Archive of Our Own ^beta

“Phil, are you sure Martyn gave us the right address? I thought he said the house was near the beach.”

Dan frowned, leaning closer to the window of their Uber car as he watched the rainforest grow denser and denser the farther they drove.

When he got no answer, Dan glanced at the opposite end of the backseat to find the other man deeply absorbed in some new mobile game. Dan rolled his eyes and stretched a leg across the floorboard to nudge Phil’s ankle, prompting him to yelp and fumble his phone through his fingers, losing his game in the process.

The two stared at each other for a moment, the confusion in Phil’s eyes making it clear that he hadn’t really heard Dan at all.

Dan jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the greenery speeding by the window behind him.

“That ain’t the beach, mate.”

“Oh!” Phil sat up straighter in his seat, pushing his glasses back up his nose as he pulled up his text conversation with his brother. “Yeah, he did say it wasn’t far from the beach. Didn’t mention a rainforest, though,” he said with a shrug, turning his screen so Dan could see.

“Weird,” Dan replied, drumming his fingers on his knees. “So, you said the guy that owns this house is also a wiz—”

Dan cut himself off, looking up and momentarily making eye contact in the rear view mirror with the Uber driver, who quickly turned their attention back to the road.

Dan cleared his throat, leaning a bit closer to Phil and lowering his voice. The whole point of taking Muggle transportation during the tour was to avoid being caught out Apparating or something by their non-magic viewers, after all. “So, he’s, uh... like us?”

Phil nodded, whispering his response. “Yeah, Martyn said he was even a fairly decent Chaser for the Thunderlarra Thunderers back in, like, the mid 90’s, but after he left the team, he fell off the map a bit. He apparently got into experimental magic, and I guess he kind of isolated himself in the rainforest.”

“And now he’s resurfaced on Airbnb, of all places?”

“Hey, it’s a tough economy, you’ve gotta squeeze out every Sickle you can get.”

Dan snorted. “Yeah, alright, Capita£ester.”

Phil’s brows furrowed behind his glasses.

“You know, ‘Capital Lester,’ like with a Pound symbol instead of an ‘L,’” Dan elaborated through giggles. “It’s what the viewers have started calling you, you ‘ole penny pincher.”

Phil scoffed, shoving Dan’s shoulder lightly before turning to look out his own window.

“Whatever,” he grumbled, although there was a hint of amusement in his voice. “I’m kind of excited to just relax out in nature for a bit, even if I will miss our 32nd floor view of Sydney.”

“Yeah? You even gonna miss the weird bathroom window?”

Phil groaned in response. “I swear those urban explorer guys across the way could probably see me peeing! I felt so exposed!”

“Oh, shut up!” Dan exclaimed, crossing his arms over his chest. “You literally sent housekeeping in on me in the bath! You don’t know the meaning of the word ‘exposed’ until you have a little Australian woman about to see you dressed in nothing but a bath bomb!”

Phil winced. “This is gonna be one of those stories that you’ll keep bringing up for forever, isn’t it?”

“I was in the bath, Phil.”

Phil rolled his eyes. “Well, I’m sure you’ll get plenty of time to relax to make up for it this week.”

“God, I hope so,” Dan said, uncrossing his arms and resting his head back against the seat. “I feel like we haven’t had any real privacy since we left London. Don’t get me wrong, I love the crew, but even when we aren’t at meet and greets or on stage, I still feel like I have about a hundred eyes watching me.”

“Well, the tour bus lifestyle isn’t really all that conducive to privacy,” Phil chuckled, watching as the Uber driver flipped on their signal and turned onto a long drive.

“No shit,” Dan laughed, reaching for his backpack as the house came into view. “The Princess Bus and fancy city hotels were fun while they lasted, but I fully intend to spend some good, quality alone time relaxing by our private pool this week.”

“Just as long as no crocodiles can get into the pool,” Phil added after they had both thanked the driver and pulled their suitcases from the boot.

Dan fixed him with a raised eyebrow in response.

“What?” Phil grabbed the handle of his luggage. “It happens all the time in Florida, alligators have no problem climbing fences!” he justified as the Uber pulled away and they made their way toward the front door. “And really, what is Australia if not just a bigger, wilder Florida?”

Dan was spared from having to think of an answer by Cornelia appearing in the open doorway to meet them, her hair somehow glowing even brighter in the Australian sun and her wand tucked effortlessly behind her ear in a way Dan was instantly jealous of; if he were to attempt it, he’d probably end up accidentally blowing his own ear off.

“There are my boys,” she greeted them warmly, standing on tiptoes to hug them both as if they hadn’t all just been together in Sydney.

“Hey, Corn,” Dan smiled as she ruffled his curls. “Where’s Martyn? We need to thank him for giving us a heads up about this place being in the middle of actual nature. He’s really coming for our ‘Dan-and-Phil-don’t-go-outside’ branding.”

“Well, he’s in the process of dealing with our little...visitors.” Cornelia scrunched up her nose as she led them into the house, their suitcases dragging behind them.

“‘Visitors?’” Phil asked, momentarily struggling to pull the wheels of his bag over the threshold.

“Apparently there was some miscommunication about what time we’d all be arriving,” she elaborated, leading them through the foyer, which Dan noticed was covered in fading Quidditch memorabilia and photographs of witches and wizards on broomsticks zooming in and out of frame.

“The owner thought we’d be here much earlier in the day and left all the windows open to let in some fresh air,” Cornelia continued as Dan and Phil looked around their temporary home, “but a bit more than air got inside… Mar is trying to get rid of them now.”

As they neared the lounge and could hear Martyn’s frustrated groans and curses, Dan braced himself for any and all manner of Australian wildlife that could be lurking ahead.

When they rounded the corner and only saw Martyn trying to wave a bee toward the open window, Dan let out a huge sigh of relief, happy to keep their streak alive of not seeing any of the many deadly beasts the outback had to offer.

“Mate, you have a wand, don’t you?” Dan laughed as Martyn continued trying to encourage the bug to head outside, nearly running into the sofa. “Why don’t you just zap it?”

This was met with a resounding “No!” from both Martyn and Phil, who looked appalled at the idea.

“The bee didn’t know any better, Dan!” Phil reasoned, moving to help his brother. “He just saw an open window and flew in, that’s not punishable by death!”

“These soft-hearted Lester boys,” Cornelia tutted quietly to Dan where they still stood in the doorway. “I suggested the same thing as you, but was told that, ‘so long it doesn’t try to sting us, it deserves our respect, Corn.’”

“I’m sure Kath would be so proud to see them now,” Dan mused as the brothers made their way around the lounge, waving their hands in a shooing motion.

“So, do you want to see your room?” Cornelia asked, turning to head down the hallway.

“Forget my room.” Dan tugged his luggage along after her. “I want to see the pool.”

- - - - -

“Morning, Mar.”

“Morning.” Martyn glanced up from his laptop where he was working at the breakfast bar to see his younger brother stumbling in from their early morning liveshow, pouring himself a coffee from the pot Martyn had just made and a bowl of cereal with a frown. “What’s with the face?”

“Have you been in the bathroom in the main hallway yet?” Phil asked, fishing a spoon out of the silver drawer.

“Nah, I’ve only used the en suite off the master bedroom,” Martyn answered before reaching for his own coffee. “Why?”

Phil plopped down on the barstool next to him, the milk in his bowl sloshing dangerously. “The mirror over the sink talks?” he said, as if he was still questioning the fact himself.

Martyn blew some of the steam off the top of his coffee, but didn’t seem too phased. “Probably just some of the owner’s weird experimental magic. He mentioned the house had some ‘interesting features.’”

Martyn added air quotes for emphasis with the hand not holding his mug. Phil noticed he only employed two fingers rather than using his whole hand like Phil had a tendency to do, something his viewers never failed to point out.

“Well, I wouldn’t recommend chatting with the mirror,” Phil continued around a mouthful of cereal. “He’s not very nice.”

Martyn snorted over the rim of his mug. “What makes you say that?”

“He talked for the first time while I was trying to put my contacts in, and it scared me so much I nearly dropped my lens in the floor! He told me I looked like I had ‘a few roos loose in the top paddock,’ which I assume isn’t a good thing based on how hard it made him laugh.”

Martyn had to stifle his own giggles at the look on his brother’s face. “I wouldn’t take it too personally, it’s probably just charmed to insult whoever looks in it.”

Phil hummed his agreement, getting another bite of his breakfast.

“If you don’t like the mirror, I would also steer clear of the closet at the end of the hall,” Martyn added, turning back to his computer. “It looks like a regular closet, but when you open it, it sends you back outside to the front doorstep.”

“Merlin’s sake, it’s like living in the Hogwarts dorms with PJ all over again,” Phil laughed. “He was always coming up with crazy stuff like that, said magic didn’t always have to have a point.”

“True,” Martyn agreed, “but it is intended to make things more convenient, and I’m not quite sure a prank closet fits that bill.”

Phil chuckled, passing his wand over his own mug to quickly cool the coffee to a drinkable temperature. As he took a sip, he glanced over at Martyn’s screen.

“What are you working on so early?”

“Just checking on how the Sydney pop up shop is doing,” Martyn answered without looking away from his email. “Looks like your new stuff is selling pretty well, they’re already running low on the socks.”

Phil leaned closer to get a look at the numbers for himself, smiling at how much people seemed to like his new solo merch.

“Is the tour merch about ready to go on the website?” he asked, chasing a marshmallow around his bowl with the spoon.

“Yup, should be ready to launch on Friday.” Martyn clicked over to another tab. “Can’t believe the tour is already almost over.”

“I can,” Phil sighed, rubbing at the bags he knew were still lining the bottom of his eyes. “I feel like I haven’t fully slept in weeks.”

“Did you try that low dose Sleeping Draught that Mum recommended?”

“I did, but it was too hard to keep brewing when we were on the move so much in America,” Phil replied, carding his fingers through his bedhead. “Besides, I couldn’t really get past the taste of the Flobberworm mucus. I don’t care what Mum says, the lavender does not cover it.”

Martyn laughed, finishing up his drink and waving his wand to send the mug floating into the sink.

“It’s been worth it, though.” Phil smiled. “Especially to see our magic and Muggle viewers interacting at the shows, even if the Muggles had no idea.”

“Honestly, you’re lucky none of those kids blew their cover. The Ministry lets you all get away with a lot back home, but the MACUSA would have been all over you and Dan.”

“You would have bailed us out, though, right?” Phil said, pointing his spoon in his brother’s direction. When he received no immediate answer, he pouted a bit. “Right?”

“Okay, okay,” Martyn placated, “as your business partner whose job and livelihood depends largely on your success, yes, I would have absolutely bailed you out.”

“But what about as my brother?” Phil exclaimed.

“Well, as your brother, I would have dutifully come to visit you every couple of years or so, give you Mum and Dad’s best and all that.”

Phil shoved at his shoulder, nearly knocking him off his stool. Martyn moved to pull him into a headlock, but they were both startled apart by the sound of yelling from down the hall.

“Don’t tell me to ‘bugger off,’ you shiny piece of shit! You bugger off! Oh wait, you can’t because you’re stuck to the bloody wall!”

“Sounds like Dan’s getting on great with the bathroom mirror.” Martyn nodded his head toward the commotion. “Might even replace you as his best mate.”

“Oh, come off it,” Phil laughed, nudging his brother’s elbow with his own.

“Look out, everyone, Dan and Mirror Games, coming soon!”

“Martyn!”

“‘Minof’ isn’t quite as catchy as the original, though, might have to rename that one.”

“Martyn, shhh, he’s gonna hear you! And he’s already grumpy enough from having to get up so early to do our liveshow,” Phil tried to whisper through giggles as Dan’s stomping footsteps echoed down the hall.

Both Lesters were still snickering a bit by the time Dan rounded the corner, though.

“Oh, yes, Dan got into a screaming match with a mirror, it’s very funny,” Dan grumbled, noticing the cabinet door Phil had left open when getting his bowl and slamming it shut with a little more force than necessary.

“And a good morning to you, too,” Martyn said with a smirk.

Dan rolled his eyes, crossing his arms over his chest. “We’d better damn well be doing something relaxing today before my head explodes.”

“Corn and I were thinking of heading down to the beach, maybe getting some ice cream later?” Martyn suggested.

“That sounds nice, doesn’t it, Dan?” Phil prodded a little, nodding overenthusiastically.

“Yeah, that actually sounds really good,” Dan sighed, practically deflating before their eyes and letting his arms drop back to his sides as Cornelia strolled into the kitchen, smiling wide.

“Good morning, boys,” she chirped, patting Dan’s arm as she passed him to get to the coffee, humming under her breath.

“Someone woke up on the right side of the bed this morning,” Phil laughed, watching the spoon stir round her mug as she guided it with her wand.

“Oh, I just had a lovely chat with the mirror in the bathroom, he called me a ‘right beaut!’” Cornelia grinned. “Have any of you met him yet?”

Martyn and Phil both tucked their heads down, a case of giggles working their way forward again at the look of pure rage taking shape on Dan’s face.

- - - - -

Phil pinched the edges of the plastic packaging between his fingers and pulled it apart slowly, glancing over his shoulder to make sure he was still alone in the kitchen. Sure, he was a grown man and could technically eat as many Tim Tams as he damn well pleased, but they all had just gotten ice cream down at the beach not that long ago, so he’d rather continue indulging his sweet tooth in private than deal with any judgement from the other three.

Just as he was shoving the last bite of biscuit into his mouth and licking the remnants of chocolate from his fingers, Phil heard a loud burst of laughter from the lounge.

He grabbed his glass of water—his original excuse for coming into the kitchen in the first place—and headed back into the next room where Martyn was sprawled out on the sofa, his feet resting against Cornelia’s lap, and Dan sat criss-cross on the floor, leaning back against an armchair. All three were in various states of laughter, clutching their stomachs or wiping tears from the corners of their eyes.

“Do it again, Dan, do it again!” Martyn wheezed between fits of giggles as Phil returned to his previous spot in front of the coffee table and sat his glass down on a coaster.

“Okay, okay,” Dan choked out, trying to regulate his breathing before clearing his throat. He pointed a finger at Phil, pretending to wobble a bit and slur his words as if he had been heavily drinking. “Look at yoooouuuu lads! Can I come get in there with ‘ya?”

As everyone else dissolved into hysterics at Dan’s impression, Phil felt his face flood with heat at the memory of the crowd of rowdy drunken women out on a hen do, wolf whistling at him in their Brighton hotel while he struggled to get the elevator to close.

Phil, while mildly flattered by the compliments on his new look, had mostly just been mortified by the unwelcomed attention, and even just thinking about the experience still set his social anxiety on edge.

Dan, however, had found the whole ordeal hilarious, and had taken to reenacting the story to nearly every member of their crew throughout the tour. Phil had mostly just ignored everyone’s laughter at his expense, and had sometimes even managed to joke along.

But there was something about seeing Martyn laughing at him now that left him feeling like he was suddenly back in Rawtenstall, overhearing his older brother—the person he looked up to most in the world—refer to Phil to his friends as his “weird kid brother.” His brain was screaming at him to deflect the attention, and words were tumbling out of his mouth before he could really even process them.

“Martyn, did we ever tell you about Dan and the Canadian border agent?”

Dan shot him what Phil could only describe as a warning look, but Martyn sat up straight on the couch with a mischievous smile, clearly interested. “Did I miss all the fun when I flew back to the UK?”

Feeling relief wash over him as everyone’s attention shifted, Phil smirked a bit in Dan’s direction. “Well, we had to get off the tour bus at the border at, like, two in the morning so they could search it, and Dan got a bit flustered by Chan the border agent.”

As Martyn broke out in another round of laughter and Cornelia bit her lip to stifle her own, Dan glared at Phil, a red patch blooming near his jaw. “I was not flustered, bloody hell, Phil!”

“Could’ve fooled me, you couldn’t stop staring at him,” Phil replied, casually reaching for his water and taking a sip with an eyebrow raised.

“Because he looked exactly like Tadashi from Big Hero 6! I was just sort of in shock, it’s not everyday you see a cartoon character come to life!”

“Doesn’t quite explain why you were embarrassed for him to see you in your Game of Thrones pajamas, though, does it?”

As Martyn and Cornelia both snorted from the sofa, Dan grabbed a throw pillow from the chair behind him and tossed it toward Phil, smacking him in the side of the head.

“Well, if you’re going to start the embarrassing tour story war…” Dan challenged, “what about when Phil made us take his merch pictures in the park in Edinburgh and someone saw him climbing out of a bush adjusting his clothes?”

“Hey!” Phil interjected. “You were in that bush, too!” He attempted to throw the pillow back at the other man, but Dan easily caught it.

“But the whole thing was your idea for your merch, mate, which makes it much more embarrassing for you in the long run.”

Phil pouted, racking his brain for a worse story to tell. “Well… Dan forgot that we’d already given a Truth Bomb for this morning’s Rize liveshow and tweeted out a completely different one before I woke up!”

“And then you told a pun so bad during that liveshow that you crashed the app!”

“That’s not true, and my puns are great!” Phil crossed his arms over his chest, his worries about his brother’s laughter starting to fade in favor of winning whatever game he and Dan seemed to have going. “How about when Dan made a hotel switch his room because it smelled bad, but then almost refused to go in the second room because of a tiny spider on the bed?”

“Well, Phil almost refused to eat his toast in Sydney because they had pre-buttered it for him!”

“Oh, yeah?” Phil answered, sitting up on his knees. “Have you backed anything up for Bilbo lately, Dan?”

Dan’s eyes narrowed, and he glanced over at Martyn and Cornelia on the sofa as if trying to garner their support. “The guy checking our passports in America complimented Phil’s name because he was named Phil, too, and Phil thought the guy was trying to flirt with him.”

“At least I didn’t forget my own name!” Phil shot back. “Dan introduced himself to one of our crew members as Phil just before tour started!”

“Phil destroyed his leg on the set back in America!”

“Better than you hurting yourself because you got scared by the sound of the bus driver cleaning!” Phil retorted, vaguely aware that Martyn and Cornelia had gone silent and were glancing back and forth between them like a tennis match.

“Umm, boys?” Cornelia said softly, trying to intervene, though she was largely ignored. Dan and Phil both sat fuming at each other; somewhere along the way, they seemed to have moved beyond teasing banter to a full blown argument, and neither seemed ready to back down.

“How about the time Phil claimed he saw ‘beekeepers’ outside his hotel window at, like, six in the morning?” Dan jumped back in.

“I’ve told you a million times, I didn’t make that up!” Phil practically shouted, jumping to his feet as Dan did the same. “Besides, that’s not even that embarrassing, you’re just reaching for stories now.”

“Oh, I never have to reach for stories of embarrassing things you’ve done,” Dan said, stepping closer and poking Phil in the chest.

“Maybe not normally,” Phil countered, pushing Dan’s hand away. “But face it, Dan, you’ve done way more embarrassing things on this tour than I have.”

“Have I, now?” Dan chuckled darkly. “Care to share with the class?”

“Guys,” Martyn chimed in, rising from the couch as if ready to step in between them if need be, “I think maybe that’s enough stories for the night.”

“Mar’s right, boys, it’s been a long day for both of you with that early liveshow,” Cornelia added, a slight tremor of worry in her voice. “I think emotions are just running a little high with the tour coming to an end, and maybe we should all just sleep it off?”

“No, I want to hear this list Phil’s apparently been keeping track of,” Dan insisted, fixing Phil with an angry glare.

Phil faltered for a moment, silently agreeing with Cornelia, that nearly six months’ worth of tension—not to mention the months before that they spent in the planning stages—was just starting to come to a head as the tour wrapped up.

“That’s what I thought,” Dan said triumphantly when Phil didn’t immediately respond, raising his chin in the air. “Couldn’t come up with anything, could you?”

Phil felt a fresh wave of anger course through him at Dan’s accusation, particularly since he had just been thinking about why they were really jabbing at each other and had been planning on stopping the argument there.

Normally when they argued, Phil was able to keep his emotions relatively in check: throughout Dan’s struggles with his depression diagnosis and getting his medication and life balanced, Phil had learned to push the petty stuff to the side in favor of helping him.

Tonight, though, he was more exhausted than he ever remembered being, sitting at the tail end of a world tour. He felt the anger and frustration practically pulsing through him; this time, he just couldn’t push it down and away, and the perfect target was standing right in front of him.

Phil took another half a step forward, squaring up to Dan and standing just a bit straighter to minimize their height difference and look him straight in the eye.

“You knocked over a ton of stuff in one of the airports, and a viewer’s mum got pictures,” Phil growled, holding up one finger to start counting. “You knew you were going on tour in Australia in the winter and didn’t think to bring any warm clothes with you. We got in a wreck in the tour bus and you didn’t even wake up.”

Dan started to shrink back a bit as Phil’s list grew, and when Phil found himself suddenly towering over the other man a bit, he was reminded a bit of an anxious 18-year-old Dan that hadn’t quite hit his last growth spurt yet, always nervous about what other people—especially Phil—thought of him. The guilt started to twist a bit in Phil’s stomach, but he couldn’t seem to stop himself.

“You cried in Hobbiton. Twice,” Phil continued, adding another finger. “You yelled so much when we were filming in the hotel that the lady next door asked to move rooms. You got jealous when the Queer Eye Twitter account replied to my tweet about watching them on the plane and immediately had to try for your own response, then you sulked until you got it.”

Dan had taken a full step back away from Phil, the embarrassment and hurt obvious in his eyes, but it was as if Phil’s mouth was running on autopilot.

“The airport in America thought you were an unaccompanied minor,” Phil said, already halfway through the fingers on his second hand. “And to be honest, as childishly as you behave sometimes, I really couldn’t even blame them.”

That seemed to be the final straw for Dan, who had tears brimming in his eyes as he pushed past Phil to get out of the room before they started falling. The three people still sitting in the lounge sat in silence as they listened to his quick footsteps heading down the hallway, followed by the slamming of his bedroom door.

“Phil,” Cornelia said cautiously, “you didn’t really mean any of that, did you?”

At her soft words, Phil’s resolve crumpled and he collapsed backwards into one of the armchairs. “Of course I didn’t. I just...I couldn’t stop, and I guess I went too far.”

“I’ve never seen you guys fight like that,” Martyn said, returning to his own seat and putting his feet up on the coffee table. “I mean, I’ve seen you bicker over t-shirt designs and whose turn it is to empty the bin and shit, but that was… wow.”

Phil groaned, sliding so far down in the seat that the earpieces of his glasses caught on the back of the chair and they slipped down his face.

“Phil, you have to go apologize to him,” Cornelia implored. “You still have four more countries to go, you can’t survive that if you’re fighting with each other!”

“Do I have to do it right now?” Phil asked her, although from the position he was sitting in, he looked more like he was addressing his own belly button.

“Rip the plaster off, little bro,” Martyn advised. “The longer you let it fester, the worse it’s gonna get.”

Phil gave an exasperated sigh before heaving himself up off the chair. “What do I even say? He’s locked himself in his room, he probably won’t even let me in.”

“Take him a cuppa and some sweets?” Martyn suggested with a shrug. “Always worked when you were mad at me growing up.”

Cornelia nodded her agreement, scooting over on the sofa and tucking herself under Martyn’s arm. “I think I saw some nice teas on the counter in the kitchen. I’m sure the owner wouldn’t mind, he said to help ourselves to anything in there.”

“Alright, wish me luck,” Phil said, already sounding a bit dejected as he headed out of the lounge and back into the kitchen.

Already feeling the beginnings of a migraine taking shape behind his eyes, Phil turned the dimmer switch on the kitchen lights down nearly as low as it could go before walking over to the counter and flipping open the lid of the kettle. He then reached in his pocket for his wand, pointing it down into the kettle.

“Aguamenti,” he muttered, watching a jet of clear water pour from his wand and stopping it just before the kettle was full. He shut the lid and gave the kettle a sharp tap with his wand, a burst of steam pouring from the kettle as the water heated instantly.

Glancing beside the kettle, he noticed an overwhelming number of small tins littering the counter; nothing seemed to be in its original container, as the labels were haphazardly ripped off each tin and replaced by tiny white stickers inscribed with what was presumably the homeowner’s messy cursive.

Looking through the tins and squinting at the sloppy writing in the dim kitchen lighting, Phil was reminded of searching through hundreds of vials of ingredients in the potions classroom back at Hogwarts. Which, of course, only served to make him think of his time at school with Dan, making him feel even more guilty and hasten his pace a bit searching for the perfect apology tea to take to his friend. More like apolog-TEA, Phil snickered to himself.

As it was getting pretty late and he didn’t want to keep Dan awake too much longer, Phil finally settled on a small yellow tin with a bright red lid labelled—well, as far as Phil could tell from the heavily sloping script—as “Decaf Tea.” He grabbed a spoon and scooped out a good amount, pouring out some hot water from the kettle and letting the tea steep while he got together a small plate of Tim Tams.

Tea and treats gathered together, Phil grabbed the warm mug and plate, taking a deep breath in through his nose and blowing it out through his nose, steadying himself before summoning some courage and heading down the hall.

- - - - -

As soon as Dan was safely in his room after storming out of the lounge, the door slammed shut behind him, the tears spilled out. It wasn’t quite full on ugly-cry sobbing, but it was certainly enough to soak his face. He just couldn’t keep it all in; he was already exhausted, and then on top of that, he and Phil had to get in a fight? They almost never went at each other like that, and it still had him reeling a bit.

Pulling the sleeves of his hoodie down over his hands, Dan swiped at his cheeks to dry up some of the tears before crossing the room and dropping cross-legged onto his bed, grabbing his Switch on the way. It was probably a lot healthier to take out his frustration by playing some Fortnite rather than sit there dwelling on everything.

After getting eliminated pretty early in a couple of rounds, though, he realized his emotions were clouding his concentration too much to focus on the game. Just as he shut his Switch down and tossed it aside on the bed, he heard a timid knock at his door.

“Go away, Phil,” he growled, laying back and burying his face in his pillow.

“Dan, please, I’m so sorry,” came Phil’s muffled voice through the wood. “You know I didn’t mean any of that.”

“Oh, do I, now?” Dan said, a fresh shot of anger and adrenaline making him sit back up on the bed again.

“Yes, Dan, you do,” Phil insisted softly. “You know how snappy I get when I’m tired, I would never say of that stuff if it weren’t for all of this tour craziness.”

Dan frowned to himself, crossing his arms over his chest for a moment until he realized it made him look like a petulant child and he dropped them back down to his sides. Phil evidently took his lack of response as him giving him the silent treatment, though, so he continued.

“Dan, please, just let me in so we can talk about this?” he urged Dan through the door. “We’ve been doing so much better at talking through arguments since you started therapy, and I don’t think four stops from the end of an international tour is the time to abandon that.”

Dan felt his anger receding a bit as he stared at the door, considering it.

“I also brought biscuits and tea,” Phil added hopefully.

Dan rolled his eyes fondly and swung his legs over the side of the bed, crossing the room and opening the door, surprising Phil enough that he yelped and almost dropped everything he was holding.

“I’m not saying I forgive you yet,” Dan clarified, grabbing a Tim Tam off the plate and taking a bite as he walked back to his bed. “But I’m willing to think about it.”

“I’ll take it,” Phil said, stepping inside the room and pushing the door shut behind him with his foot.

“So, what gives, Lester?”

Phil sighed, putting the plate and mug down on the bedside table before sitting at the foot of the bed.

“I don’t know,” he said, twisting his fingers around. “I just saw Martyn laughing at me, and I just kind of snapped? It made me feel like a little kid all over again, and I hated it, you know?”

Dan didn’t answer, and Phil turned to look at him, finding him biting his lip to keep from laughing.

“What?” Phil exclaimed, breaking out in a smile himself.

“I don’t know, it just sounded so dumb!” Dan chuckled, pulling his knees to his chest. “Martyn laughs at us all the time, why was this time any different?”

Phil shrugged. “I reckon Cornelia’s probably right, the stress of the tour and everything has just built up more than I realized?”

Dan nodded. He definitely understood that: he felt like he hadn’t had a full night’s sleep in probably four or five months, and getting up early that morning to try and get their liveshow to fit everyone’s time zones really didn’t help matters much. He had felt a latent irritation buzzing under his own skin for most of the day, himself.

“Plus I think I have a little brother complex. I just always feel this need to look cool in front of Martyn, and it just never works out for me.” Phil took a deep breath, letting it out in a bit of a shaky exhale and grabbing Dan’s foot where it rested next to him. “I’m really, really sorry I took all of that out on you, though. It wasn’t fair of me.”

“Nah, it’s alright, I sorta get it,” Dan said, picking up another Tim Tam and offering it to Phil, who gratefully accepted and started nibbling on it. “Water under the bridge, yeah?”

Phil nodded, looking relieved. “Thank you for understanding.” He patted Dan’s socked foot a couple more times before standing up. “Now, drink your tea and get some sleep.”

Dan rolled his eyes, but made a show of picking up his mug and taking a sip. “Happy, Mum?”

“Ew, don’t call me your mum,” Phil said, face screwing up in disgust.

“Sorry, Dad,” Dan said, taking another sip of his tea and laughing into the mug, accidentally choking himself up a bit.

“Serves you right,” Phil chuckled, opening the door and stepping out into the hall as Dan cleared his throat. “Goodnight, Daniel.”

“Night, Phil.”

- - - - -

Dan slowly blinked awake, hovering just close enough to the edge of consciousness to realize that the birds chirping away beyond the curtains sounded much more exotic than the pigeons that usually woke him up at home in his London flat.

Yawning widely, he stretched out his legs as far as they could go and rubbed some sleep from his eyes. He was surprised to find that his body felt much more relaxed than it had when he went to bed; after touring the world for months, some underlying joint stiffness had more or less become a given, but somehow this morning he felt better than he had in years.

Deciding to forgo checking his phone for the moment in favor of heading toward the bathroom, Dan pushed the blankets away and swung his legs over the side of the bed.

For some reason that his still sleep-addled mind couldn’t wrap around fully, his feet didn’t quite reach the floor. He didn’t remember the bed being all that tall, but he had slept in a lot of different beds over the last few months, so it was entirely possible that his memory was just playing tricks on him this morning. He shrugged, scooting forward until his feet dangled close enough to the floor that he felt safe hopping down.

As soon as he landed on the hardwood, he realized just how wrong he really was.

His NASA cat shirt was always big on him, but instead of hitting at his upper thighs like usual, today it was skimming the bottoms of his knees, fitting him more like a dress.

In a state of near shock, Dan held his arms out in front of him, only to see that his hands had shrunken down to about half their normal size, if that.

“What the f—”

At the sound of his suddenly much higher pitched voice, Dan clamped one of his now smaller hands over his mouth before he could even get the full curse out.

Dan rushed across the room, throwing open the door and hurrying across the hallway to the bathroom. He turned to look at his reflection, but quickly realized he was too short to see anything except his mess of brown curls in the highly mounted mirror. With a groan of frustration, he braced both hands on either side of the sink, pushing himself up enough to see.

He nearly slipped from the surprise of what he saw in the mirror; staring back at him was a panic-stricken version of his ten-year-old self, give or take a couple years.

“No, no, no, this is not happening,” he muttered, pulling his legs up on the counter to sit on his knees so his hands were free to explore his suddenly younger face.

“This is all just a really trippy nightmare,” he attempted to reassure himself, squishing up his own cheeks. “I’m actually still sound asleep, and in a few minutes I’ll wake up back in bed!”

A loud laugh filled the room, which Dan immediately recognized as belonging to his new arch nemesis: the bathroom mirror.

“Hate to break it to ‘ya, ‘ya little ankle biter,” the mirror said in its thick accent, “but this ain’t a dream.”

“Oh, God,” Dan groaned, tugging at his now unpierced earlobes.

“Wish it was a dream,” the mirror continued. “That ugly mug of yours isn’t quite as bad as it was yesterday, but that doesn’t mean I wanna keep staring at it all day!”

Dan’s eyes narrowed at the disembodied voice. “You know, I’m about a minute away from smashing you into a million pieces.”

This only earned him another round of laughter from the mirror. “Oh, and that sounded real threatening coming out of that tiny body! Go ahead and try, boy! Have ‘ya ever broken an enchanted mirror? Leaves ‘ya with a whole lot more than just seven years of bad luck!”

Dan rolled his eyes, the reflection of his younger self doing the same. He huffed, shoving away from the counter and dropping back to the ground.

“I just don’t understand!” Dan exclaimed, running his fingers through his bedhead. “Did I accidentally cast a spell in my sleep? Can I reverse it? Am I stuck like this forever?” Dan gripped at his hair tighter, hard enough to hurt.

“Alright, alright!” the mirror had to nearly shout over Dan’s mumbling to himself as he paced the tile floor. “No need to spit the dummy out the pram, calm yourself!”

Dan stopped mid-pace to glance back up at the mirror, tears unwillingly brimming in his ten-year-old eyes.

“Think back on what you did last night, yeah?” the mirror prompted, sounding uncharacteristically gentle at the sight of Dan’s distress. “Did you do anything out of the ordinary?”

Dan frowned, staring at his (tiny) bare feet on the bathroom tiles. “Umm… I got pretty mad at Phil, that’s kind of unusual?”

“Not sure a fight with your mate is enough to cause spontaneous de-aging, boy.”

Dan nodded, trying to think back. “Well, I played video games locked in my room, Phil brought me some apology tea and we made up, I scrolled Twitter until I couldn’t stay awake anymore, and then I went to bed.”

“What was that middle bit?”

“Phil and I made up?”

“No, no, what did you say he brought you?”

“Oh! He brought me a cup of tea!” Dan corrected himself. “Why, is that important?”

The mirror stayed quiet for a moment, setting Dan’s nerves even more on edge, although when it finally did speak again, it didn’t do much in the way of settling them.

“That tea didn’t happen to be out of my owner’s kitchen, did it? He has a penchant for leaving his experimental magic lying about…”

Dan’s eyes went wide, and he tore out of the bathroom and into the hallway to bang both fists against Phil’s door.

- - - - -

Phil jerked awake with a start to the sound of someone at his door.

His eyes struggled to focus as he loosened his grip on his blue and green pillow, reaching across to the nightstand and fumbling around for his glasses. Pushing the frames up his nose, he glanced at his phone for the time before the pounding at his door started up again.

“I’m coming, I’m coming!” he shouted, throwing the blankets back and stumbling out of bed. He yanked the door open, expecting to come face-to-face with either Martyn or Dan—Cornelia was far too considerate to be banging on his door so early in the morning—but he was surprised to not see anyone standing straight ahead of him, and his brow furrowed.

At the sound of a small voice clearing its throat, Phil shifted his gaze down a few inches, and he suddenly found himself staggering against the doorframe in shock.

Staring up at him was a much shorter, much younger Dan, practically drowning in his favorite cat nightshirt and seething so hard that Phil could easily imagine steam pouring out of his ears.

“Dan? What the— How the—” Phil couldn’t even manage to formulate a sentence that could completely capture all of the questions brewing in his mind, and he clutched at his chest as he tried to calm his racing pulse.

“Oh, do I look a bit different?” the tiny version of Dan snarked, crossing his arms over his chest. “I tried out a new anti-aging facemask, I was hoping someone would notice.”

“I—I don’t understand,” Phil stammered. “How did this happen?”

“I reckon I should be the one asking you that, mate.”

“Wha—me? You think I would want to do this to you?”

Dan rolled his eyes. “Obviously I don’t think you did it on purpose, you utter spork.”

“But how could I have caused this?” Phil frowned. “I’ve been right here in bed all night, ever since I got back from bringing you your...tea…”

Dan’s eyebrows lifted and he nodded as the spark of realization seemed to dawn on Phil’s face.

“Oh, no,” Phil groaned, pushing past Dan to rush to the kitchen, practically slamming into the counter as he began shoving aside containers of all shapes and sizes.

By the time Dan caught up to him with his now considerably shorter legs, Phil had located the familiar yellow and red tin from the night before. The scribbled cursive was just as difficult to make out in the early morning sunlight streaming through the window as it had been in the darkened kitchen the previous night, but it still appeared to say “decaf tea” to him, no matter how hard he squinted.

“Let me see that,” Dan said, grabbing the tin out of Phil’s hands and examining it for himself. When he finally deciphered the scrawled writing, he groaned loudly, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“What’s wrong?” Phil asked almost in a whisper, his hands suddenly going clammy. “Is it not just decaf like I thought?”

“Phil, you blind bat!” Dan exclaimed, turning the tin around and pointing at the label. “It says ‘deAGE,’ not ‘deCAF!’”

Phil swiped the tin back from Dan and peered at it again, as if looking one more time might change the results. Alas, they stayed the same, and he dropped it back onto the counter in dismay. “Who the hell leaves something like that just sitting around in their kitchen?”

“Oh, I don’t know, Phil, probably the same type of guy to own an enchanted talking mirror and build an indoor Quidditch pitch in his garage.”

“Wait, really? I hadn’t seen that yet—”

“Phil! Focus!” Dan said, snapping his fingers in front of the other man’s face. “We need to figure this out, like, ASAP!”

“Right, right,” Phil replied, stroking his chin as he dropped deep in thought to look for a possible solution. He was quickly pulled from his thoughts, though, by the sound of his brother’s voice echoing down the hall.

“Shit, shit, Martyn’s up!” Phil exclaimed, grabbing Dan by the wrist and dragging him down the hallway to Phil’s room, ignoring Dan’s cries of protest and attempts to wriggle free from Phil’s grasp. Once they were both safely inside, Phil all but slammed the door shut, panting from the exertion.

“Phil, what the hell?” Dan whined, rubbing at his wrist.

Phil swung around to face Dan, eyes wide and a finger pressed to his lips in a plea for silence just as there was a knock at the door.

“Phil? You up yet?” came Martyn’s voice, slightly muffled by the door in between them. As Dan and Phil both turned their attention to the door, the knob slowly started to turn.

“No, don’t come in, Mar!” Phil shouted, rushing to hold the door in place.

“Why not?”

“Because...because…” Phil sputtered, grasping for a plausible excuse. “Because I’m naked!”

The doorknob instantly stopped twisting at that declaration, Martyn clearly not wanting to see his little brother in all his glory. “Alright, weirdo, I was just gonna see if you wanted to come with us for breakfast.”

“Breakfast?” Phil asked, glancing back over his shoulder at Dan, who had a deep frown on his young face.

“Yeah, you know, your literal favorite time of the day?” Martyn laughed through the door. “Corn and I were going to Apparate into town to this cute little cafe we saw, then maybe hit some of the shops or head back to the beach. You in?”

Phil shook his head before realizing his brother couldn’t actually see him. “Um, no, I think I’m just going to stay inside today, maybe catch up on some Netflix or something,” he answered, playing with the hem of his t-shirt.

“Alright, sounds good,” Martyn said, his big brother obligation of extending an invitation fulfilled. “I’m just gonna pop over to Dan’s room, see if he wants to go—”

“No!” Phil interrupted, heart racing again.

“Um, why not?” Phil could practically hear the suspicion dripping from his brother’s voice.

Phil floundered for an excuse, looking back just in time to see Dan fake a yawn and pretend to lay his head on a pillow.

“He’s still asleep!” Phil finally answered, shooting Dan a thumbs up. “We made up after our fight last night, but he was still kind of in a rotten mood, so we should probably just let him sleep it off.”

“Alright, whatever,” Martyn replied. “I guess we’ll see you guys later, then? Maybe for dinner?”

“Sure! Have a good day!” Phil called out as he pressed his ear to the door, listening to his brother’s footsteps as they faded away. He stayed frozen in place until he heard the tell-tale pop! that accompanied Martyn and Cornelia’s Apparating, then turned back to Dan with a sigh of relief.

“Okay, Lester,” Dan said, pointing a finger in Phil’s direction, “explain. Why are we hiding from your brother?”

Phil’s shoulders slumped as he moved away from the door, collapsing onto the bed. “Because I didn’t want him to see you like this.” He waved a hand at Dan’s tiny form before pushing his glasses up to rub at his eyes.

“Why?” Dan asked, moving to sit next to Phil where he was stretched out on the bed, his shorter legs dangling over the edge. “I mean, I know it was a pretty stupid mistake, but he might have known some way to help.”

“That’s just it,” Phil said, righting his glasses and sitting up. “It was a stupid mistake, and it was my stupid mistake, and he can’t know it.”

“I really don’t understand, Phil.”

Phil sighed. “That’s because you’ve never been the younger brother, constantly being teased for your mistakes. You do one thing wrong, and they make sure you never forget it.”

“Phil, that’s kind of ridiculous, you guys are in your 30s.”

“Exactly! I’m in my 30s, I shouldn’t be making such stupid mistakes anymore!” Phil fell back against the bed again, pulling his pillow over his face.

Dan still didn’t fully get it, but he sympathized. “Okay. So, we won’t ask your brother for help,” he relented, patting Phil’s knee. “But we need to figure out something, Phil, I can’t just stay ten years old, we’re still on tour.”

Phil pulled the pillow down off his eyes to look at Dan more closely. “Ten? Is that how old you are right now?”

“I think so?” Dan said, pulling his knees to his chest so he could pull his oversized shirt down over his legs. “I mean, it has been almost two decades since I looked in the mirror at my ten-year-old self, so I could off by a couple years.”

Phil nodded, seemingly not able to take his eyes off his younger friend. “It’s so weird, I’ve never really seen you this age. Just that awful picture from a few years later that you put on your website, the one with the funny surfer hair.”

“Oi, watch it, Highlighter Head,” Dan jabbed.

“Touche.”

Dan rested his head against the top of his knees. “Phil, what are we going to do?” he asked quietly.

Phil’s heart broke a bit at the sad look on his face. “Maybe there’s a spell we could try?”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. Maybe Finite Incantatem?” Phil suggested.

“That’s only for ending spell effects, though. It doesn’t work on ingested things like potions.”

“Well… We could go to the wizarding hospital in Sydney.”

“Not a chance,” Dan immediately answered. “What if we run into a viewer in the city? And if the hospital wants to admit me, we might get stuck there. Then we can’t film Instagram stories, and we might even miss our flight to Manila!”

“I hate to break it to you, but I think we would miss our flight either way,” Phil added with a grimace. “You don’t exactly match your passport photo right now.”

“Not helping, Phil.”

“Sorry,” Phil said, sitting back up and running a hand through his quiff.

“It’s too bad we can’t just tell Martyn and Cornelia, you know, since they booked the house and have all the contact information,” Dan sighed. “It’d be really helpful if we could just talk to the owner.”

“Wait a minute,” Phil said, suddenly jumping up from the bed. “We don’t need to actually talk to him, we just need someone who knows how he thinks!”

Phil rushed over to the door, pulling it open so fast he worried it would fall off its hinges as he headed toward the bathroom, Dan trailing behind him.

“Alright, mirror man, wake up! We’ve got some questions for you!”

- - - - -

After an arduous interrogation that felt like it dragged on for hours to Phil, they had finally gotten all of the information they needed out of the mirror about a shop in town that the homeowner frequented for a lot of his magic supplies.

Well, almost all of the information they needed. The mirror couldn’t quite tell them what the shop was called. Or what it looked like. Or even where in town it was. (“Well, I’m a pissin’ mirror, ain’t I, mate? How often ‘ya think I get out to take a stroll ‘round the town for a bit of fresh air?”)

The mirror did, however, remember his owner mentioning the shop was under a concealment spell to appear rundown and grimy to any non-magical people walking by, much like the one Phil remembered being around the Leaky Cauldron in London. It wasn’t much to go on, but it was definitely a start, and Dan and Phil both quickly left the bathroom to get dressed to head into town.

Once back in his room, Phil tore through his partially unpacked suitcase, grabbing the first pair of black jeans and clean-looking t-shirt he saw and throwing them on. He didn’t even attempt to find matching socks (not that he usually did), settling on a loose orange cactus sock from his own merch and another one covered in corgis, unceremoniously pulling them on and stuffing his feet into his shoes. He grabbed his phone and his wand, shoving each in a different pocket of his jeans before rushing to find Dan in his own room.

When he walked through the open doorway, he found Dan laying out an outfit across his bed. Phil glanced at the clothes—Dan’s favorite black and white grid shorts, a black t-shirt, and a thin long-sleeved white button up—before looking back to Dan’s newly tiny form and groaning.

“Dan! Those clothes aren’t even gonna fit you anymore!” Phil exclaimed, starting to work himself up into a bit of a panic. “What are we gonna do? We don’t have any clothes with us that will fit a ten-year-old!”

Dan rolled his eyes. “Phil, it’ll be fine.”

“No, Dan, it won’t be fine! I can’t take you out in public in big, baggy clothes! People will stare at us and think I’m a terrible big brother or something for letting you out of the house like that!”

Dan snorted in response. “Phil, I doubt anyone will think you’re my brother, they’ll probably think you’re my dad—”

“Maybe we could roll the sleeves up, like, a lot?” Phil said, ignoring Dan in favor of starting to pace back and forth, trying to think of some way that they could make Dan’s clothes work. “And maybe a really, really tight belt?”

Dan cleared his throat much louder than strictly necessary, obviously trying to get Phil’s attention, and Phli stopped mid-pace to whip back around. Dan was staring at him with a brow quirked and his wand in hand, waving it a tad bit dramatically to make a point.

“Oh, right,” Phil said, breathing a sigh of relief, “wizards. Duh.”

Dan nodded so smuggly that Phil could practically hear the intended sarcasm and moved to point his wand at the clothes on the bed, but before he could cast a spell, Phil leapt across the room and grabbed the wand out of his hand.

“Phil! What the hell?”

“You’re only ten!” Phil replied, gripping Dan’s wand tight and holding it up so Dan couldn’t reach it at his current height.

Judging by the slightly confused and angry look on Dan’s face, that wasn’t quite enough of an explanation.

“Well, we don’t know how thorough this de-aging thing is!” Phil continued, moving Dan’s wand higher as the younger started jumping for it. “You’re technically ten right now, what if you cast a spell and the Ministry registers it as underage magic?”

Dan stopped trying to reach his wand and fixed Phil with an incredulous stare. “Phil, that’s ridiculous.”

“Is it?”

“Of course! I may have a ten-year-old’s body, but I’m not actually underage! Surely the Ministry could tell the difference.”

“Are you absolutely sure, though?” Phil asked, lowering his arm.

Dan glared back at him determinedly, but his expression slowly softened as he seemed to realize that Phil was right: they had no idea how the whole de-aging thing works. Seeming to concede, he stepped aside, leaving Phil room to pull his own wand from his pocket and point it at Dan’s clothes on the bed.

“Reducio,” Phil uttered, watching carefully as Dan’s outfit started shrinking down in size, stopping the spell when it looked small enough to fit, and he shifted to face the wall as Dan tried everything on.

“Well, it’s not perfect, but I think it’ll work,” Phil heard Dan say, and he turned around to see him rolling up the sleeves of his button up. “How do I look?”

“Definitely the most stylish ten-year-old I’ve ever seen,” Phil laughed, moving on to resize Dan’s shoes as Dan finished adjusting his clothes.

After Dan was completely dressed and ready, Phil extended one arm and Dan joined him in the center of the room, gripping tight to Phil as he turned on the spot, a loud pop! echoing through the bedroom.

- - - - -

“Wait, Dan, stop,” Phil said, throwing out an arm to keep the younger boy from turning down the side street to their left, “I think we’ve already been that way.”

“Are you sure?”

“Definitely,” Phil replied, taking another look down the street. “There’s that sweet shop you had to practically drag me away from earlier.”

Dan groaned, letting his head fall back against his small shoulders to look up at the nearly blinding Australian sun above them.

“Come on, I don’t think we’ve tried this way yet,” Phil said, glancing up and down the street in front of them to make sure there were no cars coming before urging Dan along across the road.

“But my legs are sooo tired,” Dan whined, dragging his feet as he begrudgingly followed, and they both stepped to the side a bit to make room for an older woman going the other direction to pass by. “And isn’t it only supposed to be the beginning of spring here? Why is it already so damn hot? I’m sweating my tits off out here.”

The woman passing them stopped abruptly with a gasp, staring down at Dan with her mouth dropped open in shock. “Young man, that language is incredibly inappropriate for someone your age!”

Hearing this, Phil turned back from where he had been walking slightly ahead of Dan, brows furrowed. “Can I help you, ma’am?”

The woman fixed him with a disapproving glare, looking him up and down. “You certainly can. Your son is far too young to be using such inappropriate language, and I think you ought to do something about it.”

Dan tried not to snicker as he watched Phil’s face flush bright red, sputtering at the implication that Dan was his son. “I… Umm.. I…”

The woman stared back at Phil, eyes narrowed and thin arms crossed, determined to see action taken. “Well? Aren’t you going to do anything?”

Dan smirked, ready to take full advantage of the situation to further embarrass Phil. “Yeah, Dad,” he emphasized, “aren’t you going to punish me?”

Phil’s eyes went wide in disbelief at the not-at-all subtle innuendo, but the woman didn’t appear to think anything of it, instead scoffing at Phil’s apparent choice to not discipline his “son.”

“Some people just aren’t meant to parent,” she tutted under her breath, turning up her nose and pushing past them. Just as she turned the corner, Dan lost his fight to keep his giggling under control and doubled over, nearly in tears.

“I hate you so much,” Phil pouted, crossing his arms over his chest as Dan continued laughing.

“Oh, come on, now, Phil,” Dan gasped, “that’s no way to talk to your son, you’re gonna give me daddy issues.”

“That’s it,” Phil said, storming off further down the street, calling over his shoulder, “I quit, you can just stay a ten-year-old. Have fun going through puberty all over again.”

Getting himself back under control, Dan scurried to catch up to Phil, who slowed his pace a bit for Dan to keep up.

“Do I really look old enough to have a ten-year-old?” Phil murmured, only loud enough for Dan to hear as they passed by a mother pushing a pram, cooing down at her baby.

Dan looked up at the older man, taking stock of his much more grown up hairstyle and the glasses he chose to leave on more often than not lately.

“I mean, yeah, maybe a bit?” Dan admitted, feeling bad when he saw Phil’s shoulders deflate a little. Phil had never even been a fan of his loved ones looking their age, as he worried far too much about impending death, so Dan knew it must be even worse for his friend to realize that he himself was looking older.

“But, then again, that would also mean someone would have had to have trusted 21-year-old you with a baby,” Dan continued, attempting to add some levity, “and I don’t think any baby could survive being dropped as many times as 21-year-old Phil undoubtedly would have dropped them.”

“Hey!” Phil protested, though a smile crept onto his face as he moved to bump Dan with his elbow, their standard retort to teasing each other. However, he must have forgotten to account for how much smaller than usual Dan was at the moment, as Dan found himself knocked off course, flying a bit to the side.

“Oi! That’s child abu—”

Before Dan could even full get the accusation of “abuse” out, Phil had rushed over and slapped a hand over his mouth. Dan, confused as to why Phil would have a problem with their typical choice of banter and angry at having his mouth covered, decided to lick across Phil’s palm in true ten-year-old fasion.

“Ew, Dan!” Phil quickly pulled his hand away, wiping it down the side of his leg. “What the hell?”

“I think I could ask you the same question! Why was your giant ass hand all over my face?”

Phil looked around to make sure no one else was eavesdropping, lowering his voice.

“Because, Daniel, you can’t just go around shouting things like ‘child abuse’ when you look like an actual child! What if someone thought you were serious?”

“Oh, shit,” Dan said, looking behind the other man.

“Yeah, ‘oh, shit,’” Phil continued, “you’re gonna get me hauled off to some Australian prison forever!”

“No, Phil,” Dan said, grabbing Phil’s hand and starting to drag him away from the intersection they were standing at, “I mean, ‘oh, shit,’ as in, ‘oh shit, there’s your brother and his girlfriend!’”

“What?” Phil exclaimed, looking back over his shoulder to see Martyn and Cornelia sitting at a table right in the front window of the cafe across the street. “Do you think they saw us?”

“No, but I don’t think you want to wait around until they do,” Dan answered, turning down a small alleyway, Phil right on his heels.

As they made their way further down the path, it became clear that this was a road they hadn’t been down yet in their search. There was only one lone storefront, and at first glance it appeared as if it hadn’t seen any customers in several decades: the windows were yellowed with age, the paint on the front door was chipping in more places than Dan could count, and large cobwebs stretched from the building to the worse for wear wooden sign hanging above the entryway.

Walking closer, though, the storefront shifted right before their eyes, the cobwebs and windows clearing and the worn sign transforming to proudly display the shop’s name, Herbs and Orbs.

“Dan, this is it!” Phil said, smacking at Dan’s shoulder a bit in excitement. “I’m sure they’ll be able to help us!”

“God, I hope so,” Dan said, grabbing the door handle and pulling it open for both of them, the hinges squeaking loudly. “I’m starting to feel more and more like an actual ten-year-old by the second. That door just sounded like a fart and almost had to physically restrain myself from laughing.”

“Don’t worry,” Phil said, stepping over the threshold and into the shop, “I’m sure we’ll have you back to normal in next to no time!”

- - - - -

Next to no time, as it turned out, was actually more like adjacent to no time.

“You’re absolutely sure you don’t sell anything like this?”
Phil knew his voice was teetering on the the edge of hysteric as he pleaded with the shop owner at the front till, but hey, desperate times and all that.

The man leaned over the counter, picking up the tea tin Phil had brought along and squinted at its contents through his glasses. After a moment, he shook his head, frowning.

“Sorry, son, I don’t seem to recognize it.”

At those words, Phil felt his shoulders droop so far that he thought they might crash straight through the shop floor. He had pinned all of his hopes of helping Dan—and of fixing his embarrassing mistake without his brother ever finding out—on this shop having all the answers, and now he felt as if all that optimism was crumbling down around him.

Evidently that despair was showing all over his face because the shop owner—George, as his name tag read—was quick to offer another solution.

“You know, I’m actually not nearly as familiar with all of our products as I used to be. I mostly just take care of the books these days, it’s my wife that handles ordering and maintaining our stock,” he said, wiping his glasses clean on the hem of his robes. “Why don’t I go grab her, see if this looks more familiar to her than it does to me, eh?”

Phil felt a tiny bit of hope sparking up inside of him again. “Yes, thank you, that would be great!”

George pushed away from the counter, robes billowing around his ankles as he leaned into the open doorway behind him that Phil presumed led to their staff only area.

“Hilda, darling? Can you head out this way? I’ve got a customer looking for something rather...unusual.”

“Georgie, everything we carry is ‘rather unusual,’” came a slightly muffled shout from the back room, “we run an apothecary on the edge of a rainforest!”

George shook his head, chuckling, and Phil couldn’t help but join in.

“Yes, dear,” George continued, “but this one is a bit strange even for us.”

“Alright, alright, don’t twist your wand in a knot!” Hilda called back, “I’ll be there in just a sec, I’m in the middle of doing inventory on the beetle eyes and I don’t want to lose count!”

As they waited for his wife to show up, the shop owner turned back to look at Phil, who shrank back a bit at the direct eye contact.

“So. Business? Or pleasure?” George asked.

“Sorry, what?”

“Well, judging by the accent, you’re not from around here,” the man elaborated, “so I figure you’re either here for work or for vacation.”

“Oh, umm, I guess kind of both?” Phil stammered, not quite sure how to explain a Youtube-based world tour. “We’re sort of on a short break in the middle of an extended work trip.”

George nodded as if he understood, opening his mouth to likely ask another question, but he was interrupted by his wife sweeping into the room through the staff door.

“Alright, now what’s so strange that you couldn’t figure it out yourself?” she said, sticking her wand in her apron pocket for safekeeping and pulling her glasses down off the top of her head.

“He’s looking for a potion or an antidote to counteract this,” George explained, pointing to the little yellow and red container, “a ‘de-aging tea,’ apparently.”

“De-aging, you said?” Hilda popped the lid off of the tea tin, grabbing a pinch between her fingers to look closer and giving it a small sniff. “No, this definitely isn’t one of ours. Might be one of Evanora’s, though.”

“Ah, of course, Evanora!” George exclaimed, hitting his own forehead with the palm of his hand. “She does do a lot of herbal teas, doesn’t she? Why didn’t I think of that?”

“Who is Evanora?” Phil chimed in, both shop owners looking up at him as if they had temporarily forgotten he was there.

Hilda let the bits of tea she had picked up fall back into the container, putting the lid back on. “Evanora runs another shop that’s slightly more...experimental, shall we say?”

George nodded. “Yes, it’s all a bit under the table, so to speak, since she doesn’t quite adhere to our government’s standards. Everything she does is ‘homemade,’ you know, in the sense that she invented it all herself with very minimal safety testing.”

“And you said she does a lot of teas?” Phil asked, trying his best to follow along.

“Well, it makes some of the potions that require ingesting a bit more palatable, you see,” Hilda explained, straightening up the display of porcupine quills sitting on the counter as she spoke. “I would imagine someone drinking that stuff you have there might not even notice it’s not just a normal tea until they suddenly found themselves growing younger. Very dangerous if used irresponsibly, which is why Evanora operates a bit outside the law.”

“Tell me about it…” Phil muttered to himself. “So, how exactly do I get to this Evanora’s shop?”

The other two shared another look and a grimace.

“What?” Phil asked, starting to get nervous.

“It’s a bit of a trek,” George said as Hilda got back to work on her display. “Evanora is a bit paranoid, for obvious reasons. Her shop is a good ways into the rainforest, and she has a protective charm to keep people from just Apparating onto her property all willy-nilly.”

“How close can you Apparate in?”

“The charm covers her for just under two kilometers, so you can get to the edge of that radius with magic, but then have to go the rest of the way by foot,” George continued, grabbing a scrap of paper and starting to scribble out a rough map. “You’ll definitely know when you’ve found her house, though. Biggest bunch of Fanged Geranium I’ve ever seen in one garden, that’s for sure.”

The Herbology nerd side of Phil jumped in excitement at the prospect, although the accident-prone side of him knew he should probably steer clear of the biting plants.

George finished up drawing his map, pushing it across the counter for Phil to pick up and try to make sense of. When he felt he had a pretty good grasp of it, Phil pocketed the paper and took a steadying breath.

“Well, thank you both very much for your help,” he said, grabbing the tea tin. “It might not be as easy as I’d like, but I’m sure we’ll be able to find her eventually.”

Hilda looked up from her cleaning, brow furrowed. “I’m sorry, ‘we?’”

“Well, yeah,” Phil said, confusion taking over his own face. “Me and Dan, of course.”

Phil looked to his left where he expected to see Dan standing, but there was no one next to him. In fact, there wasn’t even anyone else within eyeshot except for an elderly witch making her way up to the register with an armful of dried roots.

“Oh, God!” Phil exclaimed, trying to look behind the little old witch in hopes that Dan was just hidden behind her, but having no such luck. “Dan? DAN?”

“Don’t worry, sir, he’s got to be in the shop somewhere,” George supplied. “The only exit is right here next to us, we would have seen him leave.”

“What’s going on?” Hilda asked her husband as Phil peeked behind a cabinet full of various jars.

“I think he’s lost his son,” George replied, “the little boy that came in with him.”

Hilda glanced at the tea tin clutched tightly in Phil’s hand, rolling her eyes and smacking George over the back of the head. “You daft man! I’d bet everything in this shop and then some that that ‘little boy’ wasn’t actually his son!”

Phil nodded, starting to head down an aisle as he called over his shoulder. “I’d love to tell you the whole story, but I have a kid to find!”

- - - - -

“Hello, everyone, and welcome to my brand new channel, Dan: Great British Baker! Today I’m gonna show you how to make the best cookies in the whole wide world, but first you’re gonna need a really big bowl.”

Dan was sitting on the floor between two narrow aisles full of potions supplies, a good sized cauldron resting in his lap as he spouted off his recipe to the imaginary camera across from him. He grabbed a handful of random jars from the shelf beside him, narrating to his “audience” as he pretended to add each one to the cauldron.

All of a sudden, his tutorial was interrupted by Phil shouting his name, skidding around the corner and into the aisle Dan was sitting in.

“Dan! Merlin’s sake, I thought I had lost you!” Phil exclaimed, quickly making his way toward Dan and dropping down to his knees beside him. “What happened?”

Dan shrugged, still playing with two of the jars, sliding them back and forth on the floor and making them smack into each other. “You guys were talking for forever, I got bored.”

Phil sighed, grabbing the jars out of Dan’s hands and setting them back in their spots on the shelf behind them. “You can’t just wander off while grown ups are talking, I was so worried!”

Dan rolled his eyes. “Yeah? Is that why it took you fifteen minutes to even notice I was gone? Besides, in case you’ve forgotten, I am a grown up.”

“Not right now, you aren’t! You said yourself you were starting to feel more and more like an actual kid, and I just found you playing make believe!” Phil countered, standing back up.

While Phil wasn’t looking, Dan crossed his eyes and pretended to make one of his hands “talk” to the other, mocking Phil’s words. Phil caught him in the act, though, when he looked back down at the younger boy.

“Dan! Stop that, right now!”

“Dan! Stop that, right now!” Dan repeated sarcastically as he jumped up to his own feet much quicker than Phil had.

“Daniel!”

“Daniel!”

Phil crossed his arms over his chest, glaring down at Dan, who promptly stuck his tongue out at him.

“You’re being incredibly childish right now,” Phil chastised.

“I know you are, but what am I?”

Phil groaned, pushing his glasses up to pinch the bridge of his nose. “Okay, well, I was gonna tell you that I think I found someone who can get you back to normal,” he said, dropping his hand back to his side. “But you really seem to be enjoying your time as a ten-year-old, so I guess I’ll just leave you to it.”

Phil started making his way back down the aisle without so much as a glance back. Dan watched him go for a moment, considering making another snide comment, but suddenly it was as if his 27-year-old sensibility kicked back in, and he raced after Phil toward the shop’s exit.

“Phil! Wait up!”

- - - - -

“Can you imagine if our viewers could see us right now?” Phil said, holding out a hand to help Dan climb over a particularly tall tree root. “Out here trekking through the actual rainforest? They’d be shook.”

“Yeah, I’m sure if they could see us now, the jungle trek would be the real shocker, not the fact that I’m an actual foetus or anything,” Dan replied, finally making it over the root and stopping to catch his breath.

“Are you okay?” Phil asked as Dan bent at the waist and rested his hands on his thighs. “You’re, like, ten, shouldn’t you have more stamina than normal right now?”

“More stamina. Shorter legs,” Dan clarified, standing up straight. “Are we almost there?”

Phil glanced down at the map clutched in his hand, trying to orient himself. They had already passed by the large rock that was supposed to look a bit like an elephant, as well as the tree with a small image of a cauldron carved out of the moss that was supposed to show visitors when they were about half a kilometer away from Evanora’s house.

“It should be just up ahead,” Phil assured him, starting to walk again. After a moment, though, he realized that he couldn’t hear any smaller footsteps following behind him. He turned back around to see Dan leaning over a rather suspicious-looking tropical plant.

“Daniel! What did I tell you about the plant life out here?” Phil exclaimed, stomping back over to the younger boy.

“That it was dangerous and I absolutely shouldn’t touch anything,” Dan said, repeating Phil’s earlier words, frozen in place with a finger stretching near the flower.

“And what are you doing right now?”

“I’m not touching it, see? I’m almost touching it!” Dan said, shit-eating grin plastered across his face.

“Daniel,” Phil warned.

Dan moved his hand even closer, hovering mere centimeters away from the plant now. “I’m still not touching it!”

Phil crossed his arms, giving Dan the most serious face he could muster. “Alright, Daniel, I’m going to give you until the count of three. One.”

Dan smirked back at him, eyebrow quirked in a challenge. “Oh, I’m so scared.”

“Two.”

Dan somehow managed to get even closer without actually touching the flower.

“Three!”

Dan’s hand hovered where it was, almost as if daring Phil to do something. Phil wracked his brain for some way to discipline Dan for misbehaving, but he couldn’t think of an adequate simultaneous punishment for both a ten-year-old and an adult. He sighed, defeated.

“Ha! Knew you had nothing!” Dan teased, pulling his hand away and skipping ahead of Phil on the path.

Phil groaned, forcing his own feet to follow after the gloating boy. “God, being the big brother is exhausting, how did Martyn ever put up with me?”

“Beats me, you were probably way worse than this,” Dan called back to him. “At least I know I’m a little arsehole, you were just floating through life blissfully unaware of your weird kid tendencies. It’s a wonder Martyn never flat out snapped.”

“Hmm,” Phil acknowledged, staring at his feet to keep from tripping over anything, although it also kept him from seeing that Dan had stopped suddenly, causing him to run straight into his back.

“I think we’re here,” Dan said, recovering from the stumble and righting himself.

Phil looked up to see a clearing in the trees surrounding a tiny cottage that seemed incredibly out of place in the middle of a rainforest with its red brick facade and stone walkway. It would almost look charming, if not for the garden full of Fanged Geraniums snapping at each other and the large signs posted on the front gate reading, “Trespassers Will Be Transfigured.”

“Phil?” Dan gulped beside him, eyes skirting over the signs. “Are you sure this lady will want to help us?”

Phil took a deep breath, trying to be the confident and protective big brother he always dreamed of being if his parents hadn’t decided to stop having kids after he came along.

“She’s just trying to scare away people trying to meddle in her semi-questionable business,” Phil tried to reassure Dan, pushing on the gate and finding it unlocked. “As long as we can put cash on the table, I’m sure she’ll be more than willing to help.”

Dan still didn’t look fully convinced, but he followed Phil down the path leading toward the front door anyway. Reaching the house, Phil stepped up on the front porch and rapped on the door. There was no immediate answer, so he knocked a couple more times. “Ms. Evanora?”

“Umm, Phil?” Dan said beside him, tugging on Phil’s t-shirt. “I don’t think she’s going to help us.”

Phil glanced over at Dan to see that he was pointing at something. Phil followed his gaze to see another sign posted next to the door reading, “Closed until further notice, owner on semi-permanent vacation.”

“Oh, you have got to be kidding me,” Phil groaned, collapsing down to sit on the front step. “She lives in a tropical rainforest near a beach, where in the hell would she even go on vacation that’s better than this place?”

“Unless ‘vacation’ really means ‘I’m going into hiding to avoid the law,’” Dan suggested with a shrug and a small chuckle.

Phil stared up at him in disbelief. “How could you possibly be so calm and laughin right now? This was our last hope, and now you’re gonna be stuck like that forever!”

Dan frowned, moving to sit next to Phil on the step. “I mean, she wasn’t actually our last chance. Just our last chance to avoid telling your brother what happened and him embarrassing you over it.”

Phil felt heat coursing through him from the top of his head, a mixture of shame and apprehension and flat out anger, and he crumpled up the map still in his hand, throwing it as far away from them as he could. “You think I don’t KNOW that, Daniel?” he shouted, burying his head in his hands and closing his eyes.

For a moment the only sound around them was the calls of the tropical birds hiding in the canopy of the rainforest, but after a minute or so, Phil could hear sniffles beside him. His eyes shot open and he turned to see Dan trying—and failing—to cover up the fact that he was crying, big, fat tears welling up in his eyes and his lip trembling.

“Phiw?” he choked out. “Are you mad at me?”

Phil’s resolve crumbled immediately and he pulled the crying boy to his chest, letting him sob into his shoulder. “Dan, no, God, of course I’m not mad at you,” he said, rubbing Dan’s back in circles. “I’m… I’m mad at myself.”

Dan pushed away from him, sitting up and wiping at his eyes. “Really?”

Phil nodded glumly, fiddling with a loose nail sticking up out of the porch, feeling as if he was teetering on the edge of crying himself. “I’m a terrible friend. I put my pride above your wellbeing and made you spend an entire day as a child, all because I was too embarrassed to look dumb in front of my brother.”

Dan placed a hand on Phil’s knee. “You’re not a terrible friend, Phil.”

“I am,” Phil responded stubbornly, staring out at the garden. “I’ve likely caused you lifelong trauma, your therapist is probably going to tear me to pieces.”

Dan snorted at the suggestion. “Phil, you didn’t give me any kind of lifelong trauma, God. I mean, I’m definitely not thrilled with the situation right now, but I’m sure eventually we’ll be able to laugh over all of this.”

“Well, I guess we should try to make that happen sooner rather than later,” Phil sighed, getting to his feet and offering Dan a hand. “I need to tell Martyn, see if he can contact the Airbnb owner for us and get you switched back.”

Dan took the help up and they both started back down the path toward the jungle where they could get beyond Evanora’s protective charm and Apparate out.

“If it helps,” Dan suggested, “I’ll gladly take partial dumbass credit when we tell Martyn and Cornelia what happened.”

Phil glanced at the younger boy walking next to him, who smiled back up at him hesitantly. Phil felt his own face split into a grin, and he wrapped an arm around Dan, pulling him into his side for a hug at a sort of awkward angle as they kept walking, although it did its job.

“God, you would have been such an awesome little brother to have growing up,” Phil said, releasing a squirming Dan from their hug after a moment.

“Eh, I guess you would’ve been alright to have around, too,” Dan relented.

Phil couldn’t stop himself from letting out a laugh. “I think I proved today that I would have been a terrible big brother.”

“No, you were actually a semi-decent big brother,” Dan mused as they reached the edge of the small clearing. “Now, you were a pretty shit fake dad. You let me wander off in a shop by myself and get yelled at by old ladies in the street! Fine for big brother territory, but if you did those things as a dad? Yikes.”

“Well, if anything, maybe this will dissuade you from calling me ‘dad’ so much in front of the viewers,” Phil suggested, side-stepping to avoid what looked like a slipper rock.

Dan snorted from up ahead of him on the trail. “Yeah, sure I will, Phil. You just gave me enough embarrassing ‘daddy’ material to last a lifetime, you think I’m gonna pass that up?”

Phil rolled his eyes fondly as he followed after Dan, smiling in spite of the dreaded impending conversation with his brother. He was never going to hear the end of this one, but he figured seeing his best friend back to normal.

“Hey, before we go groveling at your brother’s feet to help us, can we stop back by that sweets shop?” Dan called back over his shoulder, pushing a bush to the side so he could get past it. “Ten-year-old me apparently had a massive sweet tooth.”

“Fine by me,” Phil agreed, secretly thrilled at the idea, although he wouldn’t admit it to Dan. “I think you definitely deserve a treat today.”

- - - - -

Dan and Phil were relaxing on the sofa, each of their laps covered in a layer of empty sweets wrappers, when they heard the front door opening.

“Boys! We’re back!” they heard Cornelia’s sing-songy voice ring through the foyer.

“Yeah, and if I found out you two spent the entire day sat watching anime in your pants when you could have been exploring literal jungle paradise,” Martyn’s voice followed, “I’m kicking both of your asses out into the rainforest right now!”

Phil jumped to his feet, discarded plastic wrappers falling to the floor as he rushed to block Martyn from entering the lounge. Surprised at his little brother’s sudden appearance, Martyn took a step backwards.

“Oh! You’re actually wearing something other than those god-awful emoji pajamas, I’m impressed,” Martyn laughed, looking Phil up and down. “And is that real dirt? Did you actually go outside today?”

Phil glanced down to where Martyn was pointing, finding a bit of dirt clinging to his shirt from their rainforest journey. He reached for his wand, waving it over the spot and causing it to vanish without leaving any trace of a stain behind.

“Listen, Martyn,” Phil began, shoving his wand back into his pocket. “We had a little bit of an...accident this morning.”

Martyn’s eyes went wide.

“We’re both fine! Everyone’s fine!” Phil was quick to clarify after seeing the worry on his brother’s face. “It’s just...Dan hasn’t quite been himself today…”

Martyn frowned at him in confusion, so Phil stepped out of his way to let him into the lounge where ten-year-old Dan was munching on his fourth chocolate chip cookie of the afternoon. Dan lifted the hand not currently occupied with his dessert in a wave at the eldest Lester.

“Hey, Mar! Good day at the beach?”

Martyn stumbled back against the doorframe, looking to Phil for some kind of reassurance, but getting only a sheepish smile from his little brother.

“Corn!” Martyn yelled down the hall. “Get in here, please! Now!”

Cornelia poked her head out of the master bedroom, immediately noticing the distress on her partner’s face and rushing to his side. Rather than attempting to explain, Martyn simply pointed into the lounge, directing her attention to the child sitting cross-legged on the sofa, both feet pulled up over his legs and into his lap as he nonchalantly finished his cookie and brushed the crumbs away.

“Great Merlin’s ghost,” Cornelia murmured. “Dan? Is that you?”

Dan did his standard two-finger salute in response, and Cornelia and Martyn both turned to Phil for explanation.

“Phil, what the hell is this?” Martyn asked, voice lowered as if trying to keep young Dan from overhearing. “Are you two taking the piss?”

Phil shook his head glumly. “Unfortunately, no.” He lifted an arm, scratching at the back of his neck just to have some way to channel his nervous energy. “It’s kind of a long story.”

“Well, mate, give us the abridged version, ‘cause we’re kind of freaking out over here,” Martyn implored, eyeing Dan suspiciously.

Over the next few minutes, Phil recounted the events of their day, with Dan chiming in every once in a while, filling Martyn and Cornelia in on the apology tea Phil made, Dan waking up younger, and their misadventures trying to set things right again.

“So, let me get this straight,” Martyn said when Phil’s story finally got caught up to the present. Martyn’s eyes were closed, and he was massaging at his temples with his fingers. “Rather than just asking for our help, you two idiots went trekking into a rainforest with no guide to find a borderline paranoid witch who manufactures illegal magical substances?”

Dan and Phil exchanged a glance before both nodding in agreement.

“Yeah, pretty much,” Phil said at the same time Dan answered, “Yup, sounds about right.”

“I can’t believe this!” Martyn exclaimed, hands waving a bit for emphasis. “You two should have learned by now to just ask for help when you’re in over your heads, even if it is a little embarrassing! Phil, you’re bloody 31 years old, and Dan, you’re… you’re…”

Martyn cut himself off, realizing that Dan wasn’t actually 27 at the moment, and that he didn’t really know how old Dan currently was.

“We think I’m about ten,” Dan helpfully supplied with a cheeky grin.

“Only ten? That’s adorable!” Cornelia gushed, pointing a finger at Dan’s young face. “And look, his dimples were somehow even deeper when he was little!”

“Corn, not really the time, eh?” Martyn said, eyebrow quirked.

“Oh! Right, sorry,” Cornelia replied, dragging her eyes away from where she was still staring at Dan. “I guess I’ll go call the homeowner, see what he can tell us about this whole de-aging tea business.” She pulled her phone from her back pocket, heading for the kitchen for a quiet spot.

“Well, hurry, Corn,” Martyn said, the hint of a mischievous smile cracking through his anger as he turned back to where Phil had now joined Dan on the sofa. “We don’t have all day, Dan’s not getting any younger here.”

- - - - -

One twenty-minute phone call and a seemingly never-ending round of laughter from Martyn later, Phil felt far more ashamed and embarrassed than he ever could have imagined.

After explaining the situation to the homeowner—who had a pretty substantial chuckle at Dan and Phil’s expense himself—Cornelia had come back into the lounge holding an almost identical tea tin to the one Phil had been carrying around all day, although this one was a red tin with a yellow lid.

“Ready to feel really dumb, boys?” Cornelia had giggled, passing the tin over to Dan, who had set up from where he was lounging on the sofa to examine it. Reading the label on the front, his eyes had gone comically wide, then almost as quickly narrowed in Phil’s directions.

As it turned out, the “re-aging” tea had been sitting on the kitchen counter right next to its counterpart the entire time. In their haste to dig through the large collection of tins earlier in the morning to find the one that Phil had given Dan, they had knocked the re-aging tin over to hide between the Chamomile and the hair regrowth formula.

After smacking Phil upside the head with a pillow, Dan had stormed off to the kitchen to brew himself a cup of the second tea, Cornelia following close behind, spouting off instructions the homeowner had given her on how much tea Dan needed to use to ensure that returned to his proper age, but not so much that he ended up an old man.

Cuppa in hand, Dan had then retreated to his room, muttering something about getting changed into clothes that would fit his 27-year-old body after the tea set in as he locked the door behind him, leaving Phil alone with Martyn as he rolled around on the floor of the lounge in hysterics. Phil sank as far as humanly possible down into the sofa cushions in an attempt to hide his embarrassed flush. Why in the world hadn’t they thought to check the rest of the tea tins?

The sun had fully set by the time Dan ventured back out of his room about an hour later apparently fully restored to the accurate age, plopping down at one of the kitchen barstools to watch the other three as they made dinner.

“Aww, look, everyone,” Martyn said, glancing up from the vegetables he was chopping, “Benjamin Button is all back to normal again!”

Dan huffed out a breath and rolled his eyes, but his gaze softened when Phil stepped closer to the breakfast bar and Dan saw the worried expression on his face.

“Still not mad at you,” he whispered only loud enough for Phil to hear.

“Promise?” Phil asked, hesitant to believe him. Dan had every right to be furious with him, especially after dragging him all over the place when the solution was sitting on the kitchen counter the entire time.

“Promise, not mad, ‘m just tired,” Dan reassured him, folding his arms on the bar in front of him and resting his head on top of them. “I mean, I did technically just age about seventeen years in under an hour.”

Phil left Dan to rest his eyes for a bit, jostling him awake when they had dinner ready. As they ate in relative silence—Cornelia had put a ban on Martyn teasing either Dan or Phil about their day during dinner—Dan informed the rest of the group that he would be spending the entirety of the next day lounging by their private pool. He instructed that none of them were allowed to comment on any self-indulgent shirtless selfies he posted appreciating his newly-returned 27-year-old body, and that they shouldn’t bother him at all unless they saw a crocodile sneaking over the fence.

Phil snorted at the reference, earning him a wink from Dan while Martyn and Cornelia just shrugged it off as just one more Dan-and-Phil-psychic-connection thing they would never understand, instead launching into their plans for the rest of the week. Cornelia’s suggestion of a exploring the rainforest on Saturday earned a particularly loud groan from both Dan and Phil, who had just about had their fill of the rainforest for one trip, although they eventually reluctantly agreed when she added that they could do a cable car ride over the treetops.

After dinner, Dan filmed a quick story of Phil trying out orange-flavoured Coke to let their viewers know they weren’t dead or anything. As Phil was posting the clip to Instagram, he had a Twitter notification from Dan pop up on his phone and clicked into it.

He couldn’t help but laugh as he read, knowing the subscribers would never have any idea of the context behind Dan’s words. “i am the human equivalent of a phone on low power mode.”

- - - - -

“So, Phil, what do you think of your first time in India?”

They were sitting together at a small table in a bar in Mumbai, their very last stop on the tour before they headed back to London for some well deserved rest in the privacy of their own home.

First, though, they were celebrating the culmination of a year’s worth of hard work by relaxing with a couple drinks. Or, they would be, if the bartender ever got over to them.

“I really like it!” Phil said, looking up from the menu with a smile. “I do wish we had a little more time to explore, though.”

“True,” Dan said, eyes scanning his own menu, “but I’m also definitely ready to get home. Think I have been since Australia, tbh. I’m still recovering from the trauma, I reckon.”

Phil snorted in response, but his laughter was cut short when they saw the bartender finally approaching their table.

“What can I get for you?” he asked, thankfully in English. Phil didn’t quite have the energy to attempt to stumble through placing their order through a language barrier.

“I think I’m just going to have a Piña Colada,” Phil said, sliding his menu back into its slot on the front of the napkin holder.

When he looked back up at the bartender, though, Phil saw him eyeing Dan up suspiciously. The man pointed a finger at Dan, turning back to face Phil.

“Sir, how old is the boy?”

Dan and Phil both sat in stunned silence for a moment, not fully comprehending what was going on.

“I’m sorry, what?” Phil finally asked, thinking maybe they had heard him wrong, or something got lost in the cultural translation.

“How old is your son?”

Phil genuinely couldn’t help the snort he let out. Dan, however, had a very different reaction.

“You’re kidding, right? I’m 27 years old, you—”

“Dan!” Phil interrupted before Dan could say something that would surely get them kicked out of the bar. “He’s only trying to do his job. Just show him your ID so we can all get on with our night, yeah?”

Dan grumbled under his breath, but reached in his pocket to produce his ID, handing it to the bartender to examine. After confirming his age, the man passed it back to Dan and moved on to finish up taking their orders, assuring them their drinks would be out quickly.

“Are you actually shitting me?” Dan said, still a bit stunned as he watched the man head back to the bar. “Why does this keep happening?”

A mischievous smile crept across Phil’s face. “Wow, Dan, turns out you don’t even need deaging magic for people to think you’re a child, your normal face will do all the work for you!”

Dan groaned, leaning forward and smacking his forehead lightly against the table, leaving it resting there afterwards. “I hate you.”

Phil hummed his acknowledgement, still grinning as he reached for a menu again. “I wonder if they have a kid’s menu discount…”