Raman felt a little more on edge in Diagon Alley with each passing day. It wasn't the street he remembered even from his days at Hogwarts. Yes, there had always been homeless people, but had there been this many? It wasn't even one alley any more. The road had ruptured like a parasitic fungus bursting from the body of an insect host: enormous side streets and towering malls snaking out everywhere.
The one thing he did like about it was the diversity. Just ten years ago he remembered being one of the few brown faces around. That had increasingly changed. The street was becoming a melting pot. From what he'd gleaned from his father, Muggles were way ahead of wizards on liberalising their immigration policy. The wizarding world was conservative and backward on so many things, it seemed.
It wasn't just the humans who'd diversified. In the wake of Hermione Granger's reforms of wizarding law, many magical beings had emerged from their isolation to take their place in society. The house-elves had demanded fair pay and an eight hour working day, goblins now proudly strolled down the street holding long-denied wands, merfolk-human couples had suddenly become a thing after the bestselling erotica novel, Some Like it Wet, and even the boggarts had come out of their closets. Much like Raman.
It hadn't been a smooth ride, though. Many house-elves, or centaurs, or goblins, who'd left their traditional homes and occupations for the dream life in the big magical city found doors slammed in their faces. They washed into the gutters and ended up on the streets - another story that hit too close to home for Raman.
He stepped over a puddle of unsightly liquid, and hunkered down as he passed a grimy house-elf who sat in a corner, shaking her tin of change at him. The elf's face was old, wrinkled even by the standards of her people, her face aged by hunger, tobacco, and human-strength liquor. Her inhumanly green eyes were dazed, and burned with dull emerald fire, watching the passing world. Even in her abject poverty, her clothes were clothes. Oversized human clothes, clumsily bunched and folded many times to fit her elf frame, but clothes nonetheless. The richer elves could afford their own tailors, but she only had her pride and her hard-won dignity. She was the right age to have grown up wearing pillowcases. Raman looked away and quickened his pace.
Anlon would have given her whatever was in his pockets. But of course, Anlon was technically homeless, and was one step ahead of being on the street himself. The boy had a big heart, far too big for his own good, Raman sometimes thought.
In an ideal world, Raman would have ventured off the main alley to find the small shops clinging to life on the back streets, run by the eccentric wizards who still gave this place character. But then, in an ideal world, Raman wouldn't have had a terrible shyness and fear of strangers that prevented him from deviating from any of his set routines. So he plodded the same familiar path, past the generic corporate shopfronts and designer goods stores (at least Ollivander's was still open, though who knew for how long; these days all the kids got their wands custom made by merchant guilds in Europe) until he reached the nearest apothecary.
Inside was the usual team of saleswizards, all of whom, he was sure, were staring at him as if he didn't belong. Trying not to show his embarrassment at his shabby robes and unkempt appearance, he approached a counter and loitered far enough back not to disturb anyone, with his eyes downcast, until a saleswitch noticed him and asked him if he was all right. Then came the stressful ritual of handing over the piece of parchment and watching her read it, so she knew what was wrong with him, and then handing over his benefits card, which she would undoubtedly think less of him for, because he was far younger than the usual pensioner.
When he'd gotten his pills, he stepped out into the street and felt relieved that the social and financial transaction was over. He had the rest of the day ahead of him now, to do whatever he wanted. He should probably do some studying, maybe send some futile job applications. And he hadn't sent an owl to Anlon in a while.
As if on schedule, a brown barn owl fluttered into view, swooped towards him, and alighted on a nearby railing with a couple of brazen hoots. Raman removed the parchment attached to its leg, unfolded it, and read:
Heyyyy cutie. What did my boy get up to today? I miss you lots. Wanna hang out tonight? Hugh is having some drinks at his place. We're making banners and and having a bonfire. Miss your face xxx.
Unable to help smiling, Raman turned the parchment over and wrote: Not much. Just trying to be a functional adult. I miss you too. Drinks at Hugh's sounds fun. See you soon, beautiful.
He reattached the parchment to the owl's leg, and slipped a few Knuts into its leg-pouch before bending down to its ear and murmuring, "Anlon Finnigan." It took off with powerful wingbeats and pumped hard, climbing into the sky.
Raman's current flat was one of the best places he'd lived in for years. He still felt guilty about taking it, because it had been offered to him for a whole year by a welfare organisation dedicated to helping "youth at risk of homelessness," and while his life had never been very stable, it had been punctuated by periods of family support and brief flashes of personal competence, which had left him thinking he was far more fortunate and privileged than most actual disadvantaged people. Still, he wasn't in a position to be noble and turn down the helping hand of the welfare state.
The flat was small, and very old, but for once he had a place to himself with no odd housemates, not even magically engorged cockroaches, doxies, giant rats or bedbugs. There were two rooms. The door opened onto a dining room/kitchen, and then there was a large bedroom that could double as an entertainment area, if you knew your guests well and didn't mind them being around your personal belongings. The main drawback was the mould festering behind the damp walls. The thick smell clogged everything, but was bearable if the windows were kept open at all times. More worrying was the coughing fits Raman got, because he'd had asthma as a child, and sometimes he'd wake up retching with his lungs burning from the damp, heavy air.
The agency couldn't do anything about it until their corporate sponsor came through with funding, however, and Raman didn't want to complain too much. If he made the mould sound like a health hazard the agency would be obligated by law to make him leave until the property was deemed safe again. So he would drop oblique hints during inspection times that the mould was a bother, not dangerous of course, but it would be nice if something could be done eventually, not that it was a health issue or anything. Ultimately, he didn't want to look a gift horse in the mouth. It was better to be under a roof with a fungal infection in your lungs than on the street without one. So he put up with it, and was grateful.
Actually, more vexing than the mould were his neighbours. They were also part of the youth accommodation program, but they couldn't have been more different from Raman. Raman felt lucky to be where he was. In general he tried to follow the rules, even if he didn't always agree with them. He knew the agency had certain legal obligations, and that they were trying to help him out the best they could. He hated being dependent on others, and he saw this housing as a safety net to help him avoid the streets, while he tried to move on with studying, saving some money, and eventually getting back out to live on his own. He didn't do much in his flat except lay down his head after academy, or have a friend or two over for a quiet night. While there might be a time and place to protest the rules of community housing and the capitalist system, he didn't think doing so at the expense of a charitable organisation was ethical.
His neighbours, or at least two in particular, were repulsive. Nathan had no ambition in life, and not because he'd come from an impoverished family. He was downwardly mobile, abandoning his middle-class family's comfortable lifestyle to live a "more authentic" existence of poverty and making art (if you could call that trash art). Once he'd told Raman that being poor was wonderful because it made him more creative and in touch with himself as a person. When he wasn't bitching about how the Berlin alternative community and party scene was so much better than the capitalist nightmare of London (he'd had to leave Berlin and return to London because eventually the Germans got sick of him contributing nothing to their society), he was hosting all night drug and alcohol-fuelled orgies in their backyard, or recruiting random clients for sex work, which he ran out of his own room (in violation of the contracts they'd all signed on moving in). This had led to the neighbours complaining several times, and the Department of Magical Law Enforcement threatening to terminate their lease.
Nathan was assisted in all of his grotesqueries by a hideous young gay called - well, never mind his original name, because now he was calling himself the Blazing Fairy, and anyone who couldn't keep track of his multiple reinventions got a stern lecture on the importance of respecting his identity. Apart from being petty, rude, vulgar, drug-addled, and needy, the Blazing Fairy's hobbies included gossipping about Raman and telling their mutual friends that Raman was a stuck-up snitch who thought he was better than everyone else. Personally, Raman had far better things to do than snitch on degenerates, and he didn't think aspiring to more in life than living in government housing, snorting ketamine and sucking the cocks of elderly warlock daddies for 5 Galleons a pop made you an arrogant person, but if it did, then he was guilty as charged.
Fortunately, neither of them were in the garden when Raman got home. He checked his mail, and was glad the letterbox was empty - anything official-looking made him feel anxious, but then, who wasn't living in a state of near-constant nervousness these days? He let himself in, threw his bags down, and took his pills with a glass of water. The place was a mess. He could have made a start on moving some things around, maybe doing some laundry. But it was too daunting. Just the thought of lifting his wand made his arms feel heavy.
He lay in bed and pulled the covers up. He felt so tired all the time now, exhausted at 4 pm when he'd just finished studying. How did other people juggle their education with work, exercise, hobbies, a social life, and housework? They were the real wizards.
He remembered Anlon's owl, and his promise to come to drinks that evening. His eyelids felt so heavy. He wished Anlon was here now, his warm chest, his beautiful blue-green eyes, his envious fall of tousled hair. Raman fell asleep thinking of the owl that was winging its way back to Anlon now, and in his dreams his heart flew with it.