Chapter 1: Number 13a, Grimmauld Lane

Summary:

You never know what you'll find in the neighbors' garden.

People came and went and he didn't usually notice—dead of night to skip the rent, or a moving lorie and a bunch of dago movers in the middle of the day, it didn't matter much. His flat—which the landlady had had the brass to call a 'garden apartment'—had direct access to the road and the weedy garden, and he didn't have to deal with any of the people in the building unless he felt like it, which he mostly didn't.

Grieving. He was grieving, that was it. Didn't want nobody to interfere with his grieving.

The smell of curry and onions constantly floating down from upstairs was interfering, that's for certain, and he'd tried to do something about it, but there were bloody fifteen of them in the ground floor flat, and he couldn't understand a word a one of them said. And he wasn't going to do them the favor of moving out. He'd show them.

People in and out, and he might as well have lived out on a heath somewhere.

But he noticed the two women the minute they moved into the building that had the garden across from his.

It was the redhead he noticed first, drawing open drapes on the second floor of the townhouse that no one else somehow ever believed was there. She wasn't his type, really, the ginger-haired one: small, no tits to speak of, but a look in her eye like…

Like a hunting bird.

The blonde was more his style, going by shape: nice set of coconuts, what looked to be a lovely, round bum if the window had been just a bit lower. She was talking to somebody on the first floor, waving something around.

Her eyes too caught his attention: pale blue and misty, even across the two back gardens.

Something about them gave him the collywobbles. But something about them looked familiar. Made him want to look more.

And he hadn't touched a girl in months.

Grieving.

He splashed some water on his face in the kitchen sink, ran his fingers through his thin blond hair; the mirror showed him a face no longer smooth and round, but mottled and tired, lined and blotched.

Sighing, he grabbed a jumper, pulled it on, unconsciously tucking in his aunt's old locket, and stepped into the garden for the first time in months.

The blonde was up on the second floor now too, and they were both talking—talking to someone else in the room, maybe, or someone downstairs. Short hair, both of them, and faces pale as those statues Mrs. Addison had brought them all to see, and he'd tried to hang Harry from the doorknob, but the knob had turned to rubber.

He should have known.

In the window, the two women leaned closer to each other—to whisper? Had they seen him? No.

A kiss.

Sweet and long and the most beautiful thing he had ever seen, though he should have been disgusted, he supposed—his mother certainly would have been. Red hair and blonde hair, mouth seeking mouth, and his heart just stopped.

They looked out of the window and now they saw him and even though their window was closed, and they were a hundred feet or more away, he found himself saying, "Sorry."

Sorry? Why? That was bloody…

Suddenly their window slid up—who did that?—and the blonde said, in a voice that managed to carry down two storeys and across two gardens, "Come, please."

He didn't feel as if he had any choice in the matter. His feet led him across the weedy lawn to the neglected shrubbery at the back to where a gate stood—where did that come from?

An inkling tickled at him then, but he ignored it—or he wasn't allowed to pay attention to it—and pushed open the rusty, unwilling gate.

Stepping into the neighboring garden, he felt as if he'd been pulled into a different world. Here the shrubs were green and lush, seemingly wild and yet neat. Flowers blossomed in every possible color. The walk was lined with shimmering reptile scales the size of his face.

The hair on his arms bristled. He'd crossed into a different world, all right—a world of freaks and freakiness. A part of him wanted to turn and run back through the gate to his own brown, neglected garden and his basement lair. He might have thought it was some bloody spell that held him, but in truth it was the sight of that kiss, of those two doing something so small and graceful—a glimpse of a place he knew once but couldn't find again.

He shook his head. Rubbish. Swotty rubbish.

The smell of onions and curry wafted across from his building, mixing with the roses and honeysuckle and lavender and dozens of other plants, familiar and unfamiliar, that sweetened the air of this garden. Somehow, the stench of old Mrs. Kumar's cooking didn't fill him with rage as it usually did.

The rear door to the house opened—it was a proper house, not divided up as flats like the rest of the places in this grubby slum—and the two birds sidled out. The little ginger one still looked ferocious; the blonde smiled. Each held what looked like one of Aunt Marge's thick old knitting needles loosely in her hand, and he felt the hair go up on the back of his no-longer-quite-so-thick neck. He knew, then.

"Hello," sighed the blonde. She seemed to be gazing up at the bloody clouds. Her bubbies jiggled wonderfully as she came down the steps. Yup. Her backside was indeed nice and round.

"H-hullo," he murmured.

"Are you from the Prophet?" asked the redhead, her hand squeezing her stick—her wand, his mind finally conceded.

"Er… the what?"

"Don't be silly, Ginny," said the blonde, her voice still light. "I know all of the reporters at the Prophet. And look at him—no wand, and such odd clothing. He must be a Muggle."

The one named Ginny gave a tight shake of her head; her wand was now pointed right between his knees, and he felt right nervous, as would anyone with any sense. He knew what even a little freak could do with one of those. "No, Luna, come on. The Fidelius may be down, but there are two hundred years worth of Muggle-repelling charms on this house, and Bill's just added some more."

"Oh," he said in spite of himself. "That's why n-no one can see this place."

The redhead smirked at him, her eyes narrowing. "Right. So what are you? A Squib? You can't tell me that you can see this house and that you've got no knowledge of our world at all, friend." Her wand point was aimed above his knees now, and he felt his stomach begin to go jiggly, like it used to before a three-rounder.

"Uh," he stammered, "well, my c-cousin's one of you lot—"

"Your… cousin?" The blonde witch blinked her enormous eyes—it seemed to take minutes.

"Er, yeah?" His gaze flicked from the ditzy blonde to the short one. "He, you know, lived with us? Growing up?"

The one called Luna blinked that slow-motion blink again, and then smiled. "Why, Ginny, do you realize who this is?"

The redhead blinked too, several times, and slipped her wand into her back pocket. She walked towards him, that bright, claw-sharp look in her eyes—a little on the small side, but not a girl, definitely a woman, small tits and all. Moved like a bloody cat. She smiled, dangerous still, but sexy, right? "Was one of our lot, you bastard!"

Then she unleashed an overhand right that would have done the Junior Heavyweight Inter-School Boxing Champion of the Southeast proud, and knocked Dudley Dursley cold.