Feral—freezes.

Charlie draws, and aims, and stares Feral down, waiting for him to make a move.

Feral shuts his ghostly white eyes and ducks his dragonlike head and folds his dragonlike wings, shivering uncontrollably.

"What is it, Bells, do you know?" Charlie asks, not lowering the gun.

"That's my friend, he can turn into -"

"You said you had a friend turned into something invisible, Renée said -"

"Some people can see them, Dad - but he's my friend - put the gun down, now!"

Feral continues to shiver.

"Turn back?" Bella suggests.

He shakes his head rapidly back and forth.

"Are you stuck or someth- Dad for crying out loud stop pointing a gun at my friend!"

Feral hears it. He blinks his eyes open, and takes a few steps back, still tense and shivering and with his wings tightly folded.

Bella pushes past Charlie and hugs Feral round the neck. "Are you okay?" she murmurs.

Hugs. Hugs hugs. "Dad," says Bella, "go away."

"I didn't think," Feral mumbles into her shoulder, "I didn't think he was there, I didn't think he'd see me, I didn't think he'd - and then I was just afraid I was gonna set him on fire - that's why I didn't turn back, I didn't know if it was just being a Thestral that was stopping me. Last time I was that scared I lit up my broom."

"I'm sorry," says Bella, hugging him tight. "If I thought you were going to come here I would've warned you he might be able to see you - I'm sorry."

Feral clings some more.

Hug hug hug hug.

Hug hug hug snuggle hug sniffle hug.

"Do you want to come in or are you so spooked you're going to fly home as soon as you're done hugging me?" asks Bella weakly.

Hug.

"He won't shoot you," Bella promises, and she ushers him in, and closes the back door, and plops them both onto a sofa.

"Maybe. I don't know if Charlie's going to."

"Figures," shrugs Feral.

"I'm just glad he called me down to identify you instead of shooting you on sight."

"Yeah." Feral hugs her some more.

"No big deal," he says, "I can just sleep outside."

"Well, he might not like you hanging around even if you don't technically sleep here, but that'd probably get you at least a week."

Feral shrugs. "Okay."

Snuggle. "He let Tony and Sherlock stay for a long time but they didn't turn into scary-looking critters first."

"Yeah," says Feral. "Not the best first impression."

She scritches his hair. "Kinda. I wonder who he's seen die. I knew Renée wouldn't be able to see you but I wasn't sure Charlie would."

"Maybe he shot somebody," snorts Feral.

"I don't think so, but it's not impossible."

Shrug. Snuggle. Together, do they make a shruggle?

Hugs are nice to have.

They are. They are very huggy. Feral likes them a lot.

Charlie doesn't evince an objection when Feral makes his own outdoor sleeping arrangements and hangs around. Bella gets Feral to quiz her on Potions and lets him go through her Muggle book collection. And then he flaps away back to school and she waits out the rest of the summer and busses back.

"It doesn't have to be practical to be a good book," says Bella.

"True. I'm glad you like it, anyway."

"Is it an early birthday present?" inquires Bella.

"Only if I can't find another good one by the time it is your birthday."

"I want to figure out how to destroy Dementors, if there is anything about that around. I haven't checked the school library yet."

He nods.

"Of course if someone already knows how then I don't see why there would still be any, but maybe there have been options ruled out."

"Or it could take some incredibly nasty bit of Dark magic," Sherlock suggests.

Bella contemplates this, then decides, "It would have to be ridiculously nasty to not be worth getting rid of one of those. Especially the wild ones that can suck out souls whenever they feel like it. At least the domesticated kind only prey on a certain short list of people."

Sherlock shrugs. "Would you sacrifice a person to kill a Dementor?"

Bella thinks about this, and then says, "I bet I could find at least a few people I would trade in, particularly since Dementors kill people anyway just roaming around. I'd rather not. But people include, like, the people who decided to domesticate them and use them as prison guards. And people who are already dying of something."

"I bet it's possible to do it another way, though. We break the laws of physics all the time, and there aren't that many wizards compared to Muggles and so it wouldn't be that surprising if there was a way to do it that didn't hurt anybody that no one had run across yet."

"What do the laws of physics have to do with it?"

"Well, up until I found out about magic I didn't think the laws of physics were breakable," explains Bella. "I don't see a strong reason to think there's only one layer of breakable but really convincing laws."

"What we really need is a physicist who understands magic," says Sherlock. "Until then it's all guesswork. It'll still be guesswork afterward, but less so."

Feral is there! Feral waves.

"Hi!" says Bella. The teacher isn't here yet. "So are you still taking Herbology in your elective slot?"

"Yeah," he says. "And Social Studies is branching out this year, so I ditched it and took Arithmancy."

"Why Arithmancy?"

"No wands."

"I guess that makes sense. I mean, Social Studies isn't wandy either. Didn't want to learn about Muggles or Beings or History?"

"Nope."

"Why not? I'm really looking forward to Beings."

"I just really don't like the class," he says, shrugging.

Feral also has Charms!

Everyone has Charms.

"We always all have Charms together," observes Bella.

Tony shrugs. "Yeah, guess so."

And classes ensue fairly unremarkably. Bella is in the second level of Magizoology, which is fun, and of course all the standard courses. They learn a nifty bruise-healing potion; she makes two extra batches on her own time to keep around for when she falls down stairs or otherwise finds it useful but doesn't want to go all the way to Healer Song.

That Friday at lunch, Sherlock sits himself down next to Bella and says, "Boggarts."

"Gesundheit."

"Ha. No. They're a magical creature that turns into the thing you most fear. You'll be seeing one in Magical Defense today."

"Oh." Bella frowns. "Are you okay?"

He shrugs. "It was survivable."

"Obviously, you're alive. Are you okay?"

"You could make a case for it."

"Which you are conspicuously failing to do."

He shrugs again.

"What'd you see?" Bella asks softly.

"Tony, dead. And so did the rest of the class. The Boggart's form is not a personal illusion."

Bella hugs him.

He hugs her back.

"I wonder what I'll see."

"It varies."

"Yeah. I guess it could show me myself dead? But since I would be conscious and looking right at it I don't know if that would be scary so much as disturbing."

"Or perhaps it will show you something that you might expect to kill you."

"If it gives me a Dementor does it just look like one or feel like one too, do you know?"

"It did a remarkably lifelike dead Tony. So to speak. I don't know if it can mimic the effect of a Dementor."

"Maybe I should ask the teacher ahead of time just in case."

"Probably a good idea."

"What do you do with them after they turn into things?"

"Laughter repels them. There is a spell that will alter the Boggart's form into something more humorous, and then you have a good giggle and it tries to run away and the next person has a go. I did not successfully cast the spell."

"I wouldn't think most sincerely terrifying things would be very funny," objects Bella. "That doesn't make sense."

"And yet, there it is."

"I don't think I'd be scared if I saw a very convincing image of myself dead and knew full well what was going on. But I don't know what I'd do to it to make it funny, either. And I know I don't function very well around a real Dementor but if the boggart is bad at faking it I guess there could be something funny that could happen to it."

"The teacher recommends party hats," he says dryly. "As a catchall. They looked particularly fetching on the giant spider."

"Corpse in a party hat," muses Bella. "No, I think if I had that to work with I'd make it look like I'd died cartoonishly. Put it under an anvil, tongue sticking out, X's for eyes, about to pop back up as soon as the plot demands. Dementor I think I'd put in tie-dye."

At that, Sherlock actually does giggle.

"Death to good taste," intones Bella, holding a clawing hand out at him. "I will suck out the soul of fashion sense."

He snickers.

"Thank you for warning me," she adds more seriously.

He shrugs. "Of course."

"I assume you already warned or are about to warn Tony; I can tell Feral if you haven't."

"Yes. I have warned Tony, but not Feral."

"- Is this why you weren't in Charms?"

"Yes."

Bella hugs him again.

Hugs.

Bella doesn't have another class with Feral until Magical Defense, so she runs off to find him while lunch is still ongoing.

"Sherlock warned me about what's in Defense today. It's these things called boggarts that turn into your worst fear when you look at them."

"...I should probably skip Defense," says Feral.

"I'm going to warn the teacher that mine might be a dementor and if boggarts are good at faking effects like theirs I should skip my turn. What's with yours?"

"Uh... when I get really scared, everything catches fire?" he says.

"That's true," allows Bella. "But like - the other thing I think mine could be is just myself dead and that would be unsettling but not scary, are you sure you'd get something that would scare you out of context?"

"Okay, okay," says Bella, "skip if you want, it's the terrible memory charm teacher, goodness knows I wish I were comfy skipping classes. I'll tell you how it went after."

"Great," he says. "See ya."

"He says boggarts can do the thing but he doesn't believe I've seen a dementor," Bella says desperately, "and he wants me to go in front of the boggart anyway."

"...Fuck," says Feral. "And I'm supposed to what, back you up?"

"If you don't I have to skip and I don't want him to flunk me. He saw me, he knows I'm not sick, and he already doesn't like me from the memory charm incident since Mrs. Stark didn't get him fired."

"Okay," sighs Feral, "I'm game."

"I'm sorry," says Bella apologetically, and she heads back to Defense with him.

Feral follows. He's pretty sure that him setting a bunch of things on fire would do less damage than a Dementor showing up in the middle of the classroom, so he doesn't hang back when they get there.

"I did meet a Dementor over the summer and Feral can confirm," Bella says, "and the boggart might well turn into one if you throw it at me and you can't do that to a whole room full of people."

The teacher looks skeptically at Feral. "Were you even planning to show up? Miss Swan should not have had to fetch you."

"I wasn't, actually," he says. "I have this problem where when I get scared things catch fire."

"You use that excuse to get out of a considerable amount of work," snaps the teacher, "but you've had more than enough time to grow out of infantile accidental magic. If you do the exercise correctly you will experience scarcely a second of actual fear - the incantation is Ridikkulus, you must think of a way to render your fear humorous, and if Miss Swan cannot then she at least has the history of classwork to conceivably make up for it. You on the other hand -" He flicks his wand, and Feral scoots forward in front of a cupboard, and the cupboard opens.

The teacher puts out the fire with a slice of his wand, expression unreadable.

"Feral," warns Bella in his ear, putting a hand on his elbow.

"Feral," pleads Bella.

"You've ruined the lesson for everyone. I don't have another boggart," says the teacher. "What is wrong with you? You are fourteen years old! Accidental magic is for children!"

Feral takes a deep breath, shakes off Bella's hand, and stalks out of the room.

"I could've fucking killed him," says Feral, cling-snuggling. "I almost did. And fuck, if he does that every time - I can't be the only kid in the whole school who's got somebody they don't wanna meet like that. It's fucked up."

"Are you gonna be okay?"

"Sure," he says. "Maybe not today, but I will. I just—" He shivers, bites his lip, and hugs her tighter. "I didn't know it was going to be that bad," he murmurs. "I thought it would be more like when the Dementor hit me - but - that was all in my head. With the Boggart, he was there. It's a whole different thing."

Hugs. "Do - do you need to talk to Healer Song or something?"

"Fucked if I know," he mutters.

"Who was - you probably don't want to talk about it."

"My dad. And yeah, I don't."

Hugs.

Yes. Hugs. Hugs are good. Feral likes hugs.

"I'm sorry."

"I'll be okay," he says, hugging her some more. "...If you wanna stay and snuggle me for a while, though, that would be good."

"I can do that," agrees Bella, and she does precisely that.

Feral curls up in bed and snuggles her. It does help; he doesn't start crying again, or feel like he might set anything on fire.

Snuggle, snuggle. "Transferring into a different section wouldn't even help," mutters Bella. "I wonder if they'd let me test into ninth grade Defense or something."

"You could try," he says. "I'm probably fucked."

Nuzzle. "I'm sorry."

Snuggle-shrug. "Oh well. He's probably not gonna try another Boggart on me, anyway."

"Yeah, he doesn't have another one. I'm not sure whether I wish we were in an earlier class or not. I mean, it didn't look like the room had been previously partially demolished, but that doesn't mean much."

"Yeah. When most people get really scared, stuff doesn't start burning."

"He's very terrible," says Bella.

"He really is," says Feral. "I'd try getting him fired again if I thought it would work."

"Maybe we can accumulate enough convincing material," says Bella. "The memory charm by itself didn't do it, but that plus the boggart plus I don't know what else might."

"Yeah. I bet if we tried we could get him in some serious shit," Feral says musingly.

"What were you thinking? I don't know what Mrs. Stark tried when she tried."

"Write down all the fucked-up stuff he does, see if any of it will get more people mad than just Tony's mom. Maybe try to catch him breaking a rule the school will have to care about, or get him to break one."

"I have all of it written down already," says Bella. "I mean, not organized, but I could get it that way. Most of it was small stuff."

"Like what?"

"Like - I'd need to get my notebooks to find a perfect example but after the thing with the memory charm he didn't like me, he spent the rest of sixth grade making little snide remarks whenever I was about to practice something, asking if I was sure it wasn't against my religion or did I want a minute to paint a protest sign against throwing signal sparks or whatever. He was very quiet about it, I could ignore it, I'm not sure anyone else heard."

"Wow, what an asshole," says Feral. "Probably no one will care. But he's still an asshole."

"Yeah."