So, I had covid over Christmas. Yay. It's like strep and bronchitis had a deeply fucked up baby. Choked on my own mucus at several points. My brain felt like a pudding for ten days. I do appreciate the irony of getting covid from the job that hired me to test for covid during essentially my last week on the job. Love it. Hilarious. I should have listened to my instinct to not go to the company Christmas party, but they had cake. The cake was amazing (chocolate and raspberry), but I would not call it covid worthy.

Happy New Year!

Oo0Oo0

July 26, 1997

The touch of Lucinda's mind felt like that of an old friend or the cold hand of a mother checking their child for a fever. It was easy, comfortable and familiar in a way that comforted me in an unspoken, primal sort of way.

To stand in the forest between two branching paths, the roads laid with signs pointing in opposite directions, the signs warning of both danger and peace in each direction in a confusing array of falsity and truth.

I felt Lucinda reach out again and the landscape shifted to a field with a little cottage house sitting at its heart, nestled in yellowing grass and green hedges at the edges of the property that stood firm in the slight breeze. A comfortable image I created to lure in invaders to a sense of peace and safety under what they would believe to be a true memory.

Lucinda's invading presence was stern, the outline of her loomed at the garden gate, her cloak billowing to the side in the breeze. Her form shifted to something fey and ancient, beyond my short comprehension of years. Faded and wispy, cold and hungry for something I could not place as the seasons began to change under her influence. Lucinda liked to probe my mind under particular conditions, she preferred a cold highland winter to unsettle my grip on the sanctuary I had crafted.

The clouds rolled down, dark gray and heavy as the gate Lucinda was pushing open slammed closed with a thud as the snow began to fall.

I focused on holding my image of the sanctuary I had built over the last year. I did not want to push her out and away, I wanted to build a convincing lure to false memories.

She tapped the wood of the gate, smiling in satisfaction at the sound and brushed her fingers against it to nod and the texture.

"Nicely done."

Lucinda's approval was rarely given in these scenarios, I felt myself flush for the attention and sincerity of it as the praise bounced inside of my head like an echo.

The scene shifted as Lucinda forced her way deeper into my mind, not falling for my easy trap beyond the wooden gate. A swirl of color and voices found us in the middle of a street lined with cages and enclosures that contained many magical creatures.

I was much smaller than I had been in the country cottage I imagined for myself. My hair was bobbed to my chin and the sparkly pink coat I was wearing solidified that I was around four in this memory. It was my recollection of one of the days mom and I would take day trips after Alex left for Ilvermorny.

This was the New York Magical Habitat and Rehabilitation Zoo. Mom brought me here a lot as a girl. She liked the creatures that were native to America that she never saw or studied back in Britain and buying tickets supported the organization and their causes. Dad preferred this one to the No-Maj zoo, the snake dens here were not eye level with nosy little girls and had deeper enclosures that were able to keep them away from tiny parseltongues.

I could see the wampus enclosure, the large six legged puma was sitting in a tree with a contented expression, its tail switching back and forth as it looked down at the feeding station below and to the enrichment chase toy nearby.

Several feet down the road was an enclosure with a blinded horned serpent who could no longer live in the wild and was spending the remainder of its life as part of an educational program. She was out sunning on a rock in the center of the river, her scales glimmering green and aqua in the sunlight, her horns were like the antlers of a deer, only white like old bone.

My mother had knelt down to talk to me, her blonde hair was loose and fell forward taking the brunt of my vision for a moment until she brushed it back behind her ears. She looked content and happy, she brushed stray hairs from my face before picking me up to have a better look at the animals as she pointed them out to me, her voice full of excitement to engage me and make me giggle in shrieks of laughter.

The image shifted to reveal Lucinda appearing next to us out of thin air as if she were molded into being by it.

Lucinda admired the serpent, tilting her head with a wry smile before turning back to me. "This would work if I did not know you as well as I do." She pointed at the snake. "I like how you have entwined and layered true, harmless memories with the false ones that hide anything of value. Clever."

She pointed at the ruby gem on the horned serpent's forehead.

The scene shifted again as Lucinda forced her way into the next layer, the swirling color of the ruby gem consuming my vision.

"I'm impressed with these," Lucinda waved her wand and disappeared the attacking books that were flying off the shelves in the Ilvermorny library. "Very astute to attack me with your own surroundings, but I would remove the teeth on the bestiaries, a bit on the nose."

Chastity was popping her popper gum loudly in the corner as she hid a raunchy novel behind the textbook she was pretending to study from one of the nearby study tables. This was our sixth year, her brown hair was very long and she was wearing a plaid shirt as a jacket in what she called modern No-Maj grunge style. I had no intention of dress coding her even as a dormitory duties, it was a Saturday and she was not in class, therefore she could wear what she liked as long as her private bits weren't popping out. Besides, I thought it was kind of cool.

I was pretty amazed she had gotten that outfit into the home of her preacher father let alone got it out again to come to school.

"Audie!" Chastity waved me over with a bright smile.

This was a real memory like the others after the cottage, but, aside from the one with my mother, they were meaningless and distracting. I had hidden things within the memories that would lead to the core of my memory palace in a roundabout manner. The grass trap beyond the wooden gate. The snake in the zoo. Here in the Ilvermorny library was a real trap.

Chastity had never spent any time in the library to read raunchy novels. She did that in more public settings on the grounds or at the Quadpot stadium. Also, she hated No-Maj gum, she said the flavor never lasted longer than two minutes and magical gum tended to spark and the bubbles would take the shapes of animals.

Lucinda reached out for the copy of my favorite book The Time and the Night that was laying on a nearby table.

Then there was nothing but noise, a loud yelp from Lucinda as she lost her grip on her legilimency spell and the trap I laid broke open the wall of her own mind.

I suddenly found myself sitting on the couch of Lucinda's parlor while my great aunt aggressively sipped her tea next to me. Across from us was an older woman at the later end of middle age with graying brown hair and a thin, pinched mouth.

"I believe we can come to an agreement over Thornell under the right conditions." The woman had a voice that was quiet as if she were speaking to a child and not someone much older.

I looked out the window to focus on what Tavish was doing to the bushes for a moment, what shapes he was turning these bushes into with rhythmic flicks of his wand as he consulted his notebook of ideas and garden planning.

"Lucina did make an advantageous marriage, even if it was not one of your own choosing."

If I focused, I would be able to hear Lucinda's teeth grinding together in a symphony of repressed rage behind her idle smile.

"We are willing to let go of the inheritance agreement."

That would be great! I looked over at Lucinda who was still smiling pleasantly at the Averys, masking the disdain I could feel radiating off of her even in memory.

"We will relinquish any rights to the house and petition the court with you to see it changed formally to whatever you see fit if Audrey marries Harrow."

A cold dread settled in my gut, my brain whirred with possibilities to end any made arrangements quickly with prejudice.

"Ianthe, you and I both know there is no controlling those Americans. I'm not convinced her father would be amicable to the idea and he would have more sway over the girl then I do."

Liar.

Lucinda took a sip of tea and the world changed around me for the final time.

I was back in Lucinda's office, my brain bouncing around in my skull and a wave of nausea overcoming me momentarily as I gripped the arms of the chair. Lucinda looked no worse for the wear from where she sat on the other side of the desk. She looked at me with an accomplished, proud smile and I felt I knew what she was going to say before she did so.

"Congratulations! You passed."

The smile that I gave at the proclamation threatened to split my face in two.

"I'm truly impressed. I have nothing else to teach you about this." Lucinda smiled at me with such warmth that I would have believed it out of character if it did not have the usual wry edge to it. "Now, there are an assortment of other topics that I feel you could benefit from under my tutelage."

"If you're willing to teach, I'm willing to learn." I leaned back in the chair, the feeling of relief and accomplishment making my limbs slack. "Thank you Lucinda."

Though, if she wanted to spend time with me, she only had to ask and not engage in such elaborate scenarios.

Oo0Oo0

I was still flush with victory over Lucinda's proclamation over my mastery of occlumency as Percy opened the door to his apartment. I rose to the tip of my toes and kissed him on the cheek with a quick hello as the door clicked closed behind me.

"Hi."

"Good evening." He smiled at me with such warmth my stomach flipped and clenched. I lov… I really like the comfort between us. It's so warm and natural, like something that had always been there and would stay there. It's easy. It's simple.

I had turned down Percy's offer to move in with him, I did not want fear to be the primary motivation behind the action. I would allow it to be a factor, but not the main actor. Great men died, it was the natural order of things and I had real doubts that I was important enough or close enough to anyone else who would warrant that kind of response so close to home.

Percy put his hand on my lower back to guide me towards the couch as he proceeded with the niceties.

"How's your aunt?"

"She's fine." I pulled a tin of cookies out of my purse and put them on the living room table. "Lucinda gave me these, they're sugar cookies she got for Christmas, she didn't like them for some reason. No accounting for taste."

Percy grinned. "Who gave them to her?"

"Susanna, the Head of the Administrative Office. They're old friends. Do you need the tin at all?"

He shrugged, "I could find a use for it. Keep my inkwells organized?"

"We sound very old."

"Don't go that far!"

I chuckled and Percy drifted his fingers up and down my spine in a way that was both ticklish and flirtatious before I stepped away to turn on the radio and find the program about the magical society of ancient Egypt that Percy found advertised in the Daily Prophet. We were an hour away from the program starting, but now there was a very low hum of music in the background.

I put my purse down on the floor by the table and sat on the couch next to Percy, pressing against his side as he stretched his arm over the back of the couch behind me with a contented noise. I would probably doze off once the show started, I was very comfortable.

"What do you think about the Azkaban breakout?"

Really? He wants to talk about this now?

"I think you know my opinion on it."

"No, you were muttering under your breath while you were making coffee. I have no idea what you said."

"You know me well enough to make an educated guess."

Percy's arm came down over my shoulders to pull me closer, tucking me firmly against his side. He was very warm.

"Stupid." I said with audible disgust. "It's stupid to keep that from the public."

Every day I worked for the Ministry I felt like I was finding new lows of stupidity and mismanagement. It was the kind of thing my father would come home and rant about, officials who were controlled by outside influences related to money and the lobbyists who controlled the purse strings the way a puppeteer would a marionette.

"I mean, you're not going to tell your citizens that there has been another mass breakout of your clearly penetrable prison?" My arm that was pressed between Percy and myself had enough leeway to move as I spoke and I was vaguely aware of my efforts to wave it around as I continued to rant. "Scrimgeour can't complain about a lack of trust when he shows no transparency."

I assumed Scrimgeour had been going over the will with the critical eye he did not devote to wartime politics. Perhaps that was an uncalled criticism to a man in a position I knew to be an impossible one, but being a political figure meant hearing hard things on occasion and as much leeway as I felt I had, I did not want to push my luck by calling Scrimgeour a lunatic to his face. That would not be good optics. Calling Scrimgeour an idiot to Percy's face was a little different.

"Scrimgeour has holed himself up in his office like a hibernating bear once he got his hands on Dumbledore's will and been functionally a nonentity in matters of direct leadership in a bid to get one metaphorical victory over a dead man."

Whitlock was one of the names on the escapee list. I had quietly mentioned it to Elihu who proceeded to roll his eyes and mutter something about MACUSA having less frequent escapes from our prison compared to Azkaban these days.

"What do you think?" I tried to ignore the way Percy's fingers were trying to undo the loose bun I had my hair in and the way they were massaging my scalp and the nape of my neck in the process.

Percy made some kind of noise between a sigh and a groan.

"I'm sure he has his reasons."

"Do you think there are good reasons for it?" I put my hand on his knee, his fingers stopped trying to undo my hair in surprise as he looked at me. His arm moved to come back to rest over my shoulders. "He should alert the public. The people deserve to know that these people who helped kill Dumbledore escaped at least! They're dangerous!"

"Then people will panic and lose all their faith in the Ministry."

"I don't think the Ministry deserves their faith at this point."

"We need to trust that Scrimgeour knows what he's doing. He's an ex-auror-"

"So are most of my relatives and I wouldn't trust them to be capable of political nuance, I'd trust them to hunt dark wix, but Aurors do that in silence and shadow, political power requires a whole other set of skills to earn the trust of the people. When you are the face of the nation, the face communicates, that's its job and Scrimgeour is not doing that."

"He's making some plan to keep Potter safe."

"I would hope so. Dumbledore getting murdered is one thing, but Harry Potter getting killed not even a month later would kill Scrimgeour's career before he could say chosen one."

"Scrimgeour says that as long as Potter's covered by the Trace, and underaged, then he should be perfectly safe." Percy was speaking with a confidence that I just did not possess on the matter. "He's ordered no floo connections be made to his home, that the area is to be kept under surveillance for his protection. Now all they have to do is figure out how to move him out and keep him alive in a more permanent manner."

I almost asked if the Ministry had plans to freeze Potter's head if he was killed or something. It was a thing No-Majs talked about as a way to be brought back to life in a hundred years or so, the rumor was a famous No-Maj entertainer had secretly had the process done to his own head. I mean, if they thought it would work…

It took restraint not to ask about the head freezing.

The voices on the radio moved into an introduction to the program about the magical society of ancient Egypt, the low rumble of drums entwining with flutes and strings before the presenter's voice began to make introductions.

"My brother Bill is a curse-breaker, he was in Egypt for several years." Percy's voice was low and thoughtful, as if he were dispersing some kind of secret. In a sense it was.

That was surprising, both that Percy clearly had a brother with a cool career and that he had even mentioned one of his older siblings. He preferred discussing his school aged siblings, Ron and Ginny, a kind of pride that was some combination of brotherly and almost a kind of paternal countenance to it that I did not find too strange from his general disposition.

"Really? That's awesome!"

Percy looked distracted, his eyes moving towards an open envelope that was sitting on the table. The flap was open and I could see beautiful blue paper peeking out of the enclosure. I could tell it was a high quality paper, thick, the kind used for formal announcements and invitations.

I reached over to the envelope, giving Percy a questioning look as I silently asked for permission. He gave it with a quick nod of his head. The invitation was printed on a pale blue paper and the words in a creamy ivory color giving it a warm, inviting air.

You are cordially invited to the wedding of Mister William Arthur Weasley and Miss Fleur Isabelle Delacour on the First of August. Ceremony to be held at 3 p.m. and reception to follow.

I took in the rest of the invitation, the ceremony and reception would be held at the Burrow, Percy's family home. That sounded so lovely and intimate. I idly wondered what exactly the house was like. I imagined something warm and inviting, but spacious enough to hold a wedding somewhere on the property.

We had never really talked about it.

It seemed to suit us fine.

"Are you going to go?"

He sighed, shaking his head slightly.

"Why not?"

"The invitation is from my mother, not my brother."

"Oh, that's…"

Awkward.

"The family doesn't care to have me back aside from my mother. I'm not going. If they wanted me there, Bill would have sent me an invitation himself."

Yes. That would be the proper thing. With Percy's mother sending it, it had more of an air of motherly desperation and affection than from that of the family as a collective. An invitation like these would mean more from a relative who would not have reached out previously or had been less insistent. Though, it was very awkward and very… fairytale-esque to have a sensitive reunion like that at a major family event where emotions would already be high for other reasons. It was as if his mother were relying on the standards of civility around weddings to keep everything pleasant.

No. Like Percy, I did not think it would be a good idea to go.

We settled into a comfortable silence as the radio show truly began. The male voice discussing some of the history of Egypt and the famous magicians the ancient world had produced. Tying into the complexities of myth and the rituals involved in placing complex magical curses on wizard tombs and their effects on those trespassers who wished to rib the riches within. The talk fell to the horrifying nature of these curses and the horrible fates of those who originally found and explored these tombs with mummified sorcerers buried within.

I had a passing thought about what it would be like to have a second head, but the idea of a lack of privacy for the rest of my life was the true horror of the scenario.

The program ended an hour later, but we didn't notice, we were busy kissing passionately on the couch. His glasses were pressing against my face until we parted for a moment for Percy to take them off and place them on the side table before turning his full attention back to me.

It was easy to be together like this. Percy's hands in my hair, undoing the loose bun I had my hair in so he could run his fingers through it with one hand and caress the back of my head with the other.

Percy was bossy, but I did not feel it came over in full during moments like this. I would call in more insistent than anything else. He had a better idea in the moment then I did and it was nice not to anxiously analyze what I was doing and exist in the moment where everything else just melted away to a world that existed in touches and quiet whispers as he pressed me back against the sofa cushions. I giggled against his mouth as I lay back, slipping my arms around his neck to play with his hair and keep him on top of me while I moved a stocking covered foot against the back to his leg in a silent approval.

This was nice.

I bent my knees to keep him close on more instinct than thought, cradling his hips between my thighs. He pulled away from my mouth to press his lips against the line of my jaw while seemingly muttering something I couldn't hear before he moved back up to press his mouth against mine again for a brief moment and moved down to my neck where I could feel the playful brush of his teeth as he sucked momentarily on my neck making me gasp and tighten my grip on his hair.

Time seemed to dissipate, outside noises faded away entirely. All I could feel was all the places Percy was touching me, the way he moved against me in a manner so intimate it made me understand why my old roommate Chastity found sex so fascinating. My hips were unconsciously rocking together with his in a way that caused noises to escape me that I had never made before in my life, high gasps and whispery sighs of pleasure.

"Wait…!" The word escaped me with minimal effort and everything suddenly stopped.

Percy exhaled against my neck as his hands slid out from under my skirt where his thumbs were slowly tracing the edge of my panties, brushing my hips and outer thighs with his cool fingers that moved down my legs to my knees as he pulled away from me. I wondered when exactly that had happened during our rendezvous.

I mumbled something that sounded like an apology as he sat up and moved away and I brought my legs back together to tuck beneath myself as I covered my swollen mouth in thought. I had no care for sex on a couch, not now, maybe in the future, there was something interesting I had read in a book that I was intrigued by. I had been comfortable, I felt safe but it suddenly felt so real and inevitable and not something I wanted to happen right at that moment.

I brushed my hair from my face and glanced over at Percy who had leaned back and covered his face with his hands. I could see the bright embarrassed red of his ears as he caught his breath.

"You tell me when. I'm in no hurry."

I nodded slowly as he peeked through his fingers to look at me, a hunger and desperation in his eyes that I was sure was equally matched with my own.

Oo0Oo0

Author's Note: The brain is fascinating, I drafted a large section of this chapter from my bed and it was so much more senseless before the edit.

I think that is the raunchiest thing I have ever put out for public consumption... So far.