Spells & Sheds
“Soo you think that you and Harry are related, Harry’s great-great whatever was burnt to death for being a witch, the monster killing normies - and Rowan who you insist is dead despite everyone seeing him alive - is actually a human, who you think is Xavier, and that somehow you and Harry will be responsible for destroying the school?”
Enid sat cross-legged on her bed, painting her toenails an array of bright colors, and paused long enough to give Wednesday a disbelieving look. “Did I get it all?”
“And I suspect his dog has some sort of magic power it’s siphoning from Harry, and his parents may still be alive,” Wednesday told her absently as she updated the board decorating her wall behind her desk. She stepped back and looked at all the information on all the mysteries she had built so far and frowned at the absolute lack of ability in linking any of it together.
“Of course,” Enid said sagely. “A magic dog and parents that just abandoned their kid instead of dying when he was a baby. And did you stop to think how crushed Harry will be if it turns out his parents are actually dead?”
Wednesday hesitated then turned sharply on the heel of her boots to face her roommate.
“I did not,” she said. “Surely he knows it’s a small possibility in the list of places that photo album would have came from?”
“Oh yeah,” Enid scoffed, returning her eyes to her toes where she painted with a delicate hand. “I’m sure that the orphaned kid isn’t totally getting his hopes up that his parents returned from the dead to go live happily ever after with him.”
Truthfully, Wednesday hadn’t considered that.
“You go speak with him about it,” Wednesday ordered her while she packed a bag with Thing’s help. “I have a morgue to break in to.”
Enid’s sure hand slipped, knocking her bottle of pink polish to the floor and causing it to spill on the dark wooden floor.
“Why are you breaking in the morgue?!” Enid asked, not even noticing the mess she made. “We have classes in like two hours!”
“Plenty of time,” Wednesday said carelessly. “I want to find out more about the monster’s victims. You go talk with Harry, I’ll see you both in first hour.”
Enid argued against Wednesday’s plan, but Wednesday was already climbing through the window, intent on her investigation.
*****
Harry sat at breakfast, anxiously awaiting Wednesday’s arrival. He brought the photo album with him, all of the photos except one accounted for.
There was a wedding photo of James Potter and Lily Evans, eleven months before Harry was born, that Harry had taken from the album to keep in his room. It was the best photo of them and Harry liked to keep it by his bed. Next time he went to town, he was going to buy a frame for it so it didn’t get torn up.
Ajax had given Harry an odd look when he propped it up on his nightstand in front of his cactus that Miss Thornhill had given him on his first day, but Harry didn’t bother explaining.
They might be alive.
Harry felt his heart skip a beat every time he thought of it. He’d hardly slept last night, so many memories mixed together insistent on keeping him awake.
“Stand aside!”
“Not Harry!”
“You’ve got no idea the life you were cheated of, boy.”
“Die.”
And green light, always green light.
When someone finally skipped to his table, it wasn’t Wednesday, it was Enid.
“Good morning, hair twin,” Enid sang brightly before plopping down directly across from Harry with a smile. “You know, I think you should add some pink too, so we can really match.”
“I’ll think about it,” Harry said uncomfortably. He liked Wednesday’s roommate, now that she bothered to recognize his existence, but he was still mildly bitter that she never spoke to him before Wednesday arrived.
At a minimum, Harry didn’t intend on her thinking his single streak of blue in his black hair somehow made them twins. Enid’s shoulder length hair was light blonde with pink streaks on one side and blue streaks on the other.
“Well Wednesday told me to come find you,” Enid said, smoothing past the awkward silence between them. “She had something disgusting to do, but she told me about your album.” Enid nodded toward Harry’s most important possession. “May I see it?”
Harry was reluctant to let her touch his album. He didn’t know her that well, he’d like to consider them friends, but without Wednesday around it felt tense between them. If Enid struck out with her claws then Harry’s only connection to the people he suspected were his parents would be gone.
… unless they’re still alive.
Enid smiled, a soft look passing over her face, and she reached across the table to touch Harry’s wrist lightly.
“I will be careful,” she said, her amber eyes soft. “If I so much as rip a page you can tell Wednesday and I’m sure she’ll stick nails in my eyes or something equally horrible and cruel.”
Harry believed the look in Enid’s eyes more than he counted on her fear of Wednesday.
“Be careful,” Harry told her, quickly tacking on a polite, “please.”
“Of course.”
Enid slowly flipped open the cover, acting with exaggerated slowness, and flipping through what Harry determined was nearly a decade of four boys being friends, later adding the red headed girl.
“She’s very pretty,” Enid said, looking at a photo of Lily Evans and James Potter laying on their backs, side by side, in front of a lake. From the angle, it looked like someone was sitting in the tree to take the photo, and Harry thought it was a sweet moment to capture.
“She is,” Harry agreed. Lily Evans was beautiful, a picture perfect match to James Potter, who somehow looked like Harry except probably a thousand times more classically handsome.
They looked so happy and free together, Harry was distressed every time he imagined them to actually be dead. They were too beautiful and happy to have died only a few years after the photo was taken.
“And Wednesday said these are your parents?” Enid asked quietly, pushing a banana off her tray towards Harry as she continued flipping through the album.
Harry hummed and used the banana to point at the photos. “The bloke with the messy hair and glasses, that’s James, I think he’s my dad. And he married the girl, Lily, a year after they stopped wearing school uniforms. This bloke? Remus Lupin? I think he’s best mates with this one, Sirius Black. But there’s a bunch of photos of Sirius with James outside their school too, so maybe they were cousins or something? I dunno.”
“And what about him?” Enid pointed at the heavier boy with the pale eyes and blonde hair in a group photo with the other boys when they were younger. “What’s his story?”
Harry shrugged. “That’s Peter Pettigrew, he’s not in as many pictures. I don’t think they were real close to him.”
Enid smiled and gave Harry back the album after she finished looking in all the pages.
“I’ve never heard you talk so much,” she told him. “You really think these people were related to you?”
“I mean… maybe,” Harry said uncertainly, pushing his glasses up then focusing on peeling the banana Enid gave him. “We look alike, don’t we?” he asked, almost desperate to hear someone else confirm it.
“Oh, very much so,” Enid said quickly. “I’d be surprised if James wasn’t your father, or some close relation anyway.”
Harry let out a soft breath of relief.
“But… but I bet it’s sad to have the pictures when you didn’t get a chance to really get to know them,” Enid went on. “Isn’t it?”
Harry thought that over while he chewed, considering it.
“Not really, no,” Harry finally said after he swallowed. “Because what if they aren’t dead? Someone left this album in the woods, it could be them.”
As caught up as Harry was in his excitement, his endless hope, he didn’t even care that it was Enid he was talking with. It just felt so good to finally think there was a light at the end of the tunnel of bad luck and disappointments that Harry had drove through for years.
Enid didn’t look convinced, but that wasn’t Harry’s problem. If one of his parents were out there, close by, then they had to be looking for Harry - looking out for Harry - and he needed to know. For once, Harry would risk anything to get an answer to his question.
“What if it was one of the others?” Enid asked Harry. “It could have been Peter or Remus or even Sirius, right?”
Harry scowled and snatched the album off the table, carefully stuffing it in his bag. If Enid was going to write off Harry’s beliefs about where the book came from, then Harry didn’t want her even looking at it.
“No,” Harry said firmly. “It’s from my parents, I can feel it.”
Enid gave Harry a look so full of pity that he didn’t care how rude and disrespectful it was, Harry slammed the half-eaten banana down and got to his feet.
“Have a good day,” he snapped. He passed by the other tables before Enid’s quick footsteps caught up to him.
“We’re actually in first hour together,” she said cheerfully, as if Harry wasn’t angry with her. “So, let’s walk together.”
“Kind of you, considering you never wanted to walk to first hour together before,” Harry muttered irritably.
Enid put her hand on Harry’s elbow and pulled him to a stop beneath the archway that separated the cafeteria from the rest of the main building of the campus.
“Harry, did you ever try and talk to me, even once?” Enid asked, her eyes wide and clear as they stared in Harry’s. “Did you think that maybe you’re really intimidating and I didn’t know if you would even want to be friends before you and Wednesday started hanging out?”
Intimidating? Harry?
No, Harry certainly never thought of that.
Enid smiled pitifully again and linked their arms together to resume their walk to math together.
“You’re very intimidating,” Enid told Harry while they walked. “You’ve got scary eyes.”
Harry narrowed his eyes at her in confusion and Enid giggled at him.
“Yep, just like that,” she said. “Come on, sit with me today. Wednesday can sit by herself, punishment for missing the most important meal of the day.”
*****
Wednesday had been prepared to immediately share news of her discovery with Harry and Enid, but instead she was forced to give them the cold shoulder all through their shared classes. It wasn’t until seventh hour, which Wednesday shared with Harry and not Enid, that Harry finally deigned to take notice of her.
“Hi,” Harry said, sounding as terribly awkward as he always tended to sound. He took a seat beside Wednesday in their botany class and grinned with a pink tinge to his cheeks.
Wednesday said nothing, flipping through the reports on the monster’s victims she stole from the elderly mortician at the Jericho morgue.
“Wednesday?” Harry tapped Wednesday on the shoulder and she could practically taste his sadness when she turned her shoulder away from him.
“Oh, okay…”
Trust Harry to spend the day whispering with Enid, shutting Wednesday out, then pouting like a child when Wednesday treated him to his own behavior.
When Wednesday glanced at Harry from the corner of her eye, he even looked like a wilted flower with his shoulders curled in and his chin ducked to his chest. It was pathetic.
It was so pathetic that it gave Wednesday chest pains.
“Will you be bringing your photos to my room after class so we can look through them and that spell book or are you too busy with Enid?” Wednesday asked without looking directly at Harry.
Harry mumbled something that Wednesday couldn’t hear over the irksome chatter of their classmates filling the room around them. Wednesday slammed her folder shut and turned a scowl to Harry.
“Speak clearly,” she told him. “You’re fifteen, not five.”
Though, Harry certainly looked five when he turned his big bright eyes on her, filled with some form of hurt that Wednesday must have felt through their blood connection.
“Are you mad at me?” Harry asked her pitifully. “I don’t… I didn’t have any friends before you, I don’t know what I did wrong. Will you tell me?”
It was as difficult to ignore Harry as it was to ignore Pugsley when he was at his peak most pathetic.
“I had important information on the monster to share with you this morning and instead you chose to sit with Enid and gossip like juvenile girls all day,” Wednesday hissed at him. “I thought you were finally developing a drive to find answers to our mysteries.”
“I do,” Harry said quickly, whispering as Wednesday was so as to not be overheard. “I’m sorry, Enid was just talking about some dance and she said you didn’t care and— yeah, I care,” he said. “Are we- we’re still friends, right? You’ll help me find my parents?”
Wednesday thought about what Enid had said that morning, about how devastated Harry would be if his parents were truly dead. She had thought that since Enid cared so much that she would have mentioned it to Harry while chatting on about some insipid dance, but clearly she expected too much of her.
“If they’re still alive, yes,” Wednesday told him, turning to face the front as Miss Thornhill closed the classroom door. “They might be dead for all we know.”
Harry deflated like the balloons that Wednesday used to pop at children’s birthday parties, but he needed to be aware of the risks.
Wednesday slid her boot to the side of her chair, nudging Harry’s sneakers with the toe of them.
Perhaps he didn’t need to face the depth of possible disappointment and devastation on his own.
As soon as classes ended for the day, Wednesday drug Harry directly to her room. When they passed Enid in the hall, Wednesday informed her that they had plans until dinner and she should spend time elsewhere. While Harry was most interested in exploring his photographs, Wednesday felt an unfamiliar thrill of excitement at getting to see Harry attempt some of the spells in the book that belonged to Sarah Addams-Potter.
Dead parents coming back to life were not as interesting as witchcraft.
Regardless, Wednesday listened as Harry went through the photo album and pointed out each person and gave a name and a story for them all. He was a creative story teller, more creative than Wednesday had believed him to be before.
His poetry was certainly not as hopeful and cheery as his stories for the group of boys in the photographs were.
“Pick a photo for me to hang on my wall,” Wednesday told Harry once she painstakingly sat through a story for every. single. photograph. in the album.
“So we can keep an eye out for any of them,” Wednesday explained, exasperated when Harry pulled the album closer to himself with a suspicious shadow passing over his face.
“No other reason?” Harry asked her. “You promise?”
Wednesday crossed her index finger over her heart and held her hand palm out in front of her chest.
“I am finished searching in your kills,” Wednesday told him, ignoring Harry’s tiny twitch in his hands at the reminder of the previous decorations on her board. “I merely need a photograph if you want Thing and I to keep an eye out for anyone who may have owned this book.”
It took Harry entirely too long to choose a photo that he could bear to part with, but he finally handed over a photo marked with ‘Graduation’ on the back and the four teenage boys and the red headed girl in a group photo on the front. Wednesday clipped it to the board in the section of the board dedicated to solving the mystery of the album and the supposed death of Harry’s parents.
With that tedious business out of the way, Wednesday pulled out Sarah Addams-Potter’s spell book and handed it to Harry.
“Time for magic,” Wednesday told him. When Harry merely sat on Wednesday’s bed, holding the book, looking like a fly on a corpse, Wednesday grabbed his shoulders and pulled him to his feet. “Magic spells, try them,” she insisted.
“No,” Harry said, surprisingly firm, shoving the book back toward her. “It’s not safe.”
“I’m hardly scared of you,” Wednesday said drily. “If it makes your chivalrous and patriarchal spirit feel better, you could try the one for levitation first.”
Harry ducked his head and seemed to be warring with himself - Wednesday wondered if he was afraid of his power or of his curiosity - for a long moment. When he picked his head back up, there was a satisfying gleam of determination in his eyes.
“Which one’s for levitation?” Harry asked, opening the book and gently flipping through the worn pages.
“On the second page, wingardium leviosa,” Wednesday told him, having already memorized the first half of the spell book.
Harry blinked at the third page then at Wednesday. “Er… how do you know that means levitation?”
“It’s Latin,” Wednesday drawled. She flicked her fingers impatiently. “Try it.”
“How?”
Wednesday huffed. Harry may be more tolerable than any other person Wednesday knew, but he was clearly incredibly thick.
“Try saying the incantation,” Wednesday said, speaking slowly and clearly for him to understand. “And use whatever power you drew from when you killed Rowan.”
Harry rolled his eyes and then slapped the book closed and tossed it on Wednesday’s bed, watching it bounce on the black quilt before he glanced at Wednesday. She could see he was anxious, any fool who read a beginners psychology book could see that, but he seemed mildly excited as well.
Wednesday would be ecstatic to learn she had the power of witchcraft, instead of her psychic abilities. One was ancient, respected; the other was vague, frustrating.
“Say the spell again, slower this time,” Harry asked her. Wednesday said it twice, drawing the pronunciation out slowly for him. After the second time, Harry nodded and closed his eyes.
“Okay, I’m ready.” Harry opened his eyes and held his hands out toward the book on the bed, his eyes focused on it fiercely.
“Wingardium Leviosa!”
*****
“Harry, may I speak with you?”
Harry had been working in the greenhouses, carefully watering the plants that were due for watering that day. He’d been surprised to see Principal Weems in the doorway and hoped he wasn’t in trouble. He hadn’t done anything bad recently, aside from burning down the statue last weekend… being in the girls dorm… practicing witchcraft with Wednesday…
Harry gulped and wiped his hands on a towel before stepping over to Principal Weems with his head respectfully lowered.
“Yes ma’am?” Harry said anxiously, twisting his fingers in the hem of his sleeves.
“Harry, dear, please, look at me when we talk,” Principal Weems said, her voice kind but firm. Once Harry slowly did look up at her, she smiled at him.
She didn’t seem angry, but occasionally it was hard to tell with adults.
“I spoke with Doctor Kinbott yesterday,” Principal Weems said, her smile still in place. “She’s very happy with you, Harry, she said you’ve been making admirable progress with her.”
Some of the tension in Harry’s shoulders leaked away at that, after he analyzed it and couldn’t find any way it was a criticism.
“Thank you, ma’am,” Harry said, forcing himself to hold Weems’ eyes, continuing to show he could be a perfectly normal student at Nevermore. He even smiled, just a small bit to show that he was absolutely deserving of the praise Dr. Kinbott gave him.
“We are both concerned about something though,” Principal Weems said, knocking Harry’s smile right off his face.
“Ma’am?” Harry asked, glancing down at the floor that was always covered in a layer of dirt no matter how many times Harry swept it.
“Eyes up here, dear,” Principal Weems said, tapping beside her eyes. “You aren’t in trouble, Harry, I wish you would see me as more than an enforcer of the rules.”
“Sorry, ma’am,” Harry said, mentally grimacing at the reminder of the same thing she’d said on Harry’s first day at Nevermore.
She’d always spoken kindly to Harry, but she also always insisted he looked at her eyes when he talked, something that went against everything every other adult in Harry’s life always demanded of him.
Harry hated looking Weems in the eyes. It made the skin on his back tighten, like millions of ants were crawling up and down his skin.
“It’s no problem, I believe by the time you graduate that the two of us will be quite good friends,” Principal Weems said, as if those in charge were ever friends with the people they ruled over. “Now, Dr. Kinbott and I are both so pleased with how much you’ve been branching out. Goodness, I don’t think I’ve seen you quite so outgoing as you have been lately! It’s wonderful to see!”
And all thanks too—
“However, we believe all your attention is being focused on one friend, when there are a hundred students here who would be thrilled to get to know the Harry that you and I both know is hidden inside that little shell of yours,” Principal Weems said with a click of her tongue. “So, in spirit of seeing you branch out and make more friends, I’d like you to volunteer on the decorating committee for the upcoming dance.”
Harry tried to puzzle that through… Principal Weems came to order Harry to volunteer to decorate for the Rave’N, the annual school dance, so he would make more friends?
“Ma’am, I have more than one friend,” Harry told her before hastily adding, “I’m not arguing, ma’am, I’m sorry, it’s just… Xavier and Enid talk to me sometimes and… and I made a friend from town, Tyler.”
And Harry really, really, didn’t want to volunteer to help decorate for a dance when he knew Ajax and Bianca were both volunteers.
“Tyler? Sheriff Galpin’s son?” Principal Weems beamed at Harry’s affirmative nod. “Wonderful! Then I expect you to bring him with you to the dance this weekend! You’ll be a shining example of outcast and normie relations! And,” Principal Weems’ smile turned to a smirk, “you can show him the decorations I’m sure you’ll work quite hard on.”
Harry watched Principal Weems click away on her heels a minute later, begrudgingly impressed. Somehow, without his permission, she’d forced Harry to volunteer for a school committee and show up to a dance he had no interest in attending.
She may come across as soft and friendly, but the woman was ruthless.
Then Harry broke out in a cold sweat as he realized that Principal Weems also coerced Harry into doing something terrifying-
Asking Tyler to come to Nevermore’s annual dance.
*****
While Harry was working his weekly shift at the greenhouses, Wednesday was doing some investigation on her prime suspect for the identity of the monster.
Xavier Thorpe.
Nevermore’s golden boy.
Son of the famous psychic, Vincent Thorpe.
And, most recently, a boy with an unfathomable interest in Harry and who had deep scratches down the side of his neck that looked to be made by a vicious and clawed monster.
Wednesday had noticed them the day before, when Xavier stopped to talk about a homework assignment with Harry. When she asked him where the scratches came from, he became evasive and anxious.
And Wednesday had cut many people during fencing, but she had never left a mark like Xavier had claimed he’d gotten from the sport.
Harry had found her ideas on the monster’s identity ridiculous the night before when they’d been on the balcony outside Wednesday’s room, reading through the spells in Sarah’s spell book together, but he was the one who put the final nail in Xavier’s coffin.
“It was kind of weird, maybe… when we talked at the Weathervane, Xavier mentioned my dog…” Harry said slowly, his face tilted over the rail of the balcony, down toward the very sidewalk where someone once tried to kill the two of them. “He said if Tyler hurt me that I had an attack dog that would rip out his throat…” Harry turned and scrunched his face up when he looked at Wednesday.
“How would he know that though?”
How indeed?
Unless, Xavier saw Harry’s dog rip out Rowan’s throat because he had been there the night Rowan died- as the monster.
Even if Harry didn’t believe Xavier was the monster, it didn’t stop Wednesday from tailing him while Harry was working.
And Xavier wasn’t helping himself, hiding inside a dark shed just outside the school property. Wednesday had been lurking outside the shed for nearly an hour, waiting for him to leave so she could investigate.
It took another twenty minutes, but finally Xavier left, twisting a chain around the handles of the shed, applying a lock to it once he was done.
Wednesday smirked to herself, a standard lock, nothing Thing couldn’t crack in less than a minute.
Once the two of them made it inside, Wednesday flicked on the lights and saw that it was an art studio, of a sort.
Certainly she had never seen an art studio filled with half a dozen canvas boards with the same muse drawn over and over—
The monster.
“Every tortured artist needs a morbid muse,” Wednesday muttered to Thing. She walked slowly from canvas to canvas, her eyes drinking in every detail of every drawing. Xavier had drawn the monster in exact detail, precisely how Wednesday remembered seeing it the night of Rowan’s attack.
It was certainly what any halfway decent lawyer would call ‘circumstantial evidence’.
And the evidence continued to climb when Xavier bumped directly into Wednesday on her trip back to the school. He looked to be in a hurry, the perfect time to sneak off and kill another normie, taking their body parts for trophies, as the morgue reports indicated had happened in the four prior murders.
“Hello, Xavier,” Wednesday said, stepping in the middle of the pathway, blocking Xavier.
“Wednesday, hey,” Xavier smiled and ran his hand though his hair. “Where’s Harry? I hardly ever see you guys apart anymore.”
“Work,” Wednesday said curtly. Why would they be apart in the present when their pasts and their futures were so obviously intertwined?
“Oh, I forgot he works with Thornhill, right?” Xavier nodded to himself. “What brings you out here, anyway? It’s going to get dark soon.”
The perfect time for Xavier to transform into a monster and take a life for his own nefarious purposes.
“I saw an interesting building back here, I wanted to check it out,” Wednesday told him, watching for his reaction. “A little blue shack, just off the path. Perfect for hiding, don’t you think?”
“Blue shack?” Xavier’s shoulder muscles tightened, a clear sign of guilt. “That’s not anything interesting, it’s just my art studio. I fixed it up, and the school wasn’t using it, so Weems said I could as long as I shared if any other kids with talents like mine came along.”
“Kind of you,” Wednesday said, stepping to the side when Xavier tried to look past her. “Why don’t you show me?”
Xavier quit looking past her, looking directly in her eyes and smiling slowly.
“Wednesday Addams, are you asking me to take you back to my place?” he chuckled. “I didn’t expect you to be so forward.”
Wednesday grimaced when her words were clearly misconstrued by yet another teenage boy ruled by hormones.
“That is not what I meant,” she told him sternly, faintly disgusted by the idea of a romantic entanglement between them. “I merely wanted to see inside the shed.”
“Oh, yeah?” Xavier crossed his arms over his chest and looked suddenly so arrogant that Wednesday had the urge to strike him. “I’ve seen you watching me lately, are you sure there’s not something you wanted to ask me?”
It took entirely too long for Wednesday to realize that Xavier was referring to the same ridiculous dance that Enid had been discussing since it was announced Monday. And Wednesday nearly snapped off, told Xavier to take his daydreams of dancing together and stab it to death, but then she considered it…
When would Wednesday ever get the opportunity to spend the night with a serial killer again? Aside from Harry, of course.
“Xavier, would you like to go to the Rave’N with me?”