"Good morning, Sunshine!" I sang as Ben shuffled into the breakfast room, sitting down in the seat across from me with a grunt. "What's that about?"

Ben ripped open three packets of artificial sweetener at once and dumped them into his coffee, making far too much noise with his stirring. I waited patiently, sipping my tea while my friend worked himself out of his strop. "I don't know if I'm cut out for a long-distance relationship," he finally said.

"Oh? What makes you say that?" I settled more comfortably in my chair and poured a bit more tea from the pot into my cup. I had the feeling that this could be a long conversation.

"Well, last night I decided I'd give Gavin a call. You know, see what he was up to, get to know him a bit better, maybe … you know." Ben looked to the side and raised an eyebrow.

"A little bit of phone sex?"

"What do you know about phone sex?"

"Quite a lot lately, as it turns out." I gave him a grin that seemed to lift his spirits a bit and he took a bite out of a danish, grinning back at me as he chewed.

"Really? I would have thought that wizards have something … different."

"Well, some can send messages back and forth with their Patronuses, but that's a bit difficult to be sexy with, especially over long distances. My brother George has a few things. He's got a line of naughty Daydream Charms and he's been working on an enchanted parchment."

"Daydream Charms, you say?"

I shook my head, knowing what he was going to ask next. "They don't work on Muggles. Sorry."

"What about that enchanted parchment? Have you tried it out?"

"No. It's a bit too close to that diary I told you about."

"Oh. Sorry."

I waved my hand at him and drank some more tea. "So, how did it go? Did you 'get to know him better'?"

Ben sighed and shook his head. "No. It was awkward. You know how you're with someone in person and you just click? But then when you try to recapture whatever was there, it's just not?" I nodded, my heart breaking a little bit for him. "It was kind of like that when I called him. It was like I was intruding or something, you know?"

"Oh, love, I'm sorry. Maybe he was having an off night or a bad day?"

He shrugged and put on a brave face. "Well, it's not the first time something like that has happened. I'm sure it won't be the last. How was your night? Was Harry able to dig something up on our dead guy?"

I let Ben change the subject, sure that Dr Gavin would come up again and nodded. "Yes, he found out a few things. Remember that the lieutenant said that Eliza and Joshua lived on Orange Street? Well, Harry found out that it's called Washington Street now."

Ben frowned as he finished his pastry. "That's a huge street. It's going to take all day."

I pulled out my phone and went to my notes I'd jotted down in the morning. "According to Harry, the bit that used to be Orange Street is just a few blocks, so we should be all right." Ben looked at my notes and took out his own phone, looking at a map.

"Essex to East Berkeley? Oh. You know what's there?"

"No." I leaned forward, looking at the map he showed me. "Tufts Medical Center? Oh, I'm sure there's no way that's anywhere near where we're looking for."

"I bet you it is."

"Well, it's a good thing I'm not a betting woman, then." Ben narrowed his eyes at me and drank more of his coffee, setting the cup down in the saucer with a snap.

"Have you spoken to our friend this morning?"

"No, he hasn't materialized yet. I've got the box here, though." I patted my pocket, hoping that Lieutenant Hammond would be showing up soon.

"Well, I'm going to get some bacon and some eggs. It looks like we have a long day ahead of us and I can't run on danish alone."

After sitting in the cozy breakfast room, I wasn't looking forward to going back out into the Boston cold, but I felt the snuff box in my pocket and girded my loins, adding a tee shirt to the layers underneath my jumper. I wound my wooly scarf securely around my neck and tightened the laces on my waterproof boots.

"All right, Lieutenant Hammond. Let's send you onwards," I said, nodding at my reflection in the mirror. I looked like I was going on an artic expedition and Ben raised his eyebrows when he saw me.

"Okay, I don't know where you're going, but I'm going to catch the T to Chinatown. Um, feel free to come with me," he said, showing me the map. "Look, it's right at Essex and Washington."

"Oh, brilliant. Shall we?" We linked arms and headed out on what would hopefully be our last adventure, joining the masses of commuters on the T. A few minutes later, we emerged from the underground station and I shivered just as a burst of frigid air hit me full in the face.

"What about our friend?" Ben asked as we headed down Washington Street, stepping carefully around slushy piles of dirty snow.

"I hope he turns up soon."

"Can you call him?"

"Well, why don't I just ring him up on my ghost phone?" I said tartly.

"No need to get snippy. I just meant that maybe if you opened up the little box or something maybe he'd hear you?"

I stopped in my tracks, mouth falling open. "That's actually a really good idea."

"Thank you." He looked up and down the sidewalk. It was a little busy, so he led me off to the side, closer to a little brick plaza with a plaque about a tree. "I'll shield you."

Feeling more than a bit ridiculous, I pulled the beautiful silver box out of my jeans pocket, looking at the "H" carved into the lid. I flipped it open and held it up near my face, clearing my throat. "Lieutenant Hammond, can you hear me? We're going to need your help here in a few minutes." I glanced over at Ben. He was standing with his arms crossed, doing his best to look menacing. Normally I would have said he was as menacing as a golden retriever puppy, but he was actually making a good job of it. "So if you could, um, come out, I'd really appreciate it."

I waited a moment, senses on high alert, before closing the lid and putting the box back in my pocket. "Well?" Ben asked, looking around the area with narrowed eyes.

"I put in my call. We'll see if he answers, I guess." I jammed my hands in my pockets and bounced up and down on the balls of my feet. "Let's give him a few minutes. I don't want to get further down the street and have to come back or miss the place." To pass the time, I looked down at the plaque on the ground. "Sons of Liberty? Who're they?" I said aloud, startled when Lieutenant Hammond answered me.

"A gang of underground rabble-rousers," he said, looking down at the plaque with a look of distaste. "There was an elm tree here that they used to hang effigies of those that agreed with the right and lawful decrees of King George."

"Oh, there you are," I said, ignoring his comment about the colonial rebels. "Listen, we're going to walk down this street here. According to Harry, the place where Eliza died should be somewhere around here. I need you to tell me when we're close, all right?"

The lieutenant nodded somberly and squared his shoulders. "Yes. I would like this business … concluded."

"Is he here?" Ben asked, blowing on his hands to warm them.

"Yes. Shall we?"

"Hold on. I'm going in there and getting us some coffee." He ducked into a donut shop, coming out a few minutes later with two steaming cups of coffee and handed me one. It was just the way I liked it and I kissed him on the cheek.

"Let's go." We set off down the street, staying on the right side after a short consultation with our ghost. We passed several small, rather shabby storefronts and soon we could see Tufts Medical Center looming up ahead. "Anything?" I asked after we passed a 99-cent shop.

Lieutenant Hammond paused for a moment, floating in place. "I feel something, something pulling at me."

"Ahead? Behind?"

"Ahead." He floated forward, leaving me and Ben behind.

"He says he feels something pulling him forward."

"It's gonna be somewhere in Tufts, I'm telling you."

I was beginning to think he was right, but I was damned if I'd give him the satisfaction of saying so. "We'll see."

As we got closer to the medical center, the traffic on the pavement increased and Hammond simply passed through the people, causing several of them to stop in their tracks and look around, clearly alarmed at the sensation of a ghost passing through them. We'd reached a statue of a bear that had a crowd of people around it taking pictures when the lieutenant stopped, turning slowly in place. I touched Ben on the shoulder as I watched the ghost.

"Do you feel something?" I murmured, trying to look like I was speaking to the living, breathing man standing next to me and not some spot in midair.

"I feel an … energy. It feels like her," Hammond said, his voice sounding distant. I looked closely at him, checking to see if he was getting fuzzy at the edges like he had before or if he was exhibiting any extra color, but he still looked gray and translucent.

"Can you tell a direction?"

Lieutenant Hammond looked at me like he'd just remembered my existence and he drifted forward, passing through a group of children who were posing in front of the bear statue. They all jumped and shrieked just as their picture was taken. I grabbed Ben's arm and pulled him along with me as I followed the ghost towards an entrance of the hospital.

"See! I told you!" Ben hissed as Lieutenant Hammond disappeared through the wall of the hospital.

"Fine! I'll buy you a donut! Come on!" I dragged him through the entrance to something called the Floating Hospital for Children.

"Oh, this place is awesome!" Ben said, looking around in awe. We were in a reception area with a wide, horseshoe-shaped desk crammed full of the usual assortment of papers, baskets and computers, but instead of dull, industrial-colored walls, these walls were covered in whimsical murals featuring different sorts of woodland creatures, all of whom seemed to be recovering from one injury or other.

Acutely aware of the staff and our lack of an ill child, I took Ben's hand and led him off to one side of the large reception area. "Ben, we're sticking out like a couple of sore thumbs," I whispered.

"Where did the ghost go?" he whispered back.

"I don't know. He shot in here so quick."

"Well now what do we do?"

"We have to find him, don't we? I don't think he can do anything without me there."

"So what are we waiting for?"

I sighed and waved the hand not holding my coffee between us. "Look at us. We look like parents, not doctors. We can't just go roaming around like this."

"Okay, so we need to look like we belong here. Can't you …" he said, twitching his nose and waving a finger in the air.

"Not in the middle of the reception area!" I glanced over at the main desk, glad that no one appeared to be looking at us. "Let's duck into a loo and I'll see what I can do."

"Oh, Mrs Potter, are you sure your husband won't mind?" Ben simpered at me, putting his finger against his lips.

"It's a good thing my husband trusts me implicitly, Mr Frye. Come on." We followed the signs to the restrooms and I ducked into the ladies, motioning Ben in once I verified it was empty and then locked the door with my wand. I looked at our reflections in the mirror, planning out the transfiguration in my mind.

"Here, put your gloves in your coat pocket and take off your hat," I said, following suit. "I'm not going to do our boots; no one notices those anyway."

"Speak for yourself, missy," Ben said, ruffling his fingers through his short blond hair.

Ignoring him for the moment, I visualized what I wanted and executed the spell, transforming our warm winter clothes into scrubs and white coats, making us look like any one of the hundred other doctors crawling over the place. After a moment's thought, I conjured up a couple of clipboards as well.

"You are amazing," Ben said, smoothing down the front of the dark blue scrub top. I'd conjured one with bunnies all over it for myself. "It feels like scrubs!"

"Well, that's because it is. I haven't just changed how it looks. I've actually changed your coat into that lab coat and your jumper and jeans into those scrubs," I said, basking in his amazement.

"And you can turn it all back?"

"Of course."

"Amazing." He looked down at the clipboard and frowned. "What's written on here? Goblin wars?"

"Just some boring stuff from magical history. Come on, I want this over with." I unlocked the door and poked my head out. "The coast is clear. Let's go." We quickly exited the loo and headed down a hallway, away from the reception area.

"Where do you think he might be?" Ben asked out of the side of his mouth. He was doing a good job of looking like a busy doctor as he walked, flipping back and forth through the papers on the clipboard.

"I'm assuming somewhere on the ground floor. Eliza might have died on the first floor, sorry, second floor of her house, but that could be in the middle of the air by now, you know?" I said, nodding to a nurse as we passed.

"Oh God, I hope she didn't die in the ductwork!"

"Pretty sure she wasn't a squirrel. Let's check in here." I opened a door, peering into a storage closet full of clean linens and no ghost. Shaking my head at Ben, we moved on, taking quick looks into the open doors we passed, trying to look much too busy to be interrupted. Most of the rooms were occupied by children surrounded by tubes and machines and my heart went out to them.

There was a nurse's station ahead in front of some imposing double doors and I nudged Ben toward one side of the wide hallway. "Game plan?"

Ben looked at the nurse's station through narrowed eyes. "I think we'll be all right if we walk quickly and don't really look at them. Channel Dr Potter on a bad day."

"That should be pretty easy." I took a deep breath and nodded. "All right." As it turned out all of that worry was for nothing because the nurses at the station didn't even look up as we sailed past and opened the doors. We employed the same tactic on subsequent doors and covered the first floor with no sight of our ghostly charge.

"Shit," I said as the reception area came back into view.

"Do you think he's back in his box?"

"I doubt it. I imagine he's wherever that energy is coming from, just waiting for me to show up. Bloody ghost," I muttered. I wonder, if I just leave him here, will he haunt the hospital instead?

"So should we go up a floor?"

"No, I don't think that's the answer." There was a hospital directory on the wall nearby and I walked over, looking at the map, tapping one spot. "There's a basement. Usually new things are built on top of old things, aren't they?"

"Seems reasonable." Ben looked at the map. "Cafeteria, admitting, outpatient …" Ben shrugged and looked at me, pressing the lift call button. "Let's try it, I guess." The doors opened and we exchanged nods with another nurse as she got off on our floor. "We really are invisible with these on. I'll have to start paying more attention to faces at home," Ben remarked as the doors closed.

The familiar smells of hospital cafeteria food assaulted me, giving me a brief spurt of homesickness. It was getting on toward lunchtime and the cafeteria was busy. I desperately hoped I wouldn't see Lieutenant Hammond floating in the middle of the chaos. "Is he in here?" Ben whispered as we exited the lift.

"No, thank goodness. Let's head over there," I said, nodding toward the outpatient area. The layout was similar to the place Ben and I had done our clinic hours in when we were still in school with a central desk and a rabbit warren of treatment rooms behind it. We left the closed doors alone, focusing on the open ones first. "Oh! There he is!" A flood of relief washed through me when I saw our quarry in the middle of a blessedly empty treatment room.

"Finally! Now what?" I stood, transfixed by the figure of the ghost. He looked more sharply-defined and I was dimly aware of Ben closing the door and hitting the button that lit up a little red light outside that indicated the room was occupied.

I took a deep breath as I tried to calm my rapidly beating heart. Thanks to the Auror spell on it, my tattoo started to buzz more intensely and I pushed the sensation aside, focusing on finding a calm center. You're not eleven anymore, Tom is dead and gone. No one is going to possess you. You just need to open yourself up to … something and let this nice ghost use you as a conduit, I thought, giving myself a little pep talk.

Stepping closer to him, I felt a rushing sound in my ears as he looked at me. "She was here," he said quietly. "Right here when she passed. I finally found her."

"You did," I said, pushing down the impulse to chide him for making us look all over the hospital for him. "Are you ready? Are you sure you want to do this?"

"Yes. I have held on to this world for too long. I have no place here anymore," he said, focusing on me. Color had flooded him, turning his coat a brilliant red and his trousers to cream. His black boots shone with the mellow gloss of well-cared for leather.

The buzzing sensation that started in my tattoo had spread through my body in what I imagined being electrocuted might feel like. I reached out toward Lieutenant Hammond, surprised when my hand passed through his; he looked so solid and real that I honestly expected to feel flesh. All of the small hairs on my body felt like they were standing at attention and I experienced a sharp itching sensation right between my shoulder blades.

"Oh my God," I heard Ben breathe behind me as he pointed to a silvery cloud swirling just above the treatment table.

I wanted to say, "You can see that?" but my tongue was frozen, glued to the roof of my mouth and all I could do was stare as my magic responded to the connection between Lieutenant Hammond and the energy left by Eliza's passing.

As we stared, I became aware of changes to the room. The treatment table was now a bed and the cold, clinical room turned into a small, dark bedroom with curtains closed over the windows. An old woman lay on the bed, hand out to one side as if someone unseen was holding it. Eliza! At last! I thought, my eyes smarting with unshed tears.

Hammond drifted closer to the side of the bed, transfixed by the figure on the bed. "Eliza," he whispered, "I'm here! I'm here with you."

Eliza's eyes opened and they were indeed as blue as a summer sky. She stared at him, mouth curling into a smile that summoned the image of the coquettish young girl she used to be. "Richard! I knew you never left me!"

"I was always right here! I would never leave you!"

She reached out for him and when they made contact, I felt a wave of pressure and I stumbled back a step, bumping into Ben behind me. He put his hands on my shoulders, holding me steady as power continued to rush out of me.

"I have to go," she said, sounding sorrowful. "I'm old now and you're still so young and handsome."

Lieutenant Hammond laid his hand gently on her wrinkled cheek, smiling down at her with such a look of adoration that my throat tightened in response. "You are the same as you ever were, to me," he said softly, kissing her on that cheek. As he did, a ripple spread out from that kiss and Eliza was transformed from a dying old woman to a beautiful woman in the flush of youth.

She sat up, dark, curling hair in a proper updo and blue eyes snapping with excitement. Sweeping the heavy blankets off her lap, she took her true love's hand and stood, smoothing the bodice and skirts of her fine woolen dress. The two of them made a fine pair together and I felt a surge from somewhere deep inside of me and I swayed a little bit, glad Ben was holding me up.

"Is that really her?" he whispered, voice full of amazement.

I shook my head. The Eliza in front of me didn't feel quite the same to my magic as the ghost of the lieutenant did. "I don't think so … I think this is something else," I whispered as the pair turned their attention to me.

"Ginny Potter, this is my Eliza. You have restored her to me and for that you have my utmost gratitude," Lieutenant Hammond said gravely. He executed a deep, formal bow and Eliza curtsied to me. "I apologize if I have been bothersome these last days."

"Oh, no, it's been no trouble," I said, finally able to croak out a few words. Eliza smiled shyly at me and looked up at Richard, clasping his hand tight. One wall began to glow with a strange white light, reminding me a little of the time I'd met the twisted soul fragment of Cornelius Maxwell in my own mind. No, this is nothing like that!

"Be that as it may, we thank you." He looked down at Eliza, putting one finger under her chin as he kissed her gently. "But now we are ready to depart." He tipped his tricorn hat to both me and Ben, and laying Eliza's hand firmly on his arm, turned and walked directly into the wall. In a second, the two of them were swallowed up.

I heard a loud popping sound and the sensation of pressure abruptly ceased and I sagged against Ben. My heart had been hammering in my chest and I took several deep breaths as a head-to-toe shiver ran through my body. I no longer felt like my magic was bleeding out of me and I rubbed my hand over my tattoo. "Are you all right?" Ben asked, steering me toward a rolling stool and helping me sit down. There was a small stack of cups and he filled one with water, shoving it in my hand.

Drinking deeply, I nodded, listening as Ben continued to chatter in amazement over what he'd just seen. "God, no wonder they fell in love with each other! They're both super hot!" He stared at the wall that they had disappeared into and sighed, wiping a tear from his eye.

A polite knock sounded on the door and we froze, staring at each other. I quickly finished the water and tossed the cup in the bin, looking frantically for my conjured clipboard. I grabbed it from the treatment table where I didn't remember setting it and stood up, swaying at the sudden drop in blood pressure.

"Just a minute!" Ben called through the door, shooting me a concerned look. I nodded and he opened the door, revealing a wide-eyed nurse. "Everything seems to be in order here, Dr Potter. Shall we move on?" he said, stepping through the door authoritatively, causing the nurse to scoot to the side.

"Thank you for your consultation on this case, Dr Frye," I said, giving the bewildered nurse a short, businesslike nod. We sailed down the hall as if we had very pressing business elsewhere in the hospital, waiting for the nurse to raise an alarm, but we didn't hear anything and in a few moments, we were back out in the hustle and bustle of the cafeteria.

"Let's get out of here," I whispered, eager to get to a place where we could just fade into the crowd. Rounding a corner, I took advantage of a deserted hallway to restore our clothing, pulling my hat down firmly over my head. I hoped that no one would remember the unfamiliar ginger and blond doctors and we could just stroll out.

The sunlight reflecting off the dirty snow outside made me squint and I took deep gulps of the fresh cold air as the last vestiges of tension drained away. I pulled the silver snuff box out of my pocket, running my fingers over the "H" engraved in the lid. Goodbye, Lieutenant Richard Hammond, I thought. I hope you and Eliza will be happy together at last.