don't waste your heart

For most of the past two hours or so, I’ve been trying to remember this childhood snack that I always brought to school as my recess baon. It was kinda like rice crackers, ya know. It had that same crunch and the same yellowish hue. It tasted kinda sweet but at the same time, salty. It was wrapped in bright pink plastic, with yellow details on the side, and it kinda has this little imp/fairy/little man (?) drawing on the wrapper. (I dunno, hahaha)

But anyway! It’s been bugging me that I can’t remember its name nor what company produced it. Maybe people here can remember it? I dunno. Hahaha.

Paint is an awesome application to use for interpreting childhood snacks.

This feels a lot like last time when I couldn’t remember the name of a chocolate snack I used to buy when we still lived at UP. And then! I found said chocolate snack at a stall at UP’s Shopping Center:

This comes in brown, purple, yellow & white.

This time, though, I don’t think I’d be able to find this mysterious rice cracker. I shall remain hopeful, however, that I’ll remember its name. I just need a kick to the head or something. Haha.

Okay, but a kid who’s run away from home wanders into Aziraphale’s shop while Aziraphale is out doing a blessing and Crowley is keeping an eye on the place till the angel gets back.

He’s short and dark haired and skinny in a way a healthy child really shouldn’t be. His clothes are worn and do not fit him At All. He looks about twelve. Thirteen at most.

Crowley’s slithering around the shop in snake form and doesn’t immediately notice the boy until the kid says “hello, what are you doing here?”

By hissing.

Crowley is Intrigued. He hasn’t met one of Those Humans in a very long time, and he’s never been around a child one that had the ability to talk to him like this.

So he hisses back “I live here. Whatsss your name kid?”

The boy hesitates a moment, looking around for any potential eavesdroppers. “Harry,” he hisses so quietly that Crowley just barely hears it. “Harry Potter.”

To Crowley’s increasing curiosity the boy pauses instinctively as if waiting for some sort of reaction.

Crowley just tilts his head. “Niccce to meet you Harry Potter. What are you doing here?”

When Aziraphale gets back some hours later he notices the wards on the shop have been considerably strengthened. He asks Crowley about it and the demon shrugs.

“There might be some unsavoury characters looking for our new godson so I thought I should freshen things up a bit.”

“New. Godson.”

“You’ll love him Angel! His name’s Harry, he’s asleep upstairs and he’s a self-sacrificing idiot, but not to worry, we’ll sort that out in short order.” 

“New. Godson.”

“Also,” Crowley says proudly, “he’s a sarcastic little shit. I’ll barely even need to help him work on his comebacks!”

TV ineffable husbands, Book timeline.

Aziraphale is initially very against this whole thing because “he’s a human child Crowley we can’t just take him!!”

“We didn’t take him Angel he walked in our front door.”

‘That’s not the point!’ *exasperated angel noises*

Aziraphale goes upstairs to look at the child that Crowley has installed in the bedroom just to make sure he’s okay.

He opens the door and quietly walks over to the boy sleeping soundly in the bed. Crowley, who is a step or two behind him, suddenly twitching in agitation.

Aziraphale Looks at the boy the way only an Angel (or demon) can Look at someone, because the boy is a runaway after all. There might be a small healing miracle or two necessary before they take him home.

And then he. Just. Freezes. The room goes cold, a terrible chill radiating from the Guardian of the Eastern Gate. Aziraphale’s expression as he looks at the boy in the bed is one of pure outrage.

“Yes,” says Crowley, and Aziraphale can hear matching white-hot fury in the demons voice. “I was about to mention … that.”

“Who dared?” Aziraphale spits, the words coming from his mouth sharp as ice. “What disgusting monster put that … that thing in a child’s head. A demon?”

Crowley shakes his head. “Don’t think so. Demons haven’t got the imagination for that. Except for me-“

“You would never!” Aziraphale exclaims cutting him off. “Even at your worst, at your most demonic, you would never sink to something like this!”

Crowley smiles crookedly, though the Angel can still see the fury in his eyes. “Thanks Angel. I know that, but it’s good to hear you say so too.”

“Anyway, as I was about to say, this has the hallmarks of humanity at *their* worst all over it.”

“You spoke to the boy,” Aziraphale says slowly, getting the urge to destroy something with his flaming sword under control. (Where *is* his sword he wonders, he’d really like to have it right now.) “Does he know?”

“Didn’t really get a chance to ask before he fell asleep,” Crowley answers. “But I doubt it. Pretty sure Harry thinks it’s just a weird scar.”

“His parents are dead, Angel,” the demon continues. “Probably due to whoever did that to him. He lives with some relatives, who even though he was obviously trying to be tactful, they still sound like utter shite.”

Aziraphale looks at him. There’s an almost pleading look in Crowley’s eyes now. The boy speaks the language of the serpent. That’s a rare gift, the angel knows, even among the practitioners of magic. And Crowley has always been undemonically soft where children are concerned. All the way back to the Ark.

The angel sighs. “I suppose,” he says slowly, “that it would be irresponsible to just send the boy off with that thing in his head. We ought to miracle it out at least.”

“Exactly,” Crowley nods emphatically. “Even with it miracled out he’s going to need a few days to recover,” he says reasonably, and Aziraphale can feel himself giving in. “You know how magic users are. We’ll just keep an eye on him. For a few days that’s all.”

“Just for a few days,” the angel echoes, idly wondering what kind of décor he should put in the spare room. Soothing colours, he decides.

Aziraphale and Crowley showing up to Hogwarts and announcing to Dumbledore that he’s hiring them.

Crowley is Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher. He reads one textbook and figures he’ll pick it up as he goes. That’s exactly what happens.

He’s also excellent at teaching, much better at finding the proper line between sarcasm and terror than Snape is, and does not bullshit the students. They love him.

Curse? What curse? There is no curse on the DADA position because it cannot do anything in the face of a demon’s complete and utter disbelief in it.

Aziraphale walks around the castle, encounters the ghost of Professor Binns, and helps him along to the appropriate afterlife. Students are very surprised to see a living being teaching History of Magic, but not the slightest bit unhappy about it.

Quirrel!mort tries to show up and Aziraphale and Crowley take one diabolically-and-divinely-powered look at him and in unison snap their fingers. Voldemort finds himself back in Albania without a body and Quirrel blinks his eyes at a nice French Riviera beach resort and decides to extend his sabbatical.

Crowley’s told Harry about other Parselmouths, and Aziraphale takes him to Diagon Alley, and when the Sorting Hat gets to Harry he has no preconceived objections to going into Slytherin, so into Slytherin he goes.

Harry Potter has a nice, uneventful year with no worries about Voldemort, Sorcerer’s Stones, dead unicorns or anything else.

He also doesn’t get on the quidditch team that year, but that’s okay.

Professor Crowley has plants in his classroom and office. They’re lush and they’re terrified. Neville Longbottom takes notice of this and Crowley catches him murmuring soothing words to one of them. Neville explains that they’re afraid and he’s trying to help them.

Crowley closes his eyes and has a long talk with himself (he stops time so it only takes a moment, but in actuality there’s about three hours’ worth of arguments and thrown objects). Then he opens his eyes and says, politely and without even a touch of malice, “I appreciate the assistance. Perhaps you can calm them.”

After Neville’s talked to (and about) the entire plant population of Crowley’s classroom and office, and wandered off beaming brightly, Crowley says, “I am choosing this. Don’t even think about getting smug,” and stalks off to do violence to a plate of fish and chips.

Professor Aziraphale spends the first few weeks of school making tea for a little first-year Gryffindor who hasn’t made any friends yet. After a bit, he starts inviting other students who share an interest in academic studies, and Hermione starts making friends.

Crowley is a bit more proactive. Letting a troll loose in the dungeons so that Harry and his friend Ron can save her from it is a nice little piece of diabolical work, and anyway, those toilet stalls were hideous.

He wasn’t expecting Draco to tag along with Harry, but the four of them worked together pretty nicely, and, well, there are some things you can’t do without becoming friends, and knocking out a mountain troll is one of them.

Aziraphale congratulates Crowley on the diabolical work of undermining Draco’s faith in his family’s pureblood ideology by inspiring his friendship with a muggleborn. Crowley preens for a solid week.

On Harry’s twelfth birthday, a house-elf shows up and insists that Harry cannot go to Hogwarts because he’ll die. Aziraphale and Crowley ask a few questions and Aziraphale promises to keep Harry safe and Crowlefollows Dobby home to Malfoy Manor to oops Lucius into handing Dobby a sock so that Dobby is free to protect Harry Potter from whatever the danger is.

Back at school, Aziraphale makes tea for a shy first year again and can’t help but read the recent possession of her the day after Halloween.

Pilfering the diary from her is easy. Destroying a book is harder, so he has Crowley do it.

A flaming sword once belonging to the Angel of the Eastern Gate of the Garden of Eden is easily able to defeat a horcrux.

Crowley drops in to the Chamber of Secrets and has words with the basilisk, which is all too happy to get out into the Forbidden Forest and eat some spiders.

“If the account given in Genesis is really true, ought we not, after all, to thank this serpent? He was the first schoolmaster, the first advocate of learning, the first enemy of ignorance, the first to whisper in human ears the sacred word liberty, the creator of ambition, the author of modesty, of inquiry, of doubt, of investigation, of progress and of civilization.”

Aziraphale pursed his lips. “I don’t think anyone in your part of the world reads Robert Green Ingersoll in this day and age. And besides…”

“The author of modesty. That’s me, that is. What were you going to say, angel?”