"Why is it that wherever we go, the Black sisters are there?" said Cam, scowling into her soup at the Leaky Cauldron at suppertime. "I mean, I can't get away from them. I come here, and there's Narcissa. I went into Knockturn Alley a couple of days ago, and there's Bellatrix."
"Why were you in Knockturn Alley?"
"Research. Some bloke evaded capture last week and someone said they'd seen him in Knockturn Alley, so I had to get a witness statement."
"Bellatrix probably killed and ate him."
"Oh, honestly, Eglantine. She's not a cannibal. She may be many other things—"
"But how well do we really know our homicidal maniacs?"
"We don't know she's a homicidal maniac."
Eglantine gave her a look. "Have you seen her? She probably has arsenic hidden in her hair."
"It has gotten rather unruly, hasn't it?" said Cam, wrinkling her nose. "Hey, isn't that Sirius? Finally left your closet, I see."
Eglantine kicked her sister under the table. "You knew?"
Cam blew on her soup and slurped it. "Of course I did. I heard him in there. I have excellent hearing."
"How did you know it was him? Could've been anybody."
Cam rolled her eyes. "Sure it could. I'm just surprised he's out in broad daylight with his cousins about."
"I'm not. He doesn't care about them."
Sirius was at the bar with, of all people, Remus. It bothered Eglantine less than it used to. She had Dave to hide behind now. Pleasant, engaging, Muggle Dave who loved her. Completely removed from this place and everything about it. Sirius saw her and, with an expression that perfectly blended offended with puzzled, said something to Remus and made his way over.
"Hullo," he said flatly. "Eglantine, can I talk to you?"
"Aren't you talking to me now?"
"I meant—er—alone."
She couldn't say no. She'd ignored his letters and was about to be, she suspected, rather rude. She had to at least talk to him. She stood up and walked toward a narrow hallway, away from Camilla and Remus.
"I know you got my letters. What happened?" he blurted immediately, his eyes anxious.
"Nothing happened." She swallowed. "And I do mean nothing. And I never got any letters. I didn't know about them."
"You knew about them."
"I didn't."
"Don't lie. I can tell. Eglantine, I—I know I'm not crazy. There's something here. It felt…normal. Why won't you admit it? Why is it so hard for you to—" He looked into her eyes. His were dark grey in this light, and if he hadn't had just a touch of the same pinkness that Regulus's cheeks had, you almost would've thought he was in black and white. "You know what? Never mind. I give up. I should've given up before."
Victory. This was a victory, she reminded herself. It was always a victory when they gave up, because you'd survived, you'd resisted their impulse to try to change your course, their will-o-the-wisp efforts to lure you away. When you resisted, you were supposed to realize that, like the will-o-the-wisp, they were merely a flicker on the horizon. It was possible that he was something else.
Then again, she was probably wrong. Of course he was just a flicker. Everybody was.
She returned to Camilla as if nothing had happened, and, in fact, it hadn't. She had once again been allowed to maintain her life as it was.
"Cam," she said, sitting down—her broccoli was cold. "I know Mum and Dad have been saying that there're no leads about Uncle Crevan, but…you don't know anything, do you? I mean, Mel hasn't said anything?"
"No." Cam sipped her soup with her lips almost closed. It was infuriating. And she was wearing that Alice band again. "But then, she wouldn't, would she? I don't talk to her much, anyway. She's always out of the office, talking to people in other departments."
"Either that, or she's just like her mother, and that's what she's doing."
"Please don't call my boss a secret Death Eater. I don't want to think that my Christmas truffles every year are Death Eater truffles."
"Well, yeah, but she was our cousin first, wasn't she? Alya's daughter."
This time Cam's lips weren't even open, so where the hell did the soup go? "What did Sirius want?" she said.
"Oh, no. No changing the subject. Not the first time I bring it up in weeks."
"It's not my fault you haven't talked about it. I've talked about it plenty with Mum and Dad and Carlisle." She dabbed her lips with her napkin like she was at a tea party. Eglantine was sure she always ate like this. That made it even more irritating. Did she eat like this when she was at home alone, setting up her plate and knife and fork and pretending the Queen was watching? "You know, you did the same thing after Bertie died. You didn't really talk about it. I think you have a problem facing up to things, Tina."
"I talked about it plenty. Just not to you," snapped Eglantine. Even though that wasn't strictly true. She'd told Lily and Severus. (And Severus she hadn't exactly told. He only heard because he happened to be talking to Lily at the time and she hadn't felt like telling him to get lost.)
"Good. That's healthy," Cam said primly.
"So now I'm trying to talk about Crevan."
"Why?"
"Because I want to."
"Did Sirius bring it up?"
"No."
"Well, normally, you'd have come back and told me what he wanted. But you came back and asked about uncle Crevan. Why?"
Eglantine glared at her sister. "Don't try to analyze my brain, Camilla. It's annoying. You can't analyze my brain. It's all transparent."
Cam giggled. "No, it's not. It's funny that you think that, though."
"Ugh, forget it." Eglantine pulled her school list out of the pocket of her robes. "I still need books. You can go where you want, though. I'm buying my own."
"Suit yourself. I'm going to brave the outdoors again and buy pens. I need new ones."
Eglantine raised an eyebrow. Her sister was weird about pens. She could take an hour just selecting a pen. It was a form of psychosis.
Severus was in the bookshop, hunched in a corner over a potions book, but in true Severus fashion, he didn't acknowledge her.
"Hullooooo," Eglantine said. She'd been standing there for a full minute. She had even resorted to breathing loudly.
"Oh. Hullo, Eglantine." He always called her Eglantine. She thought he actually liked her name as it was, making him the one living person besides her mother who did.
"What's that? Looks gruesome." The book featured a bloke turned inside out, who was being rubbed with leaves.
"Erm," said Severus.
"Dark Magic potions?"
He looked up, simultaneously panicked and defiant. "Ssh."
"What? I mean, it's interesting, isn't it? You should see the library my uncle left behind."
"Wish I could."
It was hard to think of how to say it, especially to someone who was so naïve about it all. That her uncle's blindness to what Dark Magic really meant, what it did, was quite possibly the reason he was dead. That it was dangerous. That it was all well and good to know about it, but to like it…it could blind you to your own mortality, in a way. Made you think you were colder, steelier, smarter, when you weren't. You were still flesh and bone. You were still fragile.
Instead she said, "Where's Lily? I imagine you two didn't come together this year."
He brought the book infinitesimally closer to his nose. "No, we didn't."
"Is she here, d' you know?"
"I don't know. I imagine she came herself. Or maybe with her mum."
"Mrs. Evans? Nah, she wouldn't come here. She'd be afraid people could sense her Muggleness and try to turn her into a shrub."
"Oh. I wouldn't know."
"You never met Mrs. Evans?" Eglantine was genuinely puzzled about this. "You've never met Lily's family?"
"Just briefly at the train. My mum isn't really…tolerant of Muggles. I've not seen enough of them to know what they're like."
"Oh. Well, you're not missing much, they're a bit boring. And her sister's a nightmare. Well, enjoy your book."
"I—you haven't got a bit of parchment, have you? I was going to copy this."
"Aren't you going to buy it?"
The book was touching his nose now. "Can't."
Eglantine sighed and plopped two Galleons onto his lap. "My uncle left me and all my siblings fifty Galleons. He'd want you to have the book. Just buy the stupid thing, won't you?" Crevan, consider this the one time I'm knowingly doing something you'd want. But only because I feel bad for all of you Dark Wizard morons, she thought.
He didn't say thank you. His hands closed wordlessly around the coins. She could tell that he was trying not to smile.
He was really quite pathetic and inoffensive, Severus. To hear Lily talk, you'd think he was in training to be the next Voldemort. He was merely a bad-tempered, weedy, awkward boy with terrible hair.
She didn't take long in the bookshop on purpose. Before Cam was done with her pen excursion, she was going into Knockturn Alley. Either someone would try to murder her, or…she wasn't sure, exactly, but if anyone did know about Crevan, they'd be in Knockturn Alley.
She felt ashamed that she had been doing so well at not thinking about it, at thinking it didn't matter if she did. After all, she was alive, so by default, she stood a chance of at least finding out who had actually killed him.
If she told Cam, if she let Cam think about it for five minutes, she would probably accuse her of displacing her guilt about Sirius onto Crevan's death, because Crevan was, factually, dead, and she had no tangible obligation to solve the case or to even contemplate it. (Not that she had an obligation to Sirius. But she owed him something emotionally, she felt—words or something—and she refused to own up to it, whatever it was.) She wanted to just be free. And taking on this puzzle was a form of freedom. She could retreat to it whenever she wanted.