Chapter Two

The only house I've ever known has fallen away with the final breaths of the war, and never have I so badly needed something, someone to call home.

It still stands, but the walls fret our grounds, and the gates throw barred shadows across our gardens, and the halls echo with slow, abandoned footfalls. From my bedroom window, I can watch white peacocks strut amongst the groves and yew hedges like glittering specters – they are the brightest thing I have now to know, but even they fade with the failing light, retreating back into the bushes and leaving the yards in blackness.

I scratch out letters to Goyle and Blaise and Pansy, but each one withers against the sour memories trapped between the words, choking them like furled weeds, and I whisper incendio. The paper curls into ashes and I write to her instead…

We have never shared anything and it makes it so much easier now.

A fidgety pygmy owl comes to my window within the week, clicking its beak against my window pane until I let it in and biting at my fingers when I don't open its parcel immediately. I swat it across the room.

Dear Draco,

I am quite well. Daddy and I have just returned from a trip to Sweden, and though I am afraid the Crumple-Horned Snorkacks seem to be hibernating, we almost certainly found evidence of Piksywhits (they're nasty little creatures that dye your hair when you're not looking and steal half of anything that comes in pairs). I helped Daddy write an article and thought that you might like to read it.

x Luna

I can hear her feathery voice in the words and a Quibbler falls open on my desk.

We do this for a month or so – she babbles and I feign interest, her handwriting loops and tilts across the page, while mine tightens and marches in frigid lines – and then, in the heat of one July afternoon, as I swallow a cold breakfast alone, something vaporous floats to the ledge of one of the dining room's high windows and phases through the glass. It appears to be a hare made of wisps of ethereal, blue steam, and it drifts lazily to the table, where rests on its haunches.

"Hello, Draco," a dazed voice resonates from it. "I do hope this works, though I'm afraid I've only ever tried it twice before."

There is an awkwardly long pause, before it continues, "I've been helping with an article on Drixelwhiffs and would you believe that there are dozens of little colonies all over Wiltshire? I'm in Salisbury for the day, in Adytum Alley, and if you'd like to chat and perhaps see a wild Drixelwhiff, it'd be lovely. If you wouldn't, though, that's all right, too… Things are a bit strange now."

It evaporates in a milky haze and there's a strange, clawing feeling at the base of my stomach as I try to convince myself that it's wisest to stay home, that there's no reason at all to apparate to Salisbury just to watch a daft girl probe about bushes for Driplespits or whatever it was she said. I almost consider the shame that such a doe-eyed, barmy thing could bring to the family name and then I remember that it is shame that arrests me here, shame that thins my mother and grays my father, shame that made us do so much of what has been done…

I leave to see her within the hour.

She isn't hard to spot, standing on the corner of one of Adytum Alley's many knobby, cobblestone streets and wearing a strange blue jumper with brown tights, her straggly hair knotted around her shoulder. There's a pad of paper enchanted to hover just above her shoulder with a Quick-Quotes Quill poised against the paper, and she seems to be desperately attempting to speak with anyone who will hesitate for even a moment, until she spots me and abruptly abandons an old witch she was interviewing, or, rather, confusing.

"Hello, Draco!" she parts through the crowd that swims between apothecaries and book shops.

I nod and we fall into step, weaving between brass owl cages.

"How have you been?"

I shrug, "All right, I suppose."

"I'm sorry that you're sad."

"I'm… how did you—"

"Your eyes look heavy. Daddy says sadness pulls the pupils down, and looking up is the best thing you could do."

My mouth twitches, but I don't say anything.

"How is your family?"

"All right… well, no, I suppose they're not."

"Things are a bit strange now."

"I can hardly leave my home but…"

"You can't stay in it, either?"

"I do, but I don't want to, no."

Her smile is watery, "Then stay out all night with me. That's when the Drixelwhiffs really come out."

"What do they look like?"

"A bit like glowing groundhogs, but with wings, of course."

I spend the day leading her through a network of alleyways for fear of anyone seeing us, until the sun slips away and we step through the enchanted walls of the alley, wandering past the sharp peak of the Salisbury steeple. She takes my hand and there's the familiar whoosh of apparation as I catch the yellow glow of the clock tower but fail to read the time.

We never see a Drixelwhiff and I'm fairly certain we aren't the only ones, but she doesn't seem to notice. We tread across furling and unfurling hills and, in the crisped night, her fingers brush against the top of my hand, though we don't know each other at all.