1995
She bought the flat on Downey Street with the last of her meagre savings. The divorce money had run through her fingers along with a string of jobs she hadn't been willing or able to hold down. She'd been waiting tables for months at some dingy diner before quitting to come out here, but she doubted she would've stayed on much longer anyway.
It was a lonely little place down south- the air here was muggy, damp, and gray, and she could see the worn spots on the wall, the plaster delicate and white as eggshells, where the landlady had tenaciously scrubbed away the mold year after year. She had no furniture, so she sat and ate Chinese takeout on the floor. A dead beetle, upended and covered in dust, was her companion.
The city dragged and blurred in the rain, cars casting dim bolts of light across the bare walls as they roared by. She resisted the urge to open Dumbledore's letter yet again. She had memorized every word anyway, in the day since she had received it.
We were all woefully mistaken in the events of fourteen years ago- all, I believe, except you. You will find the Order at Number 12, Grimmauld Place, should you choose to return to us.
Twenty-four hours ago she had still believed their lies, in every part of her except her persistent heart, which she had long since dismissed as a traitor. She gulped down another spoonful of greasy lo mein and tried in vain to ignore that heart's restlessness, the restlessness that had always been there, undeniable, persistent, and deep. Why else had she dropped everything, left her job, uprooted her life yet again? Why had she never been able to make anything work but once, those few precious years before it all came crashing down?
She stared down at her half-eaten food in disgust and pulled out a cigarette instead, opening the tiny window to admit a gust of humid air that reeked of exhaust. Smoke billowed around her face as she stared out at the dark, illegible maze of another new city. He's out there he's out there he's out there. She scowled, ashed her cigarette, and slammed the window shut with a spray of pulverized plaster.
It's madness, she reminded herself. Madness to be chasing at thirty-five after something you had when you were twenty. This is how it goes- you compromise, you let go. You forget.
She had always been exceptionally bad at those things.
She apparated neatly on the doorstep of Number 12, Grimmauld Place, her heart rattling like a box of pills. Pills she could've used very, very badly. It would be so easy to just apparate back, pack up and leave town yet again- maybe she should, after all that had happened. But she still hadn't moved when the door was flung open and a beam of light spilled out into the dreary street. A portly red-haired woman ushered her inside.
"Oh, welcome, welcome, so good to have you!" She spoke in a low voice, though Nellie wasn't sure why. "You may not remember me, we've met a few times- I'm Molly Weasley." She extended a hand and Nellie took it with a blank smile.
Molly ushered her down a dark, narrow hall, past black curtains thick with dust, and something that was definitely a troll's foot. The whole place had the disorienting feel of a home no one was supposed to be living in. She heard a low hum of voices becoming more and more distinct and she listened with painful acuity, trying to pick out the one that might be his.
"In you go, Nellie, they're all waiting." Molly swung open a heavy wooden door and Nellie walked in, an odd buzzing in her ears. She was in the dining room, distinctly cozier and more used than the rest of the house. The long ebony table was covered in candles and large sheets of parchment, and a roaring fire at one end of the room kept away the evening chill that pervaded the rest of the house. People stood all round the table, chatting, laying out more parchments, catching up. People she had never seen before, or hadn't spoken to in many long years.
It took her a few glances around the room to find Sirius, and at first she almost didn't recognize him. Then, as soon as she got a good look, she decided he really hadn't changed much in fourteen years.
He stood by the fire, talking quietly to Remus Lupin, a slight frown on his face. He had a beard, which surprised her, but he was still bloody handsome: the same dark hair hanging effortlessly around his face, the same lanky grace in his long legs. Even Azkaban hadn't taken that from him. He glanced up mid sentence and saw her. His conversation faltered, the expression on his face unreadable. Before she could make a move, Alastor Moody came barreling out of nowhere and trapped her in a bone-crushing embrace.
"Nellie Stevens," he chuckled once he released her. She beamed up into his grizzled face, ignoring the sickening spinning of his eye. "Good to see you again, girl." She glanced over his shoulder to see Sirius still staring at her intently.
"At least someone thinks so."
"Been staying safe? Watching your back?" He dragged out a chair for her and she took it gratefully. She had the distinct feeling that everyone had been told to be nice to her. "They're going after old Order members, and of course everybody knows you-"
Damn right they do.
"Meeting's starting in a few, but Molly makes a good dinner afterwards if you can stick around. Meet the kids. Harry Potter's here, y'know-"
She was just about to voice her astonishment when Dumbledore called the meeting to order and they all took their seats. Sirius sat at the far end of the table from her.
Harry Potter, here? She remembered holding him, fourteen years ago, Lily passing him into her startled hands. Go on, Nellie. You've fought more Death Eaters than I can count, I trust you won't drop him. And Sirius, his arm around her waist, had laughed. You'll be a good godmother, I know it. Get him into loads of trouble.
A week later, all of them were dead or gone.
The meeting passed by quickly, in a blur. She had scraped back her chair and was getting ready to leave, wrapping her coarse wool travelling cloak around her shoulders, when he came over to her.
"Nell-ie." He added the second syllable as an awkward afterthought. He had always called her Nel. Fourteen years ago.
Closer to him, she could see the years in his face. He was paler than he had been, his eyes sunken and dark, and she could see a streak of gray in his neat black beard. Somehow this only made him more disarming. Something in her was slipping, melting, like lights of cars in the rain. She merely nodded, not trusting herself to speak.
"Is that all I get? A nod?" He grinned but it didn't reach his eyes.
"Two years, Sirius. Two years you've been out." People moved around them, the din of voices growing louder as old friends met and mingled. She kept her voice low. "Not a word, not a sign."
He shoved a hand in his pocket, looking more and more like the teenager she remembered. Everyone thought you were so cool, so flawless. Only I saw you awkward and shy and scared.
"I didn't want to put you in danger."
"You escaped from bloody Azkaban and you couldn't send an owl?"
Sirius scowled. "I was going to, but I got out and heard you were married."
Suddenly the room felt very quiet, and she saw several people were glancing furtively in their direction. That's it, go on and stare like you want to. She was sick of everyone pretending she was a precious old friend. Everyone who had left her out in the cold fourteen years ago.
"That's it, is it?" Her voice was creeping higher and higher. "I get married and suddenly I don't deserve to know the truth?"
"You moved on, Nellie!" His words hit her like a slap. "Would you really have believed me, even if I did tell you the truth?"
"Supper!" A harried-looking Molly Weasley burst in from the kitchen, hovering a tray of steaming soup and bread in front of her, and immediately stopped short. Nellie and Sirius stood glaring at each other, the air around them cold and still and fragile as glass.
"Thanks, Molly, but I've got to get going." Nellie wrapped her cloak tighter and strode through the silent room. She burst out into the damp night air and apparated without a look back.
It took her a while to furnish her flat. She went to dreary street markets, one fluorescent-lit antiques barn, and several old, mazelike shops she could have spent hours in. She had always loved Muggle antiques- they had a history and a magic of their own. If you listened, they almost seemed to whisper to you.
She was supposed to be looking for a chair, preferably one for less than ten pounds, but she had gotten distracted once again and ended up in a small back room full of glass works. Light bounced around in chips and streaks, dazzling her. She was startled by a glimpse of herself, refracted a hundred times over in an ornate series of mirrors.
God, she looked old. Still as freckled and skinny as ever, but her dark hair had a little gray at the roots, and the bags under her eyes weren't going away any time soon. You moved on, Nellie. She had certainly tried, she wanted to tell him. The marriage, the drugs, all the new jobs and new flats, three in a year once- anything to perpetuate the lie of movement, when really all she was doing was standing still. Waiting, just like she had when she was sixteen.
"I see you've found the prize of our collection, ma'am."
She would have jumped at the voice behind her if she were fifteen years younger. Her work with the Order had taught her how to hide surprise.
"You have good taste." The old proprietor was smiling at her and she forced herself to smile back.
"Perhaps a bit too good for my pocketbook." She told him what she was looking for and he led her through the narrow maze of the store, away from the mirrors.
The flat filled up gradually. She was still getting dressed out of her battered steamer trunk every morning, but at least she had a rickety bed and a chair. Every night she would eat her greasy takeout straight from the red-and-white box, staring out the window and trying not to think of Sirius. Then, after darkness had fallen, she would take out her trash, pull back her hair, and go to work.
She tailed Yaxley every night, apparating to the address in Surrey Dumbledore had given her. Out in the street she knew what she was doing; even when it was boring it still felt right, more like home than any flat she'd ever lived in. Already she had given Dumbledore two new addresses, and they had a tail on Dolohov now thanks to her.
Meetings, however, were another matter. Every new face jarred her, and each time she turned her head she glimpsed Dorcas or Marlene or Lily out of the corner of her eye, peripheral ghosts forever stuck where she couldn't quite see them. She and Sirius skirted around each other with cautious deference, neither wanting a repeat of their earlier fight. She avoided looking at him, sitting next to him, or talking to him, but he was always there, in the periphery. Just another ghost.
"Hey, Stevens!"
She recognized the low, dull voice behind her- Terrance Goyle, one of her fellow sixth-years. She didn't even bother turning around. It only gave them more to laugh at.
"Think you're too good for all of us, Stevens? Bet your mother wouldn't be too good for me if I paid her!"
He was was coming closer, she could hear it. One more step. She whirled around and caught Goyle with a hex right in the center of his ham-like face. Immediately tiny frogs began pouring out of his nostrils and he shrieked, dropping his books as he batted wildly at his nose.
Nellie didn't stay long to admire her handiwork, skirting away down the hall to advanced potions. It was the only good class she had this year- Slughorn was a pratt but he knew how to plan a decent lesson. She'd heard that sixth years would get to do the draught of living death today.
"Oi, there." A heavy hand landed on her shoulder and she started violently. She turned around, scowling, to see a scarred, weatherbeaten face staring down at her. She recognized her assailant- some man from the Ministry who'd come to talk in her Defence class about being an Auror. She hadn't paid much attention to him.
"Was that a Ranaerius hex?"
"Yeah."
He had a glass eye that spun sickeningly around and around in his head. She wondered how he had lost the original one- the few people she knew with glass eyes were all old, but he had to be in his thirties. "Bloody good work. I've never seen such fine aim." He stared down at her quizzically. "You practice?"
"N-no," she stammered, surprised at this line of questioning. "I get enough practice just walking down the halls." That warranted a snort from him. She clutched the strap of her bag tightly; it had already broken once this week, and even Spell-O-Tape hadn't worked. "I've got to get to potions, sir. Are you putting me in detention?"
"Ha!" The Ministry man's laugh was as rough and ugly as his face. "I'm no bloody professor, and I'm not putting anyone in detention. Tell you what- have you thought about being an Auror?"
"No," she let slip before she could stop herself. "Not interested in a lot of paperwork and the Ministry telling me what to do."
His gaze when he looked down at her was decidedly more serious. Calculating. "No matter. Fancy learning how to really duel?"
She had rushed off to her potions class, letting out a volley of breathless curses as the strap of her bag broke yet again. She was out of shape, but Moody would fix that in the coming months. Lessons were weekly, and brutal.
"You don't like being told what to do, Stevens?" he grunted as he hurled a volley of hexes that she had to duck behind an old desk to avoid. "I don't like it either, but that's the way the world works. You pick your battles, you do the most good you can. Don't fight everybody on principle."
"You sound like my mother." She flung back a stinging hex that grazed his right arm, and he laughed his raspy laugh.
When they packed up and left the empty classroom for the day, it was already growing dark. Moody's words echoed in her head. Her mother had often told her something similar, looking hard at Nellie over the perpetual cigarette clamped between her lips: enjoy being young while you can, luvvie. When you're an adult you hafta learn to make compromises.
Her mother's real name was Lana, but at work she went by Ellaria. The men liked it better that way, something alluring and different. Sometimes when mum got home she was still Ellaria, red lipstick leaving veiny imprints on her wine glasses like rose petals. But when she was Lana again, they would do regular mum-and-daughter things.
The other thing her mum said was never fall in love. Love made you make compromises faster than anything. Nellie knew why she said that; Lana had fallen in love with a man when she was seventeen, and he got her pregnant with Nellie and left her. She'd had to quit her job to raise her daughter, and that was why she did the work she did now. The meagre food in their cupboard, the water in their little London flat, her secondhand books and robes, all came from her mother making compromises. I'll not make the same mistakes, she promised herself. I'll never let anybody run my life for me.
Nellie was still thinking about her mother when she rounded a corner and heard an odd, strangled cry. She gripped her wand in her pocket, her heartbeat picking up just a little. Then she heard it again- a cry of pain, followed by a splash and loud, cruel, laughter. She walked quickly towards the source of the noise and found it was coming from the prefects' bathroom. The heavy wooden door was slightly ajar.
"How do you like that, freak? Blood traitor, how 'bout I-"
She pushed open the door, briefly distracted by the grandeur of the room. A group of three boys stood around an opulent pool, their robes standing out dark against the pristine white marble. The water steamed, foaming with bubbles that released intoxicating scents: lemon, rose, cinnamon buns. They drifted erratically here and there on the surface. One boy was reaching his hands down into the baths.
They looked so still and tranquil in the steamy haze it took her a moment to realize what they were doing. Then a hand broke the surface of the water and she realized- they were drowning someone.
"Oi! You're not a prefect."
"No, she's bloody not." Nellie nearly groaned aloud as she recognized Goyle. "It's Stevens the slut of sixth year."
Her fingers clenched tighter around her wand but she didn't draw it out. "Oo-ooh. He can make an alliteration. I'm real scared." Three on one was bad odds, but she wasn't going to let them see her fear. She looked again at the water. Closer now, she could see Armenius Crabbe had the submerged boy's ankles grasped in one meaty hand, his other pushing down on the boy's head beneath the bubbles. The boy still wore his shoes, and she saw a flash of red and gold-striped socks as he kicked his legs feebly. She was starting to feel rather sick. "Let him go."
"Alright." Crabbe yanked the sputtering, blue-faced boy out of the water and advanced on her, wiping his wet hands on his trousers. "We'll deal with you first."
Could he be any thicker? Moody always said never to waste time shit-talking- it gave your opponent too much information. Silently, before Crabbe could get too close, Nellie struck. She sent a hex to Goyle first, for being her least favorite, and caught him on the shoulder. His companion, whom she recognized as a Slytherin seventh-year, muttered something and a bolt of purple lighting lanced through the air towards her. Her protective spell worked, but only just barely; she could feel the jarring impact of the curse shooting up her arm and swore loudly. This was real dark magic, not training hexes.
But she wasn't Moody's protegee for nothing. Use the environment, he had told her, so many times she had laughed at him and told him they should practice dueling in the shitter. And now here I am, dueling in a shitter. She flicked her wrist and sent a spray of bubbles cascading onto the floor, drenching Crabbe and Goyle and causing them to stumble. While they were disoriented she shot ropes out of her wand to bind them. Now it was just the seventh-year.
She tried to hold him back as he advanced on her, but she was failing. Ducking and dodging was taking up too much of her energy. She could feel the burning in her lungs, the smell of cinnamon in the warm, humid air making her stomach turn. She yelped in pain as another curse grazed her arm.
"Fuck it!" she growled as she hurled herself bodily at her opponent Muggle-style, slamming him into the pool. When he resurfaced, snarling and gasping for breath, she hit him square in the chest with another hex and he floated listlessly amid the bubbles, strangely idyllic.
She ran to the drowned boy without a second look at the Slytherins. He had pushed himself up into a sitting position in the middle of a growing puddle of water. As she got closer she could see drops of blood blossoming in the water like roses. Then she noticed who he was, and nearly stopped short. High cheekbones, long, dark lashes. Chin-length hair hanging damp around his handsome face.
"Alright, Black?"
He blinked at her as though it took great effort. "Alright. That was some pretty neat dueling."
She nodded, crouching down a safe distance away from him. He wiped a smear of blood from a cut on his forehead and grinned at her. He had very white teeth- perfect, rich teeth.
"I'm not gonna bite you. Most girls don't like to sit that far away."
She merely scowled at him. He was handsome enough, but he was also arrogant and lazy and would sleep with any girl who looked at him the right way. And he was rich, too, old blood from some fancy townhouse in London. She probably didn't live too far from him, she realized, and the thought made her scowl deepen.
He was still breathing heavily, his large chest rising and falling as he tilted his head back. His eyelashes fluttered fitfully against his cheeks.
"What did they do to you?"
His eyes snapped open. They were dark as his hair, the irises almost blending with the pupils. "Just dunked me a few times. Nothing I couldn't handle," he said but she could see his hands shaking as he twisted them in the wet fabric of his trousers.
"You want a hand up then? Or are you gonna stay here all night?"
He chuckled a little but it sounded wet and wrong.
His fingers when he grasped her outstretched hand were cold and pruny, and he was heavy, too. He stumbled and she had to catch him with a hand to his shoulder. She felt suddenly unsteady. Bubbles drifted through the air, heavy with the smell of fruit and spices.
"You should go to the hospital wing."
"I'll do that."
He turned to leave, and she stared at the drops of blood and water that pooled in his wake. Not at him. Just as he reached the door, he glanced at her over his shoulder. Something rose in her throat that she recognized as hope, but she didn't know what for.
"Stevens, is it?" Her heart tripped over itself. "Don't tell anyone about this."