Even Stranger Things

Sirianna never felt cursed before, even if life seemed to have always been difficult, but she felt truly cursed suddenly.

Bad things kept happening, over and over. All of the good continued to be overshadowed with the bad and Sirianna didn’t understand why —

Why Benny was killed, why the world was a terrible place, why Sirianna ever thought things would change?

Sirianna woke in a new place and felt a strong wave of dejavu wash over her - another new place, another place that wasn’t made for her but Harry pushed them into anyway.

The only difference when Sirianna woke was that Benny was gone and Harry was talking.

“Hop went to work, there’s a kid missing,” Harry said after Sirianna woke and the whole series of horrible things replayed in her mind.

“It’s Will,” Sirianna said. She didn’t mean to snap, not at Harry, but sometimes he didn’t pay attention to things and Sirianna didn’t feel like saying it all over again. Sirianna knew it was Will because Chief Hopper told her so.

Just after Sirianna had to talk about three years of torment because Harry wouldn’t. Sirianna was the older one, she didn’t carry the weight of everything Harry did, but… but sometimes it just felt unfair. It felt unfair that Sirianna was the one to describe the horrors they lived through, the tests that never ended and the confidence that they could only leave the cages they were in through death.

It was unfair that Benny, who had been a good and kind man, had been killed. It was unfair that Sirianna didn’t know where else they could go where Harry would be safe.

It was unfair that it was on Sirianna’s shoulders to solve.

Harry was curled up like a cat on the side of the sofa closest to where Sirianna must have slept on a recliner. It was only because Harry’s eyes were closed and his shoulders moved in even breaths that Sirianna whispered her one wildest wish.

“I wish our parents were here.”

If their parents were alive, none of it would have ever happened. Sirianna and Harry would still be in school, probably studying for their OWLS. Sirianna’s biggest problem would be boys and quidditch and thinking about what she wanted to do with her life.

Sirianna never would have met the kind man with the blue eyes who had believed Sirianna had a good heart. It would have been for the best if she never met him, because then Benny would be in his diner… alive.

Then Harry said something so cruel that the tears that threatened to spill again dried almost instantly.

“I don’t miss them,” Harry mumbled.

Sirianna’s jaw dropped and she couldn’t believe Harry just said that. He still had his eyes closed, so unbothered as he tried to sleep.

Maybe that was why Harry didn’t talk, he never knew the right thing to say.

Sirianna couldn’t sleep, couldn’t stop thinking about Benny and who would have killed him. It had to be one of the White Coats, Sirianna was sure of it. It didn’t seem like a coincidence that the man who let them stay with him - take over his whole life - ended up dead.

Why did they stop there though? Sirianna began pacing through the quiet house while she thought about it. If they knew that Sirianna and Harry would return to Benny’s home that afternoon, why not wait for them and kill them as well?

That was what didn’t make sense to Sirianna. They could have killed them so easily, Sirianna never would have expected it. They could have killed Benny, waited just inside the diner -

Harry would have ran in first, been killed instantly. Sirianna would have ran in next and they could have killed her. Steve was with them, but it wasn’t as if the White Coats would have been afraid to kill him, they would have wanted to be sure there was no evidence left behind - no witnesses.

But they didn’t. They killed Benny and… left?

It didn’t make sense and Sirianna couldn’t stay in the house that was all wrong to think about it. She needed air, she needed some proof that the world didn’t consist of just herself and Harry, as it had for years.

Sirianna searched through the drawers in the kitchen until she found a pen and paper. Her fingers were shaking as she quickly wrote that she was going for a walk, she would be back. Harry was still sleeping, Sirianna covered him up with the blanket she must have slept with before placing the note where he would see it and leaving.

It was the right amount of chilly outside, just enough so they Sirianna’s mind cleared with the wind but she didn’t freeze. Everything smelled like fall, the leaves were crispy and orange, and Sirianna hated it.

Fall used to be her favorite season, when she had been younger. Fall used to mean the start of a new school year, a chance to get away from her relatives during the day.

Sirianna had a paper chain counting down to fall the summer that they had been taken. It was something she made with Lavender Brown on the last day of school, a fun way to mark the days until they would be back at Hogwarts.

Sirianna stuffed her hands in her pockets and started walking with no real clue on where she walked.

Did the Dursleys throw it away? Did they throw away all of Sirianna and Harry’s belongings? Their wands, the cloak that belonged to their dad, the photo album that Hagrid gave them? Sirianna could see them doing just that, pitching all proof that the twins had ever existed.

Sometimes it felt like they never had existed to anyone else. They were temporary — a daughter and son for a year, students for a year. They were experiments for three years, Hammonds for two weeks. Sirianna had been a Gryffindor for a year, part of the quidditch team for a year.

Sirianna couldn’t explain it, but it all made her feel incredibly small and sad.

The only role that Sirianna never lost was being Harry’s sister and most of the time that was enough, but… it was also sad.

Sirianna walked slowly through the small town, letting her thoughts wander as much as she did. It wasn’t until she heard someone yelling her name that Sirianna lifted her head to turn around.

Behind her, walking out of a shop Sirianna had just passed with his arm full of papers, was Jonathan. It made Sirianna’s heart twist to see the curl of his shoulders and the bags under his eyes.

“Jonathan, hi,” Sirianna said, backtracking to help him pick up one of the papers that blew off the stack. She picked it up from the sidewalk and the twist in her chest was tightened - it was a poster, for Will.

The quiet and shy boy with the dark hair and solemn eyes was grinning at Sirianna from the poster with the word MISSING above his head. There were details beneath his photo; height, weight, a general description of him and his bicycle.

“I’m so sorry about your brother,” Sirianna said, picturing her own brother in Will’s photo. If Harry had been taken by himself, Sirianna would have gone spare.

It had been painful, what they went through. Sirianna couldn’t imagine if Harry had to do it all alone.

“I - I heard about your uncle,” Jonathan said with sad eyes. “Benny was a good man, I’m sorry.”

Benny was a good man and he was gone. There was no way to fix it, nothing Sirianna could do to bring him back.

“I am too,” she said. She held up the paper she had and looked around the area they stood in. “Are you hanging these up? I can help,” she offered.

“No, I mean - you don’t have to.” Jonathan took the paper back and added it to his stack. “You’re busy.”

She wasn’t, actually.

“I’d like to,” she said more firmly. Jonathan was Harry’s friend, Will had seemed sweet. Will was missing, he wasn’t kidnapped and he wasn’t dead - Sirianna could help hang posters. “Do you have any ideas where he might be?”

Jonathan seemed to accept Sirianna’s offer to help because he didn’t argue when she fell in step beside him. He had a small hammer and a bag of nails in his coat pocket and he passed all the papers but one to Sirianna so he could hang one.

“None,” Jonathan said rather bleakly. He held the poster to a wooden pole and hammered a nail in the top of it quickly. “The police are acting like he ran away, my mom - my mom’s losing it. God.” Jonathan groaned and tipped his head forward, resting it on the pole for a second.

“Will’s my baby brother, my best friend.”

Sirianna thought of Harry curled up on a sofa, she thought of him in a dozen different places at a million points of time. Harry as a very small boy in a garden as they pulled weeds. Harry at primary when he proudly showed Sirianna his name with wobbly letters. Harry under the Sorting Hat at Hogwarts. Harry flying through the air with all the grace Sirianna didn’t have.

“I get it,” Sirianna told Jonathan - she did. In all the ways that every place she had was temporary, being Harry’s sister was always consistent.

It couldn’t be outran, it couldn’t be taken from her.

“Let’s hang these posters and I’ll help you search,” Sirianna said. She slowly put her hand on Jonathan’s shoulder. “Let’s find your brother.”

Surely there weren’t many places for one boy to be hidden at.

Jonathan drove all over town, giving Sirianna quite the tour, to hang posters. They went inside a bank, a post office, a soda shop, and a store that Jonathan mentioned his mum worked at. A woman at a hair salon promised to hand out extras when Sirianna explained what they were doing.

They stopped at the elementary school, the one for very small children, to hang a poster outside and just inside on a bulletin board. Jonathan drove past the school where Will attended, there were already posters there that Jonathan said Will’s friends hung up.

School was still in session when Jonathan pulled in the high school lot and Sirianna scowled when a group of students were lingering outside and watched her and Jonathan walk up to the bulletin board.

“Ignore them,” Sirianna told Jonathan quietly when someone whistled at them. It was difficult to do, but they were clearly too busy to get in any stupid fights.

“Yeah, whatever,” Jonathan mumbled. He started to hang one of the posters when Sirianna heard the most cruel comment —

“I bet he killed him.”

Jonathan’s hands shook so badly that he stabbed himself with a tack as Sirianna spun around with a glare.

How dare they? How dare they say that Jonathan would kill his own brother? Jonathan was clearly distraught and they - they —

“Shut your mouths.” Nancy Wheeler, a girl in a few of Sirianna’s classes, shouldered past the group that snickered at Jonathan and cast a withering glare at them. “You don’t know a thing,” Nancy told them. “Idiots.”

Sirianna had a lot more she would have said, but Nancy walked up to them and asked for some of posters.

“Have you put any at the churches?” she asked Jonathan with a sad smile. “I can put some there if you want.”

“Yeah - I mean, no, I haven’t, thanks,” Jonathan stammered as he handed some posters to her.

“No problem, I’m sure Mike will want to help too,” Nancy said. “How’s your mom?”

“Stressed, terrified.” Jonathan sighed, “We just want him home.”

“I hope you find him soon.” Nancy squeezed Jonathan’s arm briefly before she looked to Sirianna. “And I heard about your uncle, I’m so sorry.”

Sirianna nodded appreciatively. Even if Benny hadn’t been her true uncle, he - he had been something like family… for the brief time that Sirianna knew him.

“Call me if you need anything,” Nancy told them - both of them, it seemed. “I have to go.”

“Thanks,” Jonathan said. He raised a hand in farewell as Nancy backed up to get to class.

It was an inappropriate time to mention it, so Sirianna didn’t, but Jonathan did watch Nancy walk away until she turned down a corridor and disappeared.

“Nancy’s brother Mike is Will’s best friend,” Jonathan told her when they left the school. Jonathan seemed so lost, just a boy driving around while missing a part of himself. “Will was at Mike’s house the other night.”

“Oh.” Sirianna tried to be subtle, it truly was a bad time, but she was nosy. “Are you and Nancy friends then?”

Jonathan shrugged, though Sirianna didn’t think she imagined the faint blush on his cheeks.

“Friendly enough,” he said, which wasn’t an answer at all. “I’m going to go to Muncie, want me to drop you off somewhere?”

“What’s in Muncie?” Sirianna asked, weighing her desire to go mad in a house she didn’t belong in against how long she had already been away from Harry.

“My dad,” Jonathan said flatly. “He’s not answering the phone, I’m going to go check if Will’s been there.”

Sirianna was worried that Harry would wake up alone in a new place and he might be scared. But Jonathan also seemed scared, beneath his stoic mask he had to be scared. Jonathan had to be, because every time Harry was out of Sirianna’s sight she was scared.

Harry was alive though, he was safe, and Sirianna couldn’t sit around thinking of Benny.

“I’ll go with you,” Sirianna said. “You really shouldn’t be alone.”

Jonathan made a protest but it was weak enough that Sirianna could pretend he hadn’t. They wouldn’t be gone long, Jonathan said that his father lived thirty minutes away. Harry probably wouldn’t wake up before Sirianna returned. Jonathan’s little brother was missing, that was important.

The drive out of Hawkins had Sirianna sweating beneath her clothes. It seemed as if the further they drove, the more difficult it was for her to breathe.

“Can I turn this on?” Sirianna asked Jonathan after too much silence. She pointed at the radio that usually played soft music to fill her mind.

“Yeah, okay.” Jonathan glanced sideways at Sirianna while she simultaneously pressed the button for the radio and cranked down her window. “Are you okay?”

Sirianna nodded and pictured Harry sleeping, sound asleep with a blanket tucked around him. Harry was fine, her brother wasn’t missing.

“I - it’s stupid, I miss Harry,” she said, knowing that wasn’t quite right. Sirianna did miss him, but it was her mind that missed him - that started picturing him hurting or sick without her there.

“That’s not stupid,” Jonathan said. “I don’t think so anyway. I mean, I get it. Will’s missing and I feel like I can’t even breathe anymore, like he’s the only reason I ever breathed to start with.”

“Exactly,” Sirianna said. The more Jonathan talked, the less she was able to picture Harry slumped on a table with blood pouring from a wound on his head. “You’re close then, with Will?”

“Yeah.” Jonathan smiled faintly, fondness softening every line he was too young to have on his face. “Probably not as close as you and Harry, but Will and I have been through a lot, you know? But it was never so bad because I had him and he had me.”

Sirianna could understand that more than Jonathan would know.

“Sometimes - sometimes Harry’s quiet,” Sirianna said. Jonathan actually snorted, which brought a brief smile to Sirianna’s face. “I know, but sometimes it makes me insane. Don’t, please don’t tell him I said that. Actually, ignore me. I think I might be going insane.”

Sirianna didn’t want anyone to think she was badmouthing her brother. Harry was - Harry meant everything to Sirianna. There wasn’t any world where she wanted to be, could possibly be, without her twin.

Jonathan did as Sirianna asked and ignored her. It made her feel worse, if possible, because Benny was dead and Jonathan’s brother was missing and Sirianna was whining about Harry.

“I yelled at Will, the other night,” Jonathan said abruptly after two songs had played on the radio. “He wanted me to fix his bike, I was busy developing photos. So… I told him to leave me alone because he’s - he’s my annoying kid brother and I love him more than anything, but he’s my brother so he annoys the hell out of me sometimes too.”

Jonathan glanced over at Sirianna, “I bet you annoy Harry.”

Did… when - how? How on earth would Sirianna annoy Harry? Maybe… she used to.

“Siri!” Harry pushed Sirianna off him, after he let her hug him for a few seconds, and his cheeks were so red. “You’re embarrassing me!” he hissed.

“That’s my job.” Sirianna grinned, pleased with her effort, and smacked Harry’s hand away so she could ruffle his hair. “Embarass my LITTLE BITTY BABY BROTHER!”

“Oh my God.” Harry groaned and looked around, blushing harder when he saw the giggles from his housemates. “It’s seven minutes, Siri.”

“Might as well be seven years.” Sirianna wiped fake tears away and waved when Harry dramatically stormed away from her. “I LOVE YOU, BABY HARRY!”

It went without saying that if anyone else tried to call him that, Sirianna and Harry would both make them regret it.

“I used to embarrass him.” Sirianna grinned at the memories. “He would be with his friends who all thought they were quite cool and I would go running at him, calling him my little baby brother.”

“I do that to Will,” Jonathan said, they shared a grin of understanding. “When I drop him off with his friends and he forgets to say bye, I yell at him sometimes, stupid shit like how I can’t believe he’s all grown up and—” Jonathan’s breath hitched and Sirianna’s heart broke for him. “— and I love him.”

Jonathan turned his head away so Sirianna reached over and ignored the prickly feeling of his skin under her fingers while she squeezed his hand - just as she would do for her brother, just as she hoped someone would do for Harry if she weren’t with him.

“He knows,” Sirianna said, thinking of her brother and the pain that seemed to follow them, the words that Harry never had enough of. “He knows you love him.”

Harry had to know that.

Jonathan’s father turned out to be an exceedingly unpleasant man. Sirianna had thought that Jonathan was going to ask him if he had seen Will recently, she wasn’t expecting the thorough search of the property that Jonathan started.

Sirianna didn’t need told to help though, she just started searching in cupboards and closets while Jonathan searched bedrooms. A woman that surely wasn’t much older than Sirianna yelled at them, but since Jonathan didn’t speak to her, neither did Sirianna.

Jonathan yelled for Will, but Sirianna didn’t think he was there.

“Stay out of my house!” The woman slammed the door when Jonathan tore out of the back door. “You’re crazy!”

“That’s Lonnie’s girlfriend of the month,” Jonathan explained when they finished the search of the house - trailer, Jonathan called it. “Ignore him,” Jonathan added, nodding briefly to an older man standing in the back lawn with a flannel shirt on and a cigarette dangling from his lips.

“Johnny? That you, boy?” The man smiled slowly and it was a slimy smile, not at all friendly. “And who’s this? A girlfriend?”

“Shut up.” Jonathan shoved past his father to get to the blue car behind him. Sirianna scurried to catch up and she peeked beneath the car, in the windows. Jonathan opened the boot, looked in there, then turned to slam his hands against his father’s chest.

“You can’t answer a call? Your son is missing and you can’t answer your phone?” Jonathan shoved his father again and Sirianna straightened up immediately when his father caught Jonathan by the shirt collar and tossed him away from him.

“Only time your mom calls me is when she wants something,” his father said. “I didn’t even know Will was missing until that fucking cop showed up. I haven’t seen Will since last Christmas.”

“That was two years ago!” Jonathan yelled. “You ever stop and think that’s not normal?”

“Oh fuck off, you sound just like Joyce,” Lonnie groaned. “Jesus Christ, you two can’t keep track of one little kid and you come here yelling at me for it?”

Jonathan looked ready to hit his father again and Sirianna thought the man deserved it, but there was the handle of a gun that she saw even he shifted and - and enough people were dead and missing.

“Let’s just go,” Sirianna told Jonathan quickly, stepping between him and his father so Jonathan had to hear her. “Will isn’t here. We should get back to searching, okay?”

Jonathan was seething and glaring at his father over his shoulder, but he glanced down at Sirianna and the tightness of his jaw relaxed some.

“Yeah, okay,” Jonathan said. “Someone has to find Will.”

“Don’t know how you’ll find him, since you were the one who fucking lost him!” Lonnie yelled when Jonathan stormed away with Sirianna beside him. “Maybe I oughta find him, bring him here and raise him right!”

“Go fuck yourself, Lonnie,” Jonathan yelled back. They opened their doors of his car just before a rock flew at them and smashed in the back windshield. Sirianna yelped at the sound of the glass crunching and Jonathan looked truly murderous.

“It’s not worth it,” Sirianna said when Jonathan seemed tempted to smash his father like the glass. “He’s not,” she added.

It must be disappointing to Jonathan, to have a father who would do things like throw rocks at his head. Lonnie didn’t seem to care about his missing son, he wasn’t even helping to search. Maybe Lonnie would throw away anything of Will’s he had, pretend he had never existed.

It was sad and Sirianna once again felt a small connection to Jonathan, one he might not know they shared.

Jonathan said he needed to check on his mum, make sure she had something to eat, before he wanted to go out searching again. Sirianna asked if he would mind to drop her off and promised that she would help him search again later when he was ready.

If Harry was awake… maybe he would go. Harry was powerful, brilliant, he might have an idea of how to find Will.

“Thanks, for today,” Jonathan said after he pulled up at Chief Hopper’s house. He had raised a brow when Sirianna told him who she was staying with, but hadn’t commented until then.

“You don’t have to thank me,” Sirianna told him. She shrugged as she climbed out of the car. “You’re my friend, Jonathan. If - well, that’s just what friends do.”

And, because Sirianna did consider them to be friends, Sirianna also pretended to not notice the tear that fell from Jonathan’s eye.

He had a long day, Sirianna could empathize.

Sirianna felt uneasy when she let herself inside Chief Hopper’s home. It wasn’t her home, even if it seemed as if they would be staying there for at least a day or so. She didn’t want to be there, she wanted to be at the diner telling Gareth and Langley and the other men about high school and laughing when Benny teased them about their weights even if she thought they all seemed healthy enough.

Chief Hopper’s house was not Sirianna’s.

Though Harry seemed to have made himself at home.

Harry wasn’t asleep like Sirianna hoped he would be, Harry was awake and flitting around the house with shaky and erratic steps. It was unusual, just as the rush of rambling he did as soon as Sirianna closed the door behind her was.

“I’m sorry, Siri. I’m sorry. I - you do everything, everything. I wasn’t trying to hurt you, I don’t want you to hurt. And I was lying anyway, I do miss them too. I do.”

Sirianna’s frustration with Harry’s silence and her guilt for that frustration and the million of complicated emotions she felt about Harry sometimes disappeared when he turned around and Sirianna could see and feel that he was miserable.

Harry was miserable and it was unacceptable.

Sirianna crossed through the house quickly, scrunching her nose at the smell of something burned from the kitchen, and she wrapped her arms around Harry so tightly that she might never let go.

Harry wasn’t dead, Harry wasn’t missing. Harry was there and he was Sirianna’s brother and she needed him as much as he needed her.

It felt like pieces of herself snapped back in place with her arms wrapped around him.

“I’m sorry.” Sirianna held Harry tightly and put her face in his shoulder. “I’m the one that’s sorry.”

“I thought - I thought you were done,” Harry mumbled, his face as similarly hidden as it was identical to Sirianna’s.

“I left a note.”

“You felt done.”

How could Sirianna possibly explain to Harry that the one place she had always fit - the one role she would never put down - was with him?

“I’d never be done with you, Har,” Sirianna said, choking up when she pictured Harry on a poster, Harry slumped over a table. “Never,” she swore.

“I…” Harry hesitated when he reached up to hold Sirianna back as tightly as she was him. “I don’t miss them because I have you.”

That made Sirianna feel impossibly small, too small for the expectations that Harry placed on her. It made her sad too, sad to think that Harry thought she was in any way a replacement for their parents who would have loved them, protected them, taken care of them.

“I love you,” was all Sirianna could say.

At least Harry finally hugged her back tightly, crushing her against him in a way that kept her from falling apart.

“I love you.”