key and lock up, having just discovered his parents murdered? And no, Severus had the key, and unless he’d been given a new one by the Ministry, then Icarus didn’t have it.

Severus flipped through the pages, and found one about the state of the kitchen, the spilled whisky, the broken potion ingredient chest…they’d definitely been fighting again, worse than usual. Could that have set Icarus off? Severus doubted it. His parents fought a lot, Icarus had to be used to it. Severus had been used to it at his age, not that it hadn’t frightened him too then. Icarus would have become numb to it, eventually, but Severus did not think it would produce a magical reaction in Icarus even if he was scared. He scanned the page again and found it—the kitchen door to the back garden had also been locked. He flipped some more pages. All the windows were closed and latched shut from the inside.

Then, even with the house key, Icarus couldn’t have jumped the back garden wall unnoticed. He was the scrawniest, shrimpiest six year old to ever live; he couldn’t even reach laundry on the line without standing on an upturned bin. Even if he did get over, he’d only be in somebody’s else’s back garden and unless he also broke into their house or hopped walls all the way to the end of Spinner’s End, he couldn’t have gotten out that way. If he did somehow do that, he’d definitely have left evidence behind.

Severus looked back at the monster encyclopedia where he’d tossed it on his sitting room sofa. Icarus must have Apparated. It was the only explanation. And if Icarus Apparated in fear, he would not have been able to take the weapons and moreover, he likely Apparated before his parents were dead…so what, then, had killed his parents?

He ran his hands down his face as his breathing went shallow and uneven—for so long, he’d believed they murdered each other. He’d let the Dark Lord brand him over it, had watched dozens of people pledge themselves to the Dark Lord claiming the circumstances of his mother’s death as justification for their beliefs.

Severus wanted to scream. Lily had been right to want him to speak up against the narrative that had been spun out of his family’s tragedy. But Severus hadn’t. Worse yet, he’d believed it himself and his brother was almost certainly dead because of it. He’d been missing for nearly five years now. Wherever he’d Apparated to, the chances of a six year old running across some fatal circumstance were high. It was late October when it happened, if he’d gone somewhere cold, he might have been dead by dawn.

Where would he have gone? Would he Apparate randomly? Severus thought not. Would he have wanted to go to Severus? You couldn’t Apparate into Hogwarts…but maybe somewhere nearby? Hogsmeade, someone would have found him. Icarus himself would probably have knocked on someone’s door or skipped into a pub and asked for help—the boy could talk to literally anyone about anything. He’d have been found safe in five minutes if he’d Apparated to Hogsmeade. Severus wiped his eyes, where his tears threatened to spill over. He focused on Occluding, like he was trying to stop the Dark Lord from seeing through his lies again.

Icarus might have turned up in the Forbidden Forest, he reasoned. It was right next to the school after all. And while his brother would doubtlessly have died there…it might be his remains could yet be recovered. That was something. He could bring his brother home, if nothing else. He deserved much more than that: namely a brother who wouldn’t fail him, parents who put him first over themselves, but if nothing else, Severus could bring Icarus home.

The unicorns were back. They showed up from time to time and unlike most everything else Icarus encountered, they were real. Like him and the kikiyaon, the unicorns didn’t change at random though, also like the kikiyaon, they sometimes left. They also could be approached, unlike the landscape, which was ever moving away from him.

Icarus had been wary of them first, knowing from Severus they didn’t like boys very much, but once a golden foal had trotted over to him all on her own and let Icarus touch her mane and pet her. Sure enough, it felt like real hair and didn’t disintegrate or turn into goo at his touch; the unicorns were real.

Icarus wondered how unicorns traveled to the dream place and wondered if he could ride one out. But they never let him on their back, or quickly threw him off on the rare attempt he did manage it. Still, even the full grown ones wouldn’t harm him, so he eventually learned, so Severus had been wrong about that. Maybe they just didn’t like boys like Sev: grumpy ones.

Icarus thought them welcome company overall, especially the foal, who’d become his best friend. The kikiyaon didn’t seem to mind.

Time was definitely moving faster. Not that much faster, and Icarus was now pretty confident he’d been trapped here for years. He suspected it was possible he’d been here a decade or more, based mostly on his body. He was taller than he’d thought he be, but still pretty scrawny. His clothes changed occasionally, and he was wearing one of Sev’s t-shirts, his jeans, his dad’s work boots which somehow fit him, and a silvery cloak the foal had brought him once. Unlike the other clothes, Icarus was pretty sure the cloak was real, and he always had it when his clothes changed.

It was generally a bad idea to look at one’s reflection in this place, as it would always morph into something nightmarish, but he’d risked it and noticed he was definitely older looking before all his skin melted off his reflection’s face. He looked a bit like Sev, but less somehow. His eyes were different than his brother’s and his hair fell past his waist—he couldn’t imagine what their dad would have done if Severus ever tried to grow his hair that long. It made Icarus want to cut it, but he couldn’t. Sometimes, he thought about tearing it out.

At one point, his brother had come home not looking like just a big kid anymore, and Icarus got the impression he was around that age. Not a big kid, but not really a grown up either, like how Sev had been when he was of age, but his mum could still lock him up in his room when she was cross with him and make him study all day long. It felt like less time than that, but Icarus was sure he’d spent more of his time here than he ever had in the real world, even accounting for all the time he’d been asleep.

The unicorns and kikiyaon were his only friends, but they couldn’t talk. Icarus sometimes chatted with people who appeared, even if they didn’t respond correctly to him. It felt nice to pretend to talk and frankly, Icarus felt like it’d be extremely alarming if dream people did start acting unpredictably. Their inability to maintain their forms for very long had stopped disturbing him so much. The unpredictability had become predictable and therefore, mundane.

He was bored a lot. He still wanted to go home, but beyond that, he was pretty sure he would eventually die—his body was growing up, it was aging, so presumably he would eventually die of old age. Icarus was looking forward to it.

In the meantime though, he entertained himself as best he could. He’d taken to trying to imitate the kikiyaon’s terrible screaming noise seeing as he kept hearing it echo off the inside of his head anyway. That was right around the time the unicorns started showing up. He’d been very amused to learn that the actual kikiyaon would call back when he did this, if it was around. It sometimes seemed to emphasize certain parts of its different calls, like it was trying to teach Icarus by pointing out where he was messing up. It was a lot like when his dad helped him sound out words he didn’t recognize in the newspaper.

At some point, he’d stopped being sad about his parents being killed. He still missed them, but it wasn’t constant, and part of him had even forgiven the kikiyaon for killing them. It didn’t hunt him, and the owl monstrosity seemed intelligent in a way, but it was still just a beast. Icarus thought that whatever had driven it to kill his parents might not have been its fault, but just part of its nature. You couldn’t stop alley cats running after mice, could you?

He wished he knew more about the kikiyaon. Sometimes, he felt the creature seemed almost guilty. Like it regretted what it had done to Icarus. He thought maybe that was why it kept him company: to make amends, as it best it knew how. It seemed crazy, but Icarus suspected he’d believe just about anything if it meant he didn’t have to feel bad about being friends with the monster that killed his parents.

It echoed its scream back at him—a long, slow wail that sounded like gargling water or something, but lower and less wet sounding. Icarus struggled with this one more than any of the others. It didn’t sound like something a human could do. It was like a trickling freshwater stream, if such a thing could be in pain. He’d been trying for ages. He had to take breaks sometimes, his throat would get sore—which was strange since he didn’t have much else pain, even when thrown from a unicorn’s back.

Icarus imagined collecting the sound up in the back of his throat, tapping each side of every molar with the tip of his tongue. Making weird monster noises required a lot of tongue dexterity. He first tried the mouth movement without breath or sound, deciding what he was going to try next. That worked better than just randomly making noises, he’d found. Then, he decided on execution—pitch and length and volume. He visualized them as three different numbers, a scale of one to eight. He’d done one to ten at first, but eight more evenly covered the range, and he could just use halves and quarter numbers if he wanted to make slight adjustments. He adjusted the numbers one at a time and when he was decided, Icarus cleared his throat, took a deep breath and screamed at the kikiyaon.

It started quiet and built up, like a small stream just beginning to turn swift from the rain. He pitched it down, like that stream was somewhere deep underground, and he rolled his tongue so the sound vibrated as it passed his lips—he relaxed his throat and contracted, making the sound widen and narrow, like a yawning echo as he extended the call, until Icarus was completely out of breath and fell over onto one knee. His breath came ragged, and he massaged his neck, but his eyes were on the kikiyaon. It tilted its head this way, and that, then extended both wings until they were a complete halo of shadow extending around its head.

Icarus shifted his weight off his knee, keeping low to the ground—the kikiyaon had never done that before. Icarus reminded himself it was a beast, a monster, its nature unpredictable; he took a step back and went still. The kikiyaon pointed its beak at the sky, toward the everchanging sun, and screamed: each of its calls in the order Icarus had mastered them, until it finally repeated its final cry back to him, exactly as he’d done it.

Icarus grinned and laughed; he’d done it! Then, his face fell. Now what was he going to do until he died? He didn’t have much time to ponder it as the entire herd of unicorns had come stomping over to him. Icarus froze, unable to jump away and feared they’d trample him, but they stopped short. They moved, parting, and the little golden foal that had first let Icarus pet her came through, her coat shimmering gold and silver where her adult coat overtook the adolescent one. She approached and Icarus saw something in her mouth, between her teeth. Cautiously, he held out his hand and she dropped it into his palm.

It was a whistle of some kind, or a small flute. It was black and glassy. Without even thinking, Icarus blew into it; a somber, tragic sound, like some kind of stoic water bird, rang out through the world—and it began to collapse around him.

The sky overhead shook, shifting rapidly between different forms like it couldn’t make up its mind. The unicorn herd, except the foal, turned and ran. The kikiyaon looked at him, dark eyes piercing his blue ones. Lowering the halo of its shadowy wings, it flapped them, once, twice, then took wing in a gust of air, soaring after the escaping herd.

On the horizon the mountains were rising and falling every other moment. The foal shook its head, and with it, shook out the last of its golden coat. It turned, but didn’t run, kneeling by Icarus’ side. He heard a horrid yawning sound of groaning, crunching steel, like one the machines in the factory his father worked at breaking somewhere off behind him, just out of sight.

A vision danced before his eyes, of a man half mangled in a machine, red splatter on the concrete floor. He heard his father’s voice: Look away, lad. Go on home—Icarus scrambled onto the unicorn’s back and barely got his arms around its neck before it took off at a sprint. Icarus felt sick, he’d never moved so fast in his life. He understood why he never seemed to move at all when he walked—everything was just so far apart. He could have walked for years, he had walked for years, and gotten nowhere, but now: now the landscape was disappearing before Icarus could even get a good look at it. The groan of breaking machinery was still at his back and Icarus buried his face into the unicorn’s silver mane, afraid to watch, and then he was falling, falling, falling all over again.

* * *

Chapter Text

Someone screamed.

The quaffle whizzed past Charlie’s head as he spun his broom around to face the forest. He saw a flash of something silver above the trees, but it was gone as quick as it came.

“Alright, Weasley?” His co-captain, Oliver Wood, reared up beside him on his broom, “Never seen you miss a catch before,” he said, sounding genuinely concerned. Charlie didn’t know if it was his well-being or their team’s prospects he was more concerned with. You could never tell with Wood. Good keeper though, and he’d be a good captain once Charlie was finally gone next year. Honestly though, Charlie thought Ginny would be a better Quidditch captain than he and she was nine.

“I…heard something.” Charlie wondered if he’d imagined it. He was still looking where he’d seen the silver flash, right above the canopy of the Forbidden Forest, maybe a mile or more away. He was a good judge of distance, but he’d only seen it for the blink of an eye. The rest of his team was gathering round, their practice uniforms damp with sweat.

“Let’s call it.” Charlie said before anyone could get ahead of him as he turned to face the team. They lingered, waiting.

“Days are only getting shorter. We’ve got an hour or more of daylight left yet.” Wood offered.

That’s what I’m counting on, Charlie looked back at the canopy. “I said, let’s call it.” He repeated. Charlie didn’t stick around to see if they heeded him, zooming off toward the Forbidden Forest still in his team captain robes.

That was happening more and more: Wood checking his authority—he supposed it was only natural. He was up and coming and Charlie was all but gone and going. He’d turned up to run tryouts this year and realized he wouldn’t have made himself Captain. He loved quidditch, of course, but he wasn’t cut out for leadership. His heart wasn’t in it anymore. And as much as he tried to hide it, everyone could tell. It wasn’t even the losing that got to him, but he’d bet anything the Slytherins would be patting themselves on the back about destroying his morale, as the rumor Weasley couldn’t even run a full practice anymore spread back down to the dungeons.

He scanned the forest floor through the canopy, but couldn’t see much of anything. The trees stubbornly clung to their autumn foliage, and Charlie ducked beneath the canopy, flying below the branches, above the ground.

“Hullo?” He called out, booming voice echoing through the forest. He hoped if it was a silver flare he’d seen, whoever sent it would make themselves easy to find. He pressed forward, looking all around as he passed through the trees. It was darker down here than above the canopy, and the gloom seemed to press close where the trees were thickest.

“It’s alright!” Charlie shouted, “I can help you find your way back, I won’t even turn you in! Gryffindor’s honor!” No answer came. Charlie frowned. He hoped it wasn’t Fred and George out here. Only second years, they were their second string beaters and only had to come to every other practice. They were good kids, and his brothers, but they got in over their head sometimes. Sneaking off into the Forbidden Forest sounded like exactly the sort of thing they’d do if they wanted to test some new joke of theirs. And though he hoped not, having a laugh at Charlie for getting all worked up over a flash of light and the faint echo of what might have been a hawk’s call was also something they might do, dragging it out and jumping out to scare him once they realized he’d come looking.

He furrowed his brow, trying to recall the sound as best he could, faint as it was, and compare it to the calls he knew: kestrel, red kite, golden eagle, peregrine falcon—no, it hadn’t sounded like any of them, or at least not enough he was willing to risk giving up the search yet.

“Come on out!” Charlie said a little firmer, trying to project calm authority, but it came out more like a question. He had a big voice, but he didn’t know how to use it—so, people said of him, criticizing his quidditch plays when they thought he was out of earshot. Charlie did his best not to worry too much about what might be hearing him every time he opened his mouth. He knew about nearly everything that lived in the forest. Most creatures hated loud noises, but the ones that didn’t he’d rather not run into or worse, attract toward whoever was lost in here.

Charlie took a gap in the canopy to fly up and look around, when he saw it. About a half mile further north, there was a break in the canopy where it was practically solid from entwining branches. As he neared, it looked unnatural, like something heavy had punched down through. The branches were broken and splintered, dangling downward in the wind. Charlie pressed on, ignoring the deepening twilight, and followed the path of destruction back down into the forest.

He gasped as eyes adjusted to the dark. He hovered over a meadow with a large spring, surface scattered with a rainbow of leaves, red, yellow and green. A herd of unicorns were drinking at the spring’s edge and, half-submerged in the shallows, was a girl. Her long black hair spiraled out around her in the water. She looked to be asleep. Charlie lowered his broom slowly, watching the unicorns. They were slow to trust blokes. These ones lifted their heads from the spring and gave Charlie a long, evaluating look. He kept still on his broom and kept his distance. After a moment, the unicorns turned and left through a gap in the treeline, the forest seeming to swallow them whole.

A small mare lingered, silver coat all bright and shiny and new. She muzzled something into the sleeping girl’s hand. She then turned and took off at a canter after the herd. Charlie swallowed. The girl was frightfully pale and he desperately hoped she was unconscious and not just dead. Charlie lowered his broom and dropped to the forest floor, pulling his wand from the sleeve of his quidditch robes. The forest wasn’t safe and this girl wasn’t a student. Though she looked to be around his age, he’d certainly never seen her before. She was wearing something strange—a cloak of silver, like the coat of a unicorn, wrapped around her in loose folds, several sizes too large for her.

Charlie hurried to the water’s edge. Night was falling and it was getting chillier every evening; he needed to get her out of the water. He knelt by the spring, got a hand under either arm as best he could through the cloak, and pulled her out. She lay on decaying leaves, but at least he could get her dry now. He knew a spell from a book he’d gotten in Hogsmeade on survival magic.

“Discutere Aquam!” The cloak steamed for a moment as the color lightened, evaporating the water. Charlie was getting ready to levitate her, checking the cloak around her was secure when she opened her eyes.

“Get away from me!”

Not a girl. NOT a girl! The not-a-girl and Charlie jumped half a dozen feet away from each other. The long haired boy scrambled and disappeared behind the wide trunk of a gnarled, old tree.

“It’s alright!” Charlie called, “I just wanna help.”

Slowly, a curtain of dark hair peered out at him from around the tree trunk. Charlie had no idea how old the boy was anymore. He might be his age, but he had big, wet, pale blue eyes that glistened—like Ron when confronted with spiders—and it made him look almost childlike. He was very, very, slim, with almost birdlike limbs. The kind of build that made exceedingly good seekers.

“Can I come see if you’re alright?” Charlie asked. The boy flinched as he spoke. “I just wanna make sure you’re okay.” He added, in a softer voice. He felt like he was trying to soothe a frightened wild animal, but he didn’t know how else to make the strange boy know he wasn’t a threat.

“Are…are you real?” The boy asked. His voice was masculine, but smooth, almost velvety but for the fear that sharpened it.

“Um…yes. I am real.” Charlie verbally confirmed his realness. The boy looked up at the tree canopy.

“Where…where’s the sun?”

Charlie resisted the urge to look up; he thought the boy might run for it, eyes flitting to the treeline that would only take him deeper into the forest, into danger. Whoever he was, he looked defenseless and Charlie thought he might only be wearing that cloak—if he didn’t get him out of the forest, he’d freeze for sure.

“It’s setting, up over the trees.” He thought it best to answer his questions, as strange as they were, “Still some light, but it’ll be dark soon.”

“The sun sets?” Two big, unblinking blues eyes were laser-focused on him. These questions made Charlie’s skin crawl. Who was this guy?

“Every day.” Charlie tried to sound cheerful and not terrified. The boy seemed to consider that, his wide eyes glancing to the forest floor.

“I’m okay.” The boy said, after a pause.

“Can I come see?” Charlie only received the slightest incline of his head as confirmation, but he took it and approached slowly, not taking his eyes off him.

“I’m Charlie, by the way.” He said softly, like introducing himself to a stray kitten. He kept his pace even, not moving too quickly. “Charlie Weasley.”

A spidery hand with long, pale fingers braced itself against the tree as the boy leaned out further from behind it to look Charlie up and down, though he refrained from stepping out entirely. “H-hi, Charlie. M-my name’s Icarus Snape.”

Charlie froze. The wrong move; he saw the fingers on the tree go tense and Icarus ducked behind the tree again. Only one eye watched him now. Even so, Charlie could see the resemblance. The shape of his nose wasn’t an exact match, but it was aquiline and strong on an otherwise delicately featured face; his brows were heavy and dark. With darker eyes, Charlie probably would have noticed the resemblance before learning his name.

“What?” The boy demanded, accusingly.

“I recognize your surname.” Charlie clarified, “That’s all.” He kept still, waiting for some sign Icarus was still okay with him coming closer. To his surprise, Icarus stepped out from behind the tree and came around to the front. He pulled the cloak tight around himself, and pressed his back against the tree behind him, looking Charlie up and down.

“Do you know my brother? Severus?” Icarus’ voice was cautious…and hopeful. Charlie didn’t know Professor Snape had a brother. Did Professor Snape know? He must, surely, though dad had told him some men fathered bastards. Maybe Snape’s dad was like that. Maybe that would explain why he was such a prick. If he did know he had a brother, did he also know he was missing? That he was here in the forest? Charlie pushed the questions aside and nodded. He needed to convince Icarus to follow him out of the forest first. His curiosity could come later.

“Where is he, is he alright?” Icarus sounded panicked.

“He’s up at the castle, at Hogwarts. He was in good health, last I saw him.” That wasn’t exactly true. Snape always looked a bit ill…but Icarus wasn’t exactly the picture of perfect health either, even for someone lost in a forest. Maybe they just looked like that.

Icarus looked away and stared at the ground, heavy brows furrowed in thought. “How…” He heard Icarus mumble, “I don’t…but how? All this time? Or has time not…” The dark-haired boy looked ready to cry.

“I can take you to him.” Charlie said quickly, trying to distract Icarus before he started panicking. Like wild animals, people could also spook themselves and enter a sort of frenzy. “I know where his office is, I’ll bring you straight there, if you come with me.” Charlie didn’t much fancy going down into the dungeons and knocking on Snape’s door at any time, but what choice did he have?

“I…” Icarus looked up at the tree canopy, eyes darting around. His head snapped down and he opened his hand face up to look at whatever the unicorn had left there. His eyes widened in terror—shit.

“Hey, hey—” Charlie tried to soothe him, but Icarus scrambled back behind the tree.

“I—I can’t—please, bring him here, please, I—I’m frightened, please, I don’t want to end up back—” But Charlie didn’t hear where Icarus was afraid of ending up again. The dark-haired boy’s legs had given out and he was clinging to the tree like he was afraid of falling off the earth into the sky.

“Easy, easy.” Charlie had thrown caution to the wind to appear at his side, and he placed a hand on Icarus’ shoulder. Icarus went rigid and Charlie froze, afraid he’d miscalculated. A trembling, spidery hand reached up and touched Charlie’s wrist by his shoulder.

“You’re real.” He breathed, “You’re…real.” His blue eyes slowly met Charlie’s, pupils dilated impossibly large—and then Icarus fainted, going limp against the ground. Charlie stared in disbelief. He had no idea what to do. If he tried to take Icarus from the forest, he might wake and panic—he could…try…to bring Snape here. He couldn’t imagine how Snape would react to someone telling him that his brother was found in the forest, but Charlie had enough experience with the man to know not well was the most likely answer.

But he had to try. Producing his wand, Charlie constructed a little shelter from leaves and branches and moss with a few rapid flicks and incantations. He went back to Icarus and lifted him—he didn’t weigh much at all and Charlie cursed himself again when he thought about how good of a seeker he’d make, and settled him down beneath the makeshift shelter. He conjured some parchment and a pencil—his hand were shaking too much for ink—and wrote out as legibly as he could manage that he’d gone to get Professor Snape and begging Icarus to wait here and not wander off, that the forest wasn’t safe, but he would be back as quickly as he could. He tucked it into one of Icarus’ hands, fingers brushing up against something black and glassy. He tried to pry it out, but Icarus’ grip went stiff, even in sleep. He stirred a bit, and Charlie decided to leave it, pressing the letter into his free hand instead. Finally, he cast a warming charm on the shelter and produced a little light in a jar, so that Icarus wouldn’t wake in complete darkness if Charlie didn’t make it back before then.

He grabbed his broom and flew off in the direction of the school.

Charlie was still in his quidditch robes as he knocked on Professor Snape’s office door. He waited all of three seconds before he started knocking desperately, and the tall, thin man looked murderous when he flung open the door.

“Weasley.” He ground out. “What. Do. You. Need. And why are you knocking on my door like an impatient two-year-old? Five points from Gryffindor for being a nuisance.”

“Professor!” Charlie was very out of breath. Professor Snape looked him up and down.

“Have you spontaneously developed asthma?” He asked and while there was a hint of sarcasm, it almost sounded like he thought it was possible.

“No, sir—this is going to sound insane—but I heard someone scream while practicing and I followed the sound into the forest and I found a person laying unconscious in a pool and I thought they were a girl but they weren’t a girl and when they woke up they told me they were called Icarus Snape and that they were your brother and he told me to come get you!”

The look on Snape’s face slowly morphed from irate to something like a mask, emotionless and haunted, and which truly frightened Charlie. He backed away on instinct, like the man was a graphorn about to charge, but Professor Snape followed after with silent steps.

“Do you think that’s funny, Weasley?” His voice was barely above a whisper and each syllable shook as it passed Professor Snape’s lips. Charlie was suddenly aware the corridors were deserted and that Professor Snape probably knew the dungeons so well, no one might ever find his body if the man chose to kill him.

“I swear—”

“Where did you even hear—” Snape snarled, raising his voice and the blank mask slipped to reveal the look of utter loathing Charlie recognized, “An old newspaper, perhaps, is that it? Think yourself clever? I should have you expelled for even thinking of uttering his name to my face! As it is, a hundred and…what was it again? Minus five of course, so that’ll make it a hundred and forty-four points from Gryffindor. Now, go. Go and tell Professor McGonagall why Gryffindor is at zero points—you tell her what you told me—and if you ever show your face in my classroom again, I will take every point Gryffindor ever earns until I run out of Weasleys to take points from. Now, go. Just…go…before I…” Severus whirled around and slammed the door to his office so hard, it echoed up and down the corridor and back again.

“Fuck.” Charlie muttered, head falling back against the damp dungeon wall. He held to the belief that McGonagall would hear him out and see he was telling the truth of things.

He was wrong.

Her face also went rigid and mask-like and she stared at him, utterly speechless, teacup half-raised to her lips.

“I swear, Professor—”

“Why on earth would you say such a thing to him? Have you taken leave of your senses, Charlie Weasley!? I thought you less impulsive than this.” His head of house looked distraught—and Charlie started to get worried he was going to be expelled or that Professor McGonagall would send her own house into negative points over it.

“I swear, Professor, he’s out there! I saw him with my own eyes, he told me his name, and he asked me to go get Professor Snape and bring him there—he looks like him! What was I supposed to do, not tell—”

“Silence!” Minerva stood, wringing her hands. “I don’t know what you saw out there, Weasley, but it wasn’t Professor Snape’s brother. The boy’s been missing since 1977 for Merlin’s sake!”

“I’m not lying!”

“I did not say you were!” She rose her voice and gave Charlie a stern look. He calmed down some. She believed him. Sort of. “Think, Mr. Weasley, think!” Charlie thought, but nothing came to mind except that no one seemed to think it was possible Icarus was alive. “The forest is home to dangerous creatures, Mr. Weasley. Ancient, terrible creatures, rarely seen and ill understood…which is why, you might have guessed, students are prohibited from entering the place.”

“But what else could it have been, Professor?” Charlie asked in earnest.

“Many magical creatures are intelligent, Mr. Weasley. Some even more so than people, with a far greater capacity for cruelty. Some can impersonate people or even…animate a corpse. Inhabit it. Like a puppet.” His professor shuddered by her fireplace. Charlie felt shamed. He knew better, he’d read about all sorts of strange monsters—but Icarus had seemed so human, despite his strangeness. And…if Icarus had been dead so long, why did he look to be nearly his own age? Could such a creature change a corpse too? He frowned. Yes, probably, there was a creature like that somewhere. He’d read of stranger beings capable of stranger things in the Monsteries of the Restricted Section, if nothing like that specifically. It seemed to him likely, at least.

“Dark and terrible creatures, Mr. Weasley. Quite frankly, you are lucky to be alive. It is not uncommon information, so I shall tell you: Icarus Snape’s body was never found. There are those who believe the boy may have accidentally Apparated to Hogwarts the night he disappeared. Or to his brother, to be exact, who was a student here at the time, but Icarus instead arrived in the Forbidden Forest. We cannot know, but perhaps now…perhaps now, we do.”

This did not seem to comfort Professor McGonagall at all.

“Naturally, the forest was searched many times, but a body was never found. Forgive me, Icarus Snape’s body was never found—we found dozens of bodies, primarily of those from centuries past and of students who’d gone wandering off where they’re not meant to go.” She stared at him severely.

Charlie nodded, mind wandering. He needed to find a way to keep Fred and George out of the Forbidden Forest for good before he graduated.

“So, what? A fae, maybe?” Charlie suggested one of trickier creature he’d read of. Fae were generally cruel beings…but no, it couldn’t be; Icarus had been surrounded by unicorns. Pure and innocent, unicorns didn’t heed the beck and call of creatures like the fae or any dark creature. He didn’t know what to think now, but he regretted that they’d been driven away by him when Charlie approached. What if they’d been protecting Icarus?

“That is one option. Of course, we all prefer to think Icarus is resting in peace. And when Professor Snape calms down, he is going to quickly become even more distressed when he realizes that it is much likelier you did actually see something that was, for whatever reason, masquerading as his brother, and this wasn’t some uncharacteristically cruel jest on your part. Don’t expect him to apologize at any rate, as the information will be of little comfort to him, I assure you. You have five brothers and a sister of your own, I’m given to understand. How would you feel?”

Charlie swallowed. “I—I didn’t mean—I never meant to make things worse.” He said. He wasn’t sure Icarus wasn’t real, but it was strange he wouldn’t leave the forest. Some creatures were bound to certain places. Had Charlie been tricked? Icarus had…radiated something. A strange sort of beauty, especially when he’d been lying in the spring asleep, looking like a bloody fairytale princess—that was typical of some kinds of creatures. They used magical allure to bait their victims. Charlie had even thought he was a girl right up until Icarus screamed in his face. But if any of that was true, what would be the point of luring Professor Snape out to the woods anyway? Charlie made a good a meal as any—better probably, he certainly didn’t look perpetually malnourished dungeon bat.

“Yes. Well, I’m afraid, as they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions, Mr. Weasley…you may return to your dormitory. If I were you, I would stay well away from Professor Snape until…well, at least until Professor Dumbledore has had a chance to speak to him, but I would not be surprised if the Headmaster honors his wish to have you removed from his class. As for the points…I shall do what I can, but I would be prepared to accept the brunt of the blame from your housemates.”

“I understand.” Charlie ran a hand down his face. All he wanted was to do the right thing. “I’ll just have to explain.”

“You’ll just have to not!” Professor McGonagall said hotly. “My apologies, but I will not have you spreading the name of Icarus Snape around this school again, Merlin knows that only ever led to disaster.” She sighed, but leveled him with a severe look. “You will tell no one. Understand me, Mr. Weasley? I shall expel you from Hogwarts myself if I hear you’ve disobeyed me.”

“I understand.” Charlie said again, more despondently and groaning inward. It didn’t matter he supposed. His ‘friends’ had long stopped making anything but polite small talk with him, and only when they couldn’t avoid it. It wouldn’t be so much of a loss to lose that. Open scorn might even be easier to bear than silent resentment.

“Good. And stay out of the forest! You may go.”

Charlie stood and left. It was past curfew when he entered the Common Room, but early enough it was packed with people doing homework, talking and gossiping, or playing chess and gobstones and exploding snap. A good few dozen turned and looked at him, gazes hard but neutral, and Charlie couldn’t tell if everyone knew already or not. But when they quickly went back to their work, he figured it was just the usual sentiment: that Charlie had given up on winning the Quidditch Cup and wasn’t fit to be captain anymore.

Well, at least people would cast dirty looks at him for entirely different reasons come tomorrow. He climbed the stairs to his dormitory, dormmates were still down in the common room. He grabbed a towel and a change of clothes, then went to shower, the sweat from practice and the grime from the forest washing away down his body and down the drain. He scrubbed himself with lavender soap; Charlie liked the scent of lavender. It calmed him.

He thought of Icarus—how he’d thought he’d been a girl and, for those brief, few moments, the relief he’d felt: he wasn’t gay after all. Well, fuck him, because his sleeping beauty was actually a man, and possibly not even human, but some monster wearing a dead boy’s corpse that had tried to get Charlie to murder his Potions Professor. The hot water cleared his skin and the scent of lavender did likewise for his mind.

No, thought Charlie. It just doesn’t make sense.

Icarus had been so real, and obviously confused. Confused that Charlie was real. He was frightened too. Charlie swore, turning the water off, realizing he was going to have to do something really bloody stupid or he’d never be able to live with himself. Because if McGonagall was actually wrong and Charlie believed her, then Icarus was going to die out in the forest. And if she was right…well, he’d read nearly every book in the library and Restricted Section on beasts and monsters, from the mundane to the magical and to the frankly eldritch. He’d figure something out. And if not, he’d have his broom and could still run fast, even if he was no longer the little seeker he’d once been.

Charlie toweled himself off and dressed.

Back in his dorm, he put on a jacket and jeans over his pajamas. He fished out from his trunk one of his Weasley sweaters from a few years back—too small for him now, but would probably still be massive on Icarus. He got a second pair of pants, spare socks, an old pair of running shoes he’d probably have to shrink, some underwear. He packed it all into a backpack along with an almost empty packet of biscuits and some spare sweets he found from his last trip to Hogsmeade. It would have to do, though he wished he could bring Icarus some proper food. Assuming he was real and human, that is; otherwise maybe he could distract the monster with the sweets. That would work especially well on a fae, at least. If half of what he’d read was true, even the most malignant of fae would be willing to bargain for a handful of custard creams and a chocolate frog, and then Charlie could at least get out of there alive.

Charlie grabbed his broom. He’d come straight from the forest and had brought it from the dungeons, to McGonagall’s office and now to his dormitory, instead of dropping it by the broom shed. He thought he’d be flying back to show Professor Snape where his brother was. Stupid. He should have known telling him was the wrong move. He might have told McGonagall first—that would have been the clever move. Let her take ten points for his blunder, rather than have Snape take all of them. He didn’t really care about the points, but it would be nice if he got them back in the event Icarus was really actually alive. Knowing Snape though, he’d probably not reverse it of his own volition.

Charlie moved to the window and unlatched it. It was pretty awkward for him to get out the window. He’d lost all the lightness of his seeker’s build in fifth year, now broad-shouldered and strapping where he would have preferred to stay slim and lithe. He’d make a better keeper, or even beater at this point. The only reason he still played seeker was because everyone else he’d tried out for the position…sucked. A lot. Though better, he wasn’t so hot at it either anymore, too bulky on his ancient secondhand broom, which had been his dead uncle Fabian’s from when he’d been in school in the bloody sixties. For all his dexterity on a broom and the adjustments he’d made to Fabian’s, Charlie couldn’t keep up with those who had brooms from the last decade presuming their riders were even half-decent fliers.

He managed to stuff himself out the window and onto his broom without falling to his death. Floating back to the window, Charlie accio’d his backpack and threw it over his shoulder. He shut the window and latched it magically, before spinning around and flying back toward the forest, really, really hoping he’d still be alive come dawn.

Icarus rocked back and forth on the ground, holding the jarred light Charlie had left him in his lap. He’d circled the spring once when he woke up, but it was freezing out. It was sort of nice at first; it was never hot or cold in the dream land. But his feet had started to hurt and go numb, and he could see frost forming on the spring’s surface. It was nice and warm back inside the shelter. Charlie had probably done that too.

It’d taken him awhile to work up the courage to read Charlie’s letter. He kept thinking he’d unfold it and all he would see were scribbles, like he had on everything else while he’d been trapped. But no, Charlie’s penmanship was clear and blocky, written in all capitals for some reason, but Icarus didn’t mind. He could read it at least, though it had been strange at first. He recognized all the letters still, but his brain didn’t read automatically. You didn’t really forget how to read, it seemed, but you could forget how to start reading, or how to read automatically maybe. Icarus wasn’t sure, but he regretted not going with Charlie now. He was all alone in a dark forest, he could barely read, and he didn’t have a wand, not that it mattered he supposed; he barely knew any spells. A couple from watching his mum and Sev, before he got his wand taken after trying to run away. Would Severus buy him a wand, he wondered? Or would they share one, like they’d shared a bedroom? He didn’t know how much wands cost.

Probably less than ten pounds though.

He hoped Charlie returned with his brother soon. He hoped Severus wasn’t too surprised to see him all grown up. He hadn’t thought to ask Charlie what the date was, but if Severus was still at school, then that meant time hadn’t passed much here at all. He was worried that maybe no time had passed and that meant Severus didn’t know about their parents yet. He didn’t know how to tell him the kikiyaon had killed them and then trapped him in the dream world until he was all grown up. That would be a shock for Severus—he was so used to having a little brother, but he might not even be the younger one anymore. And Icarus didn’t even know how to be a big brother.

He pulled on his hair. He’d never noticed how long his hair had gotten in the dream world, but obviously it hadn’t been cut in over a decade. While walking around the spring, he’d worked up the courage to look at his reflection, relieved to find that it didn’t change and shift. He looked a lot like a girl for some reason, which was frustrating. Severus didn’t look like a girl just because he was grown up. Icarus thought if he chopped all his hair off, he might look like a boy again. He’d tried to imitate it by holding it out of the way, but there was just so much of it. He understood why even his mother didn’t grow her hair out this long. It got in the way of everything.

“Icarus?” A voice called from above. Climbing out from under the shelter with the light, Icarus saw a dark shape silhouetted against a waxing moon.

“Sev?!” Icarus called out. His brother was on a broomstick! They weren’t allowed to fly around Cokeworth, but he’d heard Severus talk about flying at Hogwarts.

“It’s Charlie. Can I come down?”

Icarus frowned. Severus hadn’t come. Had Charlie not been able to find him? Severus said the castle was a big place and it was easy to get lost, but most learned their way soon enough.

“Yeah, alright.” Icarus tried not to sound too disappointed. He was sure Charlie had tried his best. Charlie landed a few moment’s later, shrugging off a backpack. He was wearing different clothes. Icarus suddenly felt under-dressed. All he was wearing was a blanket.

“I wanted to bring you some things.” Charlie said, dropping to one knee outside the shelter while Icarus sat back down where it was warm. As if he’d read Icarus’ mind, Charlie started pulling clothes out of his backpack, telling Icarus to try them on. Most things were too big. He had to roll up the sleeves of the icy blue sweater to keep them from covering his hands completely. There was a big gold C on the front. Charlie gave him some underwear that did not fit well and pants made of something durable with lots of pockets. Icarus cuffed them so they weren’t too long. He gave Icarus a jacket to go over the sweater and a belt he stabbed another hole in for him so it would fit around his thin waist.

“I like this sweater!” Icarus said, “It’s so warm and big.”

“Keep it,” said Charlie. “Doesn’t fit me anymore anyway. Matches your eyes too.”

Icarus looked at him like Christmas had come early. Once, he’d assured Icarus that yes, it was really okay and he could keep it, Charlie fiddled with the shoes and socks, changing their size with his wand as he told Icarus what had happened.

“Severus…yelled at you?” Icarus didn’t understand why. He was unwrapping a chocolate frog Charlie had given him.

“Took points too, threatened to expel me. Should ‘ave thought harder about it, or what I was gonna say at least.” The shoe became like a doll’s shoe and Charlie frowned.

“You can’t be expelled by another student…can you?”

Charlie blinked at him, going still. “Your brother’s not a student,” he said. “I’m…shit, I’m sorry—he’s the Potions Master. A teacher.”

Icarus stared at him. His brother, a teacher? “He must’ve done pretty good on his exams after all.” He said quietly. He took the chocolate frog from the package and twisted it in half before it could jump away, “Here,” said Icarus, “My brother always splits these for us.”

Charlie hesitated, but took his half of the mutilated chocolate, the back legs weakly twitching. “Does he? That’s…fascinating.” Charlie said with a big grin; he seemed amused by what Icarus had said. Icarus looked up at the moon. If his brother was a teacher, he supposed that meant a bunch of time had passed…meaning Icarus had been missing for years.

“’m sorry you got in trouble,” he said quietly. “When you said he was at the school, I thought you meant he was a student, that’s why I thought—because I didn’t know how time was passing here.” He put the chocolate frog head in his mouth, but immediately spat it out. It tasted like unsweetened porridge made with water from a street puddle.

“I think it’s gone off.” Icarus croaked, glaring as the frog head pathetically pulled itself across the ground. He pulled a biscuit out of the packet and bit off a corner, but spat that out too—it tasted exactly the same. That made more sense though, seeing the packet had been opened at some point.

Charlie must clean his room about as often as me and Sev do.

Charlie wasn’t paying attention though, head cocked to the side, though Icarus noticed he was still slowly chewing the spoiled chocolate regardless. He was about to say something when Charlie swallowed. Icarus cringed. He hoped he wouldn’t get ill.

“I don’t—didn’t know how time was passing? What do you—Icarus, where have you been all this time? Everyone thinks you’ve been dead for twelve years.” He’d gotten the shoes to a close size, and gave them and the socks to Icarus to try on.

Icarus frowned. Severus didn’t think he’d survived whatever killed his parents. Had he looked for Icarus? He must’ve, but Icarus didn’t know if it was worse whether Severus did or didn’t. He’d been doomed to never find him, but it would hurt his feelings if Severus never even looked. That probably made him selfish. Severus had been all alone for twelve years. Unless he had a wench. He probably had a wench by now, Icarus thought and it made him suddenly feel like he shouldn’t go home, shouldn’t disturb Severus and his life—he’d just have to take care of him too then. What if he had babies of his own to look after? Icarus didn’t want to be another mouth to feed, another wand to buy, another back to clothe and all the other things he remembered his mum and dad fighting about.

“Maybe…maybe it would be better if I was dead.” Icarus said, pulling on the socks.

“What, no! Look, your brother, he was just upset because he thinks I’m having him on. But if you came up to the castle with me and talked to him yourself, he’d see you are really alive! He’d be relieved! After all these years, he’d have his brother back!” Charlie said quickly, “Nobody wants you to be dead, alright? They just don’t understand how you could be missing for so long and still be alive.”

Icarus nodded but didn’t say anything. He couldn’t do that to Severus. Come home after all these years and inconvenience him. He couldn’t be any help to him, he didn’t even know why the kikiyaon had killed their parents or what it had been doing in Cokeworth to begin with. Severus had been living twelve years in his bright future everyone had always talked about; what if Icarus coming home mucked it all up for him? A moment later, Charlie was kneeling in front of him. He put one hand on either of Icarus’ shoulders and stared him right in the eyes.

“Hey, hey, hey,” crooned Charlie, “Look at me, Icarus. I want you to say it out loud, okay? Say: nobody wants me to be dead. It wouldn’t be better if I was dead.”

Icarus blinked at him. Charlie had big, warm brown eyes and when the jarred light’s slow-pulsing light caught them, they looked like an amber Severus had given him. In it had been a pale insect; an orchid mantis, Severus had told him. It had been beside his bed on a table, way back when Icarus had woken up in the hospital, as far back as Icarus could remember; when he was three. He’d been told he didn’t have nightmares before he’d woke up in the hospital after being sick and having slept for a year.

Severus had never told him why he’d given him the amber, Icarus thought. But it suddenly occurred to him his brother probably hadn’t wanted him to die in the hospital and he probably didn’t want him to be dead right now either. Probably.

Icarus swallowed. He felt silly, but said the words back to Charlie. He supposed it should be obvious that no one wanted him dead, probably.

“Sorry.” He mumbled after he’d said it, finally tearing his eyes away to look at the chocolate frog, still trying to heave itself across the ground.

“Come on, it’ll be alright, you’ll see. You just have to get your bearings. Take some deep breaths, okay? One step at a time.” Charlie squeezed his shoulder gently. Icarus nodded, still avoiding his amber gaze. He closed his eyes and took deep breaths. He felt bigger with Charlie’s hands on his shoulder. More solid.

“Do you…do you know where you’ve been? You seemed confused earlier. About what was real and what wasn’t.”

“Oh.” Icarus said. He took a last deep breath and opened his eyes. He did feel a little better now. “Yeah. I was in the dream land, where stuff changes all the time. Only things that are real stay the same—like the unicorns and me and the kikiyaon—and that’s it basically. Everything else changed. The sun, the ground, the sky. There’d be a mountain one minute and then a river there the next, and then a volcano with blue lava bursting out of it. So earlier, I just thought you might be another dream person, and not a real one and I thought you might, I dunno, melt into a puddle or rip your own face off and eat it. Something weird.”

Icarus reached for a shoe where Charlie’s had left them. “I can tie my own shoes!” Icarus informed him proudly, showing Charlie—but he found he’d actually forgotten how and it took a couple of attempts to get them tied securely.

“See! Told you so!” Icarus beamed when he finally managed it.

Charlie had gone very stiff and was still staring at him, eyes wide and mouth agape.

* * *

Chapter Text

Severus was seething, pacing in his office. The headmaster sat across from his desk but Severus hadn’t sat down since he slammed the door in Weasley’s face.

“I want him gone, Albus.” Severus said flatly. “I won’t be mocked, I won’t be tormented with his memory by my own students!” He snarled. He wanted to scream until his voice was raw. He might have, if he didn’t fear Madam Pomfrey would try to put him on mood stabilizers again. They helped, in a way. They also made it so bloody easy to ignore his own guilt and that was the last thing he needed—he was supposed to have brought Icarus home, but he’d failed at even that.

“You’re certain Mr. Weasley said it torment you?” Albus asked.

“Why else would he say it?!” Severus slammed his fist on the desk. His hand was going to be bruised come morning at this rate.

“Why, I’m so pleased you asked, Severus. I see two options. Given Charlie Weasley has no record of playing cruel pranks, or pranks of any kind on people, either he found your brother out in the Forbidden Forest or he found something that looks and talks and acts like a human that has convinced Mr. Weasley he is your brother.”

Severus went rigid. “No,” he said like it would make it true. “No, Merlin, no—he’s lying he—”

“You would prefer that, I know, Severus. You would prefer to be mocked and tormented, than to believe your brother’s corpse has been defiled wherever it is resting.”

“I was supposed to bring him home.” Severus muttered darkly and collapsed in his chair at last. He dropped his head into his hands and finally felt the ache in his legs. How long had he been pacing? He didn’t know how long he could continue to bear this, his every neuron firing like a hot and volatile machine piston. He was a skilled Occlumens, had to be to demonstrate he did not need the mood stabilizers, but the moment his thoughts turned to his brother all his carefully curated self-control evaporated, all the raw flesh of his nerves submerged in something scalding and acidic. He was supposed to bring Icarus home. Instead, he had failed to protect him, failed to find him, failed to even find his body.

“Look at it this way, Severus: perhaps now, you yet can. Mr. Weasley knows wherever the thing impersonating your brother is—if that is the case, of course. You’ll be thorough, I’m sure.”

“My brother is dead, Albus.” Severus said, lifting his head. He leaned back and let his gaze rake over up to the stone ceiling. His eyes felt stiff and strange and he’d knew they’d gone glassy and red. It was what happened to his eyes instead of weeping now; he wasn’t even sure he was capable of weeping anymore. How pleased that would have made his father, had he lived to bloody see it—had his death not been necessary for it to have happened to begin with. His eyes stung, like he’d forced himself not to blink for hours, so Severus closed his eyes. It didn’t help.

He didn’t know why Albus maintained the possibility of Icarus’ survival. He’d be eighteen by now, older than Severus had been when he lost him and his parents.

“It is possible he is dead, yes.” Albus said. “It is likewise possible he is not, until proof to the contrary is provided.”

“Albus…” Severus massaged his temples. “You know as well as I—”

A series of knocks came from the door. Severus ran a hand down his face. It had to be nearly dawn, he decided. What student would dare draw attention to themselves at this hour? After a few moments, the knocks grew rapid and desperate, and did not stop for anything.

“Weasley!” Snape hissed. “I’ll kill him.”

“Or…” Albus offered, “Ask him where he saw this apparition of your brother—question him.”

Severus scoffed, standing and crossed to the door. He opened it, to find Weasley—and a girl with long, dark hair.

“Severus!” The waifish thing shouted with a low voice that did not match their appearance at all. “You look so weird!” The next thing Severus knew, two long, thin arms were squeezing around his middle.

“Never fear, Severus.” Albus appeared at his side, waving his wand in Icarus’ direction and prodding him with it a few time. Icarus did not seem to notice or care, squeezing Severus so tightly his ribs started to ache. “This creature appears to be human—and related to you. I could have sworn Professor McGonagall told someone to stay out of the forest, but all’s well that end’s well, yes? Come along, Mr. Weasley, I must speak with you in my office.”

And then Severus was alone again, but not. His brother was here. Somehow, his brother was here. Severus felt feeling return to his arms which were frozen uselessly in a pose of being quite taken aback. He thought to return the embrace, but his disbelief would not permit.

“Icarus?” Severus turned the boy’s face up with shaking hands, with some difficulty as the boy had his cheek pressed so hard against Severus’ sternum you’d think Icarus was trying to climb inside so he could live in Severus’ ribcage. He practically had to shove his brother’s to get him to look up, but sure enough, it was him. Icarus’ pale eyes gleamed up at him, but there was something strange about them now. A kind of vapor seemed to swirl in his irises, so subtly Severus first thought he was imagining it. It was like dry ice, a blue-white fog that circled his pupils like a hurricane seen from the stratosphere.

“What…happened to you?” He asked. His little brother looked somewhere between child and man, leaning uncomfortably toward the latter. Severus suddenly thought he might faint and the only thing that kept him standing was the thought that he did not want his brother to find himself alone again.

“I grew up or something.” Icarus said with a shrug which was…disturbingly like the brother he remembered. Albus was right: it was him. It was him.

“Yes…” Severus swallowed thickly, “When? How? Where?” Severus’ voice was strained. He kept a hold of Icarus’ face, afraid to let it go.

“You were right, Severus, about the kikiyaon!” His brother’s eyes lit up, “It does live in a dream world and when it—” He frowned suddenly. It was…bizarre, to see such a serious expression on his little brother’s face. Before he’d looked like an upset little boy whenever he frowned, pouting, petulant and sulking. Now he looked…severe, his face all angles and sharp edges. “Sev, you know already, right? You know that the kikiyaon—what it—that it—” Icarus couldn’t breathe, his pupils blowing wider with each word he tripped over. Severus watched in horror; wherever he’d been, whatever had happened to him, Severus was watching his brother be buried beneath the weight of it before his very eyes.

“Icarus.” Severus said it softly and did not recognize the sound of his own voice. “Look at me. Come here. Sit down.” He steered his brother when he didn’t comply, pushing him into his own desk chair. He pulled his wand from his sleeve and flicked it, summoning a Calming Draught. He had to tilt his brother’s head back and hold it to his lips to make him drink it. It seemed to have the opposite of its intended effect; the moment the vial was empty, Icarus jumped out of his chair.

“What did you just give me?! I don’t want to go to sleep, don’t make me go to sleep, Severus! No, no, no—” Icarus backed himself into a shelf and sent a jar of flobberworms crashing to the floor where it shattered. Icarus screamed and jumped away from the noise; Severus grabbed him right before he crashed into another shelf, taking each forearm in a firm grip when Icarus tried to jump away even from him.

“Icarus!” He said forcefully, “It’s just to calm you! No one will make you go to sleep. Deep breaths, can you do that for me?” Icarus started sucking down air like he’d just been drowning and Severus had to tell him not to do that either—but eventually his breathing evened out.

“I don’t have to go to sleep?” Icarus said.

“No.” Severus lied. Obviously, his brother had to sleep eventually, but not right this minute if he was going to have a fit over it. When was the last time he’d slept? “Tell me, Icarus, where were you? And if you can…tell me what happened the night our parents died and…and what happened after.”

His brother was wearing a Weasley sweater, Severus finally noticed when he had gotten Icarus up to the Hospital Wing. He was thankful it was a weekend, though he suspected a time-off request for unexpected family reunion from beyond the grave would have been rubber-stamped before it even hit the surface of the Deputy Headmistress’s desk. The sweater was too big on Icarus, but it occurred to Severus as he dug through his old school things that nothing he owned might fit Icarus either. He was a combination of shorter, thinner and smaller that Severus had never been. Severus had gone from short and small to tall, lean and gangling pretty much overnight at fourteen, which was convenient in terms of him having only had the one awkward-fitting clothing phase until his mother could alter or replace his clothes. He’d have to get Icarus a wardrobe of his own soon.

But for now he would settle for getting him out of Weasley’s clothes. The point deduction had been reversed before breakfast, not that anyone asked Severus’ opinion on the matter. If it were up to him, he’d have taken all of Gryffindor’s points anyways for dressing his brother up like a freckled ginger or someone who was a really big fan of Charlie Weasley specifically, but at least no one was making him apologize to Weasley.

It was good no one else had seen that confrontation, knew what a near thing that had been; Severus had never been so close to actually hurting a student before. He’d been almost afraid of his own anger, though it had served a purpose in hiding the likely truth from Severus’ rational mind until Albus could point it out to him: that Charlie Weasley likely had found something impersonating his brother. Likelier than Weasley deciding he had a death wish on a random day in November.

It occurred to Severus now that possibility had been proposed for his own sake and that should his brother turn up in his office one day after a dozen years missing with zero warning, he might have reacted badly to his appearance. By gradually moving from the idea Weasley was mocking him, to that Weasley was being deceived, to Icarus actually being real, Severus had an easier time being there for his little brother when he immediately fell to pieces once they’d reunited.

He didn’t blame Icarus for that; he’d apparently been holding himself together for years. Somehow. It wasn’t surprising to Severus that his fundamentally childlike mind began to unravel the moment Icarus was back with his brother. He supposed he ought to be grateful that Albus had apparently anticipated that Charlie Weasley wasn’t, in fact, being deceived and further expected that the boy would inevitably go back to the forest so he could bring Icarus to the castle, in spite of being warned not to by his own Head of House. You could fault Dumbledore for a lot, but not his sense for orchestrating circumstances to achieve a favorable outcome.

Severus had been not so subtly told he had to let Charlie Weasley back into his class now, which was reasonable, he supposed. Gryffindor had also been awarded fifty points for Charlie Weasley following his gut and helping someone in need at risk of danger to himself. He’d ended the Gryffindor’s quidditch practice and flown off without a second thought. How terribly heroic, Severus though glibly, though he wondered if Weasley had learned by now that Gryffindor’s practice ran for another hour regardless under Oliver Wood, but the petty house squabbles of Gryffindors were not his concern.

Severus had about forty million other concerns now. He had his brother back, and he was pleased about it—somewhere, deep down, he was sure of it. Immediately though, he was overwhelmed. What was he going to do with Icarus? Something wasn’t right with him. Severus had listened intently to Icarus’ account of their parents death and of the dream world, nodding politely and not believing a word of it all the while. His brother was unwell, but that wasn’t surprising. He’d been like that before he’d lost his parents and gone missing for a dozen years. He needed Severus, clearly, and unlike his mother, Severus planned to provide whatever care it was Icarus needed.

There were other issues Severus had noticed while listening to him, besides his madness, which his brother would have to overcome. Icarus was all but a man, had a man’s voice, but spoke and acted much like the six year old boy he’d left back in Cokeworth all those years ago. As Severus recalled, his brother could barely read and couldn’t write very well either. A small test had proved that was very much still the case when Severus asked him to create a new label for the flobberworm jar he’d broken by copying the old one, which had been written in Severus’ own hand: his brother had written out, llobharvans in a shaky, unpracticed hand, though not after scratching out three other attempts. Had it not been one of the most dire things he’d seen in his entire career as a teacher thus far, Severus might have laughed.

Instead, he’d thanked his brother and quietly concluded Icarus was functionally illiterate, adding it the list of things he would need to see to for him now that Icarus was in his care. Obviously, they could hardly enroll him at Hogwarts. Lack of prerequisite skills notwithstanding, his brother was eighteen. Was he supposed to attend Charms with eleven year olds? Eleven year olds who could read better than he could? Make friends with them? No, he needed something else, something that would help his brother make up for lost time that he might catch up and be able to pursue at least some degree of independence before Icarus was into his bloody thirties.

And unfortunately, it was looking like Severus was going to have to be the one to determine whatever it was his brother needed and how it should be gone about. It wasn’t the responsibility that ate at him. If anything, needing to provide for his brother’s well-being for the foreseeable future was a relief—a kind of penance for having failed him, and failed so many others too. His brother needed him, but unfortunately, his brother likely needed much more than Severus could provide. He was not a father, a mother, he was a teacher mostly in name, and knew he wasn’t a particularly likable one at that. He would do his best, he had to; it was his responsibility. But the thought his best wouldn’t be enough was already making Severus sick with worry.

He collected the last of the clothes and put them in their own trunk. It could be Icarus’ now, a place to keep his things. He was going to live in the Hospital Wing for now, and with Severus once the house elves finished modifying his quarters and his brother was otherwise declared healthy and normal of body, if nothing else. He returned to the Hospital Wing quickly, hoping Poppy hadn’t suggested Icarus needed to get some rest lest he have another panic attack. She was still scanning him when he returned. That was odd, and rather suggested she had discovered something unexpected. For some reason, Severus’ mind jumped to his brother’s organs being riddled with malignant tumors and now he was going to have to watch him die after only just getting him back.

Poppy finished prodding Icarus with her wand and gave him what looked like a sticker before crossing the room to Severus. Albus had also appeared out of thin air to Severus’ left.

“Is he well?” Albus asked before Severus could ask what was wrong with Icarus. Poppy looked over her shoulder at Icarus. He looked ridiculous in Weasley’s clothes. She looked back and smiled bracingly and Severus frowned. He knew that look, had seen it directed at himself; something was very wrong with Icarus and fixing it would be deeply unpleasant for him.

“Nearly every organ in his body is dormant…asleep almost, like something capable of hibernating for a very long time. It suggests his body was in a kind of hibernation, or stasis, until only recently. Such things are possible with some magic; petrification, for example, but obviously that causes a number of other complications besides. I’ve never seen only the organs being in stasis.”

“Hmm,” Albus mulled it over, stroking his beard, “Icarus did say he didn’t have to eat or sleep in the dream land, but that he grew nonetheless.” Albus said it as if dream lands were real and worth crediting.

Severus gave Albus an incredulous look, in disbelief he had to suggest this to one of the most brilliant wizards of the age. “Sir, are you certain his claim of…falling into a world of dreams and spending a dozen years there…is a credible one?”

Albus looked back at him with equal incredulity, as if the idea of not believing Icarus was the absurd one. “Well, I’m not inclined to believe he has survived in the real world on his own for a dozen years, so yes, I am thus inclined to trust Icarus on this matter.”

Severus refrained from scoffing or rolling his eyes, but the look on Albus’ face suggested he understood his thoughts regardless.

“I don’t wish to alarm you, Severus, but stranger things have happened. Not much stranger, mind you…but there are realms of magic we still know very little about—dreams are one such area.”

“Dreams aren’t magic,” Severus folded his arms, “Even Muggles dream.”

“Muggles don’t generally have prophetic dreams though, do they? At least some witches and wizards were able to predict the future via dreams—and there are other instances of dream magic that have been recorded: people traveling through dreams, for instance, was a rare but not unheard of means of travel before widespread use of teleportation magic became possible through Apparation, portkeys, so on and so forth.”

Severus’ frown deepened. Where was Minerva? She wouldn’t credit this—the only ‘magic’ at Hogwarts to do with dreams were the bloody dream journals Trelawney made her students keep.

“The method was understood as a visualization and manifestation magic,” Albus continued, “in which the traveler intentionally dreamed lucidly of the place they wished to go to. Later studies of the practice however found that it was, in fact, a teleportation magic: one that used an intermediate point of redirection in a place rarely glimpsed by dreaming wixen—a place Icarus seems to have spent a great deal of his life and, if I understand him correctly, a great deal of his sleeping life before he ever went missing…didn’t your brother ever report strange dreams, Severus?”

“Only every night of his life, after he’d recovered from an unknown sleeping sickness in St Mungos. He slept for nearly a year,” Severus said, crossing his arms, “He recovered, but complained of dreams often after…well, he primarily cried of dreams often until he learned to speak better; he was only three and a half when he woke. I tried to give him a dreamless sleep potion once, but he dreamed regardless. I thought it odd enough that I tried to compel my mother to have him looked at again but she…”

Severus exhaled, glancing away. He did not want to blame his mother—but who else was there to blame? Across the Hospital Wing where they were speaking in hushed voices, Icarus had stuck his sticker in the hollow of the C on the Weasley sweater. Severus remembered he had complained for years, avoided sleep whenever possible, and no one ever tried to help him, except Severus, who never succeeded and was almost always scolded for it. Babying him, just like your mother, his father had said, though to her he was fretting over nothing, same as your father.

Useless, Severus thought bitterly. While his father was Muggle, his mother might have suspected there was something magical about her son’s dreams…but she did not want to believe that, evidently, and was content to simply address the behavioral problems his dreams manifested in Icarus.

Severus glanced back to Albus and Poppy, “Well, she didn’t do it…did my brother mention anything to you about an owl monster called a kikiyaon?” Severus asked, feeling he wanted to nip this in the bud before Albus credited that too.

Albus nodded. “He said you told him it lived in the dream land.”

Severus frowned, “No, I only told him some of what I read after he begged me in a letter to look into it.”

“Oh, excellent.” Albus said cheerfully, “Go on, then.”

Severus didn’t stop himself rolling his eyes this time, “Very. Well. They are creatures of myth, even by wizard’s knowledge, the myths originating in Africa and pertaining to some indigenous groups’ beliefs of a dream world, or afterlives and spirit planes. I had assumed my brother heard of it elsewhere and began to have nightmares of it…though he swears he heard about it first from a wizard in his dreams to begin with, who promptly shrunk out of existence.” Severus hoped that would make Albus see this business of a dream world for what it was: the result of his brother’s overactive imagination, turned into a coping mechanism from the trauma of watching his parents get murdered.

Unfortunately, Severus had noticed that Icarus’ version of events did technically resolve most all of the lingering questions of his parent’s death. There was no murder weapon, because the kikiyaon had cut his parents down with its talons, which appeared like deep lacerations—knife wounds—to the investigators. Accidental magic by Icarus had also been floated as the likelier possibility, but with Eileen’s wand tucked up in the attic, there were no other immediately plausible explanations.

Further, the doors and windows were all latched despite his brother’s disappearance, because Icarus had been transported to a dream world from inside the house. He had likened it to falling through the floor and then through the sky. Severus had his doubts; Apparation did not feel like falling. A portkey did, but there was no explanation for a portkey being in Spinner’s End. Icarus seemed to believe the kikiyaon had brought him there.

Distressingly to Severus, for a possibly parent-murdering bird, Icarus didn’t seem terribly afraid of the kikiyaon, which was saying something for a boy who once feared even owlets because they supposedly had similarities with the monster. Severus didn’t know what to make of that. He’d wondered briefly, if Icarus hadn’t been kidnapped by a witch or wizard, who’d locked the door after breaking in and murdering his parents, and Icarus’ broken mind had conflated his kidnapper and the imagined monster under his bed as the same entity. That seemed…unlikely, given Icarus’ casual discussion of the monster and especially given his extreme reaction to the idea of going to sleep.

Though, perhaps again, it might not be so unlikely if a kidnapper had meddled with Icarus’ memories.

“Severus, Headmaster,” Poppy clipped irately, both men lost in their own thoughts, “Perhaps, and I understand if you two wish to continue speculating until he’s on death’s door, we should focus our attention on getting his organs non-dormant before he starves to death?” Severus and Albus both looked chagrined and nodded for her to continue. She cleared her throat, “I fear feeding Icarus will produce adverse results, but I can think of no other way to wake up his body then to have him begin to use them as he normally would. I’m open to ideas, if you’ve any.” Poppy added.

Albus nodded, “I advise caution, though I expect that was your plan. Feed him very little and see what happens, try to treat any reaction that occurs while continuing to monitor his organ functions and most importantly, ensure his comfort. Associating pain with normalcy now will only come back to bite us down the line. I would advise you not even start with food, but small amounts of water—but don’t worry, Poppy, he shall not starve. Severus can brew a potion which can replace food as nutrition, for a limited time. It may be a good idea, Severus, to discern if that potion can be modified to extend the usage, as it may prove necessary.”

Severus nodded, “Sir, about his…other needs. My brother can barely read—”

“Severus, Severus, Poppy is right, can’t you see. I and you are getting ahead of ourselves. I advise you let Icarus do as he pleases for now.”

Severus couldn’t believe his ears. If Icarus did what he pleased he’d only while his days away climbing the parapets, throwing rocks in the lake, and talking to every stranger on the street in Hogsmeade about whatever critter he’d found under a rock that day. The vision of the clumsily scrawled llobharvans felt burned into the back of his eyelids. He should have brought it with to make Albus understand how disastrously ill-prepared his brother was for life, “But, sir—”

“I realize, Severus, that you were brought up to believe quite literally the opposite and that it might seem strange to hear it from the headmaster of a school, but education is not, in fact, the most important thing in life. I won’t deny it matters, but even so: there are many types of education. Icarus should concern himself with learning other things, for the time being. There’s no sense in trying to bring him up to speed on everything a young man ought to know by now—he will only trip and fall if you push him before he’s ready to run.”

Severus nodded stiffly, but disagreed vehemently. His brother would never get up to speed if he did not first learn to read more proficiently than a six year old. Too irritated with the headmaster to do anything but curtly excuse himself, he left Poppy and Albus to discuss his brother’s medical needs. Severus crossed the length of the Hospital Wing to where Icarus was…tying and untying his shoes over and over again.

“What are you—never mind. Poppy is going to give you some water soon.”

“’m not thirsty.” He mumbled, brows furrowed. Icarus was…struggling. A lot. Severus frowned. He thought his brother knew how to tie his shoes, last he checked. “This is so hard to do with such big hands…” Icarus muttered. In truth, Icarus had rather small hands for a nearly grown man, but relative to a six year old, he supposed they must seem a lot larger. Severus wondered how he could still be so clumsy with them, though.

It seemed to lend credence to Icarus’ assertion he’d been trapped in place for a dozen years where he couldn’t do much of anything, but that couldn’t be true. Anybody would go mad under such conditions. Even a child. Well, especially a child, but even one as preemptively mad as Icarus had been would be neither sane nor even lucid. It’d be like getting released from Azkaban after a dozen years—the mind probably could not understand it wasn’t even there anymore, not after so much decay.

“Here.” He set the levitating trunk down at the foot of the bed. “Get dressed. I brought you some clothes that should fit you better. They’re old things of mine, but they’ll serve until we can get you clothes of your own.” Icarus abandoned his efforts and pulled his shoes off. Severus turned and left him, reminding himself that his brother knew how to dress himself. Probably. Hopefully. He drew a curtain for the sake of his brother’s privacy and massaged his temples, thinking about his problems and what he headmaster had said.

Maybe…maybe I could convince him to read for fun? He might naturally develop greater proficiency over time that way. Severus harbored doubts. Despite being a school, Hogwarts abounded with distractions and well, the brother he remembered was very easily distracted. More than half the reason his mother sent him all over the village all bloody day was because, left idle, the boy wanted for distraction and would make it anybody and everybody else’s problem.

There was an idea. Severus loathed the idea of emulating his mother, but putting Icarus to work had been effective, no matter how much his father—and Severus, at least initially—disapproved. He might learn a variety of skills if he were sent to assist in the greenhouses or even with Madam Pomfrey. Not too skilled of labor, at least not at first, but the boy would slowly begin to acquire some magical knowledge and maybe it wouldn’t seem so much like work, but just something for him to do. What else was he going to do? Wander the Scottish highlands and stare at the clouds?

It wasn’t like Severus would have to work him to the bone the way his mother did. That was the other half of Eileen’s reasoning, after all: make Icarus tired enough he would not fight when bedtime came. Severus pinched the bridge of his nose. How was he supposed to give his eighteen year old brother a bedtime? He felt very out of his depth as he heard the curtain draw back and turned around.

Icarus was still wearing the bloody Weasley sweater. Severus saw now the sticker was of a unicorn, magically trotting in place. No, Icarus could absolutely not be a normal student. They’d have an easier time assembling a list of students who wouldn’t mock him.

“Don’t you think Mr. Weasley is going to want that back?” Severus suggested as kindly as he could manage. “It doesn’t belong to you, does it?”

“Charlie said I could keep it!” Icarus crossed his arms over his middle defensively, “He said it doesn’t fit him anymore and that I could keep it.” He reasserted. It was ridiculous. The sleeves were too long, far past covering his hands, and kept sliding down his arms even when he pushed them back to his bony elbows. The hem fell to mid-thigh so that it looked nearly like a dress if not for Severus’ old, patched dark denim jeans underneath.

“Your name doesn’t even start with C.” Severus pinched the bridge of his nose and forced himself not to raise his voice. Icarus looked down, appearing to consider this.

“There’s a C in my name!” He said when he looked back up. His eyes were wary but defiant, and Severus realized Icarus was going to fight him tooth and nail on this. For once, Severus decided to pick his battles, dearly hoping this would not be a recurring circumstance going forward.

“Fine. Wear whatever you like.” Severus rolled his eyes. Charlie fucking Weasley… This was his fault. Severus was going to take all fifty points back from Gryffindor if it was the last thing he did. He was grateful for having his brother back, privately grateful, but Severus was sure there was no way he could have gotten Icarus back that would be more annoying than getting him back because a student he didn’t particularly like, from a house he also didn’t like, had found him in the bloody woods and dressed him up in his own ill-fitting clothes that Icarus, for some reason, had developed a sentimental attachment to.

At least he didn’t have to worry about Icarus going cold. It was a very warm looking sweater…maybe he’d take it off come Summer and Severus could tell him the house elves ‘lost’ it in the wash, or maybe Icarus would forget all about the sweater by the time the cold came back. And maybe he’d forget Charlie Weasley too. Merlin, he hoped Icarus didn’t think Weasley was his friend.

What am I thinking? The boy thought the bloody milkman was his friend. He could imagine it. Icarus chatting Charlie Weasley’s ear off about something juvenile while he barely kept his composure and the moment Icarus was gone, having a laugh about it with his friends, mocking the way he paced the room when he was enthusiastic, how he waved his arms when he talked. These bloody kids would tear his brother apart.

Well, that settled it. He was definitely going to put Icarus to work, he thought Madam Pomfrey approached. Albus had disappeared as silently as he had come. Severus wondered what he’d told his brother about what he thought of the account he’d provided, if Icarus thought Albus believed him. He rather hoped not. Poppy summoned a clean glass from a cupboard.

“Aguamenti,” She incanted, tapping the glass with her wand. A small amount of water appeared as if poured from nowhere.

“Wicked!” Icarus said, but then quickly frowned, “Hang on, what’d I have to fetch all that water for?” He muttered to himself. Severus and Poppy exchanged a brief glance and he got the distinct impression the healer knew exactly why Icarus had been given so many pointless errands to run. She cleared her throat to get Icarus’ attention back and held the glass out him.

“Be a dear and drink for me, alright?” She said it softly. Poppy could be quite short with students—but clearly, she had a soft spot for young children and could sense that was what Icarus still effectively was if the unicorn sticker she’d given him was any indication.

Young children and the mentally unsound, Severus thought, remembering she’d spoken rather softly to him when he’d been in and out of the Hospital Wing under observation.

“No, thank you. ’m not thirsty.” Icarus said, eyeing the glass warily. Well, at least he was being well-mannered about it.

“Drink it, Icarus. It’s medicine.”

“You said it was water, you liar!” Icarus accused, eyes narrowing. There went the manners.

“It is water, and water is the medicine you need to take. Drink it. Please.” Severus eyed Poppy and they exchanged strained half-smiles. There was concern in both their expressions too, because why wasn’t Icarus thirsty or hungry? He’d not eaten since at least yesterday evening and Charlie had apparently walked him miles through the forest when Icarus was too frightened to get on his broom. He should be famished and parched by now. Severus thought it likely he would not feel hunger or thirst until his organs started acting normally and Poppy doubtlessly thought the same…but that did not mean his brother could not still starve to death or die of thirst.

Even now, his eyes were sunken, the outline of the sockets faintly pronounced, a sign of mild dehydration. His complexion was wan, but that was sort of how Severus looked too at the best of times. His lower eye lids and the area below it however, were just starting to tint toward dark pink as lack of sleep taxed his eyes. Potions might replace proper nutrition, but that would only slow the deterioration of his health, not stop it entirely, and there was no real replacement, magical or otherwise, for sleep. He might get a day or two with a stimulant, but Severus absolutely wasn’t going to be brewing one for him—Icarus could stay up a long time on his own, as memory served.

Unless run ragged through work all bloody day, he thought with frustration, hating that his mother still had a bloody point all these years after she’d died. It occurred to Severus suddenly he needed to ensure no one in the school would ever offer Icarus a cup of tea or, Merlin forbid, fucking coffee. More importantly, they needed to get this process started sooner rather than later, before the risks became too great.

“…why can’t I have it when I get thirsty?” Icarus asked warily; he’d been bargaining with Poppy over whether he really needed to drink the water or not. For not the first time in his life, Severus wondered why his little brother had to be so difficult.

“You might not be thirsty, but your body still needs water. You might get very sick if you don’t start eating and drinking soon.” Severus tried to explain, “You wouldn’t want to get sick again, would you?” He felt awful bringing it up, knowing the strange sleeping sickness his brother had suffered as a toddler was what caused his aversion to sleep, and most likely was the source of his nightmares. Icarus had been so young that he did not remember very well, but he hoped the association of sickness would be strong enough to convince him nonetheless.

Icarus made a face like he was going to argue, but it faltered. Severus watched the emotions battle across his brother’s features, fear and…more fear, larger and more intense. After a few moments of wringing the hem of the comically oversized sweater, Icarus took the glass from Madam Pomfrey. She smiled and at him and pat him affectionately on the cheek as he raised the glass to his lips, “Go on, dear; there’s a good lad.”

His brother emptied the glass in single gulp, quicker than Severus anticipated. It was maybe only an ounce or two of water, but Severus was pleased with him for not drawing it out needlessly.

“That tasted awful…and I don’t feel good.” Icarus said a few moments later.

“What do you feel, Ic?” Severus asked, frowning. He wondered if his sense of taste had been affected too. “Describe it.”

“It…I’m not sure. It’s like…a stomachache. But wet.”

That wasn’t particularly helpful. Severus glanced at Poppy, who was quietly scribbling the observation down.

“How much does it hurt, this stomachache?” Severus asked.

“Not much,” Icarus sat down on the edge of the bed, awkwardly, as if he’d more lost his feet than chosen to sit. Severus noted he was shaking and Poppy noticed too, still scribbling away. Icarus groaned quietly, “I feel a bit like I might fall down, even though I’m sitting.”

Nausea. Severus summoned a bucket to the floor, and he and Poppy both stepped to the side, just in case. They watched him for a few minutes. Icarus looked like any seasick passenger on a boat, dropping his head between his knees and breathing in a forced rhythm. A sheen of sweat appeared on his brow, but he was shivering violently now.

Fever. All very treatable symptoms thus far, but if something more serious would occur, it was best to wait and see what manifested. Severus grimaced; he didn’t like treating his brother like a medical experiment.

“You might lay down, Icarus. On your side.” He suggested, unable to watch his brother struggle with all his symptoms. Icarus didn’t know how to make himself feel better and Severus was starting to worry he couldn’t help him either.

His brother shook his head, long dark hair shaking out in front of him, “No, no, I don’t want to sleep,” he said in a hoarse whisper.

“You don’t have to.” Severus said softly. “Lay down. You’ll feel better.” When his brother didn’t move, Severus approached. He gently touched Icarus’ shoulder and guided him down onto his side. His breathing had grown labored. Poppy’s quill was scribbling by itself while she silently performed a series of scans on him. Severus moved to lift his hand from Icarus’ shoulder, but his brother shot out his own and clutched tight around Severus’ wrist.

“Don’t go, Sev.” He said. Severus froze. The only sound was Poppy’s quill and his little brother struggling to breathe.

“Of course.” Severus breathed, taking a seat beside his brother where he lay on the bed. A minute or so later, Poppy turned and left, off to do Severus’ job for him without being asked. Severus heard a sniffle; Icarus was weeping, or doing his very best not to given how he was shaking.

“Icarus…” Severus said softly, unsure what to say or do. Icarus’ long hair hung in front of his face, so Severus moved it behind his ear with his free hand. Then, he carded his fingers through the long, dark hair, gently fingering through the tangles where he could. He found words and, having no idea if they were the right ones, spoke them to his brother:

“You’re being very brave.” Severus felt his eyes start to strain, going glassy and distant, “I missed you, Ic. Every day, I missed you.” He whispered.

“I missed you too, Sev.” It sounded like it hurt for him to speak, his words half-cracked by a quiet sob; Icarus tried to cover his mouth with his other hand. Severus frowned and made a decision: Icarus didn’t need to be like him.

“It’s alright, Ic. Cry if you want.”

“Da’ says—”

“Da’ isn’t here. He doesn’t know what happened to you. Why should he get a say?”

Another sob wracked Icarus. “I m-miss them also. Da’ and mum.”

“Then cry about that too.” Severus said. Someone ought to and Merlin knows I can’t.

Finally, and without restraint, Icarus wept.

* * *