Even Stranger Things

Sirianna couldn’t sleep, she was wide awake and buzzing with a nervous energy. Harry had fallen asleep maybe an hour ago and even trying to time her breaths to match his wasn’t working for her.

School.

Muggle school.

It was just so blessedly normal.

Sirianna used to daydream of escaping the cages they were kept in, she would think about all the things that she would do with her freedom. Sirianna would dance and laugh, she would buy Harry a whole library, she would play quidditch and visit Ron’s home like she was meant to do many years ago.

Sirianna would wear makeup and shop from catalogs like Lavender Brown did. She would fill a room with food and sweets and a juice of every color.

There wouldn’t be any more grey, no more pain. It would be Sirianna and Harry living out the rest of their lives in the happiest bliss there was.

Sirianna had never truly believed they would escape, not after a while. And once they were… she had never thought about how to fit in the world, how to make a life.

School seemed like a good start though.

When Sirianna nearly woke Harry with her anxious fidgeting, she decided to go sit outside for a while. It was rather chilly, Benny said the Indiana nights turned cold at the end of August and the days followed suit by October. Sirianna didn’t think it was too cold during the day, but it was frigid outside.

Sirianna tucked Harry in tightly then took the faded brown blanket off the trunk that rested at the foot of Benny’s bed to wrap around herself. Harry made a quiet sigh in his sleep and Sirianna paused in the bedroom doorway to watch him with soft eyes.

Things were hard for Harry, it had always been that way. He had to know though, he had to, that Sirianna wouldn’t make him do anything he didn’t want to do. If school truly made Harry unhappy, then he didn’t have to go.

And… and if Harry didn’t go then Sirianna wouldn’t either.

Sirianna shuffled through the quiet house to get out the backdoor. She had planned to just sit by the door, breathe in the fresh air that she would never get enough of, but it seemed as if she wasn’t the only one with that idea.

Benny was outside, once again sunk in the red chair that could be folded up and stored away. Sirianna paused, the door still open behind her, and her eyes widened at the weapon laying across Benny’s lap.

It was a shotgun, Sirianna knew that. Uncle Vernon had once purchased one that Hagrid had twisted up like a pretzel. Sirianna only didn’t know why Benny had one —

Had they overstayed the peculiar welcome he gave them? Did - did she do something wrong at the diner? Benny hadn’t been angry when she made mistakes before, had she made one too many?

Sirianna didn’t realize that her body was trembling while her eyes were glued to the weapon until Benny spoke up and spooked her.

“Thought I heard coyotes,” Benny said. “They claw at the door sometimes, I didn’t want them to bother you kids.”

Coyotes?

“What’s - I don’t know what that is,” Sirianna said softly, her eyes still locked on the weapon. Benny could shoot her, shoot Harry. Who would ever know?

Who would know that they fought and fought and fought for freedom then were killed by a man who pretended to be their friend?

“Coyotes? City kids,” Benny scoffed. “They’re like wolves, except they run wild out here, in packs. They get in the trash, kill cats. Tore the back door off the diner one time.”

It was an animal? A wild animal?

“Like foxes?” Sirianna asked.

“Yeah, Lily, like foxes.”

Oh.

Sirianna pulled the door closed behind her and nodded as she slowly sat down, her eyes still warily eyeing the shotgun. Benny, quite slowly, pulled something on it that made it click, sending Sirianna to her feet once again.

“They’re probably gone,” Benny said, placing the shotgun on the ground in front of him.

“Sorry.” Sirianna couldn’t slow her heart down, couldn’t fix the embarrassed blush on her cheeks. Benny was their friend, he wasn’t going to shoot them.

But who would know if he did?

“Nothin’ to apologize for,” Benny said in his gruff way that wasn’t necessarily unkind. “Plenty of folks don’t care for guns. Me? I think they’re a necessary evil, I woulda lost my head in ‘Nam if I didn’t have one.”

“Oh,” Sirianna said, nodding in what she hoped looked like understanding. “Well I’m glad you had one then.”

Sirianna would like to have her weapon back, her wand. It wasn’t impossible to do magic without it, only incredibly difficult. Not for Harry, but Harry was always the exception.

Benny snorted and they lapsed in a comfortable enough silence. Sirianna liked Benny, she thought he was kind and could be funny when he would go back and forth with Wayne and Langley at the diner. There probably weren’t many people who would take a cot in a diner over their own bed, so Sirianna thought it was truly luck they had deserved to have found Benny on their first day of freedom.

Since the shotgun didn’t leap up to bite her, and was out of arms reach, Sirianna was looking up at the sky, searching for stars that were bright enough to see. There weren’t many, none that Sirianna knew… Harry would know them, he had always been more clever.

“That’s Canis Major,” Harry said, pointing up at a collection of stars. They had Astronomy together and Sirianna liked when it was night classes, when she could lay on the tower floor beside her brother and gaze up at the stars.

“See? It looks kind of like a dog, a canine,” Harry went on, his voice picking up speed in his excitement. “Look!” Harry traced his finger, drawing something in the air - in the stars - that Sirianna couldn’t picture. “A dog.”

“Yeah,” Sirianna grinned over at Ron, who was silently snickering at Harry’s excitement over the stars. “I see, Har.”

“And that star? The brightest one? That’s Sirius.” Harry turned to smile at Sirianna and his smile was brighter than the star. “I reckon our parents named you after that star.”

That… that would be nice, if Sirianna had been named for a star.

“Mate, if that’s the tail…” Ron interrupted with hilarity absolutely shaking off him in waves. “And that’s the star… does that mean your parents named Sirianna after a dog’s butthole?”

“What? No!” Harry laughed with Ron, even his quiet friend Theo started giggling. “I think she’s the neck?”

“As long as I’m the star,” Sirianna sniffed in a pretend show of haughtiness. It would be nice if her parents named her for a star, it would also be nice to be the brightest something, the best something.

Not a dog’s butthole though, nobody wanted to be the best butthole ever.

“You know anything about stars?” Benny asked, pulling Sirianna from one of her favorite memories of Hogwarts.

“What? Oh, no.” Sirianna shook her head, all of her jealousy and childish bitterness over her brother had been gone so long she could barely believe that it had ever been there. Harry was clever, twice as clever to make up for his twice as terrible life.

“Harry does,” Sirianna said unthinkingly, a small smile ghosting her lips. “I don’t know how he memorized them all, I could barely remember the names of the planets.”

And if someone were to ask her what they were right then, Sirianna would only recall earth. There were more… but it was knowledge hidden under memories and screams and fear and panic and —

“Benny.” Sirianna looked at Benny then as she realized what school meant. “I - I don’t know anything,” she said in a rush. “I don’t remember the planets or - or history!”

How could she go to school?! Why did she think that she could? Sirianna knew nothing, nothing that a muggle school would care about.

Sirianna knew quite a bit about genetics, DNA, and biological makeup from the things she heard over the years… and that was it. That was the only knowledge she had that anyone else would care about.

Nobody would care about Sirianna knowing Harry’s threshold for pain, her own threshold for pain. Nobody would care that Sirianna knew how big a puddle of blood could become before Harry would go unconscious.

“I’m going to be stupid and useless,” Sirianna said, her eyes welling with pity tears. Crying did no good, but it wasn’t as if she could stop crying.

It would have been wonderful, if the White Coats took her tear ducts instead of her ability to dream.

“You are not stupid and you’re certainly not fucking useless.” Benny wasn’t glaring, but he had what Sirianna recognized to be a no-nonsense stiffness to his expression. It was the one he used when Earl tried to sneak his flask in the diner during the breakfast rush.

“Look, I can’t pretend to know what you and your brother in there have done up to now, but I notice things, alright? I know you learned to make change quick as hell, you never mix up the salad dressings, and you’re the hardest worker I know.”

None of that would matter in a school. Sirianna had been a decent enough student at Hogwarts, rubbish in Primary. It was Harry who was brilliant, Harry who didn’t throw up during his end of year exams.

“Thanks, Benny.” Sirianna wiped her nose on the blanket she was wrapped up in and sighed heavily. Benny was trying, again, to be kind. He didn’t understand though…

What good were salad dressings when Sirianna would never fit in with people her age, never blend in a group of girls like the ones that walked past the diner when school ended??

That was just a pity party though. Who cared if she was stupid and would never fit in just right? Who cared about her curiosity on how girls did makeup and how tests could be taken without vomit when she was free? She was alive, and so was Harry.

That was all that mattered.

“I went to school with Higgins, your principal,” Benny told her. “He’s a good sort, he’ll have you in the right classes or whatever and you’ll be just fine, Lily.”

“Sirianna.”

“What’s that then?”

Sirianna ducked her head with her heart lodged in her throat, swelling up in a warning that she didn’t want to heed.

“My name,” she said, picking nervously at the threads on the blanket. “It’s - it’s Sirianna Lily, not just Lily.”

“Sirianna, huh?” Benny didn’t sound angry, though Sirianna wouldn’t look at him just yet, not directly. She could see his hands, the shotgun, from the corner of her eyes.

“You know, my first ex-wife’s name was Anna. Always did like that name.”

Sirianna let out a heavy breath and drummed up the courage to look across the shabby and chilly lawn to where Benny was sitting in his chair, looking at Sirianna with more kindness than she had seen in years.

Maybe… maybe if everyone in Hawkins was as kind as Benny then school might be okay. Hogwarts had been wonderful, mostly. Hawkins High School could be too.

Benny closed the diner after the breakfast shift ended so that he could take Sirianna and Harry to the school. Harry was quiet, his muscles shaking beneath the thick camouflage coat that Benny gave him.

Sirianna kept a tight hold of his hand when they climbed in Benny’s truck and tried to reassure him that it would be okay. They were free, school was normal, things were going to be okay.

“I’m gonna need enough information to give Higgins,” Benny said when his truck turned on the gravel road and Sirianna felt as if she were bouncing around in her seat. Benny kept his eyes on the road, thankfully, but Sirianna sensed that he was paying too much attention to Harry’s nerves.

“They’ll need full names, birthdays, probably the last school you attended,” Benny said - like a bucket of ice water on Sirianna’s head.

Their last school? Hogwarts? That - that wasn’t a thing they could write. It would set off alarms, maybe alarms that the White Coats would hear.

“We were… homeschooled,” Sirianna said, pulling the term from her vault of memories from before. Homeschooling was what one of the children in Privet Drive did, the little boy with the twisted legs and vacant expression.

Aunt Petunia said he was too disturbed to attend school, but Sirianna talked to the boy’s mum once, when she had been outside picking weeds. Sirianna couldn’t remember why the boy didn’t go to school, Sirianna only remembered that the mum sounded like she loved her son more than anything in the world.

“Homeschooled,” Benny repeated. He scratched his beard. “Reckon that makes sense…”

Harry’s eyes were dull when Sirianna looked at him, checking that he would remember that in case he was asked again later. It wouldn’t do any good to remind him then, Sirianna knew that he was worlds away inside his mind.

“And birthdays?” Benny asked. “They gotta know how old you are.”

“We’re fifteen,” Sirianna replied, having realized that on the day they escaped, the day Harry saw a newspaper.

Fifteen. Sirianna and Harry had spent four birthdays in cages… more than that if she counted the boards on the windows at the Dursleys, which she didn’t, not anymore.

It hurt Sirianna’s heart fiercely to think about how Harry had to miss his twelfth birthday. Sirianna had plans, big plans. They were going to go to Ron Weasley’s house, Sirianna had already invited Theodore Nott… and Sirianna was going to bake Harry a cake, his first ever very own cake. They would have played quidditch with the Weasleys,

It would have been a good day. Sirianna didn’t know what they did instead on Harry’s birthday, the early days were sometimes fuzzy in her memory, but Sirianna knew her plans would have been wonderful.

“Full names?” Benny asked.

That - that wasn’t a thing that Sirianna could give him. It wasn’t fair, because Benny gave them a bed and food and clothes and kindness, but Sirianna couldn’t give them their full names. He already knew almost too much, but Sirianna didn’t think that shouting their surname would lead to anything good.

“Sirianna and Harry… Hammond?” Sirianna said, gazing at Benny in the little mirror pleadingly. She couldn’t ask him, wouldn’t, but… but she hoped that the nice man who had already done so much would do just the one more thing.

Benny’s blue eyes moved to the mirror, meeting Sirianna’s. It wasn’t safe to be Potter, it probably never had been. And that was unfair, because James Potter was a hero, but Sirianna hoped he would forgive her for not wanting to carry the cursed name to a muggle school.

“Fine with me,” Benny said, breaking the hard eye contact and going back to watching the road he drove down so casually. “I’ll tell Higgins you’re my niece and nephew, should keep the busybodies away.”

The rest of the ride was more comfortable, Sirianna spent it imagining the ways she would apologize if she ever saw James Potter after she died.

Hawkins High School was incredibly intimidating, right from the start. School was in session, Benny said so, but there were still some students lingering in a parking lot, leaning against cars and casting curious looks at Sirianna and Harry.

They looked… they didn’t look like they were the same age as Sirianna and Harry. They seemed older, so mature. The girls were pretty, with their curled hair and stylish clothes.

Sirianna pulled self-consciously on the neck of the jumper that Benny had gotten for her. It was blue, which was a lovely color, but it was nowhere near as colorful and interesting as the other kids’s clothes.

Harry didn’t even seem to notice, he drifted along beside Sirianna, trusting her to lead him, in complete silence. Sirianna didn’t expect him to talk, Harry hadn’t been talkative in years, but she wished that he would say something - do something - to help ease the gnawing nerves in her stomach.

The inside of the school made Sirianna think of her primary school, what she could remember of it. The hard floors and bright lights were the same, but the rows of metal lockers were different. There was the smell of smoke too, stronger when they passed the loos, that Sirianna knew had not been a part of primary.

Benny didn’t complain about their slow pace, the way Sirianna’s head kept swiveling around to take in every detail. Benny let them walk slowly as he guided them to the office he wanted to visit.

There were two boys slumped over in the hallway outside of the office. They both looked up and Sirianna could feel their eyes following her as she was ushered in the office by Benny.

Sirianna felt her skin prickling and barely resisted turning back around to see if they were still staring when Benny introduced them to the woman at the desk, asking for Principal Higgins. The woman stared at Sirianna and Harry, especially poor silent Harry who looked at the floor with his unhappy eyes, with just as much curiosity as the students had so far.

It was too much, much too much. Sirianna could hardly hear Benny introducing them as his niece and nephew to Higgins over her own shallowed breathing.

Everyone was staring. Everyone. They weren’t blending in, they were being stared at - gawked at - watched. They were back under observation and Sirianna could not breathe.

“Hello. I’m Harry Hammond, my sister, Sirianna.”

Sirianna whipped her head to the side at what sounded like Harry. It was Harry’s voice, his flat affection, words that would make sense for Harry to use, but Harry didn’t - he didn’t talk. Not to other people, not really.

It was Sirianna’s job to handle the school and she was letting Harry down.

Harry’s eyes were still dull, not a single glitter in them to be seen, but he did say it. He did. He introduced them and pulled Sirianna into Higgins inner-office because Sirianna hadn’t.

Unacceptable.

“Hello.” Sirianna squeezed Harry’s hand in thanks with her left and politely offered her right hand to the stern-faced principal watching her. “Sirianna Hammond.”

The name stuck in her throat, the lie.

“Pleasure.” Higgins shook Sirianna’s hand and there was a painfully awkward moment when he offered Harry the same hand only to be ignored. Higgins didn’t look impressed by that, but Benny moved the conversation along to ease past it.

“Came to enroll my niece and nephew, seems they’re going to be staying a while,” Benny said, filling Sirianna’s heart with hope.

“Niece and nephew?” Higgins sat down in his fancy desk chair and rubbed the bald spot on his head. “I don’t remember Patty having any kids?”

“Nah, not Patty. These are Michael’s kids, his old lady is sick and she gave me a call, asked if they could stay with me.”

“Is that so?” Higgins accepted Benny’s lie easily, just as Benny had accepted Sirianna’s. It worried her, that Benny could lie so well. Everything he said might be a lie, every word and every kindness. “I thought Michael got divorced a few years back? Before the cancer?”

“Eh, she was sick enough I don’t know that she remembered her and Michael split,” Benny said with a shrug of one of his shoulders. “They’re good kids though, just need to get ‘em signed up.”

“Of course, of course.” Higgins looked at Sirianna again and her stomach twisted. There were too many people looking at her, watching her.

“What are you? Freshmen?” he asked.

Fresh… men?

“Homeschooled,” Benny said when Sirianna only stared blankly at Higgins. Higgins sniffed at the term, as unimpressed with it as Aunt Petunia had been. “They’re fifteen, where’s that put ‘em?”

“When did you turn fifteen?” Higgins asked.

“July,” Sirianna said.

“Sophomores then; that’s grade ten,” Higgins said. He pulled open a drawer in his desk and Sirianna struggled to catch her breath - things were happening quickly, too quickly.

“Yeah, here’s some forms.” Higgins pulled a stack of papers from his desk and handed them to Benny. “Do you have anything that says you’re in charge of them?” he asked.

“Wasn’t time,” Benny said. “That something I can get from you?”

“Probably be best if you took it through the official channel, call down to the station and have them print something off.”

“Sounds fine.”

“Alright, if you send those forms back with them tomorrow then we can get them a schedule and they’ll have books in their classes.”

Sirianna felt as if her body and mind were being pulled in many different directions while Benny asked about supplies and Higgins told her the rules of his school. Nothing was sticking in her mind, everything was too much.

For once, Sirianna wished that everyone would just be quiet.

Sirianna got her wish on the drive back to Benny’s house. Benny hummed along to a song on the radio, Harry hadn’t said a word since he had to introduce them at the school. Sirianna thought about all the students that had been watching her, the sharp gazes of the staff…

It was like Hogwarts all over again and Sirianna didn’t want that. She wanted normal, safe. She wanted Harry to be safe, she wanted to be normal.

When Benny pulled in the dirt driveway by his house, Sirianna was already sniffling again and hating herself for it. Why couldn’t her stupid brain understand the priorities?

“I’m going to go to Muncie, get these supplies you two will need,” Benny said. “Might as well keep the diner closed today, no use in working if we don’t have to.”

“That’s - no, Benny, I’ll open the diner,” Sirianna offered quickly. Benny wouldn’t take her money, she had offered it to him almost every day for everything he did for them. He kept saying no, but opening the diner was different. That was how Benny made money.

“There’s no point, I told Garth to take the day off.”

Sirianna felt guilty, horribly guilty. Benny wouldn’t take her money, wouldn’t let her give him back his bedroom. Benny didn’t even get to sleep in his own house because of them and he let them use his last name!

Benny said that he would be home before dinner and Sirianna pulled Harry from the truck and watched, waiting, Benny leave. As soon as his truck turned away and she could no longer hear it, she squared her shoulders decisively.

“Come on, Harry,” she said, turning him around to direct him to the diner. “If we can’t open the diner, we can at least clean it.”

There were probably ten layers of grease and grime on every surface in the kitchen. The floors needed scrubbed, the bathrooms were disgusting. They were all things that Benny said not to worry about, they’d find time another day.

If Benny found time to do all the things he was doing, then Sirianna had time to clean. And Harry… Harry would probably help.

The diner didn’t lock, Benny said there was no point in Hawkins to lock the door. It meant that Sirianna and Harry could walk right in. Sirianna flipped on the lights, though not the large OPEN sign that sat in one of the windows, and walked determinedly toward the kitchen.

There were large jugs of cleaning liquids and Sirianna carefully poured some in each of the three big sinks that she filled with water. Since Harry followed her in the kitchen, she handed him a broom to begin sweeping. Sirianna took the scrubber that Benny said to use on grease and began attacking the stove.

While she worked, she talked. It was too quiet otherwise.

“Everyone is going to stare at us, all day tomorrow,” she said, pushing hard with the scrubber to put her nerves to use. “It’s going to be awful. And I’m stupid, I’m so stupid! I’m not going to know anything, nothing useful! What am I going to do when they ask about - about history or - or whatever they learn?

“And did you see them? The other students? We don’t look anything like them! They’re all tall and pretty. They’re going to think that we’re freaks and I’m so sick of being a freak, I’m so tired of it.

“Can’t we just be normal? Just be like everyone else?”

Sirianna threw the scrubber when her chest was heaving and the dirty water was splashing back on her. She glared at the stove through teary eyes and vented the last of her frustrations in a choked whisper:

“And why can’t I be grateful? Why can’t I just be glad we’re free and away from them?”

It was all she had wanted for so long, why couldn’t her brain understand that? There were much worse things that being stupid or a freak… Sirianna knew that because she had experienced so many of them while Harry must have experienced them all.

Maybe she should be more like Harry, who had finished sweeping and started mopping vigorously, carefully getting beneath every piece of equipment and in every corner.

Harry wasn’t whining, wasn’t crying. Harry never did.

Harry also wasn’t talking and Sirianna pushed away the pang of loneliness that it brought her.

They worked through the kitchen for at least two hours before moving out to the dining room with fresh water and cleaned scrubbers. Harry started sweeping, Sirianna started on the tables. They had a steady rhythm going, one that was only broken when Sirianna had too many thoughts to keep in her head or Harry started humming.

Everything was beginning to look quite clean and freshened really when the front door opened, setting off the jingle of the bell. Harry had already turned in that direction, Sirianna was the one who planned to tell whichever old man it was that they were closed.

It wasn’t an old man, it was Harry’s friend. Because Harry could make a friend by doing nothing more than sitting in a corner looking horribly sad.

“You guys closed?” Jonathan asked Sirianna. He pulled off his hat and twisted it in his hands as he looked around, frowning. “Or is this some sort of spring cleaning?”

“Both,” Sirianna told him, hastily wiping her face when she realized she was snotty and tear-streaked. She pulled her hair forward, hiding some behind the dark curls. “Sorry.”

“I can go,” Jonathan offered, lingering in the doorway and letting cold air rush in. “I heard some kids at school say there were two new kids, I figured it was you two.”

Great. Gossip had already started. Just like Hogwarts.

“It is,” Sirianna said, bitter and already forgetting her swear to not care what freedom looked like as long as it didn’t include cages and her brother fading away day-by-day. “We’re supposed to start tomorrow.”

“Oh. Rad.” Jonathan rocked on his heels and Sirianna saw what she had already noticed before - he seemed just as awkward as Harry was at any given time. He was tall and had longer hair, he had a brilliant denim jacket. Sirianna thought that even when he looked like he didn’t know what to say or do, he was still the coolest person she had met in years.

“I - uh… I drive my brother,” Jonathan said quickly, looking down at the camera he would sometimes bring to the diner with him. “If you wanted, I could pick you guys up too.”

Sirianna blinked, taken back by that. Benny didn’t say how they would travel to the school, she had assumed that he would drive them. Except then he would have to close the diner, lose even more money because of them.

“Thank you,” Sirianna said, showing that she could be grateful and considerate. “That would be lovely.”

“Thank you,” Harry added, echoing Sirianna.

Jonathan nodded and finally stepped all the way inside, letting the door close and block out the wind.

“Do you guys want help?” he offered. “I’m not busy.”

“Okay,” Harry said, helpfully deciding to speak up before Sirianna could tell Jonathan no. Jonathan didn’t wait to see if Sirianna was okay with it, he was too busy taking his boots and jacket off so he didn’t track mud inside.

Harry started mopping closer to Sirianna while Jonathan went to grab the ‘floor waxing kit’ from the closet off the kitchen.

“I love you,” Harry said, so out of the blue that Sirianna almost didn’t understand him. The mop paused in his hand and he gave Sirianna a small - but there - grin. “You’re not stupid, Siri. You’re the smartest person I’ve ever met.”

Sirianna’s worries and her nerves - her fear - that had been choking her all day eased up with Harry’s encouragement. Harry wasn’t a liar, he never had been. Harry wouldn’t even lie to her when she asked him once if she was a good singer.

It meant that Harry believed it, believed in her, and Sirianna couldn’t let him down. She just couldn’t.

Not again.