Winterverse Chapter 4: Flightless Bird, a harry potter fanfic

Happy Thanksgiving :) A ficlet about one Quentin Quirke, and the girls important to him.

Have I found you

Flightless bird, grounded,

bleeding or lost you,

American mouth

Big pill stuck going down…

Flightless Bird

By May

Quentin Quirke had always been a nice, selfless boy, something that didn't always happen with youngest children. He and his siblings had defied all of the prescribed birth order personality types, though. As the oldest, his brother Xander had been the raucous, rebellious one, up until his untimely end at the hands of Death Eaters. His middle sister Orla was the odd, outgoing and talkative one, the only one of them with the magical genes, and at the end of the short line there was Quentin. Even-tempered, good-natured, introverted Saint Quentin. Perhaps it was because he'd battled and survived cancer at such a young age, it made him grateful for his life, made him look on the bright side of things. Whatever it was, everyone who knew him agreed, Quentin Quirke was a great kid to have around.

He didn't live with his sister anymore, not since she'd moved in with Ginny Weasley. Orla was grateful to him, but she didn't want Quentin to feel responsible for her now that Rabastan was in prison, not when he was still only sixteen. And so he'd taken up with Michael Corner, the two roommates running a food point out of the ground floor of their apartment building. The rebuilding of London was going better than expected, but the world was still a place of ruins. Death Eaters had destroyed the economy, rebuilt it to Voldemort's design, and then that had very nearly been destroyed again in the third war. As such, various spots had been set up around the city by the Ministry, where survivors of the war could at least be guaranteed groceries until a more stable economy was in place. Fresh things were carted in from the countryside, along with whatever else non-perishable remained in the city.

Normally, Quentin was kept very busy at his job. He might have been a muggle and as such, limited in this magical world, but there was still plenty to do. Case in point: driving. He may not have had his license when Voldemort killed a third of the entire human population, but he understood how cars worked and as one of the few muggles still alive in London, that made him quite the rare being indeed. On this particular Saturday in early November Quentin was making deliveries, and his last of the day was to Ginny's.

He pulled his van up between the two stone houses that evening, hauling out boxes of canned goods and fresh vegetables and stacking them by the back door.

"As reliable as the sunset, you are." Ginny proclaimed, standing in the door frame. Quentin just smiled cheerily, his mop of light brown hair mussed and his smile lop-sided.

"Gotta make sure you're feeding my big sister and all," He replied, stacking the last box of produce in the chilly air. "Got the new fridge all charmed yet?"

"Just about," Ginny nodded, "I'll be able to have these veggies nice and cold by tomorrow," She grinned, "Now go on in and see your family, Oubby's been asking where her uncle's been hiding out."

Parting with a dramatic bow, Quentin swept into the old house, looking around for a few moments to get his bearings. The two houses Ginny had procured were massive old estates, the kind his mum had once drooled over in decorating magezines. They were pretty enough he supposed, especially with all the warm, homey touches Ginny and the other girls had brought to them, but they were still a bit confusing to navigate. Soon enough though he found his sister in one of the many parlors, knitting by the fireplace. Oubliette was off somewhere playing with some new friend or another, while Antoine was fast asleep in his bunting by Orla's feet. Quentin stooped to kiss the sleeping infant, before kissing his sister on the cheek.

"You're early this week!" Orla noted with delight, and Quentin shrugged his lanky, teenage shoulders.

"Got all the rest done quick, I guess," He sat down on the floor in front of the fire, taking off his fingerless gloves and warming up his hands, "How's your week been?"

"Oh fine," Orla said lightly, returning to her knitting. She grinned, rather secretively. "The Ministry recently said that if anyone who was unable to finish their education before the war wished to take exams, they'd have a program set up for testing by spring time. I've got all the books together, so I can study properly for my NEWTs."

"Orla, that's wonderful!" Quentin exclaimed happily, "You can get your diploma after all!"

"I know!" She squealed, "And…well, it's not like there are any universities right now, aside from the one Voldemort founded, and that's currently closed. But there will be someday!" She said firmly. "I'm going to get as full an education as I can, and start making a difference, like everyone else."

"That's the Ravenclaw I know," Quentin grinned. He may not have ever gone to Hogwarts himself of course, but his sister was his best friend, and he knew all about it, about how much she had loved learning. She grinned back at him.

"Plus, you know," Orla sighed, "It's a good way to keep busy." Until Rabastan came back. In ten years. Quentin reached up and gave one of her hands a squeeze.

"Definitely." He nodded. Orla smiled at her little brother.

"And what have you been up to this week, kid?"

"Oh you know," Quentin replied lazily, "Daring adventures, death-defying feats, rummaging through the remains of human society in search of viable canned goods. Hunting with one of the last working muggle rifles. That sort of thing…"

"They're letting you use a GUN?!" Orla exclaimed, sitting up straight. Antoine whimpered in his sleep, and she quieted, though her rage stayed hot. "You're barely 16! Those things…shoot! And…hurt people!"

"Should I try my hand with a wand?" Quentin cracked, unaffected by her outburst. "Fresh meat is hard to come by, Orla. The Loyalists had farms set up, but that was to feed a much smaller population, THEIR population, certainly not our lot. Even with rationing, and food charms, we need as much as we can get."

"I know, I know," Orla sighed, "But couldn't they get someone older to do the…shooting guns part?"

"Plenty of people out hunting are older," Quentin shrugged, "I'm a muggle though, I know how triggers and levers work." He paused, tilting his head, "Who knew all that stuff in shop class would become so vital to my survival one day?"

"Oi, certainly not your teachers," Orla sat back, defeated. "Please tell me you're being careful?"

"Always!" Quentin assured her brightly. His sister was only half-way amused, but she let the subject go for the time being. They chattered aimlessly about this and that for a while, how his friends were, how he was getting on in a magical world, how her children were, and so on. After a while though, Antoine began to stir in his blankets, and Orla set aside her knitting.

"I'll need to feed him," She bent down to pick her baby up, moving toward the door heading for the kitchen, "You'll be about for a while?"

"Yup, don't have anywhere else to be." Her brother replied, and Orla moved on to fix her son a bottle. Quentin looked back at the fire for a while, adding a log and sitting back against Orla's abandoned chair. It was nice to be in the warm room, all cheery and full of books and blankets and a few scattered kids toys. He liked rooming with Michael Corner, but their flat had definitely become a guy's domain. Functional and messy and decidedly lacking in any kind of décor. This place felt like a home.

"Hello, Quentin Quirk-a-werk," A disjointed voice greeted him in the warm glow of the fire and the lamps, and Quentin smiled at the familiar sound.

"Hello Bianca," Quentin replied to the tall, red-headed waif who was wandering into the room. He was quite used to the oddity that was Bianca Dunstan, former spouse and prisoner of Antonin Dolohov. She was two years older than him, newly eighteen, but whenever she was around Quentin felt as if he were talking to someone much younger. She even looked younger than she was, perhaps thirteen or fourteen, wearing a dress two sizes too big for her over jeans. She actually reminded Quentin of how Orla's friend Luna had once been…but there was a macabre undertone to Bianca's oddity that Luna didn't have, and they all knew where it had come from. "How are you today?"

"Oh, ya know," Bianca sing-songed in reply, sitting down across from him in front of the hearth. Close enough to talk, but not close enough to touch. Not that Quentin would try that anyway. "Planet's still spinning. Leaves change colors and fall off…" She trailed off, and then grinned, "Andrei has mastered the more difficult details of the loo!" Quentin laughed.

"Congratulations!" He said brightly, "I know that was a long and complicated battle."

"So very for me, imagine for him!" She sighed, "He is playing with his new little friends now. They are like little fairythings. All small and dressed in little doll clothes…" Her voice drifted off along with her thoughts, as she gazed into the fire, twirling her hair around her fingertips, and Quentin sighed. He knew it was more than trauma that had made Bianca the way she was, though that certainly hadn't helped. She'd also had her mind altered over and over again by various hexes, and no one knew quite how bad the damage was, or if it could be reversed. When she'd been rescued, she could barely string words together coherently, and had a terrible memory. Though she was certainly not dangerously altered (the Ministry wouldn't have let her near her stepson if that were the case), most still looked at her as a hopeless case, one they loved no less.

Quentin, however, thought he could see an improvement. Bianca was managing complete sentences, for one. And she was remembering things much better. The first dozen times she'd seen him, she hadn't remembered who he was at all. But now she was remembering conversations they'd had, and had even asked Orla in the past when he was going to be visiting. Those were all good signs, and Quentin wasn't going to give up on her.

"Speaking of dolls," He cleared his throat, knowing Michael would likely never let him live it down if he found out about this venture, but going forward anyway. Bianca turned her wide eyes back upon him, expectant, "You remember the last time I dropped by? What I promised you?"

Bianca frowned for a moment, tilting her head to the side. Then her lips spread in a dazzling smile, and Quentin couldn't help returning it. When she had genuine emotions, it was infectious, "You promised you would let me show you my paper dolls, the next time you came to visit."

"I did," He nodded, running a hand through his mop of hair, "And I'm here now!"

"So you are!" Bianca giggled delightedly, bounding over to the sofa nearby. She rummaged around underneath it for a few moments, before producing a small shoebox, which she carried back over to the fireplace. Bianca then proceeded to very carefully open the box, and place its various occupants gently on the carpeted floor. "This one is your sister." She said very seriously, indicating a paper maiden who'd been snipped from an old issue of Witch's Weekly, "I've made her the most darling little paper dresses!"

"Looks just like her," Quentin told Bianca earnestly, nodding at the paper doll with approval. Bianca's face lit up like the sun again, and Quentin was sure he could sit through all the child-like, frou-frou nonsense in the world if it produced that reaction in the abused, formerly-listless girl. Without realizing it, he'd made her his sister as well, and if there was one thing the young man had lots of experience with, it was looking after his sister. "Is that one Ginny?"

"Yes yes!" Bianca bounced a little on her knees, setting down the next red-headed paper person, "Like the paper people we all are, so easily swept up by wind and into flames! But we are pretty in our ephemeral states, aren't we?"

"Yeah," Quentin nodded, eyebrows lifting. He actually understood that. And agreed. "We really are…"

A half-hour later Orla and Ginny stood just inside the doorframe, watching the two younger teenagers sit on the floor, playing with paper dolls. Ginny could only shake her head in disbelief, arms crossed. "Blimey," She whispered, "Your brother has really got a gift with people, you know that?"

"Yeah," Orla grinned, gently lifting Antoine onto her shoulder and patting him on the back for his after-dinner burping. "He really does. He's a good kid, that one."

~ Fin

Author's Notes: May your holiday-times be fabulous :)