Phantom Limb

by rbackwards

A young man realizes he's been the victim of a prophecy. He struggles to make sense of his place in an unfamiliar world. Sound familiar? Nothing's familiar to this young man. Nothing except his aunt Arthur. New readers: give this one some time. 9/2021 - believe it or not, a new chapter is forthcoming.

18. Chapter 18

Chapter 18

I was feeling my balances. That's important sometimes. Maybe one lousy thing that happens makes some good things lose their mass. And the houses of our demeanors make their bricks from the clay at hand, or something like that. And I feel that it's maybe more often than we believe that we have a choice in what gets used, because it stands to reason that if we aren't utterly immobile or asleep or something, we have a say in what we're building ourselves from, and what we grow in our gardens.

I was also feeling my balances because Ron and I had finally found our way to a pub and planted ourselves in a corner, and currently balance was something in scarce supply, in the sense that I had been introduced to firewhisky and it was currently slapping me around, in a kind of benevolently awful way.

I want to tell you about that moment. I was fresh from having some guy in my head who sounded just like me telling me I was going to be a bastard like him, and the idea was sort of sticking to me a little because I'd been hearing it in my own voice, and I was feeling claustrophobic and nauseated and all that, and just in general angry and horrified. Then the guy who caused all of this grief to me and Ginny and everybody by trying to handle everything himself tried to empty Sirius' memory because he thought it would be a good idea, and I got a little angry about it. I could have acted like that beating came from somewhere else, or that it was entirely just, or anything else, but what the truth really was, was that I boiled over. I couldn't take it any more. I had been almost helpless with that vaporous asshole in my head, and I suppose that once that was over I needed to act out a little. So the old wizard got a beating from somewhere in my vicinity. Broke some stuff, hurt a lot, and he was, as I have said, old, so that made it harder on him, and me, incidentally. I was trying to figure out why my remotely smacking him around somehow meant he won, but I had a sneaking suspicion that it was so. And I hated. Hated that.

I was trying to console myself by thinking that he may have won something, but he'd have a hard time with the victory lap.

I was also trying to figure out why it was that I was so incredibly angry with him. The worst part was not trusting that it was all me. Now I had plenty of reasons not to like him – in no particular order, that he'd … he'd… boy, all the colors in the pub looked really vivid. Ron's hair was a little wavy, wasn't it?

Anger seemed like it burned hot and fast in me, and used circumstances for fuel, and since they had changed, probably for the better, the anger had gone on and burned itself out, and I could barely remember with any clarity what it was like to be mad at him.

And, I suppose, the drinking was helping that.

Now I want to be clear about something. You may be imagining that I was drunk at this point. You might be casting aspersions on my character, and assuming I was the kind of fellow to casually nip down the boozer and get right bladdered, or words to that effect. Well, if you are hasty to judge, then it might help to say that I'd not been in the pub but for about thirty minutes. Also, to set the stage, I had cultivated a bit of disdain for the kind of fellow who went to pubs, got a bit pissed in the fine English sense, and started gabbing about all manner of bizarre subjects, as that sort of thing had gotten me abducted from my happy home. So truthfully, it would have made me a bit of a hypocrite.

But yeah, I was drunk.

Foolishly, perhaps, I was still trying to think reasonably about everything. And to make matters worse, I was thinking out loud. Ron had a patient expression smeared over his face - that is to say, it may have been on his face in a perfectly normal way and the way I was seeing it was smeared – and he appeared to be nodding over his drink in all of the appropriate places as I dribbled out theories of why Dumbledore was a bastard, why I had every right to be mad at him, and why Ron's hair was so wavy, and he only stopped me twice: once when I said Tom's name, and once when I brought Ginny up. The first one had him saying, "not here, mate," and the second one had him saying, "wait until you're sober."

Well, I didn't understand why I needed to wait until I was sober and said so, and I also said that she was wonderful, it wasn't like I was going to say anything bad about her, in fact I couldn't even think of anything bad, it was like if I were going to explain to someone what fabulously attractive, smart and amazing and funny and did I say attractive, anyway what all of those things were each like, that I might best be served by just bringing her along and saying, "Like her." He seemed to accept that in the spirit in which it was intended, and it was only when I said she was also a great kisser and my feet were always getting hot that he got a little funny.

"It's a good thing you're so utterly clueless and honest at the same time," he said.

"Well, yeah, I'm clueless, I'm a… an empty plate, Ron, or an empty shoe, or what's something that holds things that know things? I don't even know a… hey, you're a guy."

"Well spotted," he said. On our table a bar napkin reared up and gave him what was unmistakably a once-over before collapsing back to inertness. He gave it only the most casual of glances.

"And you are with Hermi – Hermione," I said, with some difficulty.

"The first one's silent, mate," he said.

I frowned elaborately. "Everyone's doing that now," I said. "But look – you know what I'm talking about, right?"

"No."

"You mean to – you mean to tell me," I said, trying to marshal enough muscle control to raise an eyebrow and probably only succeeding in crossing one eye a little, "that when you look at Hermione that nothing gets hot or anything?"

"Well, sometimes –"

"Or there's this other thing, where I get this swelling –"

"Oi, leave it, Deasil!"

"Wow, I was only trying to explain to you about how –"

"Mate, you're not sober, and you are fairly new here in a great many ways, and because I know that, I'm mostly fine with the things coming out of your mouth at the moment. But let's maybe have a go at something else right now, all right?"

"Fine," I said. "How long does this –" I gestured broadly and indiscriminately around me, a grand sort of motion for this particular room if I thought about it. "- this spinny color-y thing go on?"

"Spinny color-y," he said. "Maybe a couple of hours, or I can get rid of it now. Handy little potion."

"I have… I have mixed feelings about the whole thing. You know, I kind of like it, because things don't matter, or maybe a little but not so bad, and I really hate how this day has gone…"

"Understandably."

"But I've no – noticed," I said, attempting to stand up and failing, "that I'm a little clumsy now, and that doesn't feel right." The bar napkin from before struggled upright, took a few awkward steps towards Ron's glass and then flung itself around it, becoming soaked with condensation.

He smiled a little, regarding me.

"So if Tom came back in I couldn't, you know, run or anything."

"You could stagger a bit," he said.

"I think most of my evasive maneuvering -" That was what I meant to say, but I'm not sure what came out – for all I know my talking sounded like someone trying to fight their way out of a slippery bathtub. " – would consist of slumping over things."

"Slumping."

"Well, yeah, but it would be combat slumping, you know. Offensive slumping."

"Drink this," I heard him say, though I couldn't see anything but the tabletop from a very short distance away.

I more or less propped up, and something was being placed in my hand, and it smelled like something I'd been tasting in the back of my throat for a moment or two. "What's in this stuff?"

"Nothing weird," he said. "Don't the, er, non-magical people put dog hair in?"

"I have no idea," I said, managing to focus an eye on the small bottle approaching my mouth, "what you're talking about. And it's a huge in- indicator of how much I trust you that I'll drink anything you give me after that other stuff."

The first swallow burned a little, and the second felt cold. Everything in the room seemed to jump into place, like a handful of nails being drawn to a magnet. It was a little sudden for me, but I just managed to not throw up.

I know I should describe the pub around now, since my awareness had sharpened considerably by that point, and because often when someone's telling a story if they talk about how a place looks, how the walls were the color of something or the dripping of water somewhere was like a clock or like that, then it creates a backdrop, a subtext, and the location becomes sort of a character who offers commentary and tells you how you might want to be feeling about what's going on. But the truth is that I really can't remember what it looked like at that time, and anyway I hate that kind of thing, and you'll never catch me doing it on purpose.

"Better?" he said.

I became aware of something in me, an otherness. A sore spot where I'd had no idea I'd even had nerves. Kind of an ugly spreading stain. As far as I knew, it hadn't been there before that day. I wanted to take a hot bath, only inside out. For a moment I wondered, half-heartedly, if the feeling came from the stuff I'd been drinking, but I found that I knew the answer to that - I just didn't like it at all.

"Your hair has been like that all along," I said.

"Hurts that you didn't notice, mate – all this time I've been styling it on the off chance…"

It took me a moment to realize he was joking. The man could deadpan.

The thing was, before that moment had elapsed I'd already said, "I'm really sorry, I mean you're really nice, and good-looking too, but it's your sister that I want to kiss all the time. And Hermione would probably –"

I stopped and then gave away ten points. "What? Oh."

"Erm, D, if you're sober, I feel it's time for another chat regarding Ginny." Well, that joking mood didn't last. "I can see you fancy her."

I fancy her. Sounded like I was her stylist. But I knew what he meant. I thought I'd see what he had to say, rather than leap up and hide behind the bar.

"Right," he said. "I'm not going to tell you to stay away from her. I've already told you that you need to treat her well. And if I'm honest, she's more likely to give you trouble than the other way around. You're a good bloke, D."

"Where are you going with the what huh?"

"Things happen to you, and around you," he said. A small mirror on the wall near us fell and thudded on the wood floor. I tried to ignore it. It was a coincidence.

"That's how it is with everyone," I said. "That's what we all… do. I can't imagine, I mean, there might be someone who sits in an empty room somewhere with no windows and nothing happens to them most of the time, but what would happen when they had to eat? You know, they'd either have to have a little pleasant talk with the pizza guy, or they'd starve to death, but then that would be happening to them. And aren't you about to become a cop?"

"Yeah," he said, "but my job will be to happen to other people."

"How does she feel about that?"

"Who?"

"Who else? Ron, when someone says 'she' to you, don't you only think of one person unless someone tells you differently?"

He considered that for a moment. "Yeah. Suppose so. I hadn't thought of it that way."

"So how does she feel about what you do?"

"She wouldn't have much room to talk about it," he said. "The kind of work she does now is dangerous. The stuff they work with down there… well, you just never know, do you? She's only just started over there and many times she's come to dinner all pale and shaking, and she can't talk about it, of course, but when I've asked her if she would maybe consider more of a…a straight research position, she gets angry with me. Says I need to let her make her own choices."

"So what happened when you asked Ginny about me?"

"Well, I… I haven't, really."

"Why not?"

"Well, I know her, Deasil. She's only going to tell me to mind my own bloody business, and she can take care of herself and doesn't need her nosy brothers meddling about with her life."

"Okay, so –"

"But she always says that. She wouldn't ask for help if she were hanging from a thread and if I were within arms' reach. She'd just deal with it herself."

"Annoying, isn't it?" I said, not thinking it was annoying.

"Stubborn, is what it is. Thick-headed."

"So Hermione doesn't say anything to you about being a cop."

"No, because she knows it's what I want. All right, you're saying I should leave Ginny to her own choices, and I'm meant to ignore the fact that we all let her down when she needed us before, and so now she has to do everything alone to prove something to herself."

"I wouldn't ignore that if I were you," I said. "Can I try to speak like Ginny?"

"Go on."

"Just because you gits have finally figured that out, doesn't mean you can come in and make her life difficult now."

He smiled a very small amount.

"But I see your point," I said. "I'd want to protect her, too, and I do. I don't know what I want to do, Ron. It would be one thing if I were just – you know, a guy – well, I am just a guy, but there's stuff wrong with me, and I don't want to get any of it on her."

"What – the memory stuff?" he said. "Nobody cares about any of that, D."

"Oh."

"It's the prophecy crap people get thrown by," he said.

"Right."

"Yeah, the 'you or him' bit, mostly."

Do you ever become aware of the weight of your arms? Like they were stuffed with inertia? Like if you were a turkey, or, to continue the metaphor, if your arms were turkeys since we're talking about arms, and who hasn't felt like their arms are large plucked birds once in a while, honestly, and someone filled them with lead pellets, assuming that you would sit still for that, I mean if you had turkeys for arms you might be fairly sensitive about it and have to wear special shirts, and a sportcoat would be pretty much out of the question, and you might not want anyone messing with your turkey arms at all let alone filling them with lead, and not in the shooting gangster tough-guy way but, you know, with a funnel or something. Anyway, that's what I felt. "I guess I can understand why people wouldn't want to be around that."

I realize I'm probably not communicating the dread, the thud of some unfamiliar and deadly future upon my semi-formed being. Some things have too much weight to speak heavily of them. Just know I was underneath it, and knew it, too.

"No, mate, it's not that at all. That makes us want to be around you more, really."

"Great," I said. "I'm the tall tree in the lightning storm."

"No, D. It just seems like you might want the company." He looked to the side in a small show of exasperation. "If all that seer stuff is true, I would think we'd be trying to teach you how to fight or something. I know that Remus has been trying to show you some basic spells and that, but if it were me I'd be sort of skipping ahead to the more meaty ones."

"Like what?"

"Well. Er, what about Reducto, or Petrificus Totalis, or Expelliarmus, to start with?"

"…What're all those?"

"Merlin's baggy pants, D. What the hell is Remus teaching you?"

"Umm… I was trying to get a feather to float."

He appeared to contain himself. Not in the sense of his skin seeming to be holding all of his guts in, but - you know, I may have to assume you know what I'm talking about. I'd hate to have to bring the turkeys into this again. "Ordinarily I'd say that's a useless spell, but I happen to know it works on trolls sometimes, if you're really lucky."

"Trolls," I said.

"Yeah."

"Is one likely to, uh, encounter trolls around here?"

He looked over his shoulder unhurriedly, then turned back to me and with a degree of certainty, he said, "Not in this pub."

"Look. The cops here must know some, uh, spells…"

"Aurors."

"The cops here must know some Aurors –"

"No, the cops are Aurors, mate, you remember that's what I'm training to be?" I didn't. "Yeah, I know a few, and some that the Academy doesn't teach, thanks to her, and Ginny knows some good ones as well – look, would you maybe want to learn a few things from me, sort of in secret? I don't know what the hell Remus is thinking, but these would do you some good, at least in a situation where you don't make someone drop their wand."

"I don't make anyone do that," I said.

"It just happens?"

"Yeah."

"Bit unlikely."

"In what sense?"

He looked at me calmly for a second. "In the sense that if you hadn't been present, there is no bloody way that would have happened."

"Oh." I really liked Ron. I felt like maybe he and Tonks had something in common, but I couldn't imagine what it was. "Well, maybe I have something to do with it, but I didn't do it."

"Which brings me back to my point," he said.

"Which was?"

"Things happen around you."

"Okay, look, I feel like some of it is stuff I intend, or at least stuff that I would like or maybe feel, like when the rugs get all friendly or something, but most of it is just the right thing and me not getting in the way."

A bit more stillness from him, here in the noisy pub. He was waiting for his own moment to move. Finally he said, "I get that. Sometimes it's best to do nothing and let the other person show themselves."

"You're doing that right now."

"Yeah."

"Where'd you figure this stuff out?"

"Chess and death," he said.

I didn't have anything to follow that with, so all I said was, "Thanks for not wanting to leave me alone with this."

"I don't think that will be your problem," he said. Then a curious expression appeared on his face. "Except for maybe right now. Excuse me, mate." He rose and wended his way past the bar to a pair of doors, choosing the one on the right. I was fairly sure he just needed to relieve himself, and the blonde woman who'd taken a few steps after him but gave up quickly had nothing to do with it. I didn't know her, but I saw someone I did know.

Neville was sitting by himself at a table in a corner, a book balanced on its edge next to a glass of something really dark that had a thick creamy head on it. Little coin-sized flares of red emanated from deep in the glass. It made me think of stoplights on the corner outside the movie theater on that rainy night, and also the red of eyes glowing, wrongly, a betraying red and a warning red, and I could not prevent myself from seeing them, hatefully and rendingly, for a split second on Ginny's face. I had to shut my eyes for a second, and when I opened them again the blonde was right in front of me. A little too close.

"I'm Lavender," she said.

"How's that working out for you?" I said.

After a moment of surprise, she recovered. "Fairly well, I should say. Who are you?"

"Deasil," I said, trying to figure out what this was going to be about.

She frowned a little, and looked a little skeptical. It was kind of pretty. "And how's that working out?"

"About like you'd think," I said.

She grinned, and then she smiled. The grin was better, because she made the smile out of only a little of the genuine leftovers of the grin. I found that I knew something about her now, and for some reason I was already tired of knowing things about her. I guess I was still too close to a bad mood, but the fact that she had replaced something real with something she thought would work at something (what, I had no idea) kind of bothered me.

"You're American," she said.

"Mm-hmm."

"What part?" Her head angled a little. It felt like she was cutting off my escape route.

"Um…" The bit on my elbow that looks like chewing gum, I thought. I made a special effort to come back to the conversation. The alternative was red eyes and things I couldn't understand or accept that were in me.

"Manhattan," I said. "It's in New York."

"Really, I've heard of New York. Where in America is that?" Another tilt, and it felt like another facet of the crystal I was being trapped in.

"Uh," I said, looking around a little, "it gets cold there. And rainy, but it's not like here – it's more like baby spit, but it's in the northern part."

Her eyes went from being focused on me to taking slightly independent paths for a moment. Oh, they came back, but it took a second. While they were moving, she got pretty again, but when they settled again, it went away. I couldn't wrap my head around her. And that was an unfortunate visual for me at the moment as well. In any event she was weird.

"You're a friend of Ron's?" she said.

"Yes. Are you?"

She thought for a moment, then said, "We've known each other for ages, since school."

"So, no?"

She looked confused again. It was funny how "pretty" came and went with her. She had to be a little goofy to have any, and as soon as she recovered it was gone like a hole when it's filled with dirt. I was getting to the point where I wanted out of this. And I got my wish.

"Hi, Neville," I said, because there he stood, rescuing me like the hero he was.

"There you are, Deasil. I was wondering when you'd get here," he said. "Hello, Lavender. My friend here asked me for a bit of help with British customs. Awful lot to cover and all that. Excuse us, won't you?"

"Certainly," she said, though she looked a little disappointed, maybe a little thwarted, and in her disappointment she was once again pretty. I'd had enough of that. I followed Neville back to his table.

"Do you want a drink?" he said before sitting.

"Uh, no. Thanks. And I have to say that yours is making me uncomfortable."

"I'm sorry?"

All of a sudden I felt bad for saying it, though I knew he would understand.

"Well… it's just the… what makes it glow red like that?"

"It's only a charm, it's why they call it 'Old Firefly'."

"It makes me think of… glowing red eyes," I said. Unfortunately, the pairing of that with the firefly thing wasn't making it any better for me.

He picked up his glass and contemplated it.

"You know, that puts me right off this drink," he said.

"I'm sorry I said anything."

He wrapped a napkin around its sides. "No, no, don't be. It's a bit weird that I never noticed that. Still…" He took a pull at it. The idea of him drinking red eye cocktail was a little unnerving to me for a moment, but then I kind of saw it differently. It was a cup he'd drunk from before, one might say, and the taste had been bitter, but drinking from it made him stronger. It was disrespectful to Tom's memory, and that was good for Neville. And me.

"It is rather good," he said. "Care for a taste?"

"No, I had some before I came here," I said.

He set his drink down and examined the froth on the top. "How are you adjusting?"

"It's not like adjusting," I said. "I want it to be more like returning. But…"

He waited.

"I want to have been here all along," I said. "I'm having a little bit of trouble with the catching-up part. But it's not just with family and all that, you know, it's also… I don't really know how to…you know, be. I mean, parts of it I know how to do, but I'm still figuring out how to know so many people."

"Who'd you know before? Oh, right, Arthur and Molly Weasley, but surely…"

"If there were anyone else, I don't remember them. Maybe a girl, in a crowd once, but beyond that… no idea. How are you holding up?"

He looked down at his napkin-wrapped drink before looking me square in the eye. "I feel at turns relieved, useless, and full of dread."

"Why useless?" I asked.

He almost laughed.

"You understand the other two," he said.

"Yes."

"What's hard to understand about my feeling useless? I'm not who everyone thought I was, and everyone knows that."

"Actually, nobody knows that. Nobody knows who I am. Nobody knows I'm back. And even if they did… I haven't done anything at all. I don't know the first thing about being heroic or even fighting. Every time I've been around violence, with one exception, it was me hitting the floor or something,"

"Is Ginny still leading you with two falls to a submission?"

"Hey, I know she's short, but all that means is that the fist knocking you out is approaching from below."

"She's strong," he said, looking at his drink again.

"So you can use a sword," I said, apropos of nothing.

"Yes," he said, taking me in stride. "I suppose that's because I'm not so good at magic as some. I can cast spells, but I'm nothing like Ginny or Hermione or Ron."

My brain went out of focus for a moment, trying to resolve something. "So…so you went to terrorist headquarters to kill the snake, beat everyone there, with magic, now, burned the whole place to the ground, and then went up against Tom and a crowd of thugs by yourself with a sword and killed him, but you for some reason don't think you're that useful."

"It's not my turn this time," he said. "I'm not needed."

"Neville, if it's my turn this time, I have to tell you something: I'm not brave like you. I don't want to go against anyone alone. I'm learning a little magic, but magic didn't do it last time, it was you and your will. I understand if you want to sit this one out, but if you don't, then I want you around. I'm not sure how I feel about any of this and what fits and what's right, but I'm pretty sure you belong in it, and I think I need your help."

"Maybe you don't need to be brave to do it," he said. "Maybe you just have to hand yourself over to it. I don't know anything about being brave either. There just wasn't anything else for me to do."

I held still for a moment, thinking about this. In the middle of an inexorable motion, finding my place in that, things working out. That I could see.

"I'm not going to say you aren't brave," I said. "But I know what you mean."

He looked up again, going from drooping shoulders to a subtle straightening.

"You would," he said.

I wanted to talk to him about Tom. I wanted to tell him how Tom had been riding Dumbledore and how for a moment he was in here with me, and how that felt then and now, but I couldn't.

So I said, "I haven't seen Luna in a while."

"She sort of comes and goes," he said. "She lost her dad in the war, and it kind of loosened her roots, if you follow me."

Gardening metaphors. That seemed right.

"I didn't know that."

"I suppose I'm a little bit surprised that you haven't done that thing that you do with her."

"Frighten the rugs?"

He gave me a bemused look. "No, let her read you."

"I don't know if she needs to," I said.

"Yeah, she's awfully perceptive," he said, twisting his glass in place on the tabletop. "One has to like that. It's sharp and to the quick but it doesn't seem to hurt. Often times she'll mix some sort of exotic creature lore in with something that's just profoundly, perfectly true, so you wind up laughing a little bit, and while you're laughing you sort of re-hear what she said and realize it goes right to the heart of things."

"How can you not like that?" I said, smiling.

"People say some stupid things about her," Neville said, "but they don't seem to bother her, which is something else I like about her. I haven't been able to manage that one yet. She's interested in cryptomagical biology, which means that sometimes there isn't a lot of hard information about the creatures she wants to study, but she loves the field so much that she doesn't let other people dampen her enthusiasm."

"What makes people think they need to talk about her?"

"Yeah," he said. Then, after a moment, "Oh, you meant that as a real question, not a rhetorical one. My thought is that it follows the basic theory of 'cutting the heads off of the tall ones'. Hard to have an orderly English garden with a beautiful wildflower rambling about."

Neville was a hell of a guy.

Our conversation was interrupted by my seeing a coin on the floor and lunging for it for some reason and thus not being where a broad young man now suddenly was, with a thud, half-lying on the table. Neville's drink was in his hand a few inches over the head of the fellow. I thought to myself, there was never any chance of his drink getting knocked over.

"Sorry, Nev," the young man said. "Didn't see you there."

"Nor the table, nor my friend here," Neville said.

"Friend where?" He lurched around, and managed to corral both of his eyes to focus on me as I straightened up, holding a small piece of silver in my hand. "Oh. What you doing down there?"

"I've been missing you," I said.

"Do I know you?" he said, looking puzzled in a slightly belligerent way, which is to say his eyebrows crashed together like they were enemies.

"This is my friend Deasil," Neville said.

"Deasil? What the bloody hell kind of name is that?"

"You know when you stumble drunkenly to the right? They named that after me."

"Useful," he said. His esses were as broad as a river and similarly damp. "Michael. Michael Corner." He thrust his hand out to shake mine, only it wasn't anywhere near where my hand was likely to be, so he looked confused for a moment, because his hand apparently wasn't doing the expected squeezing and going up and down. He looked at me again, squinted, and then moved to his left a little before trying again. Even then I had to help.

"Hi, Michael," I said. Something nagged at the back of my mind, but there were plenty of unpleasant things back there already so I didn't go in looking for it.

"You're American," he said. "American wizards have shorter wands, eh Neville? Eh?"

"Really?" I said. "I wonder why that is."

"Erm, it's a bit of a myth," Neville said.

"Seen Ginevra?" Michael said.

Hm.

"No, I can't say that I have," Neville said.

I'd last seen her at my parents' house. She wasn't really looking at me. Sirius had just been saying that it would be good for me to get out a little bit and shake some things off, and my parents were a little hesitant to agree, but then Ron had said he'd come along to keep an eye on me, and Bill said he'd check in with us later, and then when I'd looked for that most important of people in the room, I saw her leaving, her face downturned, trying to be invisible. I'd said her name, and she'd said softly that things had been strange enough for one day and that she was going to go and study something that made sense.

It had been like a curse.

"Do you need to tell her something?" I said.

"Oh, yeah, I need to tell her a few things. The woman owes me."

"Did she borrow some money from you?"

His face sort of knotted, as if he were hearing a loud noise.

"She took everything I gave her and never – never… how d'you know her, anyway? Have you seen her around?"

"I see her all the time," I said. "We live together."

"Do what?" he said.

I wasn't sure how to respond to a question that had nothing to do with what I said, so I plowed forward. "If she owes you something, she hasn't mentioned anything like that to me. You must have completely slipped her mind – I mean, we talk about everything and we're nearly always together, like night and day, and not a word about you or whatever this thing is. What?"

I was giving points away to strangers now. He had been looking, throughout my reply, increasingly as though he were trying to crack an egg with some un-visible part of his anatomy not normally used for that purpose and having no luck, though he was giving it great effort.

"She's living with you? All that tosh about taking things slowly and wanting things to be bloody special and here she is shacking up with the first tosser to happen by? Just tell me she at least moved out of bloody Godric's bloody Hollow," he said, striking his forehead with some force.

"Why would she move out of her house?"

"You're living with her…" he said, apparently suffering a little from the blow he'd dealt himself. "In her parents' house. You're all just… living together, all bloody cozy, and they're fine with it."

"Well, they're my parents too."

"You see? This is what I'm… three years trying to get her to go out with me, and them staring holes in me, and the sodding twins turning my hair blue and slipping sodding potions in my food, and you come in from nowhere and it's like you're their bloody son."

"Well, yeah." He was weird. I say that a lot, but you know, there are a lot of strange people in the world.

"Flowers," he said.

"Erm…"

"Not conjured ones, either. The kind you buy with real solid galleons. And bloody chocolate by the trunkload. Even a bloody broom servicing kit."

Okay, I thought. Is it time for me to start listing my favorite things?

"And that would have been nice," he said. "All of that, and you'd think maybe I'd get my broom serv-"

Neville chose this moment to interrupt. It seemed unlike him – he was usually so polite. "Michael, I think you may be a few past your limit."

Michael reoriented his head so that it was sort of facing Neville.

"Look – mate – Nev," he said. "I know we all owe you a great debt of gartude-" It was a new word to me too. "-but you don't know what you're talk – talking about. A bloke…" He assumed a pose that I'm reasonably sure he meant to be a thoughtful one. "A bloke does his part. He's charming and he's funny, right, and he tells the bird she's beautiful, there's no one like her, she's the most, most beautiful bird he's ever seen and he's seen a lot of birds, like Brown over there and Patil and Vane, and he tells her she looks good with him, right, and he was big and strong and would take care of her – you know, what she wants to hear."

"Are you sure you know what she wants to hear?" I said. "None of that sounds like her."

"All the same," he said, swiping his arm like he was fending off a six-foot marshmallow, or finding his way in the dark, or moving through cobwebs, or something. I wasn't sure what. Whatever it was like, it was an ineffective version of that. "They all want to hear the same thing, and then when you give it to them they treat you like dirt."

"What did she do to you?" I asked.

"'S what she didn't do."

"But… but she's very generous. I mean there's nothing she wouldn't do. She's done a lot for me, I mean just the other day-"

"Deasil, I think perhaps…" Neville said, interrupting again, which was funny coming from him.

"Bloody slag," Michael said.

You know, I didn't really get a lot of what these people were talking about. I suddenly became aware of Ron standing a little beyond Michael, doing his waiting thing. I wasn't sure what he was waiting for, but I didn't want to interfere, so I said, "What does that mean?"

"What does that mean?" Michael's voice got quite a bit louder. "It means she's a user. She – she gets you to like her, right, and then next thing you know you're doing things for her and no idea how it started and then she doesn't want anything to do with you, just leaves you hanging -"

He was saying more, but I wasn't hearing it. I kind of leaned out of the rant for a moment so that I could feel what was happening with me. He was describing things that were far too familiar to me, and to her. Why did he think she would do that? She wouldn't even come close to it – the thought would disgust her. That seemed clear enough, as she was now giving me a wide berth because Tom had gotten in for just a little while, and he'd plagued Ginny for almost a year. And why was she avoiding me when she knew what it was like? And what the hell was this complete stranger doing, stirring up my mess in my life?

He was still talking and that had to stop. "Shut up, Michael," I said.

He did, for a moment. Then he wound up again. "Now you fancy a go, eh?" His bottom lip protruded a bit. "You think if a little speck of a girl can push me around, then you can do whatever you like?"

"All I'm telling you," I said, feeling a spring tightening in me, "is Shut and Up. You don't know anything about her. You want to buy her or something, right? She's not for sale. She's not a reward, or a prize. You don't deserve things from her. If she wanted to give you what you wanted, whatever that is, she would have. And that's all you get."

"I don't have to listen to this, you sodding bastard -"

"Then you can listen to this," Ginny said, appearing from behind Ron, her sudden presence like – like something very – sudden. Maybe like a branch that knocks you off your bicycle, or a chrysanthemum in your cereal. Maybe a combination of those two. "You," she said to me, "mind your own bloody business. And you," she said to him, her focus sweeping like a prison spotlight, "you can just sod right off. If you had been the kind of bloke who listens instead of shoveling useless gifts, you might have heard me when I said we were over."

I know she'd said I should mind my own business, but I could feel something wanting to break open in me at the sight of her, some precious relief that she was there and that maybe we could actually talk about this horrible day, and I couldn't bring myself to feel reprimanded or anything. I just wanted to reach out and feel her there.

But Michael beat me to it, grabbing her arm with some force and saying, "We're over when I say we -"

And that's as far as that went, because I felt a frown come down on my face like an avalanche, and it made me close my eyes, and when I opened them again he was gone.

She went from surprised to angry very quickly. The woman was volatile. "Where is he?"

"Somewhere muddy," I said. I was trying to break the frown, and it was lifting, but slowly.

"Is he all right?"

"If he gets his head out of the mud, he will be," I said. I was unfamiliar with my own tone.

"Did I or did I not tell you to mind your own business?" Strong arms in her pale t-shirt, folded over her chest. One forearm red from his rough hand.

"You did, but that -"

"I don't need," she said, stepping closer to me, "you or anyone else to handle my problems. Michael is a big idiot and he was about to be reminded of that by my wand. I was going to let him know in no uncertain terms what would happen to him if he ever put a hand on me again. He would look at me and know that I would not allow it again. And now what does he know?"

I abruptly realized it was not a rhetorical question. "What does -"

"You're listening. That's good. He now knows that when you are around, if he does something foolish, that you will put an end to it with your random wandless chaotic magic, and that I will stand back and allow that. But when you're not around, he will assume I'm fair game."

"But he -"

"He does not know now that I can beat him senseless on my own, and so he'll be tempted to get some of his own back with me. Thus, I will have to fight this battle again with him later. You've humiliated him and given him something to prove. Well done all round, Deasil."

"But I didn't -" I stopped, and waited for a moment. Her hair, red against her pale neck. "Are you going to interrupt m-"

"Probably. Get on with it," she said.

Okay, so I was jumpy now, and she knew it. But I had things to say. "He was saying…wrong things. I couldn't listen to them any more, and then he grabbed you, and it was, I mean, I didn't mean it, it just happened, but he was grabbing you," was my convincing argument.

"And what could he have said that was so impossible to ignore? He was drunk, Deasil. Drunk people say stupid things."

"He said you were using him."

"That's it?"

That wasn't it. Don't make me say it. I don't have to say anything. I can just stand here quietly.

"He made you sound like…" Clearly I couldn't stand anywhere quietly for long.

She rolled her eyes impatiently at me. "Like what? Like a slag? A… a bloody scarlet woman? What? I kissed the boy a few times. He was cute at first. Then he got stupid and it had to end."

"Like Tom," were the words that came out of my stupid rubber novelty lips.

Neville took a few steps away, around towards Ron, I think to give us a little space. I was wondering what we needed space for, and I didn't like to imagine.

"He said I was like Tom," she said, her voice flat.

I felt a deluge of regret at having opened my mouth. I hoped I had backpedalling skills to equal my blurting ones. "It was – it wasn't even – it was what he said about how he was charmed by you and did things for you and then sort of realized that he … I mean it was really nothing like -"

"So," she said. "It was you who thought I was like Tom."

"No, I didn't, I don't, it was just too close, not you, but too close to what you said, and I knew that was nothing like you, and I couldn't stand it, and I finally figured out he was insulting you and I didn't want to hear it anymore."

No, my backpedalling wasn't any good.

"You think I'm like him, because he left something in me, don't you? You think I'm as bad as he is, don't you? You think I'm going to turn dark like he is and destroy everything around me, everything I l…" She took a deep breath.

"Well, I'm not, even if you think I am," she said.

"I don't!" It was like watching her roll away from me, down a steep hill, out of my reach. I couldn't let that happen. "I know you won't ever do that. I know you. It was just too ugly, and too close, and I had just…" I stopped, because I wasn't sure what to say next. I didn't want to talk about Tom anymore. I was just full up with Tom. And that was my problem right there. "Look, I don't know what I'm supposed to do or not do. I just got here!"

"And how long is that going to work for you?" she said. Turning where she stood, she disapparated.

"But you're the one that thinks it about me," I said to myself.

Ron approached me and put a hand up for a moment, almost patting my shoulder I think, but then took it down.

"You got in where it's tender, mate," he said.

Okay, well, so we went and sat down, Ron and Neville and me, and I didn't have much useful to say, so we just talked about things. We just let things settle. I'd decided not to try to find her, because I figured I'd just say more stupid things that weren't what I meant. But the more I sat with them, the more it seemed that two conversations were going on, one of them in my head and unrelated to the young men I sat with. The outer one was Quidditch and plantlife and "she'll get over it", and the inner one was more like "She thinks I'm the one with evil in me, and maybe she's right, and maybe I should stay away from her though I don't want to though that feels wrong, really wrong, but I'd be protecting her from future stupid things and worse that might come out of me, but she just said she didn't need me to handle her problems and if I was a problem of hers, I mean I kind of like being something of hers, then she'd handle me herself, okay, easy there, D, probably it wouldn't be like that, like what it was like when she did the volcano paradise island thing, and her hands were kind of squeez- …focus, man, she's furious at me, but I can't help it, I was mad at that guy and he grabbed her and then he had to go, I couldn't just let him do it, so okay, I feel protective of her, how else should I feel, and can I just feel it without doing anything about it? I don't know."

I said the last part out loud, I guess. They were looking at me a little funny, and I had to look at them funny as well, because for a second I didn't really recognize them. Redhead, quiet, serious but not far from a laugh, a guy who waited. And a dark-haired guy who had his head down a little, but not for any good reason. What was it again? The dark haired guy shifted and moved his drink, and I saw a flash of red in the glass.

Oh, yeah. Here's me, slurped up through a straw into awareness.

"All right, there, mate?" Ron said. Ron. Faintly hoarse voice but soft, casual, and sure. Remember him. It can't be that hard.

"I… I kind of – I forgot you for a second." I put my hand up to my head. "Maybe I need to eat or something."

"Not a bad idea. Why don't we get a…" He stopped and looked a little put upon. "Bloody hell. Excuse me." He rose quickly and retreated towards the back area he'd gone to before, leaving me and… Neville looking around to see what had gotten him up so quickly. It turned out to be that woman from before, only this time her way was blocked by a tall redheaded man. Bill. She was trying to get past him but he was cheerfully blocking her way between tables, asking her questions about how work was going and generally interfering with her purpose, whatever that might be. It appeared to be that she wanted something from Ron that Ron didn't want to give her, and it seemed to me that it was the sort of thing that Ron might only want to give to Hermione. Also it looked like she was very capable of wrecking Ron's wait-it-out-and-let-the-other-person-make-a-move cool. Her voice was rising gradually, though it was hard for me to understand what she was saying – pub chatter and a ringing in my ears – and it didn't sound like it was going to get softer any time soon, and, you know, it was bothering me, but I was tired of using magic to make things go away, so before I knew it I was wandering over to the two of them, bent on quiet. Or less noise, anyway.

She was becoming increasingly shrill. It was like walking into a wind storm, the sort in which large slabs of beef and pitchforks were being kicked up and thrown at one, and I know that sounds like the unfortunate meeting of a farm and a tornado and also I know that when I don't like things that it often sounds like I'm getting pummeled with food, and, well, I'm like that. But it was loud and I wasn't taking it very well. Maybe something today would be able to have sense made of it.

She was in mid-keen and looking a little disheveled when I said, "Lavender, right? I almost didn't recognize you from the volume."

"You," she said, appropriating me, "you tell William that I need to speak with his brother. You tell him he's in the way of two people who need to be together."

"Oh, hey, Deasil," Bill said, eyeing me but not really turning, as to do so would have given ground. "I was just telling Lavender about how Ron needed to floo Hermione about the – that thing they're doing together, that they always do together, you know."

"Argue?" I said. That was one of the things they always did.

Bill sighed a little. "No, not that." Lavender looked satisfied.

"Kissing, then? They do a lot of that. It's kind of funny, really, you'd think Hermione was a little stiff, you know, not very affectionate, I mean she's kind of formal, but I walked in on them the other day and she was really, uh, I'm not going to finish that sentence." Bill was cracking a smile and she looked like the smoking top of a campfire. "Anyway, that?"

"See now, Lavender? It's like I was telling you," Bill said. "They're very happy together. Now maybe if you -"

"So she's throwing herself at him," she said. "Anyone could do that – Ron likes a good snog, doesn't he? What man wouldn't?"

"Um, there's probably a bit more to it than-"

"Oh, come on, this is Ron we're talking about, he's a hero, for Merlin's sake, he needs a partner more suitable for him, not some bookish public servant – d'you know what's unspeakable? That witch's hair's unspeakable -"

"Lav, you need to let this go, it was one time and he was drunk and she knows about it and it's over!" Bill's voice rose. As it did, a napkin rose off of the table next to him, opening more and more as he got louder, until at the moment he stopped when it was trembling a bit and poised up on one corner. He and Lavender turned to look at it for a moment, at which point it stopped trembling and fell to the tabletop in a sort of going-about-its-business way.

A little silence. Good for me to think in. She thought Ron was great. She thought Hermione wasn't. She didn't care what anyone else thought.

Right now, I didn't either. I wasn't going to get into it. "Bill, I have to get out of here."

He looked back at me. "Just a moment, Deasil. I need to tell my little brother we're going."

Lavender said, "And I need to see him." She darted around us and went straight for the beleaguered guy in question, who was exiting the bathroom and looking like he was about to get a quart of blood drawn. She stood in front of him and started saying something to him that made him round his shoulders over.

"Getting his medicine," Bill said. Ron sank into a nearby chair and she settled into another and began to speak while attempting to take his hand, which he evaded.

"This is ridiculous," I said. "Can't we just – oh, never mind." I started to make my way over to them.

I could only hear the tone of her voice. It would go low and rich ("mmmmmmm"), then flip up at the end ("whoop") like a jester's footwear. Occasionally there was a little tinkling giggle, which would have put the bell on the toe, so to speak. I gave a split-second's thought to where I had seen or heard of that before, but no more than that. Ron's tone was morose.

"I wasn't," he said.

Mmmmmmmm whoop.

"You know what I said."

Mmmmmmmm whoop tinkle.

"I never did that."

Mmmmmmm.

"It was just that one time, Lav."

Whoop. Mmmmmmmmmm. Mmmmm. Tinkle.

"That was ages ago."

Mmmmmmmmm "-the way you look at me."

"You're imagining things. I look at you like someone who just wants a little peace."

"I can be very peaceful, Ron."

"I am peaceful enough with Hermione," he said, enunciating her name like he wanted her to know how it was spelled.

"I'm sure it's quite peaceful," she said. "She's such a thoughtful, bookish woman. There must be simply hours of peace while she's reading all of her books that she can't talk to you about."

There was a pause, after which his voice changed a little, becoming more stiff. "She's an Unspeakable, Lavender. I don't need to know what her work is about. We talk about things that are important to us."

"Ron, can't you see? I know you. You're a passionate man. You need a woman who is as passionate as you are. I know how we were together -"

"We were hormonal teenagers and I was trying to make her jealous!"

"We both know it was more than that," she said. He couldn't deter her at all. "Maybe you need reminding."

"I don't need reminding of anything! It's only her! Whenever I say 'she' I mean her. I mean, if there's a her, it's always her. Deasil! Deasil, mate, tell her about the 'her' thing, like it's always her, right?"

She didn't turn around to acknowledge me. "Do I make you nervous, Ronnie?"

"My mum calls me 'Ronnie'," he said. I wondered if he meant my mum or his.

"Does she not like Hermione or something?" I said.

"Not so much," Ron said. Lavender turned and glared at me with a dislike that looked sprayed on.

"You don't know her very well, then," I said.

She rose up out of her chair in a way I was supposed to be threatened by, and her wand was in her hand.

"I have been trying for weeks to get this man alone and neither you nor anyone else is going to interfere with me now," she said. I know she meant me to be cowed, but it was really more kittenish than anything. "You have all been trying to keep us apart, and I am fed up with it. I won't have it. Now go away and leave us alone."

I felt that this was getting away from me. I wanted to make sense of this thing, to solve this conflict. At least that would be one taken care of. Also it was distracting me from that creeping feeling of being preoccupied – in the sense that a car can be pre-owned - and anything that got in the way of that was good with me. "Any…way. Sit down."

She did, slowly, but making a show of indignation. Another pretense. This woman never knew when to stop acting, even though it made her plain. Okay, D, let's rub some brain cells together and make a spark. I put my hands on the table, for a little strength, maybe.

"So Lavender – when he says he loves Hermione do you believe him? I mean, you don't think he would lie to you, do you?"

"Erm… no."

"And that's what you like about him, right? He's honest and true and loyal."

"Well, yeah…"

"So when you try to get him to step outside of that… if he did, then you'd know you couldn't trust him, right?"

"I…"

"And then you wouldn't want to keep him because he wouldn't be who you were attracted to in the first place, right?"

"I…"

"So the one you want is someone who wants you and only you, not someone you have to try to take from someone else – so it's not Ron you want, because if he turned to you he'd stop being Ron. So why don't you stop trying to make him and yourself miserable and go find the other person?"

Her head turned down, her golden hair fallen past her shoulders; her eyes were pale with reflected light, her mouth tugged with thought, and as she leaned forward and breathed deeply to calm herself, her bosom swelled sweetly. She was pretty again. To me, anyway. Like that mattered to anyone, me included. But it was far better than the alternative.

"Sorry, Ron," she said. I almost didn't hear her. "I should have respected you when you told me how things were."

He sat still for a moment. "I made a promise to Hermione," he said, "and you didn't think I meant it. So you thought I was a liar and that she wasn't worth respecting. The way I see it, you've been insulting us both, really."

"Oh, but – but you mustn't – Ron, it was your promise that made you seem so – good. I wasn't thinking of Hermione at all – I was just thinking that I wished someone would do that for me. I was looking in the wrong place, and I was… I was selfish, and you are both right to hate me."

"No one hates you, Lav. But you owe her an apology for being awful to her. She never understood why you were doing it. Me either, for that matter, until now, anyway."

"And I owe you one too. I'm sorry, Ron. I've been an awful hag." Well, that was going a bit far for her, but it was an effort.

"Just talk to her about it." There was finality in his words. Subtle, but I felt like it communicated that she was getting off easy, as long as she did right by Hermione.

She rose. "Your friend is smart, even if he's a little weird. He's met Luna, hasn't he?"

"She's one of my best friends, certainly the oldest," I said, liking that I could say that.

"Can't get much past her, either, can you? I always, kind of, secretly…" She didn't seem able to say she liked Luna. My friend was apparently a guilty pleasure. Bit of an underground sensation.

I wondered what the hell was wrong with these people.

"Right, that's me done," I said. "Say hi to her, Ron."

"Huh?"

"Your 'her,' Ron. The 'her' you're about to go see." I motioned to Bill, who ambled over.

"D…" Ron said.

"See you at the house," I said. "See, everything's fine, Bill. Let's go."

"Wait, where are we going?"

"Where can we eat?"

He paused, not ready for this question. Something occurred to him, and his face changed. "Can you really apparate long-distance?"

"Yes, if you don't mind throwing up."

"Well…there's a place near the bank – just opened, and I've been wanting to try it out. Mum has been forcing so much food down me that I never get the chance to eat anywhere else."

"The bank. Where's that?"

"How about the place you got your wand – can you manage that?"

I thought about it. The alley. I'd been there only in broad daylight, and it was surely evening by now. I'd listened to Hermione's explanation of how apparating works, how you had to visualize the place clearly in your mind, which is why I ended up in a wall in the stupid Chamber of aromatic Secrets (it smelled in there, that was another secret that didn't get around), and I remembered that I'd said, "What if you go at night?" and she'd first looked puzzled, then dismissive, then puzzled again. Then she'd said, "It's a locative spell. It doesn't matter about daylight." And I'd said, "What if it's raining there?" and she said that the rain drops are shoved out of the space that you occupy, most often, and I said okay but what if you only know what a place looks like when it's wet and you can't visualize it any other way, and she said that didn't matter either and when I asked why she got a bit more irritated and anyway I wasn't talking about that, I was trying to visualize the street outside of Ollivander's, and I remembered the door pull and how it was worn and yellowed and looked like a giant tooth, but like a tooth from a creature who was extremely patient because it allowed people to put their hands on its teeth for years and years until they were slightly…

"I've got it," I said. I grabbed his hand.

•

That sucked.

I mean to say it was like being pulled through your own navel by a vacuum cleaner that you'd swallowed earlier. Then burping yourself up again.

As the alley puddled around me I felt happy that I'd held on tightly to Bill, and wondered what would happen if I let go during the suck. Would he have made it here if he hadn't had a visual memory of it? If not, where would he have gone? If he'd stayed half-way, then where was that?

I was definitely hungry.

Until Bill threw up next to me, which took the edge off of it.

"You weren't kidding about the sick," he said after a moment.

"I wouldn't lie to you," I said, scratching my forehead. In the falling dark I saw that there were only a few people about. Behind Bill a tall man spun and headed down another alley, and the sounds of owls and final commerce were faint. Ollivander's store was closed and shuttered.

"It's back towards the bank," he said, making his mess go away someplace – I hoped it was a place where they were tolerant of that sort of thing: you know, vomit appearing out of thin air. It was a funny bit of magic, that I didn't want to practice – I mean I liked to move things around sometimes, or maybe make some idiot go away and stick his head in the mud where it had been metaphorically for some time, but I didn't get rid of him or anything, and I didn't make him someone else's problem. It struck me that people didn't want to think about it, and definitely didn't want someone showing up later with a heap of discarded stuff, saying "I believe this is yours?" But you can't get something for nothing, and when things vanished, they appeared somewhere else – at least it seemed that way to me. Woolgathering in this manner, I followed Bill up the street, past a used robe shop.

"So I ran into Ginny right before I came over," he said, and he sounded casual, so he was making an effort. "She seemed a bit put out."

"Yeah, we had a similarity of opinion," I said.

"A sim – how so?"

I felt tired answering it. "She thinks I'm an ass, and I also think that I'm an ass."

He laughed.

I said, "I got a little angry at a guy who was also being an ass -"

"Michael."

"–and kind of took things out of her hands, and she got angry with me for doing it."

"Right," he said. "On the one hand I applaud your desire to protect my little sister. On the other hand, I know she despises that."

"Well, I know why she hates it when you guys do it," I said. "She feels like it's too little, too late, and since she's taken the trouble to get strong on her own, it's kind of useless for her brothers to start looking out for her now."

He was silent for a moment as we walked. "I must say I hadn't heard it put so baldly before, Deasil, but you're right about that. So it must be equally frustrating for her to get the same thing from you."

"But I never knew her when she was going through all of those things."

"Yeah, but she had a roomful of brothers who did know her, and when you grow up with brothers they're part of the rulebook that you use to evaluate men." We had come to the bank, and stopped in front. "As much as we love her and she loves us, there's a part of her that wants to escape us and be her own person, and when she's around someone who she… likes, she will react strongly when she feels like that person is treating her in the same way as the people she wants to escape from."

"So it doesn't matter if it just feels natural to protect her?"

"Well, no, not really. I'm not saying this is just, or fair. But I am saying she is who she is, and part of being with her is accepting that."

"Accepting that?" I wasn't really sure what he meant. "How is that different from…I mean, I already know that she's who she is – who else would she be? And if she were someone else, we wouldn't be talking about her."

He looked a little puzzled himself, but then his gaze wandered to the side street behind me.

"Is that Fleur?" he said. She was his girlfriend – we had not met. "She shouldn't be going down there."

I looked down the street and saw no one. "Who? Where?" Surely that was worth points to someone, but I don't count those.

"She's right there – Fleur!" He hurried past me. "Come on, Deasil, and keep up, it's a little dodgy over here."

I followed him, though there wasn't anyone there. There was a flicker in the air at the end, as if someone had thrown gauze made of silver, and my first thought at seeing it was "That's not for me." It was a strange thought, but I didn't have any time for it. Bill was several strides ahead of me, passing bins of black furry things that looked like giant spider legs and tiny replicas of heads. Ordinarily I would have stopped and looked – no, I wouldn't. He rounded a corner and I briefly saw his shadow on the wall to the left, larger than human and with his arms out, then it was gone, leaving an afterimage in my vision. I followed him around the corner and almost ran right into him.

He had stopped in front of a pale blond-haired man in a black robe. Bills arms were out but not moving, and in the growing dark he looked a little gray.

The man held a wand in one hand, and a silver-tipped, snake-headed cane in the other. He looked a little pleased with himself.

"Accio wands," he said. Bill's popped out of his pocket and ended up in the man's hand, but I'd left mine at home.

"Out without your wand," the man said, a little slowly, as if he were demonstrating the act of speaking. "That leaves you defenseless."

Bill was still. His eyes blinked rapidly, but that was all. This struck me as odd.

"Thanks – I'll try to remember that. Who are you?" I said.

"My name is Lucius Malfoy, and I know who you are, boy."

"How? Do you know my parents?" The name was familiar. Kind of on two levels.

"You might say that. Ever since the prophecy was made," he said.

"You know about that too," I said.

"Of course I do. We knew of it almost as soon as it was made."

Hm. I was thinking a couple of things – one was that I'd thought the prophecy was supposed to be a little bit of a secret, and here perfect strangers in the street were bringing it up. The other was that I wanted to ask Bill about that but he was still standing utterly still. I kind of wanted to ask him about that as well, but sometimes I feel like letting people do what they're doing if I don't understand what's going on, because I might learn something.

"It was wrong, of course," he said. "Whatever weapon you used on our master was insufficient, as he had already learned how to move beyond death."

Oh. Wait. So this man was a Death Eater, only without the mask on. This was the weird–guy-from-the-alley's dad… the man who gave Ginny the diary with Tom in it… she fought him. She and Ron and Hermione.

"And then what happened to you?" he said, as if speaking to a small child. Quite separate from any thoughts I was familiar with came a brief one, unlike me, raking over my mind before vanishing utterly: How dare you.

He went on. "Taken from your family by Sirius Black when you were four, only - that didn't really happen, did it? Very mysterious, I should think. And no one able to speak your name – rather ironic, yes? Gone all these years, everyone believing you're dead, and then, as the Dark Lord returns from evading death a second time, you reappear."

And he had given her a scar on her arm, a pink mark. Like breaking the calm of a perfect lake. He gave her a scar on her perfect arm.

"I thought that you were supposed to be lucky," he said.

"Luck is a funny thing," I said.

"Surely. All of these years you've been hiding from him and now you just happen to stumble into my hands. Luck, you stupid boy, appears to be all –" he pointed his wand at me "- mine."

"Things happen," I said.

"They do," he said, "and they have only begun to happen to you, Mister Potter. Starting with the long-overdue deaths of your worthless parents, and the torture of your friends – oh, and that would include Miss Weasley, would it not?"

"She is my friend," I said. I was aware of my own stillness and of something in me that was anything but still.

"The dark lord will make great use of you," he said. "Your suffering at his hand will increase his power and return him to the glorious road you somehow drove him from all those years ago."

I said nothing. I was too loud inside.

"He has carried us a long way, Harry Potter, through taking pain and giving it, transforming it into ecstasy, through bringing death and now, soon, defeating it. The killing makes us stronger, you see. And when we have learned to take life as he does, then he will show us all how to cheat death, using the deaths of mudbloods and muggles to augur our own immortality.

"It's too bad your blood-traitor slut will not survive to serve us in that fashion," he said, and the sibilance in his voice was like a branding iron on skin. His wand was black and shiny in the dusk, as though it were coated with a viscous fluid.

"Ever since we used her to open the Chamber I have thought of… other uses for her. Cast aside by the dark lord like a dirty dish, or a used tissue perhaps, yet there is still a little spark left in her, and I should think that I would rather enjoy watching that spark… go out."

Well, it's strange. But at that moment, I was being drawn along by something that I couldn't identify. Trying to find my place in this. There was a question, and an answer, and an action. I thought so, anyway. I felt like Arthur had, in the pub, a long time ago. I didn't want this. Regardless of my unrest, my stirred-up depths, my inner dark whomever it came from. But there was a simple quality to the moment. Something that felt undeniable. Something I could fit into.

Question, answer, action.

"Are you sure that's what you want?" I said.

The question seemed to surprise him. He considered me a moment before answering. "Quite sure," he said.

"You won't reconsider? You won't let her be?" I said.

His upper lip bent upwards. A brief shimmer of saliva connecting, like a spider web. "If this is your idea of begging for her life," he said, "then I don't believe you've quite got the spirit of it."

"I'm asking you if what you've said is what you are going to do. If you are a man of your word."

He was seeing something other than me, in his mind - I could tell by the way his eyes went out of focus briefly. I didn't want to look in there, but I knew I had to.

I can't talk about it.

"It is my right as part of the order that is to be, and is ever the way of men of power," he said. "I do as I will."

"I know you would," I said.

His eyes went wide, and from his chest I heard a twisting sound, a snapping and a muffled wet rending sound, and the shape of his torso changed, a small ripple, like a shadow had passed over him. He gasped once, and fell face-down. Never an object more still than his body, as his robes settled over him, bunching at his neck and revealing bare shins, pale between his dark socks and trousers.

"What – what…" Bill said, taking one unsteady step forward.

"I think I broke his heart," I said.

We were even.

•

A/N: Thanks to everyone for their patience in waiting on this update. I also want to thank moshpit for a read-through and some very good ideas, and Freja for insight and good humor, and Jules for the final seal.