Chapter Text
"Who are you and why are you in my house? Papa says there are no other warlocks around. Just him," a voice asked that had the young boy scrambling backward, looking for the source of the sound. He'd been alone in the attic. He knew he wasn't supposed to be up here. Daddy had told him many times that this was off-limits to little boys because he could get hurt, but Daddy wasn't here right now and his babysitter had fallen asleep watching the weird show with the spinning wheel and Max had been too curious about what surprises had lurked behind the old red door. He'd been sad to find it was just a bunch of old, dusty furniture and a chest full of boring books without even a single picture.
He'd been looking through those books for something exciting that would make his trip to the attic and the possible trouble he'd get in worth it when the strange voice had come from somewhere behind him. It sounded like another little boy, though it wasn't any of the other children that he heard sometimes running around outside of his window that Daddy said he couldn't go and play with. (It wasn't safe, he was told, but what wasn't safe about playing?) This was someone new and different and while he had been warned about talking to strangers, surely another little boy wasn't a stranger. He was just a kid, after all — just like Max was.
"Well? Who are you? You shouldn't be in here. I'm telling Papa," the voice spoke again, making Max's head whip around to find the speaker before he fell quiet again. His eyes finally landed on the large, old mirror that was tucked away in the dark corner where he hadn't yet strayed. Looking back at him wasn't his own reflection though. Instead, it was a boy who looked a couple of years older than Max, with messy dark hair and a blue shirt with a sparkly unicorn on the front.
Max blinked as the boy stared at him with surprised eyes. "Wait, your house? No, this is my house. What are you doing in my house? Why are you in the attic? Daddy says no one can be in the attic because it isn't safe."
"Well, then why are you in the attic?" the other boy asked as he stepped closer to the mirror and then looked around the room behind him with a frown on his face. "My Papa lets me come up here. He said it's healthy to have an exploratory and curious attitude about the world around me."
Max didn't really understand what all those words meant, but as the boy looked around the room, Max did the same on his own side. "Hey, where's the trunk of smelly books and the creepy doll with the weird hat? If you live in my mirror, shouldn't you have all the same stuff that's in my room?" Max asked, pointing to the old half-broken porcelain doll that was on a dresser against the wall. "And why aren't you me? Shouldn't you be me? Who are you? My name's Max!"
This time the boy in the mirror frowned harder. "Papa says names are powerful and you shouldn't give them to someone you don't know. Bad people and demons can do a lot when they know your real name."
“Well, I don’t know any bad people or any demons,” Max replied cheerfully. “And you can’t be either because you’re a kid like me! Besides, my daddy is a Shadowhunter and he’ll chase any bad people or demons away. He said he used to fight demons! I asked him to show me how to fight demons but he said that he can’t. He’s just sad all the time now.”
This seemed to confuse the little boy on the other side of the mirror. “Your…father is a Shadowhunter?” He asked, watching as Max nodded eagerly. “But how? You’re not a Shadowhunter, you’re a warlock. Your father can’t be a Shadowhunter.”
Max had never known a time when his Daddy hadn’t been in his life. He knew his father had adopted him but his Daddy would always be his Daddy. He’d heard all his Daddy’s stories about demons and vampires and warlocks and werewolves and Shadowhunters but he never really thought their family was strange. Besides, his Daddy told him there had been a war and after the war, they were the only two like them left so they had to stick together and look after each other.
Max wasn’t dumb. He was seven whole years old, and that was practically a grown-up. He knew that warlocks like him had once had magic — that’s what the stories had told him, at least — but Max couldn’t do magic even though his Daddy had told him so many times that he wished that he could teach him. Magic or no magic, it was fine with Max. He didn’t want to be a warlock anyway. He wanted to be a Shadowhunter like Daddy was and fight demons and use cool weapons.
“Well, he is,” Max protested with a pout. “He’s the best Shadowhunter there is too because Daddy fought in a war and he said we’re the only ones left now.”
This time the boy in the mirror rolled his eyes. “He can’t be the only Shadowhunter left because I’m a Shadowhunter.”
This time it was Max’s turn to be confused. He studied the other boy from head to toe before shaking his head. “No, you can’t be a Shadowhunter. Shadowhunters have runes, duh. Daddy has tons — he said they used to do cool things like make him invisible or faster or stronger.”
“Everyone knows that runes can only be given by special people,” the supposedly Shadowhunter boy protested. “Papa says that maybe one day when I’m older I can get them, but we’d have to take a special trip for that. He gave me a book of runes though so I can learn them.”
Max was about to argue that the boy was wrong and that his Daddy wouldn’t have them if they were dangerous when he heard the front door open downstairs. “Blueberry? Where are you?”
His eyes opened wide as he glanced out the window. He hadn’t realized how late it had gotten and his Daddy had come home. If he were found up here he’d be in so much trouble. “I’ve got to go,” he yelled quickly, waving at the boy in the mirror and pulling his shoes on where he’d discarded them by the door when he’d come in. “But maybe we can play some other time! Bye!”
Max had made it all the way to the door of the attic before he heard the boy shout. “Wait!”
He turned slowly to face the mirror once more and the boy gave him a small smile. “Rafael. My name is Rafael.”
Rafael. That was such a cool name, and the boy seemed really cool because he was a Shadowhunter even though he didn’t have any runes. “Well, maybe we can play again soon! Next time I’ll bring one of Daddy’s swords for you to see if I can get it down from the shelf, but I’ve got to get downstairs before he figures out where I am or I’ll get in lots of trouble. Bye!”
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Max couldn’t stop thinking about Rafael all week, but it seemed like forever before his Daddy had to go back into town to buy food again. He waited until Mrs. Laura, his very, very old babysitter, fell asleep watching TV like she always did as soon as it started to get dark out. As soon as he heard her quiet snores, he ran as quickly as he could into his father’s office where he knew the weapons that he must never — under any circumstance — touch were. He pushed the heavy wooden chair against the wall and did his best to grab the one hanging lowest on the wall. Unfortunately, even on his tiptoes, it was still just slightly out of his reach. He tried for a few more seconds before finally giving up, knowing that he was running out of time if he hoped to see Rafael before his father got home.
Instead of the sword that he hoped to bring, Max grabbed two of the stick weapons that he and Daddy trained with and ran up the stairs until he reached the forbidden attic door. It was dark and quiet in the room, but he’d expected it to be, and had come prepared with a cheap, plastic lantern that his father had bought when they’d gone camping in the living room. He made his way to the back of the room and was upset to find that the mirror contained no trace of his newfound friend.
He sat down in front of the mirror to wait.
And wait.
And wait.
Finally, he gave up and knocked on the glass instead. “Hello! Anyone there? Rafael! It’s me Max!”
It seemed like forever before the other boy skidded into view on the other side of the old mirror. “Max! You came back! I didn’t think that you’d come back!”
“Well, I said I would, duh! I just had to wait until Mrs. Laura was here again because she falls asleep as soon as the TV is on and she doesn’t care what I do so I won’t get in trouble as long as I’m not in here when Daddy comes home again,” Max explained as he scooted closer to the mirror. “I wanted to bring one of the swords like I said I would, but I couldn’t reach them so I brought the sticks. We practice with these sometimes and Daddy says when I’m older, he’ll teach me how to use the swords too!”
Rafael’s eyes widened. “Your father teaches you how to fight? That’s so cool! I wish Papa would teach me, but he says that he doesn’t want to give anyone any reason to think I’m going to hurt them.”
“That’s silly,” Max insisted. “What if someone tries to hurt you? That’s why Daddy’s teaching me.”
Rafael sighed and took a seat in front of the mirror, crossing his legs just as Max had done. “Papa says that’s what he’s there for. He promised my real mom and dad that he wouldn’t let anyone hurt me. He’s very careful with what I say and do and who we spend time around. I think the only people he really trusts are Aunt Cat and Uncle Raphael."
“My Daddy doesn’t have any friends either,” Max replied, holding his hand to the glass. “It’s just me and him…but I’m sorry about your real mom and dad. I didn’t know mine either but my Daddy said he found me after the war and he would do anything for me.”
Rafael gave him a small smile and touched his hand to the same spot on the glass that Max had put his. There was a flash of light that had both boys shouting in confusion and then…
"What was that?" Max asked, rubbing at his eyes to try and clear the bright spots that were lingering in his vision. He blinked as his sight cleared and tried to make sense of what he was seeing. It was his own reflection staring back it him - Rafael, his friend, was gone.
"Oh no! Rafe! Where are you? Rafe!"
His reflection frowned at him. "I'm right here, Max. I haven't gone anywhere."
"But you have," the little boy insisted, his head whipping around as he looked for whatever could have happened to his new friend. "You aren't in the mirror anymore! I just see me."
"Max, I'm right here. I can see myself in the mirror. You're the one who is missing, not me," Rafael replied, looking down at his hands as his eyes widened. "What happened?! I'm blue!" He scrambled further back in the room where he knew he could find another smaller, broken mirror. He stared at his reflection and gasped before running back to the big mirror where he had been talking to Max. "No, Max, I'm you and you're me! We switched bodies somehow!"
"Na uh, that can't happen," Max argued before looking down at his own hands. When he noticed that his own skin wasn't blue, he pressed his nose to the mirror to get a closer look at himself only to find Rafael's face staring back at him. "Raf, I'm you! How am I you?"
"We touched the mirror," the boy replied slowly. "We touched the mirror and then there was that flash and then we were each other. We somehow switched bodies."
"Well, how do we get back?" Max asked, trying his best not to sniffle in front of his new friend. "I want my Daddy. I don't want to be here forever."
"I don't want to be here forever either! I want my Papa too. Let's touch the mirror again! It switched us the first time so it should switch us back!" Rafael exclaimed, pressing his hands against the mirror. "Come on!"
Max placed his hands on the mirror in the same place Rafael's were and waited.
And waited.
And waited .
Nothing happened. Nothing. No disorienting flash came. "Raf why isn't it working! Why am I still you? Why are you still me? Make it better!” Max sniffled, rubbing at his eyes and trying to keep from starting to cry. He was a big kid now, Daddy said, he wouldn’t cry over this.
“I don’t know, Max! I don’t know why it’s not working. I don’t even know how it happened the first time!” Rafael replied hastily. “Maybe we need to try harder. Close your eyes and wish real hard for us to switch back.”
Max did as he was instructed and wished harder than he had ever wished for anything before in his life. When he opened his eyes, his own face was still staring back at him. “It didn’t work! What do we do? Daddy’s gonna be so mad at me. I wasn’t supposed to be up here and now I’m stuck in the mirror and you’re me.”
Rafael opened his mouth to speak when he heard a noise from somewhere in the house below him.
“Blueberry? Where are you? I’m home! I picked you up a surprise while I was out. Want to come see what it is? I think you’ll really like it!” Max listened to his Daddy yell for him on the other side of the mirror as his heart began to beat nearly out of his chest. He just wanted to run to him and get a hug and have Daddy tell him everything was going to be okay, but now he was trapped behind this mirror in his new friend’s body and he would probably never ever see his Daddy again. He started to sniffle again. “Max? Buddy? Where are you?”
Max’s lip began to tremble and he stared at Rafael with pleading eyes. “What are we gonna do? My Daddy is going to come looking for me if I don’t go downstairs and I’m still you and you’re still me.”
Rafael glanced behind him at the door out of the attic. “I…don’t know. If we didn’t switch back the same way we switched then I don’t know what to do. I think…I think we need a grown-up. We need to ask my Papa. He’ll be able to fix it with magic.”
“We’re gonna be in so much trouble,” Max protested, even though he knew that his friend was right. There was no way that two little boys could fix a problem like this on their own.
“It’s the only thing we can do, Max. Magic did this and only magic is gonna fix it. We’re gonna need my Papa for that and your Daddy needs to know too.”
Max glanced at the door as tears began to form in his eyes. “Okay. You’re gonna need to call him so it sounds like me.”
Rafael frowned before he crossed the room and opened the door. He glanced back at Max and tried to give the boy a smile before he started yelling, “Daddy, I’m here! Come quick!”
He went to stand in front of the mirror again and touched the glass once more so Max did the same. It was only seconds before the sound of boots rushing up the old wooden steps could be heard and Alec rushed in with a look of absolute panic on his face. The moment Max saw his Daddy, he burst into tears, afraid that he’d never be able to hug him again or train with him. Why did he have to be stuck?
He watched as his Daddy looked at the mirror and noticed the reflection of the crying boy was not his son. Slowly, the Shadowhunter’s hand went to the knife that Max knew that he always kept on his belt. He’d never seen his Daddy look as scared as he looked right now before — not even when he fell off the counter and broke his arm trying to get to the cookies that he wasn’t supposed to eat until tomorrow.
“Daddy, help! I’m stuck in the mirror and Rafe is me and I just want to come home,” Max pleaded from the young Shadowhunter’s body as he burst into tears and beat his little fists on the mirror. “Please bring me home! I’m sorry I went in the attic even though you said not to! I’m sorry!”
Alec’s eyes widened as he looked between where Rafe stood frozen in Max’s body and where Max was on the other side of the mirror. “Blueberry?” he asked, his voice soft in a way that Max had never heard before, and it made him more scared than he already was. “Is that you? What happened?”
“I came up here to look a few days ago even though you told me not to,” Max explained between sobs. “I was just looking and then I found the mirror and Rafael was in the mirror and when I came back we touched the mirror and it switched us and now we can’t get back.”
His Daddy was quiet for a moment as he studied Rafel, in Max’s own body, carefully. “Blueberry, what did I get you for your birthday last year?” he asked finally, addressing the question to Rafael instead of to his own son. The boy shrugged but Max couldn’t help but speak up quickly. “You gave me Uncle Jace’s favorite knife but you said it’s for looking only until I’m twelve because it’s really sharp and you don’t want me getting hurt.”
Daddy’s eyes looked sad as he turned his attention to the mirror and raised a hand to the glass. “Oh, Max… what happened, Buddy? How…” He stopped in the middle of speaking and turned to the other boy who was next to him. “And who are you?” he asked, his voice slow and scarier than it was when Max did something he wasn’t supposed to and got in a lot of trouble. “You aren’t my Max. What are you? Demon?”
“He’s a Shadowhunter, Daddy,” Max explained quickly, knowing, even while he was terrified, that if his Daddy used to hunt demons and he thought Rafel was a demon, that couldn’t be a good thing. “His name is Rafael. He’s a Shadowhunter, but he doesn’t have runes like you and his Papa is a warlock like me.”
“A warlock?” Alec asked quietly. “But there are no warlocks…” He stopped speaking again before he let out a deep sigh. “Interdimensional travel of some sorts, then,” he continued as he rubbed his temples like he did when he had a bad headache. Max sniffled again and his Daddy straightened up before he turned to Rafael. “Your father is a warlock, Max said?” The boy in Max’s body nodded his head. “We’re going to need his help to switch you back, I think. Unfortunately, my own abilities don’t really lend themselves to correcting magical mishaps. Is your father at home right now? Or is he wherever Max is now?”
Rafael nodded his head. “He fell asleep in his apothecary. He’s been working on a new spell and sometimes he studies too much and gets tired and doesn’t make it to bed and falls asleep at his desk until I wake him up.”
“Max, Buddy, listen to me, alright?” Alec said quietly, scooting an inch closer to the mirror. “I need you to go find Rafael’s daddy and bring him here, okay? I know you’re scared, I’m scared too, but we’re going to need Rafael’s daddy’s help if we want to get you home.” He looked at Rafe and gave the boy a little smile. “Where can Max find your daddy’s apothecary?”
“It’s downstairs to the left before you get to the kitchen,” Rafael responded quickly, pointing at the door behind Max that led to the attic. “Tell Papa…tell him it’s like the book with Alice and her kittens. He read that to me a long time ago.”
Max’s lip trembled as he looked between his Daddy and his friend. He didn’t want to leave to go find Rafael’s daddy.
“You’ve got this, Blueberry. It’s like a mission, alright? Remember I used to tell you all about the ones I used to go on? It’s your first mission and it’s an important one. We’ll be waiting right here for you when you get back.”
A mission. Daddy went on a lot of missions with Uncle Jace and Aunt Izzy before the war. He’d told Max that he’d gone on his first when he was twelve. Max was only seven and he was already going on his first mission. He sniffled one last time, rubbed his eyes, and tried to stand a little straighter. He could do this. He could make Daddy proud by finding Rafe’s daddy and bringing him to the mirror. “Okay, Daddy. Please don’t leave. I’ll be right back.”
As Max, in another little boy’s body, ran from the room, Alec turned his attention to the child who was not his son standing next to him. “Rafael, was it?” He asked, watching as the child inhabiting his son’s body nodded shyly. “I’m Alec. Alec Lightwood. How old are you? Max said you’re a Shadowhunter but your father is a warlock?”
“I’m nine,” the boy responded quietly. “My papa is a warlock and we live with other warlocks. I’ve never met another Shadowhunter before. I’ve just heard my papa’s stories from before the war. He said after that Shadowhunters lost all their runes and disappeared.”
Alec frowned at Rafael’s words, a strange feeling starting to form in the pit of his stomach. “Why are there no more Shadowhunters where you are from? Did something happen in the war? Did the Shadowhunters win?”
At that, the child shook his head. “The Shadowhunters didn’t win — the warlocks and the vampires and the werewolves did. Lots of Shadowhunters died. Like my parents.”
Alec’s heart broke at the boy’s words, though he couldn’t help the glimmer of hope that started to blossom in the back of his mind. A world where the Downworld won? A world where it would be safe for Max to go outside without a risk of him being hunted like the monster Valentine and the Circle believed him to be? He licked his lips and tried to push those traitorous thoughts from the back of his mind. “I’m sorry about your parents. I’m sure they loved you very much.”
“Papa said he told them he’d take care of me,” the boy who was in Max’s body but wasn’t Max said. "He keeps me safe but… I’ve never met another Shadowhunter before.”
Alec was saved from having to answer by the sound of running feet and the vision of a man sliding into the room. He was dressed simply in a deep red button-down shirt and black slacks with suspenders hanging from his waist. His hair had a streak of red through it and there was blue magic already sparking at his fingertips as he came to a stop in front of the mirror and Alec suddenly found himself staring into golden cat eyes.
“Rafe?” the man asked, and Alec could hear the panic clear as day in his voice. “Is that you?”
“Papa! Help! I’m trapped,” the little boy cried, his thus far stoic demeanor finally cracking at the sight of his father.
Alec forced a smile to his face even though he felt no joy in his heart. “Hi, my name is Alec. Alec Lightwood — I’m afraid we’ve got a bit of a situation here and I’m really hoping that you can help. Demons I can handle but magical mishaps aren’t exactly where my expertise lies.”
The warlock’s eyes narrowed, and he studied the boy standing next to Alec. After a moment, he took a breath and turned his attention back to Alec. “It seems that we do. I’m Magnus Bane, former High Warlock of Brooklyn and Rafael’s father. Do we have any idea what happened here?”
“From what Max was telling me, they touched the mirror and somehow switched bodies. Unfortunately, touching the mirror again didn’t seem to switch them back.”
Magnus flicked his wrist in the direction of the mirror and Alec watched as the image in front of him flickered behind a haze of blue. The warlock’s face twisted into a scowl as the magic faded. “It’s a dimensional gateway. These have been outlawed for centuries because their magic is unpredictable at best and incredibly temperamental at worst. It’s impossible to track magically because the magic lies entirely dormant until it gets activated. Most of these devices were destroyed when they were outlawed and had I known this mirror was one of them, I would have done the same before something like this happened,” Magnus replied with a sigh.
“Do you know how to fix it?” Alec asked. “Unfortunately, I don’t have a rune for interdimensional travel.”
Magnus grasped the side of the mirror and Alec watched as it illuminated once more. The warlock placed two fingers from his other hand on the glass and the glass let out a horrid creak that had both men jumping backward. “Unfortunately, if I use just brute force, we run the risk of irreparably fracturing the mirror and having our children stuck in the wrong bodies permanently. We’re going to have to do this by the book…and I’m afraid to admit that I’m not entirely certain what ‘by the book’ would be in this case. I’ll have to look through my library and see if I can turn up any cases where something like this has happened before and how they went about fixing this.”
Max — Alec’s Max-stuck - in-Rafael’s-body — began to cry, and he just wished he could pull his son close and tell him that everything was going to be okay. He pressed his fingers against the glass and watched as Magnus pulled the boy into a hug and softly stroked his back. “Don’t worry, Max. Everything will be okay. We will find a way to switch you back, I promise.”
“What do we do in the meantime?” Alec found himself asking.
“The only thing that we can do — we take care of the children. I’ve been working on interdimensional translocation, though I’ve been struggling with making it actually work the way I intended. I’ll start working harder on a solution…I’ve got some friends who owe me a favor or two that I’m sure I can conscript into helping with research. I invented the portal, this isn’t much different from that, I suppose,” Magnus replied.
“You invented the portal? How—" Alec asked, finding himself cut off by the sound of Rafael’s stomach rumbling. “I’m not sure if there’s a time difference between the dimensions, but it’s dinner here. I should probably cook something and we should get the boys settled since they seem to be stuck for the foreseeable future.”
“It’s dinner here too,” the warlock confirmed, turning to Max and offering a hand to the little boy. “I was going to make ceviche but we’ve got magic and an entire world at our fingertips. What would you like me to conjure for dinner, Max? Do you have a favorite food?”
The little boy stopped sniffling to consider the question. “Pancakes? With chocolate chips and blueberries?”
“Breakfast for dinner — that’s one of my favorites. I know this little tiny diner just outside of Savannah that makes the best chocolate chip pancakes that I’ve ever had. They’ve got absolutely to die for milkshakes as well. What do you say?” Magnus asked.
“Yeah!” Max exclaimed, his fear suddenly gone, replaced with excitement for one of his favorite treats.
Magnus turned his attention back to Alec and gave him a sad, tired smile. “Well, Alexander, what do you say we meet back here in two hours. That will give me enough time to get Max something to eat, call my friend Catarina, and pull out any books I think may help us with our dimension-hopping children.”
Alec didn’t want to leave the mirror, not with his son still trapped on the other side. He didn’t know Magnus at all, but now he had to trust him with Max’s life until they could switch the boys back. He wanted to cry or beg for mercy from the angels, and get them to fix the problem at hand, but he knew that no help would come. The angels had abandoned them after Valentine’s corruption and betrayal. Magnus was trusting Alec to look after Rafael. The least he could do is extend the same amount of trust the other way.
“Well, Rafael, I can’t summon breakfast from the best diner in Georgia but I can make a mean french toast. What do you say? Breakfast for dinner on our side too?”
The boy nodded shyly and Alec offered his hand. “I’ll see you in two hours, Mr. Bane,” Alec replied, casting one last glance at the mirror before he led the boy out of the room.