Disclaimer: I'm not J.K. Rowling; I'm only visiting her universe for nonprofit fun and edification. (No profit is being made and no copyright infringement is intended).

***

Mary Esmond didn't even look up at first until she heard the silence in the waiting room. She'd been talking with McConnell, in a break between waves of patients; the usual suspects were all in and waiting, reading their magazines or talking quietly or playing chess.

She'd been showing McConnell pictures of Jackie. Some of them were glossy black and white stage documentation shots from Jackie's portfolio: Jackie Bones in school, in student productions of the classics: Jackie as a much-too-young Lady Macbeth, Jackie as Hedda Gabler. Her personal favorite, and McConnell's as well: Jackie as Joan of Arc, Shaw's Saint Joan. Mary loved that part, because Joan was really very much like Jackie, a sensible, humorous country girl. Well, no, Jackie was definitely a city girl, a Londoner, but other than that…

McConnell nods, and smiles with something odd and wistful in her expression. Mary knows that McConnell lost her mother and sister and brother and her best friend in the late war, the war about which she knows nothing.

And Jackie Bones is dead too.

She's taking out the color pictures, the snapshots from home, Jackie with her eccentric Aunt Amelia's cranky white Persian, Darius, showcased on her lap as if she were merely his throne; Jackie on the Thames embankment in front of the Houses of Parliament—that was the day they played at being tourists, with Jackie putting on a stagy and nasal New York accent—pure Bronx, she had said—

A dead silence falls.

Mary looks up.

It's the Rock Star, and his redheaded girlfriend, and he's got a baby, no a toddler, perched on his skinny blue-jeaned hip. Everyone in the waiting room has looked up and fallen silent. The Black Widow looks up and puts her hand to her mouth and if possible goes paler than she already is. More than one face in the room turns to her and glares.

And then the oddest thing happens—it's like a film effect, only in real life—the little boy's hair turns blue. No, it's not digital technology or special effects because this is real life and real life does not have special effects…

Gas-blue, the color flaring through his hair as if it really were made of fire, and his eyes go yellow, an extraordinary shade like the eyes of a cat.

Mary turns to McConnell, who whispers, "Teddy Lupin."

McConnell adds, as if this were explanation, that it's her son. Her dead friend's son.

Mary has seen many strange things in her life; she's learned to keep quiet, because explanations arrive more quickly that way.

McConnell says, "He's the godfather, you know." The Rock Star, the unprepossessing boy not quite twenty years old, whose very ordinary name she can never remember, until she recites to herself the short list of ordinary names—Granger, Potter, Thomas, Finnegan—the four names on the list that are ordinary to the point of invisibility. Granger is the officer, Thomas is the artist, Finnegan is the wisecracking Irishman, and Potter is the Rock Star.

Potter and his girlfriend seat themselves, and the little boy, released from his godfather's arms, toddles about the waiting room, looking at the faces, many of whom seem to be familiar to him. The Black Widow looks on, with an unreadable expression, which would read as calmly neutral interest except that her long fingers are twisting about themselves in her black-draped lap.

McConnell had laughed at that nickname, by the way, because the Widow's maiden name actually was Black. She'd started reciting a list of names, surpassingly odd all of them: Andromeda, Bellatrix, Sirius, Regulus. All of them named after constellations. Ah, well, the ill-named son fits in there, though Mary still can't help parsing it as 'double-dealing reptile.'

McConnell laughs at her now, too. "You're goggling," she says.

"Blue hair," Mary whispers. "His hair turned blue. And his eyes…"

McConnell shrugs. "Well, his mother was a shape-shifter and his father was a werewolf, so that's nothing surprising."

Mary isn't quite sure she heard that right. She looks at McConnell, who stares levelly back. "You're joking."

"No," McConnell says. "Why do you think Kingsley put you all under Fidelius?"

You cannot speak. You must keep faith. That was the translation of the words from that little ceremony, the one that had struck her so odd at the first orientation.

"You must keep faith," McConnell says. "So it rather takes the pressure off us. We don't have to worry so much about slipping."

"There's no such thing as werewolves," Mary says sensibly.

McConnell takes a picture out of her pocket. It's another of those marvels that move, and it's the pink-haired girl again, except this time she's with a man, sandy-haired and some years older than herself, no, she looks more closely, many years older than her, for the girl is in her mid-twenties at most and her companion must be closer to forty, and he has a look Mary well recognizes: those eyes have stared into the abyss.

"Remus John Lupin, werewolf," McConnell says. "And war hero. Posthumous Order of Merlin, Second Class. So's Tonks." She blinks, and Mary notices that her brown eyes are bright with tears. "It sounds bloody glamorous but they're dead."

Mary is well acquainted with all of the British military decorations and there is no Order of Merlin.

No, McConnell tells her, it's on their side of the border, and then, as if she had said too much, she takes up the black and white glossy of Jackie Bones as Saint Joan. Mary watches that unreadable face, and there's a flicker about the eyes….

Addie McConnell knows Jackie Bones; those pictures are not the first time she's seen that face.

You cannot speak. You must keep faith.

"You know Jackie Bones," Mary says, trying not to sound accusing, because this woman has been friendly to her, has accepted her invitation to dinner and a show even though technically it's fraternization. "Jackie Bones is dead, and you knew her before." McConnell's fingers close on that slim wooden rod that they all seem to carry, in a pocket or a sleeve or a boot.

She flicks it ever so slightly, and her lips barely move; all that Mary hears is a sussurus of consonants…

Something shifts, and suddenly the face across from her snaps into focus.

"I remember you," Mary says. "You were at her Aunt Amelia's. We met you once at the National Gallery. You were following us."

"Strictly in the line of duty, I'm afraid," McConnell says. "I was Jackie's bodyguard." She says, "They never would have assigned me that duty if they'd known what was going to happen to Madam Bones. It was a prestige assignment, a plum for a new graduate." McConnell's face stiffens momentarily and her gaze shifts to the middle distance, to the place where it is still going on, where it will go on forever. Mary's seen that look before, on wave after wave of veterans who can't and don't say what it is, at least not to the one who watches the waiting room.

"The head of Dimly's Squib niece—nothing difficult about that at all. Until they took out the head of Dimly."

The words don't mean anything, but the tone translates: It was my first assignment. I wasn't ready for it. They killed her in front of my eyes and I didn't move fast enough to stop them.

She looks at Mary. "And you were there. You were the first Muggle I ever Obliviated."

***

Author's note: "Until they took out the head of Dimly." Amelia Susan Bones, d. 1996, Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement; see opening chapter of Half-blood Prince.