Author's Note: Okay, dearest readers, here's the deal. This is the ending of the first document of Company. The second document has been started. I'm working on the chapters for stories that have been requested as quickly as I can without losing the quality of the stories, such as it is. Company here, which is one of my personal favorites if anyone is reading it, is a little less than half done by my estimations. Work might not be fast, but it will get done.

Augusta.

Chapter Twenty: The Witches of Springfield

There was, naturally, a hitch. Whenever he made grand and morally upright resolutions, it came to nothing in a piece of deeply depressing normality. He couldn't figure out how to explain his world to Dinah, how to break down the thousands of years of traditions and arts of a separate reality that existed side by side with hers. He could only see two possible outcomes: either she decided that he was raving mad and forged his signature on the check-in papers of the Ravenwood mental hospital or she gave vent to a full-scale temper tantrum and walked out on him. Both options were thoroughly depressing, but he felt he owed her the truth even if she didn't believe it.

Two days after he resolved to get everything out in the open, he found himself confronted by the one exclusive club in Springfield that he had never been able to determine the existence of.

He was sitting in Company mulling things over when Reva Lewis, the absolute last woman he expected to be very chatty with him because of his relationship with Dinah, came over and sat at his table. "I must admit that you had me fooled at first," she said, her voice only just above a whisper and even more friendly than normal. "I really did think that you were a Muggle."

It was several moments before he realized he was staring at her agape, certain that he hadn't just heard her, one of Springfield's most renowned matrons, use the word Muggle. "I beg your pardon?" he managed.

"Don't 'I beg your pardon' me, Jim Potter," she chided, still sounding in good humor. "You know exactly what I'm talking about. Does the name Albus Dumbledore mean anything to you?"

"Yes," he said cautiously. "I met the man once in London at a social event hosted by my sister's in-laws, Reva. Bit of an odd sort- a scholar, as I recall."

"Uh-huh. He had you memorize that one too? Me and Albie have been friends for years, honey, and he gave me the scholar line when he thought he was fooling me with his Muggle act. It doesn't take a genius to tell that he's a pureblood, but it's harder with you. You're surprisingly good at the Muggle act. Are you a half-blood or a Muggleborn?"

"Pureblood, but my wife was Muggleborn," he said shortly, lowering her voice even further than she had hers. "How did you find out what I am, Reva?"

"For one thing, I couldn't get a reading on you," she replied serenely. "My psychic abilities started to fade a while back, but I can still do what I call reading people, or, to be more accurate, reading Muggles. It doesn't work very well on other witches or on wizards, and on someone who has the Sight, I can't get anything at all. That's part of it. Another part was that a new woman came into our circle last week and mentioned your name to us-she seemed surprised that you weren't at the meeting. Spoke with a British accent a little different than yours, somehow, so I suppose you two knew each other before you came here. She's not sure if she'll be staying in Springfield or not. The third and final part was that Albie told me flat-out about you-he said you had done your penance long enough, whatever that was supposed to mean. He also told me to tell you to remember Morgan." She shrugged. "He's an elusive man. As the leader of Springfield's only coven, I was just thrilled to hear that another of our kind had made it to the city-there are only nine of us in the coven now, ten counting you."

James thought for perhaps the millionth time about how much he would like to strangle Albus Dumbledore slowly, but he had a feeling that it wouldn't be wise to air such a view in front of Reva, not if she was close enough to the bastard to call him Albie. "Only ten in this whole city?" he asked skeptically. "You're sure on that one?"

"Well, ten from Springfield proper, not counting those who weren't invited or refused the invitation," Reva said, more prissily than he would have believed her capable of. "There's a community in the slums of Fifth Street- two tenament buildings full of old crones and hunchbacked warlocks, all practicing their form of the black arts by brewing potions and selling charms to drug dealers and murderers. There's a rumor that one old witch in the worst of the two tenaments acts as a sort of doctor. You have to be invited into our coven, and our standards are pretty tough." James wondered how Reva could so blatantly indulge in class snobbery with such a warm, friendly note in her voice. "The nine initiates at the moment are me, Olivia Lewis, Buzz Cooper, Harley Aitoro, Danny Santos, Marina Santos, Alexandra Spaulding, Edmund Winslow, and Beth Raines. We've got Tammy Winslow and Sandy Foster lined up to be initiated next year-they're a little too young for full membership just yet. As for you, we're letting you in at the next meeting, provided you accept the invitation." She paused there for his answer, but he could tell she felt that she knew what it would be.

"Where's your meeting place?" he asked. Reva smiled, but it wasn't a smile of triumph. It was a welcoming sort of smile, almost motherly, and he was struck again by how similar her smile was to his mother's.

"We move around, but the next meeting's in Danny and Marina's apartment the day after tomorrow at five," she said. "Hope you'll drop in."

"I'd be pleased to." She was about to leave when a thought hit him. "Reva, does Josh know about you?"

"Of course he does," she said immediately. "I told him as soon as he was properly awake after the first time we made love."

Could've done without that detail, James thought, but decided that he'd better not say it out loud. "How'd you get him to believe you?"

"Oh, it was easy," Reva said spiritedly. "I levitated him, turned him upside-down, and stuck his head in a bowl of wine. It made my point and convinced him that he was in love with a dangerous woman." She laughed. "Why do you ask?"

"Just idle curiosity," he replied, trying to imagine the storm Dinah would call up if he tried to dunk her into a bowl of anything.

"I've never thought curiosity was an idle thing," Reva said. "It's how you find things out. See you later." She left, walking as if she were still the Slut of Springfield in all her glory and making men look at her as if she still was just by the strength of her temporary conviction. James shook his head and laughed softly.

"What a woman," he said to nobody in particular.


He decided to hold off on telling Dinah the truth until after the meeting at the Santos place. James found it strangely ironic that most of the people he knew and had befriended-Danny, Marina, Beth, Alex, and Olivia for friends and the rest for friendly aquaintances-had been getting to know him and he them without any of them having any idea that they were of the same stock. A pity Dinah wasn't one of the secretive witches of Springfield; it would have made things a lot easier.

The meeting of the coven began almost like a social occasion, with the members, such as they were, standing around and chatting leisurely, holding their drinks. The main topic of discussion was whether or not a witch on Monterey Street named Anita Shrever should be invited to join. On one hand, Anita was a well-living, respectable woman with excellent potion-making skills, but on the other she wasn't from that narrow window of Springfield that everyone else came from and her family was one of the many nondescript, middle-class, boringly ordinary families in the city. The Shrevers were purebloods who had never done a single thing interesting in the Muggle world or the Wizarding world. To James's mild surprise, he was drawn into the conversations as if he had always been at these small, secret meetings.

It was thirty minutes after the meeting was officially called to order and the martinis passed out to supplement Anita Shrever conversations when a short woman bundled into her cloak rushed in, giving an appearance of being a little windswept, as if she had come from somewhere in a great hurry. Her hood moved as if she was looking around the room. James thought she froze like a rabbit when she was looking in his general direction, then she hurried away towards the opposite wall. He did a hasty head count and realized that whoever she was, she wasn't a member of this little country club. Maybe it was Anita Shrever herself, but he didn't think so. He had seen Anita in Company once or twice, and he was sure she was taller than this woman, not to mention that he didn't think Anita would have presumed to come to this meeting without being invited, and the talk about her convinced him that she had not been invited. He saw the woman put back her hood, revealing a head of black hair that looked very familiar, though he couldn't place her. Reva threw an arm around her.

"I was starting to think you weren't going to make it!" the Lewis matriarch said, her enthusiasm clearly amplified a little higher than was normal even for her by the alcohol she had consumed. "We would have all missed you, Elizabeth. We don't get many visitors." Reva took another swallow of her martini and snapped her fingers. "I just remembered, honey. Remember James you mentioned to us the other day? Well, we got him out here tonight, and I reckon you two'll want to catch back up-"

"Oh, no," the woman said, her very familiar voice sounding very alarmed. "No, Reva, we didn't part on good terms, I really don't think I should-"

But she was too late. "James, get over here!" Reva called. "The new girl who mentioned you the other day just got here. Come see if you two know each other!"

James didn't need to see the woman's face to know that he did know her-he knew her too well. The hair, the voice, the name-it was all a connected picture. If she hadn't spoken, he would have been in suspense a little longer, but he didn't blame her for trying to keep them from coming face-to-face, given that he was almost angry enough to hex her while he was still feeling unusually nice. He wasn't quite sure what he would do once she launched into her pious explinations and made him properly furious. She had pulled some damn interesting stunts before, but this was sicker than anything she had ever done. This was sicker than everything she had ever done before put together. He reached her just as she turned around to make a run for it, and he found himself staring, as he had known he would, straight into the startled dark eyes of his younger and presumed-dead sister, Elizabeth Lupin.

Second Author's Note: I know, typical soap opera moment, but I couldn't resist it. If you read this, then be ready to tune in for the next chapter, where James realizes that he doesn't know everything about his relationships with his sisters or even about his own life.

Augusta