The Age of Inertia

The Age of Inertia: Prologue

Eternity of Youth

I wonder, from time to time, what the world must look like to a dying person. We've all heard stories of a blinding white light, the flip-book of memories racing before our eyes, maybe the odd supernova of colors here or there. As for me, I've never died; I couldn't advise you on which of these I would even claim to see. it's all very much a thought-experiment to me, a dark pool I dip my toes in mainly because I am not sure if it will ripple - or if it is worth wondering whether it will.

For my thought-experiment, I imagine that time is no longer sequential to a man or woman lying on his or her deathbed.

Entertain this example:

Police are sealing shut a dark body bag. The street is closed off with orange and white barricades; a neon-clad deputy is redirecting traffic from his post thirty feet down the block. The road, recently paved with fresh tar, is still pitch black; the outline of the victim's body has been chalked onto the pavement in white. Two gloved workers examine the murder sit and a blood smear expert kneels by the sidewalk, photographing the fine red spray that's colored up the concrete. Like common cargo, the body is slammed into the boot of a van and driven away.

All of this happens as a function of time; linear, always moving forward. But to the dead man, time spun off its track the second the bullet struck; the two minutes it took him to die were spent remembering his regrets. Even after all these years, he recalls that he never took action when the schoolyard bully called his sister names, so he apologizes to her as his heart beats out its dying rhythm. He sees his sister's face and remembers the time she cleaned out the bicycle wound he'd won from speeding down a hillside without having bothered beforehand to put on a set of kneepads. Although he has never been religious, his last thought is of the Rosary.

Or even this one:

An old woman is lying in a hospital bed, and her family finally decides to turn off her ventilator. Foggily, in a dream, she thinks she's nine years old, fishing in a creek with her brother or father or friend, her lungs hooked to a pump siphoning each breath backward, forward, and backward again with the strangest current she's ever seen in water. She is vaguely aware of the pressure of her daughter's fingers and tries to squeeze back, feeling her frailness as a memory of her fatigue after delivering that baby girl fifty years before. She dies quietly and without pain.

Rendered artistically, I suppose some deaths might look like this:

The sun is setting, and the dying person is suspended in midair over an ocean. Thrusting high above the sixty-feet waves is a one-thousand-foot cliff. Each passing instant is characterized by one of those waves moving smoothly over the shore and crashing into the side of the cliff in an explosion of spray. Each drop of water is a prism, one possible lens through which this person might be viewing his or her past. The light refracts as it hits the drops and splits into red, orange, yellow, green, indigo, and violet, each color illuminating one more facet of the truth of the dying person's life.

Somewhere else on Earth, a child sees that rainbow, reaches up, and tries to touch it. He isn't sure what he expects a rainbow to feel like, but he discovers it's just air and a spray of water, perhaps raindrops. He can't hold it, not really, so he wonders why it is that he can see it. He only knows that it stirs something inside him; but that if he tilts his head a certain way, it disappears.

x.x.x.x.x.x

My grandparents had an oceanfront cottage on the northern Atlantic coast. Petunia and I often spent weeks of our summers there when we were young, building sandcastles, bodysurfing, or hunting for seashells. We would play with the other children who frequented that stretch of the beach—a pair of stocky, freckled twins named Edwin and Noah, and a small Asian girl named Penny who didn't speak much English. The two boys liked to roughhouse with me, though Penny preferred to follow Petunia around the vicinity with a pail and shovel to dig for shells. This being the case, I almost invariably found myself being dragged into the water—careening headfirst, rather—and had to thrash my way back to the surface while the twins splashed and wrestled to the chorus of Penny and Petunia squealing each time the water struck their legs.

Once, though, when we were six years old, the boys decided to pass the time by throwing rocks into the surf. Naturally this resulted in a rock-throwing contest, with me as the smallest and most ridiculous of the three contestants. Edwin, the twin with the longer range, tried to show me how to hold the rocks before letting go.

"Like this, see," he said impatiently, putting an oval-shaped piece of granite into my hand. "No, don't put all your fingers on it. Just two."

"But then it falls out unless I hold it really tight."

"You have to throw it before it falls out, stupid."

I scowled and pitched the rock as hard as I could. It flew roughly five feet and plunked into the water with a small splash.

"No, not like that."

"You're making me mess up."

"Am not."

"Yes you are. Bugger." I snatched another slab of rock out of the surf and threw this one as well, this time flinging it off to the side. It skipped twice before disappearing under the surface.

Just then Petunia approached us, incongruously tall and lanky in her nine years, the sand and briny spray making long blond ropes of her hair. "Lily. How did you do that?"

Faintly awed and bemused by what I had accomplished, I shrugged and said, "I just did."

"You still throw like a girl," Edwin scoffed.

That evening, after the other children had gone, Petunia and I stood alone on the beach, she watching me with her arms crossed and her pail dangling from her fingers, and I trying to re-create the incident that had occurred in the afternoon.

"I bet that skip was a freak accident," Petunia said in bored tones as I tried in vain to get a piece of round stone to skim the surface of the waves again. "You do have a lot of those."

I glared at her and flung another rock into the water. "I do not." Plunk. There it went.

"Give it up, Lily."

"No."

"You're just being dumb."

"You're just being mean." This time, I picked up a disc-shaped stone and tried flicking my wrist as I threw it; I gasped when it struck the water, bounced, and flew into the next rolling wave. "Look! I told you."

Petunia rolled her eyes. "That one only skipped because it was flat."

"So?"

"So you can't skip every rock," she said, sticking her nose in the air.

"I dare you to try it. I bet you can't."

This time she glared at me. "Just watch me."

I put my fists on my hips. "Then go ahead."

Petunia stared at me for a moment, then hesitantly waded another few feet into the surf. She made a face as the sandy water hit her legs and splashed her thighs, holding her pail high above her head as she bent down to fish a rock out of the mud. She recoiled as the water soaked her hair and stained her swimsuit. Finally she straightened up, scowling and holding a flat piece of stone between the tips of her fingers.

"Let's have a contest," she said. "You find one too and throw yours first, and then I'll throw mine."

"I'm not going to let you copy me."

"I am not going to copy you, you little brat," Petunia said, flushing.

"Ehh, you're the one who's acting like a brat," I scoffed, kicking water in her face. She gasped and wiped it out of her eyes with her wrist, spitting.

"Lily Evans! Stop that!"

"What're you going to do, tell on me?"

"Yes!"

I rolled my eyes and folded my arms. "Oh, I'm so scared."

Red-cheeked and angry, Petunia hurled her rock as far as she could, at which it struck the surf with an insolent splash. Then she turned, slapped some water in my direction, and flounced back up to our grandparents' cottage, her pail swinging at her elbow. Her feet left muddy tracks in the sand.

x.x.x.x.x.x

There were times during our childhood where Petunia and I got along quite well. My bouts of accidental magic had a tendency to get me in trouble, and these were the times when Petunia shone like the big sister she had always wanted to be. I was the hapless little sister who made worms leap out of the ground and flatten themselves over my classmates' faces, and she was the protective older sister who explained everything away with an "Oh, shove it, Lily's just quicker than you, now get out of my way before I tell the Headmaster on you," and march me off to a wash room to tut-tut at me as she scrubbed dirt off my fingers. Naturally I protested and argued when she did this, but privately I was grateful. Petunia had a way of making other children feel stupid for looking at me as though I were a freak, and because she did so, I knew she loved me, in her bitter, insecure way. And for that I loved her back.

But then, of course, there was the day I received the letter from Hogwarts. I had no trouble believing it; I hardly questioned the contents of that letter until both my parents had read it. You're a witch, the handwriting in green ink said, and you've been enrolled in a school where you'll learn all number of spells. You'll learn to hold a wand and levitate lead; you'll learn to transfigure matter and heal wounds without bandages. You'll learn to defend yourself with magic.

"You'll learn how to make cards disappear and pull rabbits out of hats, more like," Petunia snarled, snatching the letter and whisking it out of reach when I lunged for it. "What a load of tripe. What a load of crap. What are you going to do with magic? Bewitch my wardrobe so that it flies out at me every time I open my chest of drawers and—"

"Give me the letter back, you bloody—"

She was laughing now, a bitter, high-pitched screech. "'Talented young witches and wizards!'" she repeated, cackling. "What a joke! Lily, my dear, you don't really believe this is true, do you? So brilliant and you still fall for this! Hark, magic really does exist!"

"Petunia. Give me my letter!" I was chasing her around the room now, stumbling over furniture as she darted out of my reach, holding the letter over her head.

"Oh, look, Lily wants it back. She thinks it's a magical passport to fairyland! What, Lily, you don't actually believe this, do you? Come on, you're my little sister, you can't possibly be that stupid--"

"Give it BACK!" I tackled her to the floor and tried to pin her arms down so I could pry the letter out of her fist. She was still laughing, her face red, blond hair all over the place, ropy muscles standing out on her bony arms as she attempted to wrestle me off of her. "What the hell is wrong with you!" I yelled.

"Ah-ah-ah, none of that, Lily! Mummy'll be angry!"

"Petunia, God, what's got into you! Give it back, what is wrong with you--"

Petunia kept laughing, gasping now, her face growing redder by the moment. She was out of breath; and never one to miss an opportunity when I saw one, I shoved my knee against her chest and snatched the letter out of her hand. Just as she began to thrash and lunge for the parchment again, our father burst into the room, shouting.

"Girls!" In a moment he had yanked me off Petunia's chest and pulled her up off the floor. "Stop that this instant! Lily, what do you mean by pinning your sister against the floor? And Petunia, what the blazes did you think you were doing?"

"I got a letter," I explained furiously, breathing hard, "and she thinks she can just steal it, as if that's going to stop me from going. I just got enrolled in Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. I'm a witch, Dad. And if you don't believe it, read that letter. It'll tell you everything you want to know."

"She's got that right," Petunia cackled. "Burn her at the stake, that's what I say. I always knew she was a freak!"

Our father grabbed her by the shoulders and gripped her, hard. "Stop it. Now. Do you hear me?"

She was shaking with laughter, so badly that she didn't appear able to breathe. She nodded almost imperceptibly and kept laughing. When our father let her go, she collapsed against the wall, gasping.

"You are fourteen years old, Petunia, and you're acting like a child. You should know better than to pick fights with your sister over a letter. Apart from being completely immature, this is—"

"Hah. Immature! I have my reasons."

"Would you care to share any of them?"

She lifted her chin and gave a proud, saccharine smile, but she was visibly livid and there were tears forming in her eyes. There was a small tremor in her voice when she spoke. "No, I would not like to share them at all, thank you very much."

"Then you'll put your reasons away and never act on them again, or I swear you won't see the light of day for the rest of the time you're living under this roof. Now you," he said, rounding on me, "you are not to attack Petunia under any circumstances, no matter how infuriating you find her. She is your sister, and it is your responsibility to treat her in kind."

"I hate her," I said, my throat tight. "And she isn't my sister. I don't know what you think she is, but if she can say that shit about me, I am not related to her."

"You are related to her whether you like it or not, young lady. Now tell your sister you're sorry."

"What!"

"I'm waiting, Lily."

I stared at him, open-mouthed, unable to believe the punishment he was demanding I inflict upon myself.

"I'll wait all night if you make me, but you'll regret it if you do."

I waited a moment longer to see if he would stand his ground. When I saw his face harden, I rounded on my sister and thrust out my hand. "Petunia, I apologize for retaliating. I should've known better than to fight with you, because you were obviously going to give the letter back on your own. I'm sorry you've always secretly hated me for being what you aren't. I'm sorry I'm not just your stupid little sister." With that I wrenched my hand out of hers, stuffed the letter in my pocket, and stormed out of the room, eyes blurry with tears.

x.x.x.x.x.x

I was always getting into fights, of course; not by intention, but often because I simply happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. There was one incident at Hogwarts where I tripped on my way from the dormitories to the common room; my books went flying, my uniform ripped, and I went crashing down the stairs, only to barrel straight into James Potter and Remus Lupin as they dodged into the stairwell with the apparent intention of avoiding a flying seat cushion. The three of us landed in a heap at the bottom of the staircase, yelling and swearing. We were thirteen years old.

"Oy! What the—watch the hell where you're going, Evans!"

Coughing, I shoved James away and scrambled to my knees, groping on the floor for my wand. "Excuse me? Who's in the bloody girls' stairwell when they're forbidden to be there? Eh?"

"Excuse me while I knock your block off," James said, putting on a high voice. "Hang on, let me snap my brassiere in your face—"

"POTTER! You little berk—HEY! My WAND!"

"AAAGH! YOU HAVE VIOLENT TENDENCIES, EVANS! Wait, are you grabbing my zipper? Hey! Hey, Evans is trying to strip me, ha ha—"

"I think it's more like she's trying to kill you, James, I'd quit trying to cop a feel if I were you—"

"I'm not trying to kill him, I'm just trying to get my wand back, JESUS, Potter, will you give me the stupid thing so I can HEX the crap out of you—"

"Ha, you would, wouldn't you—whoa, whoa! Bitch slap, bitch slap, watch the face! OW, your nails SCRATCH! THE GLASSES, Evans, have some respect for the GLASSES!"

"Hark, I hear the voice of an idiot! HA. Die." I snatched my wand, clambered to my feet, and yanked a loose shoelace out from under James's stomach as he felt blindly under the couch for his glasses. Ten seconds later, I stomped out of the common room to study in the library, so that, perhaps, he'd stumble by a bit later and see that I'd proven my point.

x.x.x.x.x.x

Then, later on, there were the times when it wouldn't stop raining.

When I was fourteen, I would sit by the window, watching the drops trickle or, as the case often was, stream down the glass. Floodwater would fill the streets outside our house and shallow whirlpools would form around the drainage grates. I tried my hand at writing poetry but gave up when the words began to look frivolous and vain. That year, I developed a venomous hatred for my own penmanship and vowed never to write poetry again.

When I was fifteen, Alice and I got caught outside the castle in a thunderstorm. I had just broken up with my first significant other—a Ravenclaw boy with few romantic sensibilities—and had thrown off my raincoat, yanked the rubber band out of my hair, and stomped one sneakered foot into the deepest mud puddle I could find. My white blouse was drenched to transparency, my skirt was clinging to my thighs like plastic wrap, and the red and gold tie I had placed around my neck was coming undone.

"You know, this is probably going to sound crass," Alice mused later as we ran up the steps to the Entrance Hall, "but you two were more like a pair of eight-year-olds trying to figure out how to hold hands than an actual, you know, couple anyway...at any rate, please tell me you'll wear a different set of underthings when you get your first real date."

x.x.x.x.x.x

When I was sixteen, I began to study the rain. It seemed that I could never get out of it, so I would go to the library every once in a while and take out a book on weather patterns. I would then spend my spare time flopped on my bed with them, reading about the formation of hurricanes, tornadoes, and anvil clouds. I began to analyze weather dynamics and tried to predict whether we would receive rain, sleet, hail, or snow. When my roommates began to stare and ask questions, I simply told them, "I like it when it rains."

After James and I became a couple, we made it a point to sneak out of the castle whenever it was raining. He had a penchant for sucking the water off my lips when we kissed, and so the more torrential the downpour, the better he liked it.

Once we found ourselves outside in the rain and lightning. We hadn't realized how close the storm was until a resounding crash shook the wall against which I was leaning.

"Wow, shit," I remarked.

James laughed and began unfastening the buttons of my blouse. "I love how we're just standing here, waiting to be struck by lightning."

I felt his lips at the base of my throat and moaned as he worked his way down. His hair was soaked and black as coal between my fingers. "Yes, you do, don't you?"

x.x.x.x.x.x

One thing that's particularly interesting about memory is that it can be almost absolutely subjective. If you are at all confused over your past, memory bends to your every mood; what seems like a good memory one day can be an embarrassing, cringe-worthy memory the next. For example:

It's sunny outside and I'm sprawled on the grass reading a book. Some young children are playing on the swing set twenty or thirty feet from where I'm lying, the same swing set I played on with Severus Snape when I was ten. The children are shrieking with laughter, one of them throwing himself as high up in the air as he can go before letting go of the swing and flying into the sandbox before them. I remember the look on Snape's face when I did the same and think, You know, he wasn't so bad.

Then a cloud moves over the sun and the sky becomes subdued. Now I remember the hollowness of Snape's cheeks, the sunken shape of his eyes. His smile was a tight, thin puzzle I could not solve - and then, when we were older, one I flat-out refused to solve. I wanted nothing from Severus Snape, and so I had nothing to give; whether he liked it or not, that would have to be enough. I remember him and I feel sick.

A better example of subjective memory, though, is this:

Alice's parents had just been murdered, and we were standing before their open caskets. Her mother's eyes were shut, and her hands were folded quietly on her stomach. She wore a black dress with a white lily pinned to the breast; her hair was wavy and golden. Alice's father was wearing black as well, and his hands, too, were folded quietly on his stomach. Death exaggerated the broadness of his shoulders, threw the scars on his face into sharp and ethereal respite. And there they were, mother and father: elegantly, artistically, and irretrievably dead.

It was I who wrote and delivered the eulogy. For some reason she'd never fully explained to me, Alice had wanted me to be the one who did it, so I complied with as much dignity and composure as I could summon. I did well for a seventeen-year-old girl - but I was exactly that; a seventeen-year-old girl, fresh-faced and still young enough to think that losing my virginity made me adult enough to comprehend the weight of the speech I was delivering.

Sometimes I can see myself standing at that podium again, dressed in black, hands trembling; my eyes are dry, and my voice is controlled and even. I'm giving the classic eulogy - fond memories and profound sentiments with moral undertones. I've expressed the thoughts of the funeral congregation, and I'm providing a lead-in for their prayers.

Other times, though, I look back on that and see myself standing at the podium, feeling sick to my stomach. I'm nervous and inhibited and don't feel like I deserve to be up there. Alice is looking up at me as if she can't see me anymore, and she's leaning back against the pew with her hands folded tightly in her lap. Her eyes are red and her corsage is drooping. And although she never says it, I can tell that she's asking me, silently, why I can't sound a little more sincere.

Why can't I, indeed? I'm seventeen. My family is still alive. I can't possibly grasp her pain. What stupidity moved her to think I could?

She thanks me after the funeral and tells me she's sorry for putting me on the spot.

"No, really, you didn't screw it up," she says, swirling her drink as we sit at the bar after the reception. She's staring at the ice as it clinks against the sides of her glass. "I just...I don't know what I was thinking. You told me you didn't want to do it, and I still...God. It's my fault, Lily. Don't beat yourself up."

But the catch is that I'm not really sure if she was disappointed at all; perhaps I merely think she was disappointed because I'm projecting my insecurity onto her. The day was such a whirlwind that all I remember with any real clarity is a myriad of images and emotions—faces, strange voices, shadows, black robes and dresses, smeared red lipstick and women crying in the lavatory while cheap, pearly hand soap dripped from the dispensers. The scenarios I recollect for myself at any given time are entirely dependent on the lens through which I choose to view the event. I can make the memories brave, pensive, sad, perfectly ludicrous, or some bitter and satirical combination of the four.

It's funny, this art of self-delusion. You would think it'd make you feel empowered, but in fact it makes you feel just the opposite: just a little too susceptible to lies, just a little too vulnerable to emotion, just a little too human for your own liking.

But then, who am I to be a judge of such things?

Who am I to be a judge of such things, indeed?

x.x.x.x.x.x

Before my grandfather died, he would let me sit with him on his back porch in the evenings, the two of us listening to the ever-present crash and sigh of the waves along the shore. Often he would while away the entire night whittling small wooden figurines with a Swiss Army knife, a lantern perched beside him on the wooden steps.

"How do you define wisdom?" I asked during the summer after my sixteenth birthday. "It seems like it should be pretty simple, but all I ever hear nowadays is this debate over who's wise enough to lead mankind to its inevitable suicide."

He chuckled. "Ah, Lily," he said, carving the dorsal fin of a driftwood dolphin, "Astute as always." He shaved a few flakes of wood off the dolphin's back. "I learned a thing or two while I was in the Navy—always keep track of your socks, for one," he said with a dry laugh. "But if there was one thing that struck me, it was that life was cheap. Yet...cheap as it was, we all clung to it in our own ways, as if by revolting against what every day in combat reminded us of, we could take back the value of our lives. Human nature, to be sure. Testament to the idea that the appearance of things depends on the how we choose to think about them. It's easy to lose sight of our convictions when we're under fire. Wisdom is the ability to see things with clarity and keep your balance."

I groaned. "Does everyone over the age of sixty talk in generalities like that?"

"Ah, now that I couldn't tell you, but I can assure you that a bloody load of them will talk your ear off if you give them a chance." There was an amused twinkle in his eye. "From what I understand, most young people find this brand of specificity tiresome."

Later, after the sun had set and my grandfather had retired for the night, I walked down to the surf and fished blindly for rocks to skip. From what I remember, I found two or three of a suitable shape. Whether they actually skipped or not, I don't know; but I like to think they did.

Wisdom.

How easy it is to throw that word like a wrench into the heavy machinery of your brain and jam every cog and wheel you've ever suffered and triumphed to create. How simple it is to muddle, how insolently it invites you to invent new and foolish definitions for it. And, incredibly, we all do: "Wisdom is the ability to understand, not just know"; "Wisdom is the ability not to be misled by either end of an extreme"; "Wisdom is the ability to content yourself with the world as it is, not as you want it to be"; "Wisdom is the ability to know what's right". It's easy to sound wise when you're speaking in generalities, and equally easy to say, "Yes, but that's not what I meant, you've got me all wrong" or "No, no, I meant that in a different context" as soon as someone else comes along and proves, simply, logically, and empirically, that your definition was nothing but hot air.

It follows, then, that the only way to ensure you won't lose the argument is to come up with a definition for wisdom that nobody can disprove. The hidden premise here is that if you can win the argument, you somehow know enough to be considered wise, and you are therefore qualified to comment on things other people don't understand.

That seems to leave a bit to be desired, doesn't it?

x.x.x.x.x.x

It's raining now as I write this by the indolent light of a lantern in King's Cross train station, in a makeshift notebook of parchment and tin paperclips. I'm working what used to be my shift as a night watchwoman for the Order of the Phoenix, dressed as a shabby university student waiting for her train to arrive. King's Cross station is the entry point to the Order's escape network, through which we've been smuggling targeted Muggles to safety for the past six months. By day, I work as an undercover mail clerk for the Ministry of Magic, where I screen all incoming mail for Dark Magic.

Mail room duty on a good day is dull but tolerable. We see just enough Dark Magic there to keep things interesting. But nights in the train station - I'll be honest: That is a tense and terrible job. The numbers of Muggles we shuttle through each week is increasing; what's more, we are never sure if those people, wrapped in blankets, shaking, weeping, befuddled and frantic for their loved ones, are truly the only ones amongst their friends and families who are being hunted. There are many more we never know existed until they turn up dead or missing. Often these are the Muggle families of witches and wizards - which begs the question: How many more were being killed on spontaneous Death Eater raids? How many might we have saved, but didn't?

This was my job until I began writing the obituaries of the people the Death Eaters have killed. I do it because the last person who wrote obituaries for The Daily Prophet disappeared and, for some unfathomable, ridiculous, and likely very ill-informed reason, someone volunteered me to fill his shoes.

When I come to the train station now, it's check on the new recruits who share the position I recently held. I'm not much older than they are, these baby-faced kids straight out of Hogwarts. I suppose the only difference between us is that they haven't been at this job long enough to have realized that they aren't the guardians of innocence they were told they are, that the real fight is being fought elsewhere, that they are sentries standing at the front gate when the enemy has known all along to use the back door. This used to be a source of endless frustration for me, so strongly did I believe that we had too many people working in the escape networks, and not nearly enough in the field; but now I'm just supremely grateful that the Order of the Phoenix is squeamish about sending seventeen- and eighteen-year-olds off to die. I met a fourteen-year-old last week whose eighteen-year-old brother was killed in a Death Eater raid. I wrote about them both and The Daily Prophet paid me fifty Galleons for my trouble.

I have a confession: I'm writing this out of guilt and shame. I'm nineteen years old and I know nothing. I'm not qualified to write about anyone's life but my own. I wish I were, because nobody deserves to die and then have their story botched. But here I am, for whatever reason, for whatever purpose, hoping that - at the very least - I understand life well enough to write death with some small measure of dignity.

x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x

Disclaimer: As thrilled as I'd be if I were J.K. Rowling, I am not her and I own nothing you recognize. Sigh.

Author's Note: June 2011: I finally got off my lazy bum and edited this after, I don't know, five years of letting it sit? I took a three-year hiatus when I went off to college and didn't come back until last summer, right before starting grad school. Anyway, this fic has been written up through Chapter 9 and will be updated regularly until all available chapters are uploaded here. I'm still pretty busy these days, but I've been cranking on this fic since last July and hope to finish it.

Cheers. Hope you liked!

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- Chapter 1: Highway Driving -

The sudden return of winter had spit a sleet storm on London, and I was wet and chilled to the bone when I arrived in my flat that dreary February morning.

The first thing I did was remove my cloak and toss it over the coat rack; and the second, kick my shoes off and throw them in the closet. Then I collapsed facedown on the living room couch and lay there without stirring. All was silent but for the sound of sleet rapping at the windows; my skull felt as if it had just been stuffed with cotton. Exhaustion had deadened my nerves and left me unable to keep my eyes closed.

A few moments passed before I rolled onto my back to avoid suffocation.

My flat was your typical city apartment: ten floors up, looking out over a busy street, windows perpetually dirty from rain, smog, and pigeon droppings. The paint was chipped in a few places, the doors all creaked, and the furniture, all secondhand, was frayed around the edges. But it was quiet, it had a good heating system, and it had running water. And above all, the rent was cheap.

After a time, I rose from the couch and headed to the bathroom for a shower; then, after drying off and donning some nightclothes, I sauntered back into the living room and sat down at the worktable I used as a desk. On it lay piles of paper and parchment: legal documents, a ledger, my rent contract, last year's tax returns, letters from friends and other members of the Order of the Phoenix, a journal, and other stuff of this nature. In the middle of all this chaos sat the crowning glory of my existence: a brand-new typewriter, which I had bought on sale for fifty percent of its original price, complete with two large packages of erasable paper; no wands, quills, or reams of parchment necessary.

Beside the typewriter was a bouquet of deep crimson roses in a blown glass vase—a Valentine's Day salutation from James, which he had sent just the day before alongside a delicate gold-rope necklace that I now wore as a talisman to stave off my loneliness. I hadn't seen James in almost two weeks.

His most recent letter was lying atop of a stack of extra paper, a corner of the page gently curling. Running my fingers lightly over the parchment, I picked it up and reread it.

Happy Valentine's Day, Lily!

Just wanted to send you a little something to remind you I'd still be asking you to go out with me if you hadn't already said yes by now. (And I really really hope you like it, because I actually have no idea what kind of jewelry you're into.)

By the way, I got your gift. Thanks, it was brilliant! I've never had a dress shirt fit me that well before, it was almost like I had a woman shopping for me or something. Now I'll have no excuse showing up to interviews or whatnot looking like an unmade bed. Lily, you are seriously making a man out of me. I'm not sure what I'm going to do about this.

Oh and the cookies you baked were TO DIE FOR. Why don't you bake more often? Actually, why are you ALL THE WAY OVER THERE, where I have to wait 'til every second week to see you?

How's the night shift been these past few days? You sounded tired-ish in your last letter, so I was wondering if everything's all right. Remember, life is too short to be taken seriously.

- I'm only being halfway serious about that. It sucks huge donkey bollocks that they keep you guys there so late, I still can't get over that. You should switch to the Gringotts janitorial staff so you can roll around in piles of gold at weird hours with me instead. - Maybe outside the vaults in the presence of a fire-spitting dragon and pissed off goblins. But that's not the point. I miss you. I want you to be my partner in this fight so badly - but more than that I want to be there to protect you. Maybe those are the same thing, I don't know. But it kills me to know that's not what's happening.

Life's been dull on my end this week. Driving me mad. I want to stir things up but I think I'm in a deadlock position right now. Which I guess is alright because I'm pretty sure I'll have an out in the near future, but I'm going mental all the same. Feels like a waste of life to be bored like this, but I guess in the scheme of things I'm better off than those bloody Death Eaters, who are so spooked by the world in general that they have to constantly inbreed just so they don't crap themselves in terror of their own offspring.

Love,

James

P.S. I have a day off coming up. I'm pretty sure it's not on the same day as yours, but I know Sirius's is. I'll switch with him and meet you at Headquarters after your night shift then.

I picked one of his roses out of the vase and held it to my lips, breathing its scent. I closed my eyes. All was silent and still. After a moment I flicked open my journal. Perhaps I could convince myself to go to sleep if I cleared my head a bit first.

February 15th, 1979

4:29 AM

My family left the city when I was about five years old.

I paused for a moment.

- For some reason this is what I'm thinking about now, moving out of London. Actually we didn't live too far away from where I'm living right now, maybe a 15 minute ride on the Tube if that. Our flat was kind of similar to the one I'm living in now, too, but bigger and less run down.

I miss my family's home off the coast. It was the fact that you could always see the sky, and when you walked into town the air still smelled fresh, you could still hear crickets. I miss those innocent days.

My head was filled with sleepless tension. I put my quill down and considered the typewriter before me. I was due in the mail room in less than eight hours.

Fuck it.

I pulled the typewriter to the front of the desk and laid my fingers upon the keys.

x.x.x.x.x.x

My family left the city when I was about five years old. My mother had given up her job as a criminal defense attorney because she was "tired of defending more hardened felons than innocent passersby" and felt it was time to stay home with her daughters; and my father, an engineer who had up until then been hard-pressed to find a well-paying job, had just gotten an offer from a building firm based near the coast. We bought a house in a small neighborhood near the western seaboard, where my grandparents lived, and moved out of London the following July.

We went through the usual moving routine—excavating everything from our closets to our wardrobes to our garbage bins and tossing the contents either into the dumpster or into boxes, haggling with moving agents, and waving good-bye to friends while secretly wondering whether we really would write to one another in one, two, three years' time.

I remember it being a hot day during the peak of summer when the moving van came, the kind of day that manages to be so humid that you can't tell the difference between the invisible mugginess and the sheen of sweat that refuses to evaporate from your skin. Traffic was heavy in front of our flat and pedestrians kept getting in the way of the movers, bumping into them as they schlepped our beds, our mattresses, our dining room table, our chairs, and our television down five flights of stairs and into the street. Mum and Dad were both disheveled and slightly frantic, still sealing boxes with large rolls of strapping tape and sticking colored labels on the sides; as for me, I was mostly just hungry.

I spent a good deal of time sitting on the balcony with Petunia and one of her school friends—a girl named Mary who lived one floor above us, if my memory serves me. Mary was small and round-faced with large brown eyes and a ponytail that stuck up at the top, where it was tied with a rubber band glued to a pair of pink plastic stars. She had a little sister who was about my age, a girl named Vicky with chin-length blond hair and who refused to wear anything even remotely pink. She and I had often played together—drawn on the sidewalk with chalk and played cops and robbers in the alley, that was—yet it had never occurred to either of us that the term for this relationship was 'friendship'.

Petunia and Mary understood it, though.

"Are you still going to come to our school, Petty?" Mary asked, sitting on the concrete balcony with her knees drawn up to her chest and looking demurely out at the scene below.

"No," Petunia sighed. She was perched on a footstool with her elbows on her knees, her chin rested on her palm—like a self-proclaimed queen staring resignedly at her rumpled kingdom and unconscionably frumpy subjects. "Mum and Dad say I'm going to go to a different school next year. This one's going to be too far away."

"So you're really leaving?"

Petunia sighed again, this time more dramatically; Vicky and I exchanged glances. Vicky rolled her eyes, and I smothered a giggle. "Yeah, I'm leaving," Petunia said. "Dad has a new job. That's why."

"Will we ever get to see each other again?" Mary said emphatically, her eyes wide. "They can't take best friends away from each other! Nothing can!"

"Yeah," Petunia responded, with equal fervor. "That's why I brought this." She reached into her pocket and pulled out two plastic friendship bracelets, each bearing half of a heart-shaped charm, jagged down their sides to make the heart look broken. With great ceremony she handed one of the bracelets to Mary, who promptly burst into tears. "As long as we have these, we'll never stop being friends."

A grocery truck roared down the center lane and a couple of cars blasted their horns. Vicky was sucking a lollipop. "That's mushy," she said, taking a loud slurp. "And stupid."

"I'm hungry," I added.

Vicky raised her eyebrows and popped the lollipop out of her mouth. She grinned, her teeth and lips stained with blue food coloring, and twirled it under my nose. I caught a whiff of saccharine and something else that may or may not have passed for blueberry. "Want some?"

"Eugh!" I laughed, swatting at her hand. "It has your spit all over it!"

"Heehee, want some? Eh, eh?"

"That's disgusting," Petunia gasped as Vicky and I began wrestling, I trying to keep the lollipop away from my mouth, and she trying to wave it under my nose. "Eurgh, put that away!"

"Oof—haha, Vicky, you got some on my chin, ew, it's all sticky—"

At this she hopped off of me and bounced into Petunia's lap. "Ooh! Want some of my lollipop, Petty?"

Petunia shrieked and recoiled. With a screech and a thud, the footstool fell over and sent Petunia somersaulting backwards. Two pale, skinny legs went sailing through the air, and one of her pink and brown sandals flew off her foot. It struck the railing of the balcony, bounced, and spiraled down into the street, where it crashed against one of our metal trash cans and flipped the lid upside down.

"Girls?" Mum shouted. I jumped up and looked over the railing. She was standing on the sidewalk alongside the truck, craning her neck upwards. "What's going on up there?"

"VICKY'S ATTACKING ME!" Petunia shrieked. "SHE'S ATTACKING ME WITH HER LOLLIPOP AND SHE'S TRYING TO GIVE ME HER GERMS! AAAGHH, MA-R-Y-Y-Y! GET YOUR SISTER OFF ME!"

"GIRLS! I TOLD YOU TO BEHAVE!"

"Vicky, stop that," Mary whimpered, clutching the railing. "That's icky, don't do that, you're making Petty mad!"

Not that this had any effect—Vicky and Petunia continued to grapple, Vicky with her ever-sticky lollipop giggling and smearing Petunia's face with blue sugar and saliva, and Petunia screeching like a banshee as she tried and failed to ward off her attacker. The two of them were causing a fantastic racket, squealing and yelping with limbs and shoes banging against concrete. I confess that I spent those two minutes jumping around by the railing and hooting in the manner of an alarmed monkey, knocking over the flowerpots Mum hadn't come for yet and sending dirt and potted plants flying through the air at positively thrilling speeds. Mary, for her part, had to keep ducking and cringing to avoid being kicked in the face by one of Petunia's flailing feet. At length Mum rushed in and pulled Vicky off of Petunia, told her sternly that it was not right to pick fights with other people's sisters, and threatened, half-jokingly, to have us all shipped off to the city zoo if we couldn't stop acting like animals.

"I'm not an animal," Petunia sniffed after Mum had left. "I hate you all. Really."

Mary went home shortly after the lollipop scene claiming her stomach hurt, and Petunia whiled away the rest of the afternoon sulking on the balcony with her knees drawn up to her chest, her cheeks dirty and tearstained. Vicky and I spent the remainder of our time playing with pebbles and talking quietly on the other end of the balcony as we watched the movers load the truck. Rush hour traffic began to clog the street as the clock struck four-thirty, then five o'clock in the evening. The cloud layer stirred itself up a bit and drifted in front of the sun, dulling its orange rays to a muted reddish glow.

"We should make a house for the mice," she suggested, making a small pile of pebbles and twigs. Her face bore an expression of seriousness. "My mum always puts out mouse traps for them. But I think they're cute."

I considered this for a moment. "How would we get them to live in the house, though?"

"Put up a sign that says, 'Mice, you can live here'. In a different language so they could understand it. Squeaks and stuff."

"Oh, what are you on about now?" Petunia burst out. "Trying to get the rodents to like our flat? Mum'll hit the ceiling."

"But we're not going to live here anymore, Petunia, just leave us alone—"

"Mum still doesn't want any mice," she interrupted, slumping back against the brick wall and folding her arms across her chest. "Stop making trouble for our parents."

"We're not." Even at the age of five, I couldn't fathom why any family of mice would want to move into an overturned flowerpot with a bunch of pebbles piled up in front of it—I suppose it was the influence of the books my mother had been reading to me, or perhaps the fact that no animal I'd met had ever done what I'd tried to get it to do. In any case, I still enjoyed pretending, so I turned away from Petunia and began moving the pebbles into a more pleasing arrangement.

This was the way our parents found us when the truck was ready to leave: Vicky and me crouched on the balcony playing with a cracked flowerpot, and Petunia sulking by the wall. Vicky was told she had to go home, and Petunia and I were hoisted to our feet by our tired, aggravated father. "Alright, kids," he said, wiping sweat from his brow. "We're ready to get in the car and leave now. Your mother's packed some juice and sandwiches for the trip; they're in the cooler in the backseat. Come on, we've got at least four hours of driving ahead of us."

"I'll walk you home, Vicky," Mum offered. "It's nearly six o'clock; you must be starved."

She shook her head vigorously.

Mum smiled and held out her hand. "Come on, poppet. Don't be shy."

Vicky stood rooted to the spot, as if she couldn't quite believe what was happening. Then, suddenly, she burst into tears and threw her arms around my neck, nearly strangling me.

"I'll never forget you, Lily," she sobbed. "I'll write to you every day for the rest of my life!"

"I'll write to you too," I replied. And with that I started bawling.

x.x.x.x.x.x

We drove northwest that night for nearly five and a half hours, Petunia and I dozing lightly in the backseat with the juice cooler while our mother squinted in the dark at a map. The first three hours were spent on the highway, with the sun sliding low over the road and eventually leaving an endless blackness to swallow us up. Street lights raced past us at regular intervals, flashing bright as we overtook them, and the highway hummed and whined persistently beneath us as we crossed bridges and overpasses, the sound muffling our parents' voices—that incessant, white-noise ringing of suspended concrete against tires and open air.

"You know, I can't really see this map...we should probably stop somewhere and have a look at it by a real light...was that exit forty-seven or forty-eight?"

"I don't know, darling; I'm focused on keeping this bozo from crashing into us, in fact he's being a bloody prick—"

"John, calm down; you're starting to drive erratically. We've got precious cargo in the backseat."

"Yes, I'm aware; it's just that—Jesus Christ, what are you doing, you idiot?" Dad spun the wheel and our tires screeched just as another car raced past us, coming within two feet of our side view mirrors and jerking Petunia and me out of our trances. There was a moment of chaos as we swerved back into the lane, eliciting a horrified gasp and a string of curse words from Mum; half a second later, a motorist roared past us, shouting and making obscene gestures with his free hand. Mum returned the gestures fervently.

"What a bunch of fucking idiots, swerving and tailgating like that! As if they're trying to get us all killed! And with the kids in the backseat to boot!"

"Bastards should be arrested," Dad muttered.

Mum slumped back in her seat. "Do tell."

Petunia and I exchanged glances. Her eyes were wide.

"Do you figure we'll make it?" she asked quietly, so that our parents couldn't hear her.

I drew my legs up to my chest and wrapped my arms around my knees, resting my head against the windowsill to stare out at the highway. "Maybe, maybe not."

Dad glanced up at the rearview mirror. "How are you girls doing back there?"

Both of us were silent for a moment; then Petunia burst into tears and wailed, "Dad, I feel like I'm going to throw up."

I was terrified of vomit, so I immediately followed suit and began crying as well. Mum sighed and reached into her knapsack for a plastic bag, which she handed back to Petunia; but rather than open it, Petunia merely crumpled it and clutched it in her fist, sobbing.

"Petunia, sweetheart, if you're feeling sick—"

"I think she's just tired, Laurel," Dad murmured.

"Well, it's certainly been a long day for all of us...Lily, love, calm down; just close your eyes and try to go to sleep, your sister will be fine..." Then she turned to Dad and said quietly, "Do you think your parents will still be up when we get there? At this rate we won't be arriving until past midnight."

"They should be; they both said they wanted to wait for us. They haven't seen the girls in years. Lily was hardly two last time we made it out to their place."

"Goodness...has it really been that long?"

"Time flies, eh?"

"It really does...are you alright, Petunia?"

Hiccoughing, Petunia shook her head and curled up in the seat, leaning her forehead against the window. Mum watched her for a few moments, her brow furrowed. She frowned. "Petunia?"

She didn't answer. Mum and Dad exchanged glances.

"Do you think we should pull over?" Mum said hesitantly.

Dad sighed and bore down on the steering wheel. "I think we'll be fine. Look; there's our exit, coming up on the right. We'll be there in no time."

We got lost on the back roads, of course. Mum couldn't see the map without a light on inside the car, and Dad couldn't see where he was going with such a light; besides, he said, we were in the countryside now, and everyone knew country roads made zero sense even when they were properly labeled, which wasn't often. The best thing to do was to backtrack and follow our migratory instincts ("evolution's gift to man," he called them). If birds could do it, he reasoned, then of course humans had the knack as well; surely a country road passed by more visible landmarks than a flock of birds flying a thousand feet up in the effing troposphere. At any rate, the worst that could happen was a cloudy sky if we had to get out of the car and find our position by parallax, ha ha ha.

"Alas," Mum said as we lurched around the bend of what appeared to be a gravel hiking trail, "I think those genes have lain dormant for so many generations now that nature has quietly decided to phase them out in favor of roadmaps. Look, there's a sign right up there: 'Petrol station: six miles'. If nothing else, we could at least ask for directions."

"Well, if we get out of this within the next few hours, we should have enough directions as well as petrol to make it to the coast. We're getting near now, trust me. I'm following my nose; I can—" he took a deep whiff for effect— "smell the sea from here."

"John," Mum bit out, "your nose has led us off the bloody map. It is time. To pull. Over."

"Excuse me, where did that come from? You've just spent the past two hours remarking on how you can't even see the map."

"Yes. Because you keep refusing to stop somewhere and let me have a look at it!"

"Kindly leave it alone, dear. I'm trying to retrace our steps, and the absence of streetlamps isn't making the process any easier."

"Don't fight," Petunia murmured. "Please don't fight."

"Stay out of this, Petunia darling," Dad said curtly. "Take a nap. We'll get there in short order."

Mum sighed and massaged her forehead, resting her elbow on the windowsill.

x.x.x.x.x.x

It was past midnight when we pulled into the drive of our grandparents' oceanfront cottage. I had fallen into a fitful sleep shortly beforehand, and I woke to the sound of our tires grinding to a halt against loosely packed gravel. The front porch was lit, throwing small pools and arcs of warm yellow light over the door and steps. Lifting my head from the windowsill, I saw Grandfather's gaunt, straight-backed form walking out in short sleeves and sandals to greet us, limping slightly.

Dad parked the car, turned off the ignition, and unlocked the doors. "Well, ladies, we've arrived at last. Say hello to Grandma and Grandpa!"

"Mm," Mum said, stretching. "I hope we haven't kept them up too long."

"Nah, my dad's almost always up late; he doesn't mind. Let's start unloading the boot, eh?"

"What about your mum?"

"She's a lot like my dad—likes to stay up reading at night. She'll be glad to see you."

"Well, as long as we're not descending on them..." She unbuckled her seatbelt and looked over her shoulder. "Girls, are you awake? Come on, sweethearts, we're here."

Petunia stirred in the seat; apparently she had begun to doze off. "We are?"

"Yes, ma'am," Dad replied, opening his door and swinging his legs out of the car. "Ah, how the foot loves gravel after six hours of pumping a pedal. Hoo, baby!"

"Hello, John, how've you been?" Grandfather said jovially, grasping Dad's hand and pulling him into a bone-crushing hug as the rest of us tumbled out of the car. "Good God, man, it's been years! Ah, and here are Petunia and Lily—" He kissed each of us on the cheek and ruffled our hair, laughing. "Lord, you two have grown. The last time I saw Lily she was hardly walking! And Petunia, my goodness! You're at least a head taller now; what happened to you?"

Petunia, still clutching her plastic bag, cracked a tiny smile. Grandfather gave her and me a gentle push forward. "Now go on, you two, say hello to your grandmother while I help your parents unload the luggage. Grandmother's making hot chocolate for you."

By now Mum had salvaged the roadmaps and snacks from the backseat and placed them back in her knapsack. "Hello, Laurel," Grandfather said as she joined us, pecking her on the cheek. "How are you?"

Mum burst out laughing, her voice suddenly lighter, more relaxed. "Oh, it's been a long day, but we survived. It's good to see you, Patrick. How have you and Helen been?"

"Very well," he said as he and Dad began hefting our overnight bags out of the car. "Things are quiet year-round out here; it does Helen a lot of good to be away from the city."

"She does seem happier now that she's out of London, I'll attest to that."

"Oh, there's no comparison," Dad said as we walked up the front steps. With his free hand he pulled the door open and poked his head into the house. "Hi, Mum, how are you?"

"Oh, wonderful, John, it's so good to see you—" She kissed him once on each cheek and then bent down to greet Petunia and me. "Ah, Lily and Petunia, my two little pixies! Look how you've grown! Goodness gracious, you've gotten big. You've been feeding them well, Laurel."

"Well, I certainly to try," Mum said as Grandmother bustled into the kitchen and came back with two steaming mugs. Pressing them into our hands, she said,

"Here, have some hot chocolate. It'll warm you up; it's chilly out there tonight."

Mum gave her a sidelong glance. "I'm not sure if that's a good idea, Helen; it'll keep them up all night. These two are a handful when they're all sugared up."

"Nonsense! It'll put them right to sleep. And besides, they're still so tiny, the two of them; they can use it," Grandmother said, gazing fondly at us. "I'm going to call them both Thumbelina."

x.x.x.x.x.x.x

Incidentally, Grandmother was right. Petunia and I fell asleep within minutes of going to bed, though I heard Petunia wake several times during the night—the first time when she rolled off the edge of her cot and landed with an impressive thud on the thin rug covering the wooden floor of the loft where we were sleeping, and the second when she jerked awake with a startled yell and spent the next minute or so sitting up in bed, hyperventilating and staring at me from across the loft. Towards dawn she fell into a deeper sleep, her body curled tightly beneath her woolen blanket with her back turned to me, her hair spread like a dim shadow across her pillow in the gray pre-dawn light.

It was about half past five o'clock when I awoke in earnest; my only indication of the time was the diffuse, colorless glow that seeped past the curtains near the foot of my cot and the sounds of my parents' and grandparents' voices in the kitchen below. Plates and coffee cups clinked softly in between snatches of conversation as Dad told the other adults which roads we would take on our way to the new house, and as Mum warned—two or three times—that that we should get a move on sooner rather than later, as the moving van was likely to arrive early from the warehouse where it had been parked all night. I could hear the rustle of a map being spread over the table as Mum and Dad double-checked our course while Grandmother and Grandfather moved quietly about the kitchen, making coffee and toast and talking about the driving conditions; it looked, apparently, like it was going to be a drizzly, foggy morning.

Curious, I pushed my covers back; and, with the cot creaking beneath me, I pulled the heavy brocaded curtain away from the window. Dim, cold light flooded the loft and illuminated my grandparents' trunks of clothing and linens, Grandmother's extensive array of quilts, and Petunia's sleeping form; and there, some fifty feet below, a hundred yards away, was the choppy, steel-gray expanse of the ocean, churning and frothing at the lip of the shore. A brisk, salty-smelling wind swept my hair away from my face and left my skin feeling cool and damp. A mother seagull was leading her brood into the surf.

"Lily, I'm trying to sleep," Petunia moaned. "Close the bloody window, you idiot."

Immediately I rolled my eyes and yanked the curtain back into place, then flopped dejectedly onto my pillow.

Something was poking my cheek. Lifting my torso onto my elbows, I began examining the pillow—the something was sharp, pointed. I picked it out of the fabric. It was a downy feather; the root was what had been poking me.

"And don't pick at Grandmother's pillows," Petunia sniped. "Down pillows are really rare. You can't even buy one for a million pounds."

I stuck the root of the feather back into the weave of the pillowcase and began pressing at the tip, but the stem broke. "Go away."

"Well, you stop being bad, and maybe I'll think about it."

"You said you were asleep, stupidhead, how do you know I was being bad?"

"I was asleep until you woke me up, and besides, I never said I was asleep in the first place."

I buried my face in my quilt and made a noise of disgust. "I'm going to tell Mum you were spying on me. Then you'll be sorry."

Petunia opened her mouth to retort, but that was when we heard Mum climbing the staircase; a few moments later, she was pulling back our covers and shaking us gently by the shoulders. "Rise and shine, sleepyheads, we're moving into our new house today. Come along and have some breakfast before we say goodbye to Grandmother and Grandfather."

Petunia rolled her eyes at me and swung her legs over the side of the cot to follow Mum down the stairs. Angrily I followed suit and kicked a small throw pillow in Petunia's direction, which she dodged with a dainty step to the side, crinkling her nose and sticking her tongue out at me.

Breakfast was a quick affair—Dad told Petunia and me to eat some buttered toast and bacon, drink some orange juice, get dressed, and help Mum pack our toothbrushes and nightclothes. Petunia jumped up from her seat as soon as she had finished and followed Mum back into the loft as Dad had instructed, but I hung back for a moment, wary of being behind Petunia on anything, most of all a staircase as steep as this one. Grandmother smiled and blew me a kiss from across the table. "Go on, pixie. Help your mother."

I looked up at Dad, who nodded; reluctantly I slid off my chair and pushed it back towards the table. Grandfather chuckled and reached into his pocket. "Well, before you leave, little lady," he said, grasping my hand and opening it with tawny, calloused fingers, "I think I should give you a good luck charm." And with that he placed a small, carved wooden dolphin in my palm, its eyes, beak, and flukes meticulously whittled. Grandfather winked. "He'll keep you company. They're always smiling, dolphins."

Amazed, I turned the figurine over and examined its belly—a smooth, reddish brown curve, cleanly faceted by the whittling knife. Grandmother blew her breath out in a light hiss. "Oh, yes, your grandfather just loves playing with his knives," she tutted. "I expect he'll chop off a finger one of these days, he does it so often. He'll carve anything he can get his hands on, honest to goodness. Sometimes I worry that he'll carve up our furniture if he can't find anything else."

"He could sell some of his figurines, Mum," Dad remarked, peering at the dolphin in my hand. "He'd get a nice price for them."

Grandfather made a clucking noise. "No, no, I wouldn't sell these." He reached into his pocket again and pulled out another small figurine, this one a blue whale. "This one here is for Petunia—ahh, and here she is right now! Petunia, come here, I've got something for you."

Curious, she left Mum's side and approached us. Grandfather took her hand as well and opened it, pressing the whale into her palm. "To keep you company during the drive to your new house," he said with a wink. "Someone to say hello to when you wake up in the morning."

Looking faintly dumbstruck, Petunia rolled the figurine about in her hand, running her thumb lightly over its back and fluke. Then her eyes moved to the dolphin I was holding, and she stared for a moment before looking away. "Thank you, Grandfather," she said, hugging him briefly around the waist. "They're very pretty. I'm going to put mine on my night table." Then she turned and shuffled towards the door, where Mum was waiting for us with our pajamas draped loosely over her arm, her knapsack on her shoulder. Blushing, I hugged Grandfather as well and kissed him lightly on the cheek before scampering after Mum and Petunia.

It was shortly after six by the time that all the farewells had been said and we were ready to leave; car doors slammed; overnight bags were thrown into the boot; seatbelts were buckled. The tires crackled dully against the gravel as Dad backed us out of the drive and onto the open road, and in a few minutes we were driving through a thin, sporadic fog, the only car to be seen for miles. From time to time I would tear my eyes away from the window and notice Petunia staring at my dolphin.

It was a short drive, only half an hour or so. Mum and Dad spent it speaking in low tones, Mum checking the inventory lists and making suggestions as to where our miscellaneous boxes should go. At one point Petunia asked why she and I simply hadn't stayed with our grandparents—surely our parents didn't want two little kids running around while our furniture was being moved into the house?

"Well, we were going to do that," Mum explained after a moment, "but your grandfather is having an x-ray of his leg today, and your grandmother has to go with him because the doctors don't want him driving alone. We couldn't leave you and Lily alone while they were in the hospital."

"Oh," Petunia said, glancing down at her feet. "Why not?"

"Because you're not old enough to be left alone. Something bad could happen and you wouldn't know what to do."

"Why does Grandfather need to have an x-ray of his leg?" I asked.

Mum and Dad exchanged glances.

"He was shot in the leg during World War II," Dad replied after a brief pause. "It wasn't a major wound, but it was enough that he's been having some trouble with it since he came home from the war. That's why he has that limp—he's being x-rayed today because the doctors want to be sure the bone is holding up. He goes back to have it checked once every year."

"He was in a war?"

"Yes, a very big one. He was a corpsman in the British Navy; he rescued wounded soldiers on the beach and took them back to the ships to treat their injuries. Very often he would have to do that while the enemy was shooting at him."

Both fascinated and disturbed by this new information, I opened my mouth to ask how he had survived, but a sniffle from Petunia's direction stopped me. Mum and I both turned to look at her; she'd started crying again, her cheeks already tearstained and grubby-looking. Mum leaned around the side of her seat and studied her for a moment. "Petunia. Sweetheart, are you alright?"

Now she burst into hysterics, clutching the whale figurine in her fist; I almost began shouting at her for trying to strangle it. "I wanted to trade with Lily because I thought the whale was so ugly and I didn't like it," she bawled, "but I—I—" hiccough— "the dolphin is so much prettier but I'm really sorry and—" another hiccough— "and—and I wish he didn't have to get an x-ray of his leg, and..." She curled up in the seat, sobbing into her knees. Mum sighed and turned away, rummaging in her knapsack until she found a handful of tissues.

"Here, Petunia," she said, holding them out. "Hold onto these, alright?"

"Yes, cheer up, Petunia," Dad added. "There's our house, right there, down the road! Look at that, eh? Two stories, a garden in front, and less than half an hour away from your grandparents. We can even visit them tonight if you like."

Petunia made no response. Dad watched her for a few moments, then sighed as he turned the steering wheel and guided us up the hill.

The neighborhood was richly packed with mature trees and shrubs. Light and shade faded into one another in the overcast dawn, and small beads of moisture gathered on the windows and windshield as the mist thickened. Large, full-bodied maple and oak trees lined the street, and shrubs, lilac bushes, and honeysuckle blossoms formed the property lines between the houses and cottages scattered along the semi-paved roadside—indeed, the entire place seemed to be bursting with green foliage, spread out over acres of overgrown lawns.

Dad parked us in the drive and unlocked the doors; I shoved my door open immediately and hopped out onto the gravel drive. I took a deep breath: the environs smelled of wet leaves and grass seed. The air was cool, fresh, damp. Immediately I felt my shirt begin to cling to my skin.

The house had a stone and cedar wood face, and near the front door stood a tall, broad-leafed cherry tree, its branches swaying gently in the breeze; there was a cast-iron porch light mounted beneath a dark wooden overhang. All of its curtains were pulled back, revealing its white walls, its wooden staircase beside the entrance to the kitchen, and its perfectly empty interior.

No sooner had we begun unloading the car than the moving van appeared on the end of the street, puffing clouds of grayish smoke as it groaned to a stop behind us. Petunia and I were told to stay out of the way; shortly thereafter Petunia disappeared onto the back stoop, and I perched myself on the front porch, leaning against the wooden pillar that supported the overhang. From there I watched the crew of moving men carry our boxes, beds, tables, and chairs in through the door, holding the dolphin quietly in my fist and thinking morosely of Vicky, Petunia, and a wooden peg leg.

x.x.x.x.x.x.x

Clumps of ice were sliding half-melted down my window when I finished, dotting the typewriter with lumpy, slow-moving shadows. Gray morning light was seeping through a layer of clouds. It was about half-past eight in the morning now, the quiet ticking of the clock barely audible over the muffled bustle of traffic in the street below.

A weary soreness was taking hold in the corners of my eyes. Gingerly I rearranged the piles of paper and writing utensils on the desk; then I gathered James's letters and rearranged those as well, placing them at the foot of the vase that held his roses.

I hadn't sent him a reply yet for lack of time, so I set about doing that now. I imagined him sitting on the floor beside my desk, a mug of tea in hand, looking up with curiosity as I replied to his letter out loud. He would grin and tell me I was up too high and that I should come and sit in his lap instead.

I glanced around the room: It was a depressing sight. For the most part I loathed myself for staying up until nearly nine in the morning, but there was another part of me that wanted to collapse in bed and huddle there like a lonely child.

Rubbing my eyes, I counted my reasons for being happy.

One: I am alive. Two: James. Three: Life could really be much worse.

I dipped my quill and blearily began to write.

Happy Valentine's Day, James!

Oh, so you did get my gift! So glad you like it, it's Italian-made and I thought you'd look so good in it. Wear it with a nice pair of jeans and a belt, and leave the top two buttons undone, please!

You guessed right about the necklace. It's gorgeous. Thank you, thank you. I'm wearing it right now and I don't think I'll be taking it off any time soon. I think of you every time I see it in the mirror.

Anyway, you know why I don't bake that often, I'm afraid I'll burn down the whole kitchen! Very much flattered that you think I'm so good at it, though. That was only my second time baking with magic and I was actually a little terrified that I was going to poison you, so I ate the first cookie. It seemed okay, so I figured you'd be able to handle the rest (wink, wink). Maybe you really did mean they were to die for!

I'm always tired when I write to you, so don't worry about it. What is this world if not a war zone, anyway? It's tiring for everyone. As for switching to the Gringotts shift, is that even possible? If it is, why don't you switch to the King's Cross shift? It's got to be better than whatever you're doing down in Gringotts. At least up here there's fresh air.

It's interesting how you talk about us being partners in this fight. When we first joined the Order I thought that was what we were going to be, fighting Death Eaters side-by-side or whatever that means. But now, to be honest, I don't really understand what either of us is doing anymore. I guess we're at the bottom of the ladder and that's why we haven't fought any Death Eaters yet. But I'm not even sure how we're supposed to climb it anymore. The Order is made of a couple dozen core fighters and then the rest of us just exist, working sentry shifts in odd places. It's obvious that we're not in that core group. I don't know what to think anymore.

At any rate, enough of that. What would you say if I told you I just started writing a memoir? Because I think I just have. I miss the innocence of childhood. Maybe that's why I just stayed up all night writing. Remember how we were barely a year ago, Christmas at Hogwarts, skating on the lake? And the sunshine during the spring? I miss that. I miss the younger us, James.

I miss you. And I'm not all the way over here, you're all the way over there. Come visit me.

- Lily

I put my quill down. To my surprise, my eyes were stinging with tears. I sucked in a breath and held it. Then, after a moment, I wiped my eyes and walked away from my desk.

In my bedroom, I watered the small houseplant sitting on my windowsill and gently pruned the dead blossoms from its stems, thinking this might help it grow new leaves. Then I turned up the thermostat and lay down on my bed, listening to the radiator hiss to life as a procession of trucks screeched into the intersection below.

x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x

Author's Note: I realize I'm pretty much the one-post wonder here on Portkey and that this is probably annoying the crap out of anyone who's bothered to read/care about my work over the years and years I've been around, so if any of you are miraculously not annoyed enough with me to just give up entirely and would like to read this story further, it's posted through Chapter 9 on Fanfiction.net (the link is in my bio). The background details don't quite make sense as I'm in the process of editing a bit, but the basic story is pretty well set.

Thanks for reading. Hope you liked!

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- Chapter 2: The Mail Clerk -

It was cold and vaguely musty in my flat when I awoke just before noon, feeling as though I had just floated to the surface of a dark soup of runny shadows. Several minutes passed during which I could only stare up at the ceiling and watch it spin, a haze of grogginess lingering like a tunnel just outside my peripheral vision.

I was beginning to drift off again when my alarm clock began ringing from my bedside table. Cursing, I hit the snooze button and flopped back onto my pillow.

Mailroom duty in half an hour. Fuck.

With a sigh, I pushed back my covers and swung my legs over the side of the bed.

I arrived in the mailroom twenty-three minutes later. It was in its usual state, with two or three dozen owls perched on the windowsills, in the rafters, and on the furniture, hooting, preening, and nipping at the letters tied to their legs. All the windows were open to allow the owls to come and go, as usual, and today we had a chilly draft to show for it. There were envelopes flying about here and there where the wind had leaked in around our insulation charms and lifted the mail off the desks, and the room smelled faintly of parchment and owl feathers.

"Not the most efficient system they could've come up with, eh?" said a voice as I picked up a disordered pile of letters and tapped them against the desk. "A couple charms here, a little black magic there, that'd fix things up."

I looked up; it was a whiskered, ginger-haired man in his early twenties, grinning toothily from behind several foot-high stacks of parchment and envelopes. I blinked. I recognized that face from my trips to the Leaky Cauldron with Alice; this was the face that opened the bar drunk and closed it drunk. "Mundungus Fletcher. What are you doing here?"

"Filling in for one of your colleagues," Mundungus winked. "He was feeling a bit under the weather, if y'know what I mean."

What were they thinking, letting him in here? I thought. "Well, I'm here now, did they say you could leave when another staff member arrived?"

"Yes, they did, in fact," someone replied. I turned and saw Hestia Jones—a round-faced, pink-cheeked brunette who had graduated two years ahead of me, and who had been known at Hogwarts being able to cook and bake as well as the kitchen elves—sealing and addressing envelopes at a desk near the windows. "Your work here is done, Mundungus. Lily and I can handle the rest of this."

Mundungus looked up, still grinning. The ratty gray cap he wore was drooping over his left eye, reminding me of a screever I'd recently seen bickering with a homeless man over chalk near Parliament.

"That means you're free to go," I said flatly.

Mundungus pushed his chair back and stood up, his grin widening. "Your wish is my command," he said as he stumbled towards the door, swaying slightly, the sash of his coat dragging on the floor. With a drunken flourish he straightened his cap and disappeared into the hall, whistling the tune of London Bridge. When he was out of earshot, I turned to Hestia.

"Which crackpot decided to let him touch the Ministry's mail?" I asked bluntly. "Last I saw him, he was taking his twelfth shot at the pub."

"Haven't the faintest," Hestia replied, folding a letter into thirds and sliding it into an envelope. "All I know is that Benjy Fenwick is heading out into the field and isn't going to be working here anymore. Trouble is, we've no one to replace him—apparently someone saw Mundungus slouching about outside the Ministry this morning and decided he was sober enough to at least tie strings for the mail."

"Real jack-of-all-trades, that one," I said dryly.

"He does know the black markets. He's useful in tracking dark objects."

"If he's ever sober enough to see straight."

Hestia snorted. "Life's a compromise." She leaned over her desk and reached towards the owl perched there, holding out a letter. "All right, pal, give me your leg. That's the ticket."

I watched her silently for a moment. My eyes hurt. "Do we have coffee? If not, I think I'll go find some."

"Oh, yes, I made a pot this morning. It's over by the door. Help yourself, but it's probably cold now; I forgot to refresh the warming charm."

"That's alright, I just need the caffeine. Thanks." I tripped over the leg of a chair on my way to the coffee table. "So, um. Where are we now, workload-wise?"

"We're somewhat behind," Hestia replied, giving me a sidelong look as I fumbled with the coffee pot. I squinted at the lid and tried to unscrew it.

"You might try flipping the top open," she said after a moment.

I blinked. "Ah. That's right. I'd forgotten about that." I picked up one of the spare mugs set out on the table and filled it. "Sorry. I'm fading in and out today, apparently."

"You need more sleep, Lily."

"I'm fine. I'm functional."

Hestia continued to look doubtfully at me, but she raised an eyebrow and turned back to her work when I merely shrugged and took a swig of coffee. "Don't bank on keeping this up, that's all I'm trying to tell you. Anyway, there actually is something that needs to be done." She shuffled through a pile of papers on her desk. "We need an obituary written, sooner rather than later. Our main writer just left the country. Not the most pressing job, but one of the higher-ups wants it done. You know."

I gulped another mouthful of coffee without lowering my mug. "Oh. And they want me to write it, is that it?"

"Well. We shift workers in the mailroom want you to write it, since the task fell on us and you're the most literary one here." Hestia pulled a wry little smile. "We have all the research done on this bloke, anyway. All you'd have to do is go through it and write some drivel to put in the newspaper. They'd take it. He was a bit of a hotshot; everyone just wants a good, nostalgic read. Especially now," she added dryly. "Can't fault people for wanting to remember the dead when there are so many of them crowding the graveyards."

I exhaled slowly; I hadn't realized I'd been holding my breath. "An obituary, hm?"

A ghost of a smile passed over her lips. "I'm not sure how much you'll like the deceased, though."

"Why, who was he?"

"A millionaire, prince of the railroad. He died a drunk. Alcohol poisoning."

I blinked again as the words registered in my mind. "Am I supposed to romanticize alcohol poisoning to make sure people get the read they want?"

"Well…I don't know. Not really. I'm not sure actually," Hestia said uncomfortably. "The thing is, this drunkard has been funneling money to us—the Order of the Phoenix—under the table for years now, not that you'd mention that anywhere in a public newspaper when we're trying to stay underground. He started years before you graduated. Totally useless in a fight, but he kept us funded."

"Oh." I wasn't sure what to make of that. "I see."

"And the general consensus is that you'd be able to spin a good yarn about this one, what with our actual obituary writer…gone," Hestia continued, fidgeting. I chewed my lip; her expression told me that 'gone' meant something along the lines of 'hiding for his life in Ireland or Finland'. "Here's his information—life history, vocation, all that; Dorcas Meadowes took care of it last night. The Daily Prophet doesn't charge by the line, either, so you shouldn't have too much of a length restriction."

"Oh," I said again. "Er. Thanks."

Hestia pursed her lips. "Sorry to put you on the spot. But you're the best writer here."

"I wouldn't have thought it's that…difficult to write an obituary, if you already have all the research done," I said hesitantly. "I mean…"

"You'd be surprised," Hestia said quickly. "Please, Lily, just do it. You can get it done in a few hours if you're quick about it; it'll take all week if we hand it off to anyone else. Anyway, I'd write it myself, but I'm really no good at this sort of thing."

"Does writing it mean I don't have to address envelopes today?"

"You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours. Deal?"

I blew out a breath and picked up the pile of documents and newspaper clippings on Hestia's desk. "Fine, I'll do it. I have one request, though—put in a good word for me if the obituary sucks and anyone gets it in their head to fire me for it."

"Fair enough," Hestia said, removing the stack of unaddressed envelopes and unsealed letters from my desk and dumping it onto hers. "Not that anyone's going to fire you if you write a less than stellar obituary. In any case, they're not going to publish it under your real name; you'll have a nom de plume and whatnot. You're a mail clerk, for God's sake."

This time I laughed, the sound of it harsh and bitter in my ears. And if I want to stay alive, I thought, a mail clerk is probably all I'll ever be.

"Fine by me," I said, spreading the news clippings out before me and opening a fresh roll of parchment. "A nom de plume—I never wrote this at all. I can take that."

x.x.x.x.x.x

Name: Jonathan J. Paxton

Date of Birth: January 18, 1952

Date of Death: February 19, 1979

I stared blankly at the page. My mailroom shift was nearly over, and almost an hour had passed since my quill had last touched the parchment. Scattered about the desktop were newspaper articles, photographs, and a seemingly bottomless pile of documents on Paxton's stocks (which were bought and sold by a hired broker), numerous records of his alcoholic incidents (some of which had led to arrest or hospitalization), and publications on his few minor acts of philanthropy (for which I supposed he was going to be remembered). His father owned the railroad company, rendering Jonathan J. Paxton himself little more than the heir to a small commercial empire. He was the ornament of his father's enterprise, the pet of twittering cocktail conversation; the stories of his alcoholism never reached the newspapers, but his hospital records, obtained God only knew how by Dorcas Meadowes, told a less rosy tale. Paxton was in that unique spot where he could be both the public pride and the private shame of the world's Wizarding community, and I found myself resisting his story. Glitter, vodka, and noise, I thought. Why do I hate this man so much?

I pinched my eyes shut for a moment. When I opened them, Hestia was shuffling through a stack of flyers, licking her finger as she flicked them apart and set them in small piles for mailing. Owls hooted from their perches on various pieces of furniture. I slumped lower over the crumpled drafts before me; I could not think of a single coherent sentence, much less a charitable one for Paxton. The Order of the Phoenix would never be able to acknowledge his contributions in public. I felt silly and trapped; I couldn't write about the only material I had to work with.

The mailroom door creaked open, and someone walked in. Cautious footfalls, coming in my direction.

"Hello, Lily?"

It was Remus Lupin, looking more tousled than usual in a frayed coat and scarf. I counted several gray hairs amongst his head of light brown ones, and a fresh scar beneath his ear; I wondered if he'd slept at all over the past few days.

"How've you been, Remus?"

"Oh, the usual," he said, waving his hand dismissively. "But I heard you were writing something dazzling." He peered over my shoulder. "Bit odd they put you up to this. Whose idea was it?"

"No clue." I massaged the corners of my eyes with my fingertips. "That seems like something I should probably start worrying about, at some point."

"I think that's a good idea," Remus agreed. He sat down on the edge of the desk. "I wanted to see some of those documents, actually, if you don't mind?"

"Help yourself." I sipped at my coffee. The stuff was cold now, bitter and stale-smelling. "If you come up with anything nostalgic or schmaltzy to say, by all means, let me in on it."

A faint smile crossed Remus's lips. "I'll let you know if I think of anything."

"Yeah. As you can see, I'm not exactly at the top of my game here." I gestured toward the piles of crumpled parchment lying on my desk.

"Well, he was a philanthropist," Remus said, rather unhelpfully. "That was something."

I sighed. "That he was. But why? That's the question, right? At least, that's the question if I'm to write an obituary, not a eulogy."

Remus pressed his lips together, so that the scar above his mouth stood out. "I think you're probably over-thinking this. I'm amazed Dorcas managed to dig up conversation transcripts, anyway. I didn't even know they kept things like that around." He gave my shoulder a light squeeze. "I've got to get back to work. Good luck writing that."

"I thought you wanted to see some of the documents?"

"I did. And I saw them. That's actually all I wanted." Remus reached for the doorknob and gave me a little smile. "I'll see you 'round, Lily. Stay safe."

I opened my mouth to reply, but the words died on my tongue at the sight of his retreating back. After a moment I noticed Hestia watching me.

"Sorry, Lily," she said hesitantly. "I didn't think it'd give you this much trouble."

I pressed my lips together and glanced at the clock. My shift in the train station was going to begin in twenty minutes. "It's an obituary," I said, marveling silently at just how strange it sounded to say that aloud. I picked up the parchment, folded it, and put it in my shirt pocket; the rest of the documents I placed in the lining of my coat. "But it's fine, I've written things like it before. I'll take care of it."

"You have? Do tell."

"It was a eulogy. When I was seventeen."

Hestia tilted her head and looked at me as if she didn't quite believe me, but didn't want to call me a liar. "A eulogy," she repeated. "When you were seventeen?"

"Mmhm. Yep."

"You're serious?"

"Yeah, surprisingly. You'd think they'd have got someone older to do it, but apparently the planets aligned in my favor. So I did it." I put my hands in my pockets and stood there for a moment. Then I realized I was going into a reverie and jolted out of it. "And for some reason that was that."

Hestia was still watching me curiously. "Odd."

"I'm not denying it. Anyway, I've got to go. Thanks for handling my envelopes."

x.x.x.x.x.x

Working the night shift at King's Cross was like hanging suspended at the portal between two worlds. The terminal was a dark, echoing cavern, sectioned off from the sky by a thin lattice of arched metal and glass; a large, pale-faced clock hung above the platforms, wrenching the minutes by, gleaming in the filtered moonlight. It was beneath this shimmer and emptiness that we ushered in the trains that vanished into the night with our refugees.

On shift with me were four others. There was Han Li, a Ravenclaw in my graduating class who kept a quiet vigil at the newspaper stand; there was Sirius Black, who tended to stay closest to me, regardless of my position or disguise; and then there were Gideon and Fabian Prewett - red-haired, freckled, both twenty-four and typically disguised as watch peddlers or students in transit. Being the most experienced of the lot of us, they escorted the refugees into the station while the rest of us stood guard.

I was working the coffee stand this week, sitting behind the coffee counter with my feet up, a gray beret tipped over my eyes and a newspaper spread over my knees as I pretended to sleep. Chalkboards painted with the week's coffee specials hung on the back wall, almost garish in their cheeriness. There were very few travelers this morning—one or two businessmen and a few low-budget, confused-looking tourists who appeared to be backpacking through London. Barring the ticking of the clock, the only sounds in the station were the quiet murmurs of the tourists' voices and the occasional echo of footsteps over the concrete platforms.

A glance up at the clock told me it had just passed one o'clock in the morning. Gideon and Fabian were due in the station in twenty minutes with the Muggle parents of a Hogwarts third-year. I twiddled my thumbs nervously and contemplated a cup of espresso and Paxton's obituary.

A voice at the coffee counter jerked me out of my reverie. "Oh how quiet, quiet the world can be," Sirius said, propping his chin on his fist. "You look bored. Care to sell me some coffee?"

"Would you like the turpentine with sugar, or the wet paint with cream?"

Sirius grinned. I noticed that his eyes were as bloodshot as mine from lack of sleep. "Double shot espresso with cream and French vanilla. I still can't take that stuff straight."

I tutted and swung my legs off the counter. "Weakling. What are you, some Brit who only drinks tea?"

Sirius yawned. "One in the morning and quick on the draw as ever. You amaze me."

"And you're charming as always." I finished pouring his cup of coffee and began mixing in the vanilla and cream. I lowered my voice. "What did you really come here to tell me?"

Sirius snorted. "Well, believe it or not, I actually am knackered. But anyway, two things. One, James sends his regards from the Gringotts garbage bin- " he slipped me a folded piece of parchment, which I hastily pocketed to read later - "and two: Han's just started passing these around. Here's yours." Sirius pushed a silver one-pound piece across the counter with his payment for the coffee and lowered his voice to a whisper. A tiny portion of the rim was red. "Less obvious replacements for the rings we were using before, and Muggle to go with our disguises. They vibrate whenever someone's trying to send a message, so - " he stifled a yawn - "I reckon we'll be hearing from Gideon and Fabian soon." He glanced down at my buttoned shirt and gave his chin a little tap with his index finger. "And if I were you, I'd keep it right between my knockers."

I rolled my eyes. "Glad you can appreciate my cleavage even under these strained circumstances." I punched the cash register and handed Sirius his cup. "Sound advice, thanks."

Sirius grinned roguishly. "Cheers, Lily." And with that he ambled back to his post.

I sank back into my chair once he'd gone and watched the station again from behind my newspaper. I was beginning to get nervous; the Muggle night watchman had just picked up the telephone, even though a telephone call at this hour was extremely rare. The observation booth in which he held his post was perched on the end of a crosswalk one flight above the platforms, and though it was too far away to allow me to see his face clearly, I did notice him pause after hanging up. Then, to my dismay, he picked up a megaphone and stepped out onto the crosswalk.

"All present track laborers, please report to the terminal."

A sleeping businessman jolted on his bench and sat up, glancing blearily about the station; the tourists fell silent and looked up from their map. I saw Sirius turn his head in my direction. I fingered the coin in my palm.

"All present track laborers," the watchman repeated, "please report to the terminal."

A moment later there came a sound of footsteps. Squinting, I could make out the shapes of four workmen walking into the terminal, two of them carrying what looked like tool cases. In a moment they were gathered wearily beneath the watchman's post. The watchman cleared his throat and put the megaphone down, wiping his hands nervously on his trousers. "Do us a favor and check the rails here, lads," he said. "Make sure the crossties are secure."

One of the workmen gestured towards the tracks. "We replaced 'em last week, Jim. They're brand new."

The watchman was visibly squirming now. "Apparently there was a problem with them a few miles north of here, so please, just run the check. There's another team being deployed to examine the rest of the track right this moment, and the three-thirty train's still on schedule to arrive here on the dot. So kindly get on it."

"Well, what the bloody hell happened?"

"The one-thirty train's just gone off the bloody rail, that's what happened!" The watchman's voice was high. "It's probably a smoldering wreck, so stop this rubbish and check the bloody crossties, will you?"

Immediately the workmen scattered. All four of them were climbing down onto the tracks and switching on the lamps at the fronts of their hardhats. I scanned the rest of the station for my colleagues; I wasn't sure if any of them had heard the conversation. Exhaling, I gave my coin a quick scratch, held it to my lips, and whispered, "Reports of an accident on the North Line. One-thirty train is off the track, cause unknown. Prewetts, please come in."

The others made almost no sign that they'd received the message, but I did see Han casually hitch up his sleeve. A moment later the watchman had picked up his megaphone again and was clearing his throat to speak.

"May I have your attention, please," he said, evidently struggling to keep his voice even. "Due to a recent rail accident, the one-thirty northbound train will not be arriving in King's Cross Station tonight. All passengers for the one-thirty northbound train, please arrange for an alternative. The two-thirty northbound train has been diverted to Waterloo and will not be stopping here. However, the three-thirty eastbound is scheduled to arrive as usual. You may be able to pick up the northbound route if you take the eastbound to Portsmouth and transfer there. Further information can be obtained at the information desk at the end of Platform One. We…apologize for the inconvenience, and hope that none of your loved ones were riding the one-thirty train at the time of the accident. Thank you, and Godspeed to you all."

My stomach clenched. The coin in my hand buzzed and immediately I turned it over to read.

Everything's on schedule. Saw the train derail, it was a couple of Death Eaters. They Disapparated laughing without tracking us so suspect it was just a night raid, Aurors on it now. Stay focused. Will be there soon.

I held my breath for what seemed like an eternity. I wasn't sure if it was a trick of the light or if the shadows on the face of the clock were twisting slowly, forming fang-like shapes that made me wonder if I was losing my grip. Time passed like a slow-moving nightmare, the tick of each passing minute echoing through the near-empty terminal more menacingly than the last.

Then - suddenly, finally - there was a small flash of light at the end of the platform. The Prewetts had arrived.

Make sure nobody's following us, buzzed the coin. One of you please come with us. 9 3/4. Everything's fine.

I stood up behind the coffee counter, glancing around at my shift mates. Seeing their subtle nods, I hid my wand up my sleeve and quietly left my kiosk. Straightening my beret, I broke into a light jog, checked to make sure nobody was following me, and ran through the barrier to Platform 9 3/4.

Gideon and Fabian Prewett were standing close beside a middle-aged couple and their young, light-haired daughter. The parents' faces were utterly white, and the little girl was clutching her mother's coat, burying her face in it.

"Ah, Lily. Fantastic," Fabian nodded, gesturing for me to come closer. "This is Linda and David Crane, and their lovely little lass Diane. We're going to be taking them to Paris tonight."

"If you're moving us," said David tightly, "then where are you taking our older daughter?"

"She's staying at Hogwarts for now," Gideon said, gripping David's shoulder soothingly. "She's safer there than anywhere else. Professor Dumbledore has her under a very close watch. Nobody's going to be able to lay a finger on her."

"Yeah, it's you lot who need to get the hell out of dodge," Fabian said, checking his watch. "Train should be here soon. Lily, wand at the ready for when we get on, yeah?"

"Absolutely."

With a strangled little sob, Linda clutched her daughter and began to cry. Feeling a lump rise in my throat, I put my arm around her. "Shh, everything will be all right," I whispered. "Don't worry. We've got a safe house waiting for you in Paris, it's well-protected and the bad guys don't know it exists. We'll bring your daughter there when she finishes the term. She'll be safe."

Covering her mouth, Linda only cried harder.

"I want you to bring our daughter with us now," David hissed. "You can't bloody well smuggle us out of the country and leave our kid in the middle of a war zone, I don't know what you - "

"Mr. Crane," I cut in, so sharply that he started, "you don't want your Muggle-born daughter leaving Albus Dumbledore's sight. Trust us on that. He is the only wizard the Dark Lord is afraid of. Hogwarts is practically impenetrable. You are the ones in danger."

At that moment there came a whistle, a roar of engines, the sudden illumination of a headlight, and a long hiss. A wall of warm air rushed into the terminal as the deep blue locomotive - which we had affectionately dubbed the Phoenix Express - pulled into the station, releasing a thick mist of steam as it chugged to a halt. In its brightly lit windows were the silhouettes of other passengers, refugees picked up earlier from the northern regions of the country - witches, wizards, and Muggles alike.

"All aboard!" Fabian said loudly. "Mrs. Crane, ladies first!"

I raised my wand, scanning the station for intruders as the Cranes hurriedly boarded the train, the Prewetts close on their heels.

"Keep an eye out, Lily!" Fabian shouted as the engines began to huff. "Make sure the barrier seals!" And then, with a blast of steam and an ear-splitting whistle, the train sped away from the platform and vanished into blackness. All was silent.

Once I was sure that there was no errant steam leaking back into the station from the vanished train, I turned on my heel and strode to the opposite end of the platform, holding my wand high as I cast a memory-erasing charm over the entire station in case there had been any spies lurking in the shadows. Then, with one final sweep of my wand, I sent a jet of blue light flying down the length of the tracks. The sparks landed with dull finality between the crossties fifty feet beyond the train's vanishing point.

Satisfied that the Phoenix Express would not be discovered tonight, I turned and crossed the barrier into King's Cross, where I went back to the coffee kiosk and slumped into my chair.

Everything all right? came Sirius's message.

I raised the coin to my lips. Yeah. Fine.

I'm crawling out of my skin over here. Entertain me, will you please?

I snorted. Come see me and I'll sell you another coffee.

I just got wind that three of our people were injured on the train that derailed.

The chatter of thoughts in the back of my mind seemed to go silent. I looked up and saw Sirius walking toward me, looking somber, his shoulders hunched.

I stumbled home at 4:15 that morning, numb and sleepless. I shoved a fresh stack of paper into my typewriter and collapsed at my desk.

x.x.x.x.x.x

The summer passed slowly after the move, and the days blurred together, hot, pollen-dusted and smelling of brine. The debris of change lay scattered about between the temporary arrangements of tables, chairs, bookshelves, and lamps; brown cardboard boxes and crumpled newspaper made up the landscape of our house for much of July and August. Shadows wandered across the undecorated walls in a slow ballet, dappled with spots of pale gold sun in the mornings and shot through with the silhouettes of the trees and boxes by the windows in the evenings. The solitude was palpable, it seemed, there to absorb whatever noise I made and whisper it back to me as I walked between our half-unpacked possessions each morning, my footsteps creaking softly over the wooden floors.

The house seemed packed with latent possibilities during the hours before my family awoke. We had an attic as well as a basement—more space than I'd imagined could exist within any house. Most alluring, though, was the open road that led out of our neighborhood and ran along the seashore, winding away into the morning mist as it curved towards the north and banking closer to my grandparents' house as it wound towards the south, snaking into the distance over long stretches of low, sandy beach and jutting, rocky cliffs. It was on this road that I habitually met the playmates who would later hold the ladder for me as I climbed into our attic at seven o'clock in the morning to look for ghosts: Edwin and Noah O'Neill.

Our parents made it a point to get my sister and me out of the house when they were unpacking. "We're taking a load of glass and fragile things out of their boxes now, and we don't want you girls around to trip on them and cut yourselves," Dad said one morning as he shooed us out the front door. "Go out and play, but don't wander too far." I'm sure that I never would have made a habit of meeting Edwin and Noah on that road if our parents hadn't always insisted on keeping Petunia and me out of the way while the house was being removed from storage; this was how I ended up walking along beside Petunia on one particularly humid morning, skipping rocks along the pavement.

The sun had just risen into a clear sky, breathing a pale gold-orange glow onto the mists scattered between the rocks and cliffs. It was early enough not to be uncomfortably hot, and the road was so empty of cars and pedestrians that an ant probably could have crossed it without risk of being stepped on. As for me, I was enjoying myself; I had made up my mind to explore the area as soon as the moving van had pulled away from our house, and being kicked out of the house at the break of dawn presented the perfect opportunity to do so. Petunia, however, didn't like the idea of leaving our front porch in the absence of an adult, but she couldn't do very much but follow me—she was afraid she'd be punished if she let me out of her sight.

"I don't think we should go much further," she said as we approached a rocky outcropping that swept out over the surf. "Mum and Dad won't like it."

"We're not going that far," I replied, focusing my energy on walking on the curb. I wobbled slightly, then put my arms out for balance. "Why doesn't it help to stick your arms out?"

"Of course it helps. You're just not doing it right."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah."

"I dare you to do it yourself, then," I said, putting my hands on my hips.

"I won't. It's dangerous."

This, incidentally, was the moment Edwin chose to crash the scene. In retrospect, I suppose I should have heard him coming; there was never anything subtle about his step or the way he carried himself—wherever Edwin O'Neill went, a battery of energy and noise followed. His eyes were alert, slightly cocky, and constantly scanning for some new form of excitement; his shoes were perpetually untied; and his ankles were always smudged with dirt where the soles of his sneakers had scraped across his skin as he walked, jumped, or ran. Watching him move, you'd almost expect him to break everything he touched; and though that rarely ever seemed to be the case, you could always tell where he'd been. There would be a fresh smear of charcoal, a smudged fingerprint, or perhaps a twig or chess piece out of place, for he was the sort of boy you saw traces of wherever you looked, even—especially, I should say—in his absence.

"Hi," he said, ignoring Petunia. "I saw your grandparents the other day. They were on the beach."

"Oh. Yeah, they walk a lot."

"Crazy old people," Edwin said, picking up a pebble from the side of the road and skipping it along the pavement as I had just been doing. It bounced twice before skittering off the shoulder and disappearing into the weedy gravel beside the curb, scattering a few other pebbles as it went. "I think they're nuts."

I picked up a pebble of my own and skipped it in Edwin's direction. "Just because you walk doesn't mean you're nuts."

"Edwin, are you supposed to be here?" Petunia demanded. "Are your parents letting you walk out here this early in the morning?"

"They're not even awake yet."

"Fine, it won't be my fault if you get in trouble."

Edwin made a noise of disgust. "Your sister's nosy, Lily."

"I know, she loves to come into my room at five o'clock in the morning and ruin all the stuff on my desk—"

Petunia's cheeks reddened. "I do not, Lily. Mum wants me to check on you, that's all—"

"I told her what you were doing," I said, rolling my eyes, "and she thinks you're being nosy too."

"She does not!" Her voice was higher than usual now. "And besides, you're always up making noise, so someone has to make sure you won't burn the house down!"

I raised one leg and held it up behind me, stretching my arms forward to maintain my balance, and rolled my eyes again. "You're dumb, Petunia."

"You're younger. And dumber."

"Yeah, well," I said, adjusting my arms, "Mum and Dad decided to have me because you were too dumb for them, so shut up and go away, please."

I don't know which reaction I was expecting; I didn't think that what I'd said was any worse than what I usually said to Petunia when she got aggressive, so I was surprised when she simply stood there, working her jaw to zero avail. It was a moment before I noticed that her lip was trembling.

"Forget it," she shot back after another few seconds' delay. "You're impossible, and I'm not the one who's responsible for you. And if you get either of us hurt, or even killed," she added, jabbing a finger in my face, "Mum and Dad will just have to deal with it!" With that, she turned on her heel and stormed off down the road, disappearing around the bend that led to our house.

Edwin looked at me and raised an eyebrow. "She's crazy."

I swallowed. "I think she was just born that way." Then I made a face. "She's always doing things like that."

"Yeah, probably," Edwin agreed. "Come on, let's go find my brother. He's looking for rocks on the beach."

x.x.x.x.x.x

We did indeed find Noah O'Neill on the beach, but he wasn't looking for rocks; rather, he was down on all fours, digging in the wet sand by the tide line. Unlike his brother, he didn't have any dirt smeared across his cheek or ankles, but his hair was wiry from collecting ocean spray all morning; though he and Edwin were identical twins, Noah's face was more deeply freckled, and, somehow, his hands were more slender and his skin more delicate, almost as if he had less of a penchant than his brother for getting mud under his fingernails. He wore an intent look on his face now, chewing his lower lip in concentration as he scraped at the sand with the tips of his fingers. Edwin and I came to a stop in front of him and peered down at the pit he'd dug; something smooth and white was protruding from the ground.

"What's that?" Edwin asked, squatting beside his brother. "Looks like a seashell."

"I think it's a conch," Noah replied, still focused intently on the task of unearthing the object. "Dad showed me one with spikes like that."

"Why don't you use your foot to push it out of the sand?"

"No, don't do that! You'll break it, jeez."

"I always use a shovel when things are that hard to dig up," I said, tapping the shell. "I could go back to my house and get one."

Noah looked up at me, his eyes meeting mine briefly; then he dropped his gaze again. "It's okay, I think I can get it out like this."

It took us the better part of an hour to dig up the conch, or whatever it was—by time we'd finished, the sun had burned away the last of the morning's mist and was beating uncomfortably on our backs. Rubbing the sand from his hands, Noah reached into the pit and lifted out a large spiral seashell, which he turned over in his hands for us to examine.

"Look at that," Edwin said, pointing to the opening on the underside of the shell. "I think there's something living in it…"

I nearly fell into the hole as I craned my neck to see what they were talking about, and I had to get down on my hands and knees to keep my balance. In any case, my efforts were rewarded when Noah suddenly recoiled and dropped the conch right in front of me, where it landed with a dull thud in the sand. Something wet and brown was squirming slowly at the opening, a flat, slimy-looking thing that smelled vaguely like spoiled fish. After a moment its head emerged, slug-like and whiskered, stalk eyes bulging. With a small yelp I jumped back and wiped my hands on my shorts, even though I hadn't touched it.

"It's still alive," Edwin said in a low voice, his eyes wide. "It's moving…"

"I think it's dying," Noah said in horror. "Look what it's doing." He picked up a small piece of driftwood and poked tentatively at it. The animal twitched at the sensation, writhed slowly about its shell a few more times, and then lay still, its foot drooping limply.

"Get it some water," I suggested. "Maybe it can't breathe…fish out of water can't breathe either…"

"Can we get it out of the shell?" Edwin asked, still staring at it in awe.

"I don't know," I said. "I think it's attached to the inside."

Silent, Noah poked the animal's flesh again. It didn't move.

"Dead," he said after a time. His voice carried a note of amazement and dismay. "It's dead."

I didn't know what to say, so I looked up at Edwin; he didn't seem to know what to say either.

"Are you sure?" I asked hesitantly. "Maybe it just went to sleep instead."

"No, it's dead," Noah replied, still prodding at the snail with his piece of driftwood. "This would wake it up if it were asleep." And with that he sat back and drew a knee up to his body, resting his chin against it as he stared down into the pit of sand. A wave washed up on shore and pooled around the snail, spreading a thin layer of foam over its foot before disappearing.

"How did you find it, anyway?" Edwin asked, breaking the silence.

"I saw the shell sticking out of the sand."

I fidgeted uneasily with my shorts. "I don't think we should bury it again."

Noah gave me a look of puzzlement. "Why not?"

"Because then it's like we never found it."

"Yeah," Edwin piped up. "We should keep it. Or mark the spot so we can find it again later."

Now Noah looked incredulous. "It's going to rot," he said emphatically. "It's going to rot and stuff is going to come out of the sand and eat it. Remember the bird we found on the road? Like that. That's what it's going to be like."

"Let's just mark the spot, then." Edwin began pushing handfuls of wet sand over the snail until he'd built a small mound, cracked where the sand hadn't stuck together and imprinted with the shape of his hands. He picked up the piece of driftwood Noah had used to poke the snail's body and drew a large X over the pile. "See?" he said, sitting back after a moment. "At least now we know we found it. Conches are rare. You can't find them anywhere but on a few beaches in the world, anyway."

Noah didn't respond; he only gazed towards the surf. The three of us sat there in silence for a long while. Finally Edwin got to his feet and retraced the X with his toe. "There. That should last a while."

Noah and I exchanged glances as a fresh wave swept over our feet and wiped the last trace of our little grave into the surf in one smooth stroke. When I turned to gaze ahead once again, Edwin was running ahead of us - though not without gesturing for us to follow.

x.x.x.x.x.x

I stopped typing and pushed my chair back from my desk. The typewriter continued to sit expectantly before me; it was nearly dawn and I still hadn't finished the obituary. The half-written draft lay derelict atop a pile of tax returns, words scrawled haplessly up and down the parchment where I had tried in vain to come up with something bearing even a shred of perspective.

James's roses sat wilting in their vase on the other side of the typewriter, their petals dry and curling. In a haze of exhaustion I carried them into the kitchen, where I pared off the rotten tips of their stems with a knife and replaced the water in the vase.

On the other side of the window, the world was still dark. The ticking of the kitchen clock made my skin crawl.

I went back to my bedroom and curled up under the covers with a draft of Paxton's obituary and not a lot of hope of finishing it.

6:23 AM

It's about that time of the morning again—the printing presses will be rolling in a few minutes. Am expecting the train wreck to hit the papers in about twenty-four hours' time with a likely alibi. We'll see if they blame it on a drunken conductor.

I am on the precipice. I am staring down at a pit of invisible monsters.

-->

- Chapter 3: O Writer, My Writer -

It was unseasonably warm when my day off arrived. The streets were a soup of slush and melted snow; people brought out their de-icers only to find that the locks on their cars actually weren't frozen. The air temperature remained solidly above freezing and the Order paused momentarily in its obsession with atmosphere and climate control charms. We threw open the windows in the mail room and breathed much-welcomed fresh air; we swapped our heavy cloaks for lighter ones. Hestia even waltzed around the mail room watering our resident plants, which seemed to be having a growth spurt. It was lovely - except for the fog.

My head was intensely foggy with sleep deprivation by the time I was allowed to take my leave. The last thing I needed was to be surrounded with fog, because now I got lost in two ways instead of one: First I would lose my train of thought and stand stupidly in the road, wondering what I was doing there and why my skull felt pumped full of molasses; then I would look around and realize that I hadn't the faintest idea where I was or where I was going. This was hardly unusual for me, though, so I didn't worry much about it when it happened. I simply smiled at the grandness of having gone through several weeks of exhaustion and emotional turmoil, for which the reward was incoherent giddiness and a day off to celebrate 1) the fact that I was not dead, and 2) the fact that missing James for so long had borne its fruit, because now I could see him again.

The problem with seeing James, however, was that I always managed to choke at the sight of him. He was beautiful, with strong shoulders and a lovely tapering waist that put smug thoughts in my head: He is a piece of art, and only I am allowed to see him naked. He was also, I kept discovering, eminently better than I was at sleeping during the ungodly hours of the morning, which made him infuriatingly well-adjusted - at least when compared with me. The fact that he seemed so in-control, so calm, and so well-rested made me feel stupid, angry, and altogether incompetent. And this just made him look all the more beautiful.

Such was the condition of James Potter when we finally got to see one another. He was sitting on my bed with his coat and socks off, black hair falling over his forehead, rifling through the sheets of paper I'd taken off the typewriter while I fidgeted restlessly with a loose thread on my pillow case. I got up several times and puttered about my closet while he continued to read, but found nothing to clean or put away; I went into my cramped and dingy little kitchen and rummaged through the cabinets. I brushed my teeth and rinsed three times. Finally I lay down on the bed and curled up next to James, resting my head in his lap.

At last he was done. "…When I turned to gaze ahead once again, Edwin was running ahead of us, though not without gesturing for us to follow." James put the manuscript down and gave me a hard look. "This is what you're doing at six in the morning?"

Immediately my stomach constricted. "This is what we're going to spend our time off together arguing about?"

A look of pain flickered on James's face. "Well - no." He sighed. "It's just - you need to sleep, Lily. I mean seriously."

"I know, I know. I just can't. I'm an insomniac."

"You need to find a way to make it happen."

"I'm trying!"

"No, you're not. You're drowning yourself in your misery and refusing to sleep so you'll have an excuse to keep drowning yourself. And wax nostalgic about the past again."

"What! No I'm not, what is your problem?"

"I don't have a - listen, Lily, you work at a dangerous job and you keep staying up at night. You're a really good writer, but seriously, you can't do this. Okay?"

"James. Don't be an asshole, I'll do what I have to do in order to sleep! If that means I'm up all night with insomnia, then fine, better I do something useful with the time."

"Lily - "

"What about 'stop' do you not understand!"

Now James got that pained look on his face again and gathered me up in his arms, making hushing sounds. "Shh, Lily, I'm not trying to pick a fight. I'm just telling you the truth. Please." He cupped my face gently in his hands, tilting my chin up; a hot flush spread over my cheeks, and I avoided his eyes. To my consternation and chagrin, tears flooded onto my cheeks and I began sniffling pathetically, wetting James's shirt.

"I'm sorry," I mumbled. "I'm being unreasonable. I just never get to see you. And I've been all depressive lately. Having a hard time shaking it."

"Shh, shh, don't cry," James whispered. "I'm here now. And we'll get to see each other again soon." He kissed my cheek and rocked me gently, which only made me bawl harder. "Shh. It's okay."

"If you say so." I sniffled and fought to control myself. "Sorry. I'm being ridiculous."

James kissed me again. His body was tense. "Yeah, you are."

I pulled away and wiped my eyes. "How embarrassing."

"Promise me you'll actually sleep now."

"Sure."

"I mean it. I'm not going to talk to you about your writing or the Order or the weather until morning. And I'm not going fuck you until you've slept for at least eight hours."

That felt like a slap. I laughed a little disbelievingly. "Aren't you supposed to be a hot-blooded caveman or something? I'm an available female." I batted my eyes at him, then sniffled again. And swallowed a nose full of runny mucus.

James's shoulders slumped a bit, and he closed his eyes for a moment. Breathed. Then he looked up and smiled. "Stop messing with me, Lily," he said gently. "Why don't you take off all those clothes and get in bed? I'll join you after I'm showered and don't smell like a goat."

"You don't smell like a goat," I said thickly. He was stripping off his shirt and trousers. The hint of muscles rippling over his lean frame was catching the light of my floor lamp with almost pornographic deliciousness. He looked at me quizzically.

"Sorry," I said, for the third time. "I'm just enjoying the view. Are you going to toss off in the shower?"

He gave me a supercilious look and took off his boxers. Then he threw his dirty clothes into the laundry basket and helped himself to one of my freshly washed towels. "And so what if I do? I'll last longer in the morning."

"Touche." The absurdity of my predicament was rising so insistently in my throat that I almost wanted to kill myself. I laughed. "I'm going to remember this forever: 'The day James Potter cock-blocked himself.'"

"I love you too. Now shut up and go to sleep." And with that he turned and left the room. The door clicked shut behind him with absurd finality. My head was foggy with fatigue and frustration, and suddenly it hurt quite a bit; unable to think of anything else to do, I rolled over and laughed silently into my pillow. And then smelled fresh lavender on my sheets, just as I'd intended. I was so relieved not to be smelling dust and weeks-old sweat that I began to weep again. Blinded by tears and aching with the choke of laughter, I stripped off my clothes, tossed them into the laundry basket, and collapsed onto the bed. One yank of the sheets and I was in the dark, asleep.

I woke briefly to the soft rustle of blankets as James slid into the bed with me, his skin soft and still damp from the shower. I was conscious long enough to feel his hand move over my hips, over my belly and the cusp of my breast. I felt his chest pressed against my back, his lips on my shoulder; and then all was black, all was silent and soft.

* * * * *

Sunlight was streaming through the curtains when I awoke. I was still curled up beneath a pile of blankets, and groggy; now that I'd succumbed to the urge to sleep for more than half an hour at a time, I didn't want to wake up. Ever. "What time is it?"

James stirred behind me, pulling me more tightly against him. "Eleven AM. You outdid yourself. That was twelve hours right there."

I buried my face in the covers to block out the light. "Really? Damn."

"I've been reading your memoir from start to finish for the past hour. You're really obsessed with death, aren't you?"

"What? Not at all. I am Lily. I am loquaciously loftily loony. I love writing shit that sounds deep."

"Ludicrously loopy liar. How bad is your morning breath?"

"Lovingly lethal."

"Mm. I'll bet." James threw a leg over my belly and climbed on top of me, resting his weight against my pelvis. He pushed my hair gently out of my eyes and kissed me. "Glad to have you back."

"Was I gone?"

James kissed me again, this time with lust. He was already hard. "You were acting like a crazy lady who raided pharmacies at night and ate their toothpaste instead of sleeping like normal people. Do you mind if we spend the next six hours fucking?"

His hand squeezing my breast was delicious. I lifted my hips against him and ran my hands down his back, gripping his buttocks. "Let's do the honors. Indulge me."

* * * * *

"Okay, so let me get this straight," James said, his mouth full of roast beef sandwich. He swallowed. "You're writing an obituary for Jonathan Paxton, which you say you don't want to do, and you're doing it because Hestia Jones, who - if I may remind you - was at Hogwarts known as 'The Pastry Girl' and whom you out-classed at her own game, says you should."

"Er. Well. When you put it that way."

"I'm just trying to figure things out here, my ridiculously sexy nymph. Forest nymph, I mean."

"James!"

He cocked an eyebrow at me, looking mischievous. "Sorry," he grinned. "It's just that you were naked all afternoon. And now you're feeding me. I couldn't feel more manly if I tried." He took another huge bite of his sandwich and gulped it down with amazing fortitude. "I'll act civilized now. And I won't say anything about you bending over and letting me eat lemon meringue pie off your bum."

"Right. Not a word."

"Yes ma'am."

We were sitting across from one another at the small wooden dining table in my kitchen, with an impressive amount of food piled up between us. The place looked much cheerier with the lights on - I had to give James credit for pointing that out - and was equipped with surprisingly good cookware. It made the whole business of talking about obituary writing seem much less important, and I had to admit that I felt a bit foolish with him grinning across the table at me the way he was.

"Right, so," I said. "Yes. I'm writing the obituary for Jonathan Paxton because Hestia Jones asked me to. I guess whoever's been writing them is taking a vacation. Or got reamed out by the Death Eaters for saying something they didn't like. Or something."

"And you don't want to do it?"

I stared at the sandwich in my hands for a moment. I still hadn't bitten into it. A piece of tomato was falling out, dripping juice and mayonnaise onto my plate. "It's just difficult. I mean I don't know the guy from a hole in the wall. Which is a silly thing to whine about, I guess, because they just handed over a whole bunch of records and research and said, 'Hey, you could write this thing in half an hour if you're quick about it, no sweat'. And there was a noticeable lack of volunteers for the task. So I feel kind of obligated."

James gave me an odd look. "Why?"

"I don't know. But anyway. I'm writing it." I bit into my sandwich and relished the taste of fresh tomato and beef. I'd been glamorously living on noodles and broccoli for the past three weeks, and I wondered as I chewed whether I was going crazy partly out of diet-induced anemia. "It's a weird task. At least I knew Alice's family when I wrote their eulogy. I feel like this time I'm dissecting a corpse."

"How appetizing."

I opened my mouth to quip about James suddenly becoming squeamish, but the look on his face made me stop. "So how is everything? At Gringotts, I mean."

James grimaced. "Fantastic, of course." He took a swig of water, seeming to wash down a bit of bile. "I still haven't seen any action the way you people in the train stations and alleys do. But I did see a few rotting bodies and a mutilated goblin this week."

I had been about to swallow, but that gave me pause and I spent a moment trying not to choke. "Really. How did that happen?"

"Someone broke into Gringotts about a week ago, tried to steal a piece of cursed jewelry, I think. I guess the Death Eaters managed to head them off in the middle of it, because we'd been searching for the bodies for days. I was the lucky bloke who stepped on someone's collapsing face. And the guy who got to dispose of the whole scene, seeing how I'm, you know, at the bottom of the food chain and all that."

"You're sure the fact that your family is insanely rich couldn't get you a slightly nicer job?" I asked, and immediately felt ashamed at having suggested it. "I mean, this isn't to say you should try to bribe your way up, but you'd have to work pretty hard to come up with a reason why someone like you should be a janitor. They're just wasting you on a job like that."

James laughed harshly. "No, I volunteered for that job. Everyone in the Order would have been wasted on it. I took the position because they needed someone to do it, and I have enough money that I can afford to do it for free - and it's not like I've been doing it that long; it's only been two months. I'm planning on quitting as soon as they finish training this crop of Aurors. I'll be able to get under someone's wing easily. I just have to wait it out until they've got space to take me on as an apprentice."

"…Oh." I found myself staring open-mouthed at him. "Why didn't you tell me you'd volunteered?"

James smiled. "Because you would have freaked out and told me not to do it."

"Well, who's crazy now? Shit, James. I stay up all night writing about my childhood, you stay up all night searching for dead bodies. Voluntarily."

"Yeah, you can bet I'm foaming at the mouth just thinking about a tube of toothpaste when I find a pile of putrefying human lying about in a small, enclosed area. Breathing the smell and getting it in all in your mouth really makes you appreciate toothpaste. And toothbrushes."

The image was nauseating and brazenly, improperly, almost comical. I shuddered, all the while hating myself for thinking I might want to laugh. James regarded me curiously, seeming to await my response. I decided on a half-laugh, half-grimace. "And to think I sometimes forget how much chutzpah you have."

"Hence the reminders, Lily-tron. Now you'll always know who's got the biggest balls of them all. Without ever having to check."

"My knight in shining armor."

"That is my God-given purpose in life," James said, grinning stupidly at me. "I love you, Lily."

I grinned back and passed him another sandwich, which he happily took. "I love you too, James."

But even with the expression of unadulterated contentment on his face, something darker and not so cheery lingered. It was not self-pity - I hadn't seen that on James for several years - but it clearly weighed on him. A look of carefully contained somberness. Of responsibility, perhaps.

* * * * *

James and I had only the following night off before we had to return to our respective shifts, so in the evening we decided to take a short trip out of London, to a remote wooded area neither of us could locate on a map. We didn't know if the place was named; we didn't know if it was even in Britain. But it was beautiful, a snowy landscape of hills, evergreens, and rocky gorges. There was a waterfall, about forty feet high and frozen over now, near a clearing we frequented on our days off. In our jeans and snow boots we walked over the icy rocks at its base, slipping, falling, laughing as we tried to catch one another. James, who had more strength and superior balance, was better at it than I. "I keep having to make a point of not planting my face on these rocks," he laughed, holding me up by my armpits as I slipped and skidded. "You're too impatient to get to where you're going, you have to quit jumping around."

"I'm not jumping around," I giggled, brushing hair and snow out of my eyes. "I am just lacking the proper zen."

"I like how you imply that I'm filled with zen." He nuzzled the back of my neck.

"You know I exist purely to stroke your ego." I kissed him and didn't pull away until I slipped again and nearly sent us crashing onto a large pile of rocks.

And that was how we spent the evening - walking through the snowy woods, tripping in the snowbanks, breaking icicles off the trees and sucking the water off them; when the sun set, James Transfigured a rock into a lantern, which we took turns carrying as we wended our way through a forest of rich, thick evergreen boughs. Eventually we grew cold and stopped in a small clearing, where I brushed a pit into the snow and lit a fire. James and I stood before it, warming our hands and feet as steam rose from our sodden clothes.

"Try that thing you did once, when you got it to change shape."

I concentrated and flicked my wand at the flames. Something resembling a fish flickered into sight. I squinted and flicked my wand again; the fish's tail fin only grew broader. "That was supposed to be a bird, but I guess a fish is good enough."

"I'll take it," James yawned. "It's warm and it dances."

"That'll be fun to write into my memoir, the time we tried to dance in the dormitories that ended with me somersaulting over the back of one of the armchairs."

"That was hot," James said. "Your shirt rode up about a mile. And I hadn't known until then that you were that flexible."

"Can't argue with the truth, I guess."

"You know what I love about this," James mused, "it's the fact that it's been two hours and neither of us has mentioned work."

"Jinx."

"Savoring the sanity, you mean."

I laughed ruefully. "Or the rest of the world is crazy and we're mad. Either way, we'll never know."

"Lily," James said, giving me a wisftul smile, "look up. The stars are out. This is why I like to come out here with you. You can look up at the sky and see the stars through. And if you bother to look long enough, you'll even see them twinkle."

I looked up. It wasn't just the stars that were out - it was the entire Milky Way, visible as a faint, pearly stripe of violet and blue, half-hidden by the trees. I closed my eyes for a moment and inhaled deeply, drinking in the scent of winter and pine. "I have a confession," I said after a time. "I feel incredibly stupid for dramatizing and poeticizing everything in writing when we're out here."

"Why is that?"

"Because it's like the paint job in my brain suddenly changes when you're around and we're away from all the death and fighting, and I don't have to try to find ways of making life look artful."

There was a beat of silence, and James simply continued to look up at the sky. Then he exhaled, his breath a cloud of steam dispersing into the night, and put his arm around me. "Well," he said, pressing his lips against my forehead, "I'm glad to be of service. Because being with you does make me very happy."

* * * * *

Going back to work really was like having a different mental paint job. The mail room was in a drab state as usual when I got there the following morning, with loose parchment and envelopes cluttering up almost all of the visible desk space. A freezing rain had begun to fall an hour earlier, so that now the windows were in the process of glazing over with an inch of solid ice; all of the owl windows had been shut for the morning, with the owls themselves grudgingly perched on a slightly dizzying array of pegs on the wall. Hestia Jones was in her usual spot, looking pale and a bit run-down, and mindlessly waving her wand to and fro over a stack of letters. Each time the tip of her wand moved to her right, a letter slid into an envelope, which then addressed itself. Hestia had the look of someone who had been doing this for several mind-numbing hours already. There were two empty coffee cups on her desk, where she ordinarily kept her writing supplies.

"Anything you want me to take off your hands?" I asked.

My question seemed to have broken her trance, and she started a little before looking up. "Oh, Lily," she said, as if she'd completely forgotten I was supposed to be there. "Hi. Yes, if you could take a stack of these and deal with them, that'd be lovely."

Wordlessly, I did as she requested and sat down at a desk next to hers. "Where are these going?"

"Blue seals mean Department of Mysteries," Hestia said. "Red are for the Wizengamot. Actually, I put a charm on all of these that'll tell you where the letters are going, if you tap the seals and look pretty."

I nodded and sighed inwardly. I thought about experimenting with a few different charms for addressing the letters more efficiently and even considered making a suggestion to Hestia, but thought better of it. Her voice had a slight edge to it, as if she'd stop being polite as soon as I stepped a bit sideways and landed on her toes. "So what happened with the train that went off the rails?" I asked carefully. "I was off-shift when they were investigating, and I haven't heard anything over the past day."

"Ah, so you were sleeping," Hestia said, a bit testily. "I was wondering if you'd ever get to that. Anyway, yes, I was on duty with the group they sent out to survey the accident. A whole bloody night of walking over wrecked cargo. And Muggle-proofing the scene. It took us until six in the morning to wipe their memories and get them out of there."

"Was anyone hurt?"

"There were a few injuries. Nothing serious, as the conductor appeared to have realized there was a problem in time and hit the emergency brakes before they went careening over the wrecked tracks at eighty miles per hour. Horrific amount of monetary losses, though. That train was supplying half the apothecaries in Wizarding Britain. All that cargo - spilled all over the place, soaked into the dirt. Millions of Galleons. Disastrous."

My stomach sank. The Order of the Phoenix consumed a huge amount of potions and potion ingredients provided by the local apothecaries each month - with our rate of injuries due to hexes, curses, and confrontations with the Death Eaters, we were second only to St. Mungo's and the potions classes of Hogwarts. "Do you think we're going to have a supply shortage?"

"You should hope to Merlin not," Hestia said, smiling mirthlessly.

"I do," I said uselessly. "Is there anything else you want me to take care of today? You look like you could use a break."

"Write that obituary." Hestia's smile hadn't changed. "His father sent an owl this morning asking for it."

"…Ah."

"Make it good, too," Hestia added, a note of irony in her voice. "You could make a nice bundle on it if Paxton Senior is pleased."

Something about her voice sounded barbed, and, feeling defensive, I finished addressing her letters with a swift flick of my wand. She started and looked at me. "How did you do that?"

"Modified sorting charm, I think," I said, clearing my throat. "Right. Obituary. I'll get to it right now."

Hestia only regarded me strangely.

* * * * *

I spent the rest of the shift working on the obituary - that is to say, I spent the rest of the shift sifting through the mess of documents Hestia had provided me, struggling to think of a workable angle from which to tell Paxton's story. The clock ticked relentlessly through the morning and early afternoon, seeming to crush itself into the spaces between my ears and brain with each twitch of its hands. After about an hour of this, I began to feel claustrophobic, so I got up and paced along the wall where the owls were perching; but this only heightened my anxiety, so I sat back down and stared at the blank parchment before me. Disparate thoughts skittered across my mind. How could we know the monetary value of a person's soul? Was I supposed to hide Paxton's alcoholism and bring him off as a saint? Surely I should refrain from writing about his support for the Order of the Phoenix and risk getting his father killed - but didn't the fact that the request for an obituary had landed on my desk imply that he wanted someone from the Order, who knew about his son's contributions, to write about him? Which newspaper would publish the obituary? Oh, Paxton had been so young. Too young to die. Too stupid to know not to drink himself to death - or too helpless to overcome his alcoholism. An empty suit. Riding the shirttails of a railroad tycoon. Living the high life, drunkenly threatening to kill a taxi driver, drunkenly destroying millions of Galleons' worth of talking marble sculptures at a five hundred thousand Galleon house party. Drowning in his own vomit. Everything hushed up. Until now?

I didn't understand him. How could I possibly know him from his medical records?

Eventually I got up the nerve to ask Hestia for her opinion.

"You don't have to know him," she answered impatiently. "Nobody reading his obituary is going to know him. Of course his father doesn't want you to make him sound like a drunken fuck head…sorry, excuse me." She paused to sip from her coffee mug, blushing a little. "All I'm saying, Lily, is that the point of an obituary isn't to bare the ugly truth to the public, it's to notify them about the person's death and provide them with a bit of backstory. All you really have to do is write a short biography of him. Who he was, what he did, some vague nonsense about how he died. Make him sound like a good guy. Remember him fondly. You know. That sort of thing."

"It's going to be a security risk to his father if I mention anything Paxton did that was good," I said flatly.

Hestia's eyes flashed. But then she smiled. "So don't be specific about it. Just say he was a philanthropist. Generous bloke."

I considered this; she was right. I shrugged my concession.

"Oh, come on, Lily," Hestia said irritably. "You wrote a eulogy when you were seventeen. You went parading around Hogwarts with half a book's worth of who knows what you were writing practically every day. You were also at the top of your class. Stop acting stupid. Just write the bloody obituary. You know what to do."

I was silent for a moment, stunned. "When did I parade anything?"

Hestia looked at me as if I were crazy; for a moment I thought she was going to yell at me for deliberately being thick. But then her expression softened. She turned away. "I'm sorry. I'm just in a bad mood. And you were always winning writing awards at Hogwarts. I just didn't expect you to have any trouble with this, that's all."

I blinked. "What writing awards? I wrote an advertisement for Honeydukes once. They took it because they liked the jingle I came up with. And the parchment rolls you saw me carrying around were probably all essays for class."

Hestia blushed and refused to meet my gaze. "Lily, kindly shut up, all right? I'm sorry I got snappy with you."

"It's fine," I said quickly. "Thanks for the advice." With that, I went back to staring at my parchment. And failed utterly to come up with a single worthwhile sentence.

* * * * *

Writing the melodrama into death is easy to do. You choose your favorite set of overblown metaphors, be they filled with the love of birds, sunsets, or over-described fallen leaves, and then you think about something depressing, to the point where you are convinced that you yourself want to die, and begin writing about death as if you can count yourself amongst the bereaved - regardless of whether you are bereaved or not. You do not spare a single moving detail, and the details that aren't moving, you either exclude completely, or describe with such maudlinness that the mere presence of the words fools you into thinking you should be moved. And then, if you find that you can't stomach the descriptions you've produced, you trim them down until you can read them without gagging.

I spent several more hours wrestling with myself over how not to do this to Jonathan J. Paxton. I couldn't tell if I loved him or hated him, or even if I was indifferent. The emotion of writing blocked all judgment from my mind, until I was finally so fed up that I scrawled the following in roughly eight minutes:

Jonathan J. Paxton

Born January 18, 1952

Deceased February 19, 1979

It has been said by some that Jonathan J. Paxton was the face of the Gwydion Railroad; indeed, he was often his father's ambassador. An educated, literary man, he charmed many and entertained many more, leading a life surrounded by Britain's rich and famous. And certainly he was one amongst them: an heir to his father's millions, Jonathan Paxton could have chosen to live on the Riviera and never look back.

But he did not. In a time when our country is wracked with conflict and bloodshed, Paxton supported peace. He was an avid philanthropist. His many donations to numerous and admirable causes will always be remembered by all of us who carry the mantle of peace. May he live on in our hearts and memories.

* * * * *

"Thank you," Hestia said, as I handed her the piece of parchment. "Right on time for the next shift, too. Nice work."

"Thanks," I replied. I had a massive headache. "I guess I'm going to get a move on. Can't be late."

"Good luck."

The obituary was published the following day. I read it from my usual spot in the train station, behind the coffee counter, to the sound of the late-night trains roaring in and out of the station.

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