Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow

“Crypt, cottage, or the cave… crypt, cottage, or the cave…” Sirius muttered to himself while he and Xavier ran to put as much distance between themselves and the werewolf loose in the forest as they could. “Crypt, cottage, or—”

“Crypt,” Xavier suddenly whispered harshly. “Shit.”

Sirius spun to where Xavier’s voice was coming from, his mouth open to ask why the crypt, but then he saw what Xavier must have seen and fell momentarily silent.

In the distance, above what had to be the steepled roof of the crypt, was a swirl of dark storm clouds. They had to be magic, they weren’t any naturally occurring clouds. They spun around with a viciousness that should have had them overtaking the entire sky, not just the one section of it.

And where there was magic, there was Harry.

“Crypt it is,” Sirius agreed, his eyes stuck on that swirling vortex of magic. “Let’s go, quick.”

They began running in earnest, neither concealing their footsteps on the crunching leaves or their quiet swears when they stumbled on a stray branch or an upended root.

“Sirius!”

“I see it,” Sirius said tightly. The swirling mixture of magic, electricity, and clouds increased until they could nearly feel the wind battering them from where they were in the forest.

It smelled like the darkest and most foul magic Sirius had ever experienced.

His mother would love it.

“Kid, listen, I’m sure Harry’s in there,” Sirius told Xavier, coming to a quick decision. “Stay under the cloak and try to follow me, but don’t go in until I give you the all clear, got it?”

“What are you doing?” Xavier asked frantically. “Because I don’t think splitting up is a great option right now.”

Sirius barked out a bitter laugh and tucked his wand in his moleskin pouch.

“I’m quicker on four legs,” he said. “Be safe, kid, I’ll see you soon.”

Xavier made a sound of protest, but Sirius was already shifting.

If his choice was leaving behind one kid to be attacked by a werewolf or leaving Harry to deal with whatever shit storm was happening alone - it was an easy choice.

Harry came first, always.

The last thing Harry saw before everything went black was a bullet going through his cousin’s head.

The last thing he heard was a whisper in his own mind—

“Oh yes, you’ll do perfectly.”

Harry shuddered and collapsed forward on the tomb only to stand back up a moment later with his back straight and his eyes blazing with the shine of someone else’s soul.

“Lead me to Nevermore,” Joseph Crackstone ordered his foolish descendent coolly.

“Yes,” the woman breathed, awestruck as she should be. “I would be honored.”

As she should be.

“Guard the crypt, don’t let anyone enter,” she ordered the beast standing in the doorway. “Kill them if they even try.”

The beast bowed its head subserviently and then locked eyes with Crackstone. A whine slipped between its terrible teeth and Crackstone sneered at it.

“Foul company you keep,” he informed his foolish descendent. “When I finish cleansing my land of outcast filth, I will return for the beast.”

“As you wish,” the woman said with a bow of her own head. “I’ll show you the way to Nevermore.”

Crackstone smirked, the woman was a fool. She had no idea what she had awakened. She had no idea what power she had offered him with the body of a witch.

She would see soon.

They all would.

It was cold, pleasantly so.

Wednesday could have laid on the soft bed of cold mist for an eternity, but there was something niggling in the back of her mind… something she needed to worry about…

Harry.

Wednesday sat up and looked around quickly, assessing her situation. She seemed to be… no where. Everywhere she looked it was fluffy white clouds and silence.

Apparently she had been taken to Hell. Quite an enticing idea, she had always believed she could rule the underworld more effectively than Lucifer.

No sooner had Wednesday thought that than her surroundings began to slowly shift until she was sitting cross-legged in the center of the Nightshade’s secret library. Wednesday looked down at herself and saw that she was dressed simply in her favored black dress with her black leggings and boots on. When she touched her hair, she felt her braids in place.

And when she touched the side of her head, no hole from Thornhill’s bullet could be found.

Interesting.

Wednesday stood and intended to ascend the staircase back to the main level and attempt to find a way to escape whatever purgatory she had been dropped in, but before she could, the door opened and footsteps of someone descending the stairs could be heard.

A man bounced down the stairs; he was tall, lanky, young. His wild dark hair and glasses were as familiar to Wednesday as her own face would be.

“Oh.” James Potter stopped on the second to last step and blinked owlishly at Wednesday, an expression Wednesday was more used to seeing on his son’s face. “You’re not Harry.”

Nobody told Enid that her first transformation would be so freaking painful!

Everyone made it sound wonderful and fun and magical but Enid was not having fun at all, thanks. And the absolute worst part was that her mom was going to be so thrilled that Enid ‘finally’ transformed.

Enid ran through the forest, her hearing sharper than ever, and tried to find Xavier and Sirius and poor little Thing who had been on her shoulder when she began transforming. It was kind of fun being able to run so quickly and still see everything so sharply through her wolf eyes. Even little things, like a bat hiding up in the tree branches, were clear to Enid.

The smells were overwhelming though; Enid could smell everything. From the dirt on the ground to the water flowing in the creek, it was all so strong to Enid’s sensitive nose. It was her best tool to use to track everyone- she just needed to run toward the smell of humans and hope it was Wednesday.

When Enid caught up to them in the forest though, she hid in the shadows. It wasn’t Wednesday, it was Harry and Miss Thornhill.

Were they in it together? Harry’s boyfriend was the monster that Wednesday had been stalking, maybe this was all a game to him?

Enid growled quietly when she considered it. If Harry had been planning on befriending Wednesday and then betraying her then Enid was going to rip him from limb to limb.

Harry didn’t sound right though when Enid overheard the conversation between him and Miss Thornhill, he didn’t look right either. Harry walked quietly, with his head ducked and his shoulders curled inward. Now he was practically strutting through the forest with his head held high and an arrogant lift of his chin to match the lilt in his voice.

“The land reeks of outcast filth,” Harry sneered. “They have allowed these freaks to breed and expand and tarnish my homeland.”

“We’ll fix it now though, right?” Thornhill asked, her voice simpering and gross when aimed at a teenage boy. “You and I will clean out the outcasts and rule together?”

Harry laughed in a high-pitched cold voice and glared at Thornhill.

“I have no need for a fool such as yourself to rule beside me,” he scoffed. “I will destroy these outcasts and build my land back to its former glory.”

They stormed past where Enid was hiding and she got a chance to scrutinize their faces. Miss Thornhill looked hurt and disappointed, Harry looked… unreal. His eyes, usually a relatively bright green, were glowing in an unearthly way that Enid had never seen before. Everything he said sounded wrong in his voice, it was like it was Harry’s voice and someone else’s words.

Enid’s heart raced inside her chest, pumping double time what even a normal wolf’s heart would be, and she had to make the worst decision ever.

Trust Sirius with finding and protecting Wednesday so she could go warn Weems that something - someone - dangerous was coming to ‘destroy the outcasts’, or go after Wednesday herself.

Enid huffed and then turned tail, heading directly toward Nevermore. Sirius would save Wednesday, he had to. There was a whole school full of students - innocent children - who were just sitting ducks for Harry and Thornhill.

“Why are you here?” Wednesday asked James Potter. “Why am I here?”

James sat on the floor in front of Wednesday, crossing his legs in a mimic of hers, and grinned crookedly.

“Well I was here to see my kid again, I’m not sure what you’re doing here,” he laughed brightly, nothing at all like Harry’s laugh. “Seems like you’ve got a bit more Potter in your family than I expected. Maybe Gomez is a squib…”

Wednesday raised a disdainful brow at the merry man before her.

“My father is not a squib,” she said coolly. “My father is a great man.”

James threw his head back, laughing uproariously.

“Squib isn’t an insult,” he told Wednesday after he finished his irksome laughter. “It just means someone born in a magical family that doesn’t have any magic.”

Wednesday hummed skeptically. “Is it magic then that fuels my visions? Mother has them as well.”

“Oh, I’ve got no bloody idea,” James shrugged. He reached up and ruffled his hand through his hair, squinting off in the distance. “Your family is… unique.”

Wednesday smirked slightly at the compliment. “We are,” she agreed haughtily. There was a faint ache in her chest when she thought of the family she would never see again. “They are,” she said again, amending herself quietly.

James gave Wednesday a sympathetic and sad smile before reaching out slowly to place his hand on her knee in what was likely meant to be a comforting gesture.

“They’re lucky to have you,” he said softly. “If I had a daughter, I’d want her to have been just like you.”

Wednesday nodded curtly in acknowledgement of the sentiment.

“You have a stubborn, annoying, moron of a son instead,” she scowled. Even death hadn’t reduced her irritation that Harry had known Tyler was the Hyde and never bothered to inform her.

Harry allowed Wednesday to run amok and accuse the wrong person of being the monster, making her look like some second-rate detective from a bad novel.

James grinned impishly, his lights twinkling with with mischief and merriment.

“He gets all that from me,” he said proudly.

Undoubtedly.

Sirius didn’t get the chance to use the element of surprise to slip past the Hyde and in to the crypt. The Hyde - Tyler, apparently - sensed his presence as soon as Sirius was ten yards away from the little stone building.

“Nice little hyde,” Sirius cooed after he shifted back to his own two feet and snatched his wand. He crept closer with his wand in hand and his face in a forced neutral expression. “Who’s a good hyde? Is it you? Yes it is.”

The Hyde snarled when Sirius broke out from the tree-line and bared its teeth at him in a definitely unfriendly way.

“I don’t want to hurt you, Tyler,” Sirius said with his wand up high. “I will though. I need to get to Harry. Remember Harry? Skinny bloke with blue hair and glasses? If he’s in that building, I need let in.”

The Hyde shifted, blocking Sirius when he made a move for the door.

“Sorry, mate,” Sirius sighed. “Stupefy!”

Sirius swore especially creatively when the spell bounced off the Hyde’s thick skin and rebounded directly toward him. Then the Hyde was pissed, Sirius was pissed, and a fight Sirius hoped to avoid broke out between them.

“You did tear up my tattoo,” Sirius called as he slashed his wand harshly, cutting across the Hyde’s thick upper arm. “This is just payback, mate.”

“Yeah, let’s leave the unarmed teenage boy in a forest with only an invisible blanket and a paintbrush to defend himself,” Xavier muttered quietly while he tried to chase after the black dog that had been Sirius.

“I see no problem with this. There’s only a possibly dangerous werewolf and the guy I’ve fallen for who happens to be a Hyde under control of my botany teacher and, oh yeah! He kidnapped the other guy I fell for.”

Xavier stopped to lean against a tree and catch his breath for a moment. He’d give anything to even have a single arrow and his bow with him just then. The feeling in the forest was thick - as if the air itself knew that danger was lurking around and waiting to ambush them all.

It smelled like death too.

Minus the caramel scent that Xavier mentally associated with Harry.

After a moment of rest, while Xavier continued to grumble quietly to himself, Xavier took a deep breath and then continued to run toward the crypt that Harry and Wednesday had to be inside.

They had to be safe.

Tyler wouldn’t hurt Harry; not even as the Hyde. He didn’t hurt Xavier before, he wouldn’t do it then.

Xavier didn’t like betting Harry’s life on Tyler’s emotions working through the Hyde’s mind.

Enid had outstripped Harry and Thornhill in the race back to Nevermore and was relieved beyond measure when she found Thing waiting for her at the gate.

Thing began tapping and signing out a frantic message and Enid bobbed her wolf head in agreement. She couldn’t speak, only howl, but Thing couldn’t speak and he communicated just fine.

Enid tapped her claws on the pavement, desperately trying to remember enough Morse Code for Thing to get the gist.

W… e… e…

Thing signed out ‘Weems?’ and Enid howled affirmatively.

D… a… n… g…

‘Danger?’

Another nod and short howl.

H… a… r…

‘Harry?’

K… i… l…

‘Get Weems, someone is in danger of dying from Harry?’

Enid held her paw up, grimacing at the disgusting filth she’d gotten all over her fresh manicure, and then went back to tapping.

S… t… u… d… e…

‘The students aren’t safe from Harry?’

Enid nodded quickly.

H… u… r…

‘I’ll hurry.’

Enid watched as Thing immediately began scrambling up the lane to the school, headed directly toward Principal Weems’ room. It seemed as if Wednesday was wrong, all those long manicure sessions with Thing were life or death.

All that was left then was to release the other werewolves and ready them for an attack.

“Your son has a tendency to become possessed, is it a family trait?” Wednesday asked James.

James laughed, just as cheerful in death as he had seemed in his photos, and shook his head.

“Nope, that’s a 100% Harry thing,” he said brightly. “You’re not going to believe this, but that prophecy you two are fulfilling right now? It’s not even his first prophecy.”

As interesting as that tidbit of information was, it was the rest of James’ words that caught Wednesday’s attention.

“The prophecy we’re fulfilling right now?” she asked. “It may have escaped your notice, but you and I are dead. The prophecy showed Harry and I either destroying or saving the school together.”

James hummed and tilted his face up, receiving sunlight that shouldn’t be there to touch his tanned skin.

“Not all prophecies come true, usually just the ones that the subjects of them hear,” he mused thoughtfully, still smiling up in the sunlight. “I think there’s still time for this one to come true, but I don’t think you’re going to like it.”

“I rarely like anything,” Wednesday said drily, drawing a chuckle from James.

“Yeah but you’re going to really hate this one,” he said. He lowered his face back down to turn his smile directly on Wednesday and there was a solemn and grave look in his eyes that had just been shining so merrily.

“What if you’re interpreting it wrong?” he asked Wednesday softly. “What if that image was of Harry destroying Nevermore, ending some bloodlines of outcasts, and you were the one meant to stop him?”

If Wednesday’s heart still beat, it would be quicker than a hummingbird’s when she considered it. How many times in a single night would Wednesday be proven wrong?

“I would say that’s absurd as I’m dead and Harry would never kill the other outcasts, he’s entirely too soft for genocide.”

“But Harry isn’t Harry right now, is he?” James challenged Wednesday gently, leading her to see the image he had. “He looks like my son, sounds like my son, but Harry’s soul isn’t in charge right now, Crackstone’s is.

“And I’m not completely convinced that you’re dead just yet.”

Wednesday raised a brow at Harry’s father and curled her lip irritably.

“I have a bullet in my brain, James.”

James grinned boyishly at her and shrugged his shoulders. “Yeah, but Sirius might have some tricks up his sleeve.”

Sirius lobbed non-lethal spells quickly against the Hyde, aiming for his eyes as they had a tendency to be every creatures’ weak spot, and felt it when something warm brushed past him to get inside the crypt.

“Find Harry,” he murmured quietly, blasting a tree branch above the Hyde’s head to distract it for a moment.

“I will,” Xavier whispered before the crypt door opened and then closed behind him.

“I gotta say, Xavier’s sort of winning my vote on which of Harry’s boyfriends I prefer,” Sirius taunted the Hyde, trying to cajole Tyler to take control. “Don’t come asking for my blessing anytime soon, kid, because you’re not bloody getting it.”

Hyde lore was sparse, rarer than basilisks they were, but Sirius figured it was still worth a shot in trying to reach the boy inside the beast. And if it didn’t work, then Sirius still did some of his best spell work while running his mouth.

The Hyde snarled and charged at Sirius, finally giving him a good aim directly at his bulbous eyes.

“STUPEFY!”

That time it was a direct hit and the Hyde went down hard.

Sirius leapt over his body, noting that he was already beginning to shift back to boy, and then charged inside the crypt.

He could always revive Tyler once he had Harry, no need to bring back a Hyde unnecessarily.

Larissa was yanked from a restless sleep by a detached hand smacking her in the face with her own cell phone.

Unfortunately, it was hardly the most startling way Larissa had ever been woken before.

The hand continued to smack Larissa with her phone even when she climbed from bed and threw a robe around her pajamas.

“What do you want, you cretin?” she demanded. “Stop that at once.”

The hand waved her phone at her and Larissa could see that her messages had been pulled up with a text typed out with no recipient in place.

Harry is coming to kill the students. Everyone is in danger.

“Harry?” she asked the hand. “Harry Potter?”

The fingers on the hand curled in and out rapidly, its version of a nod, it seemed.

“Preposterous,” Larissa sniffed. She tied her robe more securely around herself and glared disdainfully down at the hand flapping about on her bedroom floor. “Harry is one of my best students, I won’t hear these lies about him.”

The hand had the audacity to begin scaling Larissa’s leg, as if she were a jungle gym for it, and ignored her efforts to shake it off as it lunged for her phone.

Larissa watched with morbid curiosity as the hand began typing out a new message that she knelt down to read as it wrote.

“Thornhill took Wednesday? A Hyde stole Harry? Enid and Xavier are running amok with Ares Frump?”

The thing was still tapping away frantically when there was an explosion outside Larissa’s window that shook the school and nearly knocked over a bookshelf in her bedroom. Larissa hastened to the window and peered out to see what the commotion was.

It was Harry. Just outside the gates of the school, Harry stood with a cold expression on his face while Miss Thornhill stood beside him.

Harry held his hands high and shot a stream of magic from them, unnecessarily blasting a hole through the center of the unlocked metal gates. He ducked through the hole he created and then straightened up and brushed a hand down his chest in an arrogant manner. He stood there then, looking around the front of the campus as a predator would assess a group of its prey.

It seemed as if the hand was correct.

“I will begin evacuating the students, you wake the other teachers and inform them that the school is in danger,” Larissa told the hand, hoping to the Gods that it truly understood English. The hand saluted itself to her then began crawling from her room on quick fingers.

Larissa unlocked her safe and grabbed the only weapon she could wield.

Mother of All above, do not let this be the day I have to shoot a student.

“No, no, no…” Xavier fell to his knees and fought against the urge to be sick when he entered the crypt and saw the massacre that had been left behind.

There were organs in jars, a body that was only identifiable by its dark skin and blue cast left in ribbons on the floor, and Wednesday…

Wednesday slumped against a podium with her eyes closed, her pulse silent, and a hole through the side of her skull.

Harry was no where to be seen and Xavier didn’t know if that was a blessing or a curse considering the other two inside the crypt were dead.

“Wednesday,” Xavier whispered. His throat clogged and his eyes welled with tears when he looked at her pale face colored only by the blood coating it.

Wednesday Addams was a pain in his ass. She accused him of murder. She broke into his shed. She invited him to a dance under false pretenses. She refused his friendship or even his civility. She constantly tried to warn Harry away from him.

And she was only sixteen.

Sirius burst in the crypt when Xavier was still frozen in shock, pinned in place by grief, and he slid through the puddle of Lucas Walker’s blood on the floor to get to the platform where Wednesday rested.

“Merlin, can you smell that?” Sirius asked. “I’ve never smelled magic so bloody dark before.”

Xavier barely heard him over the rushing sound of water in his ears - dead, they were both so young and dead - but he did finally look away from Wednesday’s face that looked unimpressed even in death when Sirius began flipping through a book on the podium Wednesday laid against.

“Oh, bloody hell,” Sirius muttered. His face turned a grey color and he swayed on his feet for just a moment. “Xavier, whose body was resting here?”

“Joseph Crackstone,” Xavier answered automatically. He brushed his hand on Wednesday’s shoulder, a last gesture of kindness to the girl who hated him so fiercely in her life, and then used his grip on the podium to pull himself up. “Why?”

Sirius’ grey eyes flickered quickly across the page of the book he was pursuing and he looked less and less happy as he went.

“Because they brought him back and stuffed him in my godson,” he said. He trailed a finger across the page, his lips moving silently as he read whatever the book was to himself. “Aha! There! Is Wednesday bleeding from her stomach at all?”

Xavier furrowed his brows together at Sirius’ rapid fire sharing of information and questions and looked down at Wednesday. She was so drenched in blood it was hard to tell.

“I’m not undressing her to check,” he told Sirius tightly. “Jesus Christ, man.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Sirius waved his hand airily while he still read on. “I’m guessing the muggle all tore to pieces was the last organ sacrifice they needed. Bit of overkill on Wednesday, but nothing too bad.”

Xavier balled his hands in fists at his sides.

“She’s dead,” he grit out through a jaw clenched so hard it would ache for a week. “DEAD, SIRIUS! THEY KILLED HER AND LUCAS AND TOOK HARRY’S BODY FOR A FREAKING JOY RIDE!”

Sirius laughed mirthlessly and locked calm eyes on Xavier’s furious ones.

“She’s not dead, she’s just not alive,” he said, as if that made any sense at all. Sirius laced his fingers together and flexed them out in front of himself, popping the joints with a sigh.

“Time to bring her back.”

“You honestly believe that Sirius, the man who had been living as a dog for the last five years, is going to be able to remove the bullet from my brain and bring me back to life?” Wednesday scoffed at James Potter. “Your son must get his minor intelligence from his mother.”

Unflappable as always, James merely grinned at her.

“It’s not all up to Sirius, of course,” he explained. “It’s got a bit to do with the ritual itself, dark magic usually comes at a cost. The unforgiveables can cause illness, horcruxes cause madness, so on and so forth. They didn’t have to kill you, just take your blood.”

“And yet here I am, having a conversation with my deceased cousin,” Wednesday pointed out.

“That’s precisely why I think you’ll be able to go back,” James said cheerily. “Why bring you here if there was no hope, eh? I think Magic wants to give you a chance to stop Crackstone from killing all her children at Nevermore.”

“With what?” Wednesday demanded as she jumped to her feet irritably. “The power of visions that never even helped me?!”

“I think a solid silver spike directly to his heart,” James said seriously. He turned his head to watch as Wednesday began pacing circles around the library they appeared to be in. “I’d say something Goblin Made, but I doubt you lot have anything like that in your school.”

“Crackstone doesn’t have a heart,” Wednesday reminded him, blatantly ignoring the implication. “Thus, I have nothing to stab.”

“You’re a smart girl,” James said gently. “You know what you’d have to do.”

Wednesday pointed at him accusingly, furious to have it even implied that she could do such an appalling thing.

“I will not hurt Harry,” she told him firmly. “Despite his many, many, many, flaws, I love him.”

And Wednesday would prefer to languish away for an eternity without Harry than end his life prematurely.

“His life is over if you don’t,” James said, somehow guessing at Wednesday’s precise thoughts. His cheerful smile had fallen and he appeared years older than twenty-one. “He’s gone either way, Wednesday. The question is if you love him enough to set him free and save innocent lives at the same time?”

Wednesday inhaled deeply through her nose and held it in her chest until she was sure she could blow it out evenly between her lips.

“I don’t,” she said simply. “I don’t love him enough to kill him.”

“He’d hate you if he knew,” James said, looking up at her sadly. “Harry cherishes his freedom above all and he’s never been so entrapped before.”

“Then make someone else do it! Have your friend drive the stake through his heart! Or anyone else! I will not!”

James shook his head at her and Wednesday had the sudden thought that he had somehow perfect her own father’s disappointed expression while he had only been a parent for a year.

“It’s got to be you,” James insisted. “Nobody else loves Harry enough to do it.”

You don’t know magic, all you know is hate and ignorance.

I know magic that your foolish mind could never comprehend, boy.

I’m in your head, Crackstone, you’re in my body. I can see what you know. You don’t know spells, you’re just letting your sparks catch fire and burst free.

Fire is what will cleanse the Earth of filth.

Filth like you? Everyone’s a hypocrite.

Silence yourself before I end your existence as well!

You should try that. We’re connected now. You can’t kill me without dying.

You are nothing more than a body for my soul to control. I can find another and leave you behind to burn as your ancestors did.

You were jealous, weren’t you? They could control theirs with spells and do things with their magic and yours just burst from you when you couldn’t control yourself, right? That’s why you hate them.

SILENCE!

Joseph Crackstone released a stream of red hot flames toward the pens to the side of the school that held the moon-beasts inside them.

He would destroy the outcasts, burn them to ash, then he could find a way to bring back his own body to inhabit.

With his powers combined with the witch-child his soul resided in, there was nothing he was unable to do.

If Enid survived the night, she was totally going to go check in a spa for like a whole week and just be pampered at someone else’s expense.

Even though Thing couldn’t interpret her howls, her fellow wolves could and they were rabid with fear when she told them what was coming.

“OPEN THE GATE!” Jace howled. “HURRY!”

“HOW?” Enid demanded. The eight werewolves inside the gate were depending on her, but it wasn’t like she had opposable thumbs at the moment!

“CRUSH IT!” Cody yelped frantically. “CRUSH THE LOCK SO WE CAN BURST OUT!”

“IT IS SILVER!” Enid howled. She could feel the heat of the metal radiating from where she paced in front of the main gate to the pen. Any other day of the month, Enid could touch silver and get a mild burn, but during the full moon high in the sky it would leave scars.

“DO YOU WANT US TO HELP FIGHT?” Mandy yelped when there were explosions coming from the front. “WE CANT REACH THE LOCK FROM IN HERE!”

Enid was shaking in her fur when she looked at the large silver gate with the lock that kept the others in the pen.

It was only the brief thought that Wednesday seemed like the kind of person to find scars sexy that gave Enid just enough bravery to launch her body at the gate, flatten it beneath her, and wail from the burns while the others ran to help the students.

“What can I do?” Xavier asked for the fiftieth bloody time.

“Shut the hell up and don’t interrupt again,” Sirius muttered. He was about to perform a ritual so complicated that he doubted if Dumbledore himself had ever even tried.

Of course, Dumbledore would never touch a book that stunk like dark magic like Sirius had to do, but Sirius couldn’t let this girl die either.

Not this girl.

Not Harry’s first friend.

Who knew more than Sirius how important someone’s first friendship was?

“Stay back,” Sirius warned Xavier as he moved to stand directly in front of Wednesday. “Whatever you do- don’t interrupt until I’m done.”

“Yes, sir,” Xavier said gravely.

Sirius rolled his eyes at him briefly. It would be an excellent time to tell the kid not to call him ‘sir’ but he had a dead girl to bring back from the afterlife.

“Can you feel it?” James asked, looking around the library when the books began shaking on their shelves. “It’s Sirius, he’s starting.”

Wednesday closed her eyes and sank back to sit beside James, knowing he could never betray her for the show of weakness.

“I can’t go back,” she told him in a whispered admission. “If I go back then I’ll either have to kill my best friend or watch him kill hundreds of innocent children.”

“Millions,” James said solemnly. He turned his body so he could place his arm around Wednesday’s shoulders. “Do you think Crackstone will be happy with just the Nevermore students? He’ll never rest until he’s destroyed anyone with magic, anyone supernatural.”

“My mother,” Wednesday said flatly. “Uncle Fester.”

“Your father, your brother as well,” James added. “Crackstone will kill Sirius and Tyler, Xavier and Enid, all the people that Harry loves and would want you to protect.”

Crackstone would kill them all unless Wednesday killed Harry first.

“Their lives or his,” Wednesday said. She opened her eyes to look James directly in the eye, wanting to hear him say it himself. “You choose their lives over your son?”

“I’m choosing Harry’s freedom and their lives,” James said. He hugged Wednesday to his side in a way that she didn’t fully despise. “If it helps any, he’ll be happy here.”

Wednesday felt the tears dripping down her face; tears for the boy who barely got to live.

“Do you swear it?” she asked James. “Do you swear that Harry will be happy here?”

James released her shoulders to put his hands on either side of her face, kindly swiping the tears off her cheeks with his thumbs.

“I swear to you, Wednesday Addams, Harry will be happy here with us. And the first thing I’ll tell him is how much you love him.”

Wednesday sniffed, hating herself for showing her vulnerability in the moment.

“I’d prefer you first told him that he’s an absolute idiot… then, if you’d like, tell him that other more sentimental statement.”

James grinned crookedly and helped Wednesday get to her feet.

“I will,” he promised. He pulled Wednesday forward and hugged her tightly. “I’ll take care of Harry, you do your best for Sirius, yeah?”

“I’ll have Mother prepare a dog house,” Wednesday drawled without any true heat to her tone.

James pulled away from Wednesday and smiled down at her.

“We’ll meet again one day,” he said with a twinkle in his eyes.

“Only if I’m quite unlucky,” Wednesday quipped. She could feel a tug behind her navel, pulling her somewhere else. “Take care of Harry.”

“I will,” James promised. “Forgive yourself, Wednesday.”

Wednesday managed to roll her eyes before being yanked through time, space, the very basic atomic level of the world.

For as long as she would live, she would never forgive herself for what she knew she had to do.

Harry once asked Tyler what the worst part of being a Hyde was and Tyler told him it was the lack of control.

But it wasn’t.

Not anymore.

If Harry were there to ask Tyler again, he would tell him that it was remembering. It would be easier, kinder, if Tyler didn’t remember the things he did as Hyde under Laurel’s control.

Because while Tyler laid on the ground, his mind and body his own again, all those memories filled his mind and taunted him.

Cutting Harry when he grabbed him. Harry’s failed attempts to take control from Laurel. Harry thinking he drove Tyler away by picturing himself with Xavier.

“I don’t want you to leave me, please.”

“I love you, Ty.”

Tyler attacked Harry, stole him right off his balcony, and Harry said he loved him.

Tyler had never deserved Harry. The whole fucking world had never deserved Harry.

With his memory came an ache in his limbs to challenge the ache in his chest. Tyler rolled on the ground, clutching his cut arm to his side and pretending the tears in his eyes were from pain and not shame.

He killed Lucas.

He handed Harry over to Laurel.

The ritual wasn’t supposed to work; it wasn’t!

The ritual should have failed- Laurel said it had to be a normie and Tyler never told her about Harry’s power. It was supposed to fail then Harry or Tyler could kill Laurel and break her control once and for all.

It wasn’t supposed to work, it wasn’t.

Wednesday wasn’t meant to be killed.

Tyler ruined everything.

There was a sudden rush of icy cold wind that washed over Tyler’s naked body. Part of Tyler wished that he could freeze to death, then he could atone for handing Harry over to Laurel to be possessed.

He couldn’t die yet though, not yet. Laurel had taunted Harry, hurt him purposefully—

“He’s not your Tyler, he is my Hyde.”

— and she was going to die for it.

Tyler had to find Laurel, kill her, and then see if Harry could be saved. And to do that…

Tyler eyed the crypt warily.

…to do that he had to find Sirius and trust him to cast the control spell over him.

Sirius collapsed as soon as the ritual completed and Xavier rushed to his side.

“Sirius? Hey, man, wake up!” Xavier grabbed him by his thin shoulders and shook him lightly. “SIRIUS!”

Xavier thought Sirius groaned, but the quiet sound didn’t come from him, but from the dead girl across from him. Xavier spun on the spot, accidentally releasing Sirius in his shock and leaving him to fall on the floor in an exhausted slump.

“Wednesday?” Xavier whispered, terrified out of his mind. Sure, Sirius had looked creepily impressive while he waved his wand and chanted in some foreign language, but Wednesday had a bullet in her freaking brain.

When Xavier reached out tentatively, his hand shaking with a mixture of adrenaline and fear, he didn’t get a chance to even check Wednesday’s wrist for a pulse before her eyes snapped open and her lungs refilled with air.

It was a fast blur after that—

Sirius moaned and vomited on the floor before getting to his feet.

Tyler stormed in the room, naked, and strode directly to Sirius.

Wednesday was talking about silver stakes and Harry seeing his dad.

Tyler was talking about Sirius taking magical control of his mind.

Xavier wondered if the light-headed feeling and elevated heart rate he had was how Harry felt when they’d so stupidly put a hood over his head as a joke.

It hadn’t been funny.

“I need you to cast that imperio spell on me so I can kill Laurel.”

“An unforgiveable? Mate, you let Harry cast an unforgivable on you?!”

“We have to kill Harry.”

Everyone fell silent and even the buzzing in Xavier’s ears died down when they looked toward Wednesday as one. She had her chin raised and her braids neatly redone - she didn’t look like she’d just been shot - and she met each of their eyes steadily.

“There’s no other choice,” she said baldly. “It’s not a sliver of a soul inside him, it’s the entire thing. We have to drive a silver stake through his heart.”

“That’s not funny,” Xavier said, too shocked to even sound angry yet. “We can’t kill Harry.”

Wednesday raised a brow at him, somehow making Xavier feel two feet tall as was her speciality.

“Quit whining, I’m the one who will be doing it. Your job is to help the others. Let’s go.”