Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/891341.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Choose_Not_To_Use_Archive_Warnings, Underage
  Category:
      M/M
  Fandom:
      Teen_Wolf_(TV)
  Relationship:
      Derek_Hale/Stiles_Stilinski
  Character:
      Derek_Hale, Stiles_Stilinski, Alan_Deaton, Vernon_Boyd, Scott_McCall,
      Erica_Reyes, Ms._Morrell_(Teen_Wolf)
  Additional Tags:
      Orphan_Stiles, Alternate_Universe, Magic, Mates, Non-Negotiated_D/
      s_Elements, Bondage, Rimming, Past_Child_Abuse_-_Physical, POV_Multiple,
      Harry_Potter_-_Freeform, dark!stiles
  Stats:
      Published: 2013-07-20 Chapters: 3/3 Words: 25018
****** Such Things Don't Bear Repeating ******
by Allizane
Summary
     A wizard, a wolf, and a boy. Or: spells and magic can never truly
     substitute for strength. (Harry Potter AU, in triplicate.)
Notes
     Drafted during hiatus, so no S3 characters make an appearance. Except
     for Stiles’ hair.
***** Chapter 1 *****
Wizard.
The shrill ringing sound is so incongruous it takes him a moment to realize
what it signifies. Minerva McGonagall pauses in her speech — while she won’t
disagree that changes need to be made, she refuses to go so far as to start
teaching her students Muggle science — and looks curiously at him from the
fireplace.
“Is that a telephone?”
“Indeed it is, Headmistress,” he says. “As you can see, I practice what I
preach. We’ll have to continue this later.”
He throws a handful of powder at the logs with one hand while grasping for the
phone receiver with the other. It’s buried under a pile of scrolls and papers,
but he manages to find it before the ringing stops.
“Dr. Deaton. To whom am I speaking?”
There’s a pause on the other end, as though the caller wasn’t really expecting
anyone to answer.
“I, uh, yes, this is, ah — Isabella, from the Children’s Home?”
He thinks for a moment. There was an Isabella at the Beacon Hills Children’s
Home in California; a thin blonde woman with nervous hands.
“Isabella! How wonderful to hear from you,” he says. “I hope everything has
been going well since our meeting.”
“Ah, yes, um, thank you, it’s just, uh — you said, when you were here, you told
me that I should call you if one of the children ever did anything — odd, you
said — like, unnatural-like, and, well — ”
He’s already reaching for the suit jacket he keeps in his office for
emergencies. “Say no more, Isabella; I’ll be there in an hour or two.”
“Oh, well, that’s, um, okay then, I’ll — I’ll just get him ready for you, I
guess?”
“Much obliged, Isabella,” he says, then carefully places the phone down before
throwing off his robes and tugging on the suit jacket, fingers snagging on the
buttons. In theory, he could be at the Home in the next minute, but Apparating
from Maine to California is a risky proposition at the best of times, and the
quick journey would arouse suspicion as well. Better to Portkey to Sacramento,
find a nearby car rental and drive the last 50 miles.
In his hurry to leave, he almost forgets to grab the wand off his desk.
***
He pulls up at the Home exactly two hours after the phone call, slowly parking
the black sedan in the gravel lot out front. It’s a gray and sad-looking place,
but he supposes that’s inevitable when you’re dealing with unwanted children.
Isabella is standing on the front porch by the time he exits the car. There’s a
pale, skinny child of indeterminate age and gender perched on the railing, eyes
hidden by a thick mop of brown hair.
“Hello,” he says, smiling. “How wonderful to see you again. And this is — ?”
Isabella bites her lip, frowns. “Inside,” she says. “We should — inside.”
She goes through the door and leads him to a small room at the end of the hall.
He wonders briefly where everyone else is, but is wary of asking questions that
a Muggle would see no need for. 
The room holds a filing cabinet, a desk and three chairs. Only the child sits,
head bowed low and fingers twitching against thighs.
“You said — you hinted,” Isabella stutters out, “When you were here, you — ”
“Yes, I remember,” he says. “And as promised..." He reaches into his jacket
pocket; pulls out a small stack of bills. “First, however, I’ll need a few
minutes alone with the” — him, she’d said — “with this young gentleman here.”
“He can’t speak,” she says, gaze following the money in his hand. “He — whoever
had him last, they — his tongue’s been cut out.”
The room is silent apart from the rasp of small fingertips against denim.
“And...who exactly had him last?” he finally manages to ask.
She shrugs her shoulders; a sharp, jilted motion. “Angus found him lying with
the dogs near the train yard when he went to throw them some scraps; called up
the cops and they brought him here. Said no one was looking for him. He’s been
here a week, hasn’t tried to write or sign anything. He — I knew I had to call
you, after he — ”
“After he what, Isabella?” he prompts gently.
She nods towards the window. “We have a pond out back. Filled with all sorts of
weird looking fish, all different colors.”
“And?”
“We didn’t before,” she says.
And that’s — just not possible, on several different levels.
“They’re not real,” she says. “The fish, I mean. Or — they go through your
hand, when you try to catch them, but they look up at you, like — like they
know you’re there. So they’re not fake.”
“I see,” he says, even though he honestly doesn’t.
“But that’s not — that’s not why I called,” she says. “I wanted to, kept
picking up the phone ready to dial, but I — I couldn’t make my fingers press
the right buttons. Almost like, like it didn’t want me to.” She licks her lips,
glances furtively at the window. “Then, the other day, some of the older boys
were pushing him around, calling him names — kid stuff, you know — and then
they just started coughing, coughing up — blood, the whole yard — splattered,
and they all...” She trails off, pauses. “We had to call an ambulance.”
He looks at the child again. A bit small to have put several boys in the
hospital, but sometimes things happened. It’s bad, but not irredeemable.
“He can’t stay here,” Isabella says. “You — you have somewhere to put him, you
said?”
There’s no response he can give that won’t lead to more questions, and he’s
anxious to get back to the Academy. It’s cool here, this far north, but he can
already feel the sweat beading at the base of his neck.
“There’s no need to worry,” he says, and pulls the wand from his sleeve. He
whispers the spell, waits until her eyes glaze over and her breathing slows.
“Come along, then,” he tells the boy. “Show me your pond.”
He feels almost bad, watching it curl into itself with a faint shimmer, but the
boy doesn’t protest and follows him easily enough to the car.  
He slips the cash into Isabella’s coat pocket, then sends a quick message to
the Aurors, letting them know that Beacon Hills was in dire need of some memory
spells without providing too many details.
It’s an awkward, silent drive to Sacramento. The Portkey is still lying in the
alley, right where he left it, and the boy reaches out for the old sneaker
unprompted.
His fingers barely have a chance to brush against its surface before they both
disappear.
***
He takes the boy to his suite of rooms in the dorms. There are questions that
need answering, but first —
“Drink,” he says, holding out a small bottle. The boy looks at him warily from
under his bangs, sitting on the edge of the sofa.
“It’ll grow your tongue back,” he says. “It shouldn’t hurt.”
The boy doesn’t move.
“If you don’t drink it I won’t be able to teach you about magic,” he adds, and
that’s enough to convince the boy to open his mouth and swallow the potion.
“And it makes you fall asleep while it’s healing you,” he says, but the boy’s
already slumped over, out cold.
***
In the morning he makes pancakes. The smell draws the boy off the couch and
into the kitchen.
“You’ll need to tell me your name if you want any,” he says.
The boy considers him for a moment.
“Stiles.”
It’s mumbled, but he hears it well enough.
“I meant your full name,” he says.
The boy — Stiles — sits at the table. “Should’ve specified.”
And — all right, he can grant him that.
He brings the platter of pancakes over and watches as Stiles rolls one up and
stuffs it in his mouth without bothering to add any syrup.
“Where are your parents?” he asks.
Stiles ignores him and reaches for another pancake, glaring when he moves the
platter away.
“Dead,” Stiles says. “Obviously.”
“When did they die?”
Stiles’ mouth twists to the side, fingers drumming against the table’s surface.
“Two years ago, I guess.”
He lets him have another pancake. This one, the boy drowns in syrup on his
plate.
“And how old are you, Stiles?”
“Nine in September, why?” The words come out garbled from behind a mouthful of
food.
“I’m afraid you won’t be able to begin your wizarding lessons for another two
years, then. We start our students off when they’re eleven. It’s the same age
as the other schools but we try and keep you for two years longer, so if you
get the full degree you’ll be able to attend a Muggle university, if you want.”
He doesn’t really know why he’s giving the boy his marketing spiel. It’s not
like Stiles is going to suddenly demand to attend one of the more traditional
schools.
“What’s a Muggle?” Stiles asks.
“Someone who doesn’t know about magic,” he says. “Like Isabella, back at the
Home.”
Stiles goes back to eating.
“I take it your parents weren’t wizards?”
No answer, but if the child hasn’t heard the term Muggle before, that’s telling
enough. Which means —
“How did you know the sneaker was a Portkey, back in that alley yesterday?”
Stiles looks up him, swallows.  “You knew what it was, too.”
“Yes, because I’d used it before. How did you — ?"
“Oh,” says Stiles, tilting his head to the side. “Huh.”
“What is it?”
“Full now,” Stiles says, sliding off the chair and ambling back to the couch.
***
He spends a full month trying to get Stiles to tell him what happened before he
came to the Home, but none of his usual methods for questioning students bears
any fruit. Sometimes Stiles answers with a stream of babble only tangentially
connected to the topic at hand; sometimes he stares blankly at the wall in
silence.
There are options, of course — Veritaserum or Legilimency, followed by a
carefully spun Obliviate to erase any memory of what could be seen as a breach
of trust — but he’s reluctant to use magic here, and that magic, especially.
Bad enough when used against a full-grown wizard; unthinkable with an eight
year-old boy. There’s no telling what the long-term side effects might be.
He lets it go; starts teaching him the basics of magical theory and algebra
instead. Stiles is smart but easily distracted, and sometimes it’s easier to
just leave him alone in his private library, letting him flip through book
after book.
He’s surprised at the boy’s complacency. Whoever “had him last,” in Isabella’s
words, must have hurt him badly, and yet Stiles — despite his actions at the
Home — isn’t an angry child, or a fearful one. He wonders every so often if
it’s all an act, but — to what purpose? Stiles appears to have no agenda beyond
getting chocolate stains all over the furniture.
He arranges to have one of the gardeners’ nieces, a nineteen-year old Squib
named Amy, look after Stiles while he runs errands. He supposes she’ll do well
enough to look after him once the fall term starts, since Muggle public school
is out of the question under the circumstances. Stiles’ magic seems to pour out
of his skin and into the air around him, overflowing. Things — happen, around
him; shadows taking on shapes and colors and movement, and for all that it’s
mesmerizing to watch it’s also vaguely unsettling.
Today, there are five frogs sitting on the dining room windowsill. They’re
wearing top hats and every once in a while will jump up and rearrange
themselves in a synchronized leap.
It would be odd even if Stiles were actively directing them, but — he’s not.
He’s slumped over in an armchair, reading about the Goblin Wars of 1834 and
chewing on a pretzel stick, spilling crumbs onto the rug.
***
He asks Professor Morrell about it during their weekly lunch meeting.
“It’s probably just excess magic manifesting itself,” she says. “You should
consider yourself lucky he’s not blowing holes in your ceiling.”
“I think I might prefer the holes,” he says. “For it to manifest in such a
structured way, and at his age...I’m almost afraid of what’s going to happen
when he gets his hands on a wand.”
“I’d like to meet him,” Morrell says, eyebrows lifting in mock amazement.
“Anyone who manages to scare the Shadow of the — ”
“Oh, not this again.” He sends a raspberry flying at her face with a flick of
his fork. “You really don’t need to remind me that the words top secret and
classified apparently mean nothing to you.”
The raspberry stops an inch away from her nose, then drops neatly onto her
tart. “I always found it odd they’d never put us under Fidelius,” she says. “I
think they’re actually hoping someone lets something slip. All that madness
over in England, and no one here even knows — ”
“It was over forty years ago,” he says. “And there’s a reason for the silence.
You can’t repeat a story that was never told in the first place.”
A skinny hand reaches over his shoulder, makes off with a bit of crust. He
hears Morrell’s fork clatter to the ground, but his attention is focused on the
incursion into his plate.
“You sound like a fortune cookie sometimes, you know that?” Stiles is saying,
crunching loudly and bumping against the table with his hip. There’s a silver
lizard napping in his hair. “You should grow out your beard; then you’d have
something to stroke while spouting your wisdom.”
“You’re being rude,” he says mildly, and gives Stiles a gentle push towards
Morrell. “Say hello to Professor Morrell, and then go back to the library and
finish your worksheet.”
“Howdy,” Stiles says. “What do you teach?”
“Divination,” Morrell says, smiling in her inscrutable way. “And Latin. It’s
nice to finally meet you.”
“Yeah,” Stiles says. His eyes drop to her hands, face flushing pink. “Uh,
sorry. For the interruption and stuff.” He grabs a raspberry off Deaton’s
plate, then swivels around to head back to the library.
“That was actually fairly subdued for him,” he tells Morrell once Stiles is out
of sight.
“Nonetheless, he’s a bit — loud,” she says, eyes gazing at the spot where
Stiles had been standing. Her hands lie loosely curled on the table, but
there’s something forced about their softness.
“He’s just a boy,” he says, oddly defensive. “They tend not to be the quietest
of creatures.”
Morrell looks up at him. “Boys will be boys,” she says, almost singsong, and
it’s an opening; an invitation for him to finish her thought.
He stays quiet; watches her watch him.
Finally she sighs, pushes herself away from the table. “He has a point about
the beard,” she says, and just like that she’s Professor Morrell again.
“Sometimes I wonder why I keep you around,” he muses, and she pauses with her
back against the door, smiles sharply in answer.
He lets her leave, suddenly weary. The Muggles have a saying about foxholes and
bedfellows, he thinks. There’s a whole constellation of scars linking their
bodies, years spent in darkness wearing strangers’ skins. When it was all over
— when it all turned to dust under their hands and they’d been asked to choose
their rewards — his only request had been for a school.
He hadn’t asked her to stay; still isn’t sure what it was that she’d wanted.
His thoughts are interrupted by a loud thump from the library. “It’s like
living with a tiny drunk troll,” he mutters to himself.
It’s probably for the best that Morrell isn’t there to see the fondness that’s
no doubt on his face.
***
Three days before Stiles’ ninth birthday (or what Stiles claims is his
birthday, anyway; he supposes it’s possible the boy just wants cake earlier in
the month), the first of the students arrive.
As always, he’s there to welcome them at the gates, reassuring the parents of
the First Years that in the whole of its 38-year history, no one at the Academy
has ever been eaten by bears. Or wolves, though that’s become a more awkward
conversation in recent years.
Stiles is supposed to be inside the apartment with Amy, but he’s not surprised
to discover that the boy convinced her to take him for a walk just outside the
Academy’s entrance.
No one seems to mind that there’s a skinny, floppy-haired child staring at
them, or that there’s a bright blue parrot sitting on his shoulder, so he
leaves them be. At least this one doesn’t have an eye-patch and a wooden leg
like the last one.
***
That night, Stiles comes into the study and sits cross-legged on the floor.
He’s putting the finishing touches on a speech for tomorrow’s dinner ceremony,
but it can wait.
“Can’t sleep?” he asks.
He thinks that the boy must have nightmares, but he’s never heard — or, for
that matter, seen — any signs of them, so maybe not.
“The kid with the big family,” Stiles says. “The ones who kept hugging.”
“Derek Hale,” he answers, even though Stiles hasn’t asked.
“Derek Hale,” Stiles repeats. “Why’s it...different, for him?”
Sometimes words don’t work quite the way they should with Stiles, and he has to
guess at their meaning.
“Derek comes from an affectionate family,” he says, and decides there’s no harm
in Stiles knowing the rest — after all, everyone else at the Academy does.
“He’s a born-wolf,” he explains. “It’s very difficult for him to leave his
family — his pack — and come here for nine months every year. It’s difficult
for them, too. That’s why they all come out to say goodbye. And why there’s a
lot of hugging, as you noted.”
“How come he’s the only one at the school?” Stiles asks.
“And not his siblings, you mean? It’s very rare for a born-wolf to have magical
abilities. There aren’t that many born-wolves to begin with, and maybe one
every five generations or so has the capacity to be a witch or wizard as well.”
He glances at the clock on the mantelpiece. “I think it’s time we both got to
bed,” he says. “You can learn more about born-wolves tomorrow; there are a few
books in my library that mention them.”
Stiles nods and rises, looking preoccupied.
Somehow, he isn’t surprised to find Stiles asleep in one of the library chairs
the next morning, books spread across his lap.
***
“I think I should go to school now,” Stiles tells him during winter break. “You
can get me a wand for Christmas.”
“You’re nine years old,” he says, flicking open the evening paper to scan the
headlines. “You’re too young to have a wand.”
“I could’ve lied,” says Stiles. “I could be twelve for all you know.”
“Hmm,” he says. “In that case, I suppose that means I’ll have to give you some
Veritaserum, just to make sure you’re telling the truth now.”
“Fine,” Stiles mutters. “I’ll just buy a wand myself.”
“First off,” he says, putting down the paper to meet the boy’s stubborn glare,
“Unless you’ve been picking pockets, you don’t have any money. Secondly, you
don’t even know where the wand shop is. And thirdly, it’s against wizarding law
to sell a wand to anyone under the age of eleven, and they have spells that’ll
mark you as too young the second you step inside.”
He expects another round of arguing, but Stiles just goes quiet for a minute,
staring at the potatoes on his plate.
“Where do the wands in the wand shop come from?” Stiles asks, curious now
rather than sullen.
“The wandmaker makes them, as you might have guessed from the name.”
“Oh,” says Stiles. “Yeah, I should’ve figured that one out on my own.”
***
Spring begins with a House Elf strike, then a week of terse negotiations with
the Aurors after several students are discovered running a bliss-potion
operation out of their rooms. His history with the Department only gets him so
far, and he barely manages to keep everyone out of jail when there’s a crisis
with the mermaids in the nearby lake, followed by weeks of dealing with angry
parents who disagree with his stance that any student stupid enough to go
kayaking in mermaid territory in the future frankly deserves to be gored by
spears.
Sometime during all this, Amy moves to New York to go to art school, and while
he knows full well that he should find another sitter for Stiles, it gets
pushed to the back of his mind while he’s dealing with everything else.
And the boy seems to do well enough on his own — no damage to any property or
to himself, no complaints from anyone else — and it becomes less and less of a
priority until suddenly it’s the summertime, and Stiles announces that he needs
a uniform for next year.
“Check your math,” he says. “You’ll be a few days short of ten, then.”
“You said I needed a wand to go to school,” Stiles says.
“That’s because you do, Stiles.” He really doesn’t want to have this fight
again.
“Okay,” says Stiles, grinning and bouncing on the balls of his feet.
“Okay?”
“Yeah,” says Stiles, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a wand, of all
things.
“Where did you get that?” he asks, heart sinking. Wizarding law doesn’t look
kindly on wand-thieves, even those as young as Stiles.
“I made it!” says Stiles. With a flick of his wrist, the side table suddenly
jolts forward, then tilts and falls with a crash. “I’m, uh, still getting the
hang of it.”
He’s actually incapable of speech right now.
“Amy did the wood part,” Stiles says, a few seconds after they stare silently
at the table. “I just brought her a birch branch and said I wanted something to
play with. I even got her to hollow it out and make a seal so it could close it
up, you know, after I put the core stuff in.”
“Core...stuff?”
“Yeah, the magic juice. The book said you need something like unicorn hair or
dragon heartstring — which sounds disgusting, by the way — but I had to
improvise since there aren’t any unicorns or dragons around here, which is a
kind of a major failing of the Academy, like, we should totally have a few
dragons out in the forest, how cool would that be — ”
“Stiles,” he says, getting his bearings back. “What do you mean, you
improvised?”
“I mean I winged it, cobbled something together, contrived a solution — ”
“Stiles,” he interrupts, and Merlin, he needs to put a limit on how much the
boy reads every day, if only for his own sanity. “You’re not going to tell me
what’s inside that wand, are you?”
“Nope,” says Stiles.
“All right,” he sighs. “Can I at least try it out?”
“You’re not gonna break it open or anything, are you?”
“No,” he says, “But only because I know you’ll just do something even more
ridiculous as a response.”
The wand is simple-looking, thicker than most but still elegant. A little short
of eleven inches. He gives it a flick and nothing happens. “Accio pen!”
The pen stays exactly where it is. It doesn’t even wiggle.
Stiles grabs the wand back. “Accio pen!” The pen comes flying towards him,
along with every other pen in the apartment. He can hear several thunking dully
against the study door.
“Guess it only works for me,” Stiles says, batting away the pens with his left
hand, his right still clutching his wand. 
“Guess so,” he says.
“So, about the uniform — ”
“I’ll schedule a fitting,” he says. “And a haircut,” because the fewer
flammable parts the boy has come autumn, the better.
***
“I hear your ward’s gotten his hands on a wand,” Morrell says the next time
they meet. He wonders if that’s new, her refusal to call Stiles by his name, or
if he simply hasn’t noticed until now.
“He’s certainly creative,” he says. “And on the bright side, his magic’s gotten
much more controlled — no more dancing animals all over my living room.”
Morrell slants a quick look at him before returning her gaze to her teacup. “He
reminds me of someone I once met.”
He doesn’t rise to the bait. “He’s just a boy,” he says, “and one of your
students come September.”
“I suppose I’ll have to take some responsibility for him at that point.”
“It takes a village,” he says. “Or so I’ve heard.”
Morrell smiles down at her cup. He doesn’t ask her what the leaves say.
***
Stiles turns out to be a capable but unremarkable student for the most part —
surprising, given his earlier precociousness, but perhaps that was just the
result of boredom and solitude, and unfettered access to what in retrospect
were some rather inappropriate books for someone his age.
His two friends are a boy named Scott who’s a natural on a broom but a disaster
most everywhere else, and a girl named Erica who knows far too many spells that
end in tears and pus-filled boils. Everyone else, Stiles more or less ignores.
At any rate, Morrell was right — the boy is now the responsibility of the
Academy as a whole, and while he still keeps an eye on him and keeps him
company during breaks, he’s no longer as concerned with his future.
He can’t be, not when the Academy is full of hormone-riddled teenagers sneaking
each other faulty love potions and experimenting with sex spells and every so
often kayaking in the mermaids’ lake because they’re all idiots, all of them.
“How’s his Latin?” he asks Morrell when he sees her, which isn’t nearly as
often these days. 
“Inventive,” she says; or: “A bit loud, still”; or, once: “Stark and bloodied.”
He’s a bit young for Seneca, he almost says in response to that last one, then
remembers how he found Stiles, back at the Home with his tongue missing.
“He practices all time in his room during breaks,” he tells her instead.
“Very dedicated,” she agrees, “But only to the things that hold his interest.”
***
In February of Stiles’ third year, the new Defense Against the Dark Arts
professor Apparates to northern California and burns down Derek Hale’s house.
Derek’s uncle, away on business, is the only survivor apart from Derek himself.
Everyone else is burned alive, the Fiendfyre reducing everything in a half-mile
radius to ash.
Before the week is out, Peter Hale tracks down Kate Argent and tears out her
throat. His mate was killed in the fire. By wizarding law, he is within his
rights to act as he did.
By human law, he is taken into custody by a SWAT team and placed under 24-hour
surveillance.
By wolf law, he rips his own heart out before morning.
All told, it takes him, Morrell and a team of Aurors seven hours, countless
memory spells and two dozen cleaning charms to make the whole thing disappear,
until all that’s left is Derek.
***
“Harris tells me that he’s missing some rare herbs from his storage room,”
Morrell says, appearing beside him and matching his strides down the hallway. 
“And he told you instead of me because...?”
“I believe he’s still reeling from your response the last time he acknowledged
a break-in.”
“They’re teenagers, not mastermind criminals. If they’re getting past his
protective wards, it doesn’t really leave me with a lot of confidence in his
overall abilities.”
“It’s interesting,” Morrell says. “They didn’t take anything that would be
useful for a lust potion or memory aid. Some of them you’d need for an Animagus
spell, but you’d be missing a few critical components that need to be picked
fresh from the forest. Several of the herbs are quite poisonous, though.”
“Why go though the trouble of mixing a poison when you could just throw a hex?”
he asks.
Morrell hums in answer.
“Well, I’m sure the culprits will make themselves known soon enough,” he says.
“We’ll just have to be on the lookout for someone with a horse’s head
surrounded by internally bleeding classmates.”
“Speaking of horses’ heads,” Morrell says, “Your charge seems to have developed
a certain fascination with Derek Hale.”
“Stiles has always been intrigued by Derek. He grew up with Muggles; they’ve
got a thing for werewolves.”
Morrell stops suddenly, forcing him to turn around and step back towards her.
“There’s something odd about that boy,” she says.
“Stiles or Derek?”
“Derek’s far too straightforward to be odd.”
She’s being unnaturally straightforward herself at the moment, but all that
means is that she’s playing a different game now, and he refuses to be drawn
in.
“I’ve got parchments to sign,” he tells her, and walks the rest of the distance
to his office alone, wishing she hadn’t mentioned Derek. What happened to the
Hales last winter wasn’t his fault — the school board picked Argent, not him;
she’d been an Auror for three years and none of her superiors had ever
suspected an affiliation to a fringe purity group. There was no way he could’ve
known what she’d been planning.
Not his fault at all, really; but he doesn’t like to dwell on it.
***
He notices Stiles watching Derek, after that. When Harris tells him that family
tragedy or not, Derek’s on track to fail Seventh Year Potions, he suggests
enlisting Stiles as a tutor, even though he’s only a Fifth Year. Chemistry and
Potions are Stiles’ best subjects, in spite of his tendency to ignore
instructions and come up with his own highly volatile concoctions.
He thinks Stiles can handle the work easily enough. This is the boy who made
his own wand, after all, and refused to trade it in for a...more traditional
one on his eleventh birthday. 
Harris agrees, possibly seeing it as an efficient way to torture both boys.
The tutoring goes well.
“A little too well,” Harris mutters darkly. He’s ignored by the rest of the
teaching staff, most of whom think Stiles’ and Derek’s new friendship is rather
sweet.
He sees them sometimes, occasionally with Scott and Erica and Derek’s friend
Boyd, but more often by themselves. Stiles chattering away; Derek watching him
talk, eyes shadowed. Derek seems to at least tolerate Stiles, which is more
than can be said for most of his own classmates.
It’s not his fault, he tells himself. The board appointed Kate; he simply
hadn’t vetoed their decision.
Still, he asks that Derek join him and Stiles during the summer break, and
holds back his surprise when Derek says that he’s already agreed to stay with
Morrell, to work on his Divination.
“Ah,” he says. “You’re interested in becoming a Seer?”
Derek shrugs.
He supposes it makes sense, given what happened. “Hopefully Professor Morrell
has already tempered any expectations that you’ll be able to see your own
future, or any future at all, for that matter?”
Derek nods, eyes glued to the floor.    
“All right then,” he says. “You should still stop by for dinner sometimes, if
only to keep Stiles from raising an army of giant wasps out of boredom. Again.”
Derek looks up at that, mouth shaping into something that’s almost a smile.
“He said he thought they were bees,” Derek says. “I think he wanted to see how
they made honey.”
Derek doesn’t agree to come to dinner, but he shows up every Friday that summer
nonetheless.
***
Stiles finally hits his growth spurt in his Sixth Year, and spends most
mornings of the summer after stretched over the length of the sofa, sometimes
with food balanced precariously on his chest.
“We do have a table, you know,” he says, plucking the bowl of cereal off him.
Stiles sticks out his tongue, flailing a bit in the process, and that’s when he
sees the mark on his neck. It’s also when Derek wanders out of Stiles’ bedroom,
scratching absently at his stomach on the way to the kitchen.
He leaves it alone until after dinner, when Derek goes for a run. 
“You do realize he’s three years older than you,” he says. Stiles looks up from
the dishes, sponges plopping dully into the water as his spell fizzles out.
“Seriously? You’re giving me the dad talk?” and there’s a thread of anger in
Stiles’ voice — or maybe fear. It’s strange, coming from Stiles, who usually
vacillates between cheerful and indignant.
“You’re not kicking him out,” Stiles tells him, because after the summer with
Morrell, Derek has chosen to stay with them over breaks. Or, he realizes now,
with Stiles, specifically.  
“No,” he agrees. “But I am going to ask him to sleep on the couch from now on.”
“We’re not — it’s none of your business, but we’re not even having sex. So
there’s no need to exile him out here.”
“Sorry,” he says. “My roof, my rules.”
“Fine,” says Stiles. He throws down the plate he was drying and slams the door
to his room.
The next morning he finds Derek lying on the couch, Stiles sprawled on top of
him, snoring lightly.
Derek glances towards him and his mouth sets into a thin line, but his hand
doesn’t move from its spot on Stiles’ hip.
Trust Stiles to find a way to wriggle through a technicality.
***
He leaves it alone, after that. Stiles has never needed his protection, and
Derek does seem to be doing better — more in control of his wolf — with Stiles
draping himself all over him at every opportunity.
Morrell brings it up once, strangely hesitant, asking if perhaps they shouldn’t
be concerned about Derek’s level of attachment.
“What do you mean?” he asks, distracted. Several Seventh Years (though not
Stiles, thankfully) are in the hospital wing suffering from severe stomach
ulcers, and the head nurse can’t figure out why or how to fix it.
“Just — Derek’s strength,” Morrell says. “And Stiles — ”
“Derek could never hurt Stiles,” he says. He knows enough about born-wolves to
be certain of that, at least.
“No,” Morrell agrees. “That’s what concerns me.”   
She looks tired, he notices, faint circles under her eyes and a certain
brittleness to her words. But they’re all tired now, trying to figure this
thing out, keep it from spreading further.
He wants to ask what she means, but they’re interrupted by the Charms professor
running into his office — another student’s collapsed, and they rush out to
help get him to the infirmary with the others.
***
A type of rare fungus, he figures out in the end; one that eats through stomach
lining and multiplies with the application of further magic. They’d had to
resort to Muggle medicines to kill it, and no one knows how it got inside Matt
Daehler’s home-brewed Firewhiskey (how the Firewhiskey got inside the students
is a far easier mystery to solve), but no one dies and only about two-thirds of
the parents send Howlers.
All in all, he’s looking forward to a nice subdued winter break, except Stiles
and Derek are apparently in the midst of an argument, which means that Derek
decides to stay with Morrell and Stiles decides that the dining room works much
better with a swamp as a carpet.
“Perhaps you could try talking to him?” he asks after several days go by. He’d
promised himself not to interfere, but he misses being able to spread his paper
out over breakfast without having to shoo frogs away from his eggs.
“He’s mad at me,” Stiles says. He looks more resigned than heartbroken, so it
can’t be anything too serious.
“So apologize.”
“Can’t,” Stiles says. “I’m not really sorry, and he’s got that whole thing
where he can tell if I’m lying.”
“So apologize for upsetting him. You are sorry about that, aren’t you?”
Stiles shrugs, running one hand over his head. He’s grown his hair out, and it
tends to clump up like a rodent’s nest when he’s stressed.
“Yeah, I guess,” he mumbles. “Shit, I think I really am sorry about that.”
“Language,” he scolds gently. Stiles grins at him, levering himself up off the
sofa and towards the front door. “And no visiting anyone until you’ve returned
the dining room back to its uninhabited state.”
Stiles rolls his eyes at that, but takes a second to point his wand at the muck
slowly encroaching into the hallway, moving his arm in a quick, complicated
spiral.
“All gone,” Stiles says, and amazingly it is in fact all gone. “Don’t wait up!”
he yells over his shoulder.
“Try not to get mauled,” he calls back, then winces when he realizes how that
could be interpreted.
“There’s a reason I never wanted any children of my own,” he tells his empty
apartment.
 ***
Stiles and Derek make up, he assumes, because Derek comes over for dinner that
night with his things.
Morrell Floos him, once, a few months later. It’s the morning after the April
moon and Derek’s not back from his hunt and a quick look proves that Stiles is
missing as well, and she almost manages to work him into a panic until he
remembers himself; throws out a simple tracking spell, then a more powerful one
of his own design when the first fails.
The spell flickers out after a second, but it works long enough to lead him to
the woods, where he and Morrell find the two of them curled up inside a hollow
oak, under one of Stiles’ winter cloaks.
“Young love,” he tells Morrell, relieved and rueful for worrying.
“It didn’t work,” she says softly. “The tracking spell didn’t work, and they —
”
He doesn’t respond. Magic can be tricky with born-wolves; she knows that. As
for Stiles — well, magic can be tricky with him, too, sometimes.
“Coffee,” he says instead. “I’d like to be well-caffeinated when I lecture
Stiles for almost getting eaten and freezing to death.”
He rests his hand against the small of Morrell’s back, nudges her back towards
the school.
“If you’re not inside in the next fifteen minutes I’ll get Harris to fetch
you,” he says, confident that Derek, if not Stiles, has been awake from the
moment he and Morrell entered the forest.
***
Stiles doesn’t suffer any ill-effects from his moonlit jaunt, but Morrell
develops a cough, then a fever, and he’s forced to take over her classes for a
week while she recovers under quarantine from what turns out to be a bout of
Scrofungulus.
He visits her after the danger of contagion passes, and tugs Stiles in after
him when he finds the boy skulking outside the infirmary.
Morrell’s staring up at the ceiling, propped up against pillows and eyes
slightly glazed. He pulls over a chair to sit near her bed. Stiles perches on
an empty bed across the aisle, getting a book out of his bag as though he
merely wanted to come in here to study.
“I think he feels a bit guilty,” he whispers, but Morrell doesn’t seem to hear
him. “Been a while since we’ve had to do the whole bedside thing,” he says,
louder, and she turns towards him at that.
“A while, yes,” she says, voice dry and raspy. “Yet here we are again. You said
— I know you believe that, about our silence, the stories. But it’s not right,
is it?” and her eyes slip shut. “Because it’s all — there’s only so many out
there. So of course they’re going to — what else, what else can they do?”
“She’s still a bit feverish, the poor dear,” the nurse says, jostling him out
of the way to whisper a calming spell over Morrell’s head.
“Do you know, I actually like being a teacher?” Morrell says dreamily.
“That’s good,” he says, watching her face go slack in sleep. “Considering
you’re one of the few I can actually tolerate.”
He glances towards Stiles, but the boy hasn’t taken his eyes off his book, hand
stretched across the pages like a twitchy spider.
And he knows, knows that there’s something there, something Morrell wants him
to see — but he likes being a teacher, too. This is the only skin that’s ever
felt even halfway like it should. 
***
In the springtime he asks Stiles what courses he’d like to take in his eighth
year.
“Not sure I’ll stick around for the full degree,” Stiles says, surprising him.
“What are you planning to do instead?” he asks.
“Dunno,” Stiles says. “Maybe I’ll put on a top hat and cape, take my show on
the road. Derek can be my lovely assistant.”
“The Aurors generally frown on using real magic in front of Muggles.”
“You wound me, good sir,” Stiles says with mock affront. “There won’t be a
trace of wizardry at my shows.”
“Just sleights of hand, then?”
“Well, sleights of something, anyway.”
“Is this because Derek’s graduating next month?” he asks, suddenly realizing he
doesn’t know what Derek has planned, either. It slips his mind, sometimes, that
Derek no longer has a place in the world outside of school.
“Nah, Derek would wait if I asked,” Stiles says. “I just — I don’t know; seems
like the time’s right to strike off on my own. On my own with Derek, anyway.”
 “You’ll always be welcome here, you know,” he says, because maybe Stiles
doesn’t.
“Thanks,” Stiles grins. “You won’t miss me too much, will you?” he asks,
fluttering his eyelashes.
“I’ve actually been thinking of adopting a dragon,” he says. “That way I can
continue constantly fearing for my living space and spending my wages on snack
food. Though I’m told they’re much less moody than your average teenager, so
that’ll be a nice change.”
“Yeah, yeah, you love me, really,” Stiles says, and he — he thinks about that
small silent boy, compares him to the wizard standing in front of him and says,
smiling: “Hmm. Maybe. Just a little.”
***
Stiles and Derek disappear in late June, the afternoon that Derek gets his
degree. He’s not too surprised by the lack of goodbye; none of them are the
type for emotional scenes. Stiles is just a few months shy of seventeen, and he
figures that’s close enough not to go through the trouble of tracking the boy
down. Especially since Stiles is staying in touch, in his own unique way.
Morrell never mentions either of their names, but sometimes she pauses in his
office and runs her fingers across the postcards tacked to the wall, whispers
something too low for him to hear.
Stiles sends the first one, featuring a snow-capped mountain with hints of a
small town near its base, the same day he and Derek vanish from the grounds.
It’s old; faded and creased, as though folded and re-opened dozens of times
over the years. The ones that follow are brand-new, showing different towns and
landmarks across the U.S.
They’re all blank on the back except for his name, scrawled in Stiles’ messy
hand. Not “Deaton” but his full name, his original one. It’s a good thing he
knows Stiles as well as he does, understands Stiles’ insatiable curiosity and
need to show off what he’s learned. From anyone else, that sort of thing could
come off as a warning, maybe even a threat.   
As it is, he just rolls his eyes and pins them up on his wall after erasing the
ink, and sometimes when he’s having a bad day and students are being their
usual moronic selves, he likes to look up at the postcards and think, Well, at
least I did one thing right.
***
 
***** Chapter 2 *****
Wolf.
She asks him to stay behind after class one day, fingers curled around her wand
as the other students file out.
He stays.
“Derek,” she says. She leans forward from where she’s perched against the desk,
brown hair falling across her shoulders in waves. 
“Professor Argent,” he says, voice steady. 
“Call me Kate,” she tells him, and she rests one hand lightly on his shoulder.
She smells like ginger. It overpowers his nose, makes him thrum with
uncertainty, but.
He stays.
(Sweetheart, you are just more than I can resist.)
***
He stumbles into the common room ten minutes before curfew.
“What did Argent want this time?” Boyd asks.
Derek’s body feels post-moon new, all his bones trying to slot into place.
“She thinks I have a shot at being an Auror,” he says, and his voice is rougher
than it should be. “Wanted to see if I’d be interested in some extra practice
sessions.”
Boyd gives him a long, slow look from where he’s stretched out on the sofa.
“A little early for that sort of thing, don’t you think?” he says mildly, and
Derek flushes but doesn’t respond.
Boyd never brings it up again. There’s a reason he and Derek are friends.
(Baby, sometimes I can’t even look at you, I want it so much.)
***
He tells her about his family. Their estate in Beacon Hills. He knows he did;
knows he invited her for a covert visit over Christmas break. He wasn’t used to
asking things from her; had to picture it in his mind to work up the courage:
This is the tree I splintered when Laura snuck up behind me, he’d say. This is
the shed I built last summer — no magic, just tools. This is the school I went
to — before. This is where I played baseball with my cousins, until Mom made me
stop.
It’s harder than it should be, trying to see her surrounded by the things that
belong to his pack, but Derek ignores it. Knows she’s liquid and heat while
home is cold granite and chains, but thinks maybe together they’ll make a place
where he fits.
He’s wrong, obviously, but.
She tells him no. Pays his family a visit the next month instead, while Derek’s
asleep in his bed thousands of miles from his pack.
It should hurt more than it does. Maybe Derek’s too broken already for this to
break him up even more. Or maybe some pain is simply too large to feel.
Whatever the reason, Derek doesn’t fall apart or go off on a rage-fueled
rampage the way most of his classmates expect. He wakes up, goes to class, does
his work, goes to bed. Sometimes he even manages to eat.
Derek turns sixteen on a wet Thursday in March and it’s his fault everything’s
been destroyed, but that’s okay. He’s a monster, just like she said. That means
it’s okay to be monstrous.
(You’re a beast, babe, and you know it.)
***
He tells Deaton he’s spending the summer with Boyd; tells Boyd he’s going back
to Beacon Hills to tie up loose ends.
Boyd doesn’t know that there are no loose ends, that none of the townspeople
even remember the Hales. It doesn’t matter. The woods are still there, still
the same in places the fire didn’t reach.
He spends three months on four paws, thinks about not going back, but he misses
the school. It’s the only thing he misses that still exists in the world.
Plus Boyd will probably track him down and drag him back to Maine if he’s not
in class the first day.
***
“That kid’s staring at you again,” Boyd says.
Derek looks up from his biology notebook. “What?”
Boyd nods at a table in the corner of the library, where a blonde girl is
whispering furiously at a boy who is — staring at Derek.
Derek lifts his lip in a snarl, showing teeth, and the kid grins.
Boyd huffs out a laugh. “That’s Deaton’s ward. Stiles. He’s been creeping on
you since day one, but it’s staring to get obvious.”
Derek isn’t sure what to do with that information. “You think he’s a threat?”
he asks.
Boyd raises his eyebrows. “I think he’s got a crush, Wolfman. Though I find it
interesting that that’s the first thing you think of when faced with a spindly
little Fourth Year.”
“How do you know what year he’s in?” Derek asks, still trying to process the
rest.
“Everyone knows about Stiles,” Boyd says, shrugging, but he looks
uncomfortable.
“He doesn’t have a crush,” Derek finally mutters, returning to his book. “Not
unless he’s a complete idiot.”
“Like I said, everyone knows about Stiles."
***
Derek wakes up in the infirmary after the next full moon. The wolf had savaged
its own flesh, like one of the bitten.
“If you feel like you’re losing control, you need to tell me,” Deaton says.
He’s standing awkwardly at the foot of his bed, smelling even more like burnt
apples than usual.
“It’s fine,” Derek rasps. “It won’t happen again.”
He can always chain himself to a tree in the woods, if it does.
“All right,” Deaton says. “I’ll take your word on that.”
It’s only after Deaton leaves that Derek notices the kid sitting in a chair on
his right, knees pulled up to his chest. He smells him before he sees him, a
too-thick wave of cinnamon, cherry and earth.
“Uh, hey,” he says, giving Derek a little wave. “I’m Stiles. I brought you some
blueberry muffins from breakfast; they’re your favorite, right?”
Derek just stares at him.
“Wow, that, uh, probably made me sound like a stalker, but I just — notice
things about people, you know? Like your friend Boyd, he’s all about the eggs
and hash browns, but you have kind of a sweet tooth, tend to go for the waffles
and stuff.”
Derek closes his eyes and turns away. Whatever the kid is offering, he doesn’t
want it.
“Right,” says Stiles. “Good talk. I’ll just, uh, leave these here, okay?”
He hears him get up and walk to the door, banging into a cart along the way.
“You want me to close the shades so it’s not as bright in here?” Stiles calls
out.
Derek ignores him, slowing his breathing and letting his skin stitch itself
back together.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” Stiles mutters, and then whispers a spell. The room
turns dark and it smells like — it smells like —
Derek’s body jolts up despite the pain, eyes wide and nostrils flaring, but
Stiles is already gone. He picks up a muffin and sniffs, and under the
blueberries it smells just earthy, and a little like cherries and cinnamon. Not
the kid then, just his spell. Derek isn’t sure what that means, or if it
matters.
Every other witch and wizard he’s ever met has had the same scent as their
magic, more or less, but Stiles — Stiles smells like pie left out in the
forest.
His magic smells like the forest’s full of wolves.
***
He keeps an eye out for Stiles, after that. Sees him with the blonde girl and
sometimes with the boy who made the varsity Quidditch team as a First Year.
Sometimes, when Stiles notices Derek looking, he’ll smile and give him an
awkward wave. But he keeps his wand hidden.
***
He spends his summer break with Boyd and Boyd’s grandmother in her cottage in
Vermont. For the most part, he stays a wolf, but he shifts back for meals and
chores.
He’s an alpha and an omega, a wizard and a wolf. It’s easier not to think about
it, so he doesn’t. Whatever he is, he is.  
Boyd runs with him on foot, sometimes, and his grandmother bakes blueberry
scones and doesn’t ask any questions. It’s better than what Derek deserves, but
he takes it anyway.
(Sweetheart, me and you, we’re gonna set the world on fire.)
***
The first full moon of the term comes and Derek is restless, chasing after
something just out of reach. There’s something in the forest with him,
something that smells like earth and cinnamon and wolf, but Derek can trace it
only as far as the trees, where it melts into the shadows. It’s something
small, then, and fast; and it keeps him distracted from the empty space where
pack used to be, however muted and faint. 
The next morning, Derek wakes up in his own bed, free of injury. He wants to
track down Stiles and throw him against the wall and demand answers, or maybe
just sniff his wand, but Stiles is Deaton’s ward and Derek needs to prove he
still has control.
It doesn’t matter, he tells himself. If it’s a threat, then it’s only a threat
to him and he’ll either deal with it or he won’t.
And if it’s something else — then it matters even less, really.
It’s not worth jeopardizing his place here. This is the only home he has left,
for all that parts of it still stink of ginger.
***
Two months into Derek’s seventh year, Professor Harris tells him he’s very
close to failing Potions, which isn’t a surprise. He also tells him to report
to the lab three times a week after dinner for tutoring sessions with Stiles,
which is.
“Why not someone in my year?” he asks.
“The headmaster suggested Stiles,” Harris says, sounding a little gleeful about
it.
“Fine.” If nothing else, maybe he can finally figure out what’s going on with
the kid’s smell.
***
The first thing Stiles says to him is, “Man, Harris really has it in for you,
huh?”
His robes are askew and there’s a gravy stain on one of shirtsleeves.
“I mean, he hates me, like, a ton, so if he’s punishing you with my presence
then you must really be on his shit list,” Stiles continues, dropping his books
on the table with a thunk and straddling the bench. “Lucky for you, I’m
actually something of a Potions prodigy, so we should have you sorted out in no
time.”
He doesn’t seem to expect Derek to respond, so Derek doesn’t.
“Right, so I think you guys are doing Veritaserum this month, which does not
sound like the greatest idea given the amount of gossip and backstabbing that
goes on around here.” Stiles flips through one of the books, pausing when he
gets to the page with the recipe on it.
“Okay,” he says. “Go for it.”
Derek gives him a look.
“Hey, I can’t fix the problem until I know what it is. So you go and start
chopping, and I’ll let you know when I see something that needs fixing.”
Derek represses a sigh and gets up to gather the ingredients from the cabinet.
He has the recipe memorized, it just — doesn’t work for him. Same with all the
other potions they’ve learned this year.
He’s halfway through the prep work, shredding the dandelion root as instructed,
when Stiles places his hand on top of Derek’s. Derek raises an eyebrow and
Stiles snatches his hand back.
“Uh, I think I know what the problem is,” Stiles says. “You’re a born-wolf.”
Derek hopes his face is communicating just how unimpressed he is.
“And that means your magic works differently!” Stiles adds quickly.
“Differently, how?” Derek asks, and ignores the grin the kid sends his way at
hearing him speak.
“Like, it’s bound up much more tightly in your, uh, body,” he says, blushing
and tugging at his shirt collar, “And it doesn’t get transferred to the things
you touch the way it does for the rest of us. So any potion where you have to
prepare the ingredients by hand, you’re going to have some trouble.”
“How can you tell?” Derek asks, looking down at his hands. They’re normal, no
claws in sight.
“I read it in one of Deaton’s books,” Stiles says. “And it makes sense. A lot
of the Seventh Year potions require tearing things up manually, which explains
why you’re having so much trouble.”
“Fine,” says Derek. “If you’re right, how do I fix it?”
Stiles thinks for a moment, mouth twisting. “I guess if we increase the amount
of whatever ingredient it is, it might balance out the lack of magical
transference.”
“Increase by how much?”
“Dude, I may be a Potions genius, but this is my first time at this rodeo. We
might have to work it out by trial and error until we can figure out some sort
of pattern.”
Stiles looks overly cheerful at the thought of having to spend several evenings
a week for the foreseeable future trying to cobble together dangerous mixtures.
 “So you’ve downgraded yourself?” Derek asks, and decides adding a pinch more
of dandelion root will do for a start.
“Huh?”
Stiles is chewing on the end of his pencil, scribbling some sort of calculation
Derek can’t make out.
“Earlier you said you were a Potions prodigy, but now you’re just a genius.”
Derek’s not sure why he’s engaging him like this, but. It’s been a while since
he’s spoken to anyone who wasn’t a professor or Boyd.
“Dude, were you actually paying attention to all that?” Stiles says, leaning
forward in his excitement and nearly dipping his tie in Derek’s cauldron. He
catches it at the last second and tosses it over his shoulder. “I’m gonna have
to start watching my words if you keep that up,” he says, grinning, and Derek
can’t help but breathe him in, this close to his skin.
***
They spend three weeks fiddling with ingredient amounts without much success.
On Monday of the fourth week, Stiles arrives at the lab in a flurry of papers.
“I’ve figured it out!” he shouts.
“Great,” says Derek. “Does it involve soaking your chemistry notes in leech
juice?”
“Whoops,” says Stiles, snatching them out of the way. “Sorry about that.
Anyway, I think I have a solution to our problem.”
“My problem,” corrects Derek. “Your problems, we haven’t even started on.”
Stiles sticks out his tongue at that, and it reminds Derek yet again that
Stiles is only a kid and probably has no idea what he’s doing, no matter how
potent he smells.
“Anyway,” says Stiles, “The ingredients plan isn’t panning out, clearly, so I
thought — why not use the amount in the textbook, but transfer your magic to
the stuff you’re going to be touching the traditional way.”
Derek leans against the table, waiting.
“The traditional way being through your wand, obviously,” says Stiles.
“Obviously,” Derek repeats. “So you want me to, what, spell extremely sensitive
ingredients before putting them into volatile potions? That doesn’t sound
dangerous at all.”
“We’ve been spending too much time together,” Stiles says, eyes narrowing. “My
sarcastic wit is starting to rub off on you.” He flushes, then, the way he does
whenever he accidentally (and Derek hopes, for both their sakes, that it really
is accidentally) saying something even vaguely suggestive.
“Are you going somewhere with this or not?” Derek asks
“Hey, buddy, I’m already there,” Stiles says. “Just waiting for a certain wolf
to catch up.” He turns around to dig through his bag.
“Stiles,” Derek says, and Stiles pauses his rummaging, tilting his head back so
he can look at Derek upside down.
“Yes, Derek?”
“Did you come up with a spell or not?”
“Course I did!” Stiles says, spinning around on the bench and banging both his
knees in the process.  “Motherfuck — ”
“Stiles!”
“Yeah, yeah.” Stiles finally settles, elbows on the table. “Okay, so point your
wand at the dandelion root, say Potentia Translationis, and hold it steady.”
“For how long?”
“Uh, a few seconds, probably? I’ll tell you when to stop.” He’s chewing on his
pencil again. It’s distracting.
Feeling a little silly, Derek does as instructed. He makes it to six
mississippis in his head when Stile suddenly knocks the wand out of his hand.
“And you’re done!” says Stiles.
Derek growls at him and bends down to pick his wand off the floor. “You’re the
one who’s done if you ever do that again,” he says, and Stiles nearly falls off
the bench laughing.
Derek ignores him and looks at the dandelion root. It doesn’t appear to be any
different.
“How do we tell if it worked?” he asks.
Stiles is still snickering like an idiot, but he makes a get on with it motion
with his hands. Oh.
Derek prepares the potion ingredients, carefully shredding the root. It takes
about thirty minutes, and while he’s working Stiles goes quiet, then still.
When Derek adds the root into the cauldron, the potion releases a puff of gray
smoke, settling into a thick, colorless goo. Just like the book described.
“Prodigy,” says Stiles, and he sounds rueful. “It should work for the other
potions, too; just say the spell and hold for six seconds.”
“Okay,” says Derek. They watch the cauldron for a minute. “Thanks,” he
remembers to add.
“Yeah, sure,” says Stiles. He bites his lip and looks down on the floor. Derek
should probably not be staring.
Stiles scratches at his head. “So hey, now that we’ve figured this out, I was
thinking, maybe you could — return the favor, help me out with something?”
Derek’s fingers tighten on his wand. “What do you need help with?” he asks, and
tries not to sound suspicious, but. He knows what sort of favors wizards ask of
wolves.
“How are you on a broom?” Stiles asks, which is — not what Derek was expecting.
“Not great,” he says. He doesn’t like being separated from the ground.
“Right,” says Stiles. “What about — uh — ”
It hits him, suddenly, that Stiles is straining for an excuse. To continue
spending time with Derek, and. Well, he does owe him for his help.
“I could use someone to study with on Thursdays,” he says. “Boyd has Dueling
Club then.”
“Thursdays,” says Stiles, nodding a little too earnestly. “Okay. Sounds good.
I’ll, uh, see you then?”
Derek nods, and Stiles raises his hand to — do something, Derek’s not sure —
before quickly lowering it to grab his stuff and walk out of the room, head
bowed.
Watching him go, Derek realizes he’s yet to smell Stiles’ spellwork since that
morning in the infirmary.
***
They study on Thursdays.
Or, rather, Derek tries to study while Stiles runs long, bony fingers over
pages and pages of text, as though learning by osmosis, sometimes chattering
away about everything and nothing, sometimes staring intently at the
bookshelves, mouth working but making no sound. It’s a little unsettling.
Right now, he’s talking. About Scott.
“ — so then, Ferguson asks him to transfigure the snail into a pair of glasses,
and he’s about to say the spell but then I guess he sees the sun glinting off
of Allison’s hair or something because next thing I know, the snail is the size
of my head and also on top of my head — ”
Derek tunes him out, reading up for his physics exam. Allison’s an Argent but
she’s never spoken one word to him, always looks away when he walks by, and
maybe she’s a threat but really, there’s not much he can be threatened with
these days. 
 “ — but I told him it’d be fine because you’ll still be around then,” Stiles
finishes, and looks at Derek expectantly.
“Still be around where?” Derek asks, because he honestly has no idea what
Stiles is talking about now.
“At the Academy,” Stiles says. “And you will be, right? You’re going to get
your full degree instead of busting out at the end of the year.”
 “Yeah,” Derek says. “Might as well.”
He wouldn’t know what to do with himself, anywhere else.
“Yeah, okay, that’s what I thought,” Stiles says, quickly launching into a
different story involving Erica and a Mandrake.
***
That summer Deaton extends an invitation to stay with him and Stiles, but Derek
decides to stay with Morrell instead. There’s another boy from his year trying
to get ahead in Divination, a quiet kid from East named Isaac, and it feels
like a legitimate pursuit. Not like whatever Derek would be getting up to with
Stiles.
Professor Morrell is calm and easy-going, lets him spend a week in New York
without a fuss. His sister Laura always wanted to move there, but their parents
refused to let her go so far from the pack. Which led to no small amount of
tension, especially with Derek attending school in Maine. He likes the city,
likes how invisible it makes him feel, and thinks maybe he’ll settle there once
he graduates.
When he comes back Morrell makes him look at dozens of star charts, takes him
and Isaac to look up at the sky as it is.
It’s odd, being outside in the woods on two feet. The stars never seem to have
anything to tell him.
“They tend to signify major shifts in energy. Wars and movements, things that
change history,” Morrell says. “But sometimes if you look deeply enough, you’ll
be able to see something of your own fate. Not in the stars themselves, but in
the space they open up and illuminate inside of you.”
Derek thinks he has plenty of spaces inside of him, but none that the starlight
can reach.
“I don’t think I’m very good at this,” he tells Isaac after she leaves them
alone in the clearing.
Isaac grins. “I think we’re doing okay. The centaurs spend decades studying
this stuff, and they still didn’t see World War I coming.”
He likes Isaac, likes the idea that he’s still capable of making friends even
more. Stiles — Stiles doesn’t count.
“I’m having dinner at Deaton’s on Friday,” he says. “He won’t mind if you come
with me.”
“Oh,” says Isaac. “Stiles, too, right? That’s okay, I think I’ll pass.”
“What’s wrong with Stiles?” he asks, and can’t suppress the growl in his voice.
“I didn’t mean — I know you guys are friends,” Isaac says. “And he’s a good
friend. It’s just, the people who aren’t his friends — ”
He trails off. “Like, you must’ve heard about what he did to the Whittemore kid
after he messed with Erica.”
Derek has no idea what Isaac is talking about, but he doesn’t push the issue.
“He’s loyal,” he says, because he pays enough attention to Stiles’ stories to
know that there’s not much he wouldn’t do for Erica. Or Scott.
“Sure,” Isaac says, smiling ruefully. “That’s one way of putting it. Either
way, I’ve had enough excitement in my life without getting involved with that
kid.”
***
He asks Stiles about it, not that week but the week after. They’re in his
bedroom at Deaton’s, Stiles sprawled on his bed and Derek sitting cross-legged
on the floor, thumbing through one of Stiles’ comic books.
“Oh my god,” Stiles says. “Do people still think that was me?”
“Was it?”
“Well, yeah, but there wasn’t a shred of evidence, so I don’t know why Morrell
thinks she can go about disparaging my good name.”
“It wasn’t Morrell,” Derek says, confused. “It was Isaac. Why would Morrell — ”
“Who the hell is Isaac?” Stiles interrupts. “Hold on, how many nubile young men
does she have stashed away in her quarters right now?”
“It’s just me and Isaac,” Derek says. “He’s in my year. He’s on East’s
Quidditch team.”
“Oh, right,” says Stiles, eyes narrowing in concentration. “I think Scott’s
friends with him. Pretty, right? Would you characterize him as pretty? I mean,
I guess, objectively you’d have to, but — you never get the urge to make out
with him under the stars, do you?”
“No, Stiles,” Derek says, rolling his eyes.
“Good,” says Stiles, “Because I’m pretty sure he has a thing for Scott.”
“Okay,” Derek says, “But you still haven’t told me about what’s-his-face, or
why you think a professor would be gossiping about you to other students.”
For some strange reason, that makes Stiles beam. “You’re getting better at
this.”
“At what?”
“Me,” he says, head hanging over the side of his bed like some demented monkey.
“And for the record, if you ever do get the urge, I’d be a much better under-
the-stars make out partner than Isaac.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Derek says drily. “Just in case you beat the odds and
actually end up an attractive human being.”
“Fuck you, asshole!” Stiles says, laughing, and Derek looks at his wide open
mouth, his bright brown eyes and the moles scattered across his skin like a
constellation, and thinks —
No.
He doesn’t think anything at all.
He also doesn’t get an answer to his questions, but decides it doesn’t really
matter. He finds he likes looking at the stars with Isaac sitting silently
beside him in the field. They never provide any answers, either, but at least
there’s no danger in staring at them for too long.
***
Sometimes after dinner, Stiles takes Derek out into the woods on “expeditions.”
Mostly these involve Stiles muttering to himself and ripping various plants
from the ground to place in his backpack.
“Pretty sure we’re not supposed to go this far in,” Derek tells him during
their first trip out. He can vaguely smell the hippogriff that’s rumored to
live out here.
“Dude, why do you think I brought you along?” Stiles says. “You’re the muscle.
And occasionally pack mule,” he adds, dumping a bag of mushrooms and possibly
rocks into his arms.
Tonight, they’re trying to find a clump of foxglove, which the Academy
gardeners tend to cut down on sight.
“What do you need all of this for, anyway?” Derek asks.
“Oh, you know, experiments and stuff,” Stiles answers, his scent going slightly
sour the way it does when he’s trying not to lie.
Derek sighs. “Can you even see anything?”
“Would you stop bitching for a minute? Here, Lumos, now I can see just as well
you.”
The tip of Stiles’ wand flares brightly yellow, and in the next second Derek
has Stiles pressed up against an oak tree, hands fisted in his cloak.
“Explain,” he growls out, eyes flickering red.
“Uh, the spell? Pretty sure you learned it as a First Year,” Stiles stutters
out, and his fingers come up to curl against Derek’s.
“No. Your magic. It smells like — why would it — ”
“Oh, yeah, I read somewhere that you guys can smell magic,” Stiles says. “It’s
not a bad smell, is it?” He tries to take a sniff of his wand, and Derek lets
him drop; straightens the cloak around his neck.
“No,” Derek says. “Strangely familiar, but not bad.”
And there’s that sour cherry scent again.
“You’ve been following me, on the full moons.”
“Uh — ”
“How?”
“How do you think?” Stiles says, shrugging. “I’m an Animagus, duh.”
“You’re fifteen,” Derek says. “You could’ve killed yourself!”
“Actually, I’m not fifteen for another month and also — prodigy, remember?”
“Show me,” Derek says, and lets his eyes flash red again.
“You could try asking nicely, you know,” Stiles says, and Derek gets ready to
growl at him when Stiles vanishes with a soft poof before reappearing as a —
Derek can’t help it; he bursts out laughing.
Suddenly Stiles is standing in front of him again, looking equal parts pissed
off and enthralled.  “Hey, it’s not that funny! You should see what Scott turns
into.”
“No,” Derek says, once his laughter subsides. “I think I’m good with just you.”
“It’s your hair,” Stiles says a moment later, looking a little guilty. “Your
wolf hair, anyway. I needed something for my wand and you kind of shed all over
the place, so...”
“Yeah, I figured,” Derek says, except he hadn’t; not fully, not until now.
***
Full moons after that are — fun.
Almost like having a pack again. Almost like —
And Derek cuts the thought off before it can begin to take root.
***
He signs up for the pre-Auror track with Boyd for his eighth year, mostly
because he doesn’t know what else to do.
Stiles plunks his breakfast tray next to Derek’s their first day back, sighing
dramatically.
“Scott’s gone dark-side,” he says. “Every other word that comes out of his
mouth is ‘Allison.’ I’d suspect a love potion, except I’m pretty sure his
obsession extends beyond anything mere magic could accomplish.”
Derek doesn’t say anything. He has no right to comment.
He keeps expecting Stiles to go off with someone else, pair up like all the
others. But he never does.
Stiles is loyal, he knows. But lately Stiles has also been smelling vaguely of
ash, and that makes Derek hesitate.
***
They’re in the forest again, looking for bloodroot this time.
“Can’t Scott or Erica help you out with this?” Derek asks.
“Scott’s busy staring deeply into Allison’s eyes,” Stiles says. “Plus he’s
terrified of spiders. And Erica’s got Dueling Club tonight.”
He spots a patch of white flowers and nudges Stiles towards.
“Thanks, man,” Stiles says. “Job goes a lot quicker with your wolfy senses.”
Stiles crouches down, picking out the freshest blooms and forming a small
bouquet.  
He works quietly for a while, then slants a look up at Derek.
Derek glares back.
“Hey, don’t be like that,” Stiles says. “I just wanted to ask what you wanted
for your birthday. Finally managed to get the date out of Boyd.”
Derek sighs and crouches down next to Stiles. “I don’t want anything, Stiles.
Just — leave it alone. Please.”
“Are you sure?” Stiles asks, and there’s something different about his voice,
something as sweet and deadly as the flowers scattered across his lap.
Derek meets his gaze, then drops his eyes as Stiles wets his lips, soft pink
tongue darting out.
“Kate Argent,” Stiles whispers, and Derek can’t look away from the shape his
mouth makes on her name. “I know where she’s buried. I could bring her back for
you, if you wanted. If you wanted to be the one to kill her, this time. Or —
your uncle. I can’t do much with the ones who died in the fire but I could
bring your uncle back, and — I could fix him, maybe, if you asked me to try.”
“How?” Derek rasps out.
“Magic,” Stiles says, looking down at his hands. “I’m good at it; better than
Deaton, better than — anyone, probably. It doesn’t always work the way it
should, but I can do some really amazing things with it. Awful things, too.”
And Derek —
Derek catches his chin in one hand, covers Stiles’ mouth with his own before it
can say anything else.
He tries to keep it soft, gentle; but Stiles surges under him, tasting like
singed cherries and wolfand before Derek can stop himself he’s braced on both
elbows over Stiles’ skinny body, biting at his lips and holding him still so
Derek can fuck his tongue into Stiles’ mouth.
He tears himself away to breathe, listens to Stiles panting under him.
“Not to, uh, ruin the moment or anything,” Stiles says, working his hips
against Derek’s thigh, “But maybe we could move this somewhere a little, ah,
less poisonous?”
There are bloodroot petals in Stiles’ hair and crushed under his fingers. The
smell of decay and arousal is thick in the air.
“Fine,” Derek grounds out, and lays one palm heavily against Stiles’ groin to
still his movements. “But no sex until you’re of age. And no raising the dead,
either, fuck.”
***
The end of the year comes too soon for Derek. Boyd is graduating and headed for
the Auror Department, and he doesn’t know who else in his year is sticking
around for another term — which is essentially Advanced Muggle Studies, SAT
prep and drafting “appropriate” Muggle college application essays — but he
supposes it doesn’t really matter. He’ll still have Stiles.
Stiles is sitting with Scott and Erica this morning, but whenever he throws his
head back to laugh Derek can see the mark on Stiles’ throat and thinks, Mine.
“You and your crazy jailbait boyfriend going to be okay next year?” Boyd asks.
“He’s not crazy,” Derek says, and slams his cup down on the table before
stalking out of the dining hall.
***
It’s a difficult moon, that June. He snaps at Stiles and chases down a wild
rabbit, throwing its carcass into a creek after breaking its neck. He wants to
tear something apart, but the only thing big enough is his own body, and Stiles
keeps darting in the way before his teeth can meet flesh.
Eventually he manages to run down a deer, wakes up pink and bloodied, with
Stiles perched beside him on a tree stump poking at the dead deer’s entrails
with a stick.
“I haven’t seen you that angry in a while,” Stiles says.
Derek stares up at the light filtering through the leaves above him. “Yeah.”
“It’s because all your classmates are leaving, moving on, and you’re staying
here, huh?”
“I want to stay here,” Derek says.
“Yeah, but you don’t want to want to,” and that — actually makes sense. “Go
shower and then say goodbye to Boyd,” Stiles says, “And accept the fact that
he’s going to visit, if not to spend time with your sorry ass then to hover
intensely near Erica.”
Derek hauls himself up, shaking dirt and leaves from his hair. “Boyd likes
Erica?”
“Uh-huh, and grass is green and bumblebees buzz. Honestly, you’re worse than
Scott sometimes.”
He snags Stiles’ hand as they walk back to the school, wonders if he needs to
apologize for the night before. Stiles lifts up their linked hands to lick
Derek’s thumb clean of blood, bumps his shoulder before letting them fall.
Derek stays quiet.
***
They have a fight, and a compromise: no sex until Derek’s nineteenth birthday,
which is still months before Stiles’ seventeenth.
It doesn’t make sharing a bedroom with him that summer any easier, but for less
obvious reasons.
“Shit,” Stiles says, the third time Derek wakes in a panic. “I’m not bleeding,
really, I just — I don’t know why it smells like that, it’s just — dreams — ”
“Yeah,” Derek says, trying to slow his heart rate. It’s not just the faint
scent of blood. Stiles smells raw, like an open wound. “Must be some pretty bad
dreams.”
“Sort of.” Stiles turns away from Derek, buries his face in the pillow. “You’ve
never asked, about where I lived before I came here,” he says, muffled.
“Figured you’d tell me if you wanted me to know.”
“California,” Stiles says. “Then Colorado, for — ten months, just about. Then
California again, for a few weeks.”
“Okay,” says Derek. “I grew up in California.”
“Hmm.” Stiles lifts up his head, trails one finger along Derek’s jaw. “That
must’ve been interesting.” He’s starting to smell like himself again.
Derek nips at him to make him smile, pulls him close until he can feel Stiles
breathing against his chest. Stiles doesn’t like being held when he sleeps, but
when he’s awake he sometimes tries to burrow beneath him, nose against Derek’s
throat and hands tucked under his hips.
“My family,” Derek says, then pauses. He hadn’t intended to speak, but Stiles
is looking at him, waiting. “It was hard, learning how to be — normal. Human.
And then I had to learn it all again, when I came here.”
“I never learned,” Stiles says, words soft against Derek’s skin, before
pressing a kiss to his chest. “I just got good at pretending.”
“Yeah,” Derek says. “That’s what I meant.”
He likes that they haven’t had sex yet; that he can run his hands over Stiles’
body and soothe him back to sleep, keep him safe, and leave it at that. He
knows it won’t last much longer, and that’s fine; he just needs to know that
it’s possible, something he’s able to do.
***
He gets his own suite of rooms as a Ninth Year, which is nice, except for the
part where it gives some of the other students a convenient target for their
pranks.
“It’s Matt,” Stiles says. “He’s got a thing for Allison and he thinks you’ll
think she’s the one doing this, and he’ll get to — I don’t know, be her knight
in shining armor or something. The rest of them are just joining in because
they think it’s funny.”
“It’s fine,” Derek says. “It’s not like they can actually hurt me.”
“They set your bed on fire and scrawled ‘The only good wolf is a burnt wolf!’
in blood on the wall,” Stiles says angrily, pointing. “It’s not fucking fine.”
“Stiles,” Derek says, gripping Stiles’ wand arm tight, “It’s fine. They try to
set the bed on fire while I’m in it, then it’s a problem.”
“You’re not fucking funny,” Stiles says, and he pushes Derek away from him
before storming off down the stairs.
Matt Daehler is in the hospital wing the next evening. Five more Seventh Year
boys fall ill before the week is out.
Derek finds Stiles in the library, staring blankly at a book on wave mechanics,
of all things.
“Not all of them were involved,” Derek says, sliding into the chair across from
him.
“Collateral damage,” Stiles says.
“You picked those mushrooms over a year ago, why — ”
“Always be prepared.”
“They’re dying,” Derek says, trying to get Stiles to look at him. “They’re just
kids.”
Stiles shrugs.
Derek pulls out his Muggle Studies notes, spends the rest of the evening
sitting quietly at the table.
“I think I’ll spend Christmas break with Morrell,” he finally says.
Stiles doesn’t reply; just slams his book shut and rattles the table in his
rush to get up. 
He talks to Morrell the next morning.
“Of course it’s fine,” she says. “I’m sure Isaac will be glad of the company.
But perhaps you can do me a favor in the meantime. The students who’ve fallen
ill — maybe your sense of smell can provide us with a clue.”
“Maybe,” Derek says. He follows her to the hospital wing, where the air still
stinks of the mushrooms Stiles made him carry the summer before last.
“Anything?” she asks, and the peach scent of her magic ripens. Expectant. 
“No,” he says. “Sorry.”
***
Deaton figures out how to heal them, eventually. Derek doesn’t know if Stiles
helped. He doesn’t ask.
“Sorry,” says Stiles, two days before Christmas. Derek doesn’t say anything,
just takes his hand and leads him to his room. The heating’s been turned off in
that part of the building, but a warming charm works well enough.
“I’m not sorry for what I did, but I’m sorry I was such an asshole to you about
it,” Stiles says, curling up in his lap on the bed. Derek doesn’t reply, busy
rubbing his nose behind Stiles’ ear, pushing Stiles’ robes and shirt up to
stroke the soft skin underneath.
“I’m kind of — fucked up, on the inside,” Stiles whispers.
“Yeah,” Derek says. “Just my type, really.”
Stiles makes a wounded noise into his neck, and he runs his hands over Stiles’
back, kisses his forehead.  
“It’s okay,” he whispers into his hair, because Stiles loves him, maybe, and
that makes it okay.
***
They don’t have sex on Derek’s birthday, because Derek’s birthday falls on the
last night of the full moon, and he can’t risk it.
“There’ll be consequences,” Stiles warns him when Derek says he’s spending the
night in the woods, alone. “Sexy consequences, to your dick.”
Derek kisses him, wet and rough; scrapes his cheek against the delicate skin of
Stiles’ throat on his way to darken the mark on his neck. His hands keep
Stiles’ hips from jerking up at the pressure of teeth.
“Stay,” he says, and gives Stiles another bite for emphasis before leaving the
room.
He doesn’t think much about Stiles’ “consequences”; doesn’t make any concrete
plans for the following night beyond doing whatever Stiles ask; marking him
inside and out with his scent.
So he’s not prepared to be hit with a wave of Stiles’ magic as soon as he
enters his room after dinner. It knocks him onto his back on the bed, forces
his arms up towards the headboard, where they’re tied to the slats with
something that feels like silk but refuses to budge.
His robes and uniform melt away into the air, and he turns head to find Stiles
leaning lazily against his dresser. The room smells of wolf, spiced cherries
and loam.
“Untie me,” Derek growls, “Now.”
“No, I think I want you to stay,” Stiles says, vanishing his own clothes with a
wave of his wand. “Don’t worry; the ties will disappear after you make me come
the first time.”
Derek raises an eyebrow. Stiles just smirks at him, sauntering over to the bed
and settling himself on Derek’s thighs. “And this,” Stiles says, curling his
fingers around the base of Derek’s dick and squeezing, until Derek is achingly,
painfully hard, “Will disappear after — hmm, how many orgasms do you think I
missed last night? Three? I’m going to be nice and say three, since it was your
birthday and all.”
He lifts his hand but the pressure remains, and Derek’s dick throbs even
harder, now covered in a thin sheen of oil.
Stiles stretches himself out, lifts himself up on his elbows to keep his mouth
just out of range of Derek’s teeth.
“You don’t get to come until I get what I’m owed,” he whispers, and slams
himself down.
Derek’s answering howl gets swallowed up; his arms straining against the bonds.
Stiles is warm, tight, wet — and Derek’s eyes flash red but he can’t smell any
blood, which means Stiles must have — before — and the thought sends fire
spreading through his veins. He lifts his hips up, almost unseats Stiles with
the force, but Stiles just laughs in response.
“You’ll need to do better than — ah, that!” Stiles gasps out, but beads of
precome are already leaking out of him, and Derek repeats the angle of the
thrust, tries to fuck in even deeper.
It doesn’t take long, after that. Stiles bends down to bite at his chest, teeth
catching on a nipple, and Derek lets out a roar; spears his hips up as Stiles
finally wraps a hand around himself, stripping his dick to match the violence
of Derek’s thrusts. He comes with a shout all over Derek’s stomach, sounding
almost surprised.
In the next instant, the bonds around Derek’s wrists dissolve and he’s got
Stiles on his back, mouth wrapped tight around his dick, sucking him clean.
“Fuck,” Stiles says, “You — fuck,” sounding wrecked, and Derek lets him slip
out for a moment, meets Stiles’ blissed out gaze.
“Before,” he says, voice rough, “You — magic, or?”
And Stiles understands, huffs out, “Magic; wanted you to be the — first, ah — ”
as Derek pushes two fingers into him with a pleased rumble.
“Mine,” he grinds out, and swallows him to the root again; lets Stiles fuck
into his mouth as long and as hard as he wants until his cock thickens and
throbs, releasing a thick stream of come down Derek’s throat.
“Two,” Stiles breathes out, falling back limply onto the bed from where he’d
been propped up on his elbows. “Maybe we can take the next one a little
slower?”
Derek looks pointedly down at own cock, jutting out between his thighs, angry
and red.
“Hey, I warned you,” says Stiles, and Derek stretches out over him, gives him a
slow, wet kiss, because — he did warn him, true.
He moves his mouth down, leaves Stiles’ nipples hard and shiny with spit, bites
gently at his stomach and licks off the remains of his mess from before.
Stiles’ dick looks soft and spent, lying in a bed of brown curls, so Derek goes
down slightly lower, mouths at his balls as Stiles lets out a steady stream of
curses above him.
He moves his head down even further, uses his hands to spread Stiles’ thighs
apart. He licks inside as deep as he can, stabbing his tongue in with the same
violent pace as before, until Stiles is trying to squirm out of his grasp.
This time takes longer, and Stiles sounds almost like he’s sobbing, hands
clenched tight in Derek’s hair, but Derek knows better. He shifts his grip and
stretches his fingers to graze against the base of Stiles’ dick, lets one fang
slip free and presses it carefully against skin already red and raw from his
stubble. Stiles curls in on himself as much as Derek’s hands allow, keening and
pulsing weakly in response.
Three, Derek thinks, and the tight band of pressure around his cock and balls
disappears, almost makes him come right that instant, but he grips his dick in
one clawed fist until the need dies down in immediacy.
“Fuck,” Stiles gasps. “Derek, what — "
He doesn’t give Stiles a chance to finish; lifts his body and rolls Stiles over
before pushing him down into the messy sheets until he’s covering every inch of
his back. Stiles has no leverage, his hands caught under Derek’s, fluttering
weakly.
“Can’t,” Stiles says, voice weak. “Derek, I can’t,” as Derek pushes into him,
into the place where he’s still wet, Derek’s spit and precome mixing in with
the oil and leaking out of in a slow, steady dribble.
“Can,” Derek says, biting at his neck and shoulders, “Will.”
He keeps his thrusts slow, deep; rotates his hips to make Stiles jump in his
grasp on every outstroke. Stiles clenches around him and he snarls, uses one
hand to lift Stiles up so he can’t rub his dick against the sheets anymore.
Stiles is half-hard now, and Derek growls in satisfaction, moves faster,
harder, while Stiles fucks into empty air and lets out soft, high-pitched
whines.
The fire in his veins is burning him from the inside out. His hands are clawed,
teeth fanged and eyes red but he needs — he needs —
Stiles lets out a thin, reedy scream, clenching around him painfully tight, and
Derek can smell the fresh burst of Stiles’ come hitting the sheets.
Derek’s answering howl rattles the window in its frame, and finally, finally,
he lets himself empty out into the body shaking apart beneath his.
It’s quiet, then; blissfully quiet and still, until Stiles thumps weakly at his
side. Derek pulls out slowly and moves Stiles to lie on top of him.
“Fuck. You,” Stiles pants out. “That was — you — ”
“I like to exceed expectations,” Derek says, breathing heavily. Stiles smells
delicious, and Derek wants to lick him all over, but he’s too tired to move.
“You okay?” he asks, even though he’s pretty sure of the answer.
“Peachy,” Stiles says, and shifts to look down at Derek. “Feels weirdly empty,
though. Guess your dick made a permanent impression on my ass.”
And Derek’s exhausted, but he summons up the energy to slip two fingers back
into Stiles, massages him gently from inside.
“Better?” he asks.
“Hmm,” Stiles says, squirming a little, and he shoves one hand down between
them, fingers curling in the hairs above Derek’s dick. “’S good,” he mumbles,
yawning, and falls asleep just like that.
Derek stays awake, watches him breathe. Stiles makes a good wolf, he thinks
muzzily, and doesn’t bother to correct himself.
***
They spend nearly every night together, after that, and Stiles becomes an
expert at sneaking to and from Derek’s room after curfew. They fuck in Stiles’
bed just once, Derek struggling to focus under the threat of others seeing
what’s his.
Derek likes running his nose and mouth over every inch of Stiles’ skin. That
close, he can make out the faint scents layered on top of Stiles’ usual smell,
scents that flicker from day to day, sometimes second to second. Like the
fading trails of a thousand different spells.
The only permanent difference is on the skin of Stiles’ right palm, which
smells ever-so-slightly rotten. Kate’s hands had a similar smell, he thinks,
but a hundred times stronger. Whatever it is, it doesn’t seem to be bothering
Stiles.
Stiles still wakes up smelling of blood sometimes. But sex softens his edges;
makes him more willing to let Derek close.
Bit by bit, Stiles tells Derek his secrets. One night, during the full moon,
Stiles tells him a story about the people who hurt him. He lets slip the name
of the town where they lived, where he almost died. The following morning Derek
wakes up in a strange house covered in blood, Stiles standing over him with
wide eyes, moon-bright.
He opens his mouth and Stiles falls onto him, into him, mouth biting and hands
grasping until he’s just as filthy as Derek, red-streaked and grinning.
“We should clean up,” Derek says once Stiles lets him breathe.
Stiles moves his wand in a complicated motion, whispers some strange words in
Latin.
Derek feels a cold chill pass over him. He’s clean, now, and so is Stiles, but
the bodies on the ground remain where they were.
“All done,” Stiles says.
Derek twitches his nose, frowning.
“Yeah, sorry; side-effect of the spell. I just scrubbed our magical signatures
off. I did it at the church, too, so we’re good to go.”
“Church? How many people did I kill?” Derek asks, sitting up and trying to
figure out where his robes went. He can’t quite orient himself without being
able to smell his or Stiles’ magic.
“Nine,” says Stiles. “Too bad, one more and we could’ve gotten the eleventh one
free!”
He sounds manic, breath coming too fast.
“We should go,” he says, standing, and Stiles nods, moving under his arm,
holding tight. “Can you Apparate us, or — ?”
“Yeah,” says Stiles, “The spell, it’s cannibalistic. It’ll eat up any magical
residue before eventually eating itself, it’s pretty neat; I came up with it
myself,” and Derek can’t help but kiss him quiet. They drop down half a mile
away from the school, still pressed together.
***
Derek waits for Stiles to bring it up, but he never does. He isn’t sure what to
do with the tangle of things inside him without Stiles to unravel it.
Derek doesn’t regret what he did; he can’t, not when he knows that anyone who
might even try to hurt Stiles in the future will meet the same fate.
Stiles seems — happy, and at night he smells like himself and like Derek,
cherry pie and earth and wolf all mixed together.
So Derek takes the twisted threads of blood and bone and fire (because they’d
all tasted like ash to the wolf, like someone was already burning them up), he
takes them and ties the loose ends to Stiles, because what else is there to do?
“Mate,” he whispers one night, one month before term ends, and he can feel
Stiles smile against his shoulder.
“Yeah, I kind of figured,” Stiles says, and he still doesn’t give a name to
what happened, so maybe he’s okay using Derek’s.
“Tell me,” Derek whispers, just to be sure.
“Mate,” Stiles says. He stretches his hand over Derek’s heart, almost like a
cage.
***
***** Chapter 3 *****
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
Boy.
There’s a born-wolf at the Academy. His name is Derek, and he’s three years
older than Stiles.
Stiles discovers him the day before term starts, standing outside the school
gates — spindly limbs and spiked hair, scowling and surrounded by grasping
relatives.
Maybe he’s sick, Stiles thinks, unsure of what else it could be, until later
that night when Deaton explains that Derek is something rare, something that
only appears once every two or three hundred years, maybe.
A born-wolf with magic.
***
“Tell me about your parents,” Deaton says in his quiet way, and Stiles thinks:
No.
“Would you like to tell me a story, Stiles?” Deaton asks the week after. “Any
kind of story you’d like.”
“I’m not too good at stories,” Stiles says. “Always get the endings mixed up.
You probably have some pretty good ones, huh?”
And Deaton sighs but doesn’t push.
Stiles knows he should be grateful to the man who gives back his words and a
world full of new ones. But the air around Deaton is too thick with magic,
keeping him hidden, and Stiles is wary of what he can’t see and warier still of
anything resembling charity.
There’s not much he can do if things turn sour, but he tries. He studies, he
watches; tries to figure out how to get his magic to do what he wants for a
change.
And when he discovers the born-wolf, he plans.
***
Once upon time there was a boy named — .
Once upon a time there was a boy. The boy’s father was a deputy, then a
security guard, then a body mangled and broken on the side of the road. His
story is distressing, but simple enough. The boy’s mother is more complicated.
***
On the second day of classes, a boy with messy dark hair sits down across from
Stiles in the dining hall.
“Are you really an internationally-wanted warlock who drank a de-aging potion
so you could hide out in school until the heat died down?” he asks.
The blonde girl sitting next to Stiles snorts. “Yeah, because obviously
Deaton’s taken up harboring fugitives in his spare time.”
Stiles swallows his mouthful. It’s lunchtime and so far all the other kids have
just stared and whispered at him, so he’s willing to cut this guy some slack.
“Yeah, no, sorry,” he says. “Just a regular wizard-in-training. But, uh, that’s
actually one of the better theories I’ve heard.”
“I might’ve come up with it myself,” the kid says, reaching for an orange with
a grin. “I’m Scott. We have Transfigurations together.”
“Right,” says Stiles. “You’re the one whose turtle exploded.”
The blonde girl laughs and Scott flushes. “Yeah,” he says. “I feel really bad
about it. I just — I don’t think I can do those kinds of spells.” He pokes
dejectedly at one the sandwiches on the platter in front of him. “I was
actually hoping you were a fugitive warlock; then maybe you could show me how
to make the spell work, or at least how to survive once I get kicked out of
here.”
Stiles lets himself smile, bumping his shoulder against Scott’s. “Hey, I may
not be a 400-year old wizard in a ten-year old’s body — and, wow, that sounds
bad — but, uh, I’m still pretty good at the spell stuff. I could help you
practice today after class, if you want.”
“Really?” Scott asks.
“Yeah,” he says. “I could actually use a study-buddy; I get distracted if I try
to work by myself.”
“Cool,” says Scott. “I’ll help you focus, and you’ll help me not explode any
more innocent animals.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Stiles says, studying the way Scott’s face lights up with
happiness. Really, if he can get anything half as good as Scott’s puppy-dog
eyes and easy grin down, he’ll be getting the better end of the deal.
***
Scott’s in the East dorm and Stiles is in the North building next door, which
works out because it means Stiles has an excuse to hang out in Scott’s common
room instead of his own. His suitemates aren’t too bad, but Jackson is the kind
of guy who’d be signing up for the Death Eaters if he’d been born a decade
earlier.
“Your parents were Muggles, weren’t they?” Scott whispers when they’re in
detention, sorting through Potions ingredients after Stiles made Jackson’s
cauldron explode right in his face.
Stiles shrugs. “They weren’t wizards,” he says.
“My dad was a Muggle,” Scott says. “Or, I guess he still is, but I haven’t seen
him in like five years. He freaked out when he realized my mom’s a witch.”
Stiles wants to ask what kind of woman would marry a man without telling him
something like that, but then remembers all the things his mother never told
his dad, about where she came from and why.
“Sucks, dude,” he says instead.
“He was kind of a jerk,” Scott says. “I think we’re better off without him.
Doesn’t mean I agree with Jackson, though. Not all Muggles are like that. I’m
sure your parents weren’t.”
Stiles hates that word — Muggle — like people who can’t do magic are muddled;
silly and weak and in need of protection from themselves.
“My parents were pretty cool,” he says.
“Did they know you could do magic?”
“No.” Stiles points to Scott’s sleeve. “You’ve got a horned slug crawling up
your arm.”
Scott lifts his arm to see. “Oh, man, look at him go! D’you think Harris will
notice if I smuggle him out in my pocket? I can set him free in the forest
after.”
“Still trying to make up for that tortoise, huh?” Stiles says, but he’s already
pointing his wand subtly towards the classroom lights, making them flicker and
buzz.
***
After the Jackson incident, Harris makes Stiles pair up with Erica, the blonde
girl from East who sits next to him at lunch sometimes, and sends Scott to work
with her previous partner, Matt.
“Fuck this up and I’ll fuck you up,” she says, pulling her hair into a messy
ponytail and looking over the ingredients list in the book.
“Duly noted,” says Stiles. “Also, I’m starting to wonder if maybe I’ve been
judging Matt too harshly and all this time his creepiness was just a byproduct
of terror.”
“Nah, he’s pretty creepy,” says Erica. “Your buddy Scott might end up in a jar
on Harris’s shelf by the end of the year. Only mystery will be who finally
snaps and pickles him — Harris, Matt, Jackson or Greenberg.”
“Greenburg’s in the running?”
“Sits behind him in Transfigurations. Prime splatter territory.”
Their hands move quickly while they talk, shredding and chopping and stirring
the mixture.
“Done,” says Erica, smiling in satisfaction as their cauldron releases a plume
of sweet-smelling smoke.
There’s still thirty minutes to go in the class.
“Guess I’ll get started on the essay for tomorrow,” Stiles says.
“Or we can bottle this stuff up and use the rest of the time to make
something...interesting,” Erica says, eyeing the ingredients cabinet.
“I have a feeling I’m going to regret this,” Stiles says slowly, but he’s
already following her to the back of the room, keeping an eye out for Harris,
who’s busy yelling at two kids whose cauldron is overflowing with black bile.
“Only if you bleed easily,” Erica says, and Stiles realizes he’s just gained
another friend.
***
“I can’t believe you’re doing better in Math than I am,” Erica grouses,
grabbing the test out of Scott’s hands. “You couldn’t even manage an
Alohomoracharm until Stiles spent three hours practicing it with you!”
“Hey, just because you’re Muggle-born and I’m not — I mean, it obviously
doesn’t work the other way,” Scott says, grabbing the paper back. “You and
Stiles are way better at all the magic stuff.”
“Stiles would be way better if he ever actually tried,” Erica says, and Stiles
looks up from his comic book long enough to flip a finger at her. “As it is,
he’s only slightly above average.”
They’re in the courtyard, soaking up the last warm day before autumn begins in
earnest.
“Anyway,” Erica says, “It’s not like I have some sort of advantage. I missed a
lot of school because I had — I was sick a lot.”
“What do you mean?” Scott asks, sitting up from his sprawl. “Are you okay now?
My mom’s a nurse at St. Hilga’s, I can Floo her if — ”
“She’s fine,” Stiles says, because it’s obviously true. “I’m sure St. Hilga’s
was the first place Deaton told her to visit when he wrote her acceptance
letter, and they fixed her up good as new.”
“Yeah,” Erica says. There’s something sharp and brittle in her smile. “Would’ve
been nice if they’d fixed it before, but I guess better late than never.”
“I thought Muggles were pretty good at the medicine stuff,” Scott says, looking
curiously at her and Stiles.
“Depends on the Muggles,” Stiles says, at the same time that Erica says, “It
depends on the stuff.”
***
The one class where Stiles does make an effort is also the one he’s currently
failing.
“Listen, kid,” Finstock says, running his hands through his hair. “I’ve seen
Squibs do a better job on a broom than you. I’m pretty sure your average Muggle
could fly higher.”
“I’m trying!” Stiles says, and for once it’s actually true. “It just — I don’t
know, it just doesn’t want to go.”
“Wrong!” says Finstock. “The broom always wants to go. It’s you that’s the
issue. Figure it out by Monday.”
Stiles takes the broom back to his dorm, then drags it out to the forest once
everyone else is asleep. The problem with flying is that it doesn’t work
through his wand, and his magic is its usual ornery self without the wand to
guide it. He walks until he spots a few of the wolf’s stray hairs, shimmering
faintly in the dark, and weaves them into the broom’s bristles.
Then he straddles the broom again, clutching it tight between his thighs.
“Okay, go,” he says, and for the first time manages to lift about a foot in the
air before toppling back to the ground.
“Okay then,” he says. On Monday he tells Finstock that if he doesn’t give
Stiles a passing grade, not only will he have to deal with Stiles again next
term, but Stiles won’t be able to help Scott with his lessons and there’s no
way Scott will be able to maintain the B average necessary to try out for
Quidditch without him.
Finstock gives him a C+, and a wide berth whenever they run into each other in
the hallways.
***
Despite being the only First Year on any of the teams, Scott leads East to an
easy victory over the other dorms. Finstock is reportedly trying to decide
which scouts to invite for a preview next spring.
Stiles likes watching the games, especially when East plays against West,
because that means he gets to look at Derek while he sits stiffly in the
stands.
“You’re cheering for the wrong team again,” Erica says, elbowing Stiles in the
stomach.
“Hey, that save was awesome,” Stiles says, still clapping for Boyd. “Also,
North’s already out of the running, so I’m just here as an impartial observer.”
“Uh-huh,” says Erica. She frowns up at Scott. “He should’ve gotten the Snitch
already. West scores a few more goals and it won’t even matter.”
“He knows what he’s doing,” Stiles says.
“I would’ve tried out for the team,” Erica says, still glaring at Scott. “But
then you wouldn’t have anyone to keep you company while you ‘impartially
observe’ a certain werewolf. You’re not subtle, you know.”
Stiles shrugs. “Wasn’t trying to be.”
***
In the summer the other students leave and Deaton once again spends his days
carefully crafting personalized admissions notes for the incoming First Years.
Stiles wanders around the forest, gathering strands of wolf hair when he comes
across them. He doesn’t have any need of them, but they’re — pretty. Longer
than anything he’s ever seen on a dog; silky and black with traces of the same
green-silver shine that surrounds Derek. Stiles also takes note of which plants
are growing where, though he leaves them alone for the moment.
He practices some of the harder spells he’s read about, having cast a variant
of Confundus to rid himself of the Trace earlier in the year. It took him a
week to figure out what the dirty yellow specks on all the younger students’
hands signified, and another month to create a spell that would dispel them
without doing any further damage.
A targeted Avada Kedavra would have been neater, but Stiles is wary of the
Unforgivables. Too easy to track even without a Trace, according to the books. 
He pauses at a clump of flowers, considering. “Crucio,” he whispers at a daisy.
It shudders and withers before his eyes, but that’s not what has Stiles’
attention. He’s staring at the black ooze dripping from all sides of his wand,
getting all over his hand.
“Well, guess that explains it,” Stiles says. Cleaning charms don’t seem to do
any good. The ooze dissipates over the course of the day, though it takes a
week for it to disappear altogether. Stiles’ right palm continues to carry a
stain, black and vaguely spider-shaped.
He tramples the daisy before he goes back to Deaton’s. His mom grew daisies in
their front yard before they lost the house. The flowers bloomed into her hands
though she never seemed to notice, just like she never noticed the way cups
would hover in the air for a second to let her catch them before they fell.
Stiles noticed, though. Stiles broke a lot of cups and crushed a lot of flowers
the year his dad died, but this is the first that he’s tortured on purpose.
***
Erica makes East’s Quidditch team in their second year, and Scott starts to
look slightly harried after practice. Stiles comes out by himself to watch
their games against West.
Derek’s always easy to spot in the stands; there’s a negative space around him
where the other students’ magic crowds in. Derek’s makes a thin green and
silver outline around him, like a transparent shield. It doesn’t unfurl in
thick ripples like Scott’s, or pulsate quickly like Erica’s. It’s just — there.
Held tight and still. Born-wolf magic is said to be nearly impossible to track,
and Stiles can see why.
He wonders what would happen if Derek ever cast an Unforgivable.
***
Stiles is only a Third Year when Professor Argent takes an interest in Derek.
He’s too young to present himself as an option, but he can tell that there’s
something not quite right in how she looks at the wolf, knows now what the
coal-black color of her hands signifies. Whatever it is, it can’t last.
He can’t follow Derek or cast a surveillance charm without Derek knowing, and
he spends fruitless hours trying to mask the scent of his magic — difficult,
since he can’t tell if it smells to begin with — when Argent kills Derek’s
family and gets her throat ripped out by his uncle.
“You think Deaton’s going to take him in?” Scott whispers the morning they all
find out. Derek’s sitting at the breakfast table with Boyd at his side,
stirring a bowl of oatmeal but not actually eating.
“Isaac’s in his year and he stays with Morrell,” Erica says.
“Derek’s not going to stay with Morrell,” Stiles says. “He’ll probably just go
with Boyd.”
Scott pokes at his oatmeal with a spoon. “I never got why you hate Morrell so
much,” he says. “Lydia’s the only one who gets better grades in her class.”
“I don’t hate her,” Stiles say, “We just share a mutual state of antipathy and
distrust.”
“Except you’re twelve years old and she’s a full-grown witch,” Erica says. “You
shouldn’t be sharing anything.”
“Whatever,” Stiles says, grabbing an apple. “It’s not like I’ll have to deal
with her after this year. No more Latin and I’m not about to sign up for
Divination.”
Derek does take Divination, though, and he might gravitate towards Morrell if
he can’t spend his breaks with Boyd. Stiles may have to speed things up a bit.
***
Stiles spends the rest of Third Year waiting for Boyd to leave Derek’s side so
he can talk to him alone. It doesn’t happen. Boyd even quits the Quidditch
team; hovers behind Derek like a menacing shadow.
Stiles thinks of the bag of plants he has stashed under a rock in the forest,
but decides against using them. Derek likes Boyd. Stiles should learn to like
Boyd, too.
***
After a long, frustrating summer that Stiles spends figuring out how to erase
the traces of Derek’s magic on the wolf hairs he leaves behind (easy) and the
traces of Stiles’ own presence in the woods (a work in progress), Stiles
finally sees Derek sitting by himself in the courtyard.
He turns around and tracks down Boyd in the library.
“Hi,” he says, giving him his best Scott-smile.
Boyd doesn’t look impressed. “Studying,” he says.
“Dude, it’s the first day of classes!”
“What do you want, kid?” Boyd asks. He sounds tired.
“Way too much to enumerate,” Stiles says. “But in terms of what I want from
you, specifically...”
Boyd gives him a considering look. “I’m not introducing you to Derek.”
“What? No, of course not,” Stiles says. “That’s way too forward, betrayal of
your friendship, et cetera. No, I just want you to mention my name to him at
some point, acquaint him with my general existence.”
 “Why?” Boyd asks.
“Uh, because Derek should at least have the opportunity to decide if he wants
to be friends?”
“I meant,” Boyd says, leaning forward on his elbows, “Why should I do anything
for you?”
“Are we — are we bargaining right now?” Stiles asks.
“Right now you’re not doing anything besides annoying me,” Boyd says.
“Okay,” Stiles says, “How's a week’s worth of Potions essays sound? Guaranteed
A+ stuff, all in your handwriting.”
“Two weeks,” Boyd says, and his smile is all teeth. “And you stay the fuck away
from Derek unless he comes to you first.”
“Deal,” Stiles says.
He breaks his promise less than a month later, when Derek wakes up in the
infirmary after the full moon.
***
Derek seems to be doing worse this year than the one before. Stiles tries to
remember what his mother’s books said about the grieving process, but it’s been
a while.
The days after the full moons are especially bad, even if Deaton never needs to
levitate him to the infirmary again.
Stiles spends the summer after his fourth year reading up on Animagi. 
***
“I don’t know about this,” Scott says in early September. He’s standing as far
away from the potion as possible, as though breathing in its fumes is already
more than he’s willing to risk.
“What could possibly go wrong?” Stiles asks. “And don’t start listing all the
horror stories your mother’s told you, okay? That was a rhetorical question.”
“Deaton’s going to be pissed if you end up killing yourself,” Erica says.
“Especially if you, like, turn into a blue whale and take out half the school
with you.”
Scott looks even more horrified.
“It’ll be fine,” Stiles says. “That’s why you guys are here. If I turn into
something aquatic, Scott, you grab me and throw me into that cauldron full of
water. I start growing really huge, Erica, and you hit me with your best
Reducio.”
“And if you start choking or having spasms?” Erica asks.
“Then you call Deaton,” Stiles says. “And run before he finds you here.”
He downs a thimbleful of the potion before they can say anything more, wincing
at the taste. In the next instant it feels like he’s falling, and then the room
becomes simultaneously huge and stifling.
He tries to open his mouth but its shape feels all wrong, and he gets a sudden
urge to stretch out his arms, so he does, only they feel strange too.
Cocking his head, he thinks about his human body, the robes he was wearing, and
turns back into himself with a gasp.
“Well?” he asks Scott and Erica, who are staring at him.
“You’re — some kind of crow?” Erica says hesitantly.
Scott shakes his head, and a laugh comes bursting out. “Magpie,” he says. “He’s
a magpie!”
Stiles had been hoping for a fox. He’d spent the entire summer preparing for
it, doing the visualization exercises, brewing the stupidly complicated potion.
“It’s kind of cute,” Erica says. “You even have little spots on your belly,
like moles.”
“And, hey,” Scott says, “Now you’ll be able to fly!”
“Plus I’m not dead,” Stiles says, which is the only real upside he’s seeing
right now.
“Also that,” Scott says. “Hey, do you think I can — ” He gestures at where the
rest of the potion is still bubbling away.
“That’s what we’re here for,” says Stiles.
***
Stiles makes Scott and Erica promise never to come out on full moons. They
spend their weekends rambling around in the forest while the other Fifth Years
visit the nearby village.
“This’ll be useful if any of us ever have to go on the run from the law,” says
Scott, shaking leaves from his hair after transforming back.
“Yeah, because a jaguar on the Eastern seaboard’s going to go unnoticed,” Erica
says sarcastically. “At least bears are a dime a dozen around here.” Stiles
knows she’s ridiculously fond of her fuzzier self, as she calls it; she even
bought a wizarding camera and had Stiles take a picture. 
Stiles tries not to be too bitter about the whole thing, even though he still
can’t really fly; just flits from branch to branch while staying close to the
ground. At least he’s never gotten a paw stuck in a beehive (Scott) or a tail
caught in some brambles (Erica).
And he’s faster than Derek’s wolf-teeth, which is an important consideration.
 
***
“Derek’s failing Potions,” Boyd tells him outside the dining hall later that
autumn.
“Okay,” Stiles says. “Not much I can do if I’m supposed to leave him alone,
though.”
Boyd glares at him. “Fix it,” he says, “Or admit you were lying about wanting
to be his friend.”
“That was less of a lie and more of an understatement,” Stiles says, “But I’ll
see what I can do.”
Suggestion spells are only taught at the Auror Department to full-grown
wizards. Protections against suggestion spells are an equally important focus
of the curriculum. But wards can only do so much when Stiles can see exactly
where they are, and can send a thin thread of magic to dart in between them.
“How would you feel about tutoring Derek Hale in Potions?” Deaton asks,
snagging one of Stiles’ sleeves as he makes his way to class.
“Sounds like my type of challenge,” Stiles says. “Also sounds like you might be
trying to get rid of me via werewolf mauling, but I’m willing to overlook
that.”
***
Derek actually has a sense of humor, which is a surprise. His feelings towards
Stiles seem to be composed primarily of tolerance and curiosity, and Stiles
makes sure to keep his magic to himself during their sessions.
“How did you and Derek ever become friends, anyway?” he asks Boyd during their
weekly Derek-status talks in an alcove near the kitchens.
“Some kid kept harassing him, telling him he belonged in the zoo, leaving dog
biscuits in his bed, that kind of thing,” Boyd says, snagging a brownie from
one of the House Elves scurrying by.
“And?”
“He doesn’t go to this school anymore,” Boyd says, giving Stiles a hard look.
“Huh,” Stiles says. “Doesn’t explain why you chose to be friends with him,
though.”
“My grand-dad was a born-wolf.” Boyd breaks the brownie in two and gives Stiles
half. “His pack kicked him out when he married a witch. I figured he’d want me
to look out for Derek.”
“Wow, you’re really just a marshmallow under that terrifying exterior,” Stiles
says, backing away quickly at Boyd’s glare. “What I meant was — have you ever
met my friend Erica?”
***
Erica joins the Dueling Club, which in addition to Quidditch practice means
Stiles only really sees her at mealtimes.
When she doesn’t show up for dinner, he assumes she’s just catching up on her
homework. Then she’s missing from breakfast and lunch the next day, and Scott’s
been looking furtive and miserable.
“If you don’t tell me what’s wrong I can’t fix it,” he tells Scott.
“She made me promise not to say anything,” Scott says. “She said — it’s not a
big deal.”
“Scott,” Stiles says.
“Jackson,” he finally whispers. “You know how Danny does all the computer
stuff? He had him look up Erica after she humiliated him in the last game and
they found an old video of her — she was shaking on the ground, and she — it
looked like she — ”
“Okay,” Stiles says. “And I’m guessing he showed the video to all the other
Fifth Years except me?”
“Erica only found out about it a couple of days ago,” Scott says. “I made Danny
delete the whole thing as soon as I heard — I think he felt pretty bad, too.”
“Right,” says Stiles. “I just remembered that I need to take care of
something.”
He gets up from the bench, strides over to where Jackson is sitting across from
Lydia and Danny, and aims his wand at Jackson’s torso.
“Let’s see how much you like not having any control over your bodily functions,
asshole,” he mutters.
He whispers the spell and a dark brown beam erupts from the tip of Stiles’
wand. Jackson jumps up from the table in the next instant, hands trying to
cover the rapidly spreading wetness on the front of his robes before he goes
pale and a stench fills the air.
Scott starts laughing from where Stiles left him, and soon the entire school
joins him. Stiles keeps walking until he’s out the door, ignoring the
professors shouting for order. He was supposed to meet Derek at the library
five minutes ago.
***
None of the professors saw what happened, and none of the students who did are
talking. Erica shows up at breakfast the next day and throws a blueberry muffin
at Stiles’ face, which he guesses is her way of saying thanks.
The morning after, Lydia corners Stiles in the common room. She’s twirling her
hair around a finger, looking bored. “It’s been two days,” she says. “While I
appreciate the poetic justice of the whole thing, we have a game against West
tomorrow, and we don’t have a chance at winning without Jackson.”
“My heart bleeds for you, really,” Stiles says. “You care so much about the
game, you undo it. I know you know how; you heard what the spell was.”
“Can’t,” Lydia says, examining her nails. “Then he’ll know that I was letting
him suffer and he’ll do that thing where he pouts for a week and starts
flirting with that redhead in South. Which, incidentally, is why I was letting
him suffer.”
“I’m still not hearing a reason for why I should help him out,” Stiles says,
but he’s following her out the door regardless. There’s really not much sense
in keeping the curse going if Jackson’s locked in a bathroom in the infirmary.
***
Stiles tries to spend as little time in his common room as possible after that,
but Scott’s and Erica’s is off-limits ever since Allison Argent transferred
from Salem (as proof that her family has nothing against born-wolves, according
to Scott; because of something involving another Salem student and a crossbow,
according to Erica).
Allison’s also in East, and while her magic is spiked in a generally
threatening way rather than aimed at anything in particular, Stiles keeps his
distance. The last thing he needs is to start smelling like her.
Unfortunately, he can’t just go straight from the library up to bed, either.
Lydia’s taken a liking to him, presumably because she enjoys watching Jackson
tense up whenever he’s near.
“Stiles!” she calls out as he tries to slip past their group. “We’re talking
about Muggles and whether the whole secrecy act makes sense anymore.”
“Okay,” says Stiles, perching on the edge of an armchair. “And you need my
opinion because — ?”
“Jackson and I are both pure-bloods, and Danny and Greenberg are both Muggle-
borns. You can be our tie-breaker since no one knows what in Morgana’s name you
are.”
“You do know how to flatter a guy,” Stiles says drily. “I assume Jackson’s
already spoken out against Muggles in general?”
“Not the ones who are related to witches and wizards,” Jackson says, glancing
at Danny but keeping his wand pointed towards Stiles. “At least they have a
stake in the game. But the other ones...”
“What, you think we should just kill them?” asks Greenberg.
“We’re already killing them,” Danny says. “Or letting them die, anyway. That’s
my whole point. Just think about how many lives could be saved if they knew
about our spells and potions.”
“They’d burn us all alive if they knew,” Jackson snaps back.
“Some of them, sure,” Stiles says, getting up from the chair. It’s late and he
needs to rest up for the full moon tomorrow. “But not all of them.”
“Oh, well, that clears things up,” says Lydia. “All we have to do is figure out
which ones aren’t okay with magic and — then what?”
“Burn them first,” says Stiles, shrugging.
***
Derek chooses to stay with Morrell over Deaton that summer, but at least he
comes over for dinner sometimes.
Stiles takes him out to the woods afterwards, to places more suitable for
wolves. He thinks they’re friends now, maybe. Sometimes Derek looks at him in a
way he doesn’t fully understand. It’s not the way Scott looks at Allison, or
Erica looks at Boyd.
He decides it’s as good a time as any to let Derek smell his magic again.
“Show me,” Derek demands, eyes turning red, but Stiles knows there’s no reason
to be scared.  
“You could try asking nicely, you know,” he says, but lets his magic funnel
through his wand and spread out over his body, feeling himself shrink down.
He manages to stay airborne for a few seconds before the familiar fear fills
him, and he switches back before he can hit the ground.
Derek’s laughing. Stiles has never heard him laugh before. It’s nice. Except
for the part where he’s laughing at Stiles, but whatever.
“It’s your hair,” Stiles tells him, even though Derek’s obviously connected the
dots on that one. There are probably rules against using parts of sentient
magical creatures without getting their permission first, but Derek doesn’t
look angry. Strangely wistful, but not angry.
“I should get back to Morrell’s,” Derek finally says.
“Or you could sleep over,” Stiles says, giving him an exaggerated wink.
Derek’s eyes drop down to his mouth. “Maybe another time,” he says, and Stiles
thinks: Soon.
***
He doesn’t tell Derek why he needs the foxglove they’d picked; it’s not
something he can explain without having to tell him about everything else, and
it’s still too early for that.
He stews the foxglove for a week in pickled toad. Adds a sprig of violets and a
handful of mermaid scales. It’s a recipe from one of the books Deaton keeps
behind wards, ancient and pulsing blood-red. A book about hunting born-wolves.
The potion’s meant to render them helpless to the brewer’s magic and
insensitive to its smell. Stiles has no plans to give it to Derek, but he pours
it into a small flask to keep in his robes just the same.
 Know your limits, his dad used to say. Stiles needs the vial to remind him
that he doesn’t have any.
***
Sixth Year and Stiles starts to get restless. It bursts out of him during the
full moons, and he’ll force his wings to work, to take him higher, before
gliding down towards Derek.
He spends more and more nights out in the woods, letting his magic flow through
his fingertips and erupt in bright flashes and sparks.
“You ever feel like you’re about to explode?” he asks Scott before their Muggle
Studies class.
“Yeah, but my mom says it’s a normal part of being a teenager,” Scott says, and
Stiles has to stifle his laugh when the professor walks in.
They start a unit on Muggle Religion, and the restlessness becomes an itch, and
the itch becomes a burn.
“It’s kind of like magic,” Scott says, working on an essay. “Right? Except if
nothing happens, they just try again.”
“When nothing happens, not if,” Stiles says, staring absently out the library
window.
“Did you have to go to one of these church places?” Scott asks.
“Yeah,” says Stiles. “For a little while.”
***
That night he sets his first fire. There’d been twelve of them, like the
Apostles. Twelve pinecones make a small blaze, easily hidden.
The Elders, his mother called them, before telling him to be polite. Saying it
was only going to be for a little while, no more than a month, just until she
figured some things out.
He’s dead, Stiles said, sullen and angry. There’s nothing else to figure out.
It’s been three weeks, he shouted during one of their fights. What’s another
month going to change?
I hate it here, he said, soft and low as she kissed him goodnight. The only
time he’d made her cry.
***
“Derek’s birthday is coming up,” Boyd tells him in early March. “He doesn’t
know that I know, so don’t make a big deal out of it.”
“It’s like you don’t even know me,” Stiles says, raising a hand to his heart.
“But seriously, what price am I paying for this unexpected but welcome bit of
information?”
Boyd gives him a look.
“Yeah, no,” Stiles says. “Unlike Derek, I require verbal communication.”
“Erica,” Boyd says.
“Verbal communication involving actual verbs, and maybe a direct object of some
kind,” Stiles clarifies when Boyd doesn’t say anything else.
Boyd huffs out a breath. “Do you know what kind of flowers she likes?”
Stiles blinks at him. “Erica’s not exactly a flowers kind of girl,” he says.
“But she has a weak spot for the ones with weird names. There’s a patch of
bloodroot way deep in the forest, they look kind of like daisies. I can get you
some next time I’m out with Derek?”
Boyd raises his eyebrows. “That’s what you two get up to when he’s out all
night? Picking flowers in the woods?”
“Hey, you have your wooing methods, I have mine,” Stiles says.
 ***
Flowers won’t get him very far with Derek, Stiles knows. He’d like to get him
something for his birthday, but wolves aren’t like wizards when it comes to
gifts.  
What does Derek want? he thinks. What would I want if I were Derek?
It comes to him in an instant. Argent. Of course.
And then, because Derek isn’t Stiles, he considers Derek’s uncle as well.
Bodies are easy enough to reanimate. Minds are more difficult. Minds not
ravaged by insanity, historically impossible. But Stiles is willing to try. The
thought settles him, calms down his magic.
He stops setting fires.
***
The first time Derek kisses him, Stiles is too busy holding on to feel much
more beyond a shuddery kind of pleasure. After that, it feels kind of strange,
like his magic is about to leak out of him again. It’s nice, but weird. His
body knows what to do for the most part, even if Stiles can’t always manage to
corral his thoughts into anything coherent.
They’re outside in the woods near the end of term. It’s a warm, heavy day, but
pleasant in the bubble of Stiles’ cooling charm. 
Derek nips his ear, breathes heavily against his hair. Stiles puts his stained
hand against Derek’s chest and Derek grabs it, presses a kiss into his palm.
Stiles carefully doesn’t react. Derek’s nose isn’t as sensitive as Stiles’
sight, he's learned.
“You’re staying with me and Deaton this summer, right?” Stiles says, because he
needs to say something.
“You sure that’s a good idea?” Derek asks. He shifts back so he can see Stiles’
face as they talk. It still makes Stiles nervous, sometimes, the way Derek
likes to look at him.
“Sure,” Stiles says. “I mean, you know, apart from the awkward boners and blue
balls. But any amount of sexual deprivation is worth having you by my side,
Buttercup.”
“No,” Derek says, and sets his mouth to Stiles’ neck again.
“No, ah, what?” Stiles says, hands curling against Derek’s shoulders. “No
awkward boners or no staying with me this summer?”
“No stupid pet names,” Derek says, and he scrapes a canine over Stiles’ pulse.
Stiles drags his head back up, brings their mouths together.
Sometimes it feels like he wants to pour his body into Derek’s. It’s an odd
thought; unexpected. He settles for gripping him hard enough to bruise, if only
for a second. Know your limits, his dad used to say.
***
He didn’t know he was having nightmares until he wakes up Derek with their
smell.
“Sorry,” he says, the first time it happens that summer. “Sorry.”
It’s like he can’t say anything else, until the word loses all meaning.
Sorry I didn’t see you were sick. Sorry I couldn’t get to the phone in time.
Sorry sorry sorry sorry.
“It’s okay,” Derek says. “Stiles. It’s okay.”
Stiles takes a deep breath, then another. “Right,” he says. “So I guess this
might be an issue.”
He doesn’t remember his dreams, but Derek says they smell like blood. Stiles
can’t bring himself to ask if the blood smells it’s like his or not.
Once upon a time there was a boy. The boy had a mother whose hands were magic
but they stopped working when his father died; couldn’t keep anything in their
grasp.
His uncle had been the one to find him, trying to reach the phone they kept on
top of the cabinets. His mother had been barely breathing by that point, her
gasps drowned out by the women praying around her.
He’d locked Stiles in the hall cupboard, and Stiles pounded against the door
until his fists were bruised. Someone started to cry in the bedroom. He thought
about the cups. Thought:I just need to get to her. Please. He tried to picture
her face, felt a rush of anger. If she could — but she couldn’t save his dad,
couldn’t fix herself, couldn’t find them another place to go. He screamed,
threw his whole body against the door. There’s a sound, then, like the cracking
of bone, and then a sharp, sudden pain that flared out from inside, consuming;
then — darkness.
He woke up in the church basement, his uncle standing over him and frowning.
They didn’t tell him what happened. He saw the sheets before they burned them,
soaked dark red, and at first he couldn’t tell if the red was actually there or
if it was something else only he could see. Like the trails of orange sloughing
off his skin in waves. The hallucinations didn’t bother him too much. Nothing
did, at that point.
When Stiles tells his story to Derek, he leaves out the part where he makes his
mother bleed out in her bed.   
***
Morrell starts watching him even more closely in his seventh year, but Stiles
isn’t worried. He’s being quiet, for now.
It’s only when he sees the damage done to Derek’s room that he feels his magic
threaten to overflow again. The depth of his anger surprises him, but maybe it
shouldn’t. Derek is his now, or almost.
Erica sneaks into his common room that evening, tells him she’s looking for
Daehler and his gang.
“They’re tasting his new batch of Firewhiskey,” she says, eyes bright. She’s
been bored recently, now that Boyd’s at the Auror Department down south.
Stiles puts down his Physics book and scrunches his nose. “Seriously?” he asks.
“You really want to imbibe something made by a guy who never washes his hands
after Potions?”
Erica still looks tempted, so Stiles takes her hand and pulls her down to the
couch next to him. “Anyway, I need your advice about something,” he says.
“This isn’t relationship crap, is it?” Erica asks, wary. “Because I thought
we’d agreed that Scott was our go-to guy for that stuff.”
“Yeah, no,” Stiles says. “I need to figure out a locking charm for my trunk
that has enough of a bite to convince certain wizards — certain wizards who may
or may not be Jackson — to leave it alone, but won’t get me in trouble will
Deaton.”
“Huh,” says Erica. “So you need something awful but temporary. Well, let’s
consider the options...”
***
He visits them in the infirmary, once. The next morning he brushes against
Deaton’s shoulder in the halls and sends a suggestion of a certain book into
his mind. Derek’s right; they’re just kids. And he can always teach them
another lesson, if he needs to.
***
He spends February reading up on sex spells with a determined-looking Erica and
a beet-red Scott.
“We’re going to get in so much trouble for this,” Scott says, but he doesn’t
take his eyes off the diagram in the book.
“Sacrifices need to be made in the pursuit of excellence,” Erica says, and she
moves her wand in the shape depicted. “Too bad we can’t practice this stuff on
each other.” They all grimace simultaneously.
“I still don’t understand why I can’t invite Allison to our study sessions,”
Scott says again.
“Because we don’t need a live demonstration,” Stiles says. “Now shush and turn
the page.”
***
The morning after he has sex for the first time, Stiles wakes up with a start.
He sits up in the bed, breaking Derek’s hold on him. He doesn’t remember going
to sleep.
“Shit,” he whispers, and runs a hand through his hair.
“Hmm?” Derek asks, reaching out a hand to trail over Stiles’ thigh. He’s soft
and blurry from sleep, and Stiles has to look away from him.
“I feel like maybe we should establish some ground rules for our sex life,”
Stiles says, staring at Derek’s curtains.
Derek hums out another sound, shifts his body closer to Stiles', curling around
it.
“Last night,” Stiles says. “You could’ve — ”
“Hey, no,” Derek says, catching Stiles’ chin and meeting his eyes. “You’re safe
with me.”
That’s not at all what Stiles had been getting at.
“You — you’re safe with me, too,” Stiles says, realizing that it’s true. His
magic had left Derek alone in the night, even though Derek had had him pinned
in his arms. Huh.
“Werewolf, remember?” Derek says.
“Yeah, whatever.” Stiles pokes his stomach. “Just because you have super-
healing powers doesn’t mean no one can hurt you.”
Derek raises an eyebrow and stretches himself out on the bed. Stiles tries not
to stare.
“Is this part of sex rules negotiations?” Derek asks. “Do I need to set a hard
limit on knife play?”
Stiles snorts out a laugh. “You’re such a fucking asshole. And ‘hard limit’?
What the fuck have you been up to?”
Derek sits up, grabs a shirt off the floor and pulls it on. “I’d let you use
knives on me if you wanted to,” he says, matter-of-fact.
“You — fucking hell, it’s like eight in the morning!” Stiles says, flailing a
bit in the bed. “You can’t just say shit like that and then expect me to calmly
get up and shower and have breakfast and  — ”
“Go. Shower,” Derek says, kissing his nose. “I’ll bring you up some coffee.”
Stiles feels his face flush at the kiss. “Just for that, I’m going to get jizz
all over your bathroom,” he tells him, watching Derek zip up his pants.
“I’m surprised you have any left, after last night,” Derek says, and he just
manages to dodge the pillow Stiles launches at him.
Stiles flops back on the bed, exhausted but jittery. His magic is a fat golden
bubble around him, one tendril stretching out to slip through the door after
Derek.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” he says, glaring at it, before gingerly getting up and
heading into the shower.
***
Sex with Derek continues to prove dangerous, not because he’s a werewolf with
ridiculous stamina and a penchant for biting, but because orgasms leave Stiles
hazy; loose-limbed and careless.
He keeps himself from slipping entirely, though. Even his body manages to time
it just right, waking up smelling of blood during the next moon.
Derek’s hands are tight on his hips in the dimly lit shadows of his bedroom,
mouth pressed against Stiles’ pulse. 
“After my mother died,” Stiles says, and he’s practiced this enough times in
his head that his voice stays steady, “I lived with my aunt and cousins for a
while. I was kind of a mess, I guess. So was my magic. I didn’t. I didn’t have
any before; it just — exploded, out of nowhere.”
He didn’t know that was what the colors signified back then, just watched the
air around his skin shift from orange to green and then flicker through the
colors of the rainbow. After about a month the colors started to trail upward
and separate into bubbles of light, taking on shapes before settling.
Butterflies, once. Reptiles and birds, mostly.
It’s when his cousin Sarah saw him in the storage shed and screamed that Stiles
realized she could also see the silver snake curled around his arm.
They prayed. Poured water over him until he dreamed of drowning. After every
session, he’d go silent and still for weeks at a time, until the colors did
something else, drew another shape in the air. The snake came back, once,
hissing hello. Stiles was tired and dazed in the darkness of his basement room,
and he greeted him back. That night they came to him with a foul smelling
cloth, and when he woke in the morning he was missing his tongue.
After that, snakes and spiders and crows spread over the town like a rolling
fog. There was a lot more yelling, and water and oils, but Stiles had been only
vaguely aware of what was happening. He spent most of the days asleep, the
hunger in his stomach dimming from a sharp pain to a blurry emptiness.
He woke up when he felt a breeze over his face, opened his eyes to see the moon
hovering above him. His body was slung between the arms of two of the Elders,
their hands tight against his wrists and ankles. Something smelled like it was
burning, and then he saw smoke rising from the field behind the gathered crowd,
who parted to make a path as the Elders got close.
Please, Stiles thought, too weak to do much else but close his eyes. Just this
once, please. The next time he wakes up, it’s to a dog licking his face and
he’s in the train yard back home.
But Derek doesn’t need to know all that.
“They — the people in town, they didn’t understand,” Stiles says. “Thought I
was possessed or something, I guess. They cut out my tongue. And when that
failed, they — they made a huge bonfire in the middle of a field and tried to
burn me in it.”
He wants to laugh, because he knows it sounds ridiculous, like something out of
the middle ages, but he can’t, not when the smell of ash is always hovering
nearby.
“Who,” Derek says, and Stiles can barely decipher the word behind the growl.
“Where.”
Stiles tells him.
***
Derek wears Stiles’ wristwatch to dinner a few days later, the one that used to
belong to his dad.
“You left it in my room,” he says when he notices Stiles staring. “I thought —
do you want it back?”
“Nah, keep it,” Stiles says, eyes still fixed on the thin thread of purple
flowing over the surface of the band like a river. A tracking spell, one of
Morrell’s, probably. Clever, putting it on something where Stiles’ scent would
mask its presence.
He rests his fingers against Derek’s wrist, unravels it with a thought. The
back of his neck prickles, and he looks up to find Morrell staring at him from
the professors’ table.
He almost laughs. Busted. Whatever she’s suspected about his unusual talents,
he’s just confirmed.
Oh, well. Stiles shoots her a grin before turning back to his meal. He’s had
her figured out since the first time they’d met; it’s about time she caught up.
He even visits her in the infirmary when she gets ill, even if it's mostly to
keep her from saying anything she shouldn’t to Deaton while loopy from healing
spells.
***
“Can’t believe I have to stick around here for another year before I can join
Boyd at the Auror Department,” Erica says, poking at her Fanged Geranium with
her wand that June. “He told me they learned a spell to remove someone’s eyes
from their skull! How awesome does that sound?”
“Pretty awesome,” Stiles says. “Not sure why you wouldn’t just go with a simple
blinding spell, though.”
“I think mine’s getting ready to bite me,” Scott whispers urgently next to him.
“It’s swaying in a really menacing way.”
“That just means it’s happy,” Erica says, taking a look. “Or it likes the way
you smell.”
She turns back to Stiles. “You still haven’t told me whether you’re still
planning on being here next year.”
“Nope,” says Stiles. “You’ll have to make do with Boy Wonder, here.” He ruffles
Scott’s hair and gets a glare in response.
“Is Finstock still upset that you decided not to sign with the Nationals?”
Erica asks Scott.
Scott shrugs. “He stared at me really intensely the last time I saw him but he
didn’t say anything. I mean, I told him I’d think about it after Eighth Year,
but I want to concentrate on Care of Magical Creatures for now.”
“And the fact that a certain Allison Argent is sticking around has nothing to
do with it, right?” Stiles says.
“Yeah, just like you leaving has nothing to do with Derek graduating,” Scott
says, elbowing him.
“Ugh, I just realized Allison’s going to be in all my classes,” says Erica.
“Does that mean I have to start being friends with her?”
“What are you talking about?” Scott asks. “You guys are friends now.”
Erica shoots Stiles an incredulous glance. Stiles shakes his head quickly
behind Scott.
“Uh, right,” she says. “I meant — maybe we’ll become even better friends, now.”
“It’ll still suck not having you around,” Scott tells him. “What if we never
see each other again?”
“Hey, no worries, I’ll visit,” Stiles says, and he slings one arm over each of
their shoulders. “And of course, if something were to happen — something that
was completely not my fault, by the way — and suspicions got roused and threats
of Veritaserum started being bandied about...”
“Yeah, yeah,” says Erica, shrugging him off and going back to poking at her
Geranium. “We’ve got your back.”
“If a bunch of Aurors ever show up on my doorstep and ask where you where the
night before, I promise I’ll tell them you were passed out in my basement,”
Scott says solemnly, and grabs him in a quick hug.
“You don’t have to make it sound so seedy,” Stiles says, awkwardly patting him
on the back.
“Dude, I’d do anything for you, you know that. I got my hand stuck in a beehive
for you, remember?” Scott says, laughing and letting him go.
“Yeah, well, same here, minus the bees,” he finds himself saying, and when he
looks over Erica’s smiling, like she’s proud of him for something. He doesn’t
really understand why.
***
“We could go to New York,” Derek says hesitantly as Stiles looks over a map,
marker cap in his mouth.
“Sure,” he says, spitting the cap onto the table. “New York first, but it’ll
probably be a little boring.”
He draws a thick black line from the Academy to New York, then pauses. “Maybe
Kansas next? Or would North Dakota be better?”
“Better for what?” Derek asks. “Getting lost in a corn field?”
“Adventures, Derek!” Stiles says, spreading his arms out. “Living off the land,
meeting new people, looking at giant balls of yarn. That kind of thing.”
Derek bends over the map, nudges at Stiles with his hip. “I’ve always wanted to
see the Grand Canyon,” he says.
“You’re so predictable,” Stiles says, sighing. “But fine. Arizona it is.”
Derek takes the marker from him, draws another line on the map.
“You can’t find all of them,” he says softly, and brings Stiles’ hand up to his
mouth, pressing his nose against the stain on Stiles’ palm. “There are too many
like your uncle, like Argent.”
Stiles feels his throat go dry. His magic surges around Derek in a soft silver
cloud.
“I’m not trying to find all of them,” he finally manages to say. “I just want
to be ready when they find me.”
“Okay,” Derek says, and he gives Stiles back the marker.
***
He’s flipping through an old handwritten book in the Divination classroom when
she finds him.
“Dare I ask what you’re hoping to get from that?” Morrell asks. As always, her
magic twists towards Stiles, sharp and threatening.
“Just a name,” Stiles says. He throws the book on her desk, stretches his arms
out and goes to examine the shelves lining the room.
“You don’t have to worry about Deaton,” Morrell says, watching him. “He blinds
himself to the truth out of love for you.”
Stiles shrugs. “He might forget, one day,” he says.
“To keep his eyes shut?”
“That he loves me.”
Morrell gives him a calculating look, but doesn’t respond. The room goes
silent. For Stiles, anyway.
“What’s it sound like?” Stiles asks. He trails his hand over the dusty surface
of the crystal balls on a nearby shelf. When he glances up, Morrell is staring
at a spot behind him.
“Like a dozen violins clashing together and the howling of a wolf,” she says,
smiling wryly. “Though the howling is more recent development.”
Stiles nods, sticks his hands in his pockets and walks towards the door.
“I’ve only known two other wizards who sound like stringed instruments,”
Morrell adds. “Deaton’s a cello.”
Stiles figures that deserves some kind of repayment in kind. “It looks kind of
like a bruise, to be honest,” he says. “Yours, not Deaton’s. This dense cloud
of purple and blue and some yellow. Derek says it smells like peaches, though,
so maybe I’m just biased.”
“Whatever it is you’re doing, they’ll figure it out eventually,” she tells him
quietly. “And when they do, they’ll send me to stop you, because Deaton won’t.
There won’t be much Derek can do to protect you then.”
“You could try stopping me now. But it wouldn’t be as interesting, huh?” He
lifts his hand as though tipping an imaginary hat, then leaves Morrell to her
star charts.
Morrell is not a witch to underestimate. But she’s expecting Stiles to rely on
his magic to get what he wants; to make Derek its shield.
Know your limits.
Stiles can’t allow boundaries, but he pictures himself as an ocean, Derek an
island sheltered in its midst. Full of sharp-toothed beasts and poisonous
things.  
 
***
There’s a born-wolf at the Academy. His name is Derek, and he’s three years
older than Stiles.
Born-wolves are scarce; born-wolves with magical ability, almost mythical in
their rarity.
The plan, like all good plans, is simple. Stiles needs the wolf to see him as
its mate. And then — all that strength, all that power, is effectively his.
***
Chapter End Notes
     Never again will I attempt a story that eventually required a color-
     coded Excel grid to keep straight. The plan was to get this done
     before hiatus ended. HA. Anyway: thanks for reading, and concrit
     welcome!
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