Lucy pulled out a chair and sat down; if she hadn't, she likely would have fallen down.

"I don't believe it. It's happening, but I don't believe it." Her sky-blue eyes were fixed on Sirius in his dog-shape. "So much has happened, yesterday and today. I'm having a hard time believing it all, even when I'm actually casting the spells myself and seeing the results for myself."

Sirius resumed his human form, so quickly that Lucy jumped slightly in her chair. "Harry told me that earlier today, Dumbledore had asked him to teach you some spells. Can you demonstrate one of them for me?"

There was a long silence.

Then, without speaking, Lucy turned and pointed at the pizza cutter, which she had set on the countertop. "Accio!", she said, and the cutter flew into her hand.

There was another long silence, a silence that was making Harry increasingly nervous the longer it lasted.

Sirius's dark eyes held Lucy's, as if he were silently asking her a question. She did not speak, but she didn't avoid his gaze, either.

"I don't believe it," Sirius finally murmured, shaking his head. "You've never done magic, at all, until a few hours ago, and -- without a wand no less -- you just performed to perfection a spell that usually takes even advanced students days to master." He grinned as he ran his fingers through his tousled hair. "You are brave enough to stand up to an escaped convict. And you are quite skilled at forensic debate and questioning. You definitely have the makings of an Auror."

Lucy put her fists on her hips in mock outrage, but both Harry and Sirius could tell she was secretly very pleased at hearing this. "Harry! Have you been talking to your godfather about me while I was down here slaving over a hot stove making pizza?"

"Of course he has, Lucy," Sirius replied, sitting down at the table. "Reminds me: you keep promising to feed us that pizza --"

"Yeah, the pizza!" chimed in Harry.

Lucy rolled her eyes. "Men!" she said, as she brought the pizza to the table.

The luncheon proceeded smoothly after that.

While at the table, Lucy told Sirius and Harry about her Appalachian childhood, her family, and most especially her father. She talked of how he would always make time for her and her mother and brother and sister, even though his night watchman job for the county took him away from them much of the time. She even told them about his senseless death at the hands of drug addicts, which caused her mother to send her and her siblings off to orphanages until they were grown.

She talked of how she got good grades, good enough to win scholarships to various colleges, and how she ended up taking a career in law enforcement as a way of succeeding where her daddy, stuck in his dead-end job as night watchman, had failed. But she abruptly left her job when her boss, married, powerful and untouchable, had started punishing her professionally for her refusal to become his mistress. She hooked up with Dr. Reader shortly after that, and found that she enjoyed working as a therapist for small children. What she left unsaid, but what both Harry and Sirius saw as plain as the nose on her face, was that she still hankered to fight the bad guys as an officer of the law.

Sirius, in turn, told her about the wizarding world, and about his friendship with Harry's father and mother. He told her about his life in Azkaban, about the constant draining of spirit caused by the dementors, and how only his knowing he was innocent kept him alive for over a decade -- until he got wind of the whereabouts of Peter Pettigrew. His eyes became dead and vacant once again as he recounted the long dark stretch of years, filled with despair and little else, that made up his stay in the wizard prison. Lucy noticed this, and, alarmed, she instinctively put her hand, warm with comforting life, on his, for a brief moment; Sirius' eyes flickered in surprise, and the dead look left them, to be replaced by speculation.

The kitchen phone rang. Lucy got up from the table and lifted the receiver. "Dr. Reader's residence," she said, using the same businesslike tone she used when answering the phone at the Harley Street office. Her face suddenly brightened. "Marcus! Darling, how are you? Where are you? Oh, I see." She leaned against the kitchen counter, sticking her thumb in a belt loop on her jeans, looking like James Dean's little sister. "No, that's not a problem. Do you need me to send you anything?" There was a long pause as she listened intently. "Oh, all right. Excellent! Excellent!" Lucy's face was wreathed in smiles. "Harry will be so happy to hear it! Oh, by the way, we have another guest, a friend" -- Lucy was careful not to say "godfather"; she was fairly sure the phone wasn't being tapped, but one never knew -- "of Harry's. I'm not sure how long he'll be staying with us. I'll have the other bedroom ready if need be. Take care, darling. Goodbye!"

She hung up the phone, her face shining. "Marcus is going to stay at St. Mungo's overnight. He called from a nearby Muggle psychiatric hospital; Dumbledore took him there so he could get more antipsychotics and antianxiety drugs for the Longbottoms."

"How are they doing?" Harry asked, his voice laden with hope and anxiety.

"They're lucid and responding to treatment, though somewhat weak and fragile mentally as yet," Lucy replied happily. "Neville and his grandmother have already visited them, and talked with them."

Harry's heart was in his mouth; he had to fight to keep from crying for sheer joy. "And -- they recognized him?"

"They certainly did," beamed Lucy. "Marcus is going to keep them on olanzapine and bromazepam until he gets them used to the idea of being sane again. People who've been psychotic for a long time get used to being insane, to the point where it's often very difficult to get them out of that rut and keep them out of it. The trick is to correct the chemical imbalance in their brains, and to push them into the rut of sanity."

Sirius was awed. "Dr. Reader is undoing the aftereffects of a Cruciatus Curse, using Muggle methods alone?"

"Yupper," Lucy said, her face glowing. "And what's more, once he gets them stablized mentally, he's going to fix it so that no one will ever again be able to use a Cruciatus Curse against them."

"How can he do that?" both Sirius and Harry asked, disbelievingly.

"By showing them the art of the memory palace," replied Lucy, sitting back down at the table.

"'Memory palace'?" said Sirius skeptically. "The ancient mnemonic device?"

"Yes. Except that the memory palace isn't just an aid to memory. A really well-built memory palace is like a moated fortress for the mind. One can spend time roaming its corridors with the utmost content, even while the outer self is writhing under the nastiest tortures." Lucy's smiling gaze took in both of her hearers. "Marcus and I both know this from experience, and there is ample literature on the subject as well."

Lucy took a sip of her Chianti as Sirius and Harry looked on, rapt. "I would bet the farm that, inside of two weeks, Marcus will not only have both the Longbottoms right as rain, but that Mr. Longbottom will be able to resume his career as an Auror." Her face had a fierce, warrior's glow about it. "Two souls that Voldemort thought he'd destroyed will soon be back to fight him."