#walkingout

Ilvermorny Masachusetts, October 1954

“No,” Dag said.  He didn’t say it very loudly, but he also didn’t need to.  Dag was the littlest -- the baby, last born and best protected, because he had the rest of them to look out for him whether he wanted them to or not.  Lucan couldn’t have ignored Dag anymore than he could have ignored gravity.  Less, even.  Magic could thwart gravity.  Nothing could thwart Dag.  Especially not when Dag was feeling stubborn.

Lucan exchanged a look with his twin.

“What do you mean,” Lucan began.

“No?” Gareth finished for him, voice low and quiet.

Dag tilted his little pointy chin up, defiant.  “I mean, no,” he said again.  “Whatever you’re planning, I don’t want you to do it.”

“Someone hurt you,” Gareth pointed out.  He was still being quiet too, but with Gareth it was the quiet before the storm -- a promise of rain and thunder to come.

Dag rolled the eye that wasn’t swollen shut.  “I got hit in the face because I was being stupid,” he said.  “You did worse the last time we sparred.”

“That’s different,” Lucan said, because it was.  They were Graves’.  They all knew how to fight, with magic or without it.  Sparring was how they learned.  It wasn’t like Gareth had randomly decided to punch Dag in the face for no reason.  “Also, what do you mean, you were being stupid?”

“Er,” said Dag, the very picture of twelve year old mortification.  “I don’t want to talk about that.”

Lucan exchanged another look with Gareth.

Gareth sighed.  “Sometimes,” he told Dag, “I really wish you weren’t the baby.”

“Not a baby,” Dag said automatically.

“Because if you weren’t, we could just dangle you upside down until you ‘fessed up,” Lucan explained.

“Preferably off of something high,” mused Gareth.

“The balcony in the foyer, maybe,” Lucan suggested.

“But that would upset Lyo.”

“Well, yeah,” said Dag.  “But that’s not ‘cause I’m the littlest.  It’s Pukwudgie solidarity.”

Lucan and Gareth considered that.  Every Ilvermorny House looked out for its own, but Pukwudgies tended to take things a step farther.  Uncle Newt described them as rather clannish, and also a bit like Hufflepuffs -- whatever those were.

“Fair enough,” Lucan said easily.  “We can just go dangle whoever punched you instead.”

“No!  No dangling, no punching, no hexing, and no jinxing,” said Dag.  “No hurting people on my behalf, okay?  I don’t want you to.”

“Why not?” Gareth demanded.

“Because it’s not right!” said Dag.  “You’re bigger and stronger.  If you beat up on people who are littler than you, then you’re no better than they are -- you’d just be bullies.”

Lucan was totally willing to beat up a twelve year old, if that twelve year old had blacked Dag’s eye.  Gareth probably was too.

Still.  It was one thing to scrap with their younger siblings.  Lyo and Dag could more than hold their own.  But the average twelve year old probably couldn’t, and Dag was right.  They were bigger and stronger, to say nothing of better trained.

Lucan sighed.  “Just this once,” he said.  “But if it happens again, I don’t care how bad it looks, okay?”

“You’re our baby brother,” Gareth finished.  “It’s our job to protect you.”