The wind dances around the large, old house, rattling the plastic draining and wailing through the rotten holes in the walls. A mossy tree in the front garden rakes its bare branches against the thin glass, like the claws of dragons fighting to get to their prey. Dark heavy clouds block out the sun's attempts to break through the grey ceiling of the sky; making the afternoon seem a lot later than it is.
A floorboard creaks in the room next to his, sending a shiver of cold down Ludo's spine, his ears prickling to attention.
It's nothing.
But it doesn't matter how many times he tells himself this, he cannot shake the burn of hidden eyes upon him, that small part of Ludo deep down inside that links every single noise to intruders, to the list of people who wish to find him and do harm to him. Ludo Bagman has pissed a lot of wizards and witches off over his many, many years, so of course, this paranoia makes sense.
Trust him to still be on the run in the middle of winter; it's much harder to hide and stay hidden when the weather outside is grim and miserable. He'd prefer to be somewhere hot and sunny, with a cocktail in his hand and a blackjack table in front of him. The only thing more perfect would be a Quidditch game with high stakes, but that's wishful thinking.
No, he cannot gamble. Not anymore. That's what got him into trouble in the first place, and why he's spent the best part of the year on the lam.
Ludo's nerves are frayed and shattered, and who can blame him? It gets to his head, having no fixed abode, nowhere to call his home. Every footstep, each sniggered word in the crowds he disappears into sets the hairs on his arm on edge, suspicion seeping into every corner of his brain. Even the most innocent of Muggles can become the most sinister of enemies.
How far the mighty have fallen.
He pokes the iron stoker further into the embers before adding another ball of paper, hoping it catches alight. The wood in the small hut at the back of the garden was useless, full of dampness and mould from the unforgiving rain. So instead, he'd collected every book, every newspaper he could get his hands on in the hope of throwing together some sort of fire. Freezing to death is not his preferred way to go. Using magic is out of the question; if he so much as flicks his wand to let out a few innocent sparks, the Aurors will find him and it'll all be over. And Ludo is not a quitter.
"All I need is one more bet. Even a Muggle one will do if the stakes are right," he mutters to the ashes, his words breathing out as frigid fog in front of his face. "Then I can catch a flight, escape this blasted country. Go to Monaco or back to Vegas."
Visions of slot machines and glitter-clad show girls fill his brain as he sinks back against the tattered armchair, his eyelids growing heavy. Bubbles of imaginary champagne burst on his tongue, although this time, they don't warm him from within. Sleep rarely finds him these days. Instead, he spends the long hours on the edge, fighting the anxiety that presses in around him. But even magical folk need more than a couple of hours of rest at a time. He could drift off, just for a short while, then perhaps…
⁂
The back door blows open with such force that the rotted wood falls apart and clatters to the floor. Ludo jerks awake with the first bang, and the residual noise has him reaching for his wand. Forget the trace. He has to be alive if he wants to make it to Monaco.
"It's nothing," he tells himself out loud this time, his heart pounding in disbelief.
His wand stays unignited as he eases himself to his feet, bones shaking as another gale winds its way through the old house. It's not footsteps he hears tiptoeing across the floor, just the way the weather in this country works. The rain pounds against the windows, breaching the smashes and soaking the floors where they're not protected by old fading rugs.
But he doesn't trust himself anymore. Something is different this time. The house was more settled, quieter before he'd drifted off to sleep, but now? A malignant presence lingers, filling every room with electricity and stealing the air from his lungs.
Ludo's hand tremors as he takes one, two, three steps toward the kitchen. Maybe he can fix the door enough to last the rest of the night. Despite the torrent outside and the lack of a proper fire, his spot was cosy, although he doubts he'll be able to get back to sleep whilst his heart still roars in his chest. He catches his shin on an old coffee table hidden in the gloom of the room. The pain radiates up his leg, tingling in his knee and hip.
"I'm far too old for this."
It's as dark as the bottom of an ink bottle, but still, he refuses to utter, "Lumos." To do so would admit defeat. The Aurors would have a right laugh at catching Ludo Bagman, so terrified at the wind he pissed his pants.
The next creak in the floorboards comes from behind him, taking him by surprise. His back curves as if shifting away from the source of the intrusion and he spins around, searching blindly in the gloom. His pulse throbs in his neck as his fingers fumble for the stoker he held only a few hours ago, and he winces as a splinter jabs into his thumb in response.
"Where's the fucking damn thing?"
Empty beer cans, a discarded takeaway carton, his old tatty blanket. None of them are the item he seeks. Finally, his hand slides over the cold iron and he scoops it from the floor, forgetting all about the final remnants of the door that still flap in the wind as he moves towards the noise, placing one trembling foot in front of the other.
His muscles scream at him to run and hide, to apparate away from this Merlin-forsaken place and find somewhere else, but he's tired. Despite how old it is, despite the state of disrepair, the lingering ferment of mouldy wood and perhaps a small animal that must have died upstairs, despite the rain that seeps in through the gaps in the windows, there had been a small underlying hope that maybe he'd be able to make it work, to give him a base until he could get back on his feet and put some coffers back in the Muggle bank account he'd opened.
Ludo Bagman might be a coward, but he's a proud man, and wouldn't it be a glorious homecoming back into the Wizarding World, his pockets overflowing with galleons and sickles, all his debts repaid?
The scrape of something against the old floorboards grows closer, mingling with the faint outlines of shadows that haunt the dark living room. The sound deafens him until the rain and the wind and the screech of bare twigs against glass disappear, and all he can focus on is the thump, creak, thump as some monster grows nearer.
This is it. His entire skin prickles, warning him of his upcoming doom. To Azkaban he goes, or the depths of a bottomless stomach. Hot breath warms his forehead, turning his stomach to liquid.
Summoning the last of his courage, he curls his fingers tighter around the poker and thrusts it outwards then up, into possible nothingness. It probably won't do anything against the demons from his dreams, or any Auror who has finally tracked him down, but the metal makes contact with something soft, meeting a small amount of resistance before seeping deeper into whatever foe it's found.
There's a small pop as the poker slices through sponge, a scrape of metal against something that sets every one of Ludo's nerve endings on edge. The tip gets caught for a brief moment, and he puts all of his remaining energy into finishing the job, angling the poker up until the gush of a hot, sticky, liquid races over his hands. He relinquishes his hold, taking a shaky step back, unsure of what damage he's just caused.
But the noises stop.
As dawn begins to break, shining with grey light into the room, a gasp of air fills the space between Ludo and his attacker. Liquid bubbles into the words as they rasp out, "I only wanted to help," the voice soft and female.
The shadows that haunted him disappear and whatever is standing in front of him slumps to the floor with a soft thwack. The poker follows it, clattering against the floorboards before rolling away.
Ludo peers closer, his heart stopping and all of the breath disappearing from his lungs as he looks at the pale face. He leans in, brushing thick yellow hair from her forehead and leaving behind a streak of red, ignoring the blood that collects in the corner of her mouth.
He knows this woman. She runs his fan club, or used to, back in Ludo's heyday. Faint memories of a collection of letters, each one dismissed with a soft chortle, cloud his mind. The girl would wait at the team entrance, and ask for photographs and signatures. She'd told him about her bad leg, rendered almost useless by a rogue bludger whilst playing against Slytherin, many years ago. But Ludo had no time for childish fangirls or boring stories about Hogwarts clubs. He was a professional, an important man with many more interesting things to get to.
The wailing starts once more, though it takes a while for him to realise that this time, the noise escapes his mouth. It joins up with the pain that yanks at his heart, feeding the darkest part of his being, the only bit of him that he recognises as bad.
Dismay curdles through his stomach as shaking hands stretch up to cover his face. What has he done? How did she track him down? Why didn't he think first before acting? Where is all this blood coming from? A friend is what he needed the most, someone he could lean on to help him. The last real person he'd spoken to, aside from himself, was Wendell Wilkins, and that seemed like forever ago now.
But it's too late. Nobody else is coming to help him.
As the birds in the naked tree begin their morning chorus, Ludo retreats from the red pool that spreads under the woman's body. Sophia? Debbie? He hasn't even got the decency to remember her name. He tries to avert his gaze, but he finds them glued to the life fading from her, the light that stops shining in her eyes as she draws her last rattling breath. It takes every last decent part of his soul with her; not only is he a gambler and a fraudster, but now he's a murderer to boot.
Something inside of Ludo snaps, his grieving forgotten about, if only for a second. He has to get out of here and fast. Stepping over her—Cynthia? Jessica?—body, he shoves his meagre belongings into his threadbare khaki bag, his eyes still flitting back towards her as if he might forget the guilt that ices his heart. When he's sure he's collected everything, he stands back above the now-deceased woman—Sarah? Belinda?—and mutters a small prayer.
It's the least he can do.
Risking capture one last time, he pushes away his search for her name and focuses on the deep, green forest in Galloway. Surely, even with the trace ignited, it'll take the Aurors a while to examine the scene and seek him out. Maybe they'll even attribute it to the nameless woman, lying in her own pool of blood.
Ludo lifts his wand, squeezing out a small "sorry" before apparating away.
An unfortunate slight.
