17. Unseen hands

She was sleeping so peacefully, he could see, as he leaned over her. She slept on her side in a plain white camisole top, her dark hair spilling over the pillow, the edge of the duvet crossing her body diagonally. What remained of the light of day gleamed weakly through the slits between the blinds, but it was mostly dark that surrounded him.

He still had the wand in his hand. He had scarcely let it go since it came back to him. It's mine. I know it is. He felt his mind teeming with countless incantations, but he could summon none. It had worked that afternoon, the easiest thing in the world it had been.

Without any clear idea of what he was doing, he languidly pointed the wand at her as she slept on. His grip was so loose that the wand could almost drop from his hand. But it didn't slip. It remained neatly lodged in the palm of his hand, as if it was contented there. He leaned over further, sliding the wand towards her exposed shoulder. She made no movement as it touched her skin, but the wand itself seemed to recoil slightly, as if it had hit some invisible force repelling it. It travelled over the skin of her shoulder and passed between the splayed locks of her dark hair. I'm not who you think I am. Then he withdrew the wand, stepped away from the bed and left the room.

He scrutinised his face in the bathroom mirror, trying to identify the person in front of him. The green eyes interested him the most, much more than the pale skin, the long, dark, unruly hair and the beard. The name he thought went with that face was wrong. He had another name, his real name. It was close to him now, although still lurking out of sight.

He took out a razor, filled the sink with hot water and began to remove the beard. With the beard gone, reduced to a mass of floating black hair in the water, he found himself looking on a younger face than he had imagined. Perhaps he had lost fewer years to amnesia than he had thought.

He thought of the girl in the alleyway and a pang of regret passed quickly through him. He hoped she was all right. Harry, she had called him. He murmured the name to himself, as if to try it on. But no light came on when he said it. Was it really him she had been speaking to? Maybe the shock and the fear had made her call out for the person in her life she thought most likely to protect her. Harry. I've been called that before. A hipsterish sort of girl had stopped him on Clerkenwell Road, on his way home from work. She had insisted his name was Harry. He had thought it was a joke of course, planned over drinks in the student union. He retraced his steps, from Clerkenwell Road, left onto Hatton Garden, across Holborn, down Fetter Lane, onto Fleet Street, then down that narrow lane to St Bride's churchyard. I've done something terrible. You can't make me better.

He was back by the side of the bed. It had got darker outside while he had been in the bathroom. He ran his hand across his smooth chin, just beneath his mouth, and grinned to himself. He reached out and turned up the edge of the duvet, gently throwing it open. He took off his t-shirt and slid into the bed next to her. She moved slightly without waking, leaning against him as she sensed his presence in the bed. He rested his head on hers and snaked an arm around her waist.

When he closed his eyes he was walking a dreary stone corridor. He looked down and saw that he was wearing school uniform. Is this some extra year of school? He turned the corner and went down the stairs in front of him. They were ancient, well-worn stone steps. He went down two floors then came out into a narrower, darker corridor. About halfway down the corridor a boy was standing alone, silently watching him approach, a look of quiet satisfaction on his face. The boy had pale blonde hair and held his wand casually at his side. His school tie had a different colour from his: green and silver instead of maroon and gold.

'You decided to come, then,' the blonde boy said.

'I did,' he replied.

The boy eyed him coldly.

'You'd better come inside.' He cast a charm and a doorway opened in front of them. They passed through the doorway into a dour, high-ceilinged hall. In the middle of the hall was an open space, flanked on both sides by green leather sofas. The sofas were filled with schoolchildren of different ages, all wearing the same green and silver colours on their uniform. Among them he could see Ilaria, Henoc and other faces he half-recognised. The other pupils watched in silence, some smirking to themselves, others deadly serious, as the blonde boy led him to the middle of the open space.

'Here,' the boy said, turning swiftly to face him.

He nodded swiftly and took up the position indicated to him. The blonde boy raised his wand and held it diagonally so that it was pointed at his head. He took out his wand and did the same so that the two wands were crossed in mid-air and touching slightly.

'Cast them off,' said the blonde boy.

'I cast them off,' he replied. His colours changed to green and silver. The blonde boy smiled to himself.

'Continue,' he said.

He began to recite the words he had learned.

No quarter for the enemy

No sympathy for the weak

No friendship save among us.

Magic is mastery, magic is genius, magic is our right.

The light has shined on us.

As he spoke the final words, incantations burst out of the crossed wands, entering the two of them. The charm was like cold molten metal, coursing inside him.

The blonde boy nodded solemnly.

'Now for the final stage,' he said. 'Bring her up here.'

A red-haired girl was pushed forward by two bulky, leering boys. The party stopped in front of them. Her face was harsh and defiant as her captors held her in place.

He looked coldly at her. They never really knew him. They had no idea what it was like, didn't want to know, truth be told. They were well-intentioned, certainly, they had even been willing to stand up and fight. But had it been for him, or for their world, for their comfort, for their own lives? For most people that was enough, but not for him: he had had to offer himself for slaughter, to annihilate himself so they could go on living. He had no complaints to make about his fate: that was what he understood friendship to be. I give myself up for you and you give yourself up for me. Anything less than that and we aren't really friends. He was tired of being disappointed, tired of sharing in an empty glory. He wanted peace, something he had a better chance of finding in the sombre chill of his new house, among those who despised him.

'Turn her around,' he said. 'I don't want to see her face.' Her warders brusquely obliged.

'Verbera,' he said, pointing his wand at her. 'Septem.'

The lash that formed itself was red and seemed to glisten in the air.

'Should we go there now, do you think?'

Hermione sat on the edge of the bed, looking pensively up at the window.

'If you like,' Caius replied in a rather halfhearted voice. He was slouched in the hotel room's sole armchair. 'But to do what exactly?'

She looked back from the window and glanced around the room. For a wizarding hotel, there certainly wasn't much that was magic about it.

'He seems to be remembering more and more,' she began. Although is he remembering the right things? 'He knows he's a wizard at least.'

By the time they had escaped their attackers, he had been long gone, and they were in no fit state to go after him: Hermione could scarcely walk on her ankle, and Caius looked like he had a broken nose. He had come and found her in the alleyway, blood all over his face and overcoat. Instead they had been forced to disapparate back to the Hotel Pelletier and break out the healing charms.

'Yes, but will he be the same wizard as before?' Caius's face looked markedly more serious than it usually did.

'That's true... How could I have been so careless?!'

'Don't be so hard on yourself about the wand: it was an accident.'

He got up stiffly then came over and sat at the end of the bed. She shot him a half-smile.

'Today I watched Harry Potter unleash a horde of snakes on a street of innocent people.'

'Maybe it's not so bad,' said Caius. 'You did say he saved you from the Witchfinder's men, or whoever they were.'

She shook her head.

'That wasn't Harry. Not really. And he wasn't saving me, he was saving a stranger.'

She shut her eyes, the meanness of the room oppressing her. But darkness offered neither comfort nor oblivion; only memory.

'Everything is my fault,' she said suddenly, opening her eyes again.

Caius looked at her with concern.

'You're too hard on yourself.'

She shook her head.

'No, I don't think so. The night Harry disappeared, the night he was out duelling with you, he and Ginny were arguing because she was jealous of me. Ginny thinks he cast the memory charm on himself. After he tried to choke her.'

Caius slumped backwards where he was sitting.

'Do you think that's what really happened?'

'I don't know. It's possible.'

'That's a pretty extreme way to run away from guilt.'

'I know.'

Or was it in fact a very harsh punishment?.

She sat in silence until she could feel Caius looking at her.

'And was Ginny right to be jealous?' he asked calmly.

'No. At least, not in that way. There's never been any question of …' She stopped.

'Don't I have the right to say that Harry was and is my best friend?' she said, her voice louder and reverberating around the small room. 'And doesn't he have the right to say the same thing?'

'I think you know the answer already,' he replied evenly.

'So you think I should just walk away, be nothing to him?'

She looked at him: his expression was opaque.

'I shouldn't be advising you.'

She thought of Ilaria wrapped up in Harry's arms, looking adoringly at him. She kisses him very convincingly. But why shouldn't she? They looked good together, she had to admit. Perhaps she really did make him happy. Her expression hardened.

'When he knows who he is again, and tells me to my face to walk away, then I'll walk away.'

He nodded.

'I understand.'

He got up off the bed, went to his bag and took out a plastic bottle filled with a dark liquid. He took the lid off the bottle and held it out to her.

'Drink this,' he said, 'you need to disconnect a little.'

She looked at him with a mixture of suspicion and curiosity. Then she took the bottle and drank. The liquid was hot, almost scorching, sweet but not excessively sweet. Almost immediately her body felt less taut. She handed the bottle back to Caius, sat down slowly on the bed and watched as he took a long swig. As she looked around the room, its decor suddenly seemed less dreary and oppressive. Caius resumed his spot at the end of the bed and handed her the bottle again.

'What is it?' she asked, though her question came out more as a statement.

'Dementico,' he replied in a thick voice. 'I've been teaching myself to brew it. I'm not that good at it, although this is the best batch so far.'

She lifted it to her head and examined the mysterious black liquid through the plastic bottle, which still bore the label of the fizzy drink it had once contained. She tilted the bottle to one side and watched the viscous liquid displace slowly.

'So this is Dementico,' she said. She could see Caius's face slightly distorted through the see-through plastic. 'I've heard of it but never seen it before.'

She drank again from the bottle and looked at him for a few moments.

'This is a bad idea,' she said as she handed him back the bottle. The drink seemed to produce a kind of heat in her head, a gooey liquid heat that almost straight away started melting whatever it came into contact with. A strangled sort of giggle escaped her lips.

'Feeling any better?' asked Caius.

'Yes,' she replied, half-suppressing another giggle. 'But how is this going to put us in a fit state to tackle Harry and Ilaria?'

He stood up suddenly, seemed to contemplate the air in front of him, then turned back to her.

'Even supposing we had a plan, which we don't,' he began, 'do you really feel up to it?'

She thought about it for a few moments.

'No. Not really.'

He took another swig from the bottle, then came back and sat down on the bed again. Rather than the drink relaxing him, he seemed fidgety and distracted. She resisted the temptation to ask him to pass her the bottle.

'By the way, I didn't get a chance to say thank you for this afternoon.'

'For what?' he asked.

'That snake. The one that was about to crawl up my leg.'

He smiled ruefully.

'Ah forget about it. Probably harmless.'

'Maybe, maybe not. I'm glad I didn't have to find out.'

'I wasn't intending to vaporise it, to tell the truth,' he remarked. 'I don't go in for cruelty to animals usually.'

'I appreciate the good intention,' she replied, this time managing a warmer smile.

'It wasn't exactly what you'd call care of magical creatures,' he continued.

'Were they magical creatures? I'm not sure. Anyway, the point is, thanks.'

'No problem,' he said. 'At least I did better than last time.'

'Last time?'

'When I allowed Mr Morley and friends to catch us.'

'You're not my bodyguard.'

He lowered his head and stooped his shoulders a bit.

'Bodyguard? No, not a ghost like me.'

This was a really weird way to put himself down.

'A ghost?'

He looked round at her, quizzically for a moment, before he realised he'd said something funny.

'I mean I'm a second-rate wizard.'

'I've never heard the word 'ghost' used to mean that,' she remarked. 'But I've noticed you use odd little words and phrases sometimes. I was meaning to ask you where they come from.'

He looked a little embarrassed.

'What other words?'

'Dackle, for example. I've heard you use it a couple of times.'

He smiled to himself.

'Ah, you're very observant,' he replied.

'I don't know about that.'

But she didn't like not knowing things.

'They're just phrases I grew up around,' he said, sitting himself cross legged further down the bed, ready to launch into an explanation. 'It's called the divine tongue. It's a kind of slang I suppose.'

'I've heard plenty of wizarding slang,' replied Hermione, 'but I've never heard of the divine tongue.'

His eyes glinted.

'Ah, it's not the sort of thing you hear at Hogwarts.'

'Why not?'

'Because it's carried by itinerants mostly.'

Itinerants she had heard of.

'You mean itinerant teachers of magic?'

'That's right.'

'Your family had itinerants?'

'On and off over the years. Though we haven't for a long time. We had one when I was a child, but he left, like they always do. After that my parents decided to send me to Hogwarts. But I learned plenty from him. Including how to speak the divine tongue.'

'Really?' she looked at him intently. 'Can you teach me some?'

He hesitated.

'What, is there some rule that doesn't allow you to tell people who haven't had an itinerant teacher?'

'No,' he replied. 'Not that I know of.'

'Well then. Teach me.'

'Ok.'

She leaned a bit closer.

'Dackle means muggle, doesn't it?' she said.

'That's right. Or you can say peaceful.'

'Oh yes, I heard you use and Adam Harries say it in the pub. So that's what it means. What's the difference between the two?'

'Peaceful is more neutral. Dackle is …uh … not so polite.'

'I see.'

'So how do you say magic?'

'Magic? Divine.'

'And wizard?'

'We just call them seers.'

'Oh. What about witches?'

'There is no separate word for witch. You call them seers too.'

'Well, I suppose that's something,' she remarked, smiling to herself.

'So a dackle is peaceful, and a seer is what we call restless.'

'Why restless?'

He shrugged.

'That's just how it is. A ghost, like I told you, is a wizard who's not much good at magic, and what most magic folk call a squib we call a squinter. Like my old Uncle Glynn.'

'You're not a ghost, by the way.'

'Thanks.'

She repeated the words in her head.

'In the divine tongue, doing magic seems to be connected to vision,' she remarked.

'I suppose so,' he replied. 'In fact, there's another one: white-eyed.'

'White-eyed?'

'Yeah, it means someone who practices a different kind of magic from ours.'

The question of other kinds of magic was one that had intrigued her from time to time. The books she had read that dealt with it had always seemed rather dismissive of the idea. She had asked about it in class at Hogwarts once, and been told that, yes, there were other kinds of magic, but they were weaker, more manifestations of the mind's untapped potential than a real force.

'What other kinds of magic do you know?'

'I don't know names. But they exist, white-eyed people.'

She leaned towards him.

'Have you ever met one?'

'Not that I know of. Have you?'

'No, I don't think so,' she replied, smiling slightly.

'I figure if there's a word for them, they must refer to something wizards have come across,' he remarked.

'Maybe.'

They paused for a moment and Caius took another swig. He offered her the bottle and this time she took it.

'Oh, and a really kick-arse wizard is called a drygue,' he added. 'That would be someone like Dumbledore, or my grandfather, or Harry or you.'

'Oh, don't include me in that company,' Hermione replied. 'And certainly not these days. I've gone soft. My reflexes have all gone dull.'

'I wouldn't say so.'

He seemed embarrassed again. She was starting to find it a bit endearing.

'So what's the divine for 'cast a spell'?'

'Ah, it's a funny sort of a word. Gockle.'

'Gockle? Yes, that's pretty strange.'

'Yeah, and to kiss means to curse.'

She raised an eyebrow.

'Really? Is kissing so dangerous then?'

He smiled.

'I don't know where the term comes from.'

His expression changed again.

'What we saw on that video tonight, you'd call it lighting someone up.'

Her expression darkened too.

'Torture them, you mean.'

'Specifically with magic.'

She looked away.

'Tell me something nicer.'

He paused.

'Ok. There's sublime.'

'What does that mean?'

'It means girlfriend. Or boyfriend.'

'Ok, that's nicer.'

'And to sublime someone means to seduce them.'

Another pause.

She looked him in the eyes.

'And are you subliming me?'

She couldn't quite believe what she was saying.

'I don't know,' he replied, maintaining her gaze. 'It's not for me to say.'

The words passing between them seemed to vibrate in the air and then inside her.

'You are a little,' she murmured.

He reached out and touched her on the cheek, his eyes glazed over and distant. Then he slid his fingers under the line of her jaw and tugged her head slightly so that her mouth faced his. She didn't try to stop him. Then his mouth was against hers. She kissed him back, closing her eyes. But the dark was full of memory again. It jarred her out of the moment. Why am I kissing him? Why would I kiss someone at all? Through the blur she could still see just how disorientated she was. What am I doing? Just lazily passing the time, when Harry's....

She broke free of the kiss and shifted a bit further down the bed from him.

'Sorry,' said Caius in a numb-sounding voice. 'I don't think you want this.'

'Don't say sorry,' she replied. 'You've nothing to be sorry about. It's me. I'm getting so good at messing things up. I can't believe how useless I am. How on earth do I think I'm going to save…'

It was only once she was on her feet that she realised the state she was in. She swayed and put out her hand to the bed to steady herself.

'... Harry Potter,' said Caius quietly.

She looked over at him but he seemed to be receding from view, either disappearing into the distance or just fading into a blur. She lay down on her side, her gaze flitting over the uneven surface of the duvet until it hit the wall. She heard a rushing in her ears, like the sea or intermingling whispered voices. For a few moments more she gazed at the wall. Then she closed her eyes.

Darkness enveloped her, but it was a darkness smeared with a blur of lights, whites, yellows and reds, some blinking on and off, others fixed. As the lights gradually started to shift into focus and the darkness took form, the cold hit her, a cold, probing wind accompanied by the smell of the night air and an undertow of exhaust fumes. Then the detail painted itself into the scene and she found herself back in London, over the middle of the Thames, standing on Southwark Bridge. Lights and animation were visible on the South Bank, but the bridge was empty and silent. She looked around for Harry, but he wasn't there. She felt confused: wasn't she revisiting the night when she had stopped him from jumping off the bridge? She looked down the line of streetlamps that led to the shore: a solitary figure was walking towards her at an even pace. It was a woman, she could see, a woman with long dark hair blowing in the breeze whipping across the bridge, dressed in tight jeans and a black sweater. The sound of her heels was the only sound on the bridge, apart from the faint wailing of the wind.

'There's nothing for you here, Hermione,' came the voice as it carried down the bridge. Ilaria.

'Where is he?' Hermione said in reply, her voice clear and cold.

'He's safe,' said Ilaria. She stopped no more than a couple of paces in front of her, a smirk of quiet satisfaction on her face.

'Safe? He nearly jumped off the bridge. He needs treatment.'

'I'm treating him. I look after him now.'

'The only way he can be treated is by getting rid of the memory charm. Only you don't want to do that, of course.'

Ilaria's smirk twisted into a glare.

'It doesn't concern you. Go back to Caius. He'll do for you, if it's a little bit of action on the side that you're after.'

'Oh it does concern me. I'm the only one who wants to help Harry. You certainly don't.'

The girl's eyes flashed maliciously in the dark.

'Every minute that he's with me I'm helping him. I found him on the streets. I took him in, helped him regain his strength. I give him everything he needs.'

'I can imagine. I've seen you all over him.'

She was smiling again.

'You can't imagine anything. You've never had him in your bed. You don't know even 1% of what I give him, and what he gives me. He's exquisite. And I intend to keep him forever.'

'What, keep him in the dark forever about who he really is?'

'He wasn't happy with who he was. He's so much better off without Harry Potter.'

'Isn't it a bit pathetic, though? Here you are the girlfriend of the great Harry Potter, and he doesn't even know who he is.'

There was a flash of something else in Ilaria's eyes. She wondered if she had touched a nerve.

'Leave him alone,' she replied. 'You lost all right to him. You waited a year, a whole year, until you started looking for him. And you only started because someone else happened to bump into him. What a pathetic friend you are. What made you do it? Boredom? Your boyfriend not doing it for you?'

Hermione looked at the girl with silent contempt. But she didn't have a reply. The accusations were pretty much the same ones she made to herself.

'Or much more likely,' said Ilaria, all smirking and triumphant, 'when you heard he had a girlfriend you couldn't stop yourself. You always make sure you break up all his relationships. It's your speciality. Here you are, stringing along Caius, getting him to help you break up me and Harry. And let's not forget your boyfriend and his sister, stabbed in the back. Quite a performance, Hermione, I have to admit.'

Hermione smiled. It seemed like the best way to hide her true feelings.

'If that's the case, Ilaria,' she said coolly and taking a step forward. 'If I'm as much of a bitch as you say I am, if I'm as obsessed with Harry as you claim, then you really should be worrying. Because I won't rest until I make sure that he's free of you. The more I think about it, the more I wonder whether you engineered his memory loss in the first place. It seems too convenient that you just found him on the street and nursed him back to health and into your bed.'

Ilaria smiled.

'You've been watching too many soap operas, Hermione,' she replied.

'So you deny it, then?'

'I don't have to deny it. We both know that if anyone's to blame, it's you. Imagine the nerve: breaking into his flat to leave him a mawkish, anonymous note. It's borderline psychotic.'

She started to grope around for a response, but something stopped her.

'Wait a second,' she said, suddenly much more conscious, suddenly remembering drinking the Dementico in the hotel room and the state it had put her in. 'You know too much. You know things that Ilaria can't know. You know too much about me. Who are you really?'

The girl smiled, her face still seemingly Ilaria's.

'I wondered whether you would work it out. Your brain is still functioning quite well, even down here. To tell the truth, I hoped you would work it out. You're just as clever as I thought you were.'

'Who are you?' Hermione repeated.

In an instant the face of Ilaria was gone, replaced by that of a woman she had never seen before. She had dark hair, pale skin and strangely gleaming green eyes. She was older than Ilaria, but strangely ageless.

'Oh, I'm just a fan,' she replied. 'A big fan of your work.'

'What work?' said Hermione.

'The trail of misery you leave behind you,' the woman replied. 'Ron and Ginny of course, and now Caius. And you mean to detach Ilaria from Harry as well, so you fully intend to hurt her too.'

'As for Ilaria,' said Hermione. 'I rather think that she's made her own bed and will have to lie in it.'

'An appropriate image,' said the woman. 'Go get her, I say. I'm looking forward to seeing how things turn out. And of course, whether you manage to rescue poor Harry.'

'You speak as if you're watching me all the time,' said Hermione.

'Not all the time,' the woman replied. 'I have other people to keep tabs on as well.'

'What are you?' said Hermione for the third time. 'Some kind of demon?'

The woman smiled.

'No, nothing so dramatic as that. I'm flesh and blood.'

'Are you a witch then?'

'Not exactly. What did Caius call us? The white-eyed.'

'White-eyed? You mean you practise some other kind of magic?'

'Something like that.'

'And you can see inside my mind.'

'Yes,' said the woman. 'It's my favourite pastime. And at the moment you're my favourite subject. You're in the process of making a really delicious mess. I thought Harry was fun when I got to take a look inside him, but you're something else.'

'Well,' said Hermione. 'I'm so happy that Harry and I have been able to provide you with such entertainment. But haven't you made a mistake by revealing yourself?'

'I couldn't resist, to be honest,' said the woman. 'I've been so looking forward to us meeting. And anyway, I like to shake things up from time to time, make things more of a challenge. I could go on lurking in the shadows forever, but it's too easy and, to tell the truth, it gets a bit lonely.'

'So what do you propose?' asked Hermione tersely. The woman looked down for a moment. As Hermione followed her gaze she felt something in her hand. She looked down and saw the black-handled knife there.

'You kept it', the woman remarked. 'That's good. You may need it at some point.'

'You gave this to me, I suppose?' said Hermione.

'Yes,' she said with a giggle. 'That was funny, wasn't it?'

'Not particularly,' said Hermione, remembering her emaciated evil twin.

'Oh you'll get used to it,' said the woman. 'My sense of humour, I mean.'

'Do I have any choice in the matter?'

'Not unless you think of a way to get rid of me.'

'I'll be working on it, don't worry.'

The woman's eyes seemed to gleam even more brightly and strangely.

'I wouldn't expect anything less.'

Hermione scowled at her.

'There's one thing I want to know,' she said. 'Are you going to try and stop me from helping Harry?'

The woman smiled again. It was the same knowing smirk she had had Ilaria wear earlier.

'Stop you? Don't worry about that. For one thing, I love seeing where your choices take you. And since your choices always take you back to Harry, that's where you're bound to go. I don't think Ilaria, bless her, will really be up to the job of stopping you. You overestimate her.'

'What do you mean?'

'He wiped his own memory, right after he tried to choke his girlfriend. What did people call him? The Golden Boy? I can see why he couldn't bear it anymore. He had to find a way of ruining his life.'

'And I suppose you were whispering all this in his ear? After all, ruining lives appears to be your thing.'

'You don't understand me yet, Hermione. I don't ruin lives. I don't go around making happy people miserable or good people bad. All I do is help people to get what they really want. I'm not trying to make you unhappy, you already are unhappy. I don't make you do anything against your own will. I won't oppose you as such, but other people might not be able to stop themselves from getting in your way.'

'I suppose that's a threat.'

'It's not a threat, Hermione, it's a piece of advice.'

'You keep using my name, but I don't know yours.'

'Oh you will,' said the woman. 'When the moment's right.' She reached out her hands and placed them on Hermione's, her cold fingers gripping Hermione's fingers. She wanted to resist, but couldn't. The woman looked down at their interlocked hands then looked up slowly and smiled.

'We're going to have a lot of fun, you and I.'

Southwark Bridge dissolved into darkness. When the darkness next became clear Hermione was back in the hotel room, her head pressed against the slightly stale smelling duvet. Slowly she dragged herself up into an upright position. The hotel room was silent. And there was no sign of Caius.

When he woke up, his hands were around Ilaria's neck. They were scarcely pressing on the skin, but he withdrew them immediately, his heart suddenly pounding in fear. He reached under the covers and took hold of her wrist, feeling for her pulse. Her heart seemed to be beating normally. He lay her hand down gently and kissed her on the back of the neck. Then he quickly got out of the bed.

He stood in the middle of the bedroom floor in the dark, not sure what to do next. Am I dangerous? What will happen if I go back to sleep? Fragments of his dream came back to him, but he tried to push them away. He wondered whether he should get dressed, pack his things and leave. But the mere idea made a feeling of dread well up inside him.

Suddenly Ilaria turned over in bed and turned on the bedside light.

'What are you doing?' she said sleepily, only half looking in his direction.

'I had a bad dream,' he said.

'You scared me,' she murmured, shifting round into an upright position on the bed. 'I thought for a moment someone had broken in.'

'Sorry,' he said.

'Oh my goodness!' she exclaimed as she noticed that his beard was gone. 'Why did you shave it off?'

'I don't know,' he replied. 'It just seemed like the right thing to do.'

'It doesn't matter,' she said. 'You're just as handsome without it.'

She reached out a bare arm.

'Why don't you come back to bed?'

He hesitated.

'I have to show you something first.'

She looked quizzically at him but said nothing.

'Wait there,' he said, walking quickly across the room to the drawer that contained his clothes and belongings. He opened the drawer, slid out the wand and came back towards the bed. Her eyes fell on the wand straight away and her mouth dropped open in shock. He came and sat on the edge of the bed.

'Ever seen one of these before?' he said, holding the wand for her to see.

She scrutinised the wand with dark eyes, not saying anything. When she reached out to take it he pulled it away from her.

'It belongs to me,' he said in a low voice.

She sat back and sighed deeply.

'I can see that it does.'

She got silently out of bed, crept across the bedroom floor and went to her bag. In a few moments she came back with a wand of her own.

'How is this possible?' he said, looking back and forward between her and her wand.

'Please don't be angry with me,' she said contritely. 'I knew as soon as I met you. But magic has already done so much damage to you. I thought that the last thing you needed was to have any contact with it.'

'What do you mean, you knew as soon as you met me?'

She swallowed then reached out and touched him arm. He raised his hand to brush it away, but when his hand touched hers he left it there. She smiled weakly.

'Magic leaves a trace, both when you cast a spell and when a spell is cast on you. That's what I felt when I met you.'

He thought over what she had said.

'And you say magic has damaged me …'

'It must have been a curse that wiped your memory. It damages the brain, and the damage can get worse as the brain rewires itself. That's why I've always tried to keep you protected. You don't know how worried I was when you took that job with Armin.'

'What, because the bookshop sells books of magic?'

'No, that shop has no connection to the real world of magic. But you're too near to real wizards there. It's a constant stress for me. I'm always having to cast veiling charms around you, particularly when you go to work.'

'You cast spells on me all the time?'

He was more excited than angry at the idea.

'Yes. I'm sorry. And now you shaved off your beard, you'll be easily recognised. I should have tried harder to convince you to go somewhere else. Even back to Italy. It's ironic: I finally get you out of London, only for your wand to find you here. Who gave it to you?'

'No one. There was a sort of fight and it fell out of someone's pocket.'

To his surprise she didn't question him further.

'There you go,' she said. 'Somehow it found you.'

She reached over and kissed him timidly on the cheek. When he made no effort to stop her, she kissed him twice more.

'Can I see yours?' he said.

She hesitated for a moment, then relented and handed him her wand.

He took it and placed it in his hand, next to his. He looked at the two wands, sitting side by side in the palm of his hand. Then he returned hers.

'I actually did some magic this afternoon,' he said, looking down at his wand again. 'But now I can't remember how to do anything. The knowledge is all floating round in my head, but I can't grab hold of it.'

She looked at him sombrely.

'Would you like me to help you?' she asked.

'Yes,' he said. 'But first, I want to see you do some magic.'

She nodded then stood up and positioned herself a little way from the bed. She looked round the room then back at him, closed her eyes and whispered the words expecto patronum. A white mist shot from the end of her wand then began to coalesce in the air in front of her. The swirling mist formed itself into a small bird, which flew up towards the ceiling then swooped down and landed on his shoulder. He looked round slowly at the white bird, which seemed to stare at him from where it had perched. Its presence didn't startle him. On the contrary, the spell seemed familiar to him.

'What kind of bird is it?' he asked, as if that was a relevant question.

She reflected for a moment.

'Succiacapre,' she said. 'In English it's called a nightjar, I think.'

The bird took off again, flew twice round the room, before dwindling to a tiny white dot and disappearing.

'It was beautiful,' he said.

'It is a beautiful charm,' she replied, walking up to him and putting her arms around his neck. 'To cast it you need to think of something beautiful that happened to you. I thought of the day I met you.'

She took the wand out of his hand and threw it down onto the bed. Then she kissed him hard on the mouth.