Draven bit down on his tongue hard before the traitorous words could escape his mouth. Some things were better left unsaid. His eyes flickered towards the messenger bag beside him. He'd fit his whole life in there, and then some. "I don't know," he said after a beat of silence.

The spider had lost interest in Cori's hair and was busy traversing her arm. He climbed onto the cushioned seat beside her, looking around for the place to start his web. There were no bugs to be found, but Deimos was an artist and the world was his canvas.

Cori sure was an odd little girl, wasn't she? Draven watched her curiously. Her clothing was neat. Her hair was shiny, and her nails were clean. Judging by her socks, she'd been in charge of picking her own outfit. Neat little boots, a pleasant aesthetic. She was put together deliberately - not like she was showing off, or trying to make a statement. But she had an eye for detail at the very least.

"I think-" he hesitated. He'd been good at reading people once. Noticing the way they stood or spoke, reading between lines, and filling in silences with whatever words they omitted. But his mind was foggy now. Ideas were few and far between, and making sense of them was exhausting. "I think you're starting to figure out what you're good at," Draven said carefully. "And that you're going to have an interesting year, being away from your family for the first time. I hope it's not too hard on you."

The ghost of a smile flickered across his face, replacing the serious expression from just moments before. "I got him to freak out my mom," he said. The memory of a frigid day and being forcefully Apparated outside of his bedroom- still in his night clothes and with bed hair- wasn't a good one. He could still feel the way his mom's nails had dug excitedly into his arm, the red polish chipped in some places. She'd been filled with a jittery sort of energy, talking too fast and too loud without saying much at all.

She'd meant well. Getting him a companion, demanding he trade his sullen solitude for something new. But he'd been angry with her, with the world, with himself. And so, when Deimos had lept atop his mom, a scared baby spider crashing accidentally into an arachnophobe, it had been love at first sight.

"It worked. She hates him."

Cori tilted her head slightly when Draven admitted his lack of direction. Or was it a lack of self-awareness? There was certainly a lack of something—something that was supposed to be there but wasn’t. But Cori wasn’t in the habit of psychoanalyzing her conversational partners, and with Lenora as her mom, she’d grown used to giving space. She wasn’t like her dad, who’d tried for months—even years—to take apart his lover like she was a puzzle to be solved, a mechanism to be understood. Cori was simpler, in a way, so she didn’t pry further.

"I think- I think you're starting to figure out what you're good at. And that you're going to have an interesting year, being away from your family for the first time. I hope it's not too hard on you."

If her question had been a test, Draven’s answer was a disappointment. He wasn’t wrong, exactly. But somewhere in her subconscious, she had hoped for more. Maybe Cori had been hoping the boy would answer a question she felt she should know. Maybe she had hoped, naively, that through this singular conversation, not even an hour in duration, he could’ve gleaned more from her soul.

Maybe people like her couldn’t be understood like that. Maybe people like her couldn’t be seen the way she yearned to be seen.

So when Draven tried to lighten the mood, the smile Cori gave in return was only a shade of the one she’d borne not long ago. She averted her gaze, watching Deimos try to make his web beside her. She liked him.

Part of her was tempted to leave. But the other part said no. Stay, it said. Try. Trust. As Cori furrowed her brow, the rational voice in her head reminded her that she was essentially destined to remain in this compartment until they arrived—unless she wanted to risk trying to find a new compartment and having to insert herself into an already in-progress conversation. No, Cori decided, she had to stay. Besides… Draven was interesting. There was more to him than met the eye; that was for sure.

“Well, I don’t hate you, Deimos.” Cori snuck a look back at Draven. “Are you… close with your mum?”

The little girl before him shifted in her seat, a vague look of disappointment fluttering across her features. Draven chewed on the inside of his cheek. His answer hadn't settled well, or so it seemed.

His thoughts drifted toward Rory. Her messy art studio nestled in the heart of London, with its broken window and the newspapers layered across the floors. He thought of his mattress, a ragged, dirty thing with a couple of stains he didn't particularly like thinking about. It had been pushed up against a wall near the door, away from the myriad of half-dead plants Rory refused to get rid of. Some of them magical, some of them not. He didn't like their smell, dank and overpowering.

Didn't like her boyfriend either.

Well. Boyfriends. He'd lost track after the first couple months. Random men would show up at ungodly hours of the night, light up with his mum, and talk until the sun rose. Their voices echoed through the studio. If they acknowledged him, it was to give him half-pitying looks. They saw Draven curled up on his mattress with a dead look in his eyes and a book half-assedly clutched between his fingers, and then moved on.

"No," Draven said. No, he wasn't close to Rory. The word 'mother' barely described her. "I was camping all summer. Haven't seen her in..." Merlin, how long had it been? Over a year at the very least.

His brows furrowed, some quick math happening behind the boy's eyes. "Since June of '23, I believe."

Big loss.

Resting his head atop his seat, Draven shifted.

His summer had been uneventful. Peaceful. Large stretches of it were spent meditating and foraging, mending his clothes, and taking the occasional trip to town for groceries. Going back to the hustle and bustle of the city had filled him with anxiety. But now that he'd found himself in the middle of it, he couldn't say he hated it.

As good a companion as Deimos was, his conversational skills were lacking.

"Think you'll join any teams? Quidditch is fun if you don't mind getting banged up every now and then. I'm on the duelling team - we get set on fire a lot."

"No."

“Oh.”

Cori couldn’t imagine not being close with her mother. Lenora had been with Cori every step of the way, despite her sometimes long work hours. She had cradled her when Cori was an infant, her usual serenity crumbling at the realization that she—she!—was in charge of a tiny, fragile life—a daughter, could you believe that? She’d fallen asleep for years wearing an exhausted smile as she gazed at Cori’s soft, sleeping face, tiny hand clasped in her own, larger one. “Mama” had been Cori’s first word (right before “Papa,” as Lena pointed out to reassure her husband). As Cori grew older, she spent most of her nights with her mother, talking before bed of unimportant things—the kind of talks that shape personalities, that fill the space amidst the big events like the sponge of a cake, the in-between that quietly chooses the hue and tint of memories you later look back on.

"I was camping all summer. Haven't seen her in… Since June of '23, I believe."

“‘23? It’s 2025… you haven’t seen your mother in two years?” Cori gaped. “Wow, I’m sorry. Does she live far away?”

She was not well-versed in delicate familial situations. Never one to pay too much attention to her classmates, Cori had had no reason to think someone’s family could be so different from her own. Apart from the presence of siblings and extended family, as far as she was aware, “family” meant a loving mother and father. She was lucky, a fact she would likely soon discover.

“Were you at the summer camp? I thought about going, but we wanted to celebrate my 11th birthday at home. And, well, I didn’t want to leave just yet.” At that, Cori turned her gaze downward, a bit embarrassed. She knew that Draven was older than her—by quite a few years, even if she didn’t know exactly how much—and she suddenly felt like a very small child.

"Think you'll join any teams? Quidditch is fun if you don't mind getting banged up every now and then. I'm on the duelling team - we get set on fire a lot."

“I like flying a lot, but I don’t really care for Quidditch. I’ve never tried duelling, so maybe? My mom was on the duelling team when she was at Hogwarts, and she loved it. I don’t think I love the idea of getting set on fire, though…” She screwed up her nose. “Isn’t that painful? My cousin mentioned broom racing, but I don’t really know how it works or anything. Maybe I’ll check it out.” Cori shrugged.

"Far away," Draven echoed. "No. I don't think so." Not last he'd checked. His heart had picked up its pace again, sluggish beats racing as St. Mungos flashed before his eyes—the acrid smell of vomit covered by antiseptic cleaners, a near-constant beep of magical machinery. He could still remember his dad's roommate. An aging man with an impressive head of hair and a tendency to try and pull it out. The last time Draven had seen him, he'd been desperately trying to flag down a nurse. "Please, you have to turn it off. I can't stand it."

The beeps.

Draven hadn't liked them either, shrill and piercing the otherwise uneasy silence of the hospital.

His dad had been awake, but not really. Gray eyes staring unseeingly through him, hazy and unfocused. His hand slack in Draven's grip. The hospital gown barely covered Abbadon's skinny frame, a slit down the side from where it hadn't been properly tied up revealing ghastly white skin. Sickness ate away at Mirador men. It stripped the muscle off their bones and left them thin and wiry, carving shadows underneath their cheeks and eyes.

"Yeah," Draven said, forcing himself back into the train. Onto the cushioned seat and into the conversation he'd started. Away from Abbadon's prone frame, which had been lying in that hospital bed for the better part of three years. He wasn't coming home. Not this year. Not the next. Not ever.

Draven blinked. It was a new year. A new opportunity to unfuck things up. A new start. Worries about his parents could stay where they belonged - locked in a box labeled 'For The Summer', and stuffed in the deepest crevice of his brain.

"Well- no." he paused. "I was camping, but not with the school." He suddenly felt- not old, exactly. Just weary. "Happy 11th," he added. "It's a big number. Do you feel any different?"

The girl's next question shouldn't have come as a surprise, but it left him a bit- bewildered. "It does hurt," he said, "But not for very long. You have to thug it out for maybe fifteen minutes in an actual duel, and then they ship you off to the nurse and you're right as rain."

Perhaps 'ship' was a bit optimistic. More like, you limped to the nurse's office and hoped the moving staircases weren't in a foul mood that day."There's also broom racing. That one I've never done, I don't know much about it."

It was strange. He hadn't said as many words back-to-back in nearly four months. His throat was starting to sting. He cleared it. Thankfully, before he could come up with something else to say, the tattletale roll of the snack cart announced itself outside.

"Far away. No. I don't think so."

Cori’s brow creased with that confusing reply. He doesn’t think so? How could you not know if your mum lived far away? But he didn’t seem like he wanted to talk about it, so she left that mystery alone—for now.

"Happy 11th. It's a big number. Do you feel any different?"

She pondered for only a bit before replying, “Not really. It’s nice to know I’ll finally be able to do spells now—not that I haven’t tried before.” A mischievous grin lit up her face at that, and her eyes sparkled with an intensity she hadn’t revealed until now. She still remembered trying to take apart her dad’s wand when she was little—eight, maybe—and being thoroughly scolded by her mum when she discovered her daughter’s antics. Cori didn’t plan on taking apart wands anytime soon, but she did plan on pushing her wand to its limits.

No matter what Draven said, she was still a little baffled by duelling. “That doesn’t sound very fun.”

She missed broom-riding. One of her older cousins had one, and he’d let her ride sometimes (carefully supervised), but she had only a toy one at home that didn’t go up very high. Lena hadn’t let her buy a broom; “Not until you’re older and really need one,” she’d said. But Cori knew she’d have flying classes once she got to Hogwarts, and she couldn’t wait.

Being confined to a rather small train compartment for hours had been grating on her, and she felt like she was going stir-crazy. She shifted on her seat, peeking longingly out the window at the rolling hills they were passing. Luckily, the perfect opportunity for her to stretch her legs (at least a little bit) soon came in a curious rolling clatter outside their door.

Up until then, the only noise in their compartment had been their two voices and the quiet rumble of the train in the background. Cori couldn’t remember the last time she’d talked so much with someone (around) her own age. It had been so easy, too.

When a knock came on the door, she eagerly leaped up. Although she stumbled a little bit at her sudden change in position, it seemed the rocking of the train hadn’t lulled her to sleep at all. She pulled open the compartment door to come face-to-face with a kind-looking old lady.

“Anything off the trolley?” the woman asked.

At that, Cori’s eyes lit up. This must be the trolley Dad mentioned. “I’ll take some Acid Pops, if you have them! Or Drooble’s gum?” Turning to Draven, she asked, “Do you want anything?”

Cori practically flew out of her seat, throwing her weight against the door. She moved so fast Draven had barely registered it- perhaps she was counting herself out of sports too early. The boy blinked, exchanging a glance with the woman standing a couple feet away.

She was older, with silver-gray hair and smile lines cutting into her face. Her skin was littered with freckles and moles, sun spots splattered across her visage like paint on a canvas. Funny, Draven could remember her vaguely. She'd been running that trolley since before the dawn of time. Her red nails were wickedly sharp, he noted, listening to them tip-tap on the trolley.

'HONEYDUKES' was painted on the side of it, jars of sweets and bags of miscellaneous candy overflowing from her cart.

"I uh-" Draven looked at the cart. A lot of the sweets were sitting loosely, wrapped in parchment paper or sheer plastic. The pepper imps were probably a safe bet; those weren't made by hand. Perhaps the chocolate frogs as well? The toads were a different story, jumping about sporadically in a glass prison, their neon green feet making sticky sounds as they collided with one another.

"Are those things alive?" Draven asked after a beat. The trolly lady didn't answer, handing Cori her Acid pops. The silence grew longer. He'd bought sweets from the lady a couple times, but he didn't particularly LIKE taking food from strangers. Especially food they claimed was 'home made'.

"Ya know, I think I'll pass," Draven said. "Thanks, though."

He wasn't even hungry, exactly, though right about then he was starting to itch for a smoke. Two hours had passed since his last toke, and he didn't want to break into his supply of patches that early.

Waiting for the lady to move on, Draven eyed the window. The pack of cigarettes was burning a hole in his pocket.

But no. He wouldn't. How trashy was that, smoking out a train window? Talk about self-control issues.

"You hear she turned her hands into claws at one point?" Draven asked, listening for the retreating screech of the trolley. "Some kids tried to jump off the train, and she was trying to scare them out of it. Apparently, they jumped off anyway."

Cori thought Draven must be quite talented in long silences. She could respect that, but as he seemed to be conducting an inner debate over whether to get anything from the trolley—it really didn’t seem that serious to her—she could feel her patience ticking away like the sands of an hourglass. She would’ve told him to hurry up and decide if Draven had not, the moment she opened her mouth, finally came to a decision.

"Ya know, I think I'll pass. Thanks, though."

She shrugged before pocketing her Acid Pops and what was left over of her coins. “‘Kay, then.” As the trolley lady proceeded down the hall, Cori slid the door closed with a clang, muffling the clatter of the metal cart once again. Completely oblivious to Draven’s struggle, she plopped back down into her seat with an audible sigh.

"You hear she turned her hands into claws at one point? Some kids tried to jump off the train, and she was trying to scare them out of it. Apparently, they jumped off anyway."

Cori gaped at that ridiculous story. “Why would you want to jump off the train?” With a flabbergasted expression, she mumbled, “Crazy teenagers,” as if she were 30 and not 11.

With that, she sank into a comfortable silence. She wrapped silence around her like a blanket, cozy and familiar. You get used to it, as an only child. She had spent most of her childhood outside, where the wind made her daring and the grass whispered like an old friend, where animals made for better companions than people. When Cori’s cousins stayed over, they were rambunctious enough to fill the room with chatter all on their own, and she loved it. They warmed the house with an energy they couldn’t summon with just the three of them.

As Cori tapped her index finger on her leg—a habit formed from a chronic excess of energy—she took in Draven again, eagle-eyed; she supposed an unconscious part of her mind had decided he was worth the effort of dissecting, understanding.

Dark cloth hung around his neck, more bandana than mask, and everything he wore was black—from his curly hair to his eye shadows to his soft-looking sweatshirt. Even after two hours of conversation (a pretty good one, too, if she had to say so herself), his posture still looked like he wanted to shrink into the seats—like he desperately wanted to be invisible. She still didn’t know what kind of “idea” he wanted people to get, but everything about his appearance struck her as the type of person that doesn’t particularly enjoy… people. Well, too bad—he was stuck with her for a few more hours at least.

Paradoxically, he hadn’t seemed to hate her company. He was a little reserved, but he hadn’t shut her out, even if he was cagey about his mom. Cori found she liked him—liked his quiet voice, rough and soft at the same time, the way he was like her—all contradictions. He was gentle, and she could tell from a mile away how much of a connection he had with Deimos. Animals always knew.

His book, the one she’d berated him for first thing, had a faded title that might have been The Neverending Story. She’d never heard of it, but she could see at a glance the numerous dog-eared pages—a reader, then. A card had been slipped in, and from its edges, it looked kind of like a chocolate frog card but more rectangular.

His messenger bag was patchy, clearly well-used, bare of adornments, and practical. His gum pack hadn’t been Drooble’s; it had looked like the kind of Muggle gum Cori’s dad would get her when she just needed something to chew on for a while. It was less distracting, and their bubbles made this satisfying “pop!” sound.

The mask, the card, the bag, the gum… It all screamed “Muggle” to her. If Cori had to guess, she’d peg him as a Muggleborn—and not a very well-off one, either. He hadn’t mentioned his parents much in their talk, and he clearly wasn’t close with his mom. Her parents were her world; she couldn’t imagine navigating life without them. Although, she supposed she was heading off to learn how to do just that.

She broke her silence with the same ease she’d entered it. “Do you have a dad? Siblings?”

Draven snorted. "I've been wanting to jump off from the moment I stepped on," he confessed, peaking through the window at the rolling hills speeding by. "It's so-" he fumbled. Loud. Crowded. The smell of Axe body spray in some of the compartments was overwhelming, spilling down his throat and clogging up his already-struggling lungs. Walls seemed to pulse as the train rattled by, closing in. Draven's gaze flickered to the door. "It's sensory hell," he settled. "I wish someone could deck me upside the head, knock me out, and then wake me up when we get to Hogsemeade."

Apparition was becoming a more and more tempting skill to learn, though he didn't fancy the idea of ending up splinched. He was already enough of a freak; he didn't need to know what he'd look like missing half his nose.

They fell into a comfortable silence. Draven was half-debating taking a sleeping potion- it would leave him groggy and disoriented upon stumbling off the train, but it was better than being awake in the sardine can of a train compartment. His book was still nearby, though he doubted he could gather enough brain cells to focus on it.

"No," Draven said, his own voice surprisingly loud. He looked up at Cori, meeting her eyes. She'd been examining him, he realized with an unpleasant start. Staring intently while he'd been paying attention to... god knew what. Half an hour had slipped by unnoticed, time marked by a web spreading out in a corner. Intricate black strands wove themselves together in something that was more art than trap, geometric patterns stretching into thick tendrils over the walls above Cori's head. "My dad is dying, my sister is six feet under. It's just me and Deimos, isn't it, princess?" The spider gave a noncommittal click.

"It used to be lonely. Now it's just... " he hesitated, searching for the right words."Peaceful," he finished with a shrug. It hadn't stopped hurting, but the pain was distant. He'd sequestered it to a corner of his mind, boxed it up, and left it on a shelf. Maybe one day, when he felt like getting his shit rocked, he'd open the box. Though who would willingly put themselves through that?

Digging through his bag, Draven pulled out a bottle. Inside, a purple liquid swirled, licking up the sides of the glass vial. "You want?" he asked, uncorking the bottle. "Make the ride go easy?"

x