XIII. Defense and Offense
The next day dawned, and it looked just like the last. A glittering crust of snow covered the ground. Julie stood at the window of her dormitory and looked out over towards the forest. Smoke was rising from the chimney of the groundskeeper's hut, and the Whomping Willow swayed gently. But something had changed, and what made Julie so extraordinarily happy was that nobody knew. How nice to have something—anything—between herself and another, with no third person, no observer, no one else to approve or disapprove.
The feeling was short-lived. Somehow, by lunchtime that day there was not one person in the castle who did not know that something, of some nature, had transpired between Julie Fraser and Sirius Black. Both of them had were accompanied by whispers and stares wherever they went. Julie knew this was unavoidable, in her case at least—if they were not talking about Sirius they would be talking about Mulciber. It didn't bother her. She half liked it.
James was in a terrible mood all day—frustrated with his best friend and practically furious with Julie. Every time he tried to talk to her she would give him a gracious, vacant smile before assuring him that it was none of his business. Sirius said the same, but he was less irritating about it, and wasn't so obviously enjoying himself.
Lily was a little bemused, and a little disgusted. She didn't think very much of Sirius. Marlene, who thought even less of Julie, was completely shocked. Only Mary had seen it coming, but she was still disappointed. She hadn't really thought that Julie had better taste, but she had hoped.
Niamh would have seen it coming, if she had been paying attention, but she had other things going on. Over the holidays, she had gone to the little pharmacy near her house, and bought herself a bitter, dark-orange nail varnish, to keep herself from chewing on her nails. It hadn't worked yet, and now she had dreams of drinking poison, of eating stones, of breathing fire.
Peter, who was scared of Julie, just hoped he could stay out of her way.
Remus had no opinion on the matter.
The funny thing was that Sirius and Julie didn't act like a couple at all. They talked across the table at lunch and at dinner, with James, Peter, Remus and Marlene. They came into the Transfiguration classroom at the same time, and she didn't thank him for holding the door. They didn't change seats in any of their classes, they didn't smile at each other across the room, and they certainly weren't seen kissing in the corridors. It was a mystery how anyone had figured it out at all.
It went on for days. Nothing was more exciting than Julie Fraser trying to kill Caius Mulciber and then hooking up with Sirius Black in quick succession; nobody would talk about anything else. Julie started sitting on the floor in the back of the library to do her studying. She couldn't concentrate on her work with so many eyes burning holes in her head. Part envy, part fear, the stares wore her out eventually.
Professor Abbott gave them something else to think about when he announced that they were beginning the practical portion of his course. It was the second week of the term. Mulciber was still in the Hospital Wing, and rumors about his health were flying. He's in a coma. He's being transferred to St. Mungo's. He's getting cosmetic Transfiguration for his nose. He's just afraid to come back.
So when Professor Abbott asked his students to stand up and find a partner, there was a little awkward scrambling and adjusting. Lily ended up with Marlene and then immediately realized she should be with Julie. James and Sirius picked each other, as usual, and Professor Abbott was inexperienced enough that he did not immediately separate them, which meant that Remus and Peter had to work together. Avery, Mulciber's usual partner, asked Aurelia Malfoy to be partners, and she laughed at him. Finally, everyone was standing in pairs by their desks, except for Mary, Julie, and a tall Slytherin girl named Priya Shah.
Priya smiled and brushed her long hair over one shoulder. "Wanna work with me?" she said as she crossed the room to Mary, boots clicking on the floor with every long stride.
"Sure," said Mary awkwardly. Julie looked at her, incredulous.
"Well," said Professor Abbott, "Now we've all got partners, and now we can begin. Miss Fraser, I hope you'll help me demonstrate."
They had spent the entire first term taking notes on Professor Abbott's lectures. He had been a very unremarkable teacher—boring, in fact.
"Right," he began. "So. Before Christmas, you'll remember—at least I hope you'll remember—we were discussing shield spells. By now, you should all understand the theory of a non-verbal Shield Charm, so this is your opportunity to try it out in practice. One of you will attempt to jinx the other, and the other will defend his or herself—without speaking, please. Don't hurt each other. All right. Miss Fraser and I will demonstrate."
Julie turned to face him and raised her wand. Professor Abbott looked nervous and uncomfortable, just as he always did. He was hesitating, bouncing on his feet a little bit.
"Whenever you're ready, Professor," said Julie drily, and he pointed his wand and shot out a jet of silver light. Julie, unprepared, was startled into swiping her wand through the air, and with a ripple of force the silver jet was reflected back to the wall, and Professor Abbott was knocked to the floor.
There was a collective gasp. Julie's face was blank. Her pulse was pounding in her ears, and she could feel the tips of her fingers tingling.
James half rose from his seat, uncertain, but before he could speak Professor Abbott had struggled back to his feet.
"Right..." he said feebly, "well, you get the idea. Perhaps a little less force. Clear the desks away and begin."
And Julie stood back, and watched the class.
"Wow," said Priya. Mary looked up sharply at her partner, but she could detect no sarcasm in her voice—and she was impressed as well. "Is she a friend of yours?"
Mary shrugged. "Sort of."
She really wasn't, but she felt compelled to defend Julie anyway. They were in the same house, after all, even if Julie was completely losing it. At least Abbott wasn't going to get her in trouble—he believed that it had been an accident.
Mary believed that as well. It was just that Julie wouldn't even look apologetic, wouldn't excuse herself at all. Mary threw her an anxious glance and she, leaning against the blackboard, raised her eyebrows in response.
"Should I go first?" asked Priya.
"Yeah, sure."
They backed away a few feet, and Priya lifted her wand. Her spell was just a Jelly-Legs Jinx, and Mary blocked it, biting her lip to keep from saying the incantation out loud. The spell rebounded and hit a desk with a small pop.
"You're good at this," said Priya, smiling. Mary returned the smile, feeling very glad, and not for the first time, that her skin was too dark to show much of a blush.
Priya deflected her Stunning Spell as well, although Mary heard her mutter the incantation. Jinxes were flying all around the room, reflecting back and forth, occasionally hitting the wrong person entirely, and after they had each made an attempt, the two girls drew together and watched the chaos. Mary looked up at her, out of the corner of her eye. She had never really spoken to Priya before—she didn't, generally, speak to Slytherins. Priya had long wavy hair, very black and a little wild, and dark eyes. There was a tiny scar on her left cheekbone.
"Sh'we do it again?" Mary asked.
"If you like. Nobody's paying attention to us."
Mary stepped back and raised her wand.
You can't always see a change as it comes. Later, she would look back and try to pinpoint the moment—the second when potential became irrevocable. She never could.
You can't always cross a Rubicon. Sometimes the Rubicon crosses you.
"If you are seventeen years of age, or will turn seventeen on or before the thirty-first of August next, you are eligible for a twelve-week course of Apparition Lessons from a Ministry of Magic Apparition instructor. Please sign below if you would like to participate. Cost twelve Galleons."
"Excellent," said Marlene. "Pass me a quill."
Lily, who had just finished reading the notice out loud, gave her friend a quill without looking at her. She was frowning at the paper, just discovered on the Gryffindor notice board.
"Twelve Galleons?" she repeated. "That's sort of a lot."
Marlene signed her name in a flourishing cursive. "You don't have to worry about it." Lily looked at her uncomfortably. "You don't, really. It can be a loan if you want. You have to learn how to Apparate."
Lily made a small, vague gesture.
"Niamh, are you signing up?" Marlene called across the room. Niamh was reading a magazine in an armchair, and she looked up with her eyes wide.
She jumped up and scurried over to the notice board. "Signing up for what? Oh. Yeah, sure." She took Lily's quill from Marlene and carefully wrote her name.
Then everyone started paying attention, and Lily had to stand by awkwardly while most of the sixth years used her quill without realizing. James and Sirius came up last. James wrote very quickly without looking at her. After he handed off the pen, he went straight up the boys' staircase. He didn't say anything to Sirius.
When Sirius finished writing his name, he looked down at the feather in his hand, uncertain. "That's my pen," said Lily, more sharply than she had intended.
He gave her the quill, and an unpleasant, mocking smile. There was nothing she hated more than feeling as if someone was trying to intimidate her; she shifted her weight into the balls of her feet and raised her chin.
He didn't say anything else; he turned and walked away. He did not follow James: he went out into the corridor, even though it was almost too late to be out, and the Fat Lady's portrait slammed against the wall behind him.
Lily went over to Marlene, who had found a table and sat down, and started to unpack her books. A few minutes later she saw Julie cross the room and go out through the portrait hole as well.
Apparition lessons began that Friday in the Great Hall. James, making his way through the crush of students on the front staircase, passed Lily, talking to Nigel, and turned around to grin at her. He had the satisfaction of seeing her roll her eyes—actually, he wasn't sure if that was satisfying anymore—before he went through the doors.
The house tables were gone, and in their place were four rows of wooden hoops. Most of the sixth years were milling around the edges of the room, unsure. It took James a moment to find Peter and Remus and make his way over to them.
Remus nodded in greeting, but Peter was chewing on his lip, forehead wrinkled with worry.
"Prongs," he said quietly, "you've done this before, right? Side-Along?"
"Sure," said James.
"So, is it...is it..."
"Is it what? Fun? Interesting? Exciting? No." He wasn't in the mood for talking to Peter; he was scanning the crowd for Sirius, and he couldn't find him. He didn't bother to look for Julie; he wasn't trying to make himself angry.
"But it doesn't—it doesn't hurt, does it?" Peter managed to say.
"It feels like shit, Petey," said James carelessly. "It's probably the most painful thing I've ever done. Just try not to pass out, yeah?"
"Prongs," Remus muttered under his breath. Peter blanched. James looked at Remus in a what did I do? sort of way, and then snapped his head back to the doors as Julie walked in. Her hair was loose and a little mussed, and she ran her hand through it as she came in. She looked around, smiled a little wickedly at James, and walked over to Niamh Fairchild, who had a skeptical sort of look on her face.
"Just ignore her..." said Remus quietly, but when James turned to look at him he went silent.
The doors opened again and Professor McGonagall came in, accompanied by a curly-haired blonde woman in powder blue robes.
"That's the instructor?" said Remus, surprised. Neither James nor Peter bothered to respond.
As the two women walked to the front of the room, Sirius came in. James took off at once, leaving the other two boys to their own devices.
"Hello, everyone," said the blonde woman, with a bright, uncomfortable smile. "My name is Victoria Harkness, and I'm going to be teaching you Apparition for the next twelve weeks. I'm so pleased to see you all..."
James was shoving his way through the crowd of students, but everyone else was moving the other way, towards the Ministry woman. When he got to the back of the room, Sirius had gone.
The door cracked open, and Lily Evans slipped in. When she saw him, she immediately blushed.
"Line up by House," Professor McGonagall was loudly calling, and the students were moving into four scraggly lines. "Stand five feet behind the person in front of you."
James shifted into position behind Mary Macdonald.
"Now, I'm sure many of you find the prospect of Apparition intimidating," Victoria Harkness trilled. "However, there are just three very simple principles to be followed..."
"Are you upset?"
"What?" James hissed, spinning around.
"Sorry," said Lily, who was standing just behind him, "I just...you seemed upset. Is it about Julie?"
James just snorted.
"...Destination, Determination, and Deliberation..."
"Because I think you should leave it alone."
James turned again. "Evans. Did I ask?"
"I don't know Sirius as well as you do—I probably don't know Julie as well either—but neither of them are going to listen to you telling them what to do. Or—Julie won't, anyway," she added, as James glared at her.
"Do you realize," he said, "how stupid they're being? Julie just smashed someone's head open, should I be glad she's dating my best friend? And Sirius isn't—he's just—"
He had a very clear idea of what Sirius was trying to do, but he wasn't interested in telling Lily, and he subsided incoherently.
"Right," said Lily, eyebrows raised. "If that's all you have to say about it, I don't see why you don't leave it alone. No, listen to me! If Julie is going to be a reckless idiot right now, and she is, isn't it better that she do this instead of attacking somebody else?"
"She's been doing both pretty well so far," James interrupted. "She shouldn't be getting him involved in her shit."
"We're both involved," Lily pointed out. "What are you so worried about? I'm pretty sure it's just about sex, anyway."
"Oh, Evans," said James, "it's never just about—what? They've already—?"
Lily didn't actually say Obviously, but the look she gave him was clear enough.
James sighed. "Look, you can't just go around snogging people without any emotions at all."
Lily's face changed from exasperated to confused, and finally slightly nervous.
"I don't mean they're going to fall in love with each other or anything ridiculous like that," said James, focusing his gaze on Lily's hairline, "it's just that Julie has this tendency to, um...go through boys at a furious rate? You know?"
"So you're worried she's going to hurt his feelings?" said Lily very sarcastically. "Well, you know him better than I do..."
"Evans! How can you ask me to mind my own business when you won't stay out of it yourself? I'm not talking to you about Sirius, and I'm not talking to you about Julie. Talk to her yourself. I'll walk you to the Hospital Wing afterwards."
Lily rolled her eyes extravagantly and was about to retort when Mary turned around and put her finger to her lips.
"...and turn into the air with deliberation!" Victoria Harkness finished, with an expectant look. The students glanced at each other with alarm and then apparently—oh god, Lily should have been paying attention—all made their first attempt. A couple people fell over. Michael Potts spun around and hit Mary with his wildly flailing arm. Lily did not move at all, and James disappeared with a pop and reappeared inside his wooden hoop.
"How did you do that?" Lily hissed at him, outraged. He had just a moment to grin at her over his shoulder before Victoria Harkness descended on him.
"That was wonderful! You, in the back, what's your name?"
"Potter," he said flatly. "James."
"Oh," she said, with an expression of exaggerated surprise. Lily suspected that she had heard the name before. "And have you Apparated before, Mr. Potter?"
Professor McGonagall was raising an eyebrow.
"No."
"Well, that was very impressive! Don't worry, everyone," she smiled at the rest of the room, "it's quite rare to succeed on your first try. Once more!"
And the students around them resumed their pained looks.
"How did you do that?" Lily repeated. James smiled reluctantly.
"I've done it before. With my dad."
"Pfft..."
He didn't speak again until the end of class, as the Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs crowded past them. It was as Julie walked by, flipping her long hair over her shoulder. "She's using him," he said. "She's using him to make herself feel better, and Sirius has never been the type to let himself be used."
"Maybe," said Lily, "but don't you think he's using her as well?"
And this was so close to what James was thinking himself that he could not respond.
On Monday, during Defense Against the Dark Arts, Mulciber came back. He came in late, when everyone was already paired up and ready to start, and gave the teacher a note.
"Excellent," said Professor Abbott, reading it through with a grimace and putting it away in his desk. "We've begun dueling practice, Mr. Mulciber—perhaps you could work with Miss Fraser, she's been helping me demonstrate."
The class was silent. Lily's jaw dropped. Even Julie looked a little surprised. One side of her mouth lifted into a little smile that made Lily think of one word: Probation.
"I'll work with Mulciber."
Lily bit her lip, but it was too late. The words had already come out.
"Oh," said Professor Abbott, blinking. "Certainly, um, if that's what you...why not? Miss Fraser, you can work with Miss McKinnon."
"Are you mad?" Marlene hissed, grabbing at Lily's elbow, but she shook it off and walked up to Mulciber, who was narrowing his eyes at her.
"Go on," she muttered to Julie, who looked at her bewildered before going over to Marlene.
Mulciber just stared, like he didn't know what to make of her.
"Begin," said Professor Abbott. "Non-verbal, please!"
"You can go," said Mulciber, unsmiling. He was an average-looking sort of person, not ugly, with brown eyes and short dark hair. If Lily had walked past him on the street, she would not have spared him a second glance. But as it was, she could not look at him without thinking of last year, when she and Marlene had found him about to curse Mary Macdonald. Mary had asked her not to tell Dumbledore or McGonagall, and she had not. Now she wondered if she should have insisted, remembering the attack on Niamh a little while ago. Niamh had told Madam March that she couldn't remember what had happened to her, but Lily knew that Julie blamed Mulciber.
"Sure," she said politely. She took a few steps back and, making sure he was ready, cast a simple Jelly-Legs Jinx, whispering the incantation under her breath. Mulciber deflected it easily, and he didn't have to fake it; he was already very good at nonverbal spells.
He didn't wait to shoot a jinx back at her, and it wasn't something she recognized: a jet of blue smoke that she reflexively dodged, so that her aim was off in her Shield Charm. Mulciber's spell hit the classroom wall with a sizzle, leaving an ominous burn mark. James, Julie and Marlene all turned around to stare at her, and she realized that half the class was barely paying attention to their own practice.
"If that's how we're going to do it," she muttered, and she shot off an Impediment Jinx. This time she managed to keep herself from speaking the words by concentrating so hard that she held her breath. Mulciber deflected it again, but rather than wait for his turn, she jinxed him again, and this time he stepped back and stumbled, just managing to knock the jet of light back to her. She ducked.
He used another spell she did not know, and when she threw up a Shield Charm it popped and fizzed. Sirius and James were not even pretending to duel anymore; James was staring at Mulciber with unmitigated dislike, and Sirius was following the trajectory of their jinxes with a dark look on his face.
There were no more pauses after that, and she did not manage to look at anyone else: Mulciber was throwing hexes at her so quickly, so furiously, that it was all she could do to send a few jinxes his way between the Shield Charms she was putting up over and over. Her vision narrowed down to Mulciber's face, the tip of his wand, and the jets of colored light she deflected again and again.
Suddenly there was a very loud BANG, and Lily realized when her opponent turned to look that she had not made the noise herself. It was Peter, who had managed to explode a desk.
"All right," said Professor Abbott nervously, "Take a moment. How about we work in small groups, so we have more space?"
Lily backed against the wall, trying not to show how out of breath she was. James, Sirius, Mary, and her Slytherin partner went first, and James took so long to successfully cast a nonverbal jinx that nobody else had to take a turn for the entire class.
4th yr Charms classroom. 9pm.
There was no signature on the note Sirius found in his Potions textbook, but he knew who had put it there anyway. The handwriting was surprisingly elegant—beautiful, really—a copperplate script that was a little difficult to read. It was stuck between the recipes for Elixir for Excitement and Blood-Clotting Potion, and he wondered if that was Julie's idea of romance, or just a coincidence.
He took the Marauder's Map, but left the cloak behind, since it was kept under James' bed, and he didn't want to talk to James. The map was more than enough; he avoided Filch on the sixth floor and was just entering the Charms Corridor when he noticed something: two dots labeled M. McGonagall and A. Dumbledore, walking upstairs from the Transfiguration corridor. He had only moments to decide which way to go, but rather than try to escape, he slipped into the nearest room and flattened himself to the wall behind the door. He followed the two professors' progress on the map until he could hear their voices approaching, coming down the corridor.
"...stand by my original point, Albus. You have a responsibility to all your students, and we both know which is the bigger threat to their safety." Professor McGonagall sounded irritated and snappish; Sirius could easily imagine her thin lips and flaring nostrils.
"Forgive me, Minerva," and Dumbledore sounded as unaffected as ever, "but do we? I share your concern about Mr. Mulciber—" Sirius inhaled sharply with surprise, pressing himself closer against the wall. "—but we have only suspicion and circumstance behind us there. Miss Fraser herself could have done a great deal more to help us in that area."
"If we had anything else," said McGonagall angrily, "he would have been thrown out long ago. Yes, Albus, I know how you feel, but while we may be more capable of containing him here, we are still teaching him advanced magic—do you know how it feels to have that boy in my class, and the rest of his friends? What are they going to do with it? What are they going to do with the magic I'm showing them?"
Dumbledore sighed heavily. "Until we can accuse him of an actual crime, he is still our student, and he deserves an education."
"Yes, so you've told me, time and again," McGonagall responded tartly.
"And it was Julia, and not Mulciber, of whom we were speaking in the first place."
They appeared to have stopped, only a few doors down from Sirius, and although they were speaking in low voices, he could hear them quite clearly.
"I have said to you before and I'll say it again, Albus, that girl is a greater danger to herself than she is to anyone else. I know there's a limit to what you can forgive, but the incident with Abbott was genuinely an accident, not to mention the man is an incompetent fool. I'll speak to her about it myself if you want." There was a pause, and then she said, even more softly, "You know what Margaret did for us. You know Julie is going to pay for it."
After a long moment, during which Sirius hardly dared breathe, Dumbledore said, in his deep, calm voice, "Speak to her soon."
They started to move again, and soon they were gone. Sirius followed them on the map again, right past the fourth year classroom, and the little J. Fraser waiting inside.
She was sitting on top of the teacher's desk, her hair loose over her shoulders. He wasn't surprised to find her with a book, and she was holding a paper bookmark in front of her mouth, absently tracing the outline of her lips with its corner as she read. She did not look up when he closed the door behind him, but she folded her bookmark into the book and set it on the desk. There was a small picture on the front, of a man wearing an Elizabethan ruff. It did not move, and he wasn't surprised; he had never seen her reading a Wizarding book for fun.
"You're late," Julie said as she slipped off the desk. "I was afraid you weren't going to come."
"No you weren't," he said calmly. She smirked at him, but before she could start he said, "I had to avoid McGonagall and Dumbledore."
"Yeah, I heard them go by. Did you hear what they were talking about?"
She wasn't very interested; she had come right up to him and was very lightly tracing the neckline of his robes with one finger. He did not think she noticed when he hesitated for a second before answering. "No."
Her hand had made it to the back of his neck. She pulled him close and went in for the kill.
Later that night, Sirius was lying on his back, watching shadows collect in the heavy curtains of his four-poster bed when James pushed them aside. He was wearing pajamas, and his hair was wet. He must have just gotten out of the shower.
"Budge over," James whispered hoarsely.
Sirius, under the covers, shifted over, and James sat on his side, on top of the covers, inadvertently smothering his best friend.
"You just finished practice?"
James shook his head. "I talked to Marlene for a while."
"What'd she want?" asked Sirius, yawning.
"She wanted to know what's going on with you and Julie."
"Oh," said Sirius, unsurprised. "So what did you tell her?"
James did not immediately respond. He was sitting up, looking straight ahead, and when Sirius glanced at him, he could only see his profile, the long nose and the messy hair.
"I said it was none of her business," he replied.
Sirius made a face. "Okay."
"The thing is, I don't actually know."
Sirius groaned and tried to slide deeper under the covers. "Oh God, can I please go to sleep?" He tried to push James off the bed, but he wasn't at a good angle, and it was impossible.
"So?"
"We had sex," Sirius said, grunting with effort as he shoved at his friend, "what do you want to know?"
"Just now?" demanded James, his voice rising.
"No, you twat. Last week."
"Wait, you mean...after her detention? In the common room? That's disgusting, what the hell?"
"Next time," said Sirius, stony-faced, "we'll do it in your bed."
James sighed very deeply. "Padfoot. Why are you trying to piss me off?"
"Because you're sitting on me, and I can't breathe."
"Not right now," said James, although he did finally shift his weight a little bit, loosening the blankets over Sirius' chest. "I mean this whole thing. Julie. You're doing this to piss me off, aren't you?"
"God, you're self-centered."
James cuffed him around the back of the head. "Be serious."
Sirius glared at him. "When am I not? Oh, for Christ's sake. If I wanted to piss you off, I'd be shagging Evans."
"Low," said James. "And she wouldn't give you the time of day—she's clever that way."
"Ha ha."
James sighed again, and Sirius relaxed into the mattress, hearing the beginning of a story in the sigh. "My dad—my dad knew Julie's parents. I'm not sure how—her dad used to work for the radio in London, when my dad was still in the Auror Office, I think, so maybe they met then. He went to her mum's funeral. I asked to come, to see Julie, but he said no...now I think it's just as well, the way she's behaving. There's nothing I can say to her that will make her feel better—but I'd like to keep her alive, you know? and sane? I'm going to look out for her. And if she keeps pulling stupid tricks, like the thing with Mulciber, it makes my life harder."
"Do you think sleeping with me is a stupid trick?" Sirius politely inquired.
"I don't...I don't think it's good for her."
"Maybe you should mind your own business," said Sirius sharply.
"Maybe you should stop trying to provoke me, because it's not going to distract me from our actual problem."
"Which is?"
And a third sigh. "Do the words 'Whomping Willow' mean anything to you?"
James felt Sirius tense up beside him.
"We've done this to death, Prongs."
"Not if Mulciber knows about the passage!" James hissed. Sirius didn't at all feel like sleeping, but he closed his eyes. "What if he tries to find it? What if he finds out about Remus?"
"What if he pokes his eye out and calls it a day?" Sirius mumbled.
"Just try not to fuck anything else up, all right?"
There was a long pause.
"Get...off...my...bed," said Sirius slowly, and he shoved his knee sideways into James' crotch. James fell with a crash, pulling the covers down with him, but Sirius did not look over. He lay on his back, staring up at the dark red drapery, and he did not blink, did not speak or move as James got to his feet, lifted the blankets off the floor, smoothed them over his best friend, and then slipped away as quietly as he had come.
