Rid of Me

littlebird

Rating: R
Genres: Angst, Romance
Relationships: Harry & Hermione
Book: Harry & Hermione, Books 1 - 7
Published: 04/03/2012
Last Updated: 17/09/2016
Status: in_progress

Hermione gets the cat, the flat, the food, and the furniture. Ron gets the family and friends. Harry gets the boot, his little book, the blame, and the shame. Ginny gets a new bloke and a haircut. New circumstances mix with old patterns, and Harry and Hermione find their friendship put to the test.

Chapters

1. Before: or Prologue Part 1

2. After: or Prologue Part 2

3. One Rough Night in September.....

4. Toil, Trouble

5. The Maiden and The Beggar

6. Reckoning

7. Sunday Night

1. Before: or Prologue Part 1

By the time the package arrived, his side of the bed had risen back to its original shape. The Horlicks he left had gone rock hard in the jar, and the smell of his soap had disappeared from the bathroom drains. The advert had promised ‘Delivery in four to six weeks’, but by my calculations, it had taken closer to eight: The one week before he’d finished with me, and then seven more afterward.

It had been a fine surprise to come home and finally find the wrapped box nestled against the front door. Nudging it out of the way with my toe, I noted the weight of the contents then stepped inside, hoping someone would see it sitting unguarded, think it was something grand, and steal it in the night. That failing, I stashed it in one of the drawers he’d emptied. There it rested for weeks, waiting, ubiquitous, a hidden emblem of all my failings as his chosen partner- a persistent reminder that I had, indeed, been ‘un-chosen’.

That drawer front, the dark, bevelled Cherry hummed to me. It was the first thing my bleary eyes focused on in the morning. The two silver knobs were the last things to flash before the light went out at night.

The time had come, and my hand was steady as I wrote out the invitation:

Ron,

If you could spare a few moments this Friday, at 6:30, I’ll spring for pain au’ chocolat and a coffee at the Café Tortucci, 438 S. Arlington St.

No pressure. I have something that belongs to you.

Hermione

Confident with my word choice and the overall ice-queen tone, I tied the note to the owl’s leg. Of course, no sooner had it flown away, but I was beset by crushing doubt. I shouldn’t have used the phrase, “No pressure”- it’s just too lame. I never should have offered coffee and the pastry, with its implications of lingering about and chewing near each other. For that matter, I should have just named a street corner for a quick hand-off. There would have been an awkward Hello, a brief explanation, and then a forced, cheery Good-bye.

Yes. That’s what I should have done.

This becomes more obvious by the second as I sit alone at the two-top by the window. The carrier bag with the package inside is under the table. The longer I wait, the more I feel myself nudging it with my shoe. I tap it. I prod it. By the time my watch reads 7:13, I’m actively driving my heels into it, rattling the bag and drawing stares. By 7:15, the hot cocoa I ordered is cold, the top covered with pale film, the bottom thick with fine, black grit. Maybe he’s having trouble finding the place. I wait ten minutes longer.

If he’d show up, he’d see I pulled my hair back and braided it tight, just like he’s always hated, just so he’d know that I’d come with zero expectations. He’d see I picked a Muggle spot, a place the two of us had never been before, well away from any dangerous point of reference. If he’d bother, he’d find a large, well-lit coffee shop with a glass front and mirrors running the length of the walls so he could find plenty to look at if he didn’t want to look at me.

I swish the debris around and peer into my cup. His note said he’d come, so I wait ten minutes more.

Outside, it’s begun to rain in earnest, and I stand to pull on my coat. I look down as I button-up, studying the blurred, foreshortened shade of myself reflected in the gleaming floor. Past the soles of my shoes, there is only the flare of grey wool, my elbows jutting out on both sides, and the pale, featureless oval of my face. I bend to pick up the crumpled, slouching bag, and, while the un-focused shapes of a mouth and nose rise up to meet me, the places where the eyes should be remain dark and hollow.

I try not to dwell on this as I dump my mug in the dishpan over the waste bin and walk out the door. Beneath the awning, I open my umbrella and think on which way to go. This bag, this package, they’re not coming home with me tonight, but Ron’s blown me off, Ginny’s left the country, and the Burrow and the joke shop are out of the question.

That leaves Harry- if Harry even exists, anymore.

Standing here, static, the water is already bleeding from the hem of my jeans, rising through the denim to cling to my calves. My socks leech the damp down into my shoes. The rain whipping around me lights in tiny droplets on my coat, while the inside of each nostril and the space around my eyes, burns, the vessels and veins contracting with cold as I breathe in. I begin to walk, gulping quick lungfuls of frigid air, cooling everything fast, through and through. I indulge, drowning in the mercy of this chill, wet, darkness.

By the time I get to Harry’s, I need to be unbreakable and numb. I want to be frozen hard, inside and out, before I even raise a knuckle to knock on the door.

2. After: or Prologue Part 2

A part of her, an ankle or a knee, pops as she passes through the doorway. I open my eyes in time to track the silhouette motion of one calf, the flex of one foot, before she disappears into the hall. Out of sight, she becomes the soft crush of heels and toes sinking into carpet, the whisper of fabric being raised from the floor, the hiss of cloth sliding against skin.

The oven door creaks open. I hear the tinny clang, the puff of displaced air as it seals shut. There is a moment of nothing, then the metal on metal grate of the chain latch, the grind of the guts of the door-knob. Street noises rush in- tires squelching against wet pavement, the frantic bleating of a horn in the next lane over. I grab my glasses and throw back the covers. Before I can sit, she’s closed the door, shutting me in with an interminable silence.

I kick my feet free of the sheet and roll off the bed. My shorts are somewhere here in the dark, but the lamp is dead, so I forget it and charge out to the sitting room. The copper light streaming through the gap in the curtains cuts across a heap of denim on the floor. I wrestle the trousers over my knees, the buckle of my belt flogging my thighs. I snatch my T-shirt from under the coffee table and whip it over my head, shivering, engulfed in cold cotton.

She will have made it to the street by now. She will have turned east, heading toward the nearest Apparition point two blocks away. I kick my trainers onto their soles and cram my bare feet between the rise of the heel and the thin, padded tongue. Socks, underwear: Floppy wastes of time. Perceived essentials, that, it turns out, aren’t.

Essential now is speed. Necessary to this moment are keen eyes and a loud voice. As I pull on my coat and slam out the door, what is absolutely indispensable, what I am totally without, is a hint of her motive. Barrelling into the foot traffic, scanning the crowd, I find myself slipping into Auror mode, retracing, probing my memory for anything that could be labelled ‘evidence’, trying to objectively reconstruct the scene. I have the who, what, where, when, and how. Missing is the why. Why would a young woman sneak out of a warm bed to wade through this February mizzle in the middle of the night? The objective answer: Countless reasons- she forgot to lock her doors, she fancied a walk in the rain, or, perhaps, the cat needs feeding. So sod objectivity and ask the real question, patently un-impartial and painful: Why would she want to sneak away from me?

The answer, I know, isn’t a bludger through a window. It’s a dozen tiny pings against the glass, the hundreds of spider web cracks spreading slowly, joining over time, until one wrong nudge sends the whole thing collapsing from the frame.

So I start at the very end, looking for that last careless word or gesture. I search for the Devil in the details.

Those final moments when we were both still awake, still lazing in a haze of dopamine and sweat, what I remember is the weight of her, the firm ridges of her ribs pressing against my open hands. She spoke, answering me, and I turned my head so the tip of my nose and my mouth were on her stomach. I didn’t register the exact second her fingertips grew still in my hair, but when I realized she’d stopped moving, I looked up to where her face was listing against the pillow, her lips a lingering flesh red, swollen and parted. I pulled my hands free and pushed myself up over her. Her hand sank down, her fingertips falling to the place my lips had been.

I remember the air, too cool on my chest, and the arc of her legs falling together as I pulled the duvet over her- over us. I lay on my stomach beside her, the tip of one curl coiled around my finger, and I thought if she could fall asleep lying there beneath me, she must have felt as safe, as positively right, as I did.

Now, I can only suppose she didn’t feel that way, at all.

And I’d like to believe that by lying still and listening as she left, by choosing not to act, I was really just doing what she wanted. I’d like to think my intentions were entirely noble. But a second, sotto voice in my head is churning out phrases like “passive aggressive”, and “blatant narcissistic denial”, and it makes me sick at myself to have to admit there is truth in the words- that I didn’t want to believe she would leave me, so, to punish her, I just lay there and let her go.

The under-voice splutters up something about “latent self-destructive tendencies”, and I clench my jaw and quash the thought down. All this sunk-in psycho-babble is irrelevant. What matters now is that I’m pushing past these scattered clusters of pub-goers, that I’m up on my toes, craning my neck, looking daft and desperate to catch a glimpse of her somewhere beyond. She can’t have got that far ahead of me, and, while she’s fast- the fact still remains- I’m faster.

3. One Rough Night in September.....

When I find him, Harry is curled on my bathroom floor, the top of his head pressed flat against the tub, his glasses floating in a cloudy soup of toilet water and sick. At the sound of my feet against the tile, he drags his head around, opening one clenched eye a slit, and then turns back toward the toilet.

“Everything’s under control, here,” he says, wrapping his fingers around the porcelain. “Go back to bed…” Pulling himself up, then slumping forward onto the rim, he says, “Just toss my cold carcass out with the rest of the rubbish in the morning.” He rolls his face on the edge of the bowl and spits. I snatch his glasses out from the sour muck as his body heaves, just before he can honk all over them, again.

His hand scrabbles against the tank, feeling for the flush, as I stand at the sink pumping hand soap, covering the lenses and wire frames. I scrub as the water runs from cold to tepid, from tepid to hot. Seeing steam, I leave his glasses beneath the boiling stream in the basin and pull a towel from the rack as he sinks to the floor. I double it over and kneel, then push my fingertips around the curve of his head.

“Up,” I say. He rises and I slide the towel beneath his ear.

“Thanks,” he says, then groans, turning his face into the plush, white cotton. His voice muffled, I can only make out the words, “hate”, “die”, “puddle”, and “Ron’s dribble.”

I kill the hot water and prop his glasses against the green tumbler I keep the ear buds in. “Ron hardly uses this bathroom,” I say, grabbing a face cloth from the stack on the shelf and soaking it with cold water. Stepping around him, I flick the hallway light on and the bathroom light off. His profile re-emerges, wincing in the dimness. “So,” I say, kneeling over him, “if you were to die in anyone’s dribble, it’d be mine.”

I smooth the wet cloth against his forehead. His eyes close as the edge of his lips curl up slow.

“Dirty girl,” he mutters.

“Mm. You’ll be all right for a minute on your own? I’ll be right back.” I touch his shoulder and stand. He nods once and curls up tighter on the tile floor.

I hope this doesn’t turn out to be a singular phenomenon applicable only to Weasley’s, but I’ve found the best way to alleviate most of the sickness from guzzling a fifth of clear, pine smelling liquor is two thick, spongy slices of white bread with a nice hunk of Cheddar in between. The principle theory is solid: Lower the blood alcohol level by eating. Still, it’s just enough to get one through the night, so I go ahead and rummage for the hangover potion while I make tea. Ten cheese sandwiches won’t fix the mess he’ll be in the morning.

I leave the potion on the end table next to the sofa where he was sleeping and carry the mug and the plate to the bathroom. He rolls over with his eyes closed when the plate clatters against the tile.

“I’ve brought you some tea. Can you sit?” I steady him with my free hand as he hoists himself up. He stares at the mug and swallows hard. I can see the sweat glaze the skin beneath his eyes. Daunted, he turns back toward the toilet.

I sit in the doorway and push the plate toward him. “Harry, eat this. It will help, I promise.”

He stays heaped across the toilet lid for a minute, then sits up and wipes his face, then hands, on the damp cloth. I hold up the plate and he takes the sandwich, bites off a corner, and chews. He doesn’t require an audience, so I wedge myself inside the door frame, lean back, and shut my eyes. Across the hall, through the bedroom door, I can hear the sucking sound of Ron’s snoring. Apart from that, the flat is silent except for the mush noises Harry makes as he chews. Eyes closed, listening as one rhythm plays over the other, I don’t realise I’ve begun to drift until Harry’s voice pulls me back to the bathroom.

“Thanks, Hermione.”

“Hm?” I blink and lift my head, dazed.

“And here I was beginning to think,” he says, laboriously shifting to lean against the open door, “you didn’t care, anymore.”

“About…?” I nudge the mug closer to his leg. Grasping the handle, he lifts. Light sketches across the top of the tea as it trembles in his hand. He squints down into the liquid darkness, presumably searching for cream. “It’s black,” I say. He stares at it a moment longer, then takes an experimental sip.

He swallows then mumbles into the mug. The words slip unheard around the brim, and I shake my head and lean forward. “Pardon?” He pulls the mug from his lips, sloshing a few drops of tea down the side, as his eyes roll up to meet mine.

“All night, I’m waiting.” He raises his empty hand, then swipes it through the air. “And nothing. Not a word when I’m swimmin’ through that bottle at the pub… head lolling in the toilet- still, you keep to yourself.” His voice sounds seared and low, and his face hangs in my direction as he speaks. “I mean, I’ve been… monumentally stupid tonight, Hermione… beyond intolerable. And you,” he leans back, draws his knees up, and points at my chest, “you haven’t so much as huffed in my direction. And, honestly, I’m sick of waiting for the dressing-down, so if you if could just go ahead and have done, I think we’ll both sleep a whole lot better, tonight.”

I blink at him, stung, disarmed. Even through the heavy lids and the slight slur, I can tell he’s not playing. He means it. All night, he’s just been waiting for the vicious, harping bint to come out and crack her whip.

This is what Harry thinks of me.

“Right,” I look down and fiddle with the hem of my pyjama top. “I…I’ve nothing to say. It’s only been a few days. You’re allowed a little time…” To grieve, I almost add, but stop myself. “And… I suppose it doesn’t feel like my place, anymore. You’re a grown-up, now, wearing your big boy pants…” I glance at him and he grins, undermining my point completely.

But then his face changes, droops down. He lets loose a twisted chuckle then closes his eyes. “Yeah. We’re all grown up, now, aren’t we?”

And I can’t pin-point the inherent tragedy of these words, but I feel it stretching between us, an allusion to freshly painted walls, to empty cupboards and a hallway lined with boxes, rattling with the few things he bothers to call his own. This phantom outline of his new life, it’s just another forever empty space where something good used to be, and, suddenly, I have to tilt my head back to hold in the tears. He shouldn’t be here, anticipating a tongue lashing on my bathroom floor. He should be elsewhere, curled around sweet-smelling hair and freckles, still cocooned in the adolescent faith that everything, with this person beside him, could be all right.

But that’s over, and he won’t tell why, so I’m lost for the right thing to say. Instead, I look for something to do. I collect the plate and am searching for the face cloth when I see the black smear against the tile. The trail of whatever it is leads to the black tip of Harry’s white sock.

“What’s happened to your foot?” I reach up and flip on the bathroom light. The black turns to red.

He doesn’t open his eyes. “Bashed it on the way. Aches a bit,” he says.

“A bit? Take that sock off so I can have a look.” I stand and step around him as he tugs at the elastic around his ankle. He slides the sock away and shows me five blood stained toes, the largest split deep down one side of the nail.

“This,” he says, “is why I shouldn’t drink.” He bends the bleeder, squinting dispassionately down as the tiny, red chasm of flesh spreads and closes.

“Stop. You’ll make it worse.” I leap up and burst through the bedroom door, heading straight for the medicine cupboard in the master bath. I grab the Essence of Ditany and then detour to my night stand for my wand. Ron stops snoring and raises his head.

“Whas happenin?”

“Nothing. Harry’s cracked his toe. I’ve got it.”

Back in the bathroom, I settle a legs length away and draw Harry’s foot into my lap.

“Once, when I was little, my dad sliced his finger on the mower blade,” I say, waving my wand, clearing away the dried blood. “At the time, I thought I wanted to be a doctor, so I was hovering around, getting in the way. The cut was really deep, and even I could see he needed stitches, so when he sent me to look for the Super Glue, I sort of suspected he was just trying to get rid of me while he sewed himself up.” I pick up the little bottle, unscrew the dropper top, and squeeze, measuring. “So I hurried, found the glue, and ran back. Hold still, now.” One drop of Ditany sinks into the split. There’s a hiss and a wisp of green smoke. “And I was so disappointed. He was just sitting on the side of the tub, waiting with his finger wrapped in a cloth. No needle. No thread. And I must have looked entirely deflated, because he laughed at me, then he let me run the bead of glue over his cut while he held the skin together.” Harry’s toe is whole again, the new skin pearl pink and glistening. “I wish he could see this.”

“So, bust your toe open on the coffee table next time you go round.” I snap my head up to find Ron’s shoulders, stiff and bull-broad, filling the doorway. He’s looking down at me, the set of his face flat and mean as his eyes bore into my lap. I look down to Harry’s foot. The top branching with blue veins and the knobby suggestions of bone, the rectangular toes, the pale apricot wash of the sole- it’s all cradled in my warm palm as my thumb stretches behind the lump of his ankle and into the fine, dark hair of his leg. A pulse of hot/cold panic rolls through my body, and when I look back, Ron has turned from me and is speaking to Harry. “All right, then, mate?” he says.

Harry looks pinned, as if the sudden swell of tension has forced him flat against the door. “Yeah. Good.”

Ron nods, then turns and slouches back to the bedroom. The door thuds softly as it closes behind him.

“Well,” I say, guiding Harry’s foot to the floor, “I think we’ve spent enough time in the loo for one evening.” I begin to reach all over, manically gathering the detritus of the night. I snatch the towel and face cloth from Harry’s side and lean for the mug, but he covers it with his hand.

“‘S not even cold, yet.” Close to my ear, the texture of his voice, the scratch and stir of air around each sound, seizes me. I take a long breath. The smell of pub- of smoke and wood wax and a hint of stale grease- lingers in my hair and on his shirt. I turn my face to his, near enough now that he can see my weariness clearly. “Ron’s angry,” he says. “I should go.”

“No.” I sit back on my heels, clutching the laundry in one hand. “Whatever it is, it’s nothing to do with you.” I Vanish the cloth and towel to the hamper in the bedroom, then stand. I grasp his wrist and help him from the floor. On two feet, he staggers a bit, and I raise an eyebrow and smirk.

“Ah, there it is.” He grins, circling his finger sloppily through the air in front of my face. “That’s what I’ve been waiting for.” I pluck his glasses from the sink and hand them over. He fits them over his ears as I move past him to pick up the plate and the mug. “I’ve got those,” he says, taking them from me. “I’m heading that way.”

“We could swap,” I say. “I’ll take the sofa, and you can bunk with Ron.”

He snorts and shakes his head. “I’m lonely, but, no. Thanks.”

It comes at odd times, now, the overwhelming compulsion to just hold him near. I stopped acting on it years ago. For so long, it’s been someone else’s place. Tonight, though, I reach out, wrap my fingers over his shoulder and pull him close. His hands are full of dishware, but he sags against me, heavy as the dead, and, for a few seconds, he lets me hold him up.

He takes a deep breath, then sighs it away. He says, “Maybe this is what I was waiting for,” then he’s through the door, shuffling down the hallway, the plate dangling at his side. I want to follow, to make sure he’ll be okay, but Ron’s in the bedroom, not snoring. I take a last look at the bathroom. The smear on the floor is gone, wiped away by someone’s clothes, but Harry’s sock lies bent on the floor. I pick it up and clean it with my wand, then stretch it over the doorknob and turn out the light. The bulb in the hallway I leave burning, just in case he needs to find his way.

4. Toil, Trouble

According to Benoit, lip gloss is the single greatest invention of the twentieth century.

Don’t just think of it as that goopy shit staining up your best shirt, he says. Placed in its proper context, it’s a device. An ultra-effective tool in the sub-conscious strive for biological self-mimicry.

I mean, really, Benoit says, the tip of his churchill a tiny, orange sun flaring in the shadows, you can hardly ask for a more blatant signal than a pair of sweet-slick lips parted and practically dripping in your direction.

The guys at his table all grunt in a knowing way, the sound of bandits planning their next plunder, while at our table Ron spews his stout, spotting up the front of his robes. He splutters and gasps. He takes a big, croaky breath and asks, “Are you hearing this?” Like I might have suddenly gone deaf. Like every man within earshot isn’t locked in on Benoit’s voice, memorizing every word he says.

Benoit points to the bar: The girl on the stool at the edge there, that thing she’s doing with her shoe, flexing her toes, her foot thrusting in then slipping back out. Think, boys. Remind you of anything?

Benoit nods toward the billiards table: The woman fiddling with the pendant on her necklace, sliding it along the chain so her fingernails graze the soft, white skin of her chest. That’s called ‘self-touch’, and she’s sending a message. She’s saying ‘This feels good. Maybe you can make me feel good, later.’ It’s a text-book example of the physical manifestation of sub-conscious desires.

Ron says, “Are you listening, Harry? Because this …this is good stuff,” He leans back to get closer, his chair creaking as the weight shifts from four legs to two.

I say, “Oh,yeah,” and trace my middle finger over the big ‘O’ of the Ogden’s logo on my beermat. I say, “He’s brilliant, Benoit,” then, just to see if I even register, “Even Hermione thought so when he was trying to chat her up earlier.”

And… nothing. Benoit is going on about red lipstick and primate courtship displays, and Ron is sunk in wonder, eyes round and wide, mouth just this side of gaping, chair groaning as he tilts further and further back.

I say, “Yup. She was really impressed.”

I say, “And he was quite taken with her.”

I say, “You know, I think she might have this mad idea that you’re about to chuck her.”

Still nothing, so I say, “She practically told me as much, though I didn’t get it at the time.”

Ron is gawking over his shoulder, a new and avid disciple. I lean my head against the brick behind me and stare across the table.

I say, “Are you listening, Ron? Because this…this is good stuff.”

***

My chair is squeaking.

No. Screeching is the better word. It’s screeching-- eye squinching, tooth shattering shrill- every time I move to the right. I don’t remember this being a problem yesterday, or the day before. I’m fairly sure my arse was only greeted with one quick croak before being served in silence. But now, today of all days, there it is. Obviously, I’ve never heard the Mandrake’s cry, but I imagine this is how it kills. This same sort of sound ripping through the brain, severing all crucial connections until all those automatic functions of the body- breathing and blinking and blood pumping- simply stop.

I stand and grab the chair. I flip it upside down and wrestle it, shrieking, onto my desk. The file I was supposed to be studying scatters, and the cold dregs of an afternoon coffee dash across the photos as my mug spins across the wood then smashes on the floor. The corners of today’s Prophet catch the stirring air and lift, fanning upward, the paper sliding slowly from the edge of the desk and down, the pages falling away from each other with a quiet flutter of slipping sounds.

Once up-ended and off the ground, my chair is an alien artefact, an unfamiliar form of wood, metal, and pocked rubber wheels. I’m no tinkerer, but, today, I need to take apart this chair. I need to find out exactly where the weak spot is. I must see the broken pieces with my own eyes and fix them with my own hands. And so, minutes later, my desk is strewn with rusted screws and bits of steel, soggy paperwork and flecks of sawdust. I’m so engrossed, I don’t even hear her walk up. I don’t see her in front of me until her hand sets the re-assembled mug on my desk, and then she is kneeling, collecting the pages of the Prophet, shuffling them back into order.

“It doesn’t have to be perfect, Hermione,” I say to the thick, ropy bun bobbing against her neck. “It’s going in the bin, anyway.”

She stands and lays the re-folded newspaper on my desk. She pushes her fingers into it, pressing it flat, as if something alive and dangerous might snake its way from between the pages. I don’t look up, but work on. She is still, watching.

“Looks like you might be a while,” she says. “Mind if I join you? They’ve begun a maintenance project on the fourth floor.” She lifts her hand from the Prophet and flicks one of the wheels branching up from the base in front of her. It whirls upon its caster with a tiny clatter. “Lots of dust and noise.”

“Yeah,” I say, “sit.” She does, and I listen as she rummages, pulling her things from her satchel. There is the hollow scrape of unfurling parchment, then the fluid roll of her quill gliding over its surface. She exhales, settles in.

Dust and noise.

Sitting in a room Hermione has Silenced is the auditory equivalent of floating in deep space. She can repel dirt from every surface within a twenty metre radius.

Dust and noise, indeed. We both know why she’s really here.

Even so, we work without speaking. Ignoring the Prophet, ignoring Hermione, ignoring the awful urge to slop the whole, shameful mess into her waiting ears, I fix my eyes on the clutter in front of me. I tell myself there’s no rush. We’ll get to the picture in the middle of page five soon enough. But the silence spins out forever, and my nerves are drum-head tight, and a single tone is humming in my head, and suddenly I’m halfway through blurting out the question before I even know what I want to ask.

“So, the hair. Is that something new, or…” I keep my eyes down, punching at the chair column with the ball of my hand, knocking it loose from the base.

Hermione’s quill scratches on. “I suppose so. I hadn’t seen it until today,” she says, unbothered. “Really brings out the Charlie-ness of her face, I think.”

At this, I look up. “What?”

“That sort of pixie cut, it makes her look like Charlie.”

“Does not,” I say, but she is already picking up the Prophet and shaking it open. She spreads the page in front of me.

“Harry, really….” she says. And, damn it, but she’s right. Now, all I see is Charlie. Charlie’s cranky brow. Charlie’s jaw-- clean shaven and buffed smooth, but still Charlie’s jaw-- above the peep of forged cleavage peeking from a tight, black dress. One strange, hybrid hand clasps a muffin- shaped bag , the other grasps the arm of someone the caption calls ‘Marco Giordano, Italy’s finest Seeker’. Even the set of her shoulders-- she’s her brother all over. A mad little laugh gurgles from my throat, and I look up at Hermione, feeling every bit the nutter I’ve been accused of being.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I shouldn’t have…this isn’t why….” She sucks her bottom lip between her teeth, drops her eyes, and folds the paper back onto itself.

“No. It’s fine. I mean, everyone’s seen it, and they’re all pretending they didn’t, and that’s worse than just….”

“Rubbing it in your face?”

“Right. It’s time you rubbed it in my face. It’s done. It’s over. And it’s well past the point where I need to be tip-toed around and coddled. “

She sags back into her seat and crosses her ankles. She scrapes the corner of her parchment with her thumb. “I just…. I didn’t know if you had reason to still hope…”

I go back to my chair, tapping the screws that hold the column base to the seat with my wand, watching as each wiggles free and then nests in its hole. “No,” I say. “No hope.”

“I’m sorry to hear it,” she says. She’s watching me again, patient. And then she takes a deep breath. “Harry….”

“Let’s just drop it, okay, Hermione?” I don’t even look at her. Instead, I fiddle about, dividing similar parts into piles, until she finally gives up, turns away, and goes back to her parchment.

I should be glad. These days, it only takes a few words to shut Hermione out.

I should be glad, but I’m not.

Instead, for the thousandth time, I wish it had ended for any other reason than it did. I would rather explain anything— jealous rages, cheating, a substance problem—anything other than what really happened. Anything other than the truth.

Because there’s what’s true, and then there’s what’s honest. What’s true is that I can’t sleep for dreaming. What’s honest is far more complex and involves a list of particulars I’d rather never speak of again: My clinically termed “sleep disturbances”, the services of one Dr. Joan Scarlett, and, worst of all, that stupid black notebook where it’s all written down.

The truth is “seeking treatment” was Ginny’s idea.

And, honestly, I can’t blame her.

In fact, I’m surprised she limped along with me as far as she did. It wouldn’t take long for anyone to get sick of living around what I’d become. A zombie narcoleptic. A stumbling, grunting cat-napper of a man. “You have to do something about this,” she hissed one Sunday morning, slapping me awake after I dozed off- bang in the middle of sex. I think when she made the appointment with the Healer she was convinced the right potion, the easy cure, was just round the corner. It was for Ginny that I went and I sat, half asleep and half naked, on the examining table. The Healer traced the veins of my arms with his wand. He pulled my lower eyelids down and pressed hard against my cheekbones. He pushed his thumbs into the hollows beneath my jaws and tilted my head to the left, and then to the right. He scowled, the corners of his mouth sinking deep into the folds of his jowls, and then he picked up a pad of paper and a short, raven quill. He leaned in close and spoke quietly. “There’s nothing wrong with you, Mr. Potter, the talking cure won’t fix.” He scribbled on the pad, pulled the top page away and passed it to me. “I want you see this lady. Muggle, but her husband was killed in our first war, so she knows all about our, er, recent history. However, I believe her to be ambivalent to your particular status and I know her to be very discreet, and I don’t think I’m wrong in supposing that discretion, Mr. Potter, is certainly preferable in this matter.”

So I met the discreet Joan Scarlett, and she sat with her pad on her knee, holding her ready pen in a spear grip beside her face. She smiled her satin rose smile and said, “All right, Harry, why don’t you tell me a bit about yourself.”

But I had nothing to tell. By then I was nothing but the reason I came, so I said, “I have trouble sleeping.”

She nodded once, slowly, and said, “Okay, then. Let’s talk about what keeps you awake at night?”

There is what’s true, and there is what’s honest, and truthfully, I wasn’t exactly honest with Dr. Joan Scarlett. Maybe because she’s the same age my mum would have been had she lived, but I found myself playing it close. I evaded. I diffused. And I thought I was so clever until the end of the hour when she reached over to her desk and picked up a black leather book. She walked me to the office door and then slapped the book into my chest. She told me to fill it up, to write down everything I dreamt, to specially detail the moments that led up to waking. The worst of the worst, so to speak. “And, Harry,” she peered over her tortoise rimmed readers, “omit nothing. We have work to do. No editing.”

It’s harder than one would think, writing it all out in any way that makes sense, but I try. In my black book, I write about blood and sand and the tiny heart that heaves in my hands. I write about glass spiked air, breathing it down, the prickle in my throat, coughing up black. I write about Teddy, his loose limbs cartwheeling through layers of sky and fog, falling to a place that I can’t see. I scrawl letters into words into phrases. Grey lips, loose jaws, the silver flick of a short blade, powdered milk eyes sunk in char, my feet unmoveable, dark liquid ribbons lifting, spreading from bodies mired beneath the water.

In my black book, I drop a robin’s egg on Ginny’s red tongue then sew her lips shut with coarse, blue thread. I force my fingers into Ron’s mouth and pluck out his teeth, one, then another, then another.

I run with Hermione. Through caverns, and narrow, shadowed passages, and hallways, and up and down staircase after staircase, and through close grown thickets, and across wide fields, night after night, we run. I can never see her face, but I know it is Hermione. I recognize the sound of air rushing in and out of her lungs. I know too well the feel of her feet pounding the earth beside me.

And, per doctor’s orders, I omit nothing. All the ugly things I do to ugly people, all the words so terrible I cringe to see them strung together in my handwriting: It’s all there. I take to using my own shorthand-- Dlhv, Grybck, B. Lstrng—because I can’t stand pairing the names with the verbs-- crvd, smshd, slcd, fckd. These things I do with no wand or magic words. No distance from the dark. Just my hands and my body. The feeling of skin tearing at skin.

Honestly, what happened next, I’m still not sure. For weeks I had been beyond careful. Perhaps I was just too out of it after not sleeping the night before to remember to hide the thing away. Perhaps I left it laying in the open that morning accidentally-on-purpose. But, that evening, when I stood in the hallway, staring into our bedroom where Ginny sat, the closed book in her shaking hands, there was a brief flash of something like release. For one moment, I knew she knew everything, and yet, still, there she was. But then she raised her head and, far too fast, her mirror bright eyes raked me over. “This,” she said, her voice crumbling, “This is what’s inside you.”

And because she wasn’t as much asking as telling me it was so, I said, “Yeah, I guess it is.”

The truth is heroes will inevitably fail. Golden souls tarnish.

This is what’s inside you.

The chair is dismantled, every part whole and lying in plain sight. All that bad noise, unfixable.

I toss my wand onto the desk and run a hand through my hair. Hermione stops writing. Somewhere, miles off in the cubicle maze, a clock is ticking. Hermione shifts in her seat. Her breath catches as she inhales.

“Harry, I…I need to ask….” She begins, but is cut off as the office door bangs open and a surge of male prattle floods around us. Even when their briefings aren’t so gruesome, the night shift are a loud lot. Tonight, though, they’re absolutely buzzing— high tension wires live with an overload of auxiliary power. Above it all, a distinct Louisiana drawl barrels between the walls.

“… don’t care how long the old hack’s been around.” The voice stops on the other side of my cubicle and drops to an undertone. “One word of this gets printed, Blevins, and he’ll kill the girl and run. You make sure her editor—no—you make sure the publisher understands that.” There’s the sound of a hand slapping a shoulder, one set of footsteps strides away, and then Nathan Benoit steps across my threshold. “Potter,” he says, “you’re still here?” I watch him glance at Hermione. He catches her eye, grins. “I see you’ve, uh, been brushing up on our case, there.” He nods at my desk.

The pictures, the reports. Everything damp and brown and crumpled. The pinnacle of professionalism, I am. Luckily, he’s past caring. The female in the room proves too distracting, and I can see I’ll never be rid of him until introductions are made.

“Hermione, this is Nathan Benoit, South-eastern Bureau Chief of the U.S.A.A.. Benoit, this is Hermione Granger. She works in the BBS division. You may have seen each other around.”

Hermione grasps her things, stands, turns, and then extends her free hand. She fumbles her quill and the parchment she holds coils up on itself, shooting forward. She lunges in reflex, but in one swift movement Benoit is already across the cubicle, the parchment in his fingers, his body square with hers, his lips almost brushing the tip of her nose.

“I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure,” he says, smouldering all over her, before he finally steps back and takes her hand.

Slick git.

If I were Ron, I’d hex his bollocks into a permanent twist. Or, rather, if I were Ron, I’d try. Not to be rude, but men like Benoit use men like Ron to pick the grist of still other, better men from their sparkling, white, alligator teeth.

Already, the two of them are chatting about house-elves. This is how fast Benoit works. How efficient. This is why he’s been here three weeks and already he’s the Swordsman of the Secretarial Pool—a.k.a. the Right Man for the Job, the Bloke with Three Legs, the Louisiana Plough Horse. Benoit had never seen a house elf until he came here. He’s curious about their behaviour, curious about the magic that binds them to a family. He’s heard she’s an expert, maybe she could explain. Benoit holds her parchment between them. His robes slip over his bare forearms, thick cables of long muscle under oak-coloured skin.

By now, under Benoit’s stare, any other female in the Ministry would be a slick, warm puddle of quivering goo. Hermione, though, is as polite and indifferent as if he were any crusty, old dodger off the street. She gives him the name of a book, its author, and the shelf where it can be found in the Ministry’s library. She peers down between them and plucks the parchment from his hand.

“Thank you ever so much,” she says. She turns to me and pushes a strand of loose hair from her face. She looks at her watch. “I suppose I’ll leave you to discuss your case, then.”

“Actually, I was just about to clean up,” I say, quickly grabbing up my wand and siphoning the coffee from the photos before circling it over the shrapnel on my desk. “Refecio.”

Everything I pulled apart, it all comes back together. Metal and wood, every part in its place, as perfect a chair as it can possibly be. I haul it down from my desktop and turn it right side up. Gently. So I don’t have to hear whether I’ve failed or not.

Benoit takes the hint. He points his finger at me and then jerks it back, the imaginary recoil of an imaginary gun. He makes a clicking sound with his tongue and teeth, then says, “Tomorrow, Potter,” all the time ogling Hermione as she sits packing away her things. He moves a couple of steps back, then bends at the waist until his face is level with hers. When she lifts her eyes, he smiles. “It was very nice to meet you, Miss Granger,” he says, then backs himself out of my cubicle and disappears down the hall.

I cram the case file back into its folder. She stands and grasps the handle of her satchel, her body tilting with the weight. “Are you coming, Harry?” she says.

“Yeah. Just a second.” I toss the Prophet in the bin, then grab my cloak off the filing cabinet. I trail along behind her through the hallway and out the office door. The smell of fall, of green apples and black tea and ink, swishes from the folds of her robes.

Waiting for the lift, I nudge her with my elbow. “You joining us tonight? Ron didn’t say.”

Hermione turns. Her brows drift together. “What?”

“Ron and I at The Leaky-- are you coming along?”

“Ron?” She says.

“Yeah. You know Ron. Ginger hair, hogs all the biscuits.”

“You’re meeting Ron at the pub? Here? In London? Tonight?”

The tremble of her voice. With every syllable, my stomach twists a little tighter. “Yeah. He…he didn’t mention it?”

She looks away from me. “He’s been at the shop in Hogsmeade since Sunday.”

Today is Thursday. I try to think of one good reason why he hasn’t spoken to her in four days.

“Well, Halloween is next week…” I say, and as soon as the words are cast out, I wish I could reel them back in. Instead, they are immediately lapped over and sunk, submerged inside her to bloat and rot away.

The door in front of us opens and she automatically steps forward. I follow her inside and watch as she presses her thumb into the button labelled with the capital ‘A’. She leans against the wall. She grips the handrail and the door slides shut.

“Ron’s a good friend,” she says.

“Yeah. The best.” Best friend. Crap fiancée.

“He worries. He likes to lure you away from your ‘sad little teacup’, as he calls it.”

“It’s not so bad, my place,” I say.

“No,” she says, so soft I barely hear. “It’s not so bad.”

She reaches forward and brushes her fingertips down the row of numbered buttons. “What’s the hardest part, Harry? At night, when you go home to that empty flat, what’s the worst part of living alone?”

I laugh, a strange, bitter bark that bounces off the walls. “Speaking of rubbing it in…” I say. But then I look back at her face, at the way it’s all pinched around her thoughts. She bothers to ask. Why is it so hard to just answer her bleeding questions?

“I guess…I guess when I wake up in the night… and the bed is freezing all around. The fact of there being only one warm spot. I’m still not quite used to that, yet. ”

The lift shudders to a stop. The ding of the bell tells us we’ve reached our destination.

“Sounds stupid, doesn’t it?”

“No,” she says. “Not at all.”

The door opens onto the Atrium. I wait for her to move, but she stays still, her satchel hanging by two fingers at her side.

“After you,” I say. She glances at me and rouses herself forward. Instead of the lifts out to the street, she moves toward the row of fireplaces and I follow, thinking that if I can just persuade her to come with me, if I can just get the two of them together, everything will be all right.

“Hermione…” I begin.

“Have a lovely evening, Harry,” she says over her shoulder. “Tell Ron not to get too pissed, will you? If he gets himself splinched, there’s no one waiting in Hogsmeade to help fix him up.” And then the flames flow around her, and she is gone.

****

When I fling it, the wringing beermat is just heavy enough to maintain a decent momentum. It thwacks him in the ear, and Ron startles and goes down, chair clunking back hard, legs sweeping inelegantly through the air. A few quick titters drift from the shadows. The bar-maid dropping drinks a few tables down rushes over to help peel him from the floor.

“What’d you do that for?” Ron says, rubbing his new-raised welt and righting his chair. “I know you’ve had a crap day, but bloody…”

“What do you care what he’s on about?” I jerk my head at Benoit. “It’s not as if you’re on the pull.”

His face goes flat. He takes a big gulp from his tankard and says, “Yeah. Well. You never know.”

And there it is again. That twist in my gut.

Benoit, in his apparent quest to destroy the magic and beauty of all good things, says, really, breasts are nothing more than modified sweat glands.

And, honestly, I think I’m beginning to hate Benoit.

5. The Maiden and The Beggar

A/N- I know it has been a terribly long time since I updated this, but I think I have it all figured out now. Thanks to everyone who has read and reviewed. The next update shouldn’t take anywhere near as long.

Hermione

The girl sitting between them draws her fingers through her hair. Smooth and fluid as warm honey, it pours over her shoulders, a golden frame shimmering about her face as she turns from one boy to the other. Twenty-four carat, halo gold. The same bright, rich shade as the lamp-lit coin beneath my fingertips.

But it’s rude to stare, so I drag my gaze from where they sit cloistered in the corner and go back to smoothing the two pages of today’s Prophet I found stuck in the slats on the bench outside. I focus on page three, mulling through the second halves and mid-sections of stories whose beginnings I haven’t read. I study the advertisement for the new Fluid-Write quill, consider the dubiously worded survey about the food quality at St. Mungo’s. I grimace at the photo of Minister Shacklebolt drinking a milkshake through a stripey straw.

…while Mrs. Topsport maintains the contaminated roots were purchased from the upstart firm of Dormire and Winks...

…able to contain the fire, shortly. Damage is estimated to exceed 2000 Galleons…

…says new standards will assure all recruits are proficient at conjuring and casting the appropriate…

The last bit piques my interest, but my attention is lassoed away by a blast of sound behind me- an odd whinny of a laugh echoing, jangling off the window panes. It doubles in volume, grows legs, and gallops throughout the pub. I lift my head, then think better of turning to look for the source. A flash of copper calls me back to the corner.

Ron is smiling. And this girl, from what I see, she smiles a lot, too. Genuine smiles assaulting her entire face; prying her lips apart, pinching at her cheeks, pulling the corners of her eyes. And she laughs, great surges of melodic joy bouncing from her body. Harry and Ron both laugh with her. This interloper. This fan-girl sycophant. They all laugh together, and I can tell that, whatever she is, she’s welcome.

This girl.

A face so sunshine warm and sweet. She sits in the place where I used to sit.

Standing across the room at the bar, I am very still, waiting, well-hidden by the veil of smoke issuing forth from the old man beside me. There is plenty to see and hear this night in the pub. Through the haze, I study the ridge of dust gathered at the base of the cupboards. I breathe in the burned fruit smell of the old man’s enormous pipe. I focus on the damp pep pep pep sound his lips make around the stem. I give up on the reading and attempt to lose myself in his conversation.

“I keep tellin’ ‘im, yeh can’t keep charmin’ them cabbages. They’re damn near inedible as is,”

“Aye. Tough as trotters. But, these young bucks, they know it all.”

The newest cloud of smoke tumbles across itself and blankets the tap pulls behind the bar. I follow its trajectory back to the corner where Ron’s hand scuttles across the table top, his long fingers creeping-spider’s legs- and I remember the last time I knew it all. The last time his stories were still our stories and I knew just how he’d tell them, weeks ago in the corridor outside our flat.

It was Friday night and I was rushing. The broken heel of my left shoe lay on the pavement outside, and I couldn’t open the door for the butter slicking up the knob. The wine was losing its chill, nestled in the carrier bag beside our dinner, absorbing the heat from the take-away containers of lasagne and pasta fagiole, but it didn’t really matter. A quick charm could fix it, make everything perfect, again. Standing on our welcome mat, I knew I’d pile the rolls on the green plate, then wash the garlic butter from my hands with the lemon and thyme soap in the kitchen, and then Ron and I would eat. I’d clear up, and then we’d grab our bags and Apparate to Weymouth, where we’d meet my parents for a weekend by the sea -- away from the sofa, and Last-Sunday-At-The-Burrow, and the freshly mended vase on the sideboard. I knew that night we would stay up late, have semi-public sex on the balcony off our room, then go to sleep on our own pillows that I’d bring from home. We’d wake up tomorrow, breakfast with my parents, walk the town, then, after dinner, we’d take off our shoes and stumble along the cold, dry sand of the shore. We’d forget the last two weeks ever happened, and we’d come home Sunday evening and order the take-away we were to share with Harry, feeling like the same people we were a year and a half ago when he put this ring on my finger and promised to drive me mad for the rest of my life. This is how “from now on” would begin. So, I knocked with my elbow and called his name, never doubting for a second he would hear me, that he’d come open the door.

And he did hear me. He did open the door. But instead of a half-full overnight bag sagging beside the door frame, his old school trunk filled the entire corner. And then the world broke down, rearranged itself, and sprung back up a warped, mangled mess. And in that second, I knew it all again- or at least all that mattered: that he hadn’t left the flat that day. That, when he finally did walk out the door that night, I wouldn’t be with him. That, once he was gone, he wouldn’t be coming back. I’d read this script, knew it by heart. In all honesty, I helped write it. Now, there was only one scene left to play. I lifted my eyes from the trunk and forced a smile.

“Sorry,” I said. “I couldn’t twist the knob,” I lifted the dripping sack, offering proof.

“’S okay,” he said, eyeing the carrier bag, his empty hands dangling.

“I’d say you’ve over-packed.” The words wound off my tongue, light, sticky as spider’s thread. The handle of the carrier bag twisted, slicing into my wrist. The sack with the buttered rolls was one shift of the fingers from splitting, spilling.

And Ron said, “Erm…”

“What are you doing?” Even as I asked, I was shaking my head, already denying whatever he might have had to say.

He swallowed, sucked in a breath to go on. “Maybe we should sit. Is that… is that Rudolphs?” He sighed, frowned, reached for the rolls. “Blimey, Hermione. You weren’t supposed to have food.”

I sank down on my missing heel, pulled the bag from his grasp.

“I wasn’t…? When have I ever failed to feed you, Ron?”

It wasn’t the question I really wanted to ask, but the bag had finally split. Skin-warm butter flowed down my fingers, pooled in my palm. It slid between my knuckles, the separate rivulets merging on the back of my hand where, weight overwhelming viscosity, it dripped onto the shining parquet floor of the entranceway.

Pep.

Pep.

Ron closed his eyes, sighed through his nose. “Okay, look,” he began. “It’s… it’s like ripping off a plaster, this.”

I wanted to point out that this wasn’t an answer to my question. I wanted to cock one eyebrow in utter contempt and ask him what the hell he knew about ripping off plasters, because, to my knowledge, he’d never had to do so, not once in his life, seeing as Mummy could always wave her wand and fix him right up. I wanted to sling the bag of rolls straight at his face and tell him that our relationship was not a minor abrasion. But I didn’t, because that was why, that was exactly why, he was leaving.

Instead, I stared at the third button down on the fitted blue shirt I had bought for him last spring. He hadn’t worn it above twice since, but apparently our break-up was occasion enough to get his kit on.

He said, “I think we both know it’s been coming to this for a long time. Honestly, I, er, kept waiting for you to tell me to pack it in, but... well, I s’pose I should have known you’d never give up.”

I knew after he left we wouldn’t speak again for a very long time, so I stood there, butter creeping down my wrist and soaking the black silk lining of my coat, and I just listened, wrapped myself in the sound of his voice, as he kindly explained why he had to get away from me.

“I think, maybe, we used to sort of bring out the better parts of each other, you know? But now… we’re just… we’re horrible to each other. All the time. That, or we’re not speaking at all.”

Crookshanks was helping himself to the spot on the floor, his tongue scratching loud as a scrub brush on flagstones in the spaces between Ron’s words. Butter still dripped, coating the top of his head, turning his ginger fur slick, mud brown.

“And no one’s happy, Hermione. I know you’re not. And for as much as you like a challenge, this…us… it’s… it’s all work, now. Hard work. And, you know me,…” He scuffed his boot against the floor. Crookshanks flinched away. “Lazy.”

The handles of the carrier bag cutting my skin. The warm, pungent smell of garlic. The red pain grinding from my up-jutting hip. I opened my mouth, grasped for my lines, but I couldn’t remember what I was supposed to say.

I held out the arm with the carrier bag. We both watched it spin as it un-twisted, and then I finally looked up into his eyes. I hadn’t done my bit. We were supposed to destruct in an epic, blazing row, but here, at the true end of it all, I simply could not deliver.

“Well,” I said, then stood with my mouth open, waiting for something other than I love you please don’t do this to roll out. But nothing sensible would come, so I held out the carrier bag for him to grab, and then the sodding bread. “Take this, then.” The greased ring slid forward easily, pushed by my pinky and thumb. It dangled from the tip of my finger, diamond down, gold band dull beneath the glaze of butter.

Ron just stared, as if he didn’t realize this would be part of the evening’s proceedings.

“Go on. Take it.”

He worked the carrier bag down his forearm and shifted the rolls against his chest. He reached out tentatively, exhaled audibly when his fingers closed around the band. And, as much as everything before had hurt, that one little breath was a harpoon to the heart. His face relaxed, his shoulders shrunk down from his neck. And, as he slipped the ring into his jeans pocket, I wondered, what, exactly, did he expect?

Something awful. From me, he expected something awful.

So, I did the kind thing and held the door for him. He levitated his trunk to the downstairs foyer, nicking the wallpaper in one spot and practically crushing Mrs. Whigby’s dachshund as she napped on the rug. He started down the stairs, then stopped. He swallowed, then almost looked back at me over his shoulder.

“Thanks for dinner.”

Friday. Take-away from Rudolph’s. All that rushing just to wait at the top of the staircase, to give him those last twelve steps to change his mind. Rushing and rushing, only to turn back into the flat and close the door.

Across the pub, in their corner, Harry is talking about Quidditch, his hand tracing a flight path in the air above their table. Ron steals glances at the girl in my chair. And I wonder, the night he left, did he ever fully turn and look back to the top of the stairs? I wonder, did he even think to say ‘goodbye’?

It doesn’t warrant pondering, so I go back to smoothing the paper against the bar with my palms. In the upper left corner, a row of criminally young witches in low cut robes smile and toss their hair, affirming the arrival of Madame Malkin’s new tri-cornered necklines. Mid-page, rotund Mrs. Buttercomb, flanked by mounds of pastries and assorted rolls, tantalizes with a tray of cherry-topped faerie cakes- one free with the purchase of any baker’s dozen! Next to her, Viktor Krumb glares intensely into the camera, then veers out of frame on the new Wischen TI-30. But it’s the stationary, washed-out picture on the bottom of the page that catches my eye. Two bundles of sticks, bound in an ‘X’ shape, with a bit of weed tied onto the top. I’ve seen a different photo of this same object before. Weeks ago, on Harry’s desk, swimming under a tar-tinted puddle of coffee.

At their table, Harry has come out of his chair. Leaning forward, he reaches, swipes at the air, his fingers seizing a phantom snitch. And though he faces away, I can see the swell of his cheek as he smiles. I can feel the flutter of wings beating in my own fist, the whip of the wind through my hair.

Tears well. My shoulders spasm. I close my eyes and flatten my palm to the worn wood of the bar, trying to pick up some trace of the thousands who’ve stood here before. If I could just tease it out, that remnant, and if, for once, I could just mesh with humanity as a whole instead of hyper-focusing on those two, then…

Then what?

Then I wouldn’t care that I’ve already forgotten how graceful Harry can be?

Then I’d be fine with only ever seeing them from afar?

I sent Harry an invitation to dinner this afternoon. Just a note that, I assume, turned up too late, since he didn’t reply.

Two weeks ago, I met him in the corridor and asked him to coffee. He had an urgent briefing to attend, so I went back to my office.

A week and half before that, I stood at the door to his place. I didn’t want to be in my flat because my fiancé had just left me, and I had broken plans with my parents, and I couldn’t think of anywhere else to go. I took a deep breath, raised my fist to knock, and that’s when I smelled it. Garlic. I had washed up and changed clothes. I was wearing a different coat. It couldn’t have been me, so I leaned forward and sniffed what I thought was an aberration in the paint on the door.

Garlic. A knuckle print in butter. I backed away.

Of the half-dozen places he could have gone, Ron chose Harry’s. Harry’s-- where no magic is allowed because it shorts the building’s dodgy, antique wiring. Harry’s-- where the faintest trace of detergent musk from the laundry two stories below always sparks one of Ron’s head things. Harry’s—where the only food ever in the refrigerator is leather-skinned apples and dried, shrunken wedges of poorly wrapped cheese. I had heard no end to the whinging about Harry’s, and how he and Ginny should have worked it out, and why didn’t he just go to Grimmauld Place, and couldn’t he have picked a building with fewer cat people- damn cats in every window- and on and on.

Through the door, I could hear short murmurs in male tones, long pauses. I imagined both of them sitting on the edge of the sofa, chewing. I imagined warm pinot grigio in the blown glass tumblers I had bought as a flat-warming gift. I envisioned Ron’s shirt, smeared with butter, dribbled with red sauce he wouldn’t be able to magic away, the russet stains. I imagined Harry, slumped over a dinner he didn’t order, scraping his plastic fork guiltily through the tangle of noodles, but still managing to eat the rolls, because, after all, bread is always for everyone to share.

That night, there was still comfort in proximity. Sitting at the top of the steps, my bum resting on the same stretch of floor their feet moved upon, I could still count heads. One outside, two in. That night, I still had faith in our sum total of three. I still thought myself part of the equation.

Now, the girl sitting between them crosses her forearms on the table. She leans in, moving deeper into their conversation. And, again, she laughs. They all laugh. The tips of her fingers curl into the dusk purple fabric of her robes, then re-emerge. The polish on her nails gleams under the lamp light. Pale, perfect ballet slipper pink.

But I’m not fooled. This girl, she weaves daisy chains. She eats candy floss by the big, fluffy handful, just for the fun of it. She joyfully collects baby animals and children needing a sound cuddle to her bosom. She smells of good bread and sugared violets, and, a little closer in, clean, damp skin. Wide smiles volley between the three of them. This girl, she is everything I am not. She shines, and Ron and Harry, all their own goodness is reflected, amplified, back from her. And, even from where I stand, it’s easy to see she fits, and they are all the happier for it.

And how could I not want that for them?

I do.

Of course I do.

Only good things, always. That’s what we said.

The old man beside me has spread his tobacco pouch upon the bar. His segmented fingers rake through the fragrant morass as he nods, commiserating, while his companion laments the litany of agricultural blunders perpetrated by the Young Buck. Behind me, judging from the frequent, piercing bursts, the Whinnier is having the greatest night of her life, and I’m torn between the urge to turn and Silencio her neighing away, and the crush of envy that she’s sitting with someone who wants to make her laugh that laugh, someone who needs to hear it.

The girl in the corner is pushing her chair back to stand. She’s turning her body toward Harry and lightly touching her fingers to the rim of her glass. She speaks then peers over her shoulder before making her way to the Ladies, and whatever she’s said, Ron grins after her like a love-struck simpleton.

I don’t think he ever looked at me like that. I remember awe or ire, but never sheer, dumb adoration.

Harry shakes his head, four fingers splayed against the back of his neck. He feigns embarrassment for Ron’s sake, but he likes her well enough, I can tell. The way he sits, elbows on the table, face and hands in the light, says he’s given his blessing, that she’s Potter approved.

Contrast this with the way he was at the end with Ron and me; chair pushed back in the shadows, seat angled for the loo, his quickest excuse for escape when the sniping got too bad.

It shames me to know those last few evenings with us he spent half the night in the toilets.

The girl slips back into her rightful place. She leans in amongst them, whispering, brow cocked conspiratorially, eyes wide with scandal. Ron watches her mouth and flushes pink as a new-born piglet. Harry ducks his head, gives them the moment. He smiles and sips his pint. At ease. At ease. And, it’s been so long since I’ve seen him this way…

I don’t want to spoil it.

I know I’m not like Ron. I’ve never been good for a night out, never good for a laugh. And if all Harry and I have weaving us together are hard times and horrible things, I don’t blame him for not seeking me out for more of the same.

I look down at the newsprint, at the pictures blurring off the edges of the page. I close my eyes and raise my face to the light. I don’t hate the girl in the corner, but I can’t look her way anymore. And the boys- I’ve no right to stare.

“Granger!”

The barman’s voice trembles through the wood beneath my hands. Gazes turn as he lumbers down to my end of the bar, a sack big enough to carry seven courses floating above his head. I refold the Prophet as voices drop away. Fresh eyes roam over my face. Even the Whinnier ceases her braying. The old man beside me turns, squints through his smoke, appraising.

“Well-hell. Hair’s all bound up, but I reckon it is you,” he says around his pipe. He hmphs, and turns back to his friend.

“Ham sandwich,” the barman confirms, finger punching the tarnished brass keys of his till. The sack settles on the bar in front of me. I don’t wait for the total.

“Have a good evening.” I try to smile. I push the coins across the bar, lift the ridiculous sack, then turn to the door. I weave between the tables. Conversations resume.

“Miss, your change!”

I turn back and wave toward the old man and his friend. “Next round’s on me,” I shout over the din, then, bag rattling, push out into the cold. The fogged panes clatter as the door slams shut behind me.

One outside.

Turning the corner, away from the light and warmth of the pub, I remind myself that I’m still fortunate. I have dinner and two good legs, which is more than some can claim. Walking in the dark with my sack, though, I’m not hungry, anymore, and the weight of the sandwich drooping from my hand feels like the worst part of a bad day. I’m not even that keen on ham, really.

Ron loved it, though. We’d share. I’d thin out the meat of one half, add it to the other, then give him the lion’s portion.

The ache in my shoulders spreads, knots over my spine, and I pause for a moment. I blink fast at the orange heart of a street lamp at the end of the block and take a deep breath.

Eleven years.

I know I’ll never really stop turning up bits of him in everyday things, but damn if I don’t feel stupid for fighting tears over the old, sweet habit of a ham sandwich.

I tighten my grip on the sack and focus on the whoosh of cars speeding by, the acrid smell of fresh blacktop and exhaust. The road is busy, but pedestrian traffic is sparse- just two women kneeling with a man on the steps of the book shop at the end of the block, and myself. They all stare down at one of the steps, heads bowed deep, the man talking while the women both nod. He gestures to the sky and they all three turn their eyes to the white waxing moon. I walk on toward them, knowing I’ll have to step out into the street to pass, but, oh well. This is the way I’ve chosen. Home is in the opposite direction, but I’m not going home. Not tonight.

The two women stand, both tugging their trousers back into place around their hips, the chunky heels of their boots clopping against the pavement as they move. And the closer I get, I can see they’re only girls, really. Both with long, silken hair. Both with violet lips, and huge, silver hoops swaying from their ears. Each in turn grasp two of the man’s fingers in a modified hand shake, then, arm in arm and twittering like wrens, jaunt past wafting a thick cloud of candied patchouli.

Sister-hood.

One more thing I foolishly forwent.

The man collects what I can now tell are cards from the stretch of step between his feet. The wide brim of his hat casts a shadow under the streetlight, and though I can’t see his face, I can feel that tenuous connection that always seems to stretch between two strangers on an otherwise empty path. I see the glass jar, coins lining the bottom and a few crumpled notes, one step down and out front of his left foot. I walk on and wait for him to speak.

“Spare a coin for a poor sinner’s cup?”

His voice drifts from the steps as I pass, the liquid drawl a soft stroke of memory, and I glance over my shoulder at an unfolding of long, denim legs and bright-tipped boots. He nudges his hat and looks me over. “Make it worth your while,” he says. “Guaranteed.”

And, without a doubt, he’s the most beautiful beggar I’ve ever seen. Clean, elegant hands. A heavy knot of thin dreads at his neck. High cheekbones and flawless bronze skin. Flushed, round lips and pale, palest eyes.

All good sense screams this man is a first-rate charlatan, but I turn back anyway.

“I’m sorry. I just spent my last on dinner,” I say. “But it’s yours if you like.” I set the sack at his feet.

I know hungry, and this man isn’t. He looks at the sack, then back to me. And I’m positive he’ll refuse, until he smiles a broad, snake-oil smile- all top teeth- and holds up his cards.

“I’ll take it, if you’ll have a reading in return.” A voice like a stone at the bottom of a stream. Cool and ancient and edgeless.

I take a step back and shake my head. “Thank you, but no. I… I don’t really believe in that sort of thing.”

“Oh, but that’s not the way, bel cheri. What you’ve given must be repaid, tac au tac. And, really, the cards are only a mirror. Really,” he whispers, beckons me forward, leaning toward me as if we’re sharing a secret, “it’s all just psychology…” He offers the stacked deck on his outstretched hand, “Really, it’s all just projection.” He lifts one brow, dares me. “Go on. A one card reading.” He holds up his other hand, empty. “Cut.”

I stare at the cards, then glance into this stranger’s face. One long, unbroken moment his pale, palest eyes look right into mine, the first time anyone has really beheld me in weeks, and I’m broadsided by the irrational impulse to please this man, to make him smile his snake-oil smile. I reach up and split the deck, one half in each open hand. He flashes all his top teeth. He presses the two halves together, then, with his thumbs, fans the whole deck into a perfect, curved blade.

“Choose,” he says.

I reach toward the centre, but am compelled toward the one card sitting unevenly in the spread. Seventh from the left. The nick in the blade. I pluck it free, turn it over.

I laugh, a loud, desperate ah-ha gurgling up. I hold my card out to the stranger, but he doesn’t take it from me.

“You know this card, don’t you?” He says. “It speaks.”

The woman alone in her bed. The column of swords hanging heavy above. The hunched curve of her shoulders as she hides her face in her hands.

I cannot lie. “Yes.”

He touches the woman’s head with the tip of his finger and frowns. “No joy in this card.”

Pain in my shoulders, knotting over my spine.

“The Nine of Swords.” He runs his finger over the blades. “Suffering,” he says. “Desolation. Isolation. Hard, lonely times to come.” His eyes move over my face, and then down. He takes the card and leans back, props himself on one elbow as he refolds it back into the deck. He lounges, tilting his hat forward, hiding his eyes, his nose. "Guess it’s good you don’t really believe in this sort of thing, huh?"

All his top teeth, glittering bright in the street lamp's copper light.

I straighten, stand tall. “Yes, I suppose it is." Behind me, tires rubbing blacktop, the sealed-in thump of music rushing by. We're finished here, but I'm afraid to move. "Thank you for...” My hand rises then wilts. His hat shifts as he cocks a brow, and I suddenly feel very stupid, indeed. I shove my hands in my pockets and shuffle a few steps back. “Well, good evening, then."

“Till we meet again, cheri bel m '….” He puts two fingers to his lips, puckers, then points his kiss in my direction.

*

*

A/N- I know this chapter was sort of R/Hr heavy, but it had to be done. Thanks so much for reading!

6. Reckoning

Harry

When we talk about Gwen Jolly, there are certain words we avoid around non-Auror personnel.

Words like scarred, or altered. Mangled. Ruined.

Broken.

The word destroyed is out.

Permanently fucked is not on.

When talking to the press, don't mention the crown of roses. Forget the way her skin wraps the wire-fine bones. The way the petals of flesh flush pink, then pale, with every beat of her heart.

Don't say mad, or brutal, or savage, or twisted.

Sick.

The words cruel, and untenable are fully negative, fully forbidden.

Do not say sorcery, or sorcerer. Witch doctor. Root worker.

Standard protocol, this.

Never serve anyone a plate they can spin.

Never, ever say the words dark, or elemental.

When anyone asks, blank out the image of her in the bed at St. Mungo's, curled, hands reaching for the blunt wedge of her toes. Forget the gentle flow of the medi-witches around her, silent but for the one offering sips of water in a whisper.

Don't even breathe the words drawn, or compelled. Lured.

Enticed.

When we talk about Gwen Jolly, she will have encountered the assailant. She will have been abducted.

Don't say strapped or chained. Don't say kept. Say held, as if Prosper Roque spent those weeks she was gone cradling her in his arms like a bunton-swaddled infant.

Don’t mutter about undecipherable mechanisms. Don't say feral magics.

Pretend Benoit never stared through the glass to her room, muttering "wildcat voodoo" and "bare hands and sheer will” and "We're in the shit, now, son."

Talking about Gwen Jolly, remember to re-christen her the Victim.

Never, ever let on precisely what she is the victim of.

.........

I'm stopped just inside the tree line, blinking in the sudden razor of sunlight cutting through the branches above, when Benoit glides past, steps light and noiseless as a doe's.

"Rough night, Potter?" he says. "Not that I want to pry, but...you look like shit."

I glance down, expect to see him floating, feet treading on nothing but an inch of air. He stops by the branch of a juniper, wraps the single white hair fluttering from its bristles around the tip of his wand, places the single white hair in the evidence envelope. He seals the envelope with his wand, drops the envelope in the bag hanging from his shoulder, and weaves a Marker into the air.

"I mean, normally, I'd keep my opinion to myself," he says, "but I get the feeling it's the general consensus." He tilts his head toward the tree line, the expanse of city on the other side where all the other people who think I look like shit are milling through their day. I glance behind me. Through the trunks and branches, Gibson sweeps for trace along the bike trail. Muldoon walks the perimeter of the pond. Somehow I doubt those two have registered anything beyond the fact that I'm here, same as they are this Thursday morning, looking for lost pieces of Gwen Jolly.

"That so?" I say, following along into the trees, boots squishing, sinking through the layers of wet leaves. Every step, the ground squelches beneath my weight, but Benoit picks, silent, across the forest floor, stealthy as a wild pig. Or Pan. Some other creature with cloven hooves. I look at the trees, duly search for details in the shifting slats of bright/dark.

A stiff breeze whines through the branches, smacks cold against the skin. The tang of decaying leaves tickles my nose, but it's still not a patch of woods in the park I'm walking through so much as a poor rendering of a patch of woods in the park. A shallow image, everything blurred, flattened to the foreground. All contrast, no perspective.

Ahead, Benoit squats, levitates one white feather. He catches the feather in an envelope, seals the envelope, drops the envelope into his bag, weaves a Marker into the air. I have to admire his practiced efficiency. I lurch through my days like a broken tin toy.

"It isn't an issue, yet, Potter," Head Auror Pendleton had said yesterday afternoon, leaning forward to make sure I could clearly see his eyes beneath the Cro-Magnon brow, "but I'm concerned this air of distraction might eventually result in an unintentional compromise of the investigation."

Despite what everyone seems to think, I am all too aware of this deficit in my perception. Thoughts flit, refuse to light. Nothing pulls. Nothing holds gravity. Not Benoit's voice up ahead, talking, talking. Not Gwen Jolly in her bed at St. Mungo's, her body shivering toward every sound. Not her blown-out eyes dripping tears through pale lashes, or Prosper Roque, or the other one he's taken, or the wild, hybrid magic he's using on us all.

Since I gave up sleeping, nothing touches me.

"Don't misunderstand," Benoit is saying, hunkered, swabbing something from a jutting root. "It's not like I sought her out. She just happened to step onto the elevator last night..."

I've missed something somewhere, and a puff of white dances by on the wind, then another, and I stick out my arm to catch the second on my sleeve before it floats away. Evidence, this. Collectible. More confirmation of what we already know—that Gwen Jolly stumbled all through these woods in the early light, a bleached wraith of wasted arms, legs, and ribcage, her new wings catching on branches, feathers snapping, strewing behind.

The jogger's exact statements this morning were, "staggered from the tree line,” and "began to run, but slipped on the grass,” and "screeched something ungodly when she touched the pavement.” What the jogger couldn't know was Gwen Jolly slipped, unable to gain traction on toes grafted to form a more doll-like foot. She made the only noise she could through the empty space where her tongue used to be.

"...so, I offered her a beignet," Benoit says over his shoulder. "That got a smile."

I guide the white puff into an envelope, seal the envelope, drop the envelope into my bag.

"... asked how I liked it, here, and I told her my partner could be a little quiet, but it was otherwise fine. And then she said you tended toward quiet when you hadn't slept..." He stands, faces me, lifting what looks to be the thin strand of black beads Gwen Jolly had been wearing when she disappeared.

"I'm sorry." My head wobbles. "Who is this, again?"

"Christ, Potter. Your girl. In the elevator. Last night. The “lift,” whatever..."

My girl.

Ginny, hair streaming over her shoulders. A safe, split-second blur before I remember that's not right.

And who he really means, I refuse to think.

"The Ministry pay her extra to be around at all hours, or is she just... you know...," he smiles, hair and teeth luminous in the sunlight, "nocturnal?" The last word - the promise inside to find out - lands like a stinging hex to the solar plexus. I take a step back.

The whole of London, and she finds her way into a lift with Benoit.

There are advantages to living outside the reach of things. Cracks smooth in an instant. Holes fill quick with apathy. Only this time it's not happening, and I look past him into the trees, try to think of Gwen Jolly, of what we're supposed to be doing out here, and wait for this conversation to end.

The strand of beads hangs broken, rotates between us. Benoit says, "Because she seems like the type of woman who can handle herself in the dark."

His voice. So damn sure. I hold out an envelope, begin to vomit up words. "I've always known her to be more of a morning person, myself."

"Oh, yeah?" He guides the beads into the envelope. "Could be she's the two things at once."

I shake my head, shove the sealed envelope into my bag, then look up to meet his gaze, square, "Whatever you're thinking, she's not like that."

It sounds harsh in my own ears. Both his brows flick up then settle back to neutral. "Like what?" He lifts his chin, locked in, listening.

"You know what."

"I don't." He smiles, again. A hundred watts beaming. "What is it, exactly, Miss Granger's not like, Potter?"

"Just other people. She's different. With her - what you see, that's exactly what you get."

Hermione, last night in the pub. Her face bare, her eyes too dark. Her hair twisted back, cinched in, that bun of hers like a punishment. The coat that used to fit swamping her shoulders, a thing borrowed from better times.

What I'm saying is, what you've seen is all there is.

What I'm saying is, there are no surprises beneath those Ministry robes.

What I mean is, stay away.

Benoit pretends to not understand what I'm saying. He's still smiling, still knowing something I don't.

"Oh. Well..." He weaves a marker into the air. Then, overlaying my bullshite with a thick spatter of his own, he says, "I'll definitely keep that in mind."

.....

Joan Scarlet says, "I must say, you've done an excellent job of recording-" She recrosses her legs, adjusts her readers, says, "Really, I'm quite pleased you continued..." She sits back, gaze swinging back and forth over the pages in her lap. Her spear grip points the tip of her pen dead between my eyes.

It’s nothing personal, this. Just habit, really. A matter of comfort and leverage and the way her elbow settles into the grey suede arm of her chair. It is not the “purposeful dominant posturing” Benoit would call it. Even if it does feel like a bit of an onslaught. Even if it does feel like, if she wanted, she could stain a third eye into my forehead from across the Navajo rug.

I slouch in my seat, out of the line of fire, I think, and let my eyelids drop closed. I try not to count the turn of the pages as she reads.

Joan Scarlet’s office is like the desert after dusk- everything the colour of baked sand and a sky going blue-to-black. A room designed for drifting toward inevitable conclusions. No hard vertical lines. Just one gentle horizon after another, and the sound of the aquarium plipping over my shoulder, and the warm, dry air breathing from the vent above. Sleep. I feel it, the velvet black lining plush inside my skull, and for the first time in weeks, I could sink right in. A mutinous little voice says it is my hour. I’m paying for it, I should get to spend it how I like. And it would be so easy to slide away, here, to just lie back and let go. Only, Joan Scarlet is still turning pages. Still holding me in place with the tip of her pen.

She makes a breath noise in the back of her throat, and when I look, my book is still open, spread over the flat surface of her legal pad, the words protected from sight by the hand of one arm grasping the wrist of the other atop the pages. Her pen tip points toward the red chevroned corner of the Navajo rug. I straighten in my chair.

"It's been awhile since we last met, Harry." Dr. Scarlet's voice is the clear aquamarine of an early spring sky. Calm, hypnotic blue. "What brings you back here, today?"

Back here. It's not a judgment, just an acknowledgement. I gesture to my own face, to the aubergine skin sagging around my eyes. The broken capillaries. The sad-clown mouth.

"It's come to the attention of my superior officer that I might not be...functioning as I should. I was urged to speak with someone." I realize my head is bobbing for no reason, then stop. "A professional."

She glances at my book, then back to me. "And you still don't feel comfortable speaking to any of the Ministry...professionals?"

"No."

She nods, her eyes hidden, then not, then hidden by the yellow light reflected from her readers.

"Alright, then. When you're ready."

I swallow. The central heating kicks off. The light over the aquarium hums. Joan Scarlet's office smells of a combination of cold, snapped carrot, fresh reams of white paper, and the wet metal of a dessert spoon licked clean. It's odd and chilly, and defies association. Easier to take in, I suppose, by people who need to breathe deep breaths.

I shake my head, shrug, gnaw at cheek flesh between my back molars. Joan Scarlet shifts.

"You know I prefer you to open the dialogue, Harry, but," she taps her pen twice against my book, "after all these weeks, I must admit to a pressing curiosity—and if you don't mind, this once, may I finally ask—who is 'H'?"

The air in the room contracts. I press my tongue to my teeth.

"It's a friend. An old friend."

"It?"

"Well... she. She's a friend."

Dr. Scarlett looks down at the page under her fingers, then back up to me. "Oh. I was wondering because you never write out her name..."

"Hermione. Her name is Hermione, and it's quite long... to write out."

"Ah. It's just, she's been here - rather prominently - from the beginning, yet you've never spoken of her."

"Well, she's a friend."

Dr. Scarlet smiles. "Yes, you've said."

The flesh finally gives. A thin, iron taste of inside seeping out.

"There's nothing else to say."

......

A few weeks ago, the night he left her, Ron turned up dripping Italian food on my doorstep. Hermione, he said, had gone to Weymouth with her parents. His eyes welled when he looked into the take-away tray, and his hand was a shaking machine scraping through a gory slab of noodles and cheese, but never feeding the food into his mouth. The edge of his stowed trunk jutted from under the steps as we left for pub, and I ignored it. He planted us at a table under a glowing red skull with one burnt out eye, and the whiskey was cheap swill, and I still wanted to pretend this was like every time before, so I said something stupid about the therapeutic value of a few nights in the bedsit over the shop and a pissed chat-up with Rosmerta, and then Ron shifted to dig in his pocket, palmed something onto the centre of the table and said, "Don't think I'll be back in the flat by mid-week this time, mate."

The diamond blazed, a burst of splintered neon red shafting through the black glass box where I hide all the things I should not know; sunset light over dusty blue, the gravity of her body at rest.

Later, Ron, half-hauling, half dragging me back up the steps to my flat, said, but Merlin, I’ve taken this a titch harder than he expected.

……...

When the barman called her name last night, Ron's only tell was a slight tilt of the head, a quick glance over my shoulder, then done. Lux ticked a fingernail on the rim of her glass, whispered something about awkward, pub-wide silences, and I turned in time to watch Hermione's lips move, make more words than just “thank you,” then flex into a smile that died before it reached her cheeks.

It wasn't until hours later, after he'd come back from seeing Lux home to Hogsmeade, as Ron and I were walking to the curry shop down the block, that he blew into his clasped hands, dodged from the path of a blind man tapping the pavement with a white cane, then laughed. "What are the odds, eh?"

And, right then, head marinating in the three shots of firewhiskey I'd downed while he was gone, I wasn't really up for figuring. But, now, leaving Joan Scarlet's office, metabolizing the quarter vial of Berardi’s Brain Tonic I necked in the ground floor loo, the recollections swarm bright and unrelenting, and I seem to have suddenly been able to work it all out.

She had shown us the place. She had taken our hands and brought us there one sticky, August evening just after the war. She liked the chips they served, and the house cider, and the "precise way they sliced the pickles.” She had been the one who, years ago now, led us to the table in the back corner.

The odds, if I'm calculating, were always better than fair. And, in some way, I may have been depending upon it last night, the better than fair probability of Hermione seeing us. Her seeing Ron, and Ron seeing her, and the two of them somehow realizing they really didn't like this business of parting ways.

What I’m saying is, I might have been trying to put things right.

London is at its ugliest this evening, the tops of the buildings across the street washed in sick, yellow light. A piss pool of a November sunset. Here is what's real, I tell myself, here, now. But this brew is far from the dried doxy droppings wanker Eddie Carmichael tried to pass off to us in fifth year. The vial in my pocket quivers like an idling Firebolt against the pads of my fingers, proof of sound potioneering, and I can’t seem to scatter the colours of the golden spring evening gathering edges in my brain. Can’t squint and make them blur.

There will never be a good excuse. All I can say for myself is that if magic is just another way of exerting one's intent upon the world, then it stands to reason, maybe, sometimes, a moment of unbound inclination is enough to ripple the smooth surface of what is. Maybe, sometimes, a thing springs into being, a new thing, but with deep roots and a long, hidden history. Maybe, sometimes, What Is becomes Why Is It, and in the shift, in that tectonic recalibration from certainty to query, everything twists, then grinds down screaming.

By Joan Scarlet's clock, it's ten minutes too late to call this a breakthrough.

But as the doctor would have me tell it the way I remember, then it goes like this: What comes first is the light. Late May light through their window. Sunset burning over a dusty blue dress. Not the empty settee that’s supposed to be, but instead the keyhole shape of her back. A fall of fabric. The bare soles of her feet, heel nestled into arch. I duck back into the fireplace, but then, no. I’ve come for the file on the coffee table. She left it for me, and I might as well have it. It’s only because I’m watching to make sure I don’t wake her that I even notice the lock of her hair snagged around the button on the back of the settee. I think of my best mate, Ron, and of heading off trouble at the pass, and how it will be one less thing to stoke her anger when he finally comes home, and I lean over, unhook what’s been caught.

The coil clings to the tip of my finger, then springs away, bounces back into the fray fast as any newly freed thing. Something in the way it moves, the way the light catches in the whorls. Seekers see and follow. It’s just reflex, then, my hand dipping into the pool of curls, and once there, it feels too familiar to be something I shouldn't do.

Hermione’s hair. An entire adolescence breathing it, tasting it, blowing it away from my lips. A once constant presence I’ve fished from my food and blinked from my eyes. The autumn she raked it loose by the handful, I’d find long singles in odd places. Woven into the wrist of my jumper. Outside, whipping from the charred twig of a half-burnt limb. And, once, as I about to have a wash, perfectly spiraled down the length of my cock, like the candy stripe on a barber’s pole.

The memory rolls through my skin, flares in my hands, sparks the urge to know - what does a man do with hair like this, apart from gather it, tuck it gently against his palm like a tiny, warm animal? Testing, I slide my finger inside one ring, then another, let the strands form around my knuckles. Not hair to stroke, and certainly not hair to comb the fingers through, but if I just move into it, cradle it in the cup of my hand, Hermione's hair sort of cradles me back.

Part of her. Not “one less thing to stoke her anger.” Why did I even think that?

Why had I considered her pain only in terms of his convenience?

Why hadn’t I just considered Hermione?

What is.

Why is it?

She’s not supposed to be here. I look from her hair wound around my fingers to her face. The light touching her cheek, the damp fringe of her lashes. Something went wrong. Ron has come and gone. I listen to her breathe, in then out, and I hope, maybe, she’s having the night she is dressed for in her dreams.

This is none of my business, and I should go, leave them to it, snarl the knot of them in my mind that much tighter. But I push it, stand over her, think on it all one beat too long, and like a film run in reverse, all the ways I’ve forever tangled the two of them together in my head unlace, separate. Total fission. Every filament of Ron shrinks away, and she is suddenly alone in front of me, her own lines coalescing, sharp and clear. The slight upturn of her nose, the tip and swoop of her parted lips, her hand balled, like an infant’s, under her chin. Hollows and wedges, slopes and swells filling the inside of the dusty blue dress. Her whole tender body. Skin, bones, and scars.

And she is so fucking human it hurts to see.

When had I forgotten?

Or have I never bothered to know?

What happens next, I can only call it a reckoning.

A torrent of memories. An entire adolescence. A million Hermiones all at once laughing, cheering, reading, running, gasping, fighting, falling. In my chest, her weight minus his solidifies, black hole heavy. I bend with its mass. I want to kneel beside her, wrap myself around her naked legs. I want to guard her vulnerable ankles, defend her bare knees.

I don't understand this sting in my eyes, or the way every queasy, confused cell throbs toward her. Maybe in her sleep she feels whatever this is radiating out of me, because her eyelids flutter, and I panic, let go of her hair, and back away, breath held. And then I’m in the Floo, spinning through, but not crossing the hearth into our flat. I can’t, cannot let this inside, and Ginny isn’t here to help hold it at bay, so I fold between the walls of the fireplace, sit in the ashes, shake and stare at my hands.

Don't go back.

But, in my head, I’m already there.

Don't.

By their settee, my fingers in her hair, whispering for her to wake up.

Don't.

Don't.

I summon the Ogden's from the sideboard. It’s a few shots light, but I hardly ever partake, so it’s still more than enough. I spin off the lid, and I drink. Every time her hair brushes my lips, I drink. Every time her body weighs in my hands, I drink. And when the bottle finally tilts from my grasp, there’s not enough liquid left to wake to a mess the next morning.

I sealed her under black glass, in the place light wouldn’t reach. And It worked for a while. Except, now I see it didn't. Not really. The months and months worth of words in my black book are how much it didn't work, written proof of how impossible it is to hide something so big without displacing several other tonnes of psychic rubble.

This Berardi’s is bloody astounding stuff. Instant, overwhelming clarity in a tiny, glass vial. I wish now I'd never laid hands on it, but I can't help but think Joan Scarlet would be pleased. I almost turn around, then, run back before she leaves for the evening, just to show her I'm not as resistant as I seem. I want to tell her it's not her, it's the guilt, and the idea of seeing it splashed across the Prophet if someone ever got hold of her notes: POTTER PAWS GAL PAL; SUFFERS SPELLSHOCK SURGE. It's the fear that I'll have to tell Hermione, that I'll have to admit I’m the one who rippled our smooth surface, and now we've all fallen sideways because of it, and I don't know how to help us back to our feet.

Joan Scarlet would be pleased. And I almost turn around. But then I think of saying Hermione's name aloud for the third time today, and I just keep walking, jogging, running away.

........

From the Apparition point, I see Benoit eating something wrapped in foil at the mouth of the alley, his jaws working in a big, mechanical up and down. He swipes at his lips with a paper napkin, turns his head to track a passing silver Jaguar. He takes another big bite, chews, swallows, chews, wipes his lips again, and then, though I'm now standing right beside him, speaks toward the street.

"Bad news," he says, then looks at the sky. "A neighbour's niece found crosses outside the Pettit flat. Guess where?" He pauses. My head falls back in defeat.

"The urn with the pansies."

"The urn with the pansies." He shoves the rest of the kebab into his mouth, crumples the foil, wipes his fingers, chews, chews, chews.

The urn I checked over myself, one week to the day after Victoria Petit walked out of her flat and disappeared. Nothing but potting soil and purple flowers.

“How…”

"Ague weed? Hemlock? Who knows what all he's tied into the damn things." We begin to walk. Benoit's mouth purses then draws back as he sucks flatbread from his teeth. I want to know about Gwen Jolly, but when the passing uni-age female, eyeing us and muttering to her mate that she'd “like to fit in between that,” doesn't even rate a glance, I know he's too far in his head to talk. I wait until we're on the Charing Cross platform to ask whether or not he's spoken to the hospital.

"They'll attempt to reduce the wingspan and separate the grafts. They could remove the crown, but they say she won't heal the way we do, and it'd hurt like fuck." He crosses his arms over his chest, watches the train slide up. "Her eyes… Her eyes are shot forever, and whatever he's done with her tongue..." He stops. We mind the gap. Inside the carriage, we grasp the same pole, do a quick canvas of faces, as if we'd know who we were looking for if we saw him. It's habit, now, looking, I've looked more Londoners in the face in the last seven weeks than I have in all the four years I've lived here, combined. I've memorized more tube routes, walked longer stretches of pavement, traipsed more piss-sprayed alleys. "Prosper Roque's land bound," Benoit had said, "and so are we."

Outside Victoria Pettit's flat, a cross has already crumbled to dust between the forensic technicians' latex-gloved fingers. Benoit flashes some sort of card, tells the two techs to wait in the garden, then, spectacularly sodding all protocol, negotiates a deal with a passing grey hoodie on a skateboard. Twenty pounds and a pack of Silk Cut later, the five of us squat, off property, behind a parked Opel Omega as The Hoodie unties the cross bundle over newspaper.

"Alright," Benoit says, "just spread it out, nice and gentle so nothing snaps." The skin of The Hoodie's knuckles is tight and red with cold. Inside his personal cavern, there's a fierce violet bruise below his ear, a livid ring of teeth marks. Behind his head, the street lamp's reflection flickering in a tail light is warped and fascinating, and I realize my eyes are being pushed from the pile of sticks in front of me. Magic, greasing my brain. Thoughts and intentions slide over, under. I close my eyes, fix my desire to see into a clear point, but when I look down, my eyes fall on the braided laces of one of the forensic tech's shoes.

"Good. You're done, man. Thank you," Benoit says. The Hoodie rolls off, well paid for his five minutes.

But the techs have questions. “How could he…,” and “these are like the ones that kept turning up ‘round the Jolly flat, aren’t they,” and “but this property was combed, surveilled…” Benoit deflects their questions. Their eyes have narrowed. They're agitated. And then they're not. They climb into their vehicle and drive away. Sometimes, I want to saw off my wand hand for the things we do to the minds of decent, ordinary people.

Not looking, I gently fold the paper with the broken cross inside. We’ll deliver it to the Unspeakables, even though, just as last time, my proximity is already reducing all its parts to black grit. Sticks, weed, and twine—charring to ash without ever having been touched by fire.

We sit on opposite sides of the empty carriage on the way back to Charing Cross. I hold the paper and Benoit stares into the light above, forearms on his thighs, the tips of his thumbs and pointer fingers pressed together, forming the shape of an arrow around the air. He could be meditating, or he could be trying to gather the light to himself inside. He could be focusing it to a laser beam that will stream from his finger-arrow and scorch straight through the floor.

“This won't do, you know,” I say. “We can't just pull any geezer off the street every time we need to see something.”

“Why not?” He says, trance clearing. “Worked, didn't it?”

“Yeah, but there has to be another way. One that doesn't see us shifting coal dust back to the Ministry.”

Benoit smiles. “Six years, you don’t think I’ve looked for another way?” He leans back, pulls a pack of cigarettes from inside his coat, taps one out and tucks it behind his ear. “Do you have any idea what you have there?” He nods toward the newspaper.

“A grotty, old copy of The Telegraph.“

“You’re a fucking riot. That,” he points, “is a proxy, and it’s light years from the sweet, little poppets he used to work back home.”

Benoit has a solid love/hate relationship with these crosses. He speaks of them with a worshiper’s awe while cursing their existence. He says to think of all we’ve seen, today. How they hide and repel, shield and deceive. He says they discern who might want to gut them for their secrets from who couldn’t possibly and then they react accordingly. They keep us away, confuse us and London’s Finest long enough for all signs of Prosper Roque’s workings to fade, and then self-destruct when we get close enough to harvest traces of him from their insides.

Benoit says, “Do you know how many layers of spellwork it would take for one of us to make an object like that?”

I don’t. From the rise of his voice, I can tell he’s lost for a number, as well. I open my mouth to say I wouldn’t even know where to begin when I get a millisecond flash of Hermione, tongue between her teeth, wand pinched between her thumb and forefinger, flicking spells over a bundle of sticks, curious as a cat. I get a flash of her delight when she figures it out. I get a flash of myself riding in the wake of that delight, and I imagine finding one of these crosses and keeping it whole, wrapping it up in a blue bow and giving it to her for Christmas.

The entire, mad line of thought lasts less than two seconds, and my face is too hot, and I clamp my mouth closed, shake my head and shrug as if to answer.

“Right. Me neither. And yet Roque lights a few candles and slaughters a couple of songbirds and he’s able to just think this shit into being.” Benoit gestures at the paper, shifts sideways in his seat, lifts a foot into the seat in front of him. “He’s getting better and better, Potter. Watch. He’ll up the ante, soon.”

Better might be the last word I’d use to describe what Prosper Roque's becoming, but I know what he means. Gwen Jolly’s still alive, and Victoria Pettit has been gone two weeks, and we’re just now certain she’s ours to search for.

“That kid could see because he wasn’t looking.” Benoit rubs his thumb on his chin as he thinks aloud. “He doesn’t know Victoria Pettit. Doesn’t know she’s missing, doesn’t even know she exists. Maybe temporary Obliviatiion...”

“But,” I jump in before the idea can grow roots, “you were able to see while that boy was pulling it apart.”

“Some of it. If you sort of let your eyes slide that way more than any other, you can sometimes catch a glimpse.”

“Yeah? So what did you see?”

“What I thought I’d see. A sprig of hemlock. Ague. A sliver of bone. Some black dirt.”

The newspaper is weightless between my fingers. “I never saw any of it. None at all.”

The carriage glides into the station. Benoit touches two fingers to the window, soft, like a person might touch a pair of lips they love to make them stop moving.

“Yeah,” he mutters, stands, stows his hands deep in his pockets, “Well, maybe Mr. Roque’s out to blind you but good.”

……..

The Unspeakable, a pale, shivery witch named Kandle, blinks moon eyes over my shoulder at Benoit. She accepts the newspaper from me as if it's a newborn monster in a blanket, with both hands, but held far from her body. She works up a smile for Benoit, then trembles off into the dim while I finish signing the receiving forms.

The lift doors open, and I can't ignore the smudging edges, the exhaustion settling so dull grey and heavy I leave it to Benoit to push the right buttons. I lean against the back wall and Benoit stands slightly forward, shuffles to the side when we pick up another passenger from the Atrium carrying a small paper cup of soup. I close my eyes, rest my head against the paneling as the passenger and Benoit discuss the soup—the utter necessity of bay in anything brought to boil in a pot. The lift dings and I open my eyes to the lit number four over the door. The passenger steps off and I look down as, thirty feet away in the corridor, Hermione looks up.

Stutter and recover. Her feet keep moving as her gaze slides off mine to rest on who is beside me. The smile starts in her eyes, washes over her lips. A shy, wordless ‘hello’ for him before she turns away to the left.

The doors clank shut. My hands hang cold-numb at my sides.

“You know, I think you’re right, Potter,” Benoit says, the width of his grin distorting the words. He reaches, slaps his flat palm twice to my chest. “What you see really is what you get.”

—————

Thank you so much for reading. And if you’d like to comment, that’d be lovely, too. :)

7. Sunday Night

I remembered the ewe’s name even before I saw it hand-printed on the bands of the skeins - Mercury, scrawled in the spinner’s sprawling, purple script. There’d been no call for our own, human names the morning she sold me the wool. I was a shopper amongst the stalls at Old Spitalfields. She was a scaled-up female in orange wellies. Faun-tinted freckles and a Dutch crown of strawberry blonde. Less shepherdess than Athenian Priestess, she smiled toward me as I picked up the skein from the pile in the bowl, but she spoke only when I stroked the swatch of cables.

“Beautiful, of course,” Welsh vowels, like boiled sweets held at the front of her tongue. She touched her scarf, the cables branching, the fingers of fringe dripping blood colours down her chest and shoulders. “But a cable’s true value is in the knitting, don’t you think?”

I did not. My only jag of knitting, I’d had a mission. Speed and volume trumped craftsmanship and quality. The whole endeavour had been driven by an agenda to put objects into hands, with very little consideration for the object, and even less consideration of the hands.

“That you’re snuggling is one of Mercury’s second. Spun it myself. Far too lovely a lamb to trust to the mill. I’ve the entire fleece worths, here, if you’ve a larger project in mind.” The spinner bent, lifted the large black tote spilling silver loops onto the table. Some things are best kept whole. I went ahead and bought the lot.

Back home, I held a skein below Ron’s chin, watched each drain the other of some vital essence. And so, I thought, that is that, because who else would ever warrant the working of so much wool?

“ ‘S all right,” he said. “I’ve enough of that with mum. I’d as soon skip pretending to love yet another itchy jumper, if it's all the same to you.”

I stashed the black tote behind the largest door of the sideboard, left my needles speared through the odd ball of mohair at the bottom of my school trunk.

This is how the story of the blanket begins.

Or maybe it’s not. Maybe the first sentence is a lie. Maybe I only want to think I remembered.

Mercury, the spinner, myself, and Ron.

Myself and Ron.

And Harry.

Maybe I’ve been telling myself this story all wrong from the start.

……….

From what I’ve seen, each Christmas Ron unwraps the same jumper as all the other men gathered round the Weasley family tree - a stockinette block of colour, an intarsia initial in the centre for contrast. Ginny’s jumpers might be touched with the occasional band of Fair Isle, or Fleur’s edged with a bit of lace. The baby gets bobbles and pom-pons and tiny, dot buttons, but for all the work that leaves her needles, I’ve never known Molly Weasley to work a cable.

I, myself, had yet to rate a jumper. A fact I might have taken to heart if Angelina and Audrey hadn’t once been fellow passengers in the same, cold boat. Our gifts always matched the jumpers of our menfolk. Our ribbed scarves and fingerless mitts. Our stripey hats and floppy cowls, all coordinating to our Other’s initial in some way (“In case,” Angelina once muttered out of earshot, “we all forget who we’re supposed to leave with tonight.”) Which is to say, for all her thought and planning, Molly Weasley’s really not the sort to take on cables. It is an activity that requires one be entirely present with their wool. One cannot simply spell the two sticks and the string to do the work on their own. One must see and count and anticipate. One must remember their rows and consult their charts, be aware of where the repetitions begin and where they leave off. And so, Molly Weasley would never be good with cables. She’s too occupied caring for her family to ever devote the time.

I turn my needles so the right side faces, untwist the fabric pooled in my lap, begin another long row.

Seed stitch for ten. Purl one, two, three. Cable six to the back.

Purl, and purl, and purl.

My needles work without a sound. Crookshanks pretends to ignore the unwinding yarn, but his ears twitch with each wobble of the ball. Downstairs, Dandy waits, her dachshund paws tapping a slow pace against the tile. Mrs. Whigby is late returning from her weekly visit to her sister. My floo is lightless, still.

Cable two to the front.

Purl. Purl. Purl.

Each stitch is progeny and progenitor. A twist of the wrist. Three ticks of the clock.

Crookshanks turns his head, glares through heavy lids at the cracked door. At the foot of the stairs, Dandy makes what I know to be the beginning of her “emergency” sounds, a non-vocal whine, so shrill it’s nearly indiscernible. “She still hasn’t forgiven the exterior dog-flap for dripping rain down her nose, so, If you wouldn’t mind…” Mrs. Whigby had said earlier, fastening her cloak. I work my way to a stopping place, then heap everything back into the tote beside my feet.

Dandy jump-rocks on bitty dachshund legs before realizing it’s just me. She skitters backward as I descend, lifts a front foot, stares at the empty steps over my shoulder. She sniffs as I draw near, her frosted snout raised to test the air, as if it’s all just a trick and I’m actually hiding Ron in my pocket.

“I know you miss him,”I say, rounding the newel post, “but he’s still gone for good.” The back door cracks open with the wave of my wand.

Cupboard love at first sight for those two - a couple of shared pieces of bacon when we first moved in, and then the thousand other secret morsels after. Dandy dashes down her ramp into the garden. I cast a warming charm on the foyer, then lean against the door frame, breathe in the cool night air wisping along the edges of my spell.

Dandy sniffs a low branch, “perusing the day’s news” Mrs. Whigby likes to say. I fold my arms. In this garden, Dandy’s is the sole byline for the morning, noon, and evening editions. She is endlessly fascinated by her own prior reportage. The neighbour’s Christmas lights reflect as orange orbs off the red paint of the iron lawn chairs. I close my eyes, press my temple to the wood, waiting.

And this is Sunday night. This is the weekend winding down. Earlier today, Molly would have served roast pork with apples. She would have mashed potatoes and shelled peas, and arranged Bill’s steak tartare on his plate before the rest of the family gathered around the table. She would have prepared a treacle tart for Harry, chocolate sponge and pud for everyone else. She would have poured a bit of the batter into lined tins and baked faerie cakes for Victoire and Teddy. Ron would have eaten two, unglazed, straight from the oven before lunch even began.

I wasn’t there to witness, of course, but I know all this the way I know the periodic table, the English Qabalah, the mapped night sky for the month of July - unerringly, and by rote. I know it as I know the patterns must shift. The longer she stays in Italy, the more likely Ginny’s favourite roast pork will give way to Percy’s preferred curried lamb. My sauteed spinach will disappear off the menu, entirely. Teddy and Victoire will eventually stop playing so close to the kitchen, and little strangers I’ll never know will toddle in, hands out, to take their place. If it hasn’t happened already, introductions will be made. Ron’s new friend will find her seat at the table. Perhaps, she’s already been asked to tie Victoire’s hair in one of the blue satin ribbons Fleur keeps in her pocket. Perhaps she’s already wiped away a smudge of chocolate melted to Teddy’s chin.

Try as I might, I can't picture Ron’s face any way other than looking at her,

I roll my head, chin to chest, ear to shoulder. Neck tissue creaks and grinds. A leaf scratches across the brick path. Dandy’s sniffing remains complex, arrhythmic.

This is Sunday night. What was once take-away night. Simple white plates and electric blue chopsticks. Steaming rhomboids with shining wire handles, aluminium trays, and dripping paper bags. It was Ron spearing papadums with his fork. It was Harry picking water chestnuts from the moo goo gai pan, arranging them along the edge of my plate. It was Ron’s legs stretched, taking all the space beneath the table, my toes curled around the rung of my chair. It was the clink of three more bottles clutched between freezing fingers, and bits of rice on the tablecloth, and Harry’s eyes ever brighter against the deepening flush of his cheeks.

I can, for better and worse, still picture Harry’s face all ways.

Dandy goes quiet. I clamp my jaw and open my eyes, peer past the place she’s circling to the withered clematis trailing down the bricks. Mrs. Whigby plants a proper witch’s garden: Clematis vitalba, Atropa belladonna, Hyssopus officinalis.

The trick to not remembering: Remember something else, instead.

Aconitum napellus, or monk’s-hood, which is aconite, which is wolf’s bane.

Artemesia vulgaris, known far less lyrically as “mugwort.”

Salvia sclarea, commonly called clary sage. Hyoscyamus niger is henbane, is nightshade.

I take the time to slide along the surface of each syllable. I cling tight to the typography, the crisp, black edge of each glyph in my mind, careful, so careful not to slip beneath the cortex of the literal. Because this, too, is a trap. One neural twist and these names are suddenly so much more than just their collection of sounds. Much more than the letters with which they are composed.

Antirrhinum majus and Sorbus aucuparia are soil speckles on parchment, the spiced manure odour of greenhouse two.

Passiflora incarnata is Ron’s fingertip held between mine, learning the difference between to bruise and to crush.

Juniperus communis is a glimpse of Harry through dripping needles when he thinks I can't see, fists jammed in the front pocket of his sweatshirt, his face tilting into the rain, miserable, earthbound.

Harry’s face. All ways.

And these are the exact sort of thoughts I didn't want to think. It's bad enough to relive it all as I sleep. There's no excuse for allowing it into my waking hours, as well.

Mrs. Whigby is very late, and I’m suddenly very tired. I can't look forward to a good night’s rest, but if I make my way upstairs now, if I resist the urge to pick up my needles once again, I can get in a few fitful hours before I’ll have to leave to find fire.

I say, “Come on, girl,” then click my tongue twice. Dandy rockets up her ramp, trots over the threshold, crosses the foyer, then hops through her flap in Mrs. Whigby’s door.

I look to Crookshanks who, I like to think, is waiting for me on the landing. He blinks toward where I stand in his lazy way, subtly shifts his old bones. I close the door, lock it tight, and trudge back up the stairs.

………

It was the school healer who suggested shaking off the nightmares by rolling from bed to plant both feet on the floor.

“It grounds you in time and space,” he’d said. “It reminds you of your weight in the world. It pulls you out of your head and into your body, centres you firmly within your own, true physical presence.”

And then his fingers slid forward over his knees - thick, un-marred digits. Blunt grubs the colour of raw fat. I remember feeling sick, then looking up at his face, the supercilious expression of someone who’s never questioned one single decision they’ve ever made in their entire life. I remember thinking his dreams of being swallowed were likely quite different from mine, and then flushing hot and cold, repulsed by my own filthy mind. I remember looking away from him, and never looking back. It was past mentioning “my own true, physical presence” also posed a problem.

There were lots of things then I couldn’t bring myself to say. Like, “My eyes sweep for faces I know I’m not going to find,” and, “I still can’t comprehend my own shadow - its shrunken distortion, its four pitiful limbs.”

And, besides, it all just felt like whinging to list the symptoms aloud when I’d already diagnosed the sickness.

I never went back, but I did take that one scrap of advice and alter it to suit. Besides the feet on the floor, my method to stop dreaming the same dream for hours on end was this: Lift the body, and open the eyes. Scrunch the sheets in the fists and make the mouth form the word bed,bed,bed,bed until the desperation stops firing trembles beneath the skin. Breathe, and breathe. Remember, somewhere there is a light. There is a fire. Rise and walk to it.

And I’m finding this still works. It does. Only, building my own fire never breaks the spell, so some nights I have to walk for miles. Some nights I have to wait for the sun.

Some nights, it's a can of sterno guttering blue heat under a canopy of pitted hands. Sometimes, it’s a gas log through a velvet-draped window, or a flickering bin in an alley. Sometimes, it’s orange tongues lapping an unlabeled tin atop a molehill of ash. Some nights, it’s a bank of shimmering red glass flanked with incense, a hundred fervent hopes melting toward Heaven.

Tonight I turn south, flip the collar of my coat up around the exposed skin of my neck. This was much easier to manage at school with the fire just down the stairs, tended all hours by small, dedicated hands. Yellow flames. An eternally eager appetite I could feed the notes into on the nights I had to write.

It’s odd, really. Of all the letters I’ve written, the only ones I remember are the ones I never sent.

-Dear Harry,

I mended a first year’s spectacles today. His frames are tortoise-shell, and his lenses aren't as round, but I still couldn't help but think of you.

-Dear Harry,

All term, someone’s been leaving nosegays for Lavender in the spot where she died. I sort of assumed it must have been Parvati, but tonight on rounds I found Seamus, his forehead and palm pressed to the wall, sitting exactly in the place where her blood had puddled. And, Harry, he was singing. Something like a lullaby. And I wondered, was this just picking up where they left off? Amongst the hammocks and pillows, and all the other aching bodies in the big room, had he sung her to sleep with this same song?

-Dear Harry,

The painting of the fruit bowl is gone from outside the kitchens. Prof. McGonagall says it’s been gone since last May, so how have I not noticed until February? I know it seems hardly worth telling, but I can't shake the notion it’s significant, somehow. As if the replacement painting is a portent. As If, from now on, I’ll be forever finding out missing things. Not as in running across things I’ve lost, but as in realizing I’ve lost something only after it’s long gone.

-Dear Harry,

Ginny says you say hello. I might remind you, I have been known to read a thing or two in my time, and I’ve always said your atrocious handwriting is nothing to be ashamed of…

-Dear Harry,

The ground splits in my dreams. I open my mouth, scream out the air from my lungs, only there’s no sound, and you and Ron move further and further away, and I’m falling back and fighting to climb, but my feet slip in the crumbling earth, and the roots I try to cling to dissolve between my fingers, and I wonder that you can't realize I’m gone, but the two of you keep walking and walking until I can’t see, and then the ground heals itself over above, and there’s no air and no sky and no you, and, well…it doesn’t take an Oxford scholar to figure this one out, does it?

The streetlamps’ light volleys off looming glass, tints the fog, coats this stretch of the A-10. My face at a glance is a monochrome in sodium orange, the hair frizzing from my bun, a familiar shade of deep ginger.

Never Dear Ron on those middle-of-the-night letters.

If I’m honest, it has rarely ever been Ron on my mind at midnight. Midnights are mostly for mulling uncertainties, the taste of blood off my gnawed lip, and Harry.

Forward and forward. Past the Christmas lights and hanging greenery of Leadenhall Market. Past Monument Station, down King William Street, past Fishmonger’s Hall. The fog over the Thames is dense, bitter to breathe. The sort of fog that could hide any bad thing one person might do to another on this bridge. The sort of fog a person could fall into and never see the water they’re rushing to meet. A fog that makes the south bank’s skyline appear mouldy, furred. Like something rotting. Or something asleep.

I find the fire down an un-marked side lane inside a pillar of glass and pink wax set on a low, blue sill. St. Jude faces into the shop, emerald robe draped over one shoulder, his head ablaze in holy flame. I could magically snuff the wick through the window for safety’s sake, but instead I ball my hands in my pockets and watch it burn. Now that I'm here, what else is there? I don't know the litany for lost causes. Even if I did, I don't believe in intercession. Even if I did, it still takes at least two to pray it.

-Dear Harry,

Since Ron left, I have learned that there are far too many cracks in the pavements of London.

I have learned that skin will callous even under the touch of soft things.

I have learned that when you pass by on Silenced footsteps, people eye you as if you are an apparition.

That darkness you’ve already walked through can be the force that propels you toward more waiting darkness.

That counting, steps or stitches, can effectively empty the brain, for a time, at least.

That it is possible to inject fear into an otherwise rational being with one drawn card.

That I am incapable of brand new nightmares.

That what’s worse than new nightmares are these immutable extensions of all dream narrative that's come before.

That my mind won’t force me to taste the dirt filling my mouth, but will provide the feel of its weight on my tongue.

That I am not as afraid of smothering in the earth packed around my face as I am of not being able to sense the tread of your feet through it.

That my favorite ink still flares a millisecond of green when licked by flame.

That the things I want to say to you remain best left as soot on chimney stones.

That indeed, indeed, I did have it all wrong from the start.

……….

The fourth floor is still mostly shadows when I step off the lift, the manufactured moonbeams through the “skylights” casting cashmere-edged pools of white upon the dark tiles. Always a full moon at the Ministry. Always a night clear enough to see thousands of stars. It is beautiful magic, the weather charms outside the “windows”, the approximation of sunlight. Beautiful, but insidious. I used to class it as an earnest attempt to facilitate the employee’s well-being, like providing coffee and tea, a water fountain to gossip across. Now, it’s just one more false thing to face in a day. One more elaborate fabrication to make us forget we all toil in a hole underground.

I stop short at the mouth of the corridor, try to read the shape of the shadow at the foot of my office door. Not keen on surprises before sunrise, I stand for a moment, considering, then whisper “Lumos,” take a step forward, and un-knot with recognition.

A box. Robin’s egg blue.

It was only one shared lift ride, many of the details of which elude me. I can't remember if the American and I nodded toward each other as I boarded, or if he and his bakery box stepped back to allow more room. I don't recall if I muttered hello, or if my eyes were raw, or if my hands were in my pockets, or if the tip of my nose was still numb from walking in the cold outside.

What I can remember is wanting him to have forgotten we’d met. How he began: “I see by your pointed stare at the door this is probably an unforgivable breach of lift etiquette…” I remember leaning to look into the box, the way the scent-fog of grown man and hot sugar hung heavy on his side of the lift. I remember him saying it helped him think, this whole beignet making process. I remember his wandless magic, the scar on his palm as he plucked the linen serviette he’d Conjured out of the air where it waited, perfectly folded, robin’s egg blue. I remember asking how he liked it here, and feeling compelled to label Harry’s reticence as fatigue, then immediately wishing I’d just kept my mouth shut. I remember white powder on the toe of my shoe, and him recommending a cafe au lait, and me saying I preferred strong tea with a splash of milk, and him holding the door as I stepped onto the fourth floor, smiling over the box, saying that sounded “exceptionally fine, too.”

I remember the careful walk to my office, how it felt to be overwhelmed by even this sudden, slight touch of kindness.

It wasn’t until I was sitting at my desk, burning my fingers around my mug, that I noticed the embroidery looping along the edge of the serviette wasn’t just loops, but a row of tiny, silk ‘H’s.

I do not remember ever saying, “Thank you.”

I pad across the tiles, lift the box from the floor, and open my door. Whatever is inside is light but secure, no rattling about, and I set the box on my desk, shed my coat, re-wind the bun of my hair, then lift the shade to let the enchanted stars hang in my enchanted window. I untuck the tabs and lift the lid. Inside is a clean, linen serviette, five assorted tea bags, and, still warm to the touch, a perfect golden pillow of a pastry under a dusting of white.

The silvery script in the lower corner of the lid is only just discernible, the words “I’ve been thinking…,” shining in the moonlight.

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So, who else is stoked Portkey is up and running again? Yay! Thank you so much for reading. Please feel free to share any thoughts.