March 1988

Nick sucked on the fag between his fingers until the flame caught the end. He inhaled hard, held the smoke in his lungs, and exhaled slow. He shoved the lighter back in his pocket and took a few steps around the enclosed back lot. It had been a long set and, on his way out the back door, James had told him they weren't getting paid.

Fuck this whole night.

He inhaled again. It was three in the morning. James was still inside, listening to the next set and nodding his head like a fucking idiot. James didn't care if they didn't get paid. He had family money. It wasn't the same for Nick. He was starving. He hadn't eaten in two days, waiting to get paid for tonight's show. This wasn't a fucking game for him. If he didn't get paid, he didn't eat.

They all told me to get a fucking job. He flicked the end of his fag. They were all right.

This had been a fucking job, a fucking steady job that had gone on for almost two years. But the gigs had dropped off. The venues had stopped calling. He should have seen it coming, but he kept riding the high of the few shows they got, lying to himself about how good they were.

Nick's ears still rang from their set and mixed with the sound from the next band. They sounded like shite. The crowd yelled and cheered and fucking sang along. He didn't see what the fuss was about. But he bet they were getting paid.

Whatever. This whole fucking warehouse is a shite place to play anyhow. Shite lighting. Shite acoustics. Shite underage kids with fake IDs pushing each other in the crowd, trying to prove something after their fucking parents dropped them off. Little shites.

Nick finished the cigarette and flicked it against a brick wall. It was cold for March. The thought of walking back through the warehouse and back to the Underground made him sick. He didn't want to see James and he didn't want to push his way through the crowds.

And he didn't have to. Nick dissipated and appeared four miles away inside a tunnel covered with graffiti. The sound of the air he had displaced made the ringing in his ears worse.

Shite, too loud.

Not that he cared who saw him. He didn't think anyone had. The tunnel was empty.

Nick walked to the flat he was calling home tonight. He didn't have much further to go. He would have apparaited into the flat, but his friend Lane might still be awake and he didn't want to scare him. He was a muggle, but he was a good muggle. A muggle who had given him a place to crash.

At least magic got me this far.

He laughed at the joke. This was exactly where magic had gotten him. Broke, homeless, and starving, living on sofas and floors. All the professors at Hogwarts had never told him the truth; that the magical world was filled with shite. After seven fucking years at Hogwarts, Professor McGonagall had looked at his marks and told him if he worked a little harder he could get hired to do inventory at one of the shops or make brooms for one of the major brands or clean owl shite for a delivery service. Wasn't that great? He could make ten sickles an hour, maybe more.

Every student at Hogwarts thinks they are going to be an Auror or play Quidditch professionally or breed dragons. The reality was that it took a lot of fucking work to be an Auror, you didn't breed dragons unless you were born into a family that did, and professional Quidditch teams started scouting at the Third Year level, two years before he even started to play. He wasn't born into magic and he had never cared about his grades, he had never thought they were that important.

Out in the real world, after seven years of nothing but classes involving spells, plants, stars, and potions, he was shite at anything that would have made him money. He had no practical life skills. His parents had tried to warn him. His father had hated Hogwarts and told him that magic was a waste of time. He hated that he had been right.

His parents had taken him back for a little while after he graduated. Aren't you a wizard now? Can't you make money appear? Can't you use magic to get yourself a flat? Can't you control someone's mind and make them give you a job? Can't you make potions that make people fall in love and sell them for a profit? No, he couldn't do any of those fucking things. That wasn't how magic worked and it wasn't how the real world worked. There wasn't any money in magic if you weren't a part of the magical community. If you weren't born into magic, you had to fight your way through the magical world until you made connections or gave up and went back to the muggle world.

Fuck everything about that.

Thank Christ James had called and Nick had kept up with the drums while he was at Hogwarts. It had kept him sane and given him some money for the last few years.

He took out another fag. It was his last one. And his lighter was out of fluid.

Fuck everything about today.

Nick stopped on a street corner. A woman stood next to him. He noticed her arse first. It was a great arse. She had long legs and wore stockings filled with holes. Her top was loose. She probably wasn't wearing a bra.

The woman looked at his chewed fag. She took out a flip lighter and flicked the flame. She held it up between them. "Need a light?"

Nick wanted more than a light. He moved his head and leaned into the flame.

The woman smiled. "You live around here?"

"Sometimes," Nick said.

She looked him up and down. "So, fancy a night back at mine then?"

Holy fuck. Nick shrugged. "If you want."

The woman leaned into him and bit his ear. "I want."

Holy fuck. This was happening. Maybe she even had food at her place.

Nick laughed and threw his arm around the woman. "Where do you live, love?"

"Two blocks up," she said. "You clean?"

"Very," Nick said, though he couldn't imagine what he smelled like after sweating through the show and chain smoking for two days to stop his stomach from cramping.

She laughed. It was nice.

Is she working? Will I have to pay after? He didn't even care. He'd work it out later. If she asked him for money, he'd call James. James could spot him. It was the least he could do.

The woman pulled him close and teased her tongue along his lips. He opened his mouth and her tongue pressed against his tongue and the inside of his lips. He couldn't wait for it to press against something else.

Nick lost all track of time or where they walked. When they stopped in front of a locked door, the woman fumbled with her keys. She found the right one, turned it, and led him into a dark hallway. Her wandering hands were on the buttons on the front of his jeans. She pushed him into a stairwell. Instead of going up, she pulled him down two flights of stairs. Then she pulled down his jeans and knickers. Her mouth was around him before he could say anything. He held her head in the dark stairwell as it bobbed up and down.

Sweet holy fuck.

He grabbed onto her long, silky hair; his fingers entwined. In the dim light, he wasn't even sure what color it was. He had thought black but now it looked brown. Who gave a fuck? His dick was down her throat.

He leaned back and moaned. He reached for a conduit attached to the concrete wall next to him and held on. He closed his eyes. This wasn't going to take long. If she wanted some, he should pull her back up. But why? He deserved something like this. He fucking needed something like this.

Just focus on the feeling.

Her hair felt different. Had he dropped the strands? It was short now, he was sure of it, but CHRIST it felt too good to care or stop.

His dick fell out of her mouth.

A male voice said, "You feeling good, love?"

Nick's eyes shot open.

The woman was gone. His now limp dick hung down next to the face of a man his age. The man smiled and pushed him against the wall of the stairwell.

"What? You don't like me anymore?"

"What the fuck is this? Where the fuck is she?"

"Who?"

"The fucking woman I came down here with!"

The man's face changed back to the face of the woman from the street. "She's right here, love. She never left you."

A fucking metamorphmagus.

"Look, I'm not a-"

The face changed back to the face of the man, the hair short against his scalp.

"Not a what?"

"I'm not a-"

The man shoved him against the wall and pulled out a wand. "Shut your fucking mouth."

The man flicked the wand and mumbled a charm under his breath. Nick couldn't talk.

The man raised the wand again. "Petrificus totalus."

Nick couldn't move. He couldn't fucking move. The man muttered again, too low for Nick to hear. His paralyzed body floated in the air. The man positioned himself a few steps above Nick and took out a knife.

Holy fuck. Holy fuck CHRIST this is bad.

"You fucking mudblood, using our magic out here in your shite world. Bastardizing it and waving it around so the whole fucking world sees you. Like you're begging the fucking muggles to find you and find us, like you're begging them to make us all fucking suffer again. You fucking mudblood cunt."

The man raised the knife and pressed it into Nick's forehead. He cut a long slanted line. Blood ran down into Nick's open eyes. He couldn't even scream.

"Do you know how long it took us to get away from the fucking muggles? To free ourselves from them?"

The man carved another slanted line. And another.

"Really, this is the least I can do to keep you from bringing all your fucking mud back into our world."

The man carved a fourth line. "I know what you're thinking. Why you? Well, why not?"

There was so much blood in his eyes now that Nick couldn't see.

"This is for all the witches and wizards your fucking ancestors killed. You never should have been in our world."

Nick's body lifted into the air.

The man took the knife and slit Nick's throat. Nick choked. It was all he could do.

The man rent the knife through Nick's throat.