They slept most of the morning and leaving the beast untied (could one honorably do otherwise?), he went out to find food during the day. Diving dumpsters could wait. He needed to see if he could either nick some out of a vacant home or find some unwitting publican from whom he could beg a bit of brown bread. About a thirty minute walk to the west (counting the climb) he found The Pub - Sango Sands - was closed. He looked and for leagues in every direction, he could not spot another. So he walked up to the Durness Visitor Information Center. He thought he was a visitor here in Durness and he needed information, so perhaps the folks at Visit Scotland would help him. Certainly they liked decorating their lawns with upright way stones. Reminded him of something Old Mad Eye might have done.

The visitor's center was about the size of the room he'd shared with his best mates back in school: a little A-frame of stone, plaster walls on the other side, grey tile roof, single door leading into a room full of chairs he'd seen in other unmagical offices and brochures and bright metallic things the people who Visit Scotland apparently liked to buy from the local Durness clerk. They looked like idols. Certainly New Yorkers had a lot of similar metallic talismans shaped like a moldy version of some daughter of Ceres.

Approaching the desk, he cleaned his throat and rubbed the glyph tattoo under his right sleeve - sometimes they nagged at him like that.

Behind the desk slouched a teenage girl with tight shorts and a black t-shirt advertising some band considered obscure even by his standards She painted mythical creatures on one page of a book of canvas sheets.

"Have a pub?" he asked her.

She painted.

"Hey. Aren't you supposed to welcome me?" he asked.

"You're welcome," she said.

"Thank you," he said.

"Did that backwards, didn't you?"

He worked his thumbnail over with the tip of his pointer finger. His tongue touched his canine. He thought better of that, but only just. Then he said, "If that's the greeting you give to each of your guests, I understand why you see so few."

The paintbrush stopped swaying. "No," she said.

"No that's not your greeting?"

"No, we don't have any more pubs. You've got to go several shires south for that. Past the sheep."

"Oh. Well, where can a guy get some food?"

She pointed to two glass cases with small, bright packages locked in tight with one another, inescapably bound in their little wire cells. He thought of cold stone and high waves and halls that whistled in the night's chill. He looked out the north windows of the visitor's center towards the North Sea and thought hateful thoughts at her waves.

The girl said, "Half quid."

"Measure your money in Quidditch matches? Is it a gambling thing?" He flinched and thought again of James.

"What?"

He didn't have any of their sort of money. "Got mugged."

She fished around in her pockets and held out a wrapped bar.

He smiled grimly and pocketed it, then walked out.

"You're welcome," she said.

"You did that backwards," he said and chuckled. It sounded like a growl.

Outside, he gnashed his teeth on the bag and started walking towards the nearest house. Begging was not beneath him, there were just better scraps that took less effort to scavenge. He saw no one was home and so he came around the edge of the house when another letter came. He snatched it off the string quickly and tipped its deliverer:

I reckon I just imagined my scar hurting, I was half asleep when I wrote you last time. There's no point in coming back, everything's fine here. Don't worry about me, my head feels completely normal.

"Whelp, guess I'll go back to the Caribbean," he said to no one and whipped his head and his neck popped and half sprained and he realized he'd cut his hair. He'd have to get use to the lack of weight and wind resistance again. He pulled out some scrap parchment and wrote the boy: Nice try. I'm back in the country and well-hidden. I want you to keep me posted on everything that's going on... don't worry about me, just watch out for yourself. Don't forget what I said about your scar. He'd also added how the kid needed to use a more discrete method of communication - he thought that was the most important part. He added a separate note for the headmaster about how the boy had begun to lie, then tied both notes to the foot of the snow owl and watched it fly away in broad daylight into the open air of the country field. Well-hidden. That was a fine joke on him, alright. The boy would probably think it something he'd managed to get back without getting caught. That was the thing: getting caught on your own terms was half the fun. He turned back to the house and thought he'd rap his knuckles on the front door first, just to be sure.

A very short, very fat old woman came. "Well there, I didn't order no parcels."

"What about post-order strippers?" Sirius asked.

She stopped for a second, looked him up and down. And down. She met his eyes again. "Oh that's right, I did! Come in, laddy!"

He had been joking, of course. Sarcasm had helped as much as harmed him over the years.

He also wasn't sure which side this encounter fell into.

The fat lady's costume jewelry clacked against itself as she ambled into her foyer and then under the little arch in the dry wall to the island in the kitchen. She leaned against it and said, "Well get to it."

"Can't really dance on an empty stomach, can I?"

"Well you don't have to dance on a stomach, now do you? You can dance on the floor. You can dance on me bed if it pleases you."

"Yes, but if I'm hungry-"

"Well what good was the money I paid for this order?" she asked

"Goes to the seller, not me. They pick us up off the street and haul us off and send us to the other end of the world to pull favors." He was full of it now and he knew it, but that was the problem with sarcasm. The worst part was how she didn't quite welcome but... well even she was merely tolerating him, wasn't she? Merely tolerating a potential male stripper. That was grand. Just grand. He couldn't even make it in a brothel if the floor of the whole earth fell out from under him.

"Well I guess I'd better feed you then," she said. "You know my son left years ago..."