Chapter 31: More Errands in London

PRESENT: EARLY MARCH

It was, Meli had learned, a trait of friends that they could perceive one another's stress levels, whatever camouflage might be applied thereto. It was a trait of true friends that, when people and circumstances permitted, they moved to counter stress levels that rose too high in another.

She was not incredibly surprised, therefore, that, shortly after Andrea's final departure from Hogwarts, one of her friends still at Hogwarts perceived that stress had made her stir-crazy and took steps to address the problem. The friend in question was Zarekael, and his suggested course of action was not exactly what she would have expected.

"You want me to take you back to Muggle London?" she said, stunned. "In heaven's name, why would you want to go back there?"

Zarekael was amused. "I believe the last joint expedition was, at least initially, more unpleasant for you," he replied. "And perhaps if this expedition is shorter, with only one or two stops, it would be more pleasant for both of us.

"All right," Meli conceded. "And what one or two stops do you have in mind?"

"I would like to go to a music store." Zarekael's expression had taken a subtle turn towards rueful. "'Boom' has been stuck in my head for months, and I'd like to replace it with something else."

Meli felt her eyebrows nearly meet her widow's peak. "You've had 'Boom' stuck in your head this whole time?" she breathed, horrified. "That's . . . six months!" Her brows came in for a landing once more in an expression of comical sympathy. "I had no idea. Too much of anything, even P.O.D., is bad for the sanity." She nodded. "All right, I'll take you to Tower Records. If we go in the evening, Picadilly Circus shouldn't be so crowded." Her expression cleared as another idea occurred to her. "And it's not terribly far from the Indian restaurant we went to before. We could go there first, if you'd like, then walk to Charing Cross and take the tube."

To judge by Zarekael's carefully neutral countenance, he didn't know Charing Cross from Canterbury, but he nodded his agreement to the scheme.

"Will you need to borrow another set of Muggle clothes?" Meli asked.

Zarekael shook his head. "No, thank you," he replied. "Having seen how Muggles dress, I believe I can approximate an outfit from my wardrobe."

"While you're approximating," Meli said dryly, "you might try for something that'll address your...er, lady problem."

He did better than approximate, as it happened—alarmingly better. Indeed, Meli's second coherent thought after opening the door to admit him was that somewhere he had found the time to do some very interesting research. She had no later memory of her first coherent thought, but it was accompanied by widened eyes and lightheadedness.

"Well," she remarked, after a very long pause, "you'll have no problem keeping the ladies away this time."

There before her stood Zarekael, dressed in the red-and-black cassock and closed collar of a Catholic cardinal. He had even found or made by transfiguration a gold cross.

"Nor will there be any doubt about you being a vampire," she added, stepping aside and inviting him in.

Something in her voice must have attracted Monty's attention, for as she followed Zarekael out of the entryway, the python slid out of his favorite chair and came around for a look. Monty glanced at him, did a double-take, stared openly, then whirled and slithered into Meli's bedroom as fast as he could go.

Meli smirked. "Please forgive Monty's behavior," she said, then raising her voice for the python's benefit, added, "He has fond remembrances of Luther's Ninety-Five Theses."

There followed a loud crash form the direction in which Monty had departed, and Meli surmised that he had tipped one of her bookshelves. In truth, he was not the first familiar she'd had who took an interest in religious matters; Casita had been heavily into yoga and transcendental meditation, then, shortly before her death, had made a radical U-turn and gone in for Dutch Reformed theology. Monty, by contrast, had always been, as far as Meli knew, a solid Papist. Indeed, he had hissed out nastier invectives against Martin Luther, Ulrich Zwingli, and John Calvin than he had ever voiced against Voldemort (which was, admittedly, saying something).

She turned back to Zarekael and found that he had already charmed away his closed collar and taken off the cross, the only alterations necessary (aside from removing and returning to its original form the cassock, of course) to make his clothing both Muggle and secular.

"A small joke, for your benefit only," he replied in answer to her questioning look as he removed the cassock. "I do not believe it would be appropriate for me to go out like this."

Meli smiled. "Well, perhaps I can help you in avoiding female fawning anyway," she said. "If I match my look a bit more to yours this time, they'll be less likely to come after you." With that, she excused herself and, after a short stop at her wardrobe, disappeared into her bedroom. Monty had indeed overturned the shorter of her two bookshelves, so she turned to the desk chair where he was coiled and sulking.

"I expect this to be cleaned up by the time I get back tonight," she told him coolly. "And I would also like to point out that I take it with much more grace when you make snide comments about my being a Calvinist Protestant. Perhaps I should vandalize your cage next time." She was in the bathroom with the door closed before he could give any reply.

She emerged fifteen minutes later and presented herself for comment. She still wore black, but there was a lot more of it, accompanied by, of all things foreign to her, lace. She hadn't done anything with her hair, but she had charmed her fingernails black and done her eye shadow and lipstick to match. Her black eyeliner was thick enough that her eyes nearly stood out from her head. And, topping off the full ensemble, she wore a black leather dog collar with silver spikes.

To his credit, Zarekael made no initial reaction, though he seemed to be highly amused. After a short moment of silence, however, he arched an inquisitive eyebrow and asked the most obvious question: "And what manner of jacket or cloak would one wear with that?"

Meli thought for a moment before coming up with an answer. It's not exactly something I ever thought I'd show anyone, much less wear . . . but he knows me well enough. "Well," she said aloud. "I have a likely candidate." She turned and stepped once more to her wardrobe. "Do you have a cloak that could be altered to look something like this?"

She brought it out: a black cloak with a deep hood, now far too small for her without a bit of alteration. Even before she held it up, Zarekael paled visibly.

I don't understand. He had to know I'd have this. He's a—She swallowed. Right. He has one, too. He's a Death Eater.

Not missing a beat, however, Zarekael nodded.

Meli kept her tone light, for the benefit of Monty, who surely took in every word that was said. "Shall we stop by your rooms to pick it up, then?"

He nodded again, and they left Monty to his cleanup.

Zarekael disappeared into his bedroom to retrieve his hidden cloak, and while he was gone, Meli altered her own, draping it across the back of one of his fireside chairs. She broadened the shoulders and lengthened it considerably, reflecting on how much she had grown in seventeen years. As a last touch, she removed the hood; it could be easily put back, and she was suddenly acutely aware that she didn't want to be caught with anything resembling a Death Eater's cloak anywhere around Hogwarts.

Their entry to Zarekael's rooms had caused a few torches to light themselves. They were spread out at even, though long, intervals around the main room, but they did not give enough light to illuminate it fully. There was adequate light where she stood, but the walls were draped in overlapping layers of shadows thrown by the flames. Her work completed for the moment, Meli stood aside and faced the doorway to the bedroom, waiting.

When he emerged, the shadows played over his face in a manner somehow reminiscent of shadows on masks at the Death Eater gatherings she had attended as a child. He seemed suddenly wraithlike, a threatening apparition stepping out of the past, a well-remembered cloak in hand.

She forced herself neither to swallow nor to step back, but her struggle to remain in place was evident. Zarekael paused, looking uncertain. "Are you sure this is a good idea?" he asked quietly. "Knowing is one thing; seeing evidence is quite another."

And in that question she found a firm foundation on which to stand. Compared with all that she had seen of Death Eaters before, this was nothing. Zarekael was her friend, and what she knew in the present should be more than enough to defeat the ghosts of the past. In any case, no Death Eater, then or since, had ever harmed her.

"I've seen Severus," she reminded him. In full regalia, no less, she added silently. Just the cloak should be nothing.

"I'm not Severus," he countered mildly.

But I'm stubborn, and the more you protest, the greater my resolve! "But you're both my friends," she said firmly.

He looked measuringly at her for a moment, then nodded. "How should I alter it?" he asked.

"I've removed the hood," she replied, breathing easily once more. "That should be enough to get past anyone we run into; a lot of wizards and witches have black cloaks."

The did not run into anyone, though. By design, they departed the school during dinner and so avoided contact with either students or faculty. About halfway down the road to Hogsmeade, they replaced their hoods and prepared to apparate. Before they went, however, Meli darted a look up at Zarekael.

"Could I ask a small favor?"

He met her eyes and nodded. "Yes."

She managed a smile. "Could you not . . . wear your hood up?" It was an admission of defeat, which she did not like to make, but even now the past held some sway over her. There was wisdom, and no shame, in admitting to that and acting accordingly.

"Of course," Zarekael replied, and she read in his eyes that he understood perfectly.

To Meli's knowledge, the Indian restaurant near Charing Cross had never been extremely busy. It had enough patrons to thrive as a business, but she had never had a problem getting a table. Nevertheless, she had called ahead for reservations the day before, and that odd little whim now proved fortuitous.

By himself, Zarekael did not look overly outlandish. His primary oddities were his height and his unusual eyes, neither of which could be helped; the cloak might also be considered odd, but not outlandishly so. Meli, no the other hand, was obviously someone that they might have refused to seat. It was not a fancy restaurant by any means, but even casual establishments had their standards, and spiked dog collars and black lipstick were evidently in violation.

Meli, observing this at once, smiled, gave the name of their reservation, then added, with a sardonic smile, "Do you have a dark corner?"

The gentleman seating them smiled weakly, then led them to the darkest table in the place, which also happened to be furthest from the front windows.

Once the waiter had taken their drink orders and scurried away, Zarekael arched an inquisitive eyebrow. "Drayson?" he asked, repeating the name under which Meli had made their reservation.

She offered him a cool smile in return. "A certain individual of our mutual acquaintance has a nasty habit of checking reservation logs," she replied. "It wouldn't do for that certain individual to notice that I dined with a friend. He might start asking questions." She shrugged. "I'm paranoid; hence the pseudonym."

"Ah."

Dinner was thoroughly uneventful, and Meli's only regret was that the house elves at Hogwarts could not make even a decent imitation of good lamb curry. She was careful to leave a generous tip, partly as an apology for her appearance, but mostly in appreciation of the food.

They stepped out onto the pavement, and Zarekael turned to her, obviously about to say something. His brow furrowed, though. "Your . . . collar . . . fell off," he observed.

"No way." Meli put her hands to her throat, but it was, indeed, gone. How could it have fallen off without my noticing?! It's not exactly a fine silver chain! Her Skulker's instinct for drama kicked in, though, and she gave him a mock-panicked look. "It's gone!" She splayed her hands over her neck and glanced from side to side. "Why, I feel absolutely naked without it! I'll be back." She ducked back into the restaurant.

For something so conspicuous, the thing had done an excellent job of hiding itself. After several minutes of fruitless searching, she crawled under the table and whispered, "Lumos." A faint ray of light came from her right sleeve, where her wand lay concealed. With that invaluable aid, she found the collar immediately. She snatched it, snuffed her wand, then made the most graceful possible exit.

She stepped onto the pavement once more, occupied with fastening the collar and muttering viciousness against it. It was only then that she noticed that Zarekael was not alone.

There in front of him stood a gooey-eyed young woman about five years Meli's junior. Somehow she had gotten a hold of Zarekael's hand and would not release it; though her eyes were fastened on his face in rapt attention, she was completely ignorant of the expression of discomfiture he wore.

Meli was not a professional actress, but she knew a stage cue when she saw one. "What's this?" she asked, making no effort to mask her only partially-manufactured disdain.

The other woman glanced at Meli, then came back for a good, long, horrified stare, accompanied by numerous gulps; Meli smiled evilly.

"She ran into me," Zarekael explained long-sufferingly. "I helped her up."

Meli made a show of looking her over from crown to toe. "Nice lipstick," she said at last. "It's very . . . pink."

The woman looked as though she might faint in terror, then, at the last second, she changed her mind and made a break for freedom as fast as her designer pumps would allow.

"Prep," Meli muttered, borrowing from Andrea's slang. Once the woman rounded the corner at the end of the block, she turned to Zarekael in exasperation. "What is it with you?" she demanded.

"I'm tall, dark, and handsome," he replied, deadpan. "You said so yourself."

It was a fairly short, pleasant—which is to say, uneventful—walk to Charing Cross. There they entered the tube station and encountered their next hurdle: the ticket dispenser. Meli, having lived among Muggles for years, knew quite well how to manage both the currency and the technology; Zarekael, however, preferred to learn firsthand by purchasing his own pass, rather than by watching her buy two. Meli, who had exchanged his money for him, obligingly handed over first a wad of notes, then a handful of coins, then she stood to the side to watch him work.

Zarekael pocketed the notes, then frowned over the many and varied coins. "Why is it that they have so many different kinds?" he asked in an undertone. "Three are quite sufficient for us."

Meli smirked. "We have to remember all manner of charms and hexes," she replied dryly, so softly that only his inhumanly sharp ears had any hope of hearing. "They don't. Muggles need something to keep track of."

With some effort, Zarekael sorted out the proper amount and obtained his pass, and then he and Meli made their way through the gates and down to the tracks on the Bakerloo Line.

"What sort of name is 'Picadilly Circus'?" Zarekael inquired, furrowing his brow as if in protest at having to utter those objectionable syllables.

"I'm not entirely sure," Meli answered. "I never bothered to look into the etymology of it."

"And 'Bakerloo'," he continued. "It sounds so . . . wrong."

Meli raised her eyebrows. "Even bakers have to use the loo," she told him. "I can't tell you why the people of London thought one noteworthy enough to name a tube line after it, but apparently they did."

Zarekael had no immediate counter-reply for that pun, other than a subtle narrowing of his eyes.

Upon reaching the platform, Meli had just enough time to explain the meaning of "Mind the Gap" before their train arrived. The station was moderately populated, the car they entered less so. At the far end, there sat a rosy-cheeked grandmotherly woman with her knitting, and near her stood a group of four men in their mid-twenties, all dressed for a night at the pub or some like entertainment. Nearer at hand sat a young couple who stood and moved to seats further down the car as soon as Meli and Zarekael appeared on the scene. Meli smirked, but she made no move to deter them.

She turned instead to Zarekael with a smile and launched into an off-the-cuff monologue intended purely for her and Zarekael's amusement, and others' alarm: "So my mother and I had a delightful time at her Victorian tea. My cousins just loved my reading. Even though Jane Austen wasn't strictly period, Mum loves my interpretation of Mr. Collins' proposal so much that she asked me to read it anyway. And I finally had an excuse to wear my new pink dress—you know, the one with the ruffles and the chiffon—"

Meli broke off then as she belatedly realized that, although he had been listening, Zarekael had not been listening to her. His attention was instead fixed on the group of young men at the far end of the car, whose conversation, she now noticed, had started to elicit disapproving glares from the elderly woman. It wasn't loud enough for her to pick up on more than isolated words, but Zarekael's hearing surpassed even Crimson Fell's in acuity.

She could not guess at how long the conversation had been going on, but clearly whatever they were saying had worn Zarekael's patience down to nothing. Bare seconds after she stopped her idle prattling, he reached the end of his endurance and crossed the car in two strides. To his credit, his assault was entirely verbal, but Meli saw the men shake in sudden nervousness at his approach.

"You don't speak that way of a lady," Zarekael snapped, his voice even but showing strain. "No matter how she may be dressed or how inattentive she may seem."

Meli restrained herself from looking down; she knew without seeing that she was modestly dressed, showing very little skin below her neck. Their discussion must therefore have concerned her general proportions, which, while not actively displayed by her apparel, were also not actively concealed by it.

Zarekael wasn't finished, though. His irritation was not fully vented by his rebuke, and the fervent, jerking nods of the men before him did not completely mollify him, either. He followed up with a stream of words that had no root in any language any present had ever encountered, but which Meli took to be some variety of profanity from his plane. After he had fully finished this spiel, he turned from them with a final glare, then looked to the elderly lady, to whom he apologized for his "French". He then returned to stand beside Meli once more. His withdrawal from the young men's vicinity did nothing to reduce their sickly pallor or obvious need for adult-sized nappies (or, for my fellow Americans, Huggies).

And they say that chivalry lives only in Gryffindor and certain dark corners of Hufflepuff, Meli thought sardonically. The poster boy of Slytherin House has just offered the latest proof that they, whoever "they" might be, are completely mistaken.

She was ordinarily resentful of chivalry, particularly when she was its object; she had not studied multiple martial arts and learned hundreds of nasty hexes for the pure fun of it. Still, while she prided herself in her ability to take care of herself, she was most appreciative of friends who were willing to stand up for her—particularly when it was accompanied by such humorous displays as the one now before her.

"An interesting treatment," she remarked to Zarekael. She carefully modulated her voice so that the quaking foursome could hear her. "You were far nicer than I would have been. In my humble opinion, the best use for pigs is roasting." She casually drew from her pocket a silver lighter, which she flipped open and flicked on, grinning like Mad Emily the entire time. Not surprisingly, the pigs in question didn't speak another word until the train stopped and Meli and Zarekael departed.

On their arrival to Tower Records, Zarekael demonstrated that his sense of humor had been in no way damaged by the incident on the train. He walked over to the first clerk in sight, stopped dead in front of her, and narrowed his eyes in an approximation of a smile. "What kind of music do you think I'd like?" he asked without preamble.

To her credit, the clerk was not thrown off-balance for long, and in no time at all she had deposited Zarekael and Meli in the industrial section.

"Thank you," Meli said politely. "I think we can manage from here." Once the clerk was gone, she turned to Zarekael and smirked. "I don't think she got it quite right. Why don't we find a listening station, and I'll bring you different music?"

Zarekael having no objection to this course, they followed it, and Zarekael soon found himself sitting next to a growing stack of CDs. Meli flitted between a number of different sections of the store, with the result that the stack included, but was not limited to: Enya, Linkin Park, the Monkees, System of a Down, Kitaro, Disturbed, the Doors, the Verve, and the Beatles. All of these (and more) Zarekael sorted through and listened to with a peculiar mixture of fascination and amusement. He seemed to like System of a Down, though the Beatles puzzled and amused him ("Why does he think he's a walrus?" he asked at one point).

Meli, in the meantime, had a great deal of fun running around and picking out the strangest possible assortment of CDs. She drew odd and even alarmed looks during her brief dash through the pop music rows, though she was unwilling to lower herself to pick up a boy band or Britney disc. Most of what she picked out was music that she thought Zarekael would actually enjoy, but she couldn't resist throwing a Weird Al CD into the mix. Zarekael obligingly endured the first five minutes of "Albuquerque" before she took pity on him and handed over the next disc in the stack.

This one happened to be the soundtrack from Cirque du Soleil's Alegría, of which Zarekael's music had reminded Meli six months earlier. She selected the first track, then pushed play . . . and then something a little odd happened.

Zarekael actually appeared to enjoy the music for a few measures, until about the point at which the singing began. Then his eyes widened a touch, and he pushed stop and removed the headphones. "No," was all he said as he ejected the disc and handed it back to Meli.

She kept her expression neutral as she replaced the CD in its case and passed him Hybrid Theory, but her curiosity was piqued, and she was a little concerned. The style of the music shouldn't be a problem, nor should the lyrics—they were in Spanish, and in any case he couldn't have heard more than the first half-dozen words. There must be something wrong with the singer's voice, then, she concluded. I don't mind it, but Zarekael's ears are more sensitive than mine. Poor guy—to have a good song marred by an objectionable voice.

Having come to that conclusion, she never thought another thing about it.

At the end of a pleasant couple of hours, Zarekael made a few selections (among them Toxicity), which he carefully paid for—not as much of a challenge as it might have been had he not sorted out his coins and notes once already that night. Meli drew a mystified look from the clerk when she presented for purchase her own selections: Mozart's violin concertos, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, and the soundtrack from Die Hard.

Meli smirked. "I don't always wear a dog collar," she said, by way of explanation.

The clerk raised a bewildered eyebrow, parted with a nonplused half-smile, and rang the purchases without comment.

They walked back down to the tube station, but they never boarded a train. Instead, they proceeded to a designated apparating area and departed by less conventional means, arriving on the road to Hogsmeade shortly thereafter.

"You said that Alegría was a soundtrack," Zarekael recalled suddenly, as they strode towards Hogwarts. "What is it a soundtrack to?"

The question, coming from left field as it seemed, took Meli by surprise. "Aah . . ." she murmured, then cleared her throat. "It's for a program by Cirque du Soleil, which is a sort of . . . hm." She frowned. "It's difficult to explain. They tell a story through music, dance, acrobatics—and I'm doing a lousy job of describing it. You'd really have to see it to understand."

"I believe I've seen something like it," Zarekael said softly. "There is something similar on my plane."

He was silent for the remainder of the walk home, and it seemed to Meli that he was a little saddened.

Somehow, he never struck me as the type to be homesick, Meli thought. But even Zarekael's not immune to it, apparently.