Part IX

"Arse-dagger, kindly state your business or you can fuck right off." The voice is male, young, drawling, and what the bloody hell?

"I… I think I may have the wrong number. This is –?" She reads it off.

"Yesssh, precioussssss. Who're you looking for?"

Oh hell. She knows she'll sound like an idiot, but now she's determined to get to the bottom of this, so: "I received a packet in the post today. It's documents, and a letter to call this number."

"Righto, hang on." Then, muffled shouting: "Anyone send someone a bunch of papers?" He uncovers the receiver and asks, "What's your name, girlfriend?"

"Granger."

He shouts again, "Oi, got a call here from some bird named Granger. Any takers? Going once… here we are, lovey, got your culprit, just a tick."

She waits. Her hands are unaccountably sweaty. Endless seconds pass, before she hears a faint growl of 'Give me that, you tosser'. She can't deduce a thing from it.

"Damnations. Would you bugger off? Not you, Granger. Sorry. I don't know what possessed me to give you this number instead of my mobile." The voice is so instantly familiar she feels like she's been hit by a lorry.

He's alive. She can't breathe. The sodding bastard's alive and he didn't tell her.

"Hello? Damn it all, bloody telephones, hello?"

"Yes." It's the last of her air.

"Have you got a pen handy? If I could give you another number?"

The scramble to find something to write with, and on, takes valuable instants, despite the fact she's got all her research materials in the bag at her feet. But she's started breathing again, just barely. "Yes, go ahead." She writes the numbers down in a daze.

"Just give me, oh, fifteen, say. I'm in the midst of something just now."

"Of course." There's numbness creeping over her with every one of his blithely inconsequential words. Vital words. Living words, inanities uttered all unconscious of time of loss ofhollowdarknesslonely death

"Alright, 'til then." She senses he's about to hang up, and terror floods through her, but he's not quite finished which is water and she's so parched, a morsel and she's been starving, air in a dark void pressing close. "Please… please do call." The words are hesitant, uncharacteristically quiet, and she thinks she's misheard, and she tries to ask, but the line is dead, and he's gone again, and she's so afraid it's forever that she stares fixedly at her wristwatch, desperately observing its hands tick down the minutes.

Thirteen. Inauspicious. She flexes her fingers. They're cold, and she tucks them under her armpits, but then she can't see her watch, and what if this is some bizarre magic – she believes in magic, because of course she has to, doesn't she? – that will only work if she meets every requirement of the spell?

Ten. A gaggle of tourists presses down the pavement, voices loud and cacophonous. How will she hear him? Her eyes dart wildly; where can she escape to? Panic or stomach acid or maybe the two are synonymous roils up. She snatches up her bag, ducks into the crowd. Weaves, twists, vanishes.

Risky, but she's home safe, although her stomach has won the battle and she's heaving into the toilet and

Six. She blows her nose, wincing at the sharp sting of vomit that's blatantly ignored her soft palate. Blowing was the wrong choice. She inhales sharply, spits. Flushes. Wipes her face on a clean flannel. Well, she hopes it's clean.

Tap water, gargle, spit. Three. She wants a toothbrush, but knows better. Motherly advice from before the Hogwarts letter: "Run, or count calories, but heavens don't ever vomit, it will ruin your teeth. And give you chipmunk cheeks, love, which you simply can't afford, what with those unfortunate incisors. At the very least don't brush afterwards, it does more damage than good."

Two. And she's been wasting brain-space on this, when she should be trying to come up with something intelligent to say. But her words have been left behind somewhere, abandoned, forgotten. She must not have packed them up with her, when she fled the Queen's Walk.

Damp, shaking fingers – someone else's, because she's quite sure she hasn't asked this of her own – unfold the scrap of paper and punch numbers into the mobile's keypad. One.

"Ms. Granger." A soft purr in her ear, followed by a dark little huff, just the barest hint of a laugh. And then, all deprecating wryness, "I didn't really expect you to call."

"I—I'm sorry." Cold, pressing in on her, heavy and smothering. She's failed again; she's accustomed to it, she's fallible, but lord, why now, why when it finally matters?

"Oh, I'm tolerably pleased that you have. I just, rather. Well."

There is a long silence, and her brain refuses to fill it with anything useful. Anything other than the obvious: You're alive. And you didn't tell me.

But he has now. Why?

"I haven't got a script for this, alas." He sighs. "And mobiles are awkward as all hell. You are still there, aren't you?"

"Yes. And so are you." Speaking above a whisper is an anticipation of hurt: she's so afraid of saying something that will dispel this voice, this thin tendril of sound that encompasses her, that soothes an empty ache deep in her sternum.

"I am. Yes. Still here. I… I expect I owe you apologies. That's… Ms. Granger, you should know that's a positive novelty in my existence. Being able to apologize to someone I've wronged, I mean. Or, well, someone I've wronged that I've wanted to apologize to. A meaningful distinction there."

Wronged? Has he? Wronged implies some deliberate hurt, a dereliction of duty, a willful act of malice. She has long understood that it is only in her own imaginings that he had any obligation towards her. It is Lily for whom he was obliged to live, for Harry obliged to die. "What do you feel the need to apologize for?" She has managed a full sentence. This is called progress.

"Harm. That which I've done, and that which I shall surely continue to perpetrate, because I am that sort of fool. Would you be averse to meeting with me?"

There's a feeling like a queer hiccup in her chest, a little lurch. "I'd like that." The words escape her as a gentle sigh, too calm and detached for the chaotic jumble of emotions that is tightening her throat. Who is this foreign entity that has taken control of her lips, her voice, her fingers which unhesitatingly scribe the address he gives her? And who is he, this stranger who commands such actions of her?

"Just knock; I'll be about, or someone will know where I am." Such simple instructions. Too simple by far to bridge a gap of years, life: lived, or at least survived.

"I'll come today. If you want." But what does she want?

"That would be fine." He doesn't bid her farewell, merely disconnects. This is a pattern for him, perhaps.

She slowly sets the mobile down upon the grimy tile, and lets her head sink onto her knees. The acrid scent of puke is still clinging in her nose. She should open the window, air it out, find some clean clothing. Eat something, because she can't remember when she did, last, and maybe her brain will start working again if she feeds it.

One thing at a time. One foot in front of the other. Make a list, cross off the bullets.

- She strips out of her clothing, unceremoniously dumping it into a pile with the rest of the laundry she ought to have done a week ago. Or more.

- At least there's one clean pair of denims left in her trunk. They were from her school days, and ought to be embarrassingly tight, but she's lost weight, despite the marzipans.

- There's a choice between cashmere that she never wears because it has to be dry-cleaned, or a knobbly pink Weasley sweater. So it's no choice, really. Besides, she's fairly certain there aren't any style guides for what to wear when you meet a dead man.

- She scoops Plant and Mini-plant off the sill. She'd hate for a gust to dash either of them down onto the pavement. They're only just recovering from their last trauma. "Am I insane?" she asks them. Since she doesn't hear a response, she is left to surmise that her faculties, though undoubtedly shaken, are probably intact.

- She gargles with rinse, and then brushes her teeth anyway, because to hell with it: Dental charms exist.

- She bolts a bread heel with the tail end of a cup of cold tea – did she make it yesterday? Or this morning, before she opened Ronald's note?

Ronald. Fuck. And just what the bloody hell does she think she's doing? (Does it even matter what she thinks? If she thinks?)

One thing at a time. One foot in front of the other.

She survived a war this way.

She survived a marriage this way.

She will survive herself this way.

She will survive Snape.