Wherein Harriet falls in love over lemonade.

A/N: This is far from the chapter I hoped for. It was either post this chapterlet, or continue agonizing needlessly. Hopefully the length isn't too disappointing.

Harriet was jittery. Her wand hung loosely from her numb fingers. She sat cross-legged in the dust, hand splayed across her sticky forehead. She took in every detail of the room: the daylight peaking shyly through the gaps around the boarded-up window; the thickness of the silence, disturbed only by Tommie's shallow breathing; Tommie herself curled in a heap, her wand and the open wooden box lying forlornly beside her.

Harriet realized dully that there would be no next act unless she moved, and she didn't want to quite yet. Let the moment rest; let the tumult of her thoughts subside. (Had Tommie tried to kill her? Or considered it?)

The air was gritty. It coated the inside of her nose, which was far from pleasant. She couldn't keep waiting here. There was nothing to be gained.

Harriet scrambled to her feet and tiptoed toward Tommie. The little box snapped shut at her approach before she could get a better look at its contents, seeming to hiss in warning. She glared at it, and the serpent worked into the lid glared balefully back, fangs exposed. Disappointed but somehow unsurprised, she gingerly returned the box to its compartment under the trapdoor; Tommie didn't appear to be in the state of mind to do the honors herself. The trapdoor closed heavily when the box came to rest, blending seamlessly with its surroundings. Harriet knew she couldn't open it again. Whatever. And contrary to popular opinion, she valued her appendages far more than satisfying her (insistent) curiosity.

Tommie still hadn't moved, still curled in her stiff ball. Harriet put a hand out, let it hover above her shoulder. Tommie remained unaware, lost deep in some labyrinth, no string to guide her through. Tentatively, Harriet patted her shoulder, the light touch bringing Tommie out of her wending contemplations. Her face was pale and drawn.

"Tommie?"

Tommie blinked, disconsolate, her eyes roving glassily.

"Tommie, can we go?" Harriet asked, as gently as she could, so as not to spook her and risk starting the duel anew. "This really isn't the place for anything."

Tommie laughed weakly. "Darling, I just attacked you without clear provocation, and you would like to depart in my company?"

Harriet gave a short exhale. "Maybe. I'm a Gryffindor. Chivalrous to the end and all." Gryffindor paragon or parody. She couldn't tell which.

Tommie picked up her abandoned wand and began to methodically polish it with the hem of her shirt. "What precisely do you think happened here?" The question was posed casually enough, though Harriet could detect an undercurrent of suspended incredulity.

"Let's see… You came here expecting to find something you didn't want to find." Whatever was in the rabid little box. "Then you, ah, took out your shock and displeasure on me."

"That is accurate, a commendable deduction."

"Great," Harriet said, not remotely triumphant. "So can we please go?"

"You don't deserve any of this," Tommie snapped, an apparent non sequitur.

"Don't tell me what I deserve." Because if she were being honest with herself—and she nearly always was—then she deserved exactly what she was getting. Helping strange women with murky pasts, without concrete benefit beyond potential satisfaction? God, being attacked was the least of likely results. Harriet stiffly helped Tommie to her feet. "Really, don't even start." She narrowed her eyes. "But I do deserve thorough explanations, wouldn't you say?"

Tommie assented.

"Brilliant! After that, I'll figure out the best way to proceed." Possibly. She didn't have a clue.

"That's fair, but I can guarantee you will not like any of the answers I can give you," Tommie said.

"Probably not," Harriet agreed, wishing she didn't have to. "This is such a miserable place. Your mother was raised here?"

"'Raised' is a generous term."

"Ah." Yet another unsurprising bit of knowledge to join her expanding collection.

They stepped gingerly through the disturbed layer of dust and went blinking out into the sunlight. There were birds chirping and not a cloud to be seen. It was a jarring transition and utterly incongruous with the inside of Harriet's head.

"I don't want to have this conversation anywhere meaningful," Tommie said, Vanishing the dust from their clothes with precise movements.

"We could go for drinks of some kind," Harriet suggested. Better to go somewhere with many people, just in case Tommie got the urge to attack her again. "There's a teashop Hermione likes, and she definitely knows about this sort of thing."

Tommie nodded in resigned understanding. "Muggle, I presume?" she asked with forced casualness, her disdain unmistakable.

Harriet parsed through several snappish retorts before settling on a flat "Yes." She ran a hand through her tousled, sweat-soaked hair. Tommie unconsciously mirrored her, grimacing as her fingers caught in the multitude of snarls. "No one will recognize me. No one will care whatever we talk about, should they inadvertently overhear. And besides, you should really start understanding how the Muggle world has changed, too."

"Good enough for me." Tommie firmly grasped Harriet's hand. Harriet did not flinch away, although it took a fair bit of effort. "Off we go, then."

"Off we go," Harriet affirmed and Disapparated.

#

"You'd clean up well," the scruffy uni boy ahead of them in line said, giving Tommie a shameless once-over.

Tommie's hand flexed toward her wand, then dropped back to her side. "You certainly don't," she replied sharply. The kid grabbed his glass—of what, Harriet couldn't quite tell—and scurried away to a table as far from them as he could get, giving Tommie a wary look over his shoulder. She smirked.

Harriet felt an odd sort of fondness at the exchange but tried to ignore it. She placed an order for two lemonades and scooped up the tall, condensation-covered glasses, the ice clinking merrily. "Where shall we sit?" she queried.

Tommie pointed peremptorily at a table in the back corner, a convenient half wall shielding it from prying eyes. Harriet led the way across the room, the tables they passed occupied by perfectly boring people drinking a pleasing variety of iced beverages. She doubted their conversations were as horrific as the one she was likely to have.

She was not disappointed. "Have you ever thought much about death, Harriet?" Tommie took a dainty sip, mouth puckering at the tartness, then set down her cup and examined her hands in somewhat embarrassed awe.

Damn, what a way to start! "Not as such." Harriet tasted her own lemonade—perfect amount of sugar, yes!—and wondered where Tommie could possibly be going with this.

"I have." A tangle of ebony hair slipped from behind her ear. She seemed prepared to bring it to her mouth, perhaps to tease it apart with her tongue, then noticed Harriet's intrigued-yet-pitying expression and pushed it away. "The void," she continued relentlessly. "The endless nothingness. The lack of thought. The not-knowing how things go on apace without you. Being forgotten." The last two words were spoken in a harsh whisper.

"Um." Harriet swirled her drink, the ice bobbing about the rim. "I really haven't." But put in such prosaic terms, she could understand why Tommie would. Tommie's turns of phrase made existential angst eminently rational.

"No?" Tommie cocked her head, her lips twisting into an expression Harriet couldn't place, didn't want to place, for it was somewhere between bitter and hungry. "There are ways to avoid death, for those determined enough. What's a little murder, a mutilated soul, pain beyond imagining, then no pain at all, if it means that death will flee in disgust before you?"

"Oh, Tommie." Harriet reached out, her heart twisting, her throat tight. "What is it? That sort of magic?"

"They're called Horcruxes," Tommie said, and the word was sour and curdled, laden with terrible history. "Only the most cold-blooded murder will do for the first. After that…" She closed her eyes. "After that, anything goes."

Harriet could imagine it: Tommie in Hogwarts robes and a neatly-knotted Slytherin scarf, her nose buried in one of those moldering, suspiciously-stained grimoires from the Restricted Section that made most people sick to the stomach, that even Hermione avoided; Tommie, standing over a supine corpse, wild-eyed, wand aloft and sparking; Tommie, crouching in shadow, ripping something wet and dripping from her chest, for where was the soul, if not the heart? Harriet shivered.

"They're gone now," Tommie went on, the words wrenched from her. "That wretched sorcerer made sure of it."

Harriet knew she should be relieved to hear this, but Tommie sat across from her, head in hand, utterly bereft. Unwanted mortality, such a perilous prospect, one that could not be abided. Inexplicably, Harriet ached to comfort her.

"You can leave now, you know," Tommie murmured, her eyes cast down to the smudged tabletop. "My curse is broken. Your obligation to me is done."

"I know" should have been easy to say, but Harriet changed her mind halfway through, and it emerged instead as a mess of incomprehensible syllables. She coughed to cover it, then tried again. "I don't want whatever we have to end." Because how could she forget their banter and how Tommie had let her cry into her fur and— She knew that none of it mattered much, when compared with everything Tommie had confessed to. But the curse was indeed broken—proof beyond proof of a degree of sincerity.

And—

Tommie understood… the burden of revolutionary, world-upending vision. Clichéd. Perhaps trite and foolhardy and rosy in the extreme. But, well, fuck it.

Tommie's head snapped up, her eyes-the pupils round, nothing like how she'd appeared in Harriet's nightmare—wide and hopeful and smoldering. "Truly?" She seemed to balk at the question. "Rather, are you certain?"

"I think so." Harriet grinned, something warm unfurling in her chest. "But you could try convincing me further."

"Oh?" Tommie leaned across the table, intrigued. "And how might I go about it?"

Hermione's voice shouted caution in Harriet's mind. Her argument was cogent and persuasive…

Ah, what the hell. Harriet was a Gryffindor, expected to do impulsive things, which paid off at least, oh, 52 percent of the time (but she was pretty damn sure she wasn't completely stupid). She reached out and grasped Tommie's hand. Tommie returned the grip without hesitation, a contented smile steeling across her face.

Harriet cast her eyes around the teashop. There was some interesting post-modern art displayed that didn't interest her. More importantly, no one was looking over at them—which, admittedly, was a given since Tommie's Privacy Charm was something of a small-scale marvel.

"Maybe a bit like this." And Harriet leaned the rest of the way across the table and kissed Tommie full on the mouth. Yeah, maybe it felt a bit like signing one of those compacts with the Devil, or like adding the final flourish to her signature. But Tommie's surprised whimper was worth it.