AN/ Sorry it took so long, but life can be a quite a bit nasty thing to handle.

Well, I don't have English as my maternal language so please be lenient with my grammar and let me know if you do find mistakes so I can correct them.

Disclaimer: Sadly I own neither Harry Potter nor Thor.

Testing Waters

I would have never guessed, that a talk could be that exhausting. Well, talk and late lunch, but still. After depositing my robes, I poured myself a glass of a scotch.

It was a strange awkward meeting, but maybe, just maybe I had just gained my own family. It certainly seemed that Andromeda took to me by the time I left. She reminded me of many things I would rather forget and we created a plan of joined care here in England for now and planned our summer. Black villa in Greek does sound so lovely, that I can hardly wait.

As exhausting as the transformation from strangers to family seems, it certainly is worth it, I thought as I sipped on my scotch. And as tired as I felt there was a lot to do. Hmm, where to start?

"Petal!" I called. She appeared silently and gave me a curtsy. Her ears flapped as she lowered her head in it. She looked a bit surreal. A house-elf in a red dress, short-sleeved dress with v-neck and golden embroidery. A stag stood proudly on her chest with lilies on its antlers and little lilies decorating hems of the dress. At least we were able to work out the uniform loophole.

"Master called?"

I managed not to sigh. I hated being called that, but if anyone found how to get house-elf to not call them master, they sure as hell did not share that knowledge. Petal was the last remaining Potter house-elf. She lived quietly forgotten about, taking care of my various properties including apparently the ones I inherited after Sirius. I found her, when Mrs. Malfoy asked me, if it was possible for her and Draco to stay in one of them for a while, which ended with her giving me a tour through them.

"Yes, on my invisibility cloak lies a wand and a stone. Please find a place, where no one would find them and hide them… No, not together, but at different places. But this is important Petal when I say no one I mean it. Not me and certainly no dark wizard or a power-hungry idiot. You can drop them down into Mount Vesuvius crater if you think it'll do the trick"

So that was out of the way. 'Good! Now to the other things.' I drowned the rest of my scotch and got up. It was time to go on a walk. Absentmindedly I summoned a wallet. Walk would surely help me clear my head and I should probably buy a journal or something like that and a ballpoint pen. Lots of ballpoint pens, Merlin, how I missed these. And as opposed to a computer, these won't short circuit on me. But they certainly will improve my handwriting. Maybe I should find a spell to create a dicta-pen, but then again… no, I would feel like an idiot dictating it and one can never know, who might overhear.

I opened the door and was greeted with a beautiful sunny day, which in the somewhat shabby Grimmauld place looked quite anticlimactic. This place must have once been a good neighbourhood, but it looked like these times were long gone and nobody has even tried to maintain it since. Well, it matters not. I move through it quickly enough and it is not like I have any wish to stay in England anyway. Although giving an anonymous gift for the cultivation of this place might not be such a bad idea either.

After a while of wandering through the city, I came upon an old but homely looking stationery shop. It turned out to be just the place. I brought a deep red leather diary with latch and lots of pens. I was briefly disappointed, that they haven't got green one, but I supposed that most of my acquaintances would find me having a green one strange, so it actually was quite all right.

I wandered through London for a bit longer, until I came upon a nice looking cafe. I ordered myself a tea - blueberry hill and a blueberry muffin. Here in one of London's quiet oasis from the city rush, all my worries seemed so surreal, that I quietly hummed to myself as I opened my journal and begin writing: "I was falling. I was falling. Falling so fast, that the stars become shining…"

I thanked the waitress, who brought me my order and sipped on my tea, scalding my tongue. Ah, well, but as I glanced on what I have written so far, I found a new appreciation for a muggle ball-pens. Honestly, even, if we leave the impractical inkwells out of it, it still is awesome how much easier, they are for use. Simply neat.

I carefully took another sip of my tea and bit into my muffin, before returning to my writing. It didn't seem so terrible from there, but that might have been just because I have not started with my research yet. Or it might have been the muffin and tea.