by Anne Harris

Antonin’s warm, quirky, criminal family are a revelation to Harry, who grew up on an isolated island with his abusive, wealthy father. Harry’s unquestioning acceptance of Antonin and his loved ones is a refreshing change from the disbelief and scorn Antonin is accustomed to from classmates. The two teenagers become friends and soon fall in love, but Harry’s father has plans to manipulate their relationship for his own gain, and Antonin’s aunt harbors a secret that may destroy them all.

This is a preview of the first seven chapters of a young adult science fiction novel I am currently marketing.

Chapter 5 — Captain Invincible to the Rescue

“I still think I should talk to that roommate of yours, set him straight on a few things.” said Rose. Her face on the screen of Antonin’s notebook looked pinched and anxious.

Antonin took a deep breath and prayed for strength. He sat cross-legged on his bunk, his notebook in his lap. It had been over a week since the fight by the utility yard, and Rose had been calling him daily, checking up on him, harping endlessly about it. “Mom, I told you a hundred times already. The fight wasn’t Harry’s fault. It was mine.”

“Because you were defending him. I know. Well, you’d just better mind your own business from now on, Antonin. Let that boy fight his own battles. It’s got nothing to do with you. What’s wrong with him anyway? What kind of person doesn’t even try to defend himself?”

“It’s complicated, Mom.” Actually, it wasn’t, and he’d explained about the whole getting sent home thing like twenty times. He just didn’t feel like going into it again. There was also no point in mentioning the obvious contradiction in her reasoning: that Harry should have fought and Antonin should have run away. “Look, everything’s fine now. Marcus can’t give us any more trouble because he’s on probation. I’m studying hard. I even got an A+ on my extra-credit history report, so you’ve got nothing to worry about. In fact, I have a math test tomorrow, so I really should be studying. . .”

She narrowed her eyes at him, obviously not fooled for a minute. “Tumcari wants to talk to you. Do you have time for him?”

Antonin dropped his eyes. He hated how she was jealous of Tumcari all the time. She didn’t understand why he could tell Tumcari everything, and he couldn’t tell her anything. “Yeah. Just a few minutes.”

When he looked up again, Tumcari was there. Even though they were thousands of miles apart, just seeing him on the screen made Antonin feel as if everything was all right.

With his strong chin, piercing green eyes and wavy blond hair, Tumcari resembled an American newscaster with a really good plastic surgeon — from the waist up. But then, that was about all anyone ever saw. Now, as always, he floated in the greenhouse pond, his head and his bare shoulders rising out of the lapping water. He leaned closer to the camera on the bank of the pond. “How’s my boy?”

Antonin shrugged. “Any chance of getting Mom off my back in like, the next millennium?”

Tumcari smiled, displaying his perfectly even teeth. He gazed upon Antonin with amused fondness.

Antonin sighed. “I know, I know. She’s worried about me. She loves me. Blah, blah, blah.”

Tumcari tilted his head to the side and lifted his shoulders. “What’s happening with the Arctic Avenger?” he asked, dispensing with futilities.

Antonin bounced. “Oh, it’s so cool! Captain Chernobyl created this secret underground city, and populated it with mind-controlled slaves. He’s going to use them to take over the world unless the Arctic Avenger and Two-ton Tundra can stop him.

“Wow. Who’s Two-ton Tundra?”

“Oh, that’s a character Harry came up with. He can turn into a wooly mammoth.”

“Neat.”

“Yeah.”

Tumcari gave him a soft smile. “You’re quite fond of this boy now, aren’t you? When you first met him you said he was—”

“A total freak, I know. But now. . . well now I guess maybe he still is but. . . Ever since I saw how scared he was of his dad, it’s not so much like he’s just being a jackass. More like maybe he can’t help it or he doesn’t know how else to be or like he’s just so scared every minute of every day that he doesn’t know what the fuck he’s doing. I don’t know.” He shook his head, and looked away, embarrassed because he wasn’t even sure what he was saying, wishing that for once he could just shut up. His eyes fell on the page where the Arctic Avenger swung across the vat on a chain. “Do you think you can tell if someone is gay just by looking at them, or by something they do or don’t do?” He bit his lip and looked back up at Tumcari.

Tumcari tilted his head to one side. “There is one way to find out for sure.”

Antonin leaned even closer to the screen. “What? What is it?”

“Ask him.”

The door opened, and Harry came in, the discordant bars of “Reviens” by the Pathetic Remains leaking out from his headphones. He went over to his punching bag and started working out on it.

“Is that him?” asked Tumcari.

Antonin froze. He didn’t want to say. The look in Tumcari’s eyes became carefully veiled, but Antonin knew him well enough to know what he was hiding: hurt because Antonin didn’t want to introduce him to his new friend. Because Antonin never wanted to introduce him to any of his friends. Not since Marcus.

When Antonin first came to St. Bart’s, he and Marcus had been friends. He’d actually been part of the popular clique for almost a year, until one day he introduced Marcus to Tumcari and told him how Tumcari was a plant-man with a tail instead of legs. And the thing was, Marcus had believed him. Only Marcus described Tumcari as “handicapped,” and started going on about how the loneliness of being forever trapped in a pond in a greenhouse in Siberia must have driven him mad years ago. Antonin couldn’t stand it. He couldn’t hear another word of it. He hit Marcus, and then, when Marcus had retaliated and Antonin lay on the floor of his room, exhausted and aching, he told Marcus he’d made it all up. Tumcari didn’t have a tail, he wasn’t a science experiment gone awry. He was just a regular guy with legs who liked to swim a lot.

Well that was the end of his career as a popular kid, and the beginning of Garglezilla and his indelible reputation as a liar, but he didn’t care about any of that. What he hated, both in equal measure, were his cowardly betrayal of Tumcari and the doubts Marcus had put in his mind about his adopted uncle’s well being.

“It’s okay,” said Tumcari, and Antonin realized he’d just been sitting there staring at him. “You should get back to studying. Your mother will be unhappy with me if I keep you from your books.”

“I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?”

Tumcari grinned, and it almost obliterated the veiled look in his eyes. “I’ll look forward to it.”

After Antonin closed his notebook, Harry took a break from the punching bag and pulled his earphones off. “Who’s that guy?”

Shit. “What guy?”

Harry snorted. He started stretching out, pulling first one arm in and across his shoulders, and then the other. “The one you were just talking to. You talk to him like every day. But every time I come in you cut it short. What’s the big secret?”

“It’s not!” Antonin shouted, and then realized that was probably the wrong way to go about denying the truth.

Harry shot him an amused look and snagged a T-shirt off the floor. He dangled it behind him, grabbed the other end and pulled, stretching his triceps. “Then if it’s not a big secret, why not just tell me?”

Wasn’t this kid supposed to be stupid? “‘Cause! It’s none of your business. What do you care, anyway?”

Harry switched hands. “I don’t. It’s just weird is all.”

“You’re weird.”

Harry glared at him. “Tell me something I don’t know, dude.”

This was ridiculous. He was being ridiculous. “It’s my Uncle Tumcari, okay?”

Harry was mollified by this. “Cool name. Sounds like he really likes you, too. You’re lucky.”

“Yeah, I am lucky. Tumcari believes in me. And he doesn’t treat me like a little kid, the way my mom does. He’s like – he’s not like anyone else, you know? He just, the way he looks at you, the way he sees everything, like it’s this amazing miracle or something. He’s got these bright green eyes, right? And they’re just like-” He put his hands to his eyes and snapped his fingers out. “Pchiouuwwww!”

“So are he and your mother like, shacking up?”

“No! No, she wouldn’t — he wouldn’t — it’s not like that at all.”

“Uh-huh.” Harry gave him a skeptical nod. Not buying it.

Antonin gritted his teeth. The idea of Harry thinking of Tumcari as some kind of freeloading boyfriend drove him nuts. “You don’t understand. It’s complicated. He’s just really different, and most people don’t get it.”

Harry, leaning to one side with his arm up over his head, raised one eyebrow. Gods knew what he was thinking now. Suddenly frustrated with hiding and feeling guilty and all of it, Antonin said, “He’s an aquatic plant-man with a twenty-foot tail where his legs should be.”

Harry’s eyes went wide. He straightened and came over to stand beside the bunk. Antonin held his breath, waiting for the smack down, but Harry grinned eagerly and said, “No shit, really?”

Air rushed back into Antonin’s lungs. “Uh – uh – uh-huh. He was created by a scientist. He was the prototype for a line of organic robots created by Dr. Remus Rahul. Rahul abandoned him because he didn’t do what he was supposed to.”

Harry gripped the edge of the bunk and jumped up, settling himself against the wall. “Wow, harsh.”

“Yeah. He lives in the pond in the greenhouse back home. My Uncle Kelira and Cid were hired to look after him. Then Magnolia came along, and Cid invented this virus, and she wound up getting reincarnated in the body of one of the other organic robots, because of the virus, and a whole bunch of shit happened, including me getting kidnapped by my dad and taken to Wotroya, which is where Rahul kept Tumcari, and where we all live now.”

“Cool,” said Harry when Antonin paused for a breath. He leaned closer and said, “So, does he have, like, special powers?”

Antonin blinked. He couldn’t believe it. He couldn’t believe he was saying all this stuff, but Harry was just like, loving it. “In fact, he kind of does. His tail is really powerful, and at the tip of it he has these razor sharp ridges. He can cut a person in half with ‘em — I mean he hasn’t, but he would if they were trying to hurt one of us.”

Harry grinned, delighted. “Shit! This is great! You should write a comic book about this!”

Antonin’s jaw dropped, and he quickly looked down. No! He swallowed and looked up with a dark gaze that made Harry flinch back. “They’re real. Tumcari is real. It’s all true!” He clenched his jaw and jumped down off the bed. “If you don’t believe me, then we’re gonna go, right now!” He held his hands out, waving Harry in. He was gonna get his ass kicked for sure, but he’d be damned if he’d betray Tumcari again.

Harry stared at him, stunned, then a smile cracked his lips and he gave up a great guffaw. “Fuck man, take it easy. I’m not saying you’re lying, I’m just saying the whole thing rocks. You are so lucky. My life is like, totally boring.”

Antonin swallowed. Harry believed him. Nobody ever believed him about Tumcari anymore. He climbed back up on the bunk again. “So where are you from, anyway?” he asked, suddenly curious.

Harry shrugged. “Belize.”

“Belize? No shit! And you say your life is boring. You don’t know boring until you’ve lived through a Siberian winter. I’d love to live in Belize. Tropical climate, sunny beaches, rainforest and shit.”

Harry tilted his head to one side. “Yeah, it is beautiful there, no question. I used to sneak out all the time and take off for days. I’d hang out in the rainforest, go swimming and stuff. My dad’s cook, Perla, would slip me extra food so I could stay out longer.”

Antonin imagined Harry swinging from a vine through dense, dripping green foliage, clad only in a leopard skin loincloth. He pulled his pillow onto his lap.

Harry shrugged and continued. “But most of the time, underground — my dad has this big underground complex — it’s just really boring. I watch a lot of cartoons and stuff.” He paused, picking at a thread along the frayed seam of his jeans. Suddenly he brightened and looked up at Antonin again. “This one time? My dad had this big state dinner-type thing. All these important people from different countries were there. Of course I wasn’t allowed to go, but right in the midle of it I snuck in anyway and started chucking lobsters at my dad. Just grabbing them off people’s plates and running around, lobbing them like hand grenades, screaming what a fuckwad he was.

“The security guards grabbed me and I punched one of ‘em right in the nose, a really good shot, considering I was only ten. But then the other one got me in a shoulder lock and shoved me down on the table — Bam! — right into the Venezuelan Minister of Finance’s fish fork.

“That’s how I got this,” he pointed to the scar on his eyebrow. “But it was worth it just to see his face.” Harry pantomimed it, drawing his eyebrows and his jaw down, his eyes wide, jiggling his head from side to side and making outraged sputtering noises. His face relaxed and he sighed. “That’s when he started sending me to these schools, so it worked out all right.”

Antonin closed his mouth with an effort and tried to think of something to say that wouldn’t betray the horror he felt. “Now that would make a good comic,” he said at last.

“Yeah?” said Harry, hopeful.

Antonin nodded. “Yeah. Captain Crustacean and the Venezuelan Lobster Battle.”

Harry laughed, leaning back against the wall again, looking up at the ceiling, apparently happy and relaxed. At last he looked at Antonin again. “So are you going to be a comic book artist when you grow up?”

“I want to be. My mom says it’s impractical. She wants me to go into business, but Tumcari says I should go for it.”

Harry nodded. “You should. You’re really good.”
Antonin nodded back, not sure what to say. “Uh — thanks. So uh, what do you want to do when you grow up?

Harry gave him a small, proud smile and said, “I’m going to kill my dad.”

Well that was a unique career choice. Antonin stared at him, but Harry returned his gaze placidly. He was serious. Antonin took a deep breath. “Harry, whatever your father did to you. . .”

Harry’s eyes widened slightly before he shook his head and jumped down off the bunk bed. “It’s not me,” he said, picking his history book up off the desk. “But he’s done bad stuff to lots of people. You know how Mr. Roth was saying today about the Fair Labor Accord and how it made mining cheaper by loosening trade restrictions and stuff?”

Holy Chao, Harry had been paying attention.

Harry waved the textbook at him. “Well Mr. Roth doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He said the United Nations did all that. It wasn’t them. It was my dad. He did it. I remember. I heard him on the phone about it. He owns mines all over the world and he wanted that thing passed so he could operate them more cheaply. And do you know what that means?”

Antonin shook his head.

“It means that he can use slave labor, Antonin. Child slave labor. Ten year old kids mining without respirators. And they barely even get enough to eat. It’s horrible!” He slammed the book down on top of his desk. “He shouldn’t be able to get away with that!”

Antonin blinked and sat back, speechless in the face of Harry’s righteous anger. Was that really true about the mines? “You should do a report on that. For Roth’s class. You could get extra credit.”

Harry scrunched up his face in incredulity. “I should what? That’s sick! What are you? This motherfucker is killing people and I should write a report about it? How’s that going to help them?”

Antonin’s jaw worked as he searched for an answer to that. He had nothing. The message light on his notebook blinked. Probably another call from his mom. He looked back at Harry. “What about your mom? Can’t she stop him?”

Harry shook his head. “Anyway, I’m almost ready. I’m nearly grown now, and I’ve been practicing a long time.” He went over to his punching bag and proceeded with a demonstration. “First I’ll kick him square in the balls.” His foot slammed into the bag. “Then I’ll pound him in the face awhile, just ‘cause.” His fists beat a staccato on the canvas. “By then he’ll be down, and I’ll roll him over, kneel on his back. . .” Harry got to one knee and grasped a wadded towel laying nearby, “grab his head and. . .” he twisted the bundle sharply to one side, “snap! Break his neck.”

Antonin watched Harry’s face very carefully throughout, trying to see in him whatever horrible thing his father had done to him. Because there was something, beyond the miners. He just knew it.

Harry got to his feet and dropped into an armchair with a satisfied air. “Quick. Simple.” He shrugged. “I thought about making him suffer more. You know, elaborate shit, but in the first place,” —he made a face— “ew, and in the second place, why risk it? I’m not that bright, it’s better to keep it basic.” He sighed and rested his elbows on his knees, his chin propped in one hand.

Antonin’s brain scrabbled for rationality. “B-but you’ll go to jail.”

Harry shrugged. “Ahh, that’s probably gonna happen anyway.” He glanced at his hands and then up at Antonin, his eyes bright and hard. “It might as well be for something worthwhile. Besides, everyone’s always saying how I’m, you know, privileged and I should use my advantage to help others. And they’re right. That’s what all the comics say, isn’t it? Use your powers for good? Well, my power is that I’m very close to one of the most evil motherfuckers on the planet.” Harry nodded in satisfaction, then frowned. “The trick is getting him alone. He won’t go near me anymore without his security guards around.” Harry gave Antonin a speculative glance. “You’re smart. Maybe you can help me think of something.”

Antonin thought about how Magnolia had killed his dad, and how he was mostly glad, but at first really upset and confused about the whole thing. It wasn’t fair. If Harry’s dad needed killing, he was willing to accept that. But it shouldn’t have to be Harry who did it. That wasn’t fair at all. “I know what Captain Invincible would do,” he said, half to himself.

Harry snorted and rolled his eyes. “What would Captain Invincible do?”

Antonin leaned forward. “He’d find a way to switch bodies between your dad and one of the miners. That way he’d suffer everything he made them suffer, see?”

Harry pursed his lips. “Villains always have brain swapping devices...” he allowed.

“Yeah, so he’d trick the villain, Dr. Wad—”

A grin lit Harry’s face with a hundred watts. “Yeah! Dr. Wad!”

“He’d trick Dr. Wad into getting into the device and then swap his brain with one of his own miners.”

Harry hopped up from his chair. “Can you imagine Dr. Wad’s despair when he discovers what’s happened?”

Antonin jumped down off the bunk and looked down at himself, his arms stiff at his sides, his hands curled into claws. He contorted his face into a mask of horror and rage. “Blast you Invincible! You’ll pay for this!” And he launched himself at Harry, grabbing him around the chest and trying to knock him over. He marveled at his own — what? — audacity, opportunism, horniness?

Harry caught him easily and said, “But of course he’s in the body of a starving miner, so he’s powerless.” And Harry pushed Antonin to the floor and straddled him, and Antonin felt his own heart, very high in his chest, beating rapidly. They stared at each other, and Antonin was about to abandon all to the moment and just kiss him when Harry stood up suddenly and returned to his desk. “Too bad it’s only pretend,” he said, sat down and opened his history book, of all things.

Antonin stared at his back, a bitter mixture of disappointment and relief swirling in his mouth, his mind reeling. He went back to his bunk, called up the art program on his notebook, and started sketching.

oOo

Three days later, Antonin finished Captain Invincible and the Brain-Swapping Device. He printed it out and bound it with staples in the center, just like a real comic book. He wiped his hands on his pants before picking it up, so he wouldn’t get sweat smears on the cover.

Harry lay on his bunk with his headphones on, his body thrashing in time with “Desperate Measures” by The Realm. “Hey,” said Antonin, tapping his chest with the book. “Check this out.”

Harry sat up and looked at the cover, which was a picture of him in a Captain Invincible costume, standing astride a fallen Dr. Wad. He pulled his headphones off and looked up at Antonin. “Is that me?”

“Yeah,” said Antonin, feeling his cheeks flush.

An unspoken question surfaced in Harry’s eyes, but he didn’t say anything. He took the comic from Antonin and started to read.

Antonin stationed himself in an armchair and pretended not to pay any attention, but he heard the whisper of each page as Harry turned it.

When the whispers stopped, Antonin glanced up to see Harry sitting on the edge of his bunk, frozen. Something worked itself through his face, but he couldn’t tell what it was. “You can’t do that,” Harry said, so low Antonin barely heard him, and he stood up, the comic fluttering in his hand. He looked like a zombie or something. His face was... vacant.

Antonin felt a stab of fear as Harry walked toward him, his eyes locked on him. He came close, and then leaned in and said, still in that same flat, quiet voice, “You can’t draw me like that. I’m not a hero.” He breathed in and straightened. Turning away he said, “I’m...” He fell silent and shook his head. Antonin saw his larynx bob. He took another sharp breath and whirled on Antonin, his blue eyes suddenly savage. “What are you doing, anyway?”

Blind panic seized Antonin. “What?”

Harry grimaced in frustration and waved the comic book at him. “All this superhero bullshit! You think you can just draw something and that makes it real? It’s not real.” He trembled and then took the comic in both hands and ripped it down the center, and then put the two sundered halves together and ripped those in half too, staring at Antonin the whole time. He threw them up in the air and they fluttered to the ground like drunken birds. “There are no superheroes, Antonin! There’s only powerful people and weak people, and the powerful people can do anything they want and the weak people can’t stop them. That’s it. That’s all there is.”

Antonin felt tears stinging his eyes, and that only fueled his anger. “And how do you know so much about how the world works, huh? You think there aren’t any superheroes? My aunt’s a superhero; she survived the Detroit Tax Partitions, and then she saved my mom and me.”

Harry sneered at him. “She shot him with a gun. What kind of superpower is that?”

“Yeah, well she did it, didn’t she? She wasn’t afraid. She did it.”

Harry opened his mouth to answer back, and then blinked. His shoulders slumped. He looked down at the torn and scattered pages, and lifted one hand to his forehead. He closed his eyes briefly, and then nodded his head. “You’re right,” he muttered, bending to pick up the pages. “You’re right, I’m sorry.” He stood and his eyes were red around the edges. His nostrils flared as he fought for control. He ducked his head as he placed the remnants of Captain Invincible and the Brain Swapping Device carefully on Antonin’s desk. He stood there, staring down at them, his back to Antonin. “But you can’t make a hero out of me just by drawing me that way, Antonin. I’m not a hero. I’m a coward and I don’t deserve to have a friend like you.”

Curiosity tempered Antonin’s anger. “What? What are you talking about?”
“I had my chance, and I chickened out.”

“Your chance to...”

Harry took a deep breath and shot him a sideways glance. His eyes shined with wetness. He moved over to his bunk stiffly, like a robot. He sat down with his elbows on his knees and rested his head in his hands. “To kill him. The very first time I tried—”

The first time?

“—I got the drop on him. He just wasn’t expecting it. I snuck into his office — I was good at getting past the security systems by then — and I got his gun out, and I was waiting for him when he came in.” Harry bit his lip and tilted his head down. “I could have killed him right then, and I just...” His voice faded out and his shoulders shook. He covered his face with his hands.

Antonin was across the room and at Harry’s side before he even realized he’d moved. He gathered him in his arms and was surprised when Harry let him. He held on tight, pressing Harry’s hot, wet face against his neck. “Why? Why did you try to kill him?”

“B-b-because he killed her,” Harry snuffled brokenly. “He killed her and I couldn’t just p-pull the f-fucking trigger. I’m such a dumbfuck.”

“Your mom?”

A thin, high whine escaped Harry’s lips and he nodded his head.

Oh gods. Antonin buried his own face in Harry’s hair and hung on even tighter, rocking him as he sobbed. Jesus, Buddha and the Holy Chao. This was so much worse than anything he’d imagined. What in the world was he going to do? What had Tumcari done, when Antonin woke from a nightmare of his father and ran down to the pond for comfort? Antonin continued rocking and began to hum a low, wordless drone.

It seemed to help. Harry relaxed a little, and actually unclenched his arms and put them around Antonin. After a while he stopped crying and turned his head so that it still rested on Antonin’s shoulder, but his face was no longer mashed against his neck. “I know he killed her, Antonin.”

Antonin licked his lips, and tried to make the question gentle, somehow. “Did you see her die?”

Harry shook his head. “No. He took her with him on a trip, which was weird because before he always left her to take care of me. And then he came back alone. I asked where she was and he said she was gone. He said she couldn’t stand my ugly face anymore and she left, but I know that was a lie. He killed her. I know he did. He pushed her off a cliff or he blew up the boat she was on, I don’t know, something that looked like an accident.”

Antonin’s throat was tight. He could barely force the words out. “I’m glad you didn’t see it happen.”

Harry turned his head to peer at him. “What?”

Antonin took a deep breath. “I said I’m glad you didn’t see it.”

Harry sat back and looked at him expectantly. 

Antonin rubbed his face and went on. “When my dad — after he died, I kept having these nightmares where he’d shoot my mom and I couldn’t stop him. Night after night I’d see her die like that and... But she didn’t really die.” He put his hands on Harry’s knees. “Just because you couldn’t kill your dad doesn’t mean you’re a coward.”

Harry scooted out of Antonin’s reach, resting against the headboard of the bunk. He folded his arms across his chest. “Why’s that?”

Antonin’s hands felt useless and empty now, and he tucked them into his armpits. “Well, I told you what a wad my dad was, all the shit he did to my mom, to me. But still. Even after he’d kidnapped me, and shoved me out of the helicopter into the snow and dark, and then brought me to that strange house, and I was scared shitless of him and rightly so ‘cause he was completely bat shit crazy — even then, I couldn’t have killed him. I wanted to help him. I followed him. I would have been safe. Tumcari showed me where to hide, but I followed my dad ‘cause he was my dad and I wanted to help him. That’s how he got me at gunpoint and my mom and I almost died.”

Harry rubbed his eyes and let his hands fall to his sides. “Jesus, Antonin. I’m sorry.”

Antonin shrugged. This wasn’t supposed to be about him. He shifted on the bed, scooting back so he could lean against the wall. “So...” Sheer morbid curiosity drove him on. “What happened, after you didn’t shoot him?”

Harry shook his head. “He just laughed at me and took the gun back, and then he called security.”

 “Security? What did they do?”

Harry rocked his head side to side. “Same thing they always do when I act out; beat me down and take me to the utility room at the bottom of the complex.” He lay his head on his arms and stared absently at the wall. “They tie me to the sink and leave me there.” He rolled his head to bury his face in his arms. “I hate that.”

Yeah, no shit. Antonin knew exactly what it felt like not to be a hero. He didn’t have the strength to ask Harry how long they left him there.

Harry lifted his head, cradling his face in his upturned hands, his eyes downcast. He looked fairly miserable, but not as much as it seemed to Antonin that he should be. Antonin swallowed against the dryness in his mouth. “You uh... You know that’s not, you know, usual, right? For most kids?”

Harry snorted derisively. “Unless you’re a ten-year-old kid in a mine and they chain you up at night to keep you from running away. It’s pretty usual for them too. I’m telling you Antonin; it’s not just me. My dad pulls this kind of shit with everyone.”

Antonin blinked. He never would have thought of it that way, but he couldn’t exactly say that Harry was wrong. “Well at least you know you’re not alone.”

Harry’s smile was small but genuine. He laughed a little; a soft, slightly hysterical whistle. “That’s why he has to be stopped.”

“Yeah, but not by you.”

Harry shot him a glare. “Why? You don’t think I can do it? You think I’m a coward, don’t you?” He unfolded himself and started to get up.

A low, rocking anger filled Antonin, but it wasn’t at Harry. He lunged forward and grabbed Harry around the shoulders, hauling him back against his chest. Harry was apparently too surprised to pull away immediately, and Antonin used that momentary advantage to brace his arms over Harry’s collarbones and clasp his hands together, pinning him in place as if both their lives depended on it. “Would you quit saying that? You’re not a coward, the exact opposite, in fact, and I know a lot of brave people, so you can take my word for it okay? Now listen—” His voice dropped to a harsh whisper and he moved his lips closer to Harry’s ear, urgency clipping his syllables. “We’re going to get him, Harry, don’t you worry. One way or another, that fucker’s going down.” Antonin’s determination grew as he spoke. “You’re always saying how I’m smart, right?”

Harry nodded.

“And I got your dad to let you stay here, didn’t I?”

Harry sighed and leaned back into Antonin and nodded again.

“Then trust me. We’ll find a way to get this thing done.” He took a deep breath and lightened up on the death grip a little bit. He was trembling, he realized. “Why don’t you come home with me for holiday break? We can talk to my aunt. She killed my dad, maybe she’ll do yours too, and if not, we’ll think of something else. I promise. But you don’t have to do this by yourself. You’re not alone now.”

Harry swallowed, and turned to look at him. He just stared at Antonin for the longest time, as if it took all that time for him to see the truth of what Antonin said. And still he seemed uncertain. “You’ll help me?”

Antonin nodded. “Yes.”

Harry’s face changed. He got a look Antonin had never seen before, but before he could identify it, Harry turned and rested his head on Antonin’s, very softly, and snaked his arm down to take his hand. And Antonin thought it was the most and the best he could do just then, to be a solid thing for Harry to hold on to.