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The shop was called Phenomena, and it smelled like metal.
Harry was reminded strongly of- something. It was unusual not to recall something instantly, with his Occlumency, but Harry had long since come to terms with the fact that the path of expecting an infallible memory only led to endless frustration. The mind healer he only visited once had called it ‘memory suppression’, but she had also asked him to rest and delegate and open up, so her opinion was worth nothing now.
He went off to the telescope aisle, the magic on his old one had weakened, and ruined a potion that had been six months in the making. Harry should have felt frustrated or angry, or even just upset, but feelings were hard to come by these days, it was always easier to just- push it all down, to a pit in his heart, where everything that didn’t help him make potions or mold people went.
He picks out the metal Skopos, an old but reliable telescope he’d been using ever since his Mastery in Potions. Someone shuffles behind him, and he turns around to see a tall, sandy-brown haired man, with cold hazel eyes, reaching for a telescope right behind the one in his hand. He moves aside, even as his heart gives a strange jerk, as if something important had slipped right out of his hands just now.
The man doesn’t nod to acknowledge him, his eyes slipping over Harry as if Harry was wearing the invisibility cloak he had thrown away. Harry is overcome with a strange urge to talk to the man, and so he looks back at the telescope in his hands as he strengthens his walls. The man pauses as he turns toward Harry before walking off, for a moment so slight that Harry might have convinced himself that he had imagined it, had he not known that his eyes and his mind are the only things worth trusting.
He paid for his telescope and left the shop, the man’s face still tugging at his mind, awash in feelings that had been buried decades ago. He walked right past the newspaper stand that would have enlightened him, the sandy-haired man’s face splashed on the front page:
Lord Nott released from Azkaban after two year-stint for assault
~~
Minister of Finance found dead on his doorstep
Blaise handed the newspaper to his mother, smirking at his own success. It’d been a week since he had killed the little bastard, and the Aurors had just found out. He’d be disappointed if he weren’t used to their incompetence. His mother smiled the grin with edges, the only kind she ever did, and promised to take him out to La Poule au Pot to celebrate his seventy-fifth successful assassination.
He still vividly remembered the night, and couldn’t help but indulge in it one more time, in the privacy of his own mind.
Matteo had been with him. He always looked perpetually upset these days, whenever he looked at Blaise, but after receiving no answer the fifth time, Blaise stopped asking and let the sleeping dogs lie. They had disabled the wards first, and apparated in right after. Blaise asked Matteo to take care of the children and wife, which usually meant to put them either in a deep sleep from which they’d never wake up, or (if Blaise wanted to impress his mother) to ruin their mind and leave them a drooling mess.
A particularly rich party had commissioned this one, though Blaise didn’t care to know the reason for it. He swiftly walked up to the minister’s bedroom, breaking the pathetic locking charm with a wordless motion of his wand, before casting an Imperio on him. He makes him crawl towards the stairs, just for his own amusement, before kicking him down and casting a breaking charm on his neck halfway down.
He knew exactly how it would go: a murder investigation would open, and with no evidence or witnesses, and the rest of the family in such state, it would go cold and get closed in another two years. He grinned, and with his work done, left the house. He had a gala to attend, afterall.
He could practically hear the whispers at his grand entrance already:
“Not the Black Widow’s son?”
~~
“Oh, is that Granger’s Runic Compendium?”
Hermione almost snarls at the woman asking, but stops herself as she puts on a painfully fake smile, nods and goes back to reading. It was a library, honestly, did people think she came here to chatter incessantly? What part of ‘silence is golden’ did they not understand?
Here she was, on a nice sunny day, making additions to her compendium, filling in gaps she had left the first time around, and then this lady had the nerve to come up to disturb the silence she had been sitting in for the past three days. She had not eaten, for g- Merlin’s sake, for the sake of the betterment of the awfully backwards society she found herself in, and now they can’t even let her study in peace.
She quickly jotted down the runic array that worked with every single combination of the runes possible, no matter the angle or arrangement, but evidently, one of the combinations wasn’t working, and the owls hadn’t stopped coming to point out the one mistake she had made.
Not one owl had come out to appreciate her contributions, how she’d practically revolutionized the entire field, but now that she’d made one mistake, all of them were practically frothing at the mouth to point it out. If she wasn’t a witch herself, she’d have given up on helping all these idiots a long time ago.
In her fury at the wizarding world at large, she accidentally snaps the nib of her quill and almost groans out loud, but stops out of respect for the library. She pulls out a book with a Transfigured cover, and rushes through to the bookmarked page.
She pays no mind to the origin of the book, of course, or how it even came to be with her, or she might remember a girl with icy blonde hair and cold blue eyes, who she’d once called her sist-
The Algiz rune is most commonly used in shield spells…
~~
It's the first anniversary of the War, and all Hogwarts alumni of the past year have been invited. Pansy looks around at the celebration, the alcohol being passed around and the laughter echoing through the room. She could point at someone and recite their entire history, pieced together from bits and pieces of rumours and gossip, and yet, if someone pointed a finger at Harry, or Theo, or Daph, or Hermione, she couldn’t tell you even their favourite colour.
She could barely even look at their faces properly, and hearing just their names made her pause. Everytime she looked at one of them, all she could see was vivid green of spells lighting it up, the cuts and bruises they had by the end, the tears they’d cried and the lies they’d told. If only one of them would talk to her, force her to listen, she’d move past it and they’d be the same people they once were.
Or at least that’s what she told herself.
~~
Harry sits in front of the fireplace, his eyes closed and his head thrown backwards in frustration. This was probably the twentieth time that another plan to meet up had fallen through. It wasn’t anyone’s fault, apparently tasks had come up for everyone at the last possible moment. And while Harry was upset, a secret part of him felt glad that he could avoid all of them some more, avoid the memories of falling-blood-pain some more.
He could barely remember the last time he had seen Theo or Blaise. He could feel his friends fading into phantoms haunting his heart and his mind, and no matter how much he tried to make them corporeal again and again and again, it never quite worked, partly due to his own inability to just shove the memories away to enjoy a lunch with friends that were supposed to be forever. He decided to practice stuffing away those stupid memories, if only to make it to the next brunch and not cancel.
Again.
~~
Daphne shot Astoria a glare that could cool the Sahara with its intensity. She wouldn’t stop pestering her about ‘Hermione this’ and ‘Harry that’ and it was frankly, getting annoying. Hermione and Harry were her friends, not Astoria’s, so why’d she care at all? With Astoria’s chattering, and Dad’s questioning, and Mother’s disappointed gaze, Daphne had half a mind to just leave the country for the next year.
She’d been planning and re-planning to visit Hermione, her s- friend, and ask for the books back. She needed them for her own research, but the deep anxiety that seemed to bubble up everytime she so much as thought of Hermione stopped her each time. She had barely been able to put it aside for the second Anniversary bash, and even then, she’d had to leave early. She took a deep breath and decided she would leave tomorrow, just to shut up Astoria.
Tomorrow.
~~
It should hurt, Blaise thinks, to become strangers with someone who had seen his very soul. But it didn’t. It felt like the numb nothingness of an anaesthetic. The anger and bitterness he’d felt had dissipated, leaving… a void in their place. He’d thought they’d stick together forever, that when he had finally given in to his mother’s wishes, Harry and Theo would be right there by his side, plotting how to avoid doing it. They’d talk about everything and anything, to distract Blaise, but now- he couldn’t even remember their voices.
The only good thing, he supposes, is that somewhere deep down, he’d anticipated this. He wasn’t made for trust and friendship, neither of them were. All of them were just kids who were forced to grow up too fast. It would always have ended like this, for he couldn’t possibly imagine a universe in which it didn’t. All of them were overfull on secrets, and underfed on friends, and dependent on each other too much but not enough. But that doesn’t stop the what-ifs.
It never does.
~~
Draco sees a bushy-haired girl in front of him, on a poster announcing a book release at his favourite library. His breath stutters, and he doesn’t know why. Why does this mug- mudblood seem like home familiar? He shakes his head and walks in, returning the book he had, and vowing not to come to this library again, not to feel things he couldn’t identify.
His head hurt, and intense longing came over him, though he still couldn’t recognise the feeling, couldn’t understand why he long for what could’ve been.
What almost did.
~~
Theo wakes up, the sunlight hitting his eyes harshly. A wandless charm closes the curtains, and he sits up. He sits down on his desk, a quill in hand and parchment in front of him, writing down how he’d almost cracked the runes of the charm he’d spent a week working on to send to-
Who? Who was he going to send it to?
Theo frowned and set fire to the parchment, his mood immediately soured. And to think he’d just woken up to a bright day. He went about the rest of his day angry and trigger-happy, and so, who could really blame him when he punched the Chief Auror?
Apparently, the Law could.
~~