Tap. Tap.

Theodore pulled his eyes away from the book he was reading in his office chair to look out of the window. His icy eyes fell on a pigeon, one pressing his beak against his window. He narrowed his eyes at the animal.

"Stupid thing," he said as he leaned back in the chair and tapped the window with the book he had been reading.

The bird flew away, startled, and Theodore turned his attention back to the book. He'd managed to make it three more pages before –

Tap. Tap. Tap.

Theodore turned in the chair and was greeted by the ruddy pigeon. He sighed, moving to tap the book against the window again, this time a bit harder, when he saw it. Something wrapped around the bird's leg.

"What?" he whispered to himself as he dropped the book on the floor and moved to open the window. He struggled with it for a moment, pulling at it in a way that was less than poised. Finally, it opened and he all but yanked the bird into the window, hoping not to be seen.

There, tied to the bird's left foot was a small piece of paper, parchment. He yanked the parchment off the bird, possibly too roughly, and then shoved the thing back outside of the window.

July 12

T.N.

I hope this dirty creature finds you. I'm sure they are not as intelligent as owls, but hopefully this gets to you. I said, I'm more than certain this thing won't find you. They took D.M at the start of July. As you could expect his mother is completely distraught. She has been with us, mother has had her sedated for most the stay. I am safe for now; they seem to be uninterested in me. Things are tense as you could imagine, but are managing.

B.Z.

P.S. I don't expect to hear from you. No need to worry yourself with writing back.

P.P.S. Your mother misses you.

Theodore collapsed into his office chair before reading the letter again. And again. And once more. Shocked. Blaise had sent a ruddy pigeon to find him. Leave it to Blaise to find a pigeon and make it find him. A smirk crossed his lips.

"It only to the ruddy thing a month to find me," he mumbled under his breath.

Despite the nature of the letter, Theodore felt a sense of relief. For the first time since he left, he had heard something from the world that he'd come from. Granted, it wasn't particularly good news. However, it did seem to bring a sense of peace and a feeling something like happiness over him.

He took no pleasure in the torture that Draco was experiencing. He took no pleasure in the fact that their affiliation with the Dark Lord had pained their mother's so. However, he did take pleasure in knowing; in having knowledge. Even if it was just a bit of less than great news.

"No."

That was the first thing he heard when he walked into the Corner Café. In Olivia's voice. Had he ever heard her say no? No with such a harsh tone in her voice. In a way that made him stop in his tracks in the doorway. She was standing behind the counter with her arms loosely crossed over her chest, frowning. Her head was tilted to the side as she held something to her ear. It took him a moment to place it as a telephone, he'd seen so many of them since he arrived that it would have been foolish of him to not recognize it. Her index finger was wrapped up in the cord, the spirals twisting over her slender finger.

"The answer is still no."

Theodore approached the counter, quietly. Her thin eyebrows were drawn together, the space between them heavily creased. Her green eyes were fixed on something on the floor and they hadn't shifted from that spot since the bell over the door had tinkled. Her canine tooth was biting down onto her bottom lip, the area around her tooth red from the pressure. She let out a deep sigh and ran her fingers through the loose end of her ponytail. It was then that her green eyes shifted from the floor and upward. The expression on her face changed in an instant from brooding to startled.

"I have to go, there's a customer," she paused. "No. Goodbye."

Theodore watched as she moved to hang up the phone, without removing her finger from the cord. When she moved to turn back around, the phone was yanked from its receiver.

"Bloody hell," she mumbled under her breath as she pulled her finger from the cord's grasp and hung the phone up again.

"Bad day?" he asked her, a soft smirk on his lips as she brushed off the front of her apron.

"You're uncharacteristically cheery. Did you find someone else to make you your coffee?" she questioned.

"No," he replied as he leaned on the counter. He gestured in an almost nonchalant manner to the phone. "Bad day?" he repeated again. He found himself very interested in what exactly had made her less than cheerful.

"Coffee black?" she asked, pulling a cup from the rack. Theodore nodded and she moved away from him. "My dad," she told him as she grabbed a filter. "My future stepmother has requested that I be a 'junior bridesmaid' at their wedding as a sort of bonding experience." She rolled her eyes. "I have no interest."

"Aren't wedding supposed to be every girl's dream?" he asked. She looked at him with narrowed green eyes. "So you don't like her then?" he asked again, moving away from his first question.

The barista sighed and shrugged. "Eh," was his answer as she placed the cup in front of him on the counter.

"Eh?"

"What's got you so curious and cheerful this morning?" she questioned, her elbows on the counter and her chin resting in her hands. Theodore lifted the cup to his lips, the smirk remaining. "Oh, come on, do tell." Olivia narrowed her eyes. "You meet a girl?" she questioned.

The wizard almost spit his coffee on the muggle in front of him. "Pardon?" he sputtered as he lowered the cup from his lips.

She laughed. "Alright, it's not that. What then?" Theodore hesitated, shifting his eyes away from her. "Oh, now, you've pried into my phone call."

"If you must know," he started.

"I must."

"I received a letter from an old friend." He was careful with his words, not wanting to let on too much.

"An old girlfriend?"

He looked at her through his icy eyes. "Why does it always have to be about a girl?"

She shrugged, holding her hands up in mock surrender. "You're right. It doesn't," she told him with a smile. "So just an old friend? Catching up?"

"Catching up," he echoed.

"That's good," she said with the definite nod, her ponytail bobbing behind her. "I was starting to think I was the only friend you had."

Theodore looked at her from behind his coffee cup. Friend? That wasn't the first time someone had used that word to describe their, for lack of better word, relationship. First, her friend on the beach. Then the piano lady. Now her. Were they friends? They talked; shared interests. They were often in the same place together, one could define that as 'hanging out'. Friends? Had he become friends with this muggle barista?

Salazar's soul.

If he looked at it that way…. yes. He had.

"Theodore?"

He cleared his throat. "No, I have other friends," he said. He watched her through his icy eyes as she watched him. "So this bridesmaid thing," he said, pushing the topic again. Really, he just wanted to get the conversation off of him. She frowned. "You get to hold flowers and wear a dress, what's the problem?"

"I don't want to hold flowers and wear the dress that she's picked out," the barista answered. "I also don't know her. She's just the fiancée of my father."

"What's her name?" he asked.

"Kaitlynn," she said. He could tell from the expression on her face that it took everything in her to not spit out the woman's name.

"So, you don't like her."

"I don't not like her. I don't know her to not like her," she said with a shrug. She leaned forward again, her elbows on the counter. "He just showed up with her a few months ago, said they were getting married and that he wanted my 'blessing'." She huffed quietly, her air quotes were dripping with sarcasm. "That's Marcus though; impulsive and completely ridiculous."

"Marcus?"

"My father's name," she said with a shrug. "Marcus Reynolds."

"Olivia Reynolds?" Theodore said. It wasn't until after he'd said it that he realized that he was testing it, trying it out.

"At your service," she said, saluting him playfully.

"Well, Ms. Reynolds," he started. For some reason, he felt more comfortable calling her by her last name. He'd often called his acquaintances at school by their last names. This was comfortable. "What will you do?"

She rolled her eyes and sighed. Pushing off the counter again, she grabbed the pot of coffee and topped off his drink. "I'm a nice person, as you very well know," she gestured to the cup she'd just filled, and Theodore nodded in acknowledgment. "Needless to say, I'll do it and be miserable the entire time" she sighed again. "Kindness is my curse," she told him.

"I see," he mused.

"Really though, enough about me," she said waving her hands in front of her face. "You have to tell me more about your letter if you're going to poke around my irritation about the wedding."

"There's nothing more to say," he said, a certain level of tenseness slipping into his tone. "An old friend wrote me a letter."

"About?" she pushed.

He sighed, looking at her expectant green eyes. He really shouldn't have told her anything about the letter. However, having the letter had put him in such a pleasant mood that he'd easily struck up a conversation with the barista. "He just sent an update about home and everyone is," he shrugged, "as expected."

"Other friends?"

He pulled a face at her. "I have friends, Olivia."

She shrugged. "Where are your friends in Blackpool?" He rolled his eyes and looked away from her and she laughed. "I rest my case. It's okay." Her green eyes turned to him. "You seem to be the type of person that takes the time to get to know people and making the best decision on people that you surround yourself with. So, I'm quite happy to be your only friend in Blackpool."

Theodore opened his mouth to counter her statement, but he couldn't. She was right. He'd always taken his time to get to know people before allowing them into his inner circle, and while she wasn't in his inner circle, she was the person closest to him in Blackpool as well as the only muggle that he had ever spent any time talking with. Without even thinking, he reached across the counter and flicked her forehead, "Don't let it go to your head."

What was he doing? Initiating contact with a muggle? That was so unlike him. Back in London, he would have never touched a muggle. At school, he made sure to only surround himself with those of equal blood purity. Pansy Parkinson, while she tended to be very annoying, could trace her blood, her pureblood, back for generations. He stayed as far away from the mudbloods as possible. Now, here he was, initiating contact and conversation with a muggle.

Merlin, what was happening?

Olivia's green eyes feel on him as she brought her hand to her forehead and rubbed it. "Ow."

Theo brushed it off with a gesture of his hand. He placed the now empty coffee cup on the counter and reached into his pocket to pay. As he did, the bell over the door jingled.

"Hey, Liv," a boy said. Theodore looked over his shoulder briefly to see a lanky boy.

"Jimmy," she greeted.

"I am here to relieve you from your shift," he told her as he walked behind the counter and grabbed an apron as Olivia moved to put hers away.

"You're a gem," she told Jimmy. "The usual amount, Theodore," she told him as she pushed her arms into the sleeve of her jacket. Theodore placed the money on the counter as she walked towards the door. "What are you doing now?" she asked him.

"I'm heading home."

Olivia pushed the door open and gestured for him to follow her. "I also live around here. I'll walk with you until we split?" Her green eyes were eager again. He didn't have a reason to tell her no. He pushed away from the counter and walked towards her, hands in his pockets. He stepped into the afternoon air, wind blowing. She tucked her hands into her pockets and looked up at him. "Ready?" He nodded in response. "That way?" she questioned, pointing up the road.

"Yeah."

"Right, let's go then."

They were quiet for a few steps, as she ducked her head down to hide her face from a gust of wind. When she looked up, her cheeks had gained a pinkish color. "Will this friend be coming to Blackpool?" she asked.

His eyebrow arched slightly. "Still on about the letter are you? Doubtful that he will come here." Theodore tried to envision Blaise in the sleepy town of Blackpool, but he couldn't there was some sort of mental block on the image. "It doesn't really suit him here."

"I see," she mused, ducking her head as the wind blew again. "When you first got here, I thought the same about you."

Her comment caught him off guard. "Pardon?"

She shrugged, "You just, seemed out of place. Like you were from," she laughed, "you'll think it's silly, but like you were from a different world."

Theodore tripped over his own feet as she spoke. A different world? She'd known he was different from the start? She glanced over her shoulder and saw that he had all but stopped walking.

"You alright?"

"A different world?" he said slowly, pushing her to tell him more.

Her cheeks flushed and he couldn't tell if it was because of the wind blowing on her face or because she was embarrassed. "I," she laughed, "it's like you were just transplanted here. You know what's going on here, but you just keep to yourself. I thought that you didn't like me at first," she told him. Her fingers had started to twist in her hair. Had he ever seen her nervous before? "You were, to quote Miss. Jane Austen, barely tolerable," she gave him a half smile and he realized that he had missed something. A joke he should have gotten. "Like that, you're well read, I assume, but you haven't read the classics. The Great Gatsby, Lord of the Flies, Pride and Prejudice, all staples of literature. You just," she shrugged, "just, don't seem to be of this world."

Her knowledge of him seeming out of place… Did that mean that she… Did she know there were other worlds? Places where the books she showed him didn't exist?

He watched her through his icy eyes as she rocked back and forth on her heels.

"Okay, say something," she said before biting her lip. "Something like, 'don't be silly' or 'I lived with parents that didn't approve of books' or something."

Theodore bit his lips as he continued to watch her. She had never been a difficult person to read, if he were being honest. The barista's emotions tended to run across her face or show in her eyes before she could even voice them. However, he had never thought to read her for this; knowledge of different worlds. She didn't seem to have any deeper meaning in her words. She never seemed to have any knowledge of anything other than her world, her muggle world.

Something inside of him was thrilled by the thought that there might be someone else here like him. Someone else that knew of magic. Suddenly he didn't feel so empty. So alone. But, her? No. He was too hasty in getting his hopes up.

"Cornelius Fudge," he said suddenly. Testing her. The quizzical expression in her green eyes showed her grade: Troll. He frowned looking away from her. He was wrong.

"I'm sorry?"

"Nothing," he said quickly waving it away. "The name of a friend."

"The one who wrote to you?"

The wizard let out a huff of air. "Sure."

She smiled and nudged him with her shoulder. "May I ask a question?" He shrugged, partially to answer her question and partially to get her shoulder off his arm. She seemed unfazed by the latter. "Speaking of books, what do you read?"

"Pardon?"

Before she could reply several children surrounded them, weaving between them and brushing against them. Olivia looked down at them, aware of every movement that they made. She stumbled as she tried to shift her weight from one foot to another. Her foot couldn't make it to the ground to steady her. Without a thought, Theodore pulled his hand from his pocket and grabbed her wrist, pulling her upright. As soon as she was steady, he released her wrist and tucked his hand into his pocket again.

"Thanks," she said with a lopsided smile as she rubbed the back of her neck.

In his pocket, he clenched and unclenched his hand, hoping that this action would rid his hand of that tingling sensation. "Yeah."

They started to walk again. Theodore leaving a little more space between them.

"Books?"

"Right. What?"

"The books that you read."

He frowned. "Books about magic." They had books about magic in this world. That wasn't too out of place. She frowned. "What?"

"Magic? Like what? King Arthur and Merlin?" she giggled.

"Merlin, yes."

She stopped laughing at the seriousness in his tone and tilted her head to the side. "You don't strike me as the type." She stopped and looked directly at him. "This is my street." She lived on the street with the elderly couple and their dog. "Bring me something sometime," she said as she turned over her shoulder and started away from him. "They say reading someone favorite book is how you get to know them. You must know me fairly well, Mr. Theodore Nott. It's only fair, right?" Before he could respond, she waved over her shoulder, leaving him standing there looking at her retreating figure.

A/N: IT'S SUMMER! I finally finished my semester, which means I am free to write and let my muse take over and stay up into the wee hours of the morning with my laptop and Netflix. I'm sure you're as happy as I am, because it means that I can update more often! I decided to come back with a longer chapter because I felt awful for leaving you guys for so long. I hope you enjoyed it. So, Theo's on the spot now. What will he do? No one knows; not even the writer. Also the letter from Blaise? Will there be Blaise in Blackpool? Will Blaise write again? Leave reviews, let me know your thoughts. Don't hate me for disappearing.

~ Nikki