Infatuation made me careless - or maybe it made me optimistic. After Jimmy and I kissed I stopped being able to see why we shouldn't at least make our friendship public, and I began to spend the occasional breakfast at the Ravenclaw table and the occasional evening up in the Ravenclaw tower, learning new card games from Jimmy and his friends. His friends were nice, which was a personality trait so rare in Slytherin that it took me a while to realize they weren't talking about me behind my back. They welcomed me into their common room and into their lives without once referring to the fact that I was a Slytherin and, more controversially, from the house of Black.

Why couldn't the Slytherins behave with such grace, I began to wonder. If we could all just forget ourselves, if we could just wake up one morning not knowing who we were and who were were supposed to hate, maybe the world would be better.

Tom and Abraxas didn't say anything at first. I assumed mistakenly that my new habit of fraternizing with the Ravenclaws wasn't a big deal to them - historically, Slytherin had always had the closest relationship with Ravenclaw, although this just meant that we tolerated them instead of hating their guts. Unfortunately, it turned out that Tom and Abraxas were just in shock and had been plotting all along to confront me. The confrontation took place within the week at Potions as the three of us set about preparing Dragon Tranquilizer.

"What the fuck are you doing, Alfie?" said Abraxas ten minutes into class. Tom, who had probably envisioned a different style of intervention, sighed.

I frowned. "I'm sticking one hundred sea urchin spines into this cow's heart like the recipe says," I said. "Did I miss something?"

"No, I mean with the fraternizing!" hissed Abraxas in the loudest whisper possible. "The fraternizing with the enemy!"

"Fraternizing?" I looked to Tom for help, but he seemed preoccupied with examining the cauldron and didn't meet my gaze. I turned back to Abraxas, who'd begun furiously chopping onions. "It's not like I'm mingling with Gryffindors or Hufflepuffs. Come on, Brax, they're Ravenclaws. Historically they're our best friends! Wait, are you crying, Brax? Are you seriously crying over this?"

Abraxas was wiping tears from his eyes with the sleeves of his robes. "It's the onions," he said angrily, "Don't flatter yourself."

Slughorn passed by our table to inspect our progress and spotted Abraxas still wiping away his tears. "Are you crying, boy?" he boomed, inviting laughter from the rest of the classroom. "It's the onions!" yelled Abraxas at the tittering crowd.

"Look," said Abraxas quietly once Slughorn had passed. "It's just that Tom and I had an idea for a thing we could all do while you were off cavorting with your 'new friends'. This thing is brilliant but it has to be kept secret, meaning no Ravenclaws involved."

"What is it?" I asked.

Tom finally looked up from stirring the cauldron. "I want to start a duelling club," he said, and grinned.


If I'd known at the age of fifteen what life really is I'd never have gone with Jimmy Leigh to Fort William that Saturday. "Sorry Jimmy", I'd have said, "I like you, in fact I like you a whole lot, but we have to stop seeing each other now because life is a farce." Maybe then I'd have been allowed to turn around and walk back into the Slytherin common room and the alternate timeline, the one where I go on to play Quidditch for England and Tom becomes Minister for Magic and we live to two hundred and fifty and spend our last years shaking our canes at little children running by on the street.

But how could I have known at that point to turn back from what was in store for us? Things had always been so easy.


That Saturday after Quidditch practice, fifteen year old me changed into Muggle clothes and led sixteen year old Jimmy Leigh on an exhilarating ride down the secret tunnel behind the One Eyed Witch. I grabbed his hand as we snuck out of Honeydukes more to coordinate our movement than anything, but when I let go once we were in the clear, he reached for my hand again and held it tight.

It was a foggy day, with limitless grey skies and air that smelt of rain. We ran till the village and castle were left behind and all that was remained were rolling, empty highlands stretching to infinity. "This was what the bottom of the ocean must feel like," I said to Jimmy, staring up at the sky. He yanked at my hand and pulled me to the ground with him. We lay spread eagled on the grass, nestled between mountains.

"Now we're starfish," he said. He let go of my hand and turned my palm over in his, tracing the grooves with his fingers. "What's this?" he asked, pausing at an old scar.

I had forgotten about that scar. It had been part of my body for so long that it was no different to me than the skin on which it was etched.

"I made a blood brothers pact with someone a long time ago," I said.

"Who?" asked Jimmy, astonished. "I thought I was your only Muggle born friend."

I shook my head. "Can't tell you who he is, I'm afraid. He wouldn't want anyone to know where he's from."

"Slytherin pride," muttered Jimmy. I withdrew my hand and laid it on the grass. Tom would have been so bored in this endless space, I thought. He'd have spent days figuring out how to apparate and then risk getting spliced just to avoid having to walk two hours across this glen. I chuckled at the thought.

"What are you laughing at?" asked Jimmy. "Nothing," I said. I got to my feet and offered him a hand. "You ready?"

We trekked across the highlands till we reached the Muggle town. We found a deli where we bought sandwiches and crisps and a giant carton of Lucky Strikes and walked to the loch to eat and feed the swans. All afternoon we roamed the cobbled streets of Fort William, ducking into different pubs to drink the beers we'd wanted to get the first time we met. When it began to drizzle that evening a tipsy Jimmy pulled me into a cab telling me he wanted to show me a Muggle form of magic, and we made the driver drive around town for no reason other than for me to feel the engine purr beneath us. I had to admit, I was impressed.

In another life, I'm sure Jimmy and I could have fallen in love and lived good lives together. I knew it when we dove out of the cab and into the drizzling rain, laughing as the confused cab driver slammed the doors and sped away before we could change our minds about not wanting to embark on a thirteenth round of the town. In an alleyway hidden from prying Muggle eyes I looked at his kind, clever face and his laughing mouth and felt a fondness that made me lean down and kiss him. He kissed me back, at first with his usual gentleness, then rougher than ever before, hard enough for me to taste the day we'd had - the rain, the smoke, the salt in our food - on his tongue.

I felt his hands dance around my waist and press through my soaked shirt, coming to rest on my belt buckle. He said nothing but his kiss was a question that asked for permission. "Please," I said through ragged breaths. "I want you." He undid my belt and fell to his knees.


By the time we crawled back up the One Eyed Witch and slid her into place behind us it was midnight. The walk back across the highlands had been more difficult than the journey to Fort William; the rain had muddied the ground, and we had had to walk quite a distance under the moonless sky, stumbling into puddles and pits in the dark, before we could pull out our wands and light up the path without worrying about Muggles. And yet it hadn't been unpleasant. Buoyed by the day we'd had and Jimmy's company I'd felt like I was floating over the glen, high above the splashing mud and the nettles that stung my exposed ankles.

We kissed goodnight at the end of the third floor corridor. "Today was perfect," I whispered.

"Can I see you tomorrow?" he murmured back. Then he froze. "Fuck. Prefect."

I whipped around. "Tom?" The silhouette was unmistakable; The prefect who'd caught us sneaking back into the castle was Tom. At first I was relieved that we were going to get off easily, but then the light shifted and I saw the expression on his face.

For a few seconds Tom just stared at us. He took in our muddy muggle attire, his gaze lingering on my half-done belt and the popped buttons of my shirt. Then, with an impossible lack of emotion, or even of recognition that he was talking to me, his best friend since the age of eleven, he said, "One hundred points from Slytherin for violating curfew." He went on in that terrible, dead voice. "A further hundred points from Slytherin for leaving castle grounds without permission. And detention, of course." His gaze turned to Jimmy. It became a look of pure loathing. "Same for Ravenclaw. Good luck explaining to your housemates tomorrow morning why you're in last place." Then he turned on his heel and walked away.

I ran after him. "Don't," I told Jimmy, who'd tried to follow us. "I'll sort this out. Go back to the dorms."

Jimmy hesitated. "Are you sure?" he asked. He looked frightened.

"Yes," I said. "I'll see you tomorrow."

I caught up with Tom at the end of the corridor, grabbed him by the shoulder and spun him around.

"What is wrong with you?" I searched his face for the stirrings of remorse, or embarrassment at how he'd overreacted, but his grey eyes were unyielding.

"You violated the school rules," he said.

"And you, a prefect, have plans to start an underground duelling club," I shot back.

"Says who?"

I felt the urge to pull my wand out and hex him. A neat application of Wingardium Leviosa would lifted him into the air, flipped him upside down and shaken some recognition onto his infuriatingly blank face. "Are you mad I'm hanging out with a Ravenclaw - is that it?" I struggled to keep my voice down. "I thought you were better than the other Slytherins. Why can't we all just get along?"

He stared at me as if I was the one who was being obtuse. Then, slowly, deliberately, measuring each word, he said something I'd heard many, many times before but never from his mouth. He said, "I will not be friends with mudbloods."

Something flickered in his eyes then. Maybe he'd realized he'd said something he couldn't take back, maybe it was something else. I suddenly found that I didn't care to find out; He'd crossed a line and I was done. "So be it," I said, pushing past him. So be it.

Alone, I walked back to the Slytherin common rooms where there wasn't a single person I could talk to about what had just happened. I took a shower, threw out my soiled muggle clothes, and went straight to bed. By the time I woke up the next morning the alternate timeline - the good one, the happy one - had already cracked like ice and slipped away.