Do You Believe in Magic

If you believe in magic, come along with me
We'll dance until morning 'til there's just you and me
And maybe, if the music is right
I'll meet you tomorrow, sort of late at night
And we'll go dancing, baby, then you'll see
How the magic's in the music and the music's in me

Carry out boxes set on various rocks, Sirius turned the bag upside down. Packets of sauce dropped out, he shook it again, and looked inside. "No silverware?"

"Oh yeah," she said, leaning to reach in a pocket of her cloak. "Almost forgot." She tossed a long, slim packet to him.

He opened it. "Chopsticks?"

"What? Delivery truck was late--they didn't have any of those convenient plastic forks and knives." She shrugged, "Better than nothing."

"Have you ever eaten with chopsticks? How are we supposed to eat the rice or soup?" The glory of an early Christmas fell from his eyes like it might from a child who's told he cannot play with any of his toys until the twenty-fifth of December.

"Well, I should assume you'd drink it straight from the bowl… But in any case, the soup is on my robes and we won't be eating it." A smirk slipped her as she unwrapped her chopsticks. "As for the rice, do what you can… But I think there's a way of holding these things so you can just scoop it up." She experimented and only succeeded in dropping them. "Right… Mind passing the vegetables?"

Sirius checked around him. "Vegetable lo Mein or Vegetable Manchurian?"

Vala stared. Truth be told, one look at the menu and she had politely asked the waiter to explain what everything was. After a lengthy monologue, she'd simply dropped a handful of money on the counter and told him to fry anything up he could find. And fast.

She was flabbergasted. She'd probably eaten more exquisite and expensive meals in the last week than he had in his entire life, and yet… It wasn't that odd, really. When someone is in Vala's position they don't often know the official name of what they're eating, just that they like it and it has those little white circles they like so much.

"Something with… those white, circle things," she said, turning a subtle pink.

"Water chestnuts?" he asked, hiding the smile from his face but not his voice. "Ah, here we are." Without checking its contents, he handed her a box with a number 14 scrawled on the side.

She took it, her eyebrows wrinkling. "How did-"

"Hey, sweet and sour chicken," he expressed happily, opening another box and taking a moment to enjoy the fragrance. He lifted his chopsticks and prodded the contents. He frowned. "I'm sorry, what did you say?"

"Oh, nothing…" Gingerly, she picked up a white bag and pulled out one of those crispy triangular things with the white filling. She loved those. Sirius stabbed a hunk of chicken as she dribbled that clear yellowish sauce over it.

Vala finished the Crab Rangoon and Sirius had set down his box and began eyeing the others. Vala picked up the number 14 again and Sirius grabbed a number 17.

He groaned.

"What?" she asked, pulling the flaps back.

"Noodles."

"You don't like noodles?"

"No, I do."

Silence. Vala broke first, "Then what's the problem?"

He held up his chopsticks, a vague smile tugging at the corner of his lips. "These are my problem."

"Oh." She looked down into her number 14, luscious vegetables just begging to be eaten. Her eyes traveled to the chopsticks lying in her lap. She lifted them optimistically and tried to pick up some baby corn; tried being the main verb. After several failed attempts, she grumbled a few swearwords and tossed her chopsticks aside. Just her luck, they clattered down next to Buckbeak, who decided they might be a good treat. "Oh wonderful," she said, rolling her eyes in irritation.

Sirius moved next to her and held out a single sauce stained chopstick.

She stared at it for awhile before accepting; it was an odd gesture, but then Sirius wasn't your average person. In fact, he seemed to be an exception to every rule ever made. He was the type of bad boy you wouldn't hesitant to bring home and meet the parents. And she had to admit, she was a spark jealous. She opened her mouth to say something, but fell silent. She poked a vegetable. There was so much she had to say, so much to ask… But for now she could remain quiet. What was her hurry? They had time.

"Something on your mind?" he asked casually, wrapping noodles around his lone chopstick. She opened her mouth and turned to him. He held the chopstick near his mouth. "What?"

"Aren't you going to put something on those?"

He stuck the noodles in his mouth, typically slurping the last one through his lips. He chewed and swallowed. "Like what?"

"Like," her eyes searched the boxes. They fell back to her number 14. She turned the thought over for a moment before grabbing Sirius' number 17. "Like vegetables," and with that she upturned the box over hers. Some noodles slithered to the ground, but most of them fell into her container. She stirred it, making more noodles fall in the process. "Here," she said, offering it to him.

"What's it called?" he asked, amused.

"Oh shut up and eat it," she said, shoving it into his unresisting hands.

He curled a noodle around his chopstick and frowned. "Might be a spot difficult," he said, "Can't curl and stab at the same time."

She peered inside the container. "Is that so… Make a toast over it, why don't you." She dropped her chopstick, and did something the wife of Saxon Malfoy would never do, she reached inside the box with her bare hand and withdrew a clump of vegetables and noodles.

Sirius grinned, and gingerly pulled out a clump himself. He held his hand high in the air, sauce splashing the rocks and slinking down his arm. "Viva la Empress of China!"

Vala rose her hand as well, and smirked. "Viva la Emperor of China!"

They clanked hands and linked arms, eating the combination of vegetables and slurping the noodles. Food splattered the ground, but they didn't care. They had other things on their minds.

~+~+~+~

Billy closed the door, and in case no one heard him bang his head against it, he thumped his fist for emphasis. Generally he liked old Stroker, but it'd been a trip to fix all the games. Teenagers and children of all ages kept crowding around and gawking, and hadn't left until they grudgingly drew the curtains.

"Hat off in the house, Bill."

They only reminded him on occasion, and it wasn't because of some respectable rule they had, hardly at all; it didn't even apply to all hats, just Billy's. The problem was, you let Billy the Kid keep his hat on too long and his judgements started to flip back a few centuries. Before you knew it, he was flanking chaps and sporting a worn-leather vest. Let him keep it on too long and he'd exchange his wand for a rifle.

Except for this, Billy was generalized as normal. Save the fact that he was a child prodigy, never knew his real family, and left his adoptive parents to live with two men in their early thirties, who not only thought they were brothers but were separate races. Did anyone mention that he'd joined a league of outlaws who worked to bring around their own justice in a world of injustice? Yeah, save those minor factors, he was incredibly normal.

"Why?" he grumbled.

"Because we've got company," replied Napoleon, who sat at the water-stained table. "And we don't want to spend another night at the police station explaining why you've been carrying a rifle around in full cowboy garb--harking at Muggles. And if that's not enough, we're already up to our necks in explanations to the Ministry--hat off," he finished.

Billy tore the hat off, shook his dirty blond curls out, and tossed the hat unto a chair. He became a different man, Benjamin Earl of the Crib. Ben rubbed his face. "Where's Seth?"

"Buying dinner."

He quirked a brow at him. "Doesn't he usually eat cereal?"

A grin cracked his face. "He does when he doesn't lose against me in Dance Dance Revolution."

Billy shook his head, and made to sit down. "He'll never learn--white men can't dance."

"Damn straight. He just doesn't listen."

"Too bull-headed."

"Hm, sounds like someone I know," Seth mentioned casually, leaving the door open.

Ben turned in his seat. He spotted Seth's companion, whose back was facing him. "Hey, that's not the same girl who had here last night," he grinned.

"Don't be a prat, Ben--If I had a girl over here we would've been called on for disturbing the peace. And in any case, Bill's not a girl."

That's right… Ben had thought the leather pants were a bit loose for a female. Bill waved a hand, revealing a spiked bracelet, then turned, revealing a dangling tooth-earring. Ben was always more taken by Bill's hair, which was flaming red and far longer than his own. Where Ben let his curls hang loosely, Bill had his pulled back with a black ribbon. On first meetings, he wasn't sure whether he was impressed or disgusted. Eventually, he'd chosen impressed.

Now it was no more one than the other. As Regulars often become… well, regular guests, they become who they are without the labels and without the explanations; they're just someone you come to accept as your own. Even when they leave, they don't exactly leave. Regulars become part of the scenery, the atmosphere.

Ben wasn't exactly friends with Bill, but… you get accustomed to seeing the same face around--sound asleep on the couch, glued to the TV, or smirking after you've woken from a deep sleep and the first headaches of a hangover are smacking you.

Napoleon rose and stood by the counter. "What'd you get?"

"Hamburgers and orange soda," answered Seth pulling everything from the bag and setting it down on the counter. He rubbed an eye and stifled a yawn.

Napoleon grabbed two hamburgers and the bottle of soda. He unscrewed the top and drank straight from the bottle.

"Hope you're not a germaphobic," replied Ben, "Because we do things differently in the Crib than we might at home."

"This is Home," Napoleon declared, following it with a belch.

"I've got five brothers and a sister, I'm not about to complain about germs," Bill responded, taking the bottle next.

Ben vaguely remembered Seth mentioning that once or twice. He'd seen Bill before, but only passingly. He usually had more important matters to tend to--tracking, saving Napoleon's and Seth's necks, fetching sticks at the park… He was a busy man. Much busier than his roommates in any case, who spent a good deal of their time playing basketball, video games, and on a rare day--the guitar. Yes, Ben knew Bill… he was the usual punk rocker who whipped Napoleon and Seth off to concerts and parties that didn't end until you could watch the sunrise on top of someone's truck.

Seth unwrapped a burger and sheepishly bit into it.

"Tired already?" asked Ben, breaking his train of thought and glancing at his wristwatch. He was the only one who ever wore one, and the one on the microwave was exactly one hour and forty-seven minutes too fast. This irritated him to no extent, but whenever anyone got around to fixing it--usually him--it just seemed to speed up the next time he checked it. Slightly paranoid, he wondered if Seth and Napoleon changed it during the late hours of the night; he highly doubted Napoleon's explanation of visiting pixies, who get their kicks from knocking people off schedule. "It's only a quarter till."

Napoleon urged him on silently, his mouth full of burger.

"Quarter till nine, would it kill you to buy a watch?"

He swallowed. "Yes. I'm a broke bugger and keeping a watch up would dry up my savings, which Bill here puts a lot of effort into protecting. No use in putting two people on the street just to keep track of time, eh?" He winked and took another chomp from his burger.

"Don't wink at me, and if that's the case I'll buy you a watch myself," Ben snapped, viciously biting his burger.

"I look forward to it."

Ben bought him a watch for Christmas every single year, and Napoleon would wear it… for a week or two, and then he'd start forgetting it and eventually cease to wear it at all. Seth was another case. Seth received a watch every year as well, and it turned him into a maniac. After a few days of wearing the watch he became a timeaholic, setting his watch by the second and constantly checking what time it was. It was a nervous habit if anything, but then he'd evolve into time-keeping and he'd start timing everything--how long his favorite TV shows were (extracting the commercials), how long it took for the pizza man to arrive (down to the second), how long it took Ben to finish a beer (1 hour 23 minutes and 56 seconds), and (Napoleon's least favorite) how long his brother played the game system before it was his turn. And he'd continue like this until Napoleon was on his last and hid the blasted thing.

"Actually," said Bill, pausing to swallow, "I don't do the protecting--that's more goblin work."

"Do they really have dragons in Gringotts?" asked Ben, slightly off topic. Just slightly.

Bill looked to the upper corner, considering the question. He shook his head a bit. "No, I don't think so," but followed it with a shrug. "Of course, Merlin alone knows what's kept in Gringotts. I don't even think the goblins do."

"But they work there," reasoned Ben, swallowing a bigger bite than he would have liked.

"Ever met a goblin, Ben?" Bill asked conversationally, leaning on the counter. "They're untrustful little buggers… Not in the sense you might think. They're very trustful for secrets and safe-keeping, but they don't share secrets--not even among their own kind." He tapped his temple. "Whatever is seen is kept in here, and it's nobody else's business to drop surveys."

"Oh."

"But don't let it get you down," he winked, "There's probably close to a hundred dragons in Gringotts--Of course, my brother Charlie could tell you for sure."

"Really?" Ben asked, perking up.

"Yeah, just don't ask me how they feed them."

~+~+~+~

It's an unwritten law all over the world that the average human being cannot finish his or her meal--if it's Chinese. It's not a law so much in the sense that the police will break down your door, tackle you to the floor and wrestle you into handcuffs--as it is written into the human brain that you must buy more Chinese than anyone could possibly eat, and save the left overs for the following night.

Left overs was the evidence, a food fight was the case. Now the two opponents sat back, the remnants of a great dinner splattered across their faces like war paint and stuck in their hair like gum.

Sirius inhaled deeply. "What a day."

"And I'm filthy."

Buckbeak was inching around, eating anything he could find.

Sirius glanced out the cave. "The rain's letting up."

"I am so incredibly dirty."

"Still raining pretty hard though," continued Sirius.

"Ugh, I need a shower."

"The rain is a nice substitute."

Vala stopped picking those long, green things she hates from her hair and stared at him. "What'd you say?"

He stood up, rubbing his belly. Then he tugged on her hand. "Come on, let's go."

(A/N: I finished writing this last night, but it took me forever to find a song. Luckily I already have one for the next chapter. I love this song, and even if you hate 60's music you gotta adore this one.

Okay, this chapter is dedicated to Syrene… simply because I was having a rotten day and her review really brightened my mood. Thank you!)