The Price of Magic

by Acid and Sinick

Haunted by the ghost of a student, a former wizard struggles to preserve magical knowledge for the future generations.

3. Chapter 3: A New Beginning

Chapter 3: A New Beginning

---

Why am I still here?

Snape let me stay. And I've got nowhere else to go. It all comes down to that. Maybe here I can make myself useful and distract him from drinking himself to death. Yeah, and why not fix all the rest while I'm at it? Get the magic and Dumbledore back to normal, and Bob's your uncle. Shouldn't be a problem at all, right?

Bollocks.

Am I better off at Hogwarts? At least it'll be warm. In here, it's bloody freezing all the time. The dreams helped, but Snape's had no nightmares for a while, and I remember what happened when I looked in his pensieve uninvited. I have learned some 'sense of propriety', as Snape puts it.

The chill I can cope with; it's nothing new. But I've noticed other things. I'm worse at paying attention, or moving things, or speaking and being heard. A few times when I tried asking Snape something he didn't answer at all. Was he in one of his moods or was it me? I can never be sure. It's hard enough to stay visible, when all I want to do is curl up in the corner and stop talking altogether.

If this keeps up, I won't have the energy to do anything at all. Potty Wee Potter, poor sod, can't get the magic back, can't even sign my own name.

Am I only going to get weaker from now on? Is it because I haven't got enough of a purpose to keep me here, now that Voldemort's destroyed and the magic's gone? Or is it because of Snape, always giving me the cold shoulder?

I don't want to be this helpless! At Hogwarts, it took months to teach myself to hold the quill up and slide it through the air just right. But I didn't let that stop me from using it to write. Then I came here, and had to try and try just to do the simple things all over again; but this time with my fingers chilled into fumbling, with stingy old Snape the only living thing that knew I was still around. And I did that too.

Move, you bastard!

How hard can it be to draw an "H"? I suppose this is close enough. I can't control the pen any more tonight anyway. Funny, if I'll ever decide to write a letter, it'll probably take me years to finish it.

It's morning again. The rest can wait till tomorrow. Wonder if there'll ever be a time when I won't notice or care any longer if it's day or night?

I hope not.

---

I watch Potter bend over the chess board trying to stare down the line of faceless pieces through the slim semicircles of his new glasses. After a few seconds, his efforts produce the desired outcome. Little by little, the queen's pawn slides forward from its black square and onto the white. By the time it reaches the centre of the square, Potter looks done in and lowers his eyes in defeat.

He isn't going to stop there on his first move, is he? "Only one square?" I allow the chess-inspired politeness to slip into my tone.

"Yes." Is it possible to set the wooden piece afire with a single syllable? If not, Potter's glare enhanced by Albus' spectacles might do so by itself.

Fine by me. "Every move is final."

"I know." He nods, rests his head on his folded hands, and props his elbows on the empty air over my kitchen table. He watches the chess board like a hawk, as if he's expecting my pieces to ambush his the moment he stops looking.

All in good time. I frown at the board balanced on the corner of the rickety table. It's primitive and cheaply made like everything in my flat. Plain numbers and letters denote the cells instead of the usual Arithmancy symbols and runes. Still, it doesn't change the game a bit. Chess is satisfying this way: the rules remain the same no matter where it's played or with whom. I slide the king's pawn two squares forward into the battlefield. Let the game begin.

"Your turn," I remind him when after another staring contest with the board Potter's gaze wanders past my half-empty bottle on the table and comes to rest on my teacup. He gives the steam drifting from my tea the longing look of a drunk denied his daily dose of Firewhiskey and turns back to his two rows of chess pieces.

"Knight to F-3," he finally announces.

"I'm afraid I didn't hear you."

Another scorching look follows. "Knight. To F-3."

I make a show of inspecting the board; the knight in question remains on its initial square. "I'll pretend that you have no other legal moves left and allow you to skip a turn."

"Will you stop pissing about and move the bloody knight?" he snaps, clearly at the end of his rope but managing to stop himself from lunging across the table.

I let him have the benefit of the doubt for a few seconds. He rattles on: "I can get the pieces to slide, but there's no way I'd manage to make the kni . . ."

"No." That stops him. He blinks mid-sentence and never finishes it.

"Why not?" he gapes at me, outraged.

The answer is obvious, why does he even ask? "It's not my piece to move."

"Fine!" he barks. For a moment he looks tempted to add a few stronger words, but instead he subsides, fixing a weary stare on the stationary knight.

He's been this way for awhile, and not only in his attempts to move objects. More and more often I've been noticing him lurking in the corners, staring off into space with a blank expression, as if he's lost track of time. Or reality. "For someone who managed to scatter a pile of newspapers all over the room a couple of weeks ago you seem to be having entirely too much trouble."

Briefly, Potter looks like he's about to confess a guilty secret, but instead he says "You were nicer when you were trying to get rid of me."

Did he, by any chance, expect the opposite? "Nothing's changed."

"Liar."

"Enough," I pick up the black bishop and slide it to the centre of the board. "Cave regi, Potter."

That gets a reaction out of him. "Git!" he spits out angrily. "If you'd moved my knight like I asked you to, I'd be able to protect the king."

"You still have four other choices." It's not as if my decision left him entirely helpless.

"I wanted the knight!" he whines.

"If you won't make an attempt to move the pieces yourself, you won't get to move at all," I growl at him. If a few quick wins on my part are what it takes to force him into such an attempt, so be it.

His flash of startlement fades almost at once into tired sulkiness. "What's the use? I can try all day and all night, for what it's worth. It won't do any good."

It won't do him any good to stop trying altogether. Why can't he see that? "Make your move or forfeit."

"Fine." He concentrates and leans over the board. "Bloody." One of the pawns shakes slightly – "Stubborn. Git!" – and slides forward a square to shield the king. "Happy now?"

It's acceptable. As I move my bishop back to A-5, I too retreat into old patterns. I resume the drawl I used in long-gone classrooms, in an effort to drive home the lesson my once and future student has just learned. "Was that so difficult, Mis-ter Potter?" I motion at the board in invitation. "Move again."

Potter tilts his head forward and narrows his eyes in a poor imitation of my scowl. "You haven't changed a bit since school, have you? Same old controlling bastard." He makes a face, but his frown doesn't hold for long, quickly replaced by indifference.

This growing apathetic streak in him is starting to bother me. I observe him closely, looking for any other alarming signs I might have previously missed. If only I knew what I am dealing with, what to look for. He resumes his hollow-eyed stare into nothingness, while his pieces remain frozen in place. "You play like you teach, and they should've never let you teach the way you did," he mutters in a surly undertone.

"Spare me." I've heard it all before. There's nothing new that he can possibly tell me. "I don't need a ghost to question my teaching methods."

Good, at least this has some effect on him. His brow furrows as his head snaps up and he fires a glare at me, alert once more. "Someone has to! How did your 'methods' justify giving your precious Slytherins all the attention and treating us like dirt?"

Always quick to make judgements, isn't he? "Perhaps if you made an effort to learn..."

"Learn?" he interrupts. "Perhaps if you made an effort to teach! Hermione studied for every lesson. And what did Ron or Neville ever do to you?"

Show up unprepared; endanger others by their own incompetence. There were multitudes of reasons. "Potter, I did my best to keep all of you from wasting my ingredients and murdering your classmates."

"How?" His voice grows louder, defiant and mocking. "By swooping around the dungeons and docking points left and right?"

Impertinent fool! "I followed exactly the same policy others used when assigning house points, Potter."

"Bollocks," he says, quiet but firm. "You should've seen your face back in fifth year when you tried to take points from Gryffindor again and there weren't any left to take. You had no clue what to do next."

"I was merely stunned at your House's incompetence." There were plenty of other ways to teach those young nitwits a lesson. I was never at loss for ideas.

"No. You enjoyed it!" he declares with such confidence that it's obvious he believes every word to be true. "You enjoyed taking points and you enjoyed seeing Slytherin win. Professor McGonagall was tired of hearing you boast every single time they got ahead."

"It was mutual," I assure him. The old witch waged the yearly battle for the House Cup as if the honours of being Albus' favourite pet were at stake. "McGonagall wasn't exactly innocent herself." No, can't let that greasy Snape get the job. He doesn't purr on demand. What shall I ever do if I don't get my ears scratched daily?

He just shakes his head at that and brushes it aside, not considering my words, as usual. "That's no excuse. You were ten times worse than her! It's a wonder we ever had any points."

"Potter, that's enough."

"You were worse than a child!"

Child! Child? Potter of all people has the nerve to . . . "Do you know what your problem is, Potter? You don't know when you've gone too far."

"And you don't know when to LISTEN!" He stands up to his full height and shouts; furious eyes aglow and hair bristling.

Perhaps now is the time? No. Not yet. I should let him fume for another minute.

"Of course it's my fault," I lower my voice to a seething whisper, just to make it more difficult for him to hear what I have to say. "For not listening, and then for not going along with your opinion, no matter how idiotic it is." Involuntarily he leans down, into the sound. "What will you do if I won't comply at once? Throw Expelliarmus at me again?" Closer. Good. "Disarm the teacher so the monster and the escaped convict can drag him through that blasted tunnel like a sack of potatoes and then waltz away scot-free?" I spit the last words in his face.

He doesn't move an inch, just stands right there and glares down at me, stubborn as ever. "Don't even start. That was self-defence. You're the one who taught us the bloody spell!"

"Which naturally gave you the right to act like a spoiled brat with complete disregard for the rules. Just like your father."

"It's better than being a sour, heartless bastard who never took the time in all the seven years to figure out that I am NOT my father and I HATE you for it!" He sneers spitefully at me; it's James Potter all over again, with the same rebellious hair, and the same mouth, taunting and deliberately cruel.

"That's nothing new," I cry, the image of my school tormentors still fresh in my mind, "You ingrate, you were imagining my face on every scarab beetle you were crushing, while I was trying to teach you how not to blow yourself and the whole damned Potions class sky-high!"

Silence hangs in the air, gathering as heavy as clouds before a hailstorm. A train whistle rips through it followed by the usual racket and roar of the tracks. As my ears ring with the noise of the passing train, I belatedly realise I've revealed too much.

He looks stunned at first. "You read my mind in Potions." It's not a question.

"I didn't need Legilimency to see that you hated me." I sneer back at him.

"Bollocks! You did! Every single class, I bet. How dare you? No wonder you acted like you owned the place and everything in it."

"Owned?" That was never a question. "It was my classroom."

"And they were MY thoughts!" he shouts. If he was any closer, our noses would meet, but it's not the sound or the proximity that takes me aback, it's his eyes behind Albus' glasses, colourless: icy-pale and unforgiving, without a trace of green in them. It's the way Albus looked at his enemies: at the Dark Lord, a pupil who defied his teachings; at Crouch Jr. who deceived him by impersonating Mad-Eye; at me, convincing me I'd be dead in seconds but only offering me the Potions position instead.

Now he's ready. "Your move, Potter," I prompt him as soon as the silence stops ringing in my ears.

"KNIGHT TO F-3!" he yells in my face. Desperate. Furious. More alive than I've seen him in days. His fist strikes the board and remains there. The chess figures start shaking, harder and harder, and suddenly explode off the board. They rebound from the walls with a clatter, roll across the floorboards, hit my chest and jaw hard enough to bruise. A white pawn slams against my cup, splashing tea far and wide. A black bishop falls, head down, into the neck of my whiskey bottle like a stopper.

On the outside, I retain my composed expression while waiting for the worst of his fury to pass. Inwardly I let out a sigh of relief. Potter still has it in him; there is no doubt about that. Perhaps all he needs is a slight push to return to his usual, obnoxiously cheerful self. If there is one thing I know how to do well it's pushing his buttons.

I allow my face to relax and let the corners of my mouth curl upward. "Very good. I knew moving a mere chess piece wasn't beyond you."

He stares and stares at me, utterly at a loss for words; with all the hatred of seven years thrown into that one glare, and something – perhaps understanding – following far behind the rage. His form grows thinner and melts away long before that understanding ever has a chance to reveal itself.

His usual reckless ways of dealing with the world have caused yet another disaster, and now he's gone. Once again I am left alone to pick up the pieces.

As I gather the pawns, three rooks and a knight from the floor, I think that there is clearly no point in reconstructing or continuing our game. I reach for the whiskey bottle instead.

The black bishop stoppers the bottle, stuck in the neck. I look at it for a while, wondering if I should take it out, wondering how long it will take Potter to calm down; wondering if I have gone completely mad, with my ghostly visions. After all, even Albus didn't notice him. No one does but me. Is it because he is nothing but a delusion, a figment of my imagination which is driving me more insane with every passing day?

I leave the bottle untouched among the chess pieces on my kitchen table. There is no use in asking the question if I don't want it answered.

Cave regi (Lat.) – check.

---

It is past noon when I discover Potter, visible once more, sitting on his usual perch: the stack of my newspapers next to the window. He appears to have established that the real world lies beneath the gap in my curtains and everything else simply doesn't exist.

Very well. If he desires the outside world, I won't stand in his way.

I'll even take him there.

My coat is hanging next to the doorway, between my umbrella and my winter hat. All three have various spots and creases traced with worn-out grey on black cloth that has seen better decades. I put my coat on and smooth out its wrinkles as much as I can in the darkness of my hallway, wishing it were possible to similarly smooth out the rest of my life with a few brushes of my hand. I check the keys and banknotes in my left pocket, and announce just loudly enough to be heard through the bedroom door: "Time to go, Potter. It's in your best interest to follow."

He emerges in silence from the solid wall after I step through the doorway and shut the door to my flat. It must be his fear of my absence or his curiosity about my departure that forces him to comply, because he passes through the layers of brick and the chipped paint and faint graffiti as soon as the lock clicks into place. Either way, his presence works to my advantage.

With the silent, moody ghost at my heels, I descend the stairway and wince once the sunlight hits my face and the sounds – much louder than those in my flat – assault my eardrums. I turn the corner into the narrow alleyway and start walking in the general direction of Camden. If my chosen route alarms Potter, he doesn't show it.

It doesn't take long to cover the distance through the streets drenched in the roar of automobiles. Some Muggles yell through that racket at each other and into the pervasive metal boxes pressed to their ears. Others shield from the noise by attaching themselves to yet more metal boxes blasting obnoxious tunes directly into their heads, loudly enough for me to hear the faint buzz from a few steps away. After the quiet of my flat, and Potter's silence, it's even more disturbing to find myself surrounded by the chatter of a dozen conversations at once. Yet I keep going at a brisk pace toward my retreat from the everyday pandemonium of London streets, finding my way among the crowds, the noise, and the usual stink of exhaust fumes.

In order to give the ghost a sufficient incentive to follow out of spite, I try to lose myself in the crowd of Camden Lock Market and refuse to check for his presence behind me. Will it work? I glance back discreetly at Mornington Crescent to catch the glimpse of Potter's wispy fringe over icy, colourless eyes. They are brilliantly sharp and empty in the light, like the windows of countless Muggle towers shining under the bright afternoon sun. Wrapped in a layer of mirrors, they reveal nothing to the world but its own reflection.

I leave Tottenham Court Road with all its memories to the right of me and pass by Tavistock Square where the trees sprout new leaves overhead and the fresh scent of grass fills the still cold air. It's better here. The din of passing vehicles subsides to a bearable level; the quiet rustle of wind in the tree tops is a welcome change. It is only when I hear a twig snap underfoot that I realise I have left my wand behind. I block my twinge of apprehension at its absence. I can't remember the last time I didn't have it with me – in the waking world, at least. Stubbornly I go on, walking not running, not letting my weakness show, definitely not thinking about tunnels or nightmares or death tracking me like a wolf.

The noisy street passes yet another park, the Muggle way of compensating for their destruction of nature by recreating it in arranged and cultivated lumps among their concrete deserts. No matter what their reasons were, I welcome the sight. It's a change from the usual reek of Muggle roads, a relief from choking on the stink of metal and exhaust toxins. The air I inhale has a hint of springtime, with its scent of the deep blue sky and thawing soil pierced by green blades of grass. I tell myself not to linger there any more than necessary and wonder if Potter is able to smell anything anymore.

At Southampton Row the crisp freshness of the spring air is again rendered non-existent by the smells of baked foods and burned fuel. The traffic noises mixed in with the buzz of conversations invade my ears and prompt the pulsing ache at the nape of my neck to spread. I cross Kings Way and turn left onto a much quieter footpath laid with old brick. I walk into the square surrounded by dark Georgian houses, arriving in the echoing footsteps of countless wizards or Muggles, who came to this place in the past. They used to duel here for pride, honour, or lost love, often unaware that they would lose their even more precious lives instead.

Lincoln's Inn Fields witnessed many such wins or losses, but right now they're simply an oasis of quiet and green and a place to rest.

I pass through the gates and keep walking until the bare branches of trees with their occasional spray of leaves obscure the tall buildings from my eyes, until there is nothing but the dome of blue sky, the sharp sunlight, the air, sweet and clear as birch sap, and the silence. The whole world seems to be contained in an enormous marble of methylene blue held up on Dumbledore's palm to the glare of artificial lamps.

I sit down to catch my breath on one of the benches along the path, facing away from the cold wind. I raise the collar over my neck and slip my frozen hands into my coat pockets, against the smooth and equally cold lining. Despite the sunlight, my ears and nose are numb from the chill. I look down, let the curtain of my hair fall over the sides of my face, slowly exhale the air through my mouth, and revel in a makeshift bubble of warmth. It dissipates all too soon, leaving me to deal with the weather and the ghost who followed me here.

Potter settles on the other side of the bench. He huddles on top of the backrest like a sparrow on a wire and rests his feet on the very edge of the seat. With his shoulders curved and tense, his arms crossed over his chest, and his fingers digging into his forearms, his entire posture oozes dislike and mistrust. If the bench were twenty feet wide, he'd still be trying to fit into few inches of space in the corner opposite of mine, torn between staying close by necessity and getting as far away as possible.

It's nothing new. All my life I've been surrounded by people who loathe the very idea of being anywhere near me: from the students in my Potions classes all the way back to my own classmates. I've always managed, first to learn, then to teach, without having to making peace with any of them. Still, it shouldn't be so awkward, trying to reason with a stubborn young man who cannot bear my presence. Trying to talk sense into him is like wandering at night after a Hinkypunk's lantern as it leads deeper into a quagmire. Reconciliation shouldn't be this difficult.

Perhaps, just as in duelling, it's all about taking your opponent by surprise.

"I'm sorry I provoked you, Potter," I say when yet another nervous glance in my direction slips past his pretence of ignoring me.

He looks up with a gasp, so startled he falls straight through the bench.

As amusing as it is to see him tumble down with glasses askew, looking appalled at his own blunder, I do not dare to test his temper by smiling. Although the long walk seems to have cooled him down, even a slight sign of mockery would surely alienate him even more.

I watch him scramble to his feet. "What? It's bloody weird to hear you apologise," he mutters as an irritated excuse.

"We'll have to learn to coexist," I explain and hope he is calm enough to listen to reason. "I've made my effort, now it's your turn."

"Oi! I've got nothing to apologise to you for." He raises his shoulders defensively, takes a step back to the footpath, and stares.

Predictable. "You don't have to, but talking to me would be a good start."

"Why? Just read my mind and be done with it," he grumbles.

He's still angry then. Perhaps he has a right to be. I recall my own irritation at the way Albus always attempted to slip past my defences. So instead of returning fire I remain silent, simply shaking my head at Potter's accusations.

"Why not?" he sneers. "You can't do it any more without magic, is that it? Too bad, it must've been your favourite pastime."

He makes it seem as if I enjoyed scrutinizing others' thoughts. What sane person would want such a task? "I never did Legilimency for my own amusement."

"Why did you do it at all?" he persists. "How can you just invade people's heads?"

"I didn't 'invade', Potter." Wandless Legilimency isn't that effective. "I was able to pick up emotions and strong images for short periods of time. Usually little more than a student of human nature could guess from mere facial expression." It's not as if I had a choice in the matter, any more than I had a choice in becoming a Legilimens. Albus discovered my talent for this borderline-Dark Art and deemed it – and me – an appropriate weapon to wield for the cause of good.

He looks sceptical. "It still doesn't explain why you'd read my mind."

Certainly not because I had any desire to rummage though his thoughts. "I only did it a few times. Dumbledore wanted me to watch for any hints of the Dark Lord's influence upon you."

His eyes widen at my mention of Albus' name. "Dumbledore asked you?"

As if anyone else could possibly force me to look into Potter's head. "Yes, it was a necessity. If it makes you feel any better, he never asked me to do anything he wasn't willing to do himself." It doesn't make me feel any better about being Albus' prized spy in yet another form, but this small difference between Dumbledore and the Dark Lord did in fact decide my allegiance. Albus never made me do anything he wouldn't do on his own. Perhaps now Potter can take comfort in the fact that the final decision came from someone he trusts.

One look at him convinces me that my attempts at reassurance did not work as intended; he turns more nervous and wary than before. "Himself? Did Dumbledore try to read my thoughts as well?"

Ah, didn't think of that, did you? But then, who would? Intrusions that were only to be expected from the sour, grim Potions teacher would be completely unthinkable coming from the kindly, eccentric Headmaster of Hogwarts. I recall the many times I sat in Albus' office – distracted by shiny gadgets, lulled by tea and warmth, basking in the glow of absolute protection – and I carefully reconsider my reply. "No. It was my job."

Albus did read his mind, for all I know. He certainly attempted to read mine once in awhile – 'for your own good, my boy' – always for my own good. But what good would it do now if I ruin one of Potter's cherished beliefs? Haven't I done that once too often already? Albus Dumbledore can do no wrong; everyone needs a pretty dream to believe in.

Potter settles on the bench, precisely in the middle this time. He is quiet for a while, turning over my words in his mind, trying to fit this new shape that his world has just adopted, into the familiar box of his preconceptions. "I suppose the Headmaster needed to know in case Voldemort ever decided to plant himself on the back of my head," he justifies. "Better you than Voldemort."

Potter is absolutely right. After the countless impromptu interrogations I should know: the Dark Lord was never as considerate a Legilimens as I was.

"And you're wrong, Snape," he adds, unexpectedly. "I was frustrated and angry at you back at Hogwarts. But I don't think I hated you. I just couldn't understand why you had to treat us like dirt. I still don't. Why? Did it make you happy?"

I look at him in wonder. No, he is the same Potter: messy hair, lopsided smile, and Albus' glasses on his transparent face. Yet out of all my students, he's the first one to ask this question with some semblance of sincerity. Apparently, life is still capable of pleasant moments when I least expect them.

Why? There are many reasons. There are those that I'd never voice aloud, that I wouldn't know how to put in plain words. How do I explain seeing the cruel, patronizing faces of James Potter and his gang behind every group of Gryffindors gathering in my dungeons: behind Granger's smug superiority, behind Weasley's eagerness to fight, behind Potter's own disregard for rules? How do I explain the frustration of watching my pupils destroy their ingredients for years and then go out into the world and use their brand-new N.E.W.T.s to get better jobs than I, for all my skills, could ever hope to get? How do I explain my yearly rage at Dumbledore for treating me like a recovering drunk not to be admitted into the pub: 'no, Severus, Defence still isn't a good idea, we'll see how you do with your current subject'. He never said the Dark Arts, but it was certainly implied with each softly spoken, well-practiced line.

Where do I begin explaining it all? Perhaps I'll start with the obvious.

"Imagine waking up daily to the thankless task of keeping a pack of dunderheads from blowing each other up," I finally tell him and watch him nod with a roguish smile, as if being a dunderhead is something to be proud of. "Imagine keeping a certain group of spoiled little brats satisfied at all times so they won't whine to their fathers about you favouring the 'Headmaster's precious pets', and ruin your cover as a spy." The smile disappears off his face and his eyebrows climb up in surprise. Judging by his reaction, that hadn't occurred to him before. "And, then," I conclude with a smirk, "imagine dealing with someone like young and adventurous Mis-ter Potter, a new celebrity determined to undermine your every effort to keep him out of harm's way."

He makes an offended noise at my description of him, but doesn't argue.

"Does that answer your question?" I ask him curtly, before he finds something else in my words to dispute.

"I suppose." he replies. "It's hard to understand you. For years I just thought you hated everyone: Neville, your students in general, my father, me because of him, Defence teachers because you wanted their job, sunlight because it made you squint…"

No wonder Potter doesn't get it. I have trouble understanding myself. Why did I stay teaching at Hogwarts? How did I restrain myself from murdering someone? Why did I not simply stand aside one day and let my pupils blow each other and the school to pieces?

It's too late to ask myself these questions. They are all in the past.

"Yes," I agree, deadpan. "You may blame the sunlight if it helps."

The look on his face is priceless. I almost send him tumbling through the bench and onto the ground for the second time.

The sunlight? Yes, it must be. The sun often plays tricks on us. Under it even familiar things turn unexpectedly novel: memories gain a fresh perspective, the old changes to allow room for the new. I watch my wayward ghost interact with the world, blink in surprise, display anger or sadness, smile, adjust his glasses, fix his weightless fringe over his forehead, and now none of these mannerisms remind me of his father as strongly as they used to. Only when James' face comes up in some unwanted memory do I notice the resemblance nowadays. It has ceased to concern me.

When did I start thinking that James Potter has Harry's face instead of the opposite? Somewhere along the line the change slipped by unnoticed. I suppose it's the natural way of the world, but still it's startling to see that even James Potter's misdeeds fade away with time to make place for new memories.

Somewhere in the tree tops, a turtledove asks the world a question over and over. A pack of sparrows gathers on the footpath. Harry watches them squabble over some rare find, looking very much like a sparrow himself, scrappy and agile, with his feathers ruffled in every direction. The empty expression he's been showing for the past week is gone. Bringing him outside did wonders for him.

He stares at the tree shadows reaching over the sunlit grass and the trails running every which way among the tree trunks and squares of green. "Where are we?"

"Lincoln's Inn Fields." By the look on his face I can tell that the name doesn't mean anything to him. "Central London," I add then.

"I knew that part," he grins. "Guessed it from the address on your mail."

Trust him to start haunting me without even knowing where I live until it is shoved under his nose in writing. "Have you ever seen Muggle London before?"

He shakes his head. "Besides King's Cross, only what I've seen with you. Why d'you always have to hurry through the streets? I barely get a chance to look around."

Why would anyone, even a ghost, want to linger in that noisy labyrinth filled with exhaust fumes? There is hardly anything worthwhile to see. "Come on, then." I get up from the bench and start walking toward the gates before another freezing gust of wind catches me sitting down and unmoving.

"Where are we going?" he asks, instantly jumping to my side, like a second shadow.

"To find a better view than you're accustomed to." We're almost in the area; I might as well take him somewhere worth visiting.

He nods and all but skips along merrily, delighted at the sunlight and the trees. Who says ghosts aren't affected by the seasons? This one's like a weed. Shine some light on him, give him some air, and he stretches toward the sky. No wonder he was glued to my windows.

"I never would've thought you'd end up in London," he tells me. "Or learn the local sights."

"Why?" Do I have a banner with ominous writing over my head: Not Suited For City Life? Or any place with other residents, for that matter.

"You just don't seem like someone who'd enjoy it," he explains. "All the noise and the crowds."

He is right. I've lived in London for years but the only thing that still keeps me here is the belief that Muggles will find a way to be just as loud and obnoxious no matter where I go. "It's adequate, for the most part; it would be better if all the people moved to live elsewhere." But I mustn't ask for too much in life.

He only laughs, the insolent scamp. "I didn't know you could tell jokes."

As if I'd joke about a thing like that.

---

"Brilliant!" Potter barely holds on to the railing, leaning further than any human would be able to without losing balance. He grins against the wind that doesn't rearrange his hair or attack his clothing at all, not the way it does with mine. "The best view in London."

Hardly. But any others have been beyond my reach for the past seven years. I follow Potter's example and lean against the railing for support as I look down. Water, it seems, is another ingredient required for successful ghost care. "I'd caution you against falling in, but it's too late to do any real damage."

"That's an idea." He flashes an audacious smile. "I wonder if I can swim."

Below us the waters of the Thames roll by, blue and deep like the sky above them, the wave tops shimmering under the sun. Behind us is the Millennium Wheel, perched on the river shore like a slow moving, colossal water mill. All around us is the noise and the rush of automobile traffic over the Waterloo Bridge. The bridge carries with it the usual city sounds and smells; but the river is stronger, absorbing them with its own: the seagulls' cries and the breeze full of moisture and fresh air. The cold wind slaps against my face, shoving damp hair over my eyes and ears.

I have to raise my voice over the wind and the traffic noises in order to reply. "If you can't swim, I doubt anyone else would be jumping to your rescue."

He eyes the wide expanse of cold, radiant waters in front of him, almost ready to let go and test that theory in practice. "No one else'd even see me, Snape," he considers, only half mockingly. "It's going to be up to you."

"In that case, you're doomed." I declare to the wind.

He makes a face at that and defiantly moves closer to the edge.

A couple of passers-by, leisurely strolling along the path, give me an odd look or two when they overhear my words but don't see anyone listening. I go along with their wishes and press a hand against my ear, pretending to hold one of those silly Muggle contraptions, a mobile, in my palm. "Go on," I say. "I refuse to save you from your own rashness yet again."

Their faces grow disinterested and dull. It amazes me how this one gesture makes talking to the empty air so much more acceptable. They turn away, certain of having solved the mystery of the old man talking to himself in the middle of the bridge. To them, I'm just a parent berating his unfortunate offspring for another failure. It's easy to assume the labels that Muggles pack in their minds for every occasion.

Harry watches them leave and laughs softly after I take my hand away from my ear. "You did all right adjusting to the city life, for a Professor who never got out past Hogwarts' wards."

A stern look works as well as any spoken reply to his remark. What does he know about what I saw and what the wards hid me from? There are roads travelled in our pasts that none of us especially want to take again.

They say that cities are born of crossroads. They grow around the point where two pathways meet. London is no exception, born of a crossing between the Thames, the waterway for vessels heading for the ocean, and some road, perhaps even this one. If that's true, then we're standing in the very centre of London, and this bridge is the heart of the city, the place where it all began.

How many times have these waters reflected the truth on people's faces? The Thames holds countless secrets in its depths. It's easy to confess them to the river. No matter what world one lived in, Wizarding or Muggle, the river was always there, constant, unyielding, whispering promises, hiding secrets and soothing aches. Years passed, trees and structures grew and fell around it, the skyline changed, but the Thames remained. It's harsh and persistent, and it's older than anything, save the ground in which it etched its path. It's cold and deep, and more accepting than the city that grew around it.

I remember a different bridge over the same river, and a young fool with his forearm sore from the summons, a painful reminder of his most recent mistake. Was I ever the fool in those memories? I wasn't much older than Harry then, already tired of life but too frightened to die; though I craved the acceptance that those dark waters offered, and for one second I was ready to jump with Luce's name in my mind and on my lips. Just as it was when I jumped into the Death Eater ranks: my mind was too full of Lucius for second thoughts.

Another bridge over the Thames rises unbidden from my memories. The cold winter night turns to a warm summer evening, my first summer in Muggle London. And I remember myself again, much older than that young fool, hungry and worn-out, sick of trying and getting nowhere, staring into the river's depths as if they contained an answer to my questions, watching the water's glimmering highlights beckoning as if each one was Lumos cast with my non-functioning wand. I remember tearing my gaze from the water to the note in my hand: Malfoy, D. it proclaimed in flourishing handwriting, followed by an address not too far from where I stood, in a respectable area filled with offices of law firms and business headquarters. It seems to have happened so long ago.

This time, it's a bit cooler than usual, but it's still undoubtedly spring. I am on a bridge over the Thames yet again, only for the first time in ages I am here for reasons that have nothing to do with Lucius or his son. Instead of them, I have the ghost who invaded my life; much as the highway, with its busy traffic and city sounds, breached and crossed the calm waters of the Thames.

He is sitting on the railing, on the very edge, in a way I never dared even when I was young. There is nothing in front of him but the vast expanse of water. I had the railing in front of me, and I stepped away from it in time because suddenly there was an option that didn't occur to me before, a choice that tied me to Albus Dumbledore for all these years; whether that choice was for better or for worse, I still cannot tell.

He leans over, his face as curious as mine when I stared into the river long ago, trying to decipher the secrets hidden beneath the shimmering light on its waves. He gazes down, takes his arms off the railing and spreads them like wings.

And then he jumps.

My heart seizes. HARRY!

Instant reflex has me reaching, before I realise in the next moment that there's nothing to hold onto over the railing, only empty space. I cannot catch a spirit; it's useless to even try.

Fool! Is he trying to drown himself after already dying once? As I look down I see him, plummeting so fast he's almost freefalling. I let out a breath I didn't know I was holding when he slows down at the very end, a small, shining figure, almost indistinguishable against the shimmering waves.

I strain my eyes to see what happens. Did he look up? Is he moving at all?

No, I realise with a gasp. The idiot is walking. He is walking on water. And I don't need to see his face to know that he's wearing a grin as wide as the world.

Spellbound by the vision only I can see, I watch him take the next step, and then another, as the waters of the Thames dance beneath his feet.

---

"What could you possibly have been thinking?" I grumble as soon as the buildings block the last glimpse of the Thames from view. I take another step on the crowded street and reassure myself that I am finally back on solid ground. The young woman who followed me since I turned onto the Strand gives me a worried look and sidles behind her companion's back, out of sight. One-sided conversations aren't taken as a good sign in the Muggle world unless one has an appropriate excuse, so I raise my hand pretending to press a small box into my ear once again. "Answer me!"

Harry hovers a few steps ahead, high enough to avoid being run through by every passer-by. "I just wanted to see the water up close. What's wrong with that?" He shrugs his shoulders and flashes a tentative smile.

He looks a bit tired, but it's a contented tiredness: he's happier than I've seen him in days. He's been rushing ahead whenever he's had a chance, gawping at the busy streets with their traffic and tall buildings. If I ignore the fact that he is transparent and floating, he'd be just like many young men leaving some quiet place in favour of the big city right after their last exams, coming to London in search of fame and fortune. Just like them, he is wide-eyed and excited at the new scenery, wanting to try so many things at once that he is at a loss to know which one to choose first.

"So, what's next?" he asks barely avoiding a collision with someone's head. He somersaults higher this time, and I have to stretch my neck to follow his movements. Suddenly his face lights up. "Oi, can we go to the zoo?"

"The zoo?" I might have been too quick to think him grown-up. What absurdity will he ask for next? A bedtime story?

"Yeah," he rambles excitedly. "I bet it's even bigger than the one the Dursleys took me to. That one was brilliant. I talked to the snake!"

"That's fascinating, Potter." My drawl hints that just the opposite is true.

"You don't have to make fun of me!" he cries. "I just want to see if I can still talk to them."

So he wants to converse with snakes. Fine. I suspect that it wouldn't help even if I did take him there. He may hiss in Parseltongue for hours, but I'm starting to believe that no serpent would pay attention to him, just like Albus and just like everyone else. It's not the snakes he wants, but the assurance that he still belongs in this world. That he exists. It's something I cannot give him, for I am not even entirely certain I believe it.

I shake my head and make sure to speak into the imaginary box in my hand rather than directly at him. "You'll have to postpone that little jaunt. I have no plans of getting anywhere near the London Zoo on Friday afternoon. It's unpleasant enough to tolerate these crowds without the sight of caged animals." Poor beasts, they never have a chance of escaping those maddening daily gatherings full of whiny children and obnoxious laughter. Trapped and subjected to daily ridicule, I know exactly how they feel, and I can only pity them.

Potter looks ready to argue, but stops himself. "Well, what are your plans?" he asks instead.

"Nothing as exciting as the zoo. First, I am going to find a place to eat." Unlike a certain ghost, real or not, I still require food daily. "It's past tea time and I haven't had anything since breakfast." And that had only been coffee.

"And then?" Stubbornly, he presses on.

"That's still a 'no', Potter."

"Fine," he nods and waves toward some garish place with a gaudy, lit-up sign. "Here's one. Eat and let's talk about it."

What part of 'no' does he not comprehend? And, most importantly, is he trying to poison me? I take one look at the garish yellow and green plastic sign labelled "Subway" and the equally bright artificial lighting inside, and I back away. Of course, he had to pick something not only utterly Muggle, but also incapable of serving a decent meal. "I refuse to set foot inside that establishment. Even under the threat of starving to death."

His eyebrows lift. "Why not? It seems all right."

I do not waste time explaining the obvious. Instead I make it a point to escape the Strand with its busy footpaths, noisy traffic, and its "Subway" as soon as possible.

"Well, see if you can find anything," he mutters, trying to catch up.

Fleet Street isn't any better, but occasionally the old wood and brick structures rising among the concrete megaliths remind me that Muggles were capable of producing some semblance of passable architectural style. I turn into a narrow alley where the buildings seem to have aged years for every step I take further in. Harry, floating above me and looking anywhere but forward, almost runs his head through the discreet round sign.

"Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese." He proves himself capable of reading when I am almost convinced otherwise. "Rebuilt in 1667."

I nod. Why settle for anything else in the area? "Go on." I point at the panelled wooden door.

He glances at it with suspicion and remains still. "You first."

Potter remains wary and cautious, very unlike him, when he follows me through the door. Inside it is warm and quiet and it smells of baked bread and cooking spices that remind me how long it's been since I've eaten.

There is no magic left in Britain, but occasionally I do find a Muggle place filled with the spirit of old times, like this one, and it's the closest I can get to touching the past.

The room to the left of the main entrance is empty of people, with dark wood panelling along white walls and the outside light streaming through the hand-blown glass in the windows. Harry glides warily ahead of me to the centre of the room and it's this caution of his that makes me wonder if this place affects him too with its aged atmosphere, so ancient it might as well be a ghost of itself, like Potter, a reminder of times long gone.

Although quiet, this place seems to be waiting for something. The hard wood benches polished from centuries of use wait for someone special to return and run their hands again over the smooth, slightly uneven surfaces. The long oaken table at the window waits for a tightly-knit group of friends or a family of twelve to come in and take over the entire room with their laughter, good-natured teasing, and spirited banter. Days pass in silence, yet like an aging parent, this place waits patiently for its many children to return home time and time again for holidays and birthdays.

I cross the room with its bare floorboards and sawdust, closer to the coals burning in the fireplace where the large mirror above the mantelpiece shows my reflection but not Potter's. Even with those standard Muggle lights placed inside the antique lamps, I still expect the silent mirror to grow dim like a Foe-Glass, still imagine one of the unmoving portraits will wink in my direction, still think the antique china jugs have been put on the mantelpiece to hold Floo Powder.

I settle at the dark, oaken table in the corner next to the fire, where the light is lower and I can observe the room unbothered and unnoticed for the most part. Harry slips onto the bench right through its end piece to sit across from me. He does relax a little and starts eyeing the place with the same curiosity as the streets we passed today.

When the waiter finally finds me, I notice that he looks a bit like Harry. He is taller and older by a couple of years, but he navigates from table to table with the same clumsy unease Potter displays at times, as if he's not used to the layout of the place yet. His dark brown hair can certainly use a comb and he gives me a familiar lopsided grin when I only take five seconds to glance at the menu prices and, by habit and necessity, order the cheapest meal there, the Ploughman's Lunch.

He could be a university student trying to make some extra money by working here. But then, he could be anyone. Harry could have been him, if he'd somehow survived past seventeen, working a side job in the afternoons and attending his lectures every morning. He would have fit in here without even needing to try, just another young face at the atmospheric old pub among the noisy streets a few blocks away from the riverbank. He would have liked such a life, I suppose.

When my food arrives, a small, freshly-baked loaf with the dark-golden crust still warm and hard, with slices of cheese and pickled cucumbers on the plate next to it, Potter eyes it with the same hungry look I am trying not to reveal. Instead, I curl my hands around a cup of hot tea to warm them up, and only then start eating my meal slowly, savouring every bite.

He shifts back and forth on the bench impatiently, unable to sit still without something to occupy his mind.

"I've been thinking about you teaching us Potions," he declares at last. "And d'you know what I think?"

I'm not in any particular hurry to find out, but I daresay he is going to tell me anyway. I raise a questioning eyebrow and simply wait.

He blinks and stares at the burning coals in the fireplace, obviously trying to rationalise something to himself after not receiving a desired response to his initial question. I let him think it over, cradling the teacup in my hands and taking another sip.

"You were an utter bastard."

I nearly choke at the hot liquid, breathing in at the wrong time. He just gives me a stubborn "Uh-huh", which in Potter-speak apparently stands for 'it's the truth and I meant every word of it'.

Fine, so be it. "Insults aside, I hope you realise that if I had to do it all over again, I would still treat you the same way," I tell him in a stubborn tone of my own, struggling not to cough. If he was fishing for an apology, he'll never find it here.

He shrugs carelessly. "Like I said, a bastard, but a bearable one, I suppose."

"Is that so?" The look I give him shows exactly what I think of such a description: it's a glare fit to incinerate.

"Only just bearable, mind you," he adds, growing more tense with every word. "Course, you wouldn't be you without all the insults and the bloody bad temper. That's who you are. When you're like that, with that . . ."

It's aggravating to hear him stammer and hesitate, abusing the simplest of phrases. "Potter," you utter cretin, "just say it."

He does, with his face determined and thoughtful. "I meant, I don't mind being around you." And then: "You're sort of all right now you're not my teacher any more."

Oh. I start searching for words to berate him for his audacity, or call his bluff, but nothing appropriate comes to mind.

"But if you ever try to teach me Potions again, we're going to have a serious problem," Potter adds with a grin, obviously not worried about such a fate.

Just outside the darkly-framed doorway I hear a faint ding of something metal hitting the wooden floor and a muffled apology that follows right after.

"Don't worry, I'll take care of it," a woman's voice answers.

I force my attention back into the room to find it still empty. It's fortunate; otherwise I would have had a much harder time explaining away my one-sided conversations.

Outside the door, the voices continue in hushed tones. "Are you sure?" some young man – our waiter, I recognise the voice – asks excitedly.

"Of course I am," the woman confirms, "your sweetie has been waiting across the street since three."

I arch an eyebrow at Potter. "Don't worry. No sane person would be willing to take on the hopeless task of teaching you," I tell him just to see his mouth twist in mock offence.

Over the top of his bench, I notice two figures in front of the doorway. The first one is our waiter, waving his hands about in a rather childish excitement. "That's brilliant! Thank you!"

His enthusiasm seems to work. "Oh, go on with you, Bobby! If it wasn't for your girl, I'd be taking you home to meet my daughter in an instant." The speaker is an older woman, short and round, with her hair, grey over ginger, gathered in a modest bun at the base of her neck.

"At least you've stopped calling me Harry," our waiter grins at her and disappears from sight.

"Off you go, Bobby," the woman calls after him. "One mistake, and he'll never let me forget it," she rolls her eyes mockingly as she enters the room. It seems to be a private joke between them.

Harry.

The name pushes me out of my reverie. This must be a coincidence. Harry isn't exclusive. Harry is a very popular name. There are plenty of reasons to call someone Harry. There are dozens of perfectly good explanations for this. Unless . . . unless she, like me, noticed the resemblance to someone she used to know. Harry, the real Harry.

Harry Potter.

No, this cannot be a simple coincidence. I look at her and glance across the table where Potter sits, stunned at hearing his name from someone else's lips just like that. Immediately I know that he heard it as well, and he knows. He knows what I know. There is no way he could have hidden that shock and fear, and at the same time the gleam of excitement and hope in his eyes as she walks over to our table.

"Can I get anything else for you?" she asks.

I hesitate for a second, and do not look at her directly. I look at Harry instead, as he stares and stares and then gasps in recognition. And then, as he does, I recognise her at well. There are a few more lines on her face and more grey in her hair since I saw her last, but the optimistic gleam in her dark, earnest eyes is unmistakeably the same. How the hell didn't I notice before that it is Molly Weasley who is standing just an arm's length away?

"Sir, did you hear me?" she repeats, and I turn my head to her. Only then she gasps, as Harry did just a few seconds before her, and as she stares at me a smile spreads slowly on her round face as if her closest friend was sitting at the table instead of me.

"Severus! I never thought I'd see the day."

"Mrs. Weasley?" Harry echoes and at that she follows the line of my vision to the seat across from me and freezes with a hand to her mouth, surprise and sadness mixed together on her face as Potter looks back.

Finally she clears her throat. "Hello, Harry," she enunciates as if talking to a child, "How are you, dear?"

"Just fine," he stammers; his eyes large and shocked and brimming with hope.

But she already turns to me and to my surprise her polite smile becomes one of genuine delight. "Wait until Ginny hears about this. She simply must see you." She goes on and on, nattering to me as Harry stares at her, the delight on his face matching hers. And if she paid any attention at all to him at the moment, she would see the way he shouts with his eyes without saying a word: I am real!

He is real. Molly saw him. He has his wish at last.

Molly keeps on talking, but for a while I lose the thread. I nod at hopefully appropriate places, but all I can think is, he truly exists, and I am sane.

"You never stayed for dinner at Grimmauld, this is your chance to make up for it," Molly announces. And as I glance at my plate, somehow I think that even the excuse of just having had a meal would not work with her.

"Nonsense," she says, quickly guessing my ploy, and obviously determined that her invitation will succeed. And I realise that it would be very hard to resist Molly's powers of persuasion. I pause and glance in Harry's direction. She casts me a quizzical look and adds quickly: "Harry, dear, you're certainly invited as well."

Didn't I promise to take him to meet a survivor, a normal survivor? Someone who can see him and talk to him and listen to what he has to say? I still owe Potter this trip. I've owed it to him ever since that morning at Tottenham Court Road.

And so I agree to wait here until Molly's work shift ends and accept her dinner invitation, without even knowing where she'll take us. Although I do wonder where in London Molly Weasley found a new home. I hope it's nowhere near the zoo; if it is, he'll probably still talk me into seeing the snakes.

---

We leave the Cheshire Cheese after six and take the Circle line from the Temple station. The Underground is packed, but Molly leads on through the evening crowd with practiced movements. I follow her and so does Harry, who seems puzzled by her habit of not addressing him directly, and keeps giving her curious glances. She doesn't notice him, or pretends not to as she continues talking about the Magician shop that the twins run in Glasgow, Charlie's most recent letter, and the prospect of surprising her daughter. I nod and feign some interest in her children's well-being, recalling that her eldest son worked at Gringotts with his fiancée that spring, and another was a Ministry hand. It doesn't take me long to deduce their fate, especially since her conversation never mentions them.

Potter remains quiet. Why doesn't he say something to her? Ask her something, anything? What happened to his desire to see the survivors? Here is one, so why doesn't he talk?

"Whoa, too many people," Potter complains, wincing and rubbing his forehead. "I'll be back." His image winks out, leaving me with only the lingering feeling of being watched. I'm used to that by now.

Perhaps he is simply tired. We've been wandering the busy streets and seeing new places ever since morning. And having crowds walk right through you cannot be a pleasant experience.

Molly watches him disappear but doesn't remark on it. Only when we're past the Tower Hill station heading north does she ask me, just loud enough to be heard over the train's noise: "So, why are you stuck with his ghost?"

I asked myself the same question in the beginning. Why me? I never did get a sufficient explanation. "No particular reason. He just found me one morning." There, any further details of his arrival at my flat can be omitted.

"He must've really hated you back in school if he's haunting you now." She sighs in sympathy.

What I really want explained is why, after she saw him herself, she still keeps treating him like an imaginary friend of one of her children or an unfortunate stain on her holiday clothing. He is a ghost, but he doesn't deserve to be talked down to like an infant or a pet.

"Have you found a way to make him leave yet? Even Muggles must have some method," she asks with a concerned smile.

'Make him leave'? The situation's a great deal more complicated than she realises. "If I ask him, he usually keeps quiet for a few hours. He is not as much distraction as I had expected."

"You are planning on getting rid of him, aren't you?" she gasps, clearly concerned.

"Why?"

"Are you mad, Severus? He's a ghost!" In her agitation she has to force her voice back down to a loud, but still clearly-heard whisper. "He isn't real. Why are you keeping him around and encouraging him? You're treating him as though he's still alive."

"Need I remind you that he is Harry Potter?" He's still the same, the best friend of her youngest son, as she seems to have conveniently forgotten over the years. "No, he isn't alive. But he's quite real. Just because he's transparent and is able to walk through walls, doesn't mean he needs to be banished or ignored." I can name plenty of other reasons for doing so, but this is absurd.

She shakes her head sadly. "When I was little my great-uncle John haunted us for a while, and he always had these daft ideas. I even listened to him at times; he was very convincing. But, Severus, ghosts aren't people. No matter how much they look like a person, they aren't to be trusted. They're too detached from reality. He might seem almost human to you, but he's not. Not anymore. . ."

Doesn't she realise that I know this already? I feel a momentary twinge of pity for the ghost of great-uncle John, whatever his fate was. "Potter is the most human ghost I've ever encountered. I wouldn't trust him in Potions, but I believe that he's sane."

"That's what I'm worried about: you, believing him. He'll have you going mad in no time," she predicts, her lips thinning into a disapproving line.

Just when I thought my doubts were unwarranted, Molly has voiced my fears again. Had I still considered Potter to be a figment of my imagination, I would have agreed with her. But Potter's ghost is real. Harry is real. She hasn't been around him as long as I have. She didn't see him making a decision to leave, didn't hear him talking about his Hogwarts, didn't witness his grief after meeting Albus. She doesn't know him as well as I do.

We exit the Underground at Euston Square station, in an area which, to my surprise, is not that far from Camden. I follow her as she turns onto a familiar street, too familiar to my eyes. It's the road I usually take to see Albus Dumbledore, past the rail yards and the luridly-coloured concrete towers.

The housing complex. Ampthill Square Estate, the sign says. And here they are, the epitome of Muggle garishness, three grey concrete towers, one trimmed in tangerine, one in blue, and one in yellow, clashing horribly with everything around them and each other. I've walked by them many times in the past. They've always reminded me of the homes that the house martens make, one on top of the other, packed tightly into the grey mud of the riverbanks. Wherever they nest, the very air seems alive with multitudes of nimble little birds, darting out of their dark nest holes, soaring higher and higher, never to touch the earth.

But humans aren't birds, and how did Molly manage to survive living here, more crowded than the Burrow and probably ten times as obnoxious?

"We're almost home," she points to the tangerine tower.

Of course, I should have guessed it. How could I ever doubt fate's irony? It's the only constant thing in life.

Harry's transparent form appears discreetly behind my back only after I follow Molly past the yellow tower and the blue and almost to the top inside the tower trimmed with garish orange-red.

"Ginny," she calls out when she opens the door to her humble abode. "Just look who came to see us."

---

My mother lives these days in a council housing estate near central London, and since this spring, so do I. I like it here, so I don't mind the noise or the tiny rooms. They're high enough that I can see the tracks and the sun setting over the low grey roofs, but they're still low enough to the ground that I can hear the neighbours' children laugh as they chase after the ball or each other. Small and crowded, this place reminds me of our childhood home, the way it was before, when Dad and all my brothers were there and we were able to renew the wards to keep it from falling apart completely.

Mum's been very kind but she worries too much about me. She let me have her bedroom, and now she sleeps on a sofa in the living room, behind a bright patchwork curtain, all colourful speckles and stripes; she brought it with us when we left the Burrow.

Mum, of course, thinks everything is all right ever since I came back from Glasgow. But I am not my mother and things aren't right at all.

They haven't been right for a long time, and I can't make it all better just by washing the windows. I stretch, rather clumsily, and try to get all the smudges and stains so I can pretend that they were never there to begin with. I've been trying to pretend that for an awfully long time. I wish I could wash my whole life clean and focus on the bright side of things, like Mum.

But things aren't bright. They're not. And I'm scared. I'm scared of all this, more scared than I was of losing my magic or my brothers, more scared than I am of sleepwalking. I'm terrified, because I'm not like my mother. I'm not like her at all. I'll never make as good of a Mum to my baby as she was to us.

How did I change from the freckled, redheaded girl in my childhood photos to this: twenty-three and more clueless than the kid I used to be, mercilessly teased by her older brothers for her shyness and silly crushes? I cocked up in every sense of the word, didn't I, Gred'n'Forge? You told me I could stay, joked about needing another apprentice, but you also promised you wouldn't string up that 'two-timing no-good bastard' by the bollocks and teach him a lesson. We both know how that went! You shouldn't have, really. It was my fault as much as it was his. Who knew that a lonely life with my two cats would seem so much more appealing than the threat of turning into my mother? I want to write more than my diaries some day. I want to try new things. I still want to be a chaser for the Holyhead Harpies even though they haven't existed for the last seven years. My life isn't over yet, damn it!

Except it is.

Sometimes I wonder if I'm going to be like Mum in ten or twenty years. If I'll be telling a child of my own that it's their own fault if they're bored, and start handing out more chores. At first Mum was asking if I needed more housework, but then she only complained about the mess when I started rearranging the flat. I guess that, like the twins, I can't do anything right these days as far as she's concerned.

Oh, how Mum yelled at them over the phone when I came back from Glasgow! She couldn't trust them to look after me for a second. It was their fault I met the bloke, their fault I left him, their fault they almost murdered him, and their fault for telling me that I'm better off alone. Poor Gred'n'Forge. They didn't even visit for their birthday because Mum was still fuming, even said that she wouldn't let them anywhere near the baby when it's born.

As if Mum has a say in it.

She will, and she does, actually. Because that's the reason I came to London: to learn how to be a good mother from her.

I've got two cats. Two mangy strays, grouchy at each other and the world. When I finally let them sneak past the door they'd been staking out for months, I named one Riddle and another Tom. The first few days, I remembered to feed them only because they wouldn't let me take another step if I forgot to refill their bowls every morning and every evening. Otherwise, we let each other be.

But this'd be nothing like taking care of a cat. I can't ignore a child. I can't name a child after my own conquered fears.

I've got three more months before I have to become my mother, for the baby's sake and for my own as well.

Soon Mum'll be home, and her whole after work routine'll start all over again. She'll come in and chew me out for not shutting the bedroom door and leaving the windows open for so long when it's still cold outside. She'll disappear behind her patchwork curtain and come out wearing her hand-knit jumper, warm and soft. She'll swap her walking shoes for the fuzzy slippers that have been showing just a bit under the curtain. She'll wash her hands and face. Then she'll light the kerosene lamp on the table even though the light switch is just a step away.

"I'll never be used to this ekeltricity thing," she still says, and I'm thankful that Dad used to bring home his gadgets and silly manuals for years. Without him, I wouldn't know how to change a light bulb or use the washing machine. I couldn't help Mum out with money since I came back, but at least I can help her with that.

She'll work in her restaurant and I'll stay home, finish cleaning whatever I can manage, and fix whatever needs fixing around the flat. We'll continue our little routines day by day and see where we'll end up later, probably before the next three months are over.

The front door lock clicks open, quiet as the ticking of a clock counting down the dwindling days, and I hear her careful footsteps.

"Ginny," Mum says, "just look who came to see us."

And so I walk – or rather waddle – to the living room where her voice is coming from, and I look.

It's impossible not to recognise the tall, sour-faced man, but who'd've thought that I'd ever see my old Potions Professor again, much less on our doorstep? He survived after all. And then . . .

Harry.

For a second I'm thrown back into my childhood. Back when everything was right and simple and when things had magic, when the brave hero killed the monster and saved me from my fears. Only, I was never that satisfied with the role of a fairytale princess.

And Harry's… not alive anymore. Of course he isn't. He's just a ghost and ghosts aren't real. Didn't Mum always say that?

"Miss Weasley," Professor Snape nods, as curt and unpleasant as ever.

I give him a thin-lipped smile; it's the look Mum always uses on our neighbours to the left, the ones who leave the music playing till midnight and don't respond well to polite requests.

"Hi, Ginny," Harry grins. As if he's visiting at the Burrow at the end of summer, or as if we're meeting back at Hogwarts at the start of a new school year. He's exactly the same as I remember: the embodiment of memories that must not be brought up anymore.

It's not until after Mum goes to the kitchen to fix tea in her favourite teapot that she brought all the way from our Burrow – "Those Muggle things just don't have the same taste," – that I can wrap my mind around the idea of Harry's ghost in our flat. The existence of Harry's ghost. Still, he looks so real, only his hair used to be less messy and his glasses were bigger and heavier and showed less of his face.

He settles on the edge of the table, looking rather lost next to Professor Snape, who is gloomy as always. What a mismatched pair of visitors they are. Harry stays quiet till Mum comes back with tea and crumpets. When she does, Harry looks at the three teacups on the tray as if he's about to ask us to bring him one too.

They said at school that Professor Binns used to do that: give the house elves long stares if they avoided him when serving food. Even after what happened, Harry's expecting everything the way it was when he was alive. I guess this sort of unbroken routine must be important to ghosts. No wonder he looks so lost with Mum ignoring him like that. I gather my courage and smile at him apologetically.

He smiles back, like a distant relative left to his own devices at a noisy family gathering and thankful to be noticed again.

The baby kicks. Without even noticing, I rest my hands over my stomach. Harry blinks, and for the first time openly looks down at it.

"Can I?" he asks and points briefly at my belly. "Look, that is," he adds, hurriedly.

"Course you can." He's still Harry, my brother's best friend and my own silly girlhood crush. I've known him for ages and I'm not afraid of ghosts.

He looks down and lets out a small chuckle. "I didn't mean to stare. Sorry, Ginny, it's just so strange to see you."

He leaves the last words unspoken, but even then I know exactly what he means. "Pregnant?" I finish the phrase for him.

"Yeah," he replies. Then shakes his head: "No. Older. Grown up."

Ah. That's true as well. It's strange to see him the same as ever.

He leans closer to my stomach, now that he has my permission, and closes his eyes. He's clearly not looking, never getting close enough to touch, but it's obvious that he's doing something. Listening perhaps? Suddenly he lifts his head, startled.

"What is it?"

"I just . . . nothing." He shakes his head. "D'you know if it's a boy or a girl yet? Only, I think I've figured it out which it is," he explains shyly as a fascinated smile lights up his pale face.

"I don't know. How d'you mean, you've figured it out?" I ask, intrigued, but he only shrugs and moves further away.

"Dunno. It's different." He glances at the end of our table, where Mum keeps questioning Professor Snape in her unsubtle way between crumpets or tea, and lowers his voice a little. "It's like chalk and cheese. If I'm next to you and Snape, for example, even with my eyes closed, I'd tell you apart."

"I should hope so. I don't talk like him, do I?" I glance in his direction and give Harry a mock shudder.

"No," he grins. "You're both warm, see, but it's a completely different sort of warm." His eyebrows draw together and his forehead wrinkles as he tries to explain. "Remember the Greenhouses? All sunny and humid, with the scent of the plants growing everywhere around you. That's how you or your Mum are."

Harry was never good at explaining, but I suppose this is good enough. "So we're the Greenhouses?"

"Don't laugh!" he cries. "It's the best I can do."

"Go on," I nod and keep myself from chuckling at him. He's so much like Harry used to be.

"OK, now remember the fireplace in the common room?" he asks again. "It's warm, just like the Greenhouses, but at the same time it isn't. It's dry and smoky and the flames crackle and spit sparks at you if you sit too close. That's how it feels. Different."

"I see. Snape's a fireplace." I can't help but tease him. "Does it have a cauldron?"

"Not like that," he shakes his head. But instead of grinning like I'd expected, he looks sad. "He's never that warm to me; he's barely there, like a candle. I can't even feel him unless I'm right next to him."

From his words, it seems like he can truly tell the difference in whatever it is he senses. "And how does the baby feel?"

"Well, it's like this…" he pauses. "Um, are you sure you don't want it to be a surprise?"

"Yes." I hate surprises. They're rarely good. "Tell me."

He closes his eyes again and leans a bit closer. "Fireplace, definitely."

A boy. It's no surprise; I've been thinking it'd be a boy for a while now. But now I can start getting used to being 'his' mother without automatically correcting myself with the possibility of 'her'.

"You aren't mad I told you?" Harry sounds almost as concerned as Mum.

I shake my head. "No. It means I've guessed right. But knowing for sure makes it only half as hard to pick a name."

He nods and stares blankly at my hands folded over my stomach. "Can I ask you something?"

"What?"

"Will you name him Ron?"

My breath stops. It feels as if I suddenly choked on my untouched tea and it scalded my lungs.

That's the problem with ghosts haunting someone they used to know before their death. Ghosts seem harmless at first, trailing after the living and constantly asking: Remember? Remember? But they've got a knack for reopening old wounds, the kind that felt healed for ages beneath the scars. All they do is drag the living back into a past that should've been done with. I rub my eyes discreetly to conceal the moisture and do not look at Harry for a long, long time.

My lower back starts aching harder than usual and my limbs feel extremely heavy even though I am sitting down. I want to scream and break something, but instead I stare at our table with its constant bowl of oranges and Charlie's latest letter. It has a collection of stamps on the envelope and the address is duplicated in another language below. Romanian.

I will not think about what Harry asked.

Charlie hasn't been in the country for a long time, but he always sends letters with the most colourful stamps. One of the stamps has a picture of a saint on a white horse slaying a dragon with a long, thin spear. He wrote to us last month that unless the storage catches fire, the dragon eggs can be kept unhatched for another few centuries.

I will not think about Ron. I won't.

There hasn't been a live dragon in Romania for the last seven years. Dragons are magical creatures. Unlike us, they can't survive without magic. It's sad, but very fortunate for my brother. He wouldn't be able to handle a full-grown beast with just a spear, like the saint on that Romanian stamp.

"Sorry," Harry says.

I take a deep breath. "No, that's all right," I assure him.

I'm far from all right, but it's the best I can do at the moment.

When Professor Snape finally goes away, leaving nothing more than the scrawled address of his current flat behind, I remain slumped in the chair. Mum closes the door after him and comes back to the table. She eyes our white crocheted tablecloth critically and starts picking at the tiny patches of cat fur sprinkled here and there, grey against the white. Riddle curls up on my lap and Tom reaches across my chest to rub his face against my own. "Down, Tom," I say and Mum frowns at the name, still, after all this time.

"Names only have power if you let them," I tell her. It's a never-ending argument between us. I could've given my pets some normal, ordinary cat names, but it's a small rebellion against Mum, in a way I still can manage without making her too unhappy. We both know it, yet she still tries to rename the mangy beasts whenever she sees them.

I grab an orange from the bowl on the table and start peeling it. When it's done, I divide it into pieces and bite into them one by one, sprinkling salt on every raw slice bleeding sticky and acidic liquid all over my fingers. Lately, I've started liking their strong citrus taste with a dash of salt.

Mum eyes me, disapproving of my making a mess of the table, but she doesn't say anything, only stacks the remaining six oranges in a bowl, balancing them one on top of the other. The stack falls apart anyway; the bowl is too small for them but Mum still keeps on trying.

It's so like Mum to do that and I'll always admire her for never giving up, but I don't want to turn into her a few years down the line: struggling to keep my own family together, pushing them and preventing them from tumbling apart like these oranges in a bowl or collapsing altogether like our Burrow. It's a never-ending battle, one we cannot win.

My mother is wrong. This baby can't make everything right again in our lives, it'll only make them more complicated.

She stops arranging her oranges and sits down, arms hanging limply over her lap.

"So, what did you think?" I ask her, knowing she has something to say about her long talk with my former professor.

She's been waiting for me to ask the question, it seems. "Poor man! As if he didn't have enough troubles like the rest of us, he's got that ghost haunting him." She shakes her head. "He refuses to get rid of it. It's not going to end well."

I don't argue with her, but ghosts shouldn't be fretted about or feared; they're part of the world just like everything else. Good-natured or evil, they're only as strong as our memories of their past; they have no power as long as we remember that they aren't truly alive. Given time, the shadows of the past stop touching us, not because we forget them, but because we survived and they did not and we have to go on living.

We mightn't have our magic and we mightn't be together anymore, but we're still Weasleys. We're still strong enough to go on.

It's the way our world is now, and I don't blame anyone for making it so. Only Voldemort.

---

I leave Molly's flat, as stripes of grey fog dim the red disk of the setting sun. On the ground level the long shadows from the towers already stretch toward streets lit up only by electrical devices. One half of the sky is heavy with clouds; the other is bright but has no stars. It's about to rain. I hurry home and Harry, silent and sombre, hurries after me, flickering like a blurred shadow on the wall, a dancing patch of darkness in a space lit by a single candle.

He curls up in the corner of my room as soon as I enter. I hesitate, wondering if I should do something for him or let this brooding run its course. In the end I light several candles and leave Potter alone with only an occasional glance in his direction to make sure that he is still here. There is something about the candles that makes his form grow more definite. I've noticed that he doesn't like the empty, unlit corners at night. And when a candle is in the room he often floats closer to it, just like a moth, attracted perhaps by subtle currents of light and heated air. I don't think he even realises that he's drawn to it.

I always buy the thin and inexpensive sticks of sallow wax that put out just enough light and plenty of smoke. If there are several candles lit in the room, oftentimes, Harry glides from one to another soaking up their yellow glow, wreathed in their thin ribbons of grey smoke, as if their light or their heat are sources of strength that he desperately needs to survive.

I worry about him.

I worry that there'll be a time when the candles won't be enough to sustain his needs, that he won't survive the next blow that reality deals him. What will happen then? Will he fade away? Or will I have to pull him from behind a dream cupboard door again, lost and quiet and ten years younger?

Is Molly right after all? Am I truly mad for caring? I attempted to tell her the story of how Harry came to be here, of all the things he wanted and all the things he told me about. She couldn't see why I didn't just get rid of the ghost to begin with, as if he were some piece of rubbish; and nothing I said helped her empathise with my reluctance. Understandably so, perhaps. She isn't the one who was rescued from the jaws of a nightmare and taken on a tour of a castle built of memories and dreams. She isn't the one who broke his naïve, grandiose illusions and made him realise that magic was truly gone. She isn't the one who sacrificed a perfectly good chess set to the need to remind him that he isn't helpless.

Perhaps I am getting too involved in this. In him.

In the kitchen, the chess pieces are still scattered in the corners of the floor, and my whiskey bottle still sits on the table where I left it this morning. It gleams under the lights of the opposite building shining through the rain-speckled windowpanes. Dapples of light and dark are splashed across the walls and ceiling, and a long, faint shadow grows from the bottle. The black bishop is still upside-down in its open neck.

What am I going to do?

I've always thought that if there were a proper place for young Potter when he was alive, it would be among the Weasleys, in their loud and cluttered home. The noisy and boisterous relations of his best friend would've taught him everything they knew about the burdens and joys of a large family. I would have thought that, even now, they would have done him some good. Molly's youngest child had enough experience with the opposite horrors of her brothers and of Voldemort that she should have been able to scold some sense into Potter's stubborn head.

Funny how life doesn't go according to plan, any more than it goes according to my wishes. Instead, Potter's friend is gone, Molly doesn't trust him, and Ginevra Weasley doesn't need him. She is too strong to need anyone right now. So by some twist of fate he is at my side, and it seems that I am the only one to care whether he stays or leaves.

If only he'd survived. If only. Ah, but life is such a callous bitch, lining us up like pawns and urging us forward with the promise of glory just six steps away past the enemy line. I need a drink just thinking about it, but Albus warned me not to grow attached to spirits, and Potter stoppered the bottle.

I hide the bottle, a needless temptation, out of sight under the table, and leave the bishop in it as a reminder for the next time my hand reaches down searching for an easy way out.

If I ever need another black bishop, I'll just take a leaf out of Albus Dumbledore's book and turn a pawn into one, the first one out of the group to reach its destination intact in six simple but oh so hard-to-survive moves. It is, after all, the story of my life.

---

He's there in the dark, with the slowly unfurling smoke from the blown out candles seeping through his huddled form.

It's a routine we don't acknowledge. He creeps into the room when I'm about to fall asleep and remains on the floor a few steps from my bed. He stays there all night long from what I can tell, always facing away from me, silent and still. As I awaken at dawn he disappears into the kitchen. He never mentions it and I never ask him why, just as I don't ask why he deems it necessary to continue his routine of keeping my nightmares at bay.

I don't expect this night to be any different, so when I first hear his voice on the brink of sleep and consciousness I cannot decide if he's addressing me from a dream or in reality.

"Are you asleep?"

Useless question. It's not as if he could ever expect me to say 'yes'. It's not as if it even matters, what with his ability to enter my dreams. Simply thinking through all the flaws in his reasoning forces me to wake up completely. "What is it?"

"Do you ever wonder if I'm mad?" Harry asks from a distance. "Or if you're just imagining me?" he adds in a near-whisper.

It seems that he's been asking himself the same questions I did. But at least I didn't have to question my very existence. "No. You're sane. Saner than most," I tell him in what is hopefully a convincing tone.

"It's just," I notice his hesitant voice moving a bit closer, "I heard what Mrs. Weasley said."

Of course he did. It was very careless of her. Invisible doesn't mean absent: he proved that time and again, even when he was alive. Apparently she never had to take on the unwelcome chore of summoning the invisibility cloak away from the uninvited visitor and scolding him for spying on Order members in my home. And now, because of her prying commentary, I am left with explaining the old wizarding prejudices to Harry. "Some people do not like to be reminded of the past." I give him what must be a centuries-old excuse. "It's nothing personal."

"Why did they treat me like that?"

"You're a ghost, that's the way all old wizarding families treat them."

"Not at Hogwarts."

"No." The Hogwarts ghosts didn't have anyone around who would have known them in life. "They didn't haunt a person, they haunted a place. Besides, they were old, centuries older than you." I wouldn't wish their fate on anyone. For his sake, I hope that he never ends up in such a state, going from day to day, like Binns or even the Bloody Baron, cut adrift from reality, not even keeping track of passing time.

"They didn't think I was real, even Ginny." I hear his voice falter at the end, disguised by a deliberate change of tone, and think of him sitting next to Molly's daughter, awkward and out of place: someone who'd never grow older alongside someone who already had.

"Don't be angry, it's not their fault," I counsel. Unlike this morning, anger wouldn't do him any good now.

"I'm not," he reassures. "It's just frustrating. It all is. This wasn't the way Ginny should see Muggle London, not the way I imagined it at least. Ron and I would've taken her shopping and to the museums, and even to Waterloo bridge."

I bite back a cutting comment about her not being so lenient at the sight of him leaping into the Thames, and let him speak instead.

"Her father was supposed to tag along and ask silly questions about Muggles and their strange ways," he continues, "and Mrs. Weasley would've waited for us to return home to the Burrow. It was supposed to be a bright and happy day. Not this."

"She is a strong woman; she's survived this far, hasn't she?"

"I suppose, but she was a year younger than me, Ron's little sister, and now she's all grown up and . . . "

"Expecting a child. You can say it without flinching, Potter."

"Yeah, and that too," he agrees, looking rather lost. "It's strange to see people I went to school with having children. How did you deal with it, Snape?"

How did I ever? "It was a tremendous challenge."

"Really?" he asks, as if to him it produced no challenge at all.

"Yes. Day after day I had to watch the children surpass the idiocies their parents had committed in their time." I suppose it could have been much worse. Black might have managed to reproduce, or Longbottom might have been triplets, or Potter might have failed to persuade the Hat like the rumours claimed and been sorted into my own House.

"Oh," he says, probably not even realising how much he contributed to my yearly torture. "I should've known you'd say that."

"Indeed." He should have.

"It doesn't seem so bad now," he announces, more cheerful than before, after a long pause. "Besides, Ginny's always been really sensible, and any kid of hers will be great. I hope she'll name him after Ron."

There is something remarkable and odd about names, these essential human possessions of no substance or form. "I'll name him after my father," Draco's voice and another name echoes in my mind. It still feels as though he doesn't have any right to give that name away to a child after it belonged for so long to someone else. I suspect that there'll be plenty of children with second-hand names and a long family legacy to uphold from now on. It's a sign of our times.

"She will," I assure him, "as soon as she gets used to the idea of that name not belonging solely to her brother." That might take much longer than Potter expects.

"There's something else," he starts reluctantly as if confessing some dark secret. "I know this might sound daft, but will you try to believe me?"

"I'll do my best." How much more insane can this be?

"I felt something when I talked to Ginny."

"Fireplaces and greenhouses, I presume," I ask when Harry's awkward conversation comes to mind.

"Not that!" he exclaims with a hint of embarrassment.

Of course not. "I know. Go on."

"The baby. He didn't feel like anyone I've been around," he says and already seems hesitant about saying the rest. "You see, when I'm near someone I get these sensations."

I think I know what he is trying to say. I wonder if it's the same thing that I've waited for, and at the same time feared, for several years now. Many times I've tossed and turned in this bed unable to sleep, wondering what went wrong, and thinking of countless possible futures before settling on the most plausible one. Could this be it?

"It always feels warm when I'm close to someone," he explains hurriedly. "And it's like food used to be. Like sun on a plant. I've got to have it or I can't move, can't do anything without warming up again. And I can't stay alone for too long because it's so bloody freezing."

He is a ghost, and the ghosts are drawn to the living. Perhaps it takes a ghost's eye, a phantom sense to notice something essential about a living person that we aren't able to see for ourselves.

"I think I know what it is but I'm not sure," he says. "I can't be, and you'll probably think I'm nuts."

His voice moves through the pitch-dark room and I can't quite pinpoint its location. Is he pacing? If so, how does he do it in the dark? Does he glide blindly from wall to wall or can he see better than I in the gloom? Were he alive, I would've tracked his movements by the pattern of sighs and footsteps, but it's impossible to track a soundless phantom. The only link is his voice inside my head, the voice which gets closer and closer and then suddenly stops advancing.

"He just… he felt complete compared to everyone else."

Complete. If there is one thing worse than the loss of magical energy in our generation of wizards-turned-squibs, this would be it. If there is one thing with the potential to save us all, but with the even greater potential to ruin us, this would be it as well. It's the way the world works: the greatest of our hopes can cause the world to end instead of bringing the expected salvation.

"No one else in the room had it but the baby did," Harry says with the utmost conviction. "And it was strong and steady and it felt a lot like . . ."

"Magic." How can it be? But how can it not?

"Yes!" he cries, relieved and frightened at once, a prophet saved from foretelling the end of the world because a wild guess from the crowd did it for him. "Do you think I'm crazy?"

"No." In fact, it's surprising how easy it is to explain. The rules of heredity do not change after every man-made disaster. Removing the teeth from a pair of serpents doesn't mean their hatchlings would lack fangs. A squib is just as capable of giving birth to a magical child as a witch or even a Muggle woman with the right ancestors. It's simple, yet so complicated. "How did you know?"

"I just told you, I felt it," he insists. Frustration rings in his voice.

He felt something, but he's never had a chance to be around anyone with magic since he died. "Guessing and knowing are two different things. There can be dozens of plausible explanations for what you've felt."

"The baby has something, Snape," he protests. "Everyone else around me doesn't. You believe me, don't you?"

"Yes."

"But listen," habitually he tries to argue at first. When the meaning of the word finally sinks in, he only manages a shocked "You do?"

Actually, I do believe him in this. "Tomorrow we'll go back. And then we'll know for certain."

"How? Really?"

"Of course, 'really'. Good night."

"Wait," he persists, and will probably keep asking questions all night if I don't silence him now.

"Good night, Potter," I repeat with more force.

It takes me hours to fall asleep, and when I do, it seems that only a moment had passed between now and morning.

---

"No one. Nobody," Ginevra Weasley replies sharply.

"Miss Weasley, I wouldn't ask unless this was important," I tell her before she responds with something much harsher and Molly descends on me like a mother hen protecting her last chick. Persuading her to talk has been no easier than hunting down the last existing Veritaserum would have been.

She keeps staring at the bowl of oranges sitting on the table. Harry gives me a disapproving glance but keeps quiet, and so do I, waiting for her to give in.

"Fine," she spits out. "He's from Glasgow. He used to help the twins at the shop. Obviously not any more since Gred'n'Forge nearly killed the bastard." A disapproving 'tut' sounds from the kitchen but she only shakes her head. "It's all right, Mum. He was barely seventeen and I was stupid. It would've never worked out."

"Was he a Muggle?" I ask her then and take a deep breath. My pulse is pounding in my temples and my hands are about to shake. I need to calm down.

She looks surprised. "Course he was. Everyone's a Muggle now, aren't they?"

"Are you certain he wasn't a wizard?"

She shrugs and looks at me as if I've suddenly grown two heads. "If he ever pulled an actual rabbit out of a hat or even managed his card tricks right, I would've been the first to notice. He was just a silly boy, obsessed with everything 'magical' and mysterious. But he was no more magical than anyone else these days."

Behind Ginevra's back, Harry glances down pointedly: tell her already. Whatever it is that the baby possesses, Potter still feels it, I'm sure of it. He would have told me otherwise, and even if not, if he felt something was wrong, he never would have managed to hide it well enough. I've been watching him out of the corner of my eye. He looks impatient, but I've seen no signs of sudden disappointment or regret.

Ginevra catches Harry's glance. When she turns to me the surprise in her face has become suspicion. "Why d'you need to know?"

Because I'd rather find out at once if this maybe-magic ended up here by other means, before Potter convinces himself completely of the most optimistic reason imaginable. If he's wrong, it will only lead to disappointment later. "You'll see. Hold this."

She seems taken aback by the item I am offering her. "What for?" Carefully she takes my wand, grasping the darkened handle in an almost intuitive gesture, safely keeping it pointing up; it hasn't yet been long enough for her to forget the old habits.

I briefly consider snatching my wand back, pocketing it, and walking out the door. Potter had better be right about what he told me. If this turns out to be a dead end, I'll dream up his blasted cupboard and lock him in there myself.

"Just try it out. Say something."

"This is silly. Lumos," she says and gives it a casual wave. "But why?"

I take a deep breath and can't take my eyes off the wand in her hands. For days I repeated that incantation, staring at the tip of my wand until I strained my eyes, searching for the smallest spark of light. Every time I saw nothing. I notice Ginevra's confused, questioning face and hope that I do not sound too much of a madman: "Because Potter believes that your child has magical ability, and it's the fastest way to verify . . .

A bright flash flickers at the tip, something that wasn't there just a second ago.

. . . that."

It must be an illusion, a deception, or a trick. Any minute now it will vanish. A thing of such importance simply can't appear out of the blue and mean what it does.

It flares brighter and turns steady.

Ginevra blinks and stares at that flicker of light with a bewildered expression, believing and non-believing all at once. Her face turns almost as white as Potter's under the wand's glow, highlighting the faint scattering of freckles around her panicked eyes. She looks up at Harry and then looks down at her own stomach, gaping at it as if it had grown there in that instant.

Behind her Molly stops completely still in the kitchen doorway with her eyes fixed on her daughter. The teapot drops from her hands and I expect a crash of broken china and a scalding splash of tea, but instead there are none, and the teapot hovers inches above the floor at her feet, like a shiny buoy with sunflowers on the side.

She brought that teapot from the Burrow, I recall from yesterday's conversation: a common magical teapot that's always clean, always keeps the tea hot, and is enchanted to prevent itself from breaking. Its protection spells must have held all this time.

The light at the tip of the wand in Ginevra's hands winks out and when she opens her palm I notice an angry red scorch mark where the wand handle touched. It must hurt quite a bit but she seems not to notice the pain, just casually examines the burn and the wand that caused it, as if sore, inflamed skin is a normal side effect of Lumos.

"A birch wand," she finally says. "Mine used to be willow. Is it yours, Professor?"

Silently I nod.

She carefully traces the burn with the fingers of other hand. "S'not so bad. At least it works." She speaks the last word and her eyes turn wild again at the comprehension of what she just said. "It WORKS! Bloody hell!"

I look past her to meet Harry's eyes: as if her outcry were a signal, a beam of hope lights up Harry's whole face.

"Just look at this, Mum, your grandson's a wizard!" Ginevra calls out to the empty teapot hovering in the kitchen doorway. And Molly appears instead, from behind the curtain stretched across the corner of their living room, holding a thin object with something akin to reverence. She regards her daughter with the same awed expression, and places a second wand, long and dark with a reddish shine, into her hand.

"Give this one a try," she says.

Ginevra sets my wand aside and looks at the other in her hands. She runs her fingers across the ridge of the handle all the way up the thin, flexible tip. "Dad's?" she asks looking up at her mother and her voice doesn't quite manage to keep steady at the question.

Molly nods, the kind of desperate motion that people make when they don't trust themselves to speak.

"I didn't know you kept it," she murmurs, holding it as cautiously as if it isn't made of wood but glass, a delicate, brittle, and precious thing.

She traces a curve with it, as if writing something in the air, and nothing happens at first. Then the teapot hovering in the doorway starts moving, first slowly and then faster and faster. It rises past me above the table, does an unexpected somersault right above the oranges and spins before settling on the table top like an ordinary piece of china. "Whoa, I didn't do that!" Ginevra cries, palming her stomach in surprise. "He kicked. And the charm went all wonky."

Molly smiles then and years disappear from her round face. "That's nothing, dear. When I was pregnant with you, the most common spells could turn all the chairs in the house upside down or my hair blonde for a week. Merlin, what a menace I was." She gives her daughter a misleadingly innocent look. Take away the prominent laugh lines at the corners of her mouth and the shadows under her eyes, and for a moment she's little Molly Prewett all over again, with her freckled face and her punch like a beater's bat that dealt with any rivals almost as well as the two towering figures of Gideon and Fabian always looming in the background. Molly hasn't changed that much after all from the schoolgirl I remember, a younger sister to the two bullies who were much more socially acceptable simply because they happened to sort into the right House.

"You do realise you are not to try this in public," Molly declares sternly. "Why, a simple levitation spell could give our neighbours a heart attack."

Ginny nods, her mind clearly considering all the possibilities, practical and not.

"But," her mother continues with her delighted, girlish grin shining through, "I suppose I could use your help in the kitchen with that."

A worrisome thought nags at the back of my mind, one that refuses to let go. "Would the Muggle officials be likely to notice this?" I interrupt them.

"We haven't heard from them for years," Molly reassures me. "Not since they took our two wands, wrapped them in plastic as if they were last week's fish, and carted them away. Haven't seen hide nor hair of them since."

Her assertion doesn't dispel all of my worries, but it helps. The officials didn't look very far, I notice. Molly's teapot huffs and puffs on the table and the giant clock hanging on the far wall defies every law of Muggle clockwork, and only Molly knows how many magical knickknacks and gewgaws she has tucked away in this place of hers.

"It hasn't been working right since the move," Ginevra comments offhandedly when she notices me looking at the clock with its multiple hands pointing at the assortment of situations. "Ron's has been jumping all over the place and the twins' have sat on 'Innocent' for years."

I take a closer look at the clock's hands, all nine of them, each with a name and a face. There are a few of them still at 'Mortal Peril'; I suspect that they've been frozen immovably like that for years. The Weasley twins' hands are indeed proclaiming their innocence. Molly's hand indicates that she is 'Home'. There is also Charlie's, pointing at 'Abroad' and a small but ornate hand labelled 'Ginny' directed at 'Happy'. Through it all, another hand wavers round and round, like a broken compass needle unable to find north, obscuring the view of its counterparts with its wild rotation. This one must be Ronald Weasley's.

If they name the child Ron, like Harry asked, would that hand finally stop spinning? It's hard to tell. Some part of me will always think that we should never hope to replace the people we lost with someone else, but something else inside me also says that the hand has been left for too long without resolution. Its whirl-pause-whirl, this way and that, reminds me too much of my own loss, and of restless dreams where I search hither and yon without cease, frantic always to find my Lucius.

---

Molly corners me before I leave and slips a folded piece of paper into my pocket. "Here," she whispers while Harry is still distracted by the sight of her daughter levitating a ribbon just out of her cats' reach. "Take this before I change my mind, and take him there sometime."

"What is it?" I mutter as her gaze drifts away.

"You'll see, later."

I unfold it only when we are outside. It's an address in Reading: the street and the number in Molly's steady, rounded handwriting. There is a name on the bottom, a name I remember all too well from countless papers I've marked over the years, from records on the inside cover of library books, from labels on potion vials that I've examined and have always found adequately flawless. I hide it away like some precious possession inside my coat pocket next to my reclaimed wand; a scrap of paper that contains just a few lines: Hermione Granger's name and address.

"What was it?" Harry asks, skipping over the stones on the footpath.

"Nothing to dance about," I tell him.

He makes a face at that. "You're too uptight about things, Snape. Relax. Live a little."

He runs through the air, looks up and spins, ready to fly: a house marten, slim and swift and exuberant, poised to soar and never touch the ground again.

I will not show him the note right away. Joy is sparse in this world and we need to draw it out, make it last through the storms and the bleakness. We need to savour every bit of it before it's gone. We need to keep it safe and make it count.

No, I will not show him the note just yet.

He is content now that he has found hope again, hope in magic and hope in humanity. This newfound hope of his is also an enormous responsibility resting on the shoulders of a young woman who lives in her orange tower with stray cats and stray magical objects not so far from the World's End. It's ironic that the place where I lost hope is so close to the place where Harry just found his.

He believes that everything will be right with the world. It makes him happy. I cannot allow myself to convince him otherwise, never again.

Delighted, Harry rushes forward onto the noisy, sun drenched streets and I have no choice but to follow.

Yes, Molly, I do believe in ghosts, or in this one at least, and if that is insanity, so be it.