It was afternoon by the time the Aurors left. They spent the entire night – from the time they arrived – to the morning, cataloging what felt like every square inch of the shop. They took pictures, they interviewed both Freddie and Danielle about what they discovered several times, and they created the kind of mess that made Freddie sigh as he looked at it.
"When did every single bloody wizard in the country become an Auror?" he muttered to Danielle.
"There's been less than ten people here," Danielle said fairly.
"That's still ten too many."
"Fair point."
"We might come back," Auror Priya Iyer, who was in charge of the investigation, told Freddie sternly, around noon. "So don't leave."
"Where would I go?" Freddie muttered. "Can I go visit him at Mungo's?" For some reason, Freddie didn't want to reveal that he knew his name.
"Not yet. He's not conscious. And when he's conscious, the Aurors will need to speak to him before he's allowed any visitors."
"Can I open the shop up?"
"No," Auror Iyer said. "We might need to come back to do a proper forensic investigation."
"Great," Freddie said. "So I can't leave the building, I can't go to Mungo's, and I can't open my shop."
"What? No, of course you can leave this building, as long as you stay within the country," Auror Iyer said, rolling her eyes.
"Yeah," Freddie said, "Thanks for that. I'll make sure to cancel my trip through continental Europe, cheers."
Auror Iyer did not seem amused. "You'll need to come into the Ministry if we have any other questions. We'll get in touch." After levelling Freddie with an unimpressed look that would make his mum proud, she stepped into the Floo, disappearing in a blaze of green flames.
"Merlin," Danielle said, from where she was curled up in an armchair she had conjured up for herself. "That was intense."
"Yeah," Freddie said. There didn't seem to be much else to say. "Have the Aurors always been such killjoys?"
"You would know," Danielle said, "half your family are Aurors."
"Yeah, well. I don't know how Teddy and Uncle Harry put up with them."
Danielle grinned. "Well, now you can strike 'Auror' off the list for future careers for you."
"There's no list," Freddie said.
"I know you. Of course there's a list," Danielle said. "Do you want me to stay with you?"
Freddie glanced up at the time, and shook his head. "No, I'll be alright."
Danielle narrowed her eyes at him. "What are you planning?"
"I'm not planning anything," Freddie said, maybe too quickly.
"That's your planning something face."
"I have a planning something face?"
"You do. It's that one."
"Isn't it strange," Freddie said, "how you can know yourself for almost two decades, and not know something as basic as the fact that you have a planning something face?"
"Very strange," Danielle agreed. "What are you planning?"
"Well, it's been a long night. We haven't slept. I don't know if I'm hungover or just have a headache. So I," Freddie said, "am planning to sleep."
"I don't believe you," Danielle said, "but I'm very tired, so I'm choosing to pretend I do."
"Wise choice," Freddie agreed.
"You'll tell me if you need help with whatever you're getting up to?"
Freddie nodded.
"Alright," Danielle said. "Then that's fine. Don't do anything stupid, will you?"
Freddie smiled, but there was no humour in it. Instead of answering her, he said, "I'll walk you to the Floo."
Freddie was not planning on sleeping. Once he saw Danielle off, he paused by the fireplace, and thought. He could Floo. But he didn't know if she would be home.
He looked down, and thought oh, right. He needed to change. He was still in his pyjamas.
Ten minutes later, he locked the door behind him, tugged his jacket tighter around himself, and spun on the spot to Disapparate.
She lived in a small flat, near the sea, close enough to Hogsmeade that Apparition wasn't too risky. He Apparated near the beach. It was still early in the afternoon, but the sun wasn't out at all, and the grey sky matched the dull grey ocean. The sound of waves roared in his ears, and the ring in the inner pocket of his jacket felt like a heavy stone, weighing him down next to his heart.
Don't do anything stupid.
He'd never been very good at following instructions.
He'd only visited the flat twice before, but he knew the way there like the back of his hand. He'd committed it to memory the first time he visited, thinking – naively – that he would visit again, and again.
Anna Selwyn. It always seemed to come back to her, in the end.
He made his way up the stairs, knocked at the door. Waited.
She opened the door after a minute that seemed to drag on and on into several centuries. She'd chopped her blond hair to just below her shoulders, but apart from that, she looked the same as she always did: pale, deceptively innocent, her round lips a smudge of red lipstick. She was wearing nothing but a bathrobe, and Freddie had to do his best not to look at her exposed collarbones, the swell of her waist beneath the robe…
"What are you doing here?" she said.
Instead of answering, he walked in, without waiting for an invite. If he had to wait for the whims of Anna, he would be here a while. "What have you been getting up to?" he asked.
Anna snorted, closing the door behind them. "You can't answer a question with a question," she said.
"Sure I can," Freddie said. He looked around the neat living room, the spotless kitchen. "Where were you last night?"
"What are you going on about?" Anna said, and then, "did you sleep at all last night? You don't look very good."
"Yeah, it's nice to see you too," Freddie said dryly. "I didn't sleep, actually. Dani and I went to the pub–" he ignored Anna's delicately arched eyebrow – "and then we were woken up. Do you want to know what we were woken up by?"
"I want to know why you were both woken up together, actually," Anna said. She sat down in an armchair, crossed her legs, rested her elbows on her knees and her face in her hands.
Freddie couldn't help it; despite everything, despite the tension headache building up in his temples, he grinned. "Seriously?" he said. "You're jealous?"
Anna met his gaze, and then slowly smiled, too. "What were you woken up by?" she asked, in her quiet voice.
That sobered him right up. "A man. On the floor of the shop."
He waited; Anna didn't say anything, and nor did she look particularly guilty. "Oh?" she said. "Someone broke into your shop?"
"Someone broke in and passed out on the floor of my shop. I thought he was dead at first," Freddie said.
It seemed to hit him suddenly, all over again: the sight of Thomas, on the ground. Sprawled out. Surrounded by broken shards from a bottle. Eyes closed. And in his hands…
"This was in his hands," Freddie said, and took the ring out. The ring, with the Selwyn coat of arms, that he'd found in Benjamin Thomas's hands. The ring, which he'd stolen. Corrupting the evidence of a crime scene. Putting himself in trouble. It was a stupid thing to do. Rash. Not thought out at all.
And yet he'd done it, without a thought in the world. There hadn't been any thought in it at all, really.
He couldn't bring himself to look her in the eyes.
He couldn't.
He did.
He thrust the ring at her, in her vague direction, and she stood up, walked over to him. Her soft hands touched his as she took the ring from him, and she looked down at it, and frowned.
"That's your ring, isn't it?" he said.
"It… belongs to my family," she said.
"Why was it in his hands?" Freddie demanded.
He'd been aiming for cool. Collected. Interrogating her, the way an Auror might. The way his Uncle Harry might. Instead, he sounded desperate. Pleading. He hated it.
"You'd have to ask him," Anna said. "Is he alive?"
"He is. For now. I'll take that back, thanks. The Aurors will want to take a look at it," Freddie said. He took the ring back from her, and shoved it into the pocket of his jeans.
"Will they?" Anna said.
"I'm sure they will. It's evidence, innit," Freddie said.
"That's why you came here? To ask me about the ring?" Anna asked.
Freddie had the strangest sense that it was his turn to be interrogated now. "Why," he said, "were you hoping for something else?"
Anna shrugged. As she did, the sleeve of her robe slipped, just enough for Freddie to glimpse her shoulder, pale as she was.
He looked at her for a long moment, and then said, "Fuck." He stepped closer to her, and as he did, she stepped towards him, too.
She was a magnet, pulling him impossible close. Time hadn't done anything to reduce the intensity of how he felt about her. He'd been a fool to think that it would.
Their lips crashed into each other's, as sudden as it was passionate. Freddie found his hands going up to her hair, just as surely as hers went to his jeans, fumbling with the waistband for a moment. Her lips moved to his neck, to the hollow of his throat, and the kisses she pressed over his skin felt like molten fire – or maybe that was him, maybe he was heating up, ablaze in the way he only ever was with her.
"I've missed you," she whispered. It was muffled, but he heard it.
How could he not hear it? Every sense he had was attuned to her, to every last thing she was doing – to her hands, soft but so sure, to her lips, to the way his hands felt on her waist as he held on to her, pulling her in closer, closer, until there was no distance between them.
Until there was nothing between them at all. Until they fell, together, panting, onto the sofa, clumsy and urgent and needy. Until they were as close as it was possible for them to be.
He felt weak as he walked out of her flat, down the stairs. No, not weak, exactly. Discomfited. Ill at ease. Maybe those were better words for how he was feeling. He could still feel Anna, as if she was still right there next to him. As if his hands were still on her, as if his lips were against hers. Her hair, the way she tasted, how everything in his mind fell apart the second they were together…
He didn't know where he needed to go. Back home, maybe? He thought longingly of his bedroom in their flat in Diagon Alley. His mum and dad, who no doubt knew everything that had happened.
They would be kind, of course. His dad would crack a thousand jokes about it – the one time I let you run a shop and it ends up with a man nearly dead on the floor? – and his mum would be endlessly practical. He could picture her reaction now. Well, accidents happen. Someone broke into the shop, that's not your fault. Do you want to have some tea?
He could picture, too, the questions. About whether he knew anything. Whether he had seen anything. What he thought the man was doing in the shop. Whether he'd answered everything the Aurors had asked him. Whether the Aurors were treating it as a standard breaking and entering, or whether they were investigating what happened to the man. Whether they suspected him.
Maybe he would be better off going to the Potters', where he could wait for his Uncle Harry to come home and tell him everything that was happening about the case. And he could tell him about the ring, about –
He paused in his thoughts, and stopped where he was. He patted his hands over himself– over his jacket. The pockets of his jeans. The pockets were smooth. Nothing but his wand in his jacket pocket. No ring at all, anywhere on him.
She must have taken it back.
And then he swore. There was no one to hear him but some confused Muggles walking by and the ocean, and he didn't hold back. "Fuck," he said. "Fuck fuck fuck – fucking hippogriff shit, Merlin's fucking pants…" As he spoke, he turned on the spot, Disapparating.
He Apparated outside the small shop in Hogsmeade, and raked his hands through his hair as he walked inside, up to the flat, and wrenched the door open.
"Fucking… Blast-Ended Skrewt, damn it all to hell and back," he muttered, turning to slam the door shut behind him.
"What are we damning to hell and back?" asked a voice.
A familiar voice. A voice that Freddie knew as well as his own.
He turned, slowly, and was met with the sight of James, sprawled out on his sofa with his feet propped up on a suitcase. He was wearing a short-sleeved patterned shirt, ratty jeans, and had sunglasses perched on top of his hair. He was also grinning at Freddie.
"Uncle George gave me the spare key," Jamie continued. His grin faded as he looked at Freddie, really looked at him, in a way that made Freddie feel like he was seeing right through him. "He said that I was welcome to come and try and get a hold of you before the Aurors do. What in the world's going on, mate? And – why do you have lipstick on your neck?"