Even Stranger Things

Sirianna used to dream, she used to dream all the time. When she was very little and locked in the bedroom with Harry, she would dream about buying a great big house and giving Harry half of the house to fill with toys and snacks and books. Then Sirianna would have half of the house and she would fill her half with fifty boyfriends - each more handsome than the last - and maybe even a whole bunch of kids.

Sirianna would sometimes dream about motorcycles that could fly, explosions of green light, and a woman who would sing the softest lullabies to her.

The White Coats did something, they broke something inside of her, and Sirianna didn’t dream anymore. It was a relief, mostly, because her dreams had changed to nightmares and wasn’t real life terrible enough? It was another form of torture though because Sirianna couldn’t hear lullabies in her sleep, couldn’t see her brother in his half of her mansion with mountains and mountains of books.

It meant that when Sirianna woke up in a strange bed, in a strange place, there were no lingering dreams clouding her mind.

“Har?” Sirianna whispered her brother’s name, unsure if he was asleep or not. She could feel him curled behind her, his face buried on the back of her neck.

“‘M here,” Harry murmured. He sounded awful, miserable, sick.

Sirianna didn’t like the idea that she had slept for… she squinted at the light coming through the windows and thought it must be at least noon… so long while Harry kept himself awake.

“Go to sleep.” Sirianna rolled over and kissed Harry’s forehead, pressing hard so he had to know she was there. “You’re safe, Bubby.”

A muscle twitched in Harry’s cheek as his eyes closed, the lashes dusting on the dark purple bags beneath his eyes. Was his skin a little yellow? Sirianna had never thought so before, but he didn’t look well in sunlight.

“I love you,” Sirianna reminded him, though she knew that he knew.

“Love you.” Harry’s hand tightened on Sirianna’s and she wondered if he had clutched it all night, knew he would have. Sirianna laid with him until his grip slackened and his breathing evened out…

Harry didn’t look well and Sirianna wouldn’t let anyone take him to a hospital, but maybe she didn’t have to. The man who gave up his bed to them, Benny Hammond, had said Harry needed to see a doctor. Maybe - maybe he knew one?

It was worth checking into.

Sirianna slipped off the bed and looked around the bedroom, curious about the place. It was dirty, as Sirianna had noticed the night before. While Harry slipped away to his own sleep, Sirianna began sifting through Benny Hammond’s closet and dressers.

Benny was a large man, nothing of his seemed as if it would fit Sirianna in the slightest. She did take a black shirt of his and eagerly swapped her grey sweater out for it. Sirianna looked down at herself in the oversized shirt, not caring at all.

It wasn’t grey.

When was the last time she had worn something that wasn’t grey?

In her excitement, Sirianna also tore off the dirty socks that she had been wearing. She stuffed them in a bin near the bed and took a pair of Benny’s socks, huge white ones, and pulled them up to cover as much of the grey sweatpants as possible.

Sirianna felt giggly on the inside as it sunk in. She was free, Harry was free. They were gone! The White Coats had planned to discard them, to dispose of them after over three years of torment, and they were free.

Actually, Sirianna looked at the door of the bedroom and frowned at the giant metal safe blocking it, they were kind of free. They were out of their cages, away from the White Coats.

Sirianna needed to make sure that Harry was healthy enough to enjoy the freedom.

After struggling some to move the safe away from the door, Sirianna slipped through a small parting to search the rest of the house for Benny. He had seemed nice enough, maybe a bit simple, when they met the night before. Harry didn’t blink much at him, so Sirianna assumed the man was non-magical.

Anyone could be a threat, but Sirianna thought that her chances against a man without magic of his own were rather good. Good enough that when she saw two plates sitting on a beaten down dining table, she only sniffed them a few times before testing out a bite of the leafy greens.

Oooh, it was heavenly.

Sirianna quickly stuffed more of the greens in her mouth before continuing her search. She could eat when Harry saw a doctor, someone to heal him and help him and Merlin, he couldn’t die. Not when they were finally free.

There was nobody else in the house, it didn’t take Sirianna long to determine that. What had Benny said? Something about a restaurant and they would talk at lunch?

Sirianna warily opened the back door of the house, the one sandwiched between a stove and refrigerator in the messy kitchen. She stopped in front of the opened door and her hands moved behind her back, her fingers lacing together, while she waited.

Harry didn’t wake up. There weren’t any alarms. Nobody shot a spell at her.

So Sirianna took a tiny step in the sunlight.

It hit her as hard as the clothes she wore did. The warmth, the air that tasted better, tasted like leaves and home. Sirianna’s skin prickled with the sensation of real, honest to magic real sunlight touching her face for the first time in… in… in four years, apparently.

Sirianna tipped her face upward and couldn’t inhale the air fast enough, couldn’t get enough of the sun that was real and good and made her think of quidditch on the pitch and hopscotch boards drawn with nubs of charcoal.

“Is that my shirt?”

Sirianna jumped. She had been close to tears while memories washed over her as vividly as the sunlight did. She never noticed the man in the back lawn, the one sitting in a red chair, staring at her while he smoked a fag.

Benny Hammond was a large man, but it wasn’t just his waist. Benny was tall, he had thick muscles in his arms and a bushy brown beard that looked rather clean despite his soiled shirt.

It was his eyes that Sirianna had noticed the night before, blue eyes. They weren’t cold and they didn’t gaze through Sirianna as if she were no longer a human.

“My brother, he’s sick,” Sirianna said, refusing to shy away from him in any uncertainty. He had mentioned a hospital before, he must know of a doctor. They had medicines, normal medicines, that Harry could get.

“Yeah, I thought so,” Benny said. He didn’t sound angry, not even properly curious. “You ready to take ‘im to a hospital?”

Sirianna crossed her arms over her chest and took a small step further from the house, closer to Benny.

“He doesn’t like hospitals,” she said carefully, her mind thinking of cages and machines and magic that could destroy a body and then piece it back together. “I wondered if you knew a doctor that might bring him medicine? I could pay you.”

“That’s definitely my shirt,” Benny said when Sirianna was an arms length away from the door. “Your brother needs a real doctor, kid. You do too, by the looks of it.”

Sirianna was fine. She was sore, maybe, not as sore as she could be. There was sunshine warming her arms and she had half of a chocolate bar and a bag of crisps in the waistband of her sweatpants. Sirianna was fine, but Harry didn’t look well.

“Look.” Benny sighed and puffed on his smoke before flicking it to a large pile of discarded ones by a rubbish bin. Sirianna watched it, waiting to see if it would catch on fire, then looked away once it only burned itself out.

It wasn’t strong enough to catch on fire.

“You kids look like hell, you show up here at the ass crack of dawn trying to rent a bedroom like I’m some fucking motel. You don’t have any shoes on, your brother looks like he went ten rounds with Sugar Ray. What we need to do here is call Children’s Services then take the two of you to a hospital.”

Sirianna stepped backward, closer to the house. She was afraid of that, afraid that Benny would be insistent. Sirianna wanted to let Harry sleep, but they would need him to make Benny forget they ever existed.

Harry said he had a good feeling about Hawkins, but Sirianna wouldn’t mind finding another town and trying again.

“Sure,” Sirianna said, nodding her head like she agreed. “I’ll just get my brother then…”

“Hey, stop.”

Sirianna hated that her feet automatically stopped moving. Stop or you’ll be cursed. Stop or we’ll hurt him. Stop.

Sirianna stopped and then hated herself for stopping and swung the full force of her glare on Benny Hammond who was a chef and threw rubbish right next to an empty bin.

“You are not taking him anywhere,” Sirianna yelled as loudly as she dared. Harry was sleeping, she didn’t want to wake him yet. She would have to soon and she hated that, but he needed to be safe more than he needed to sleep in a bed.

“If you touch him I will kill you,” Sirianna swore, the only warning she would give. She wrapped her arms back around her stomach and clutched the shirt that was not grey to herself. “And I’m keeping this shirt.”

Benny didn’t try to stand up, they only stared at each other. Sirianna wanted to be cold and terrifying, worse than the White Coats had ever been. Benny raised his eyebrows up toward his balding head and then sighed as he broke the eye contact.

“I’m gonna guess you’re, what? Fifteen? Sixteen?” Benny nodded to himself when Sirianna said nothing to confirm or deny it. “I’m gonna make another guess here, you tell me if I’m right. Shitty parents? You two ran off?”

Sirianna said nothing.

“Yeah, thought so.” Benny huffed and looked up at the sky himself, raising his eyes like there would be answers in the clouds. “Alright, kid, I can make you a deal.”

A deal?

“What kind of deal?” Sirianna asked.

“You answer a couple of my questions and I know a nurse that could come check your brother out,” Benny said. “You don’t wanna answer? I’ll call Children’s Services, let them sort this out.”

Sirianna could answer some questions, if it meant that Harry could get medicine.

“Okay…” Sirianna looked behind her at the house quickly, wondering if it wouldn’t be safer to just take Harry and leave.

But it would be like that anywhere, Sirianna told herself, fighting to push down the worries that gnawed up the inside of her stomach like acid. People asked questions, that was normal…

Nothing said that Sirianna had to answer them truthfully.

“Fine.” Sirianna sat down on the grass and scooted backward until her back rested against the back door, blocking Benny from charging past her. “What questions?”

Benny leaned back in the red chair and fixed his gaze on Sirianna, taking his time to start with his questions.

“It’s a strange accent,” he started with. “Where you from?”

Sirianna mashed her lips shut immediately and glared while she tried to think of something to say.

“Albany, that’s in New York,” she said, deciding it was the safest answer. The White Coats weren’t in Albany, that she knew of. There was nobody in Albany that would know them if Benny were to try and contact them.

“Alright, that’s a start,” Benny said, grinning crookedly at Sirianna and disarming her with his - his acceptance. “I’m guessing if I asked what your parents' names are, you wouldn’t tell me, huh?”

Sirianna shook her head; no, she wouldn’t. Partially because she had already used her parents’ names as theirs and partially because Lily and James Potter were too well-known. It was something she wished she had remembered the night before… she should have invented entirely new names.

“You can just tell me yes or no, kid, you don’t gotta go in specifics, but…” Benny leaned forward and Sirianna couldn’t help but think his eyes seemed kind. Sirianna hadn’t seen kind eyes that weren’t green in years.

“They hurt you two?” Benny asked her.

Did her parents hurt her? No. They had died for Sirianna and Harry, they protected her. Lily Potter used to sing lullabies and scream in Sirianna’s dreams, James Potter had been a chaser on the same team that Sirianna was a seeker for.

They were the only people who had never hurt her, never hurt Harry.

“Yes,” Sirianna lied, hating herself that much more. Benny looked away when a tear dropped from the corner of Sirianna’s eyes and she ducked her head to wipe it away.

“Alright, kid. I’ll call a nurse to check on your brother. I know someone, he won’t ask too many questions.”

Sirianna couldn’t be too sorry that she lied about people who had loved her, who had never hurt her, not if it meant that Harry would get help.

Benny said that he had to return to his restaurant and told Sirianna to go inside and eat while she waited for the nurse to arrive. It wasn’t a hardship for Sirianna to go back inside the house and grab both plates of food to take to the bedroom. It was something of a struggle to slip in the small wedge she had made without spilling the food, but she managed it.

Harry was curled in a ball on the bed, his legs twitching while he slept. Sirianna wondered what he dreamed about, if he ever had any good dreams or if they were all taken by the White Coats and their experiments.

One day, Harry would have good things to dream about, Sirianna swore it to herself.

While Harry slept, Sirianna picked at the food that Benny must have left just for them. She didn’t eat much, though she did eat all of the greens that were on the plate. They had flavor to them, like real food did before. Since she was awake, Sirianna did work on moving the big safe to the part of the room that looked too clean without it. It would be a hard question to answer if someone asked how the safe had been moved… best to avoid it altogether.

Sirianna planned to stay awake until the nurse arrived with Benny, but she curled up under the thick blanket with Harry and counted his breaths until she too fell asleep.

“Lily? Hey, Lily.”

Sirianna bolted upright when someone grabbed her - it was her turn, her turn. She started clawing, knowing it would bring her more pain later and not caring. If she could bring one drop of the pain she felt, that Harry felt, to the White Coats then it would be worth it.

“Hey! Hey! Jesus fucking Christ!”

Sirianna didn’t stop at the rough voice or the unfamiliar swear, she stopped when her brother’s hand curled around her elbow, soft and familiar.

“You’re not there,” Harry said, his voice rough with sleep.

Sirianna twisted to see Harry, saw him sitting up in a bed with his hair ruffled from pillows that were really the softest thing she had ever felt. There was light spilling in, yellow light from a sun instead of the blinding white lights that almost never dimmed.

They were free, they were…

“Oh.” The fight fled from Sirianna when everything caught up in her mind. They were in Hawkins, at Benny Hammond’s house. Which meant that it wasn’t a White Cost that Sirianna attacked, but a man who said he would get Harry medicine.

“My buddy is out here, he doesn’t ask a lot of questions.”

When Sirianna turned back to Benny, he was already leaving the room.

“Buddy?” Harry asked as soon as the door closed behind Benny. “What buddy?”

“A nurse,” Sirianna told him, redirecting her attention to her brother. Harry looked… he looked better, actually. The gash on his cheek, the one that wouldn’t stop bleeding, had finally began to crust over with a scab. Sirianna touched his cheek, felt the warmth of his skin, thought that even the horrible yellow had started to fade away.

Harry’s pupils, the black circles in the center of his eyes, were huge though, so big that Sirianna almost couldn’t see the green.

“You’re sick, Har,” Sirianna told him quietly, a whisper just for his ears. “Benny said that he would have a nurse come look at you, give you medicine to get you better.”

“Medicine?” Harry pulled his head away, not enough that Sirianna wasn’t still cupping his jaw. “Like potions? I’m not taking them.”

They did that, the White Coats. They had been there forever, Sirianna didn’t believe that anyone was coming for them anymore.

Sirianna thought they would die there, wondered if it would be better for Harry than the daily testing.

For a long time, they tested potions on them. They would make them both drink the same potion, write down the side-effects. Eventually they made it a game, a sick game that made Sirianna wish they would kill them instead.

One day, Sirianna would be forced to drink a potion that burned her from the inside out, made it feel like something was tearing away her innards. The White Coats would watch Harry, they would make a note of his every reaction.

The next day Harry would drink the potion and Sirianna would scream - it was the worst yet, everything hurt. Sirianna would scream and cry for her mum, Ron, Professor McGonagall, anyone to end the pain.

Anyone, Sirianna would cry for anyone, to end the pain.

“Not potions,” Sirianna said firmly. Never potions. “Non-magical medicine, Har. Like - like tablets? Remember? The ones Aunt Petunia would give Dudley when he was sick?”

Harry nodded slowly and Sirianna didn’t know if he remembered or if he was only trusting her.

“Har, I’m never going to let anyone hurt you ever again,” Sirianna swore. She gripped Harry’s cheek with her fingertips for a second, not hard enough to hurt him but enough to break through to him. “Never,” she repeated.

Over Sirianna’s dead body would anyone hurt Harry - and maybe not even then.

Sirianna thought one of the unstained shirts in Benny’s closet and a fresh pair of socks might make Harry less nervous about seeing the nurse. Sirianna herself was worried, worried that there had been no kindness in Benny’s and they would leave the room only to find a White Coat.

The thought nearly paralyzed her, it stopped her in front of the door with her hand outstretched for the knob. What if Harry had been wrong and Benny was a wizard after all?

“You’re sure that Benny isn’t a wizard?” Sirianna asked Harry.

Harry nodded and he looked so sweet in the baggy shirt that hung down to his knees, the dark blue made him look even better than he did. He might not have needed a nurse, what if Sirianna put Harry in danger for no reason?

“He’s not,” Harry said. “You’re safe, Siri.”

Harry was so powerful, so much better with magic than any wizard before. If he said that Benny wasn’t a wizard, then Sirianna had to hope that he didn’t know how to contact the White Coats.

If she was wrong then she would have to be ready to run faster than she ever had before.

The two of them left the bedroom with their hands tightly gripped between them. Sirianna could hear Benny talking from the front room and she walked slowly toward the room. There was another voice, a rough voice of a man.

Sirianna held Harry back behind her as she peeked in the room, checking that it was safe to enter. Benny was in there, leaning casually against the doorframe that separated the front door from the front room. On the lumpy sofa was a man, an old grizzly looking man who wore a faded brown shirt, only a few shades lighter than his long and tangled looking beard.

“This is a nurse?” Sirianna demanded, her flash of hot anger driving her in the room. The man wasn’t a nurse, he wasn’t a White Coat either.

“I was.” The man started to stand up and he had - he had a hunch in his back! Sirianna could beat him in a fight without magic! He was just an old man!

“First Sergeant Langley,” the old man said. He offered Sirianna a gnarled looking hand. “Registered Nurse for the United States Army. Pleasure, Miss.”

Sirianna did not shake his hand. She instead glared at Benny who was not holding up his end of the deal.

“I can call someone else,” Benny offered with a shoulder shrugged up. “They might have some calls they wanna make though.”

Sirianna hated him.

“If you hurt my brother at all I will kill you,” Sirianna warned the old man, First Sergeant Langley, in a hissed promise. Sirianna didn’t have a lot of options - though having any options at all was thrilling in its own way… - and Harry needed checked over.

An old man Army nurse would have to work.

Langley laughed, a wheezy sound, and looked over his shoulder at Benny.

“I can see what you mean,” he said. “She’s got fire, don’t she?”

Sirianna could show them fire, if she had to.

Benny made a hum and Sirianna could feel his eyes watching while she pulled Harry in the room, telling him with her eyes that it was okay, he would be okay. Harry shuffled in, he would follow Sirianna anywhere and sometimes that made her want to scream, and he looked at Benny, looked at Langley, looked at Sirianna.

“Ar, let me look at you, son.” Langley hobbled over and Sirianna thought she could feel Harry’s heart beat picking up through his grip on her hand. Langley peered at Harry and it was so ridiculous, because he was almost the same height as they were.

“Headache?” Langley asked Harry, squinting as he looked in Harry’s eyes.

“No, sir.”

“How’s your stomach feelin’? Any pains?”

“No, sir.”

“How’d you get that cut on your face?”

“Accident,” Sirianna said when she knew Harry wouldn’t. “He cut it on a tree when we were in the forest.”

“That so?” Langley asked. He started to lift his hand, as if he were going to touch Harry’s face, and Harry leaned back out of reach. Langley dropped his hand and instead swept his eyes down Harry’s body. “You’re thin,” he said. “Too damn thin. Benny, you gotta feed ‘im. I’d add some oranges, some sunshine. Kid looks ready to fade away. The girl too.”

The girl too.

Sirianna said nothing as Langley turned away from them, his clearly excellent assessment finished.

“Gotta get ‘em some clothes of their own too,” Benny said. He shifted over and opened the door for Langley with a nod. “Appreciate you coming out, Everett.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Langley raised his hand in a wave directed toward Sirianna and Harry it seemed. “Vitamins, sunshine, fruits and vegetables, Hammond. Reckon I’ll see you all at the diner.”

Sirianna said nothing while Langley left, she only turned her body some so that Harry was just a step behind her as Benny appraised them both with a big sigh.

Benny seemed to be someone who sighed a lot.

“I got a cot in the diner where I can sleep, but I gotta shower here,” he said, rather randomly it seemed to Sirianna. “You two can use the bed, I’ll see if anyone’s got some clothes that might fit better.”

Sirianna blinked and then reached for her pocket, slowly pulling out the remaining money they had.

“Er… here,” she said, puzzled over what Benny was saying. “We have money.”

Benny looked at the money in her hand and snorted. He actually snorted.

“I don’t want your money,” he said. “You wanna carry your weight? You come down to the diner, help clean tables, maybe take some orders when it’s busy. Deal?”

Sirianna looked at Harry who needed vitamins and sunshine and fruits and vegetables. Harry gazed back at her with his empty eyes, his eyes that trusted her. If Sirianna left, Harry would go with her.

If anything went wrong by staying, it would be Sirianna’s fault.

But Benny had kind eyes and he didn’t call the White Coats, he called an old man that Sirianna could have beaten up with her bare fists if needed.

“Alright, Benny,” Sirianna decided. “Deal.”

It wasn’t much of a smile, but the muscle in Harry’s cheek twitched in what Sirianna knew was approval.