CHAPTER ONE: THE MORGUE.

Mischa Potter's P.O.V

There was no singular place people went to die. They died in bathrooms and backstreet alleys, closets and coastal lines, bedrooms and bushes, shops and staircases. Death, Mischa knew intimately, struck where and when it wanted, with no remorse, no recognition, and in no discernible design. Akin to a great edacious canine, it consumed and took and gnawed and crunched. It would never get full. Death's stomach was a limitless pit with enumerable remains lost wakeless inside. Sometimes, when Mischa looked up to the night sky, if the air was clear of cloud and smoke, with the shimmer of stars rippling across its pitched face, Mischa thought she was seeing a thousand souls listlessly staring back, and then, in those terrible moments, Mischa thought she might already be in the great stomach of the beast. Another soul devoured. Nevertheless, most corpses did end up in one particular place, at one given time or another. The morgue.

Doctor Hannibal Lecter's house was a wild boar of a building, swollen fat with decadence but with a muscled structure of elegance that left it more predator than otiose rapacity. Simplicity clashed with abjection in every room, a battle ground between minimalism and extravagance that, really, as Hannibal gave her a swift sweeping tour, gave Mischa a niggling feeling of being so very, very out of place. Everything here had its set, it's own home, lovingly burnished and placed, rugs so intricate they were more tapestry than something to scuff your muddy boots across, leaving her with an unsettling fear of touching or damaging anything around her.

Too many rooms to count, paintings in gilded frames, genuine ones slick with oil paint and lacquer, winding hallways of barrelled walls so broad she could stand in the very eye, stretch her arms as wide as she could, and fingertip would never brush wooden panel. There were hearths in nearly every room she came across, great bricked things of pale grey granites with smoky mouths yawning into the rooms. The furniture too reeked of money and age, matured woods and leather pinned with brass tacks, cleansing lines of contour, resplendent with curvilinear scallops, crossing beams of trestles, and columnar clawfoots. Grand mirrors, the antique kind, with real silver backs, polished to a crisp radiance, that left Mischa shying away from her own haggard, out-of-place reflection. Yet, none of these rooms unsettled Mischa as much as the kitchen.

"And this is the kitchen. My favourite room in any house, I must admit."

Doctor Lecter said as he stepped aside from the entryway to the kitchen, striding into the room, allowing Mischa to peep in, her hand lingering on the door frame. Immediately, unfathomably, she felt a wave of glacial wind lap over her, through her, prickling her skin and eyes to goose pimples and foggy mist. The counter-tops were cut from chrome, glazed and angular. All mortuary tables lined with knives. The lights were cold and white, bright but low, the kind used for autopsies. Even the fridge, a shiny metal brute of a machine, reminded Mischa of the cold chambers of a morgue, and when she blinked, she saw a pale blue toe with a blank name tag corded around it. There was no distinct smell either, no spice or leftover, or tea or coffee, nothing but a slight chill in the air that, very likely, Mischa could be imagining. Everything was meticulous. Acute. Clinical. A morgue.

"A heart that doesn't beat."

Mischa didn't know she had spoken until she did, and even then, she wanted to reach into the air and snatch the words back, swallow them back down with greedy teeth and tongue.

"Excuse me?"

Mischa blinked at the man who, somehow, some way, was her uncle. Mischa knew what uncles were like as closely as she knew what death was like. With their fat hands, sweaty palms, ruddy cheeks, spittle in the face as they yelled and screamed, the slight hustle of their belt as the buckle was undone, the pang of pain across her back, the bruised hand prints on crooked young arms too pale and thin, the smell of mould and damp and blood. Well, she had thought she knew what uncles were, and, she knew it was such a strange thing to be scared of, this notion of 'uncles', or 'aunts', but she was, she was terrified and alone and-

But there was no Vernon Dursley in this man before her. Not even a suggestion of him. No bristled moustache or watery gaze, plump middle or squat legs, the wrath that always seemed to be skulking underneath Vernon's skin, rippling the flesh with pulsing nervure and spindly spider veins, was no where to be seen. Still, when she thought Doctor Lecter might yell or curse her for such a stupid remark, perhaps pluck up the closest object to him, regrettably a knife, and throw it at her head, leaving her to scamper off to her cupboard to hide and cower as she did when she was six, like uncle Vernon used to, there was only curiosity, no animosity, in Hannibal Lecter's voice.

It unsettled her more than it should have. She was good with anger and hatred, she knew how to appease those emotions, keep quiet and take the pain, it would be over when they grew wheezy, but curiosity? Mischa didn't quite rightly know what to do with that one. No one had ever really been curious about her. Curious about what she could do, what she could do for them, what she could do for the greater good, yes, but never curious about what she thought, or what she wanted, or how she felt. Curiosity, to Mischa, was something used to gage someone's abilities, another tool used to take, not to contemplate them and to give something back. A voice.

It was then she realised, as Doctor Lecter's head cocked to the side, that she had been silent for a long time. So long, in fact, she could only hear the slight inhale of air through her nostrils and the slight pounding of her heart, the hum of the cold lights. She blinked some more, heard the slight clip of her lids meeting, perhaps she shuffled on her feet, and waited. The silence drew on and, yes, Doctor Lecter was really expecting an answer from her. Normally, people only asked excuse me when they wanted you to shut up and crank your head down. They never really wanted an answer. All of a sudden, Mischa found herself scrambling for one, if nothing but to get the heavy attention to go away. It made her skin feel binding and itchy.

"I-.. I mean… Well… They say the kitchen is the heart of the home, don't they? I think I heard that somewhere. People laugh over boiling pots of half-cooked pasta as the fish burns in the oven, wives gossip over glasses of wine, children climb table-top to get to the sugary cereal. Kitchen's have a life all their own. In a way. This, well, it's..."

"Dead?"

Blink, blink, blink. Clip, clip, clip. The flutter of powdered wings, or bullets being fired. The image mollified her somewhat. To be frank, Mischa didn't know much of kitchens, or families, or what or how things went down in them. She knew aunt Petunia's kitchen, she knew the snap of a spatula on the back of her knuckles if she burnt the bacon or toast, if she spilt the tea, but, well, she had heard stories. Little adverts replaying on TV of housewives in aprons posing with frosted cakes illuminated with candles, children scuffling around the table for the box of cereal on sale in the local Tesco's with fifty percent less sugar, or glamorous models opening the fridge, showcasing steaming meals of delectable food that, with a monthly payment scheme, would make you, too, as slim and beautiful, and all delivered right at your front door!

Yes, Mischa had seen all the jolly pictures, and she had seen Molly Weasley's kitchen, all the laughter and warmth like a shaken wasp nest, abuzz with life and colour, and movement and merriment, and she thought she might know what a kitchen was supposed to be, but, unfortunately, she had no point of reference for herself. Belatedly, she realized she might have also confused lies with reality, such as the existence of happy endings, blissful families, or, well, many other things adults told children so they could sleep easy. After all, how happy would Molly's kitchen be with no Fred there to spike the pumpkin juice with firewhiskey? Mischa didn't know, neither would she ever know the answer to that question, not after-. No.

Doctor Lecter's tone was not dismissive, nor was it accusatory, or, Merlin forbid, insulted. It was just curious. Curiosity killed the cat. Mischa winced. She never liked that saying. There was nothing inherently wrong with curiosity, even if it did unsettled her. It was the answers to those curious questions that got people killed. Her too. Perhaps that is why she disliked it now. It reminded her of herself. Mischa got people killed better than most other things.

Voldemort dead on the ground. Blood on her tongue. Not over. Fight. Have to fight. Bang. Mischa stop! Flash. Blood splattering on her face. Warmth. Mischa no! Fire. Ash in the air. Something else. Gargling. Something chewy in her mouth. Mischa, please! Lump in her throat. Swallow it down. Flares of colours like pulses. Mischa! Mischa! Mischaaaaa - Must not think of many things. Especially that. Never that.

"I didn't mean anything by it. I didn't mean to-, I should have- I-I-I"

She was having trouble finding her words now. They slipped through her straining fingers like slugs, blubbery and slippy, squishing between her nails. She used to stutter horrendously as a child. Dudley used to call her M-M-M-Mischa, because of it, contorting his face in over exaggerated twists and spasms as he and his friends laughed and threw rocks at her. She was ten when she could finally get her name out without stuttering on the lip smacking M, and from there she had worked hard on it, wilfully and dutifully rolling over every consonant in every word, in every sentence, in every Merlin damned speech, so she would not slip, and she would not hear, in the back of her mind, those taunting laughs and the echoing M-M-M-Mischa of Dudley's gloating voice.

By eleven, her stutter came sometimes, in moments of stress or hurting, but it was hardly noticeable outside of these snaps of over exposure and vulnerability. It had been years since she had stuttered so badly. Then, back in the healing wards of St Mungos, strapped to a bed by leather cuffs, the kind used in Azkaban littered with runes to zap the wearer of their magic, the chaffed red skin still raw around her wrists and ankles even now, after she had-… After, it had come crashing back over her and she was M-M-M-Mischa again. Always M-M-M-Mischa.

Doctor Lecter backed away with lengthy strides, over and behind the kitchen island of a mortuary table, leaning back into a barstool, one long leg crossed over the other. With a gentle wave of his hand, he gestured to the stool opposite him. Mischa didn't move.

"It's perfectly fine, Mischa. Here, come, have a seat."

She didn't move for a long time. Instead, she tapped her tongue on the roof of her mouth, in sets of three. Tip, tap, tat. After seven rounds of this, tip, tap, tatting from back to front, to the very top of her teeth, her tongue was back under her control, and the jumping in her jaw muscle was nothing but a twitch now. Prying her fingers from the door frame, warmth flooding back into the tingling digits, she realised her knuckles had bleached to white and there, in the shadow of the curving wood, was four little crescent moon indents staring back mockingly.

She was acting, and if Mischa was honest, feeling a bit like an abused animal. The kind you saw in kennels, shaggy and soiled, crowding into a corner as you passed the bars, head down and ears flat and baleful eyes watchful and distrustful. The thing is, those dogs never got adopted. They got euthanised. It was the puppies that got adopted, the bouncy little ones who, yes, had a tough start, but there was still hope, not the old dog with its ear bitten clean off. Sometimes, a plucky do-gooder would try and re-home the dog, they would take it in for a time or two, but when it inevitably did what it only knew how to do, chewed up sofa's or pissed in the corner, or ate their cat, it was sent packing back to the kennel to start the cycle all over again. 4 Privet Drive, Hogwarts, Grimmauld Place, The Weasley Burrow, yes, Mischa knew that nomadic leaping life all too well.

Still, Mischa Potter was no dog, she was just an old hand with an old soul and old eyes, and like all the other places she had gone, this one was probably ephemeral too and, for the brief six months, all she had to do was not tear up Doctor Lecter's expensive furniture, defecate in his lovely house, or, if he had any, eat his pets. That seemed an easy and simple enough check-list to follow. Most importantly, and currently pressing, she needed to stop crowding corners, pinching her ears down and acting like there was a hit coming any second now.

The rubber soles of her shoes obnoxiously squeaked as she slunk through the door, across the smooth tiles of the kitchen floor, still unable to completely come away from the sanctuary the wall offered her back, as she edged around the corners over to the seat. Mischa didn't know whether she liked Doctor Lecter's encouraging and pleasant smile when she finally managed to peel herself away from the wall and sunk into the chair opposite him, the door was right at her back now and anybody could sneak up behind her, wand raised, or knife, or whether she was angry he had noticed anything remiss at all.

"What else do you see?"

Many things. Ghost and ghouls and gangrenous memories that clung to her mind like mildew on caulk. No matter how hard she scrubbed, the mould, those boggy memories, wouldn't go away from the window of her life. And then, there were those dreadful ones. The ones she couldn't fully remember, tiny scraps of feeling and pain and noises that taunted her from places deep within, places she dared not look. Answers kill. Mischa swallowed and she could hear the dissonance reverberate loudly in the calm air around them, and she knew Doctor Lecter could hear it too. She looked up at him them, right up, but she could only bring herself to meet the soft skin under his eyes before her gaze fell to the tip of his sloping nose. Nanny Annie had that nose, she'd crinkle it when she found something distasteful. Mischa had it too and did the same. Did Doctor Lecter?

"S-See?"

Doctor Lecter got up from his seat in one fleeting movement, strolling over to the table-top lining the wall opposite the fridge. With his back turned to her, he reached up into the cupboard, rummaging around, Mischa knew, as she heard the clink of china and glass.

"When you looked around the house, what did you see?"

When Doctor Lecter turned around, Mischa saw his prize. A tray composing of a glass tea set, two little glasses perched next to the teapot like chicks in a cosy nest. He brought the set over and laid it exactly between the two on the counter before he was in movement again, over towards a metal rack underneath the cold lights of the cupboards, popping open the caddies placed inside. He pulled out one of those pricey paper bags with an ink stamp on, the rustle of freshly dried tea-leaves tickling Mischa's eardrums. Through the ruffling of the paper bag, the clink of glass, and the tap of his shoes on tile, Mischa hid her stuttering answer between the ambient sounds of the kitchen. She found it was easier to speak with other noises detracting from her own twitches and notches.

"You live alone but you're social."

He was over by the sink now, filling an iron kettle with water from the long drooping neck of the tap, nodding as if her sudden leap in logic was as perfectly sound as saying good morning in passing. A swift up and down tilt of the chin. Just once. Mischa, peculiarly, thought that was him. Just once. That was all he ever needed. As precise and clinical as this kitchen. His kitchen.

"How do you know that?"

Blink, blink, blink. Clip, clip, clip. Tip, tap, tat. So many noises to hide behind, and Mischa took refuge in them all. In the sound of the water rushing, slopping into the kettle with a trickle, she saw herself and Doctor Lecter opening the large front door of his home, a big plank of mahogany with a shiny brass knob, glistening red knots agleam in the wood, saw them walking in, Doctor Lecter offering to take her rucksack and suitcase, opening a side door in the hallway, storing them away for later in the shadowed room, but she saw.

"There's a large cloak room in the hallway, but there's only a few coats and jackets within. One size. Mens. Same general style, same p-person."

Doctor Lecter put the kettle on the stove beside them, a low keening whistle taking up the drop of the waters silence, and, afresh, Mischa was happy with the sound. She's happy with any sound. She loathes silence. Silence reminds her of the white place, the blood, the-...

"And the last?"

The last? Ah, yes, social. Why did she think he was social? Mischa was picking at the seam of her jeans by her thigh, twanging her thumb nail across the thread, and she realised her thoughts were very much like those stitches. Zigzagging, leaping, but linear in an unusual way that often had Mischa playing catch up with her own thoughts and observations. Things came to her sometimes, in winks and glimmers, they were just there, waiting, and it took Mischa time to zigzag her way to it to find how she got there, like following and picking the seam of her jeans.

"You have a cloak room, not a coat rack like most people. You have large quantities of guests over at the same time. I would have first thought it might have been more business over pleasure, perhaps a group of colleagues going over the latest publishing in the medical journals, psychiatrists do that sort of thing, don't they? But your dining room is the loudest room in this house."

Winks and glimmers, Mischa followed the thread of her thoughts. Yes. The dining room was the loudest room in the house, and, in her humble opinion, the nicest. Mischa liked the dining room a lot, in fact. With it's darker pallet, flowers and design, there was life in those walls, a happy place filled with the scrape of knife and fork on crockery, the aroma of well cooked food in the air, quips given over chuckles and compliments, life. That dining room had life.

Doctor Lecter went back to the kettle when the whistling was highest, drawing it from the flame of the stove, the click of the dial turning off, he brought it back over to the glass teapot, his steps louder now and, Mischa realised, he might have picked up on her distrust of silence for he had been eerily quiet when moving around the other rooms of this house. He's purposefully making noise. Giving her noises to duck behind, detracting from her own raspy voice and stuttering. Plucking the top of the teapot off, clinking it off the tray intentionally, he began to fill the teapot with water, glancing up at her, one pale brow arched high, a small smile hinting at his mouth through the splash of water.

"Loudest room?"

Loudest? Is that what she had said? Well, Mischa supposed, it was true in a way. Rooms, like people, had a personality. A taste, a flavour, a voice. This kitchen's voice was a dead thing, raspy and hollow. Silent. Her cupboard had screamed bitterly, the cries of an abandoned infant. Gryffindor's common room had exploded with the sound of fireworks flaring in the night sky. The chamber of secrets had rustled like scales brushing marble. Memories, to Mischa, were never really memories. She didn't remember like most. Hers were an exploration of the senses, both present at the time and later transplanted by imagination. Imagination Mischa had trouble controlling. There was a bleed-over sometimes, actuality combining with imagination, but that didn't make them any less real. Not to Mischa. Doctor Lecter's dining room had sang with the voice of a choir boy, one of those semisweet hymns, where it was a single boy lit by candle, singing in soprano and falsetto.

"You've put the most of yourself in that room. The others, the living rooms, the bedroom, they're all stitched together for aesthetics. Voiceless."

The hot water in the glass teapot swirled, delving and dipping and whirling up the brittle black leaves of the tea, seeping the water in stipples of grey and purple. Earl Grey. Mischa watched the water. She liked the way the colours spread through the pristine liquid, dancing and smearing where it went, darker and darker until, there, at the bottom, where the leaves were beginning to rest, there was only blackness.

"But the dining room is different? It is… Louder?"

Doctor Lecter left the tea pot alone for a while, letting the tea brew, and retook his seat. Mischa, with his focus exclusively back on her, was back to vigorously picking at the seam of her jeans, at the seam of her thoughts, back to tip, tap, tatting, back to M-M-M-Mischa. She felt unsure, like a quill paused, hovering over a letter, letting drops of ink splash parchment in its self-doubt and timidness. It could have been seconds, or minutes, or even hours before she spoke again. Time, like places, felt impermanent, always shifting, wasted in reckoning.

"The fire place is well used. The stones at the back are black. The wallpaper is awash of blue and green stripes. You, from the suit jackets in the closet, to what you're wearing now, like stripes and dark blue. The green matches the herb garden on the side of the room, neatly trimmed, cared for. You spend a lot of time there, tending to those herbs. There's fresh flowers on the mantle. So you spend a lot of effort in that room. The centre pieces on the large dining room table are freshly cut and formed too, aren't they? Their leaves are still plump. Recently cut roses. The petals haven't wilted a bit. A shade on the artisan side, so, I think, you made them yourself. You take pride in that room. Pleasure. With the cloak room and the dining room, well, dinner parties. Social."

Doctor Lecter took the two cups and poured them both some tea, sliding one across the metal towards her. Mischa was all to happy to grab it, to have her hands do something other than follow seams and pick at threads because, then, maybe her thoughts wouldn't either. She held the cup tightly between her hands, even when the heat started to burn her palms, she only held on tighter. Doctor Lecter was smiling now, not that small smile they shared in both features and mannerisms, but one full of luminosity, stretched wide over his face like a fat cat soaking and preening in the sun.

"You're a very smart girl, aren't you, Mischa?"

Voldemort had called her smart, once. Tom Riddle always calls her smart. So had Albus. Snape. And Petunia, in spite. And Draco as an affront. She was normally called smart on the trail end of being told she was something crazy, outsider-ish, a freak seeing things she shouldn't see, or observing things she had no right observing. Crank that neck down. Keep the eyes away. Don't see. Don't think. Don't… Be. Mischa stumbled again.

"I-I'm sorry, I-I didn't mean anything by it, I was j-just-"

Doctor Lecter took a sip of his own tea before he gently placed it before him and, yes, Mischa had been right. Each of his movements were fine, eased, seasoned, like her speech had once been.

"Don't ever apologize for being observant or smart. A keen eye is worth more than any charm. It will take you far in life. Never lose that."

He said it kindly, with a dash of conspiracy, as if he was letting her in on life's biggest secret.

"There was still no need for me to be so… Rude."

Calling someone's kitchen a dead heartbeat was rude, wasn't it? Mischa didn't know. Shame, really. Aunt Petunia had spent nearly a life time whipping the 'freakishness' out of her, but had never bothered to try and instil manners, how to speak or read, or anything outside Mischa's chores and cupboard. In the end, she knew how to decently clean and bleach a toilet, tend to rose bushes and flowerbeds, how to rightly fold sheets over mattresses and change linens, how to properly cook bacon, eggs and links of sausages just the way Vernon liked, a little bit crispy, but she couldn't carry on a conversation like a civilized person for the life of her.

Doctor Lecter ran a finger around the rim of his cup and Mischa took a gulp of her own, hoping, along with it, the bitter hurt she felt for her aunt and uncle, her life in general, would swish down with it, like swill being drained into the sewer. Half of the tea was gone in one swig, no savouring for her. The boiling water burnt her tongue, cindered down her throat and flared in her gut, and it hurt, but it was warm, and lately, Mischa would do pretty much anything to shirk off this never-ending arctic numbness that had settled over her after after.

"Rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength. And, I believe, you are anything but weak, Mischa."

It was an open invitation, Mischa knew, courteously given, to speak of things she didn't want to speak about. Tom, the white place, the after she couldn't quite remember, where imagination and flares in her senses inhabited her like a skin suit, and even if she didn't have the statute of secrecy hanging over her head, Mischa still would not, ever, break her silence on it. That was the one silence she could live with. So, instead, she haggled sideways.

"Eric Hoffer. The Passionate State of Mind and Other Aphorisms."

Doctor Lecter grinned, back to the small smile, and left the tea to the side, folding his hands together in front of him, leaning slightly over the table, towards her. Normally, Mischa would find the act intrusive, she favoured her personal space, but right now, as the stammering, child like mess she was, she found it comfortable some one, any one, would want to be so close to her. Like a safety blanket, she marinated in his confidence and turned it into her own. She could do this. Six months. Cottage, sea salt and butterflies. Something finally, irrevocably hers and hers alone. Not Dudley's. Not a prophecies. Her cottage wouldn't belong to the greater good or some other obtuse concept. Not anybodies or anything's but her own.

"Correct. Do you enjoy reading?"

She'd stolen a torch from uncle Vernon's tool box once. One of those small plastic ones that you had to hit against your hand to flicker the light on because the switch was faulty. She'd had it for years, hidden under her cot in the cupboard, and, even now, shipped to America, that very same torch was back in her suitcase. She had used it in her cupboard, after she had counted three thousand and six hundred seconds, an hour whittled to seconds, after she had heard aunt Petunia's last creaking step on the top decking at night. She would then pull out bent books Dudley had thrown away in the bin, having never been one to read, or any magazine she had managed to pilfer from the letter box before Petunia had managed to collect the mail, and she would stay up, with her little torch and her water stained books and bent magazines, and she would read.

Or try to. Before Petunia had been forced to let her to go to school after a neighbour had spotted Mischa in the kitchen window while they were mowing the lawn, Mischa had only herself and her books and magazines to try and learn to read from. She'd spend hours huddled in there, going A, I, E, O, U, like the puppets on sesame street she would sometimes see when Dudley watched the telly, and she would go through, running her fingers over curves and dots and she had smiled and laughed. Quietly, of course. Petunia would come, or worse, Vernon, if she was ever to loud. She still remembered the first word she had ever been able to read in its entirety without a mistake.

Obituary. Turns out her magazine had been a pamphlet from the local funeral home and she had, unwittingly, been reading and giggling over eulogies and caskets. She had been ever since, in a comical way. Ironic, in hindsight. Still, the smell and sound of flipping laminated paper and smudged ink on crinkled page was still one of her favourites.

"I try to read when I can."

It was no definitive answer. Mischa didn't have any explicit answers for or about herself. All she really knew was survival and war. Ask her how to escape a fiendfyre and she could give you twelve different scenarios. Ask her how to destroy a Horcrux, and you could have an hour long lecture. Ask her how to infiltrate a ministry, and she could give you a blow by blow plan. Ask her what she does in her spare time and all you'll get is a blink, clip and a tat.

"Well, what else do you enjoy?"

Enjoy? Well… She was top at defence against the dark arts, potions and herbology at Hogwarts. Mischa was also seeker in the Gryffindor quidditch team. Top since her father, in fact. Did… Did that count? However, those were wizarding terms lost on muggles, and Mischa spent a while trying to plug them into something recognizable from this world.

"I'm good at sports, chemistry and the b-botanical sciences. I scored top of my classes in all t-tt-t-three."

It was like she was in a job interview. Please hire me. Look, I'm not completely wrecked goods. I am useful for something. I can tend your gardens if you want? Fetch a ball? Juggle? Just don't kick me out, please.

"Ah, but being good at something does not equate to enjoying it. One can be good at chess, yet hate the game itself."

Mischa took the last gulp of her tea and placed the cup down, perhaps a little too hard by the way the glass chinked off the metal, but she blinked and picked and tatted and… Nothing came.

"I… I... I..."

Doctor Lecter reached over the distance between them, and she felt his large palm settle over her forearm. It was heavy and warm, thin fingered like her own, like nanny Annie's, and for the first time in a very long while, perhaps all the way back to since she could first remember, Mischa didn't want to snatch her own limb away from the touch. There was something reassuring in that large hand, in the nimble fingers, like a ship lost at sea, bobbing and swaying, and the hand an anchor, grounding Mischa through the rocky waves that had, since she had woken up in Saint Mungo's, been battering her left and right. For the first time, she felt calm.

"It is okay to say you do not know, Mischa. Perhaps, we can find something you enjoy together, yes?"

No, it was not okay to say she did not know. Not to Mischa. Saying she did not know to aunt Petunia or uncle Vernon meant pain and being thrown by the scruff of her neck right back into her cupboard. Saying she do not know at Hogwarts meant ridicule and disdain because, well, her mother and father had been so bright, so very fucking clever, and she was meant to be them, she was meant to fill their shoes and all she had was crooked chickens feet. Saying she did not know in the war meant death. So much death. So, no. Mischa didn't like saying she did not know, because not knowing meant pain and punishment and death.

Yet, it was the truth. Mischa did not know what she enjoyed, no one had ever thought to ask her before, and, truthfully, she did not know many things. She didn't know what it was like to have a normal family. She did not know what it was like to laugh without caution. She did not know what it was like to play tag, or hopscotch, or tea parties like all the other children. She did not know what other sixteen year old's did, or how they did it, or what they worried about, or why they worried at all, when they didn't have a megalomaniac hot on their tail. Mischa did not know.

And she realised, with a sense of dawning sunrise, what Doctor Lecter was really asking. He was not offering her a chance at figuring out what board games she liked. Neither was he offering her a chance to pick out a hobby. Nor was he offering the chance to discover her likes or dislikes. He was offering her a chance. Just a chance. A chance at taking back a life not lived, chances not taken, to see what, perhaps, it would be like with a family, what it would be like to have a home, a real one, to know what sixteen year old's, normal sixteen year old's, did and worried about, and to find out who she was without the all the looming shadows and smokes of war and death. A life outside of prophecies and the greater good. Mischa troubled her bottom lip, and although she let the question drift between them in the ticks of a clock somewhere back in the hallway, she already knew her answer to the unfired question.

"I-I think I would like that."

Doctor Lecter's respondent smile was one of happiness growing, like spring flowers in bloom. Mischa could see the bud from deep inside the glint of his dark eyes as it dispersed, like petals opening to sunbeams, into every other part of him. Mischa thought he might have been the type of person who smiled with more than his mouth, it was in every other part of him, his smile was in his voice, not his lips, and in the way his shoulders relaxed, and it was a beautiful smile. Like those resplendent antique mirrors Doctor Lecter had littered around his home, Mischa found herself reflecting it straight back.

"I know this is not an easy time for you. And I will not ask you to speak of it before you are ready. I also know I am nothing but a stranger to you, and as I have been..."

He seemed to search for the right word and, Mischa wondered, if he too felt slugs squelching between his fingers.

"Informed of your life thus far, I know you are at a disadvantage. However, I am hoping within time there might become some form of familiarity between us, if not kinship. I would very much like to get to know you, if you would allow me to."

Anew, Mischa kept quiet. If the truth was that there were many things she did not know, then, simultaneously, the truth was there were many things Doctor Lecter did not know. Of her? Only half truths, a dossier redacted with giant chunks of blacked out text in slicing crimson ink. And, truly, she believed Doctor Lecter would not want to know. Mischa sure didn't. Answers kill. In her repose, Doctor Lecter gracefully and tastefully pushed on.

"When I was young, I too lost my family. My father, sister and mo-… My father and sister died. I was orphaned. When I, myself, was sixteen, I was adopted by my own uncle, Robert and his wife, Lady Murasaki."

The similarities sat unpleasantly in her stomach, like rancid meat filled with squirming maggots that wiggled in the very nethermost of her intestines. Life was just a cycle, a never ending wheel, spokes spinning and spinning and spinning. Life liked repeating the same jokes, like the distant cousin who told the same jape every Christmas, although no one found it funny, less so seven years later. Alike a man who was orphaned and adopted by his own strange uncle, who later went on to adopt his own orphaned niece. Rinse. Repeat. Laugh.

"France."

Doctor Lecter cocked his brow at her.

"The little roll in your R's. A lingering French accent."

He patted her arm again before he went back to his chilled tea. The cup looked minuscule in his hands.

"There it is again, that keen eye. Yes, my uncle and aunt lived in France and I too enjoyed the country for a time before I emigrated to America. Have you ever been to France?"

No. This, Baltimore, America was the farthest Mischa had ever been, and even so, all she had thus far seen was an apparition point, a train, it's thronged station, Doctor Lecter's Bentley, and now, this house. But, again, the chance was there. She could go to Washington. The Grand Canyon. Yellow Stone park. Maybe, she could even go to the butterfly house in Ladew Topiary gardens, she had seen it advertised in a pamphlet lining the turnstiles of Penn Station. So many choices, so many chances. She felt overwhelmed. Now… Mischa had survived, barely, but she had and, now, of all times, she was realising what that meant. She was alive and she could travel, she could, without the fear of war or anything else, see and live. She could do it all. Of course, she said none of this.

"I knew a French woman and her sister. They trilled their R's the same way."

Mischa looked at Hannibal, really looked for the first time, jade eye to dark, and, there, arching around the pupil, she saw flecks of burgundy in his eye. The lambency of red comforted her more than it ever should. They, these two strangers, down to the bones of it, were not so different in the broad strokes of it all. Nevertheless, there was one difference. Mischa had killed Voldemort but she had not-… The Horcrux… She had continued-… She had enjo-… Don't think of it. Don't think of many things. Keep the redacted places of her memories as just that, blank spots in a vacuous void. Take the chance being offered to you. A chance to start again.

On the sixteenth tick of the clock in the hallway, Mischa opened up a little. It was riddled with stuttering and stammering, laden with repeated words caught in the web of her spluttering speech, a butterfly with a bent wing, but there it was, a part of herself, the only part she actually knew, a chip of truth that she had told no one before, something no one had asked of her before.

"I enjoy butterflies. I collect them sometimes, when and where I can. And… Peppermint tea dashed with honey. I like, uh, plants. I kept my aunt Petunia's garden for her and everybody used to say it was the best on the block."

It wasn't a brag or boast. There was no Dudley gloating in her voice. She told it very much like Doctor Lecter had spoken to her, as if it was a secret. Her gaze fell to her empty glass and she stared, reaching out to pick it up, watching as she swirled the dregs around the bottom.

"And that made you feel proud?"

Proud? Yes. Proud. She had felt proud. Sometimes, as with her imagination, Mischa had trouble controlling her emotions and putting names to their many faces. She felt them alright, more often not too much, too fucking much, but she had always had trouble saying when or how she was sad, or angry, or scared, and usually, like following the threads of her thoughts, the name of the emotion only came later, much later. When she had time to think clearly and look back and say, oh, that was what that was. Sometimes, she couldn't even do that and was only left with the phantom of the sensation.

"They didn't know it was me, of course. Petunia would only let me out the cupbo-… I used to do the gardening at night. So the neighbours wouldn't see. But… Yes. I think I was proud of it. Growing something with your own two hands, watching it bloom or flower or grow, there's something special in that, isn't there? Knowing it was you who did it, that is was your hands that allowed it to happen."

Doctor Lecter finished his own cup before he spoke, but, again, he was back to smiling. Mischa didn't meet his eyes again.

"There is something very special in it, indeed. I'll say, we have a garden in the back, and, unfairly, I have been undue to it. Perhaps tomorrow we can head to the market and pick up some tools and seeds, and you can build your very own garden here?"

Mischa's own garden, like in the cottage she pictured in her mind. She liked the thought of that. She liked it very much.

"Some Larkspur, lavender and violet prairie flowers would look nice, near the patio outside the dining room. They would settle with the blue and the green."

Hannibal poured them both some more tea. His forefinger brushed her own as she passed him the cup. Oddly, she didn't flinch.

"I take it purple is your favourite colour?"

Mischa shrugged. She liked every colour, as long as it wasn't white. However, yes. She liked purple more than the rest. Purple reminded her of sunset and sunrise. The shadows under eyes after sleepless nights. Hemlock blooming in shaded broken places. Bruises on skin. The reflection of the sky in the deepest part of water, rippling it to indigo. Eggplants fat and ripe. There was a bittersweetness about that colour purple. A bittersweet nostalgia that Mischa could appreciate all too well. Like the choir boy singing all by himself.

"I think so."

Hannibal's gaze drifted away and so did his voice, light and away. Stars in the night sky.

"It was my sisters too."

Slowly, Mischa stretched up, towards her neck, at the back, and unhooked the chain of the necklace hiding underneath her jumper. Taking the time to feel the heat of the gold, the weight of the locket, Mischa brushed her thumb over the face before she handed it over to Hannibal.

"Nanny Ann-… Ausra gave that to me before she died. I thought the picture inside was me-… Well, I think it rightfully belongs to you."

Hannibal took it from her and held it for a while before he popped the lock and gazed down at the pictures inside, two little black and white photos of children smiling, one gummy, one poised even for his young age. Mischa could still see the boy in the man, in the corner of his lip, the swish of his eyeline, in the places between places, where time could never fully reach. Slowly, he closed the locket, the snap of it sounded like a slamming door in the weighty silence, but instead of pocketing it like Mischa thought he would, he reached for her hand, placed it, still warm, in her palm and closed her fingers around it.

"No. It is yours. To remind you who you are, even if you do not share the name. A Lecter. You look precisely like her, if she had the time to bloom as you have..."

Hannibal trailed off, seemingly lost and Mischa felt like she was swelling. She was undecided with whether it was a good or bad impression. She supposed most feelings were like that, neither good nor bad, they just... were. Something, a lanky shadow of fine pressed lines and sharp corners, flickered in the corner of her eye. Mischa dared not look. Finally, Hannibal pulled his hand away and Mischa found herself putting the locket back on, swivelling in her seat just so, so the shadow was at her back.

"Best not dwell on times past. For, here with me now, is a Mischa all her own."

Hannibal lifted his cup of tea to hers, as she delicately clinked them together as if they were champaign flutes toasting. She didn't know whether they were toasting her, this Mischa, or the Mischa gone and dead long before her time, like so many others, or, perhaps, both. In the end, Mischa was okay with that. For, she knew, there was no singular place people went to die. They lived on, through them, us, for better for worse, they lived on. Stars in the sky and twinkles in the eye.

And that's what scared her most.

"How utterly heart-warming. But you are not quite your own, are you? I am here, after all. Do you really believe he would be toasting you if he knew the truth? I would, of course. All the lies and the tricks! Spectacular, really. Round of applause, my dear girl. I could not be prouder. Of course, I currently can't, being discorporated and what not, but you get my sentimentality, do you not, Mischa? What am I asking? Of course you do. You always have and you always will."

Over the rim of her glass, before tea could touch lip, Mischa whispered back to the shadow at her back. She knew his face was smiling. It was always bloody smiling lately.

"Fuck off, Tom."

Hannibal blinked at her.

"Excuse me?"

And Mischa smiled as if nothing was wrong, even when, after she spoke, Tom's voice rang with laughter, matching the tick of the clock, the clink of glass and the tip, tap, tat of her tongue. Bastard.

"I said where's this tea from? It's lovely."

QUICK UPDATE: As you can likely tell, there's been a little bit of a change in plans on the whole pairing side. Last chapter I did say Mischa would have no pairing, but well, I couldn't help myself lmao. So, Tom Riddle is in this fic, surprise! Although, I do want to point out this isn't an hallucination, or some psychosis Mischa is going through. I will explain what and how Tom Riddle is there, through this fic, but she isn't imagining him.

As for the reason I've decided to pair Tom with Mischa, I think its sort of poetic, in a way, Tom and Mischa sort of mirror each other like Hannibal and Will, and there's a sort of symmetry between that reflection I really like in my writing. I don't want to give too much away, of course, like how Tom survived and all that, but, there it is. I just wanted to keep you guys informed encase you missed the change in the pairings in the summary, don't like this pairing, and then become upset when it happens. So, if you don't like it, I don't blame you, this is not going to be a fluffy romance, no good Tomarry romances should be in my book, let alone one set in Hannibal's world, but it's the direction I'm taking as it's going to be fun exploring and fits in well with the theme, feel and scope of this fic I'm aiming for.

As for face claims, I rather like the thought of Natsya Kusakina for Mischa, she has a child-like innocence about her, and Tom Hughes for Tom Riddle. Who do you guys picture when you think of Tom Riddle? Or even Mischa?

Thank you all for the wonderful reviews, follows and favourites. I've literally re-read each review over and over again when writing this chapter up, and they all made me smile, so, really thank you! I hope you enjoyed this chapter and what is to come, and as always, if you can spare the time, have something to say, or just even a smiley face to let me know you enjoyed the chapter, hit up a review.