The following morning was filled with questions. Have you seen my tie? When are we leaving? Do you think he was lying? Is anyone meeting us here first? Will it work?

Shortly before they were due to leave, Lucie ambushed Harry with the hardest one:

"How do I look?"

"Um, nice?" He tried, struggling in the age old male fear at being faced with that question.

"For a funeral," she clarified. "I don't want to be…you know…"

"Oh," he said, relieved. She was wearing a sombre, demure black dress that covered nearly all of her tattoos and a pair of flat shoes with buckles on the toes. "Yeah, you look fine. Appropriate."

"Thanks. Your tie's wonky, by the way."

Harry swore.

"Come here," she said, reaching out to adjust the offending accessory.

"Thanks," said Harry, standing still but lifting his chin so she could get to his collar. "It's been a long time since I've tied one."

"I thought wizards wore robes," she said, flattening his collar and shifting her gaze to his determinedly unruly hair. "And pointy hats."

"Usually we would," he told her, thinking guiltily of the dress robes hanging in his wardrobe. "Most of the others will be. I just…" He turned back to the mirror and took in the black suit and tie. "It never bothered me before, it's just clothes, but now they just make me think of the Deatheaters."

Robes and masks had dominated his nightmares for months.

"It's understandable," she said. "And you look good. Like a Blues Brother."

She chuckled and hummed the opening bars to She Caught the Katy. Suddenly, Harry was nearly eleven years old again. It was the night after he's received the first Hogwarts letter – the one addressed to the cupboard under the stairs. Vernon and Petunia had moved him into the smallest bedroom, which had previously been reserved for Dudley's junk. Her bad mood from dealing with Dudley's following tantrum had caused Petunia to waspishly deny her precious boy the opportunity to stay up late and watch a film on the telly. Shocked into picking cunning over brute force, Dudley had pretended to go to bed early and then snuck into the room where Harry lay gazing at the ceiling that seemed so high above the bed.

Harry had been brooding. Sulking, really. About the letter. About the Dursleys in general. About being Nearly Eleven, which is categorically not the same as being ten, but is depressingly far from actually being eleven. When Dudley had crept in Harry had considered making a noisy fuss and taking the beating for it the next day, especially when Dudley had insisted he take the blame if they were caught. But in the end, the desire to watch a film, to stay up past bed time, had won. He considered it a celebration of his escape from the cupboard. They sat side by side on the carpet and watched, enthralled by the swearing, enraptured by the car chases as only boys of nearly eleven can be. The music washed over them, the explosions shone in Harry's glasses and the thought had hit them simultaneously. Dudley was fat and Harry was thin. Uncle Vernon had black ties in his wardrobe and Dudley's old sunglasses were just right. The next morning, the marker pen Petunia used to label Tupperware had disappeared and Dudley swore blind he'd never seen it. The morning had been so full of the promise of misbehaviour, the boys so excited by the thought of being Jake and Elwood temporarily united and the garden so temptingly full of angry policemen and Illinois Nazis. But then the Hogwarts letter with the revised address had come and the game had died with Uncle Vernon's temper. He blinked, surprised to remember it so vividly.

"I don't sing," he told her, smiling. "Have George and Ron left?"

She nodded.

"Hermione left too, but she went straight to the school. She said something about…"

"The library? I'm sure she gets withdrawal symptoms."

"She's well clever, though. I wish I'd been more like that at school." She sighed. "Shall we get this over with, then?"