Ahead of anything else, it was the narrow and critical look he received from Professor McGonagall when he handed over his permission form to visit Hogsmeade that told Harry an owl would, in fact, be sent to his mother to ensure she was the one who had signed the form herself.

The thought left his mind almost the second he had caught up with Ron, Hermione, Eddie, and the somewhat irritated Lottie down the path away from the castle and towards the small town.

Winter still weeks away, the falling leaves that crumpled underneath their feet were cracking back and forth with the wind, the occasional branch snapping under their feet, and the slowly darkening sky as clouds began to block out the sun. Keeping herself far enough ahead of the four Third Years but not too far for them to be out of earshot, Lottie pushed her wand into her long, tight, and poofy blonde ponytail; the perm much harder to control than she had at first thought. A few paces behind her, Ron scowled at Hermione's cat, this time being walked on a leash which the creature had, despite the suggestion having been off handed on the part of Eddie, taken surprisingly well to. Crookshanks let out a primal hiss at a squirrel that briefly darted across their path, defiantly sitting down and tucking his paws under himself. He glowered up at Hermione when she gently tugged at his leash, but relented after a few minutes and began walking again, almost pulling her along to catch back up with Harry, Ron, Eddie, and Lottie. Crookshanks, nevertheless, when he and his bushy haired owner was back in the fold with her friends and their reluctant guide, began to growl and hiss at leaves, doing the same, even, to the other students passing by them in, it seemed, even more of a rush towards the town.

"Damn cat is possessed," Ron grumbled, primarily to Harry with a wary look at Crookshanks. "Even if it doesn't kill Scabbers, I still think it's possessed."

"He's a cat, Ronald," Hermione scowled at him. "It's in his nature to chase after smaller prey. I agreed to take him out because you were so worried he'd sneak into the boy's dorms to terrorise Scabbers, but if you were a little more responsible with your rat, then –"

"Shut it about the damn rat," Lottie turned towards them, walking backwards and clicking her fingers at them. "You've got ten minutes starting now to ask me any questions and, after that, I don't know any of you and you don't know me."

Eddie snickered. "Kind of hard to pull that when there was a full family photograph on the cover of the Prophet just three years ago when dad got the top job and then again after mum and dad had Cat just two –"

"What did you usually do when you first got to come out here?" Hermione excitedly pressed. "With older cousins, I'm sure you heard a lot before you were able to go see it for yourself!"

Lottie rolled her eyes. "Liam wasn't going to tell me anything because he rarely went out, preferred to study all day, and, besides, he'd already finished school by the time I was a Year Three. Cathleen, on the other hand, was useful but told me to go explore the Shrieking Shack on Hallow's Eve for a laugh – hers, not mine – and I almost locked myself in a cellar I mistook for the entrance."

"Didn't you two pull the same trick on Rufus when he got to Year Three two years ago?" Eddie said, trying not to laugh.

"We did but we purposefully hid in the Shrieking Shack to scare him," Lottie smirked. "That would've been the highlight of my life so far, but I'm still holding out hope on one last thing before I finish school in May."

Ron grimaced. "Hope you aren't planning on doing anything to us."

"To your brother, actually," Lottie replied, stretching out her arms. "I'm still angry with Percy for getting me detention, but I'll forgive him if he gets Dumbledore to reinstate one of the more archaic rules no one actually enforces anymore."

"Did you find them while reading?" Hermione eagerly said.

"Actually, yes," Lottie replied. "It's towards the back of the third volume of Hogwarts: A History but it used to be that, if one were made Head Boy of his house, the Head Boy in question would gain the right to grow facial hair and graze his sheep on the Headmaster's lawn. I've been trying to goad Percy into doing it, and I think I'll wear him down soon enough but, for now, he thinks it's just stupid."

Harry laughed. "More brilliant. I'd like to see Percy try to tend to sheep."

"Not bloody likely," Ron said, laughing as well. "He barely tolerates de-gnomeing the garden when mum forces him too."

"De-gnomeing?" Hermione sceptically repeated. "Are your neighbours pulling your legs?"

"We don't have a lot of…real neighbours, not the kind you're thinking of," Ron said with an exaggerated shudder. "No, gnomes as in the creatures, not the weird little ceramics muggles put in their gardens. They're annoying little things and I say that as someone who's grown up with a ghoul in the attic above my room."

"I don't think I've ever seen any either," Eddie confessed. "I know they exist, but my aunt Philomena doesn't have any kids and lives in London like we do, and my uncle Mike and aunt Gemma live up in Coventry but don't have a yard. And my grandmother – not the one Stateside – has been living in Essex since…God, had to have been '65, wasn't it?"

"'63, but yes," Lottie corrected. "And she likes to blend in. The last thing she would tolerate would be a gnome infestation. It'd ruin her being able to be the mysterious wealthy woman who wears dark sunglasses and a Grace Kelly scarf everywhere and who has only a handful of friends she goes out to High Tea with."

Hermione sighed. "I swear, muggle families are a lot less…eccentric."

"If you discount my aunt, uncle, and cousin, I'll give you that," Harry said, reaching up to check the bridge of his glasses. "Every time I see them, Dudley destroys my glasses. Usually more than once. Mum has picked me up from visiting with them when she can't stay – or doesn't want to fight with my aunt and especially my uncle – more than once to find my glasses held together by tape, and she hasn't left me around them alone for very long since. I don't know why she bothers. They're horrible. And I don't think there's anything in the world they hate more than magic."

"I can't believe Dudley tried to beat you into giving him sweets," Ron rolled his eyes. "Glad you did a good job hiding them while you were there, though. The git didn't deserve the good sweets Hermione and I sent you before you went to visit."

"You had a busy summer too," Eddie teased. "What with going to Egypt to visit your brother after your dad won the lottery and Fred and George nearly locking Percy in a pyramid."

Lottie turned her focus to Ron, trying not to burst out laughing. "They tried to…" She went slowly, glancing briefly over her shoulder to ensure she wouldn't walk backwards into anything the closer they got to town. "They tried to imprison Percy for all eternity in a pyramid?"

"He'd been a prat all the way since finding out he'd be Head Boy," Ron said with a shrug. "Fred and George got me a couple of things too – better than trying to lock me up – and then gave me a little bit of gold they'd nicked off Percy. I got a pocket sneak-o-scope with that gold, and Bill called it junk without realising Fred and George were pulling one over on him when it started going off during dinner one night."

"I'm sure he deserved it but you have," Lottie glanced at her watch. "Three minutes left. I doubt you've thought much of it but do yourselves all a favour and don't go to the lake at night. Unless you want to risk getting drowned, of course."

"Drowned?" Harry said. "By what?"

"Also," Hermione said, lightly tugging on Crookshanks' leash when the cat tried jump onto Ron. "Why would we even go there when it's so far removed from where everything is in town?"

"Oh, I don't know," Lottie said before winking at them with a smirk. "Try to impress your date? Or simply an excuse to sneak out at night without getting caught going in or out? Although, maybe, you'd choose to get caught? That can be half the fun, especially when you're in the mood to get into trouble to prove a point."

Eddie eyed her strangely, his brow furrowing. "Is that what was behind your summer activities? Because it can be fun knowing we're doing something mum wouldn't approve of but –"

"I don't give a damn about what Delia thinks," Lottie snapped. "I'm not some perfect eldest child – which is what she wants – and, if she doesn't like how I look, then that's her problem, not mine."

"I think mum'd kill me if she ever heard me call her Molly, even to my friends," Ron said halfway under his breath.

"After grandpa was killed, mum's just been a little overpr –" Eddie uneasily started.

"I know her dad being blown up at the World Trade Centre back in February was upsetting – for all of us, not just her – but she's not being 'overprotective,' she's been unreasonable," Lottie cut across without a second of hesitation. "Don't try and make excuses for her just because we've all been upset about grandpa's unnecessary death he walked into arriving at work one morning. She's not the only one upset, and she never is. Don't make up reasons to defend her. You're acting like Cathleen."

Eddie shook out his somewhat messy, curly dark hair. "Mum's her godmother, and Cathleen babysits Cat while mum and dad work every day. 'Course Cathleen defends her, especially when mum has been far more of a mother to her than aunt Gemma has –"

"Shut it!" Lottie took another look at her watch before glaring at him, Hermione, Ron, and Harry. "Time's up. Go enjoy yourselves and scram."

Turning her back on the four, she stormed off in a huff. Crookshanks let out a discontented meow when Hermione stopped walking, and glared at her almost as imperiously. Ron looked between her, Harry, Eddie, and the quickly fading visage of Lottie in the distance; the four much younger teenagers a little taken aback.

"Sorry to drop family tensions on you," Eddie said, breaking the brief silence. "But I think I understand what dad meant, now, about Lottie needing to be nicer to mum, but I didn't expect Lottie to ever turn on me."

Hermione frowned. "Are you worried she'll blow a fuse on Ivey, too?"

"Doubt it," Eddie said. "She's always been a little protective towards me, Ivey, Aiden, and Cat, but she treats Ivey almost like a doll. Ivey could try to stab Lottie to death and be caught holding the knife, and Lottie would still say with her dying breath it was her fault and not Ivey's," He turned to Harry. "You reckon she's found out about your dad's cloak?"

"Telling us to sneak out to go to the lake?" Harry half heartedly laughed. "I think she'd have been a lot more specific. And, with everything," He nervously glanced around to ensure they were still more or less alone when they began walking towards the town again. "I'm not going to risk it getting lost. I…mum has never encouraged me to use it but her…I don't know. I'm not even sure I should ask her about the note or…or try to get anymore about Sirius out of her."

"Are you scared of him?" Hermione said, scooping up the increasingly irritated Crookshanks. "From what little you do know?"

"I'm not sure if I am," Harry admitted. "None of it makes sense, and why mum never told me that he had been one of dad's closest friends…best man at their wedding…my godfather…"

"A lot to swallow," Ron summarised.

"More than a lot," Harry said, jamming his hands into the pockets of his jeans when the wind began to tumble more of the falling leaves around them to the ground. "And knowing mum hasn't fully made up her mind about what she thinks – who she thinks – he is makes it worse. What's so hard about telling the truth?"

"That it's not clear yet what it is," Hermione said, affectionately petting Crookshanks behind his ears. "But let's not dwell on that. We've got a day off, get to go out in our weekend, normal clothes and not our school robes, and have a chance to explore town. Let's do that instead of worrying about the bogeyman behind the Ministry staging dementors at the entrance and exits of the castle."

Rarely keen on being closely noted arriving and departing work each day, so much so that she paid every month to park her car in a muggle car park and then make the walk to the Ministry's least frequented entrance, a deep seated unease began to crawl through one Lillian Janelle Potter at the closer attention and murmuring whilst she made her way to her office.

The feeling refusing to evaporate and her steps slowing, she narrowly took a look around, her right hand securely hold her wand. A few witches passed her by, seemingly engulfed in the morning's issue of the Daily Prophet and it was, at the sight of the face on the cover, enough to tighten the already uncomfortable and nauseating sense of wrongness. Doing her best to avoid paying any mind to it, she quickly found herself unable to, reaching and stepping into the already nearly full lift to her office only to come face to face with an exhausted, red headed wizard with whom she was quite familiar. Arthur Weasley offered her a fleeting but equally disquieted smile and the both of them kept silent as more and more people departed the lift at each of its stops. A bit startled when two people entered, the both of them looked twice at the seemingly rattled young man, no older than twenty two, and the almost toad like woman accompanying him with a forced, saccharine smile on her face.

"Are you alright?" Arthur said to the young man.

He turned to him suddenly before quickly nodding, though his shoulders hiked up towards his ears.

"The Minister requested Mister Wilkinson and I retrieve some files for Madame Bones on the…Black case," The woman said in an voice barely masking her irritation at the task. "If that's where you're headed, Lillian, I'd advise you to be careful."

Lily frowned. "I don't much like the sound of that, Dolores."

"Nor did Madame Bones at nearly being hit by a stapler Cordelia flung at her without realising who was entering her husband's office. She's rather incensed by the headline being run in the Prophet today."

The bell of the lift rang out. "This…this is our stop, right…right Missus Umbridge?" The young man called Wilkinson stammered.

"It is," She said with no enthusiasm. "Come now, and make it snappy."

They stepped out, and the doors to the lift closed, leaving Arthur and Lily alone again.

"She may try to curry favour with every Minister whose administration she's worked under – three or four now, hasn't it been? – but I'd be curious to know if that young man is scared of her or what he saw," Arthur eventually said, breaking the silence. "There's a reason she has never been promoted further than she is now in the last almost twenty five years, after all."

"There is and, as much of a social climber as she is, I'm sure that young man is her latest assistant. She may do what's asked of her and seemingly without question, but everyone knows her personality is…well, it's no wonder these last three years that Cornelius and Delia have had her do the things they don't want to address or deal with as much as possible," Lily sighed. "But I'd put my suspicion on that boy being scared of Delia. I'm guessing the headline is something to do with whatever unflattering thing she's said about Sirius this week?"

"Worse than that," Arthur said, rummaging through his bag when the bell of the lift rang out again and the both of them stepped out. "Unfortunately, she can't say we didn't warn her not to say things such as this but I'm surprised…well, I've never known her to throw things at people."

Lily grimaced when he handed her the copy of the paper. "Unsurprised Skeeter wrote this," She remarked. "But I'm not sure what Delia's more angry about. The photo Skeeter chose of her, or the headline itself."

Arthur glanced over her shoulder at the paper again. "Given she looks particularly…comparable to a Russian ballet master that would put needles in one's tights to ensure perfect form – Molly's taken a liking to the art – I'd say that's part of it but her exact words about Sirius getting out are, I'm sure, the majority of it."

"I don't imagine you've seen it, but the likeness to Cruella De Vil is not helped by what she said," Lily shook her head when Arthur stared at her, puzzled. "The villain from a muggle film for children, whose obsession is turning one hundred and one dalmatian puppies into a fur coat."

"I see," Arthur said, folding the paper back up and returning it to his bag when she handed it back to him. "Yes, well, I can imagine the resemblance."

"'We could always turn an uncooperative Sirius Black into a lovely fur coat, says Minister's Wife, head of MACUSA's Department Of Magical Law Enforcement, Cordelia Amelié Fudge,'" Lily quoted under her breath. "I'm not surprised she threw something in frustration and anger, but I am surprised it was at Amelia. Though it might as well have been –"

"This isn't a damn inquisition, and –" The woman in question looked up irritably at the door opening, scowling at Lily and Arthur as they stepped into her husband's office. "I am in no mood for a further lecture, and I'd quite prefer for everyone to get back to work and leave me a few minutes with my –"

"Delia," Lily said calmly, closing the door behind her with a flick of her wand. "I know things have been going poorly in the search for Sirius and in the –"

"In the last half hour, I've had Crouch all but gloatingly tell me off, Kingsley going out of his way to ask me if I'm 'worn thin and strung up' while dropping off paperwork for Neil, Amelia startle me because she was looking for you, Lily, and Ludo –" She irritably waved at the man who looked far too amused by the situation. "– Continuing to neglect his work as head of the Department Of Magical Sports And Games ahead of the coming summer's Quidditch World Cup to 'congratulate me' for –"

"You said something, for once, that was not to the point, boring, administrative, or something we're hearing about your work across the pond," Ludo said with a chuckle. "I personally like this side of you, Cordelia, and –"

"Enough, Ludo," Delia snapped through gritted teeth, her fingers curling. "This is not amusing! If this were the fucking Quibbler, that'd be one thing, but it being the Prophet is –"

"I could actually use some help in sorting through potential portkey objects," Arthur said, waving for Ludo to follow him. "Could you help me with it?"

"Absolutely," Ludo said, laughing still. "What are we looking for, specifically…"

Terse silence overtook the room again when the two men stepped out. The short snap of the door shutting behind them rang out for a brief moment, and the ever unfazed and composed Amelia Bones offered Lily a brief, sympathetic look while Delia glared down at her hands, the tension in her shoulders only easing a little when her husband gently pulled them down and kept one hand on her nearest to keep her steady.

"It'll be forgotten about in a few days, Delia," Cornelius said when she glanced at him. "I don't…well, I don't quite know how Skeeter got the story, but…I, I'm sure it'll go away quickly."

"With as frustrating as this investigation has been so far and as controversial as it has been since my Department released the statement on the matter and requesting public tips, that is without question," Amelia pursed her lips. "I don't know, however, what on earth has gotten into you, Cordelia. You're usually much more level headed than this."

She let out a frustrated sigh. "Sometimes," She eventually said. "I have trouble not saying what I am really thinking, and, with a sick toddler at home being watched by my niece, three of my five children back at school, and having to leave for a meeting at Woolworth in three days, I'm exhausted. Is that really so hard to understand?"

"Of course not," Cornelius reassuringly told her. "We've both been stressed since this madness began, m'dear, and…and, with everything else we've had to deal with this year, it's perfectly understandable."

Amelia frowned. "Respectfully, Minister, it's well out of bounds to say what she did, regardless of whether or not it's understandable, one agrees with the sentiment, or her being a senior MACUSA bureaucrat under pressure is being taken into account."

"I have to agree," Lily said, pausing a moment when Delia tiredly took off her glasses and briefly closed her eyes. "I'm not going to say I warned you, Delia, but you have to know how bad this looks."

"I'm more than well aware, but I could have done without the headline. Though Rita calling me 'disco ball' because of my favourite dress," She briefly gestured to herself and her cerulean blue pencil dress with sparkly silver scales peeking out from its cap sleeves. "Was the only piece of it I found remotely amusing. The rest of it? I've said it before, but I'll say it again: Rita is a nasty, old, bat. And she has no room to talk about how anyone else looks, not with that God-awful green and purple ensemble she's so damn fond of and, if she's jealous of the fact I've been wearing three inch heels almost every day for nearly twenty years, she should simply be thankful to be almost a foot taller than me."

Lily glanced between her, Cornelius, and Amelia. "Is there any good news on the inquest?"

"It's formally begun and been approved as a formal inquest into the matter by the Wizengamot," Cornelius told her. "Though I can't say I'm particularly convinced by any of it. I still don't know why you bother with it, not when Black," He uneasily grimaced. "Had been muttering about your son shortly before escaping."

"It's finally chipped away at me, I suppose," Lily sighed. "Let's just hope it goes a lot more smoothly for the time being. I'd do more, but –"

"You have a conflict of interest, Lily, and I'd rather not have to continue to remind you of it," Amelia curtly cut in. "Now, if everyone could put their irritations aside, this is, I'm sure, only going to continue to be a headache and, frankly, the sooner it's over with, the better. For everyone's sake."

The life of a travelling vagrant was one he had, at birth, been taught to scorn but, by his later teenage years, had become one he occasionally lived by; the farther from his family the better and, more often than not, for one Sirius Black, that ended in his staying with his best friend and sleeping on the couch. With that friend and those years irreversibly gone, to be back to living as a travelling vagrant should have been a downturn yet, instead, it was a dramatic improvement in comparison to the over decade isolated in prison that preceded it.

Compared to the Tube or the national railways, taking the bus north from London up to Aberdeen was, he supposed, one of the more objectively normal and rational decisions he had yet made. Walking as a though he were a muggle, walking in a body which looked nothing like the one he knew, and his life all but contained in the ratty messenger bag he had vastly expanded the interior of with magic holding the little he had and the stolen skateboard which, while far more inconsequential than the stolen wand, felt to be the greatest reminder of why he had been so desperate to escape; the role it could have played in a different life he more and more imagined he had lived clinging onto him. Listening to those around him whilst the bus grew ever farther away from London, he leaned back into his seat, holding his ratty messenger back tightly against himself. The more distance, the more relaxed he began to feel; the decision, the aggressively impulsive decision to visit the Leaky Cauldron in order to try and recapture a sense of his old life felt more and more pointless and more and more dangerous, so much so that a deep seated frustration was tying itself up in his chest. There would have been no going back if even one person in the establishment had pieced together who he really was, and that would have been doubly so if the one to come to that realisation had been the barkeep and bar owner herself.

The rain started to fall and pitter pattered against the windows, and its rhythm slowly began to make him feel a little more sane. The decision he had made after that had been right; and, if things coalesced perfectly, there was a chance, however small, of finding and being able to plead his case directly before Lily and Harry, were he to come across the both of them by chance on a day in the village of Hogsmeade.

"This stop is Brums!" The muggle bus driver called out as the vehicle screeched to a halt. "All's getting off here, grab your things, pay your fee, and get out o' the rain soon as you can."

The woman he had barely recalled sitting next to him suddenly jumped up, elbowing Sirius in the process and barely noticing as he let out a startled yelp.

"I'm going to," She hummed in a sing song voice to herself as she snatched up her bags and pulled out the money for her fare. "Cut your heart out, cut out your heart," She skipped on by and off after handing the money to the driver. "Cut out your heart…"

"Bloody nutters," The man sat in front of Sirius grumbled to himself.

"Did she say something like that to you?" A kid sat beside the man in front of him exclaimed, standing up on the seat and turning around to look at Sirius, who stiffened. "She was next to you!"

"Sit down, Ashley," The man said sternly, standing up himself to make the young girl sit down. He offered Sirius a sympathetic look after he did. "Sorry, 'bout that. Me daughter can talk to anyone 'bout anything, didn't mean for her to bother you."

"No bother," Sirius said, swallowing hard after hearing the increasingly familiar, American accent he forced out of his mouth. "I…it's not a problem."

The squealing of the vehicle's wheels against the wet pavement outside putting a (merciful) end to the conversation, Sirius pushed himself as far back against his seat as he could. His arms tightened around the bag in his lap again, only slackening to pull the hood of the light jacket as far down over his face as he could. He half heartedly glanced out the window every so often, and, hearing the clicking of a portable CD or cassette player across the aisle from him and the clicks of an MP3 player in front of him, cursed himself for not taking the time to snag one and a handful of CDs or tapes while still in London. Taking a glance at the woman sat across the aisle from him, Sirius sighed at the punctuation of his thoughts. No older than twenty five, the pale woman with thick glasses and hair bleached so blonde it was almost white was flipping through a case of CDs, adjusting her headphones every so often and fiddling with the cord connecting it to her CD player. She wore a somewhat faded shirt depicting a man grasping onto a woman by the waist – album art, he quickly realised – and the name of the band and the album title written above and below it respectively. KMFDM. Naïve. His stomach twisting, he jumped when she suddenly turned her head towards him, expecting anger only to see her face contorted in confusion. Pushing back one of her headphones, she sighed.

"Why are you staring at me?"

Sirius blinked. "I…" He shook his head. "Sorry. I was zoning out."

"Jet lag?" She waited a few seconds when he didn't respond. "You sound American."

"Yeah, probably that," He said after a few seconds.

"Thought it might have been curiosity about my shirt," She said, looking briefly disappointed. "Guess I'm once again the lone girl from St. Davids' who likes German industrial music."

Sirius hesitated. "Do you know German?"

"No, but I like the beat and most of their songs are in English," She said, glancing at the man sat beside her who was asleep against the window. "D'you mind if I sit next to you?"

"Uh…I guess not."

She shrugged up her things and all but hopped across the aisle.

"Thanks," She said, lowering her voice once she sat down beside him. "That man freaked me out a wee bit, little earlier. We were passing a cemetery and he – I think he was joking – said 'you know three of my ex-girlfriends are buried there?' I don't want to risk getting stabbed, and you seem friendlier."

Sirius nervously smiled. "I…I think I might hate riding the bus."

"Don't got much better a way to travel at the moment," She said, leaning back against the seat a little. "I won't bother you. Just give me a nudge when it's your stop."

"Mine's Aberdeen," Sirius told her. "I think it's the last."

She laughed a little. "Going on a road trip through Britain? I 'spect a bus ride is better than hitchhiking, but I've never tried that nonsense myself. Could end up sat next to an ex-con in a vehicle who's one step away from asking you if you've ever been stabbed, you know?"

Sirius stared at her for a minute, his arms tightening around his bag again. "Some of them," He said with an uncomfortable laugh when she gave him a funny look again. "Are probably normal."

She considered that. "They probably are, but…" She stopped to pause whatever track her portable CD player was on. "But I'm not going to take any chances until that man the whole country's on a lookout for is found. I…the last thing I want is to end up stuffed in the trunk of a madman's car after he held me at gunpoint, or whatever it was they said he'd been in lockup for."

"I wouldn't want that either," Sirius forced out. "For anyone," He quickly added.

"I'd love the chance to interview him, under safe conditions," She remarked before shaking her head. "I won't get the chance, but damn. All has really made me consider not giving up so easily on that girlhood dream of being a police detective."

"Bet you'd be a good one," Sirius half heartedly said. "And who knows if you could interview him. Stranger things have happened."

She laughed. "Nice enough of you to say," She said before pulling her headphones all the way back on. "I appreciate the sentiment."

Sirius glanced at her a little longer but, seeing her reaching into her bag and pulling out a book as she clicked the track she had been listening to back on, turned back towards the window. The rain was falling, heavier again.

Stranger things have happened, his natural voice taunted in the back of his mind. And you're not really Alex Lloyd, the Yankee.