"If you'd held still when I told you to, you wouldn't have to be afraid of getting a bill from St. Mungo's, I would have been able to fix you up myself." Andrew could hear Peasegood snickering behind him, and ignored his partner with a scowl.

"I've got places to be—this'll heal right up, my wife's got a knack for these things—"

"It won't," Andrew said through his teeth, "It needs a potion in addition to the countercurse, and the stings required are Class C Non-Tradeables, so Mungo's is the closest place that you can legally get it. And," he added, grabbing the man's arm, "even if you did have a wife, you aren't headed home. You're going to the DMLE, straight after Mungo's." With that, he turned on the spot, picturing the reception desk of St. Mungo's.

As they popped into place, Andrew made eye contact with the receptionist. The wizard took in Andrew's robes and turned his attention back to the copy of The Quibbler he'd been reading, apparently deciding that the Hit Wizard knew what to do.

"Come on—I want you to not be my problem anymore," Andrew said, speaking over the man's protestations. He led the man through the double doors at the end of the room and up to the fourth floor, where he saw the lime green robes of a Healer.

"Perfect," he muttered as the man turned around. "Pye—hey, Pye, I've got another one for you." Augustus Pye looked at him in exasperation.

"At least tell me you stopped and got the paperwork for this one?"

"Well…" Andrew trailed off. "This one can tell you himself," he offered—the last patient he'd brought in had hexed his own tongue off in an attempt to escape the Hit Wizards. Still, the Healer looked unimpressed.

"I have more important patients to work with right now," Pye told him. "I don't have time for this."

"You have apprentices for that, don't you? Or whatever you lot call them. Listen, it's easy enough, just have—" Andrew broke off as he looked over Pye's shoulder to read the card by the entrance to the corridor, which read:

Healer-in-Charge: Augustus Pye

Trainee Healer: Adrian Pucey

Andrew felt his eyes widen, and he blinked slowly, still looking at the card. As though drawn forward by an outside force, he walked toward the corridor, pushing the door open.

"You could at least give me a name to work with!" Pye snapped at him.

"Marcellus Troughton," Andrew called back as the door shut, then headed further into the ward. Voices drifted toward him as he walked.

"…then you must know Neville—it's his seventh year coming up. Neville, do you know this young man?" The tone was grim, as though the seventh year at Hogwarts was a death sentence.

"Yes, Gran—hey, Adrian," Neville Longbottom's voice drifted through the curtain.

"Hey," a third voice said, and Andrew pushed the curtains open, three heads turning toward him.

"Sorry," he said immediately, taking in the scene: Neville and an old woman he recognized as Augusta Longbottom standing near him, clearly about to leave, a woman and man who looked very like Neville laying in the beds behind them, presumably asleep. Beside these beds, looking at him with a raised brow, was Adrian Pucey, dressed in the Lime Green robes of a Healer.

"Sorry," he repeated. "I was dropping someone off and I heard…well, I haven't seen Adrian—or Neville, I mean—all year."

"You were also at Hogwarts, I assume?" Augusta Longbottom asked him, her gaze sharp.

"Yeah—we were all in the DA together," he added, hoping it would repair her view of him as "rude and intrusive boy" a bit.

"This is Andrew Fawley, Gran," Neville put in, "He—and Adrian too—were in the forest when we rescued Kevin." Mrs. Longbottom's look turned into one of appraisal, and she passed her eyes over Andrew, seeming to weigh his appearance.

"It's nice to meet you—sorry to barge in, I'll just—" Andrew slid back behind the curtains and over to a bench by the windows, relatively hidden from view. After a few minutes, he heard the Longbottoms leave, and then the sound of feet shuffling around and a quill making marks on a piece of parchment. Suddenly aware of his fingernails digging into his palms, he released his hands, bringing them up to examine them instead. His hands, as a whole, were fairly dirty, a result of the fact that his day had involved chasing Troughton through the forest he'd been hiding in and then around London with little chance for a break. He muttered a quick Scourgify and the skin turned red, stinging for a moment before it changed back to its normal shade.

"That's not meant for human skin, you know," Adrian's voice came from the curtained area. Andrew whipped around to see him standing outside of them, a clipboard in his hand. "And it's poor form to burst in through a closed privacy curtain—kind of ruins the point of privacy, you know."

"I could hear you anyway," Andrew pointed out. "So it isn't that private."

"I had just taken the spells down—but that's beside the point. I think Neville saved you, anyway. You should thank him—I've heard that Augusta Longbottom is a scary woman when she's upset with you."

"She's a scary woman when she's not," Andrew muttered. "Since when have you been in London anyway?" he asked, trying not to sound accusatory.

"Monday night—Lucina talked me into it in the morning and had me here in time for us to get dinner. I started at Mungo's yesterday, as soon as they'd processed my references and done a floo call with Stoffer, the lead Healer at Derwent's. He told them I was interested in Spell Damage, so—" Adrian spread his arms to indicate their surroundings.

"Those people," Andrew asked, suddenly thinking of the man and woman in the beds. "Neville's parents?"

"Yeah—sad case. They seem to recognize Neville and Augusta a little, but they don't talk at all, and they can't take care of themselves. You know Bellatrix Lestrange—" he trailed off, and Andrew nodded. "Well, it's like they retreated into their own thoughts—built little paradises in their brains to escape the pain. Only, now the pain has stopped, they're more like prisons: no getting out. And we don't know enough about the brain and how thoughts form yet, so…" They sat in the silence of that thought for a moment, and Andrew tried to wrap his mind around the Longbottoms' terrible fate.

"I did try to visit you—I stopped in and saw Jack, he seems happy—you just weren't home. Jack said you'd been away for over a week."

"Yeah, that's right. We caught Vaughn, the Death Eater we were after, pretty fast, but since I'm the newest in the unit, Peasegood—that's my advisor, you remember?—Peasegood and I were stuck trailing the remnants of his operation, petty thieves and smugglers and forgers who had been helping him get documents and illegal materials. I was bringing the last of them in today—blocked his curse and it hit him instead, and then he infected it with his own products while he was running away and not letting me fix it."

"Idiot," Adrian snorted, and Andrew had to agree. "Are you back for a while, then?"

"Until Monday, at least—the paperwork will take the day tomorrow, and then we'll get the weekend off."

"Great—Jack and I have dinner plans tonight, you can come along. It'll be good for us to catch up."

"Great—where should I…"

"Just stop by Jack's shop, I think we might have to physically drag him out—or at least, that's what Patty warned me. At six. Now go on, I've got to finish up with the Longbottoms and then do check ins—I'll see you in the evening." With that, Adrian pushed the curtain aside and returned to the concealed area.

Andrew made his way out of the ward and down to the reception area, where he spun into a disapparation, landing by the doorway to his apartment. He walked in, tossing the heavy coat which was part of his Hit Wizard uniform over to the coat rack, which leaned to catch it. His boots followed, the shoe rack shuffling over to scoop them up before resuming their place next to the wall.

After the long few weeks, Andrew wanted to slump onto his couch and collapse into sleep, but a year under the strict agenda the Hit Wizards followed had bled too much into his daily life. He began by performing the monthly check of his wards, which he'd missed while on mission, touching up the areas they'd deteriorated even slightly, then proceeded to give his apartment a once-over, removing the built up dust before showering and changing into clean clothes—jeans and a jumper rather than robes—and finally allowing himself to sink into the couch.

He considered his conversation with Adrian. He'd written Andrew and Jack all the past year, but Andrew hadn't known how much to trust. When Adrian had left, it had still been with a shattered look behind his eyes, like one more thing would push him to break entirely. He'd been full of rage and the need for revenge, so much so that Andrew had been frightened for him.

That conversation in St. Mungo's though—correcting Andrew's spell usage and making fun of him, the sadness in his face over the Longbottoms' fate…Adrian had seemed almost normal, as though by training to be a Healer and healing other people, he was learning how to heal himself as well.

Andrew wanted it to be true—he missed that Adrian, missed their conversations and the certainty of being around someone he knew like he knew himself—but he didn't know yet if he could trust it. Adrian had always been good at hiding things, and Andrew had always been good at not seeing the things that would hurt.

But, for the first time in months, he felt that maybe his hopes were founded on something real.

/

"So, you still haven't managed to find a proper exorcism ritual for Binns, huh?" Andrew asked, prompting Jack to glare at him from the ladder he was standing on to reach a book on the top shelf.

"In fairness to Jack, I don't think it's exorcism—more just gently shoving him into the afterlife."

"In fairness to me," Jack put in, "I've never once mentioned trying to take Professor Binns' job. I've only said that he really should be fired, and they really should get someone new to take on the class. It's a nightmare."

"Yeah," Adrian agreed, "and you still took it for seven years. Now come on—our reservation's soon."

"Our reservation is also for two," Jack reminded him, "But that doesn't seem to be concerning you."

"They'll figure it out," Adrian said with a casual shrug. "They might not like us much, but they always work it out." Jack and Andrew exchange a concerned look, and Adrian frowned, feeling that he was missing something.

"What is it—come on, it isn't a fancy restaurant, people walk in all the time."

"It's not that," Jack said slowly. "It's just…London has been tense, especially the past few weeks, with Dumbledore. That's really why I made the reservation in the first place. To make sure we would be let in. Bringing one extra person isn't a big deal, but if the wrong people are there—"

"Magical Law's been in chaos," Andrew confirmed. "I mean, I've been out on hits, but the lawyers are practically drowning, and aurors keep getting called in to deal with things that we could handle…people are scared, and they don't know what to do with that."

Adrian considered Andrew for a moment. He'd gotten more serious—more put together—in the year after Cassius' death, but something about him had changed even since then. The way he spoke about people made it clear that he was used to evaluating them, reading the thoughts and feelings behind the actions. Even his movements were more precise, his steps even and quiet—and, Adrian saw, he'd taken to wearing his wand on a holster in his belt even out of uniform. And Jack, though not so changed as Andrew, seemed to understand where he was coming from.

"Right," Adrian said. "Plan B, then. I've got a suite at the Orion while I figure out where I'm going to live, and I've got pasta and the ingredients for sauce and a salad."

Jack stepped forward, removing the apron he wore over his robes.

"As long as Andrew isn't in charge of making it, because I wouldn't trust a thing he gave me."

"I'm making it," Adrian confirmed. "After what you told me about the beef stew dilemma, Andrew isn't allowed in my kitchen."

/

"Eventually, I guess Martin just figured that if I was going to be there so much, he would just pay me to work at the store, and give himself some time off, and I figured that if I was going to be there so much, I might as well be getting paid for it. There are some really great books, and there are also some that are really, really useless, and they're all priced the same and not organized at all."

"So the store's a disaster," Adrian summed up.

"You should've seen it before Jack started," Andrew told him. "I can't remember what it was like, but I know it was somehow worse."

"Well, the owl-order service has helped sales go up," Jack said. "It's a pain, but there are far too many books in the store, and I've at least got everything in place so that I can summon things without whole shelves collapsing, so it doesn't take too long. I cleared out the little apartment upstairs, and Martin wasn't interested in living there, but it suits me fine—I've got a good enough kitchen and bedroom, and the bathroom's small, but functional, and it's completely free."

"What are you planning to do, Adrian?" Andrew asked. "You can't stay here forever."

"No," Adrian agreed, "Lucina made me let her pay for a month, but it's not a long-term solution. I might find an apartment, but I also thought about…well, I considered going home."

Andrew stared at Adrian, and from the silence, he guessed Jack was doing the same.

"My mum's at the country house, and she's not likely to be coming back any time soon—she's always hated London. And I know where the backdoor to the wards is, so I should be able to get in and take them down. From there, it'll just be a matter of rebuilding them, one at a time, with a different backdoor that my mother won't be able to find. We never had any house elves either, so it's not as though Mum could use one to get in, as long as I specifically ward against that—there isn't one with a connection to draw them back into the house."

"Are you sure…" Andrew trailed off. He wasn't sure what he was trying to ask Adrian, only that the whole plan felt risky.

"As long as I can get in, everything will be fine. And if I can't, I run for it, and get myself a little apartment that fits the budget of a Trainee Healer."

"You should ask Zoe about some good warding spells. I'm sure she's run into some in her work with Gringotts," was all Jack said, seeming to see that Adrian was set on his idea.

"Is she here right now, or still in that castle they found in the Alps?" Adrian asked.

"Here, I think—or she will be soon. She was just recalled to help with security around here—a new service Gringotts is offering."

Adrian looked thoughtful. "I'll have to ask her. And if you find any books on it—"

"I'll send them your way," Jack promised.

"Well, that settles that," Adrian said, sounding content. "Now Andrew—Pye tells me you brought in Elle Lawrence, the infamous Honeydukes thief—what's it like being a national hero?"

Andrew threw a couch pillow at him.

/

Walking down an alley in Muggle London wouldn't be something one would assume felt like muscle memory to a pureblood, but every step Adrian took felt familiar. Finally, he reached the brick he was looking for, knowing without counting that it was in the dead center of the building, ten up from the ground.

"Herbifors spica," he said, and the brick turned into a single, deep red rose. Adrian grimaced as he picked it up, pricking his arm with its thorn.

"Succisa Virescit," he said, wiping the blood onto the empty space where the brick had been, enunciating the syllables as his father had taught him years ago. For a moment, the bloodstain remained, and then it melted into the surface as though it had never been there. The rose vanished from Adrian's hand, and the brick re-grew in its place.

Adrian reached for the brick, and then hesitated. This was the moment of truth, when he found out if his plan would work, or if it would all come crashing down around him. He pressed on, pushing on the brick. It slid backward smoothly, making a small click before transforming into a shining blue gateway which overtook the bricks around it.

Unable to stop himself from breaking into a smile, Adrian stepped through—not into the home of the Muggles who lived in the building this wall belonged to, but to the seemingly empty lot next door, which no one ever seemed to notice.

The gate closed behind him, and Adrian found himself, for the first time in two years, standing in his childhood home.