Sunlight streamed through the bedroom window and Delilah woke peacefully, propping herself up on her elbow and reaching for the glass of water on her bedside table. She must have forgotten to close the curtains, which was unlike her, since there was a streetlight just outside whose synthetic amber glow in the darkness normally bothered her.
‘Why are you wearing that blue dress in bed?’ came a voice from the doorway. Delilah looked up to see Professor Snape standing there, pale and calm as a statue.
‘I use it as a nightie nowadays,’ she said.
‘You shouldn’t. It’s a dress, not a nightgown.’
‘Does it bother you?’
‘Yes.’ His eyes roamed over her shoulders and down to her chest. She glanced down to see that one of the straps had slipped off her shoulder and the loose bodice had fallen to one side.
‘Do you remember that night you kidnapped me? I was wearing it then.’
‘I know.’ He walked haltingly towards her, his face queerly shadowed in spite of the golden morning light.
Now he was standing over her.
‘Take it off.’
She sat up and slipped the other strap off her shoulder, keeping her legs beneath the blanket. She shifted the skirt up around her waist and peeled the dress over her head. As she emerged she saw that he was not watching her, but staring at the wallpaper on the far wall.
‘What’s the matter?’ he asked without looking at her.
‘I was wondering if you’d found my father’s body.’
He rotated his neck with smooth, reptilian movement to fix her with a dead stare and said, in a voice that seemed to scrape through the air, ‘we won’t find him. He will rot in the house of the Dark Lord.’
‘NOOOOOOOOOOO!’ Delilah howled in sudden terror, and woke with her hands clapped to her throat, her heart pounding, and her back soaked with clammy sweat.
The curtains were drawn, but a chink of sunlight showed through a narrow gap between them.
*
Thirty minutes later she was sitting on a high stool at the kitchen table with a mug of coffee, still in her ancient blue flannel nightshirt. She could see through the high horizontal windows on the far wall that another beautiful August day was beginning, and was plagued with the usual restless yearning to be outside absorbing the sunshine. It was hopelessly depressing to think that it would be autumn by the time she was released from this prison.
The toaster juddered in the corner and she slid off her stool to retrieve the toast, standing at the counter to butter it. When she turned back towards the table, she saw that a large eagle owl had appeared on the nearside windowsill, an envelope tied to its leg. She dashed over and grappled breathlessly with the heavy window that clearly hadn’t been opened in some time, eventually managing to wrench open a two-inch gap, into which the bird neatly inserted its foot for her to untie the letter. The envelope read simply: Miss du Lac, HQ. She took the letter and her toast back to the table and tore open the envelope. She scanned to the bottom of the page where she saw the looping signature of Albus Dumbledore.
Dear Delilah, she read,
I hope this finds you well. In order for you to attend Hogwarts in the autumn you will need the appropriate robes and books, detailed on the next page. Professor Snape will be arriving at 10 a.m. to escort you to Diagon Alley. Although you will be safe under his protection, I urge you to remember your situation: do nothing to arouse undue interest and do not speak unnecessarily with anybody.
‘Like I could bloody forget,’ she muttered to herself.
I also wish to apologise for the events of Tuesday morning, the letter went on. It was not my intention to leave you with no means of contacting us: it simply didn’t occur to me that you might never have been instructed in the use of Floo powder, which was an unforgivable oversight on my part.
Delilah re-read this last sentence twice. Where had he got that idea? She slid from her stool again, picked up her slice of toast and bit into it as she walked up the steps towards the sitting room, still frowning at the page.
I understand from Professor Snape that you were caught in the crossfire when the Order arrived to apprehend the perceived intruder, but that you were ultimately unharmed. I fear the members who arrived may have treated you with impatience, which I hope didn’t cause you distress. Please be assured that I have since explained to all involved that it was I who was at fault, and not you, and once again, I hope you will accept my sincere apologies.
With my warmest regards,
Albus Dumbledore
Entering the sitting room, Delilah at once spotted on the mantelpiece a small shagreen leather box. Stuffing the last of her toast into her mouth and wiping her fingers on the hem of her nightshirt she took it down and carefully twisted the lid off to see that it was full of sparkling Floo powder. She studied the box for a few seconds and then returned it to the mantelpiece with a disbelieving snort. The grandfather clock in the hallway outside gave a wheezy clang announcing 10 o’clock, reminding her with a start that Professor Snape was due to arrive. She rushed for the staircase and collided with him in the doorway.
He appraised her tangled hair, bare feet and faded nightshirt with its several missing buttons, and raised an eyebrow. Seeing him, a memory of her dream about him that morning flashed through her mind and, even though there was no way he could know about it, felt her cheeks flush with a shudder of embarrassment.
‘You didn’t receive the headmaster’s note?’ he enquired drily.
‘Yes. But the owl only arrived about five minutes ago.’
‘Plenty of time to have got dressed.’
‘I was in the middle of my breakfast.’
‘And now?’
‘I’m on my way upstairs. Just give me a minute.’
‘As long as you’re sure you don’t have any more pressing commitments. Don’t mind me: I have literally nothing better to do than hang around waiting for you.’
Biting back a retort, she went up to her bedroom and hurriedly pulled on a light cotton dress, shoved her feet into her sandals and dragged a brush through her hair. She dug her handbag out from under the bed where she’d tossed it after her aborted bid for freedom, stuffed in the folded letter from Professor Dumbledore along with the equipment list, and rootled for her sunglasses as she jogged down the stairs, dragging them out from a tangle of other things and pushing them up onto her head to keep her hair off her face. Refastening the bag, she spotted her red leather purse and paused on the staircase.
‘Are you ready?’ Snape asked impatiently from the foot of the stairs, as though she’d been gone for twenty minutes instead of three.
‘Professor, I don’t know how to access my bank account,’ she said, ignoring the gripe. ‘My Gringotts key is at The Briar House somewhere. Do you think they’ll let me into my vault if I show my wand or something?’
‘You won’t need to access your account. School funds will buy your robes and books.’
‘I’d much rather get at my own money,’ she said. ‘There’s other stuff I might want to buy.’
‘As you wish,’ Snape shrugged. She continued down the stairs and he grasped her upper arm with his customary long-fingered grip. By the end of the summer, she thought, she would have five fingertip-shaped bruises from where he kept manhandling her.
‘For one thing,’ she added craftily as he frogmarched her down the hallway towards the front door, ‘I’d really like to pick up some Floo powder. Just think, that whole debacle the other day could have been avoided if only there had been some in the house.’
He stopped dead and turned his onyx gaze on her for a moment before Disapparating abruptly with her in tow.
She staggered as he released her arm, blinking in the light of the yard behind the Leaky Cauldron.
‘A little warning would have been nice,’ she grumbled, but he had already walked over to the back wall of the yard and was flicking his wand with practised precision at the brick which prompted the Alley’s stately archway to blossom into view. As the ornate brass inflorescences unfurled to the last exquisite detail, Delilah felt her spirits lift more than she would have thought possible. She slid her sunglasses down onto her nose and made for the cobbled street anticipating the bustle of activity, the sounds of chattering shoppers, people meeting up for a drink or an ice cream in the sunshine, the cheery shouts of street vendors touting their wares. Freedom at last: fresh air and a wide blue sky, glorious sunshine beating down on her…
Snape threw out his arm so that it slammed into her sternum.
‘A word,’ he said.
‘Yes?’ she replied pleasantly. A balloon of happiness had filled her chest, unpunctured by Snape’s sour expression.
‘You will meet me back here at 5pm precisely. You will not draw attention to yourself or speak-’
‘Speak to anybody unless strictly necessary, I know. Dumbledore already put it in his letter. Can’t we make it a bit later? Say 8 o’clock?’
‘You have business here that will occupy you for ten hours?’
‘No, it’s just… I haven’t been out of the house for so long. I don’t want to go back so soon.’
‘Very well,’ Snape said tersely.
Delilah waited. He didn’t say any more, but he didn’t stalk off like he normally did to signal the end of a conversation.
‘So, is that it?’ she prompted.
He threw her a look which she could have sworn contained a flicker of nerves.
‘If you’re going to ask about the Floo Powder, you needn’t worry,’ she said, emboldened by her sunny mood. ‘I won’t tell anyone you forgot to leave me any.’
He said nothing but appraised her with narrowed eyes.
‘I would be grateful of that,’ he replied at length.
‘It was a bit rotten of you to tell Dumbledore I just didn’t know how it worked,’ she went on cheerily, ‘but I won’t rat you out. You can owe me one.’
He bowed his head as though acquiescing the proposal of a solemn contract.
‘8pm,’ he said by way of dismissal, and was gone.
She headed for Gringotts.
*
Delilah had always been cowed by the grandeur and library-like hush of the bank’s cathedral foyer, and intimidated by the piercing eyes of the goblins behind the counters, so it didn’t help that security appeared to have increased tenfold since her last visit. She pushed open the large, heavy door and was immediately apprehended by a tank-like man in iron-grey robes who made her stand with her arms and legs apart and ran a thin gold rod all over her, then pushed her into a short queue of anxious-looking witches and wizards. Some people were allowed to pass straight through after being scanned, whilst others, on a seemingly random basis, were placed in the queue, so she hoped it was an arbitrary system and she wasn’t personally under suspicion. When she eventually reached the front of the queue another wizard emptied every single thing from her handbag onto a short conveyor belt which slid smoothly through a metal box, pausing for a few seconds before flashing green and then continuing into a small airlock about the size of a telephone booth, into which she was also shoved. Once inside, the door closed behind her and the wall lit up like a switchboard, with several different-coloured lights flashing in sequence. The booth vibrated alarmingly for a few seconds and then stilled, and the door before her released with a hiss, letting her continue into the foyer where her handbag and belongings clattered unceremoniously into a crate at the end of the conveyor. The ordeal seemed to be over, so she gathered everything hurriedly back into her handbag and approached an available desk with mounting trepidation.
The goblin behind the counter was engrossed in an enormous ledger and completely ignored her, so she hovered timidly before him, wondering whether to draw his attention to her presence.
‘Yes?’ he said at last, without looking up.
‘Hello,’ she said nervously. ‘I need to access my account, but I’ve, um, lost my key.’
The goblin peered over his tiny half-moon spectacles and seemed to take in the whole of her in a single glance before returning to his ledger.
‘Yes ma’am,’ he said with bored courtesy. ‘Name?’
‘Delilah Blackthorn.’
‘Address?’
‘The Briar House, Hexworthy.’
‘Date on which the account was opened?’
‘I don’t know. Oh wait, yes I do, my twelfth birthday.’
‘Which was?’
‘July 21st, 1991.’
‘Wand?’
‘Rowan, phoenix, thirteen inches.’
‘Lovely,’ he said with exaggerated patience. ‘But may I see it?’
‘Oh,’ she said, feeling more and more foolish, and laid it on the counter. The goblin picked it up and, turning his eyes back to his ledger, dropped it into a glass tank beside him. The wand hung suspended in thin air in the middle of the tank as a thin beam of gold light moved slowly along it. After a few moments a bright light flashed twice, and the goblin plucked the wand back out.
‘Seems to be in order,’ he said, handing it back to her. ‘Your father recently passed away?’
‘What?’ she said, startled.
The goblin raised an eyebrow.
‘I mean, yes, he did. But how did you know?’
‘We always know,’ he said shortly, punching at the keys of what looked like a very complicated antique cash register. Delilah wondered how many people first heard the news of a distant or estranged relative’s death in this abrupt fashion. The register hummed and made a short, high-pitched squealing sound, and a tiny key dropped from a chute on to the counter. The goblin slid it across to her.
‘Your new key,’ he said, taking off the spectacles, folding them and laying them on the desk. ‘The old one has been deactivated: if you find it, please destroy it. Follow me.’
He slid from his high stool and vanished from sight behind the counter, so she stood uncertainly until he reappeared at the far end of the foyer, and then she had to trot hurriedly across the polished floor to where he was already striding through an enormous pair of doors. In the freezing cavern beyond, he whistled to summon a tiny wooden cart which clattered up beside them, into which he hopped elegantly. Delilah had barely clambered in, trying to fold her ungainly legs into a remotely dignified position and stuffing her skirt between her thighs, when the cart jerked into motion and trundled with rapidly increasing speed along the precariously narrow tracks. The goblin sat in the seat in front staring pensively ahead.
The bitter wind whistled past, lifting her hair from her forehead and temples. She locked her knees to one side of the cart and her feet to the other and leaned slightly over the edge, gazing down into the fathomless depths beneath. She wondered, if she pitched herself out, how long it would be until she hit the bottom. Whether there even was a bottom.
‘Don’t even think about it,’ said the goblin softly, barely audible over the rattling wheels, without looking back at her.
‘What?’
‘We have measures in place to stop people falling. Or jumping.’
‘I wasn’t thinking about jumping!’ she protested hotly.
The goblin made no reply.
The cart slowed to a halt outside a door inscribed ’4784’ and they both climbed out. Delilah still had her new key clutched in her hand so her palm smelt of metal, and she stuffed it into the tiny lock. The door swung open, and she walked tentatively in.
She stopped dead.
‘Is this definitely my vault?’
The goblin raised an eyebrow in reply.
‘It’s just,’ she explained hastily, ‘there’s about a hundred times more money in here than there should be. My parents have had a fund going for me since I was a baby but there should only be about two hundred Galleons.’
‘Your inheritance claim was uncontested, so the transfer was made automatically.’
‘What?’
‘Your inheritance claim,’ he repeated slowly, ‘was uncontested. So the transfer-’
‘I heard you,’ she snapped, ‘but what inheritance claim? I assumed everything would go to Connie?’
The goblin shrugged.
‘Does this mean Connie’s dead too?’ Delilah demanded, her voice becoming shrill.
‘Amazingly enough, I have no idea who “Connie” is,’ he said aloofly. ‘If you’d like, I can check the terms of the will.’ He pulled a single sheet of parchment from the inside pocket of his waistcoat and unfolded it, then tapped it twice with his fingertip so that it began to grow in length, until several inches were furled around his feet. He shuffled efficiently through the scroll before reaching the relevant section.
‘To my eldest daughter Delilah, and to my youngest Matilda, in the event that my death should occur before the advent of their respective seventeenth years, I leave each eight thousand Galleons,’ he read aloud. ‘Should such funds represent forty-or-more percent of my and my wife’s combined wealth, and should my wife at such time remain-’
‘I get the idea,’ Delilah interrupted, so relieved she felt light-headed. ‘Thanks.’
The goblin flicked the top of the scroll with one pointed fingernail and it snapped back into a single page of parchment, which he returned to his pocket. Delilah pulled a canvas money pouch stamped with the Gringotts logo from a hook on the back of the door and crouched on the ground to scoop up handfuls of coins, thinking how undignified and medieval wizarding banking was compared with the Muggle systems of paper notes and automatic cash machines. As she grabbed at handfuls of Galleons, the reality of her unexpected wealth began to really hit her, and she stuffed the pouch until it was full to the brim.
*
Ever since the previous Christmas, the ghost of Terry Boot had haunted every corner of Diagon Alley for Delilah.
She had approached the end of her stay at Hogwarts so disgruntled and frustrated with his inconsistent treatment of her that she’d resolved to board the carriage and sail off without even saying goodbye to him; but of course, as with every plan she’d ever hatched concerning him, things hadn’t worked out as she’d anticipated.
The tragic end to the Triwizard Tournament had cast a fog of grief and shock over the entire castle, and the Beauxbatons and Durmstrang guests had felt profoundly uncomfortable trespassing on something so personal to the Hogwarts students. In the terror and confusion that swirled through the stadium when Potter emerged from the third task clutching the limp corpse of Cedric Diggory, Delilah had fought her way through the screaming crowd to the upper seats where she knew Connie was lurking. From that vantage point she caught sight of her stepmother already sprinting across the grounds away from the maze, and only managed to catch up with her at the gates.
‘Connie,’ Delilah panted, skidding to a halt beside her and leaning her palms heavily on her knees. ‘Where are you going? What’s going on?’
‘He’s back, Delilah,’ Connie said distractedly, fumbling with her travelling cloak, her wand stuck haphazardly behind her ear. ‘I have to go and deal with this. I have to go to the office.’
‘Take me with you? Please?’
‘No, darling,’ Connie had said. ‘You’re safer here. I’ll be in the office for sixty hours straight, if not more. Ormond’s going to have to take care of Tiddles. Just give us a few days.’
‘But – but – are you saying Voldemort’s here? He killed Diggory? He was there in that maze? How can you just leave me here after this?’
‘Of course he’s not here darling,’ Connie had said, already scribbling in breakneck shorthand in her blue leather notebook. She tore out the page, waved it in the air, and within a single second, a screech owl swooped with startling speed from absolutely nowhere and snatched it from her hand, vanishing just as quickly into the night. ‘Dumbledore is the only one he ever feared.’
Delilah had seldom, if ever, seen Connie in full professional swing before. A sort of commanding efficiency seemed to radiate from her, and Delilah could see now why her stepmother was revered as the most powerful journalist of her generation.
‘Then how did he murder Cedric?’
‘I don’t know, but I have to find out. Now.’
She dropped a brief kiss on Delilah’s head, who was still doubled over as she caught her breath, and slipped through the gates. Delilah tried to stumble after her but was forcibly repelled by what was evidently an anti-runaway charm.
The following morning, Madame Maxime said that Dumbledore had graciously insisted that they stay out the school year as planned, and that the tragedy was one shared by all Triwizard-participating schools; but for the last few days of their stay the foreign students hung awkwardly on the sidelines in huddles, not wanting to get in the way. The Hogwarts students moved in groups as well, scuttling between safe places, frightened, sad, quiet. Everyone was glad when the school year was over, except for Delilah, who awoke on the morning after the End of Year feast with a knot in her stomach which had nothing to do with the fact that the previous evening, in the hall that was thick with anguish after Dumbledore’s tear-jerking homage to Cedric Diggory, she had barely managed three mouthfuls of food.
She crept from her bed and dressed hurriedly in the bathroom so as not to wake anybody. When she snuck out of the carriage and eased the door closed behind her, it was still so early that the morning air was crisp, the grass sparkled with dew and a heartbreakingly beautiful peaches-and-cream sunrise blazed over the mountains, reflected so perfectly in the calm surface of the lake that the sky seemed to stretch uninterrupted before her, as though she was standing on the edge of the world. She walked towards the lake’s shore, her chest tight with the vast, overwhelming beauty of it, and it occurred to her that in spite of her pleas to Connie a few weeks earlier, she would do almost anything not to have to leave this place. She felt a stab of wounded rage at Terry, furious with him for knitting himself so inextricably through this landscape, for stirring himself in with her happiness so she could never separate it from the pain of his rejection. She walked for hours that morning, evading breakfast altogether, circling the entire perimeter of the castle, gazing up at the exquisite turrets and the early morning sun glancing off the stained glass windows. She went inside and climbed every staircase she hadn’t already climbed, opening every door that would open, so as to soak in as much of the place as she could, until she found herself on what had to be the highest tower, where she leaned her elbows on the battlements and watched the distant figure of the gamekeeper digging a flowerbed outside his hut.
‘Delilah!’ came a familiar voice as she finally made her way across the grounds back to the carriage. In her misery and fury she stiffened her spine and continued without turning. Thumping footsteps and heavy breathing announced Terry’s approach behind her.
‘Delilah?’ he repeated uncertainly, drawing level.
‘Oh, hi Terry,’ she said with cold indifference. A glimmer of concern flickered in his brown eyes.
‘Are you leaving today?’ he asked, somewhat nervously.
‘Yep. Can’t wait.’
‘Oh?’ He sounded hurt, like she had personally insulted his hospitality. ‘Homesick I suppose?’
The generosity in this suggestion made her want to lash out the more.
‘Not particularly,’ she said nastily. ‘This place is just so dull and draughty. I kind of wish I hadn’t come, if I’m honest.’
Now he looked really crushed.
‘Sorry to hear that,’ he said. ‘I thought you’d had a nice time.’
‘What part did you think was nice for me?’ she snapped, rounding on him. ‘Nobody even bothered to talk to me except for you, and you…’ she didn’t know how to finish that sentence so she just stood glaring at him, fists clenched, and then turned and stomped back to the carriage. She didn’t look back until she had climbed the steps, wrenched the door open, and turned to close it. As she did so, she glimpsed him standing exactly where she had left him, arms hanging limply, gazing after her.
As she pressed herself against the window of the carriage, watching Hogwarts recede into a tiny toy castle through the clouds, jerking in and out of sight with the powerful pulses of the palominos’ flanks, she assumed that would be the last she ever saw of either the castle or of Terry.
How wrong she was.
The memory of Hogwarts and Terry had become less painful over the summer break and her next term at Beauxbatons, where she even found herself a bit of a celebrity among her year group, being the only one of her age who had been allowed to go to the Triwizard Tournament. She went directly back to Devon after the school term ended for Christmas, and made a visit to Diagon Alley to buy Christmas presents. She was in Gambol and Japes’ joke shop examining a display entitled ‘Preposterous Presents’ when she heard a voice over her shoulder.
‘I can recommend the Harebrained Hats,’ it said. ‘They give you enormous, very realistic rabbit ears.’
She jumped in surprise and turned to see Terry Boot, his scarf loosened and winter coat unbuttoned in the heat of the shop, a hat dangling from his left hand.
‘Hare ears,’ she said breathlessly.
‘Sorry?’
Well, surely they’re hare ears, not rabbit ears,’ she said, flushing slightly. ‘If they’re Harebrained Hats.’
‘Oh. Yes, good point…’
They had wandered around the shop together, and he made her laugh until she was fighting for breath by putting on a pair of innocuous-looking glasses, which once on his face gave him huge blue blinking eyes with tremendous eyelashes, the snout of a pig and a long blonde handlebar moustache. Then he accompanied her around the Alley and helped her pick out an elegant quill for her father, silk scarves for Connie and her mother, and – the crown jewel of her haul – a beautiful pair of diaphanous, fluttering fairy wings with trailing silk tails for Matilda.
By this time it had fallen dark, and they had been in each other’s company for some two hours.
‘What now?’ he had said, guiding her by the elbow to pause beneath a street lantern. It had just begun to snow.
‘Well, I’ve done my shopping,’ she said suggestively, gazing up at him. The warm golden light of the bracketed lantern made his brown eyes glint like golden syrup.
‘I haven’t done any of mine,’ he said, his hand still on her elbow. ‘Somehow I got fatally distracted.’
‘Oh dear. Whatever made you forget to do your shopping?’ she asked with mock coyness. Her heart was pounding.
‘Well…’ he murmured throatily, and then his hand was on the small of her back, and he tugged her in towards him and sank into a long, deep kiss which left her clinging to his waist.
They ended up side-by-side in The Mugwump’s Hump, each with a pint of Butterbeer in front of them, Delilah’s almost untouched because her chest was so swollen with excitement that she felt sure the froth would bubble back up into her mouth if she took a full swig.
‘Sorry I was a dick to you,’ Terry said baldly. ‘At Hogwarts, I mean.’
Delilah just looked at him, not sure what to say.
‘I did like you. I always did, from the second I saw you. I just didn’t really want to get into anything, so I sort of just …’
‘You sort of just confused the living daylights out of me.’
‘Well. Yeah. But I managed to convince myself that you were so cool and clever and gorgeous that you would probably barely notice what I did. That it wouldn’t matter to you. It wasn’t until the day you left that I realised how angry you were with me, and I knew you had every right to be, and I felt like such a maggot. I just pretended to myself that I could do what I liked without considering your feelings. I was being a coward. And then when I went back to school after the summer and you weren’t there, and I couldn’t stop thinking about you, and how stupid I’d been, and how much I wished I’d just…’ He trailed off and stared at her with limpid eyes.
‘You’d just…?’ she prompted.
He leaned over and kissed her again.
*
Delilah only realised she had been standing in the middle of the Alley, staring at the door of The Mugwump’s Hump, lost in memories, when a street vendor called ‘that firsty for a pick-me-up are we, darlin’? Know the feelin’ love, I’ll be in wiv you soon as I’ve shifted this lot – mine’s a pint o’ Knotgrass!’ and wheezed with laughter. She jumped and turned abruptly away, colliding with a tall witch in navy robes and careering directly back into the street vendor, upsetting his cart so that a ragtag collection of curiosities scattered across the cobbles.
‘I’m sorry,’ Delilah breathed, flushing furiously and crouching to snatch them up.
‘You wanna be more careful, love,’ the vendor said good-naturedly, righting the cart and rearranging what remained of his display.
‘I know, I’m sorry,’ she said again, flustered. She crouched on the cobbles and hurriedly gathered up a tiny hourglass encased in roughly-hewn wood, a chunk of amber on a length of leather and a stiff, trembling feather that appeared to be made of gold. A glass orb, like a large marble full of swirling aquamarine smoke was rolling away, and she had to dive to rescue it.
‘Tell y’what,’ the vendor said, leering down at her, ‘you can make it up to me. ‘Ow about that drink?’
She looked up at him from the cobbles.
‘No thank you,’ she said firmly, tugging at a heavy, ornate locket whose chain had been caught under the wheel of his cart.
‘Careful with that!’ the vendor yelped. ‘Worf an undred Galleons that is!’
She freed the locket and straightened. A strange wave of unease washed over her as she laid it carefully on the display.
‘In that case, you can ‘elp out a poor street vendor. Anythin’ take your fancy?’ He waved his arm over the display, then plucked up the chunk of amber she’d rescued from the cobbles. ‘’Ow about this? Amorentis Amber, absorbs pheromones from your skin and releases them when the object of your desire approaches, so they fall in love with you. Fifteen Galleons.’
‘Absorbs pheromones from your skin?’ Delilah repeated sceptically.
‘Not for you then,’ he said, undeterred. He hefted up a huge, dusty book bound in faded green leather entitled To Be Pure is to Be Strong by Jonty Parvenu. ‘P’raps you’re an ‘istorian? This’ll tell you everything you ever wanted to know about the ‘istory of our proudest and noblest pure-blood families, back to 650 BC. Outta print for firty years this is, forcibly redacted by those ‘oo don’t want their secrets known, one o’ the last ones left in existence. Once in a lifetime chance.’
‘Er, no thanks,’ she said.
‘This is somethin’ special then,’ he said, moving fluidly on to his next pitch. He picked up a brooch of tarnished brass in the shape of a tree, with what looked like a small garnet at the centre. ‘Know what it is?’
‘No.’
‘A Bay Tree Brooch,’ he said. ‘Wear it upon your person for a lunar month, and on the quarter moon, under the right conditions, your departed will reappear to you.’
Delilah stared at the brooch.
The vendor leaned in closer.
‘And who among us,’ he said in a seductive undertone, ‘would say no to the chance at another moment with our departed?’
Delilah swayed slightly on the spot as though under the spell of the brooch. She stumbled backward.
‘No,’ she whispered.
‘Troubled times we live in, miss,’ the vendor said in the same snake-like whisper. ‘There won’t be many of these to be had.’
Delilah took one last lingering look at the brooch, and then turned resolutely and continued on down the Alley.
*
Seventh Year Students Will Require:
The Standard Book of Spells, Grade 7, by Miranda Goshawk
And in This Case, Whatsoever Should Be Required from The Following:
Three Sets of Plain Work Robes (Black)
One Plain Pointed Hat (Black) for day wear
One Pair of Protective Gloves (dragon hide or similar)
One Winter Cloak (Black, silver fastenings)
One Wand
One Cauldron (pewter, standard size 2)
One set of glass or crystal phials
One telescope
One set of brass scales
All further textbooks and materials will be provided by the school once
relevant subjects have been selected.
Students may also bring an Owl, OR a Cat, OR a Toad.
She’d bought everything on the list that she didn’t already own (‘Funnily enough, we do have wands in France,’ she’d muttered at the list when she first fished it out from inside Dumbledore’s letter) and headed to Florean Fortescue’s parlour for the ice cream sundae that she’d been fantasising about for so long.
She was double-checking the list as she approached the parlour, and then looked up and froze, arrested. The whole building looked like it had been ravaged, with blackened bricks and windows smashed in, through which she could glimpse several broken and overturned chairs.
‘Pity,’ said a passing red-headed wizard, pausing beside her. ‘Fortescue was a gentleman.’
‘What happened to him?’
‘Driven off by the looks of it,’ the wizard shrugged. ‘Hiding if he’s lucky, like hundreds of others. Dead, more likely.’
The wizard moved on and Delilah gazed sadly up at the shop-front. Rags of frayed bunting hung down from the upper-storey window, and the splintered remains of the ‘Fortescue’s’ sign swayed gently in the breeze.
She wondered what The Briar House looked like now. She imagined her bedroom, the mirror on her bureau smashed, her bedclothes singed and flung to the floor, her collection of glass perfume bottles reduced to dust. The kitchen, a mess of broken crockery. The big table, with soft, shiny dips where numerous elbows had rubbed away at the veins of the wood, now a pile of kindling. Matilda’s room, her army of teddy bears lined up underneath the windowsill, flung into the corners with eyes hanging gruesomely from their sockets and missing ears. She remembered the table at the party that had been stacked with lovingly-wrapped birthday presents from his friends, which Ormond never even lived to open; probably they had been blasted into the walls of the marquee, the paper incinerated, the contents thrown carelessly across the ground. She wondered if the hire company had come to collect their marquee and found it burnt, torn, perhaps bloodied…
She gave her head a determined little shake like a horse trying to dislodge a fly, and carried on along the Alley. The change in atmosphere since she’d been there shopping for a party frock, just a few weeks earlier, was stark. The feeling of leisurely bustle was gone, and the further down the Alley she got the more abandoned shop-fronts she found, their emptied windows plastered over with Ministry information posters. Her favourite second-hand jewellery shop, Tribble’s Treasures, had been completely covered, with only a tiny space left for a hand-written sign which unconvincingly declared ‘Gone On Hols For Health. Back Soon’; Ollivander’s wand shop looked like it had been forsaken in a hurry; even Cleaver’s Snips the hairdresser had closed down, its red-and-white striped barber’s pole rotating dismally beside the boarded-up door.
She was starting to regret asking Snape for more time. More cash than I’ve ever carried burning a hole in my pocket, and no bloody shops left to spend it in, she thought, glaring resentfully at the ‘Wanted’ posters depicting dead-eyed criminals that were pasted wonkily on the windows.
‘Weeeeeasley!’ came a shrill synthetic whistle from further up the Alley, followed in chorus by a high-pitched giggling ‘Heeeeee-he!’ She cocked her head curiously in the direction of the noise and followed it around the bend, where she was confronted with a brand-new, shockingly orange shop front adorned with a giant sign announcing ‘WEASLEYS’ WIZARD WHEEZES’. A stream of bubbles burst from the doorway as it opened and a pair of teenage wizards spilled out clutching orange carrier bags. A surprising number of people could be seen inside the shop, given that the rest of the Alley seemed almost deserted. A huge placard in the window read:
Bored of hearing about DEATH EATERS…?
Come on in and hear about BREATH-HEATERS!
Pepper Imps are a thing of the past – our sizzling new Breath-Heaters, made from
Caribbean InfernoMint, will make you breathe actual fire!
Delilah smiled and headed towards the doorway, pushing her way past a pair of tiny witches giggling hysterically at a product display labelled “Bumroll Please! The World’s Finest Selection of Flatulence Facilitators, Defecation Effectuations, and Constipation Sensations”. The shop was so busy she couldn’t get close to many displays, so she soon found herself near the back of the shop by a shelf of ‘WonderWitch’ products. She was examining a bottle of ‘Plumpit Thickening Hair Potion’ when she heard a familiar voice behind her.
‘…childish eef you ask me, and eef eet eesn’t childish eet’s dangerous. You should tell zem to be more careful, ze Ministry could close zem down…’
She snuck a glance over her shoulder and, as she feared, saw the sheaf of silvery-white hair belonging to Fleur Delacour, who was walking directly towards her in the company of a handsome red-haired man.
‘Not likely,’ he was saying. ‘Fred told me last week the Ministry are on the phone every twenty minutes placing a new order from their Defence range. They seem to have pretty much landed themselves unofficial consultancy roles, lucky sods…’
Delilah inched sideways until she could conceal herself behind a pyramid of ‘RosyGlow Rouge’ boxes, then shuffled off into the crowd and snaked her way over to the other side of the shop. What the hell was Fleur Delacour doing in London? The last thing she needed was an inquisition from that supercilious bitch – not that Fleur was likely to deign to recognise her. Nine months in the cramped quarters of the Beauxbatons carriage in the grounds of Hogwarts, and she didn’t think the precious Champion had ever so much as acknowledged her existence, except to accept Delilah’s perfunctory congratulations on her Triwizard appointment with the condescending grace of a monarch receiving a subject. Still, it would be just her luck if she chose this moment to come over all friendly, and Delilah didn’t fancy coming up with any tales about how she’d spent her summer holiday. Another glance over her shoulder revealed that Fleur was engaged in examining the WonderWitch products, but the man was peering around the shop.
‘I can’t see Fred or George anywhere. Look, there’s Verity, let’s go and see if she knows where they’re hiding…’ Delilah realised to her horror that she was standing directly beside a pretty young witch straightening a display of Quirky Quills, with a name badge on her chest reading “Verity”. She dodged out of the way again, and spied an entrance to an adjoining room. There was no door, but a heavy red velvet curtain draped the entrance elegantly from the doorframe, giving off a faint flickering light. A sign beside the doorway read, ‘ADULTS ONLY. Kiddiewinks attempt entry at your own risk’. As she ducked through the curtain its velvet folds stroked her shoulders, giving off a faint static crackle.
This room was empty except for a man in a magenta suit standing on a stepladder against the back wall, arranging boxes onto a high shelf. It was decorated in red, black and cream, and softly lit by wall-mounted lanterns, providing a stark contrast to the explosions of colour and noise in the main shop. A Silencing Charm had evidently been placed on the curtain, because as soon as she was through it the squeals and laughter of the shoppers were replaced by gentle jazz music. Aside from the boxes lined up along the walls, dotted around the room were several chest-high golden fonts filled with reams of red velvet, upon which rested all manner of bizarre objects.
‘Don’t mind me,’ the man on the step ladder called over his shoulder. ‘I’ll be out of your way in a sec. Let me know if you need any help.’
‘Thanks, I’m just browsing,’ Delilah replied, approaching the nearest display font, full of mysterious metal shapes of various sizes, one as small as a coat button, one an oval ring, another five inches long with a rounded end, each mounted on ivory silk in what looked like jewellery boxes. The sign underneath them just said Finest Titanium, fully compatible with all Weasleys’ Products. Thirty-three speed settings. Sixteen Sickles. She puzzled over this for a moment and then moved on to the next font, where she found what seemed to be a selection of silk harnesses. Hand-reeled, finest-grade silk. Fully adjustable. Seven Sickles. Bespoke size and colour services available on request for an additional fee: ask at the counter for more details. This was no clearer, so she drifted towards the display wall and picked up a box labelled ‘InstaStiff: New Formula. Instant, Long-Lasting Effect. Keep Going For Hours.’ The box beside it was black in colour and labelled ‘InstaStiff Plus: Keep Going For Days! Antidote Included.’
Delilah’s eyes widened with dawning comprehension.
‘I won’t be able to sell you that I’m afraid,’ the man in magenta said, hopping down from his stepladder. She jumped and put the box back on the shelf as though it were searing hot. ‘The Ministry are on our backs over it. Some bloke with a heart condition used it last week and ended up in St Mungo’s, so now we’re supposed to jump through hoops before we can make a sale – haven’t got it all figured out yet, so your fella’d have to come in himself.’ He smiled apologetically.
‘Um, right. That’s OK, I was just… looking,’ Delilah said, flushing.
‘We’ve got some non-chemical things you can try if you’re interested though? No restrictions on those yet.’
‘No no, really, I was just…’
‘No probs. You’re not looking for anything in particular?’
‘I, um…’ Delilah gazed hopelessly around the shop. ‘Actually, there isn’t a… I don’t know what most of this stuff is,’ she confessed. ‘I came in here to escape from someone, I didn’t realise what it… was.’
The man laughed.
‘I’m interested in hearing about it though,’ she added hastily, not wanting to offend him.
‘OK,’ he said easily. ‘Well, the vibrator attachments are the biggest sellers, they work really well with the restraints,’ he gestured the font full of metal objects and the adjacent one full of silks. ‘And they work brilliantly with the lingerie range too, totally undetectable through clothes and remotely controllable across four counties, great for long-distance play.’
‘I don’t think it’s a good idea to take anything like that back to school,’ Delilah said. ‘And I don’t actually have a boyfriend, long-distance or otherwise.’
‘You’re still at school?’ the man said, surprised. ‘Not Hogwarts? Sure I’d recognise you if you were.’
‘No, Beauxbatons,’ Delilah said swiftly.
‘Ah, you’ll know the lovely Fleur Delacour then,’ he said. Delilah detected a hint of rancour in his tone, and her lips twitched.
‘She’s the one I was escaping,’ she admitted. ‘She’s out there in the shop.’
‘Oh shit, really?’ he groaned. ‘I’ll hide out here with you then, there’s no way she’s going to set foot in here, let alone buy sex toys off her brother-in-law.’
‘She’s your sister-in law?’ Delilah exclaimed, her hand flying to her mouth. ‘Oh God, sorry. I didn’t mean to…’
‘Don’t worry, it’s a popular opinion,’ the man grinned. ‘We’re not actually related yet, but she and my brother are getting married next summer. She’s not all bad, but she’s a bit much. So you’re Beauxbatons, are you? You don’t sound French at all.’
‘Half French, half English,’ she explained.
‘And you want something dormitory-friendly,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Did you see the line of Patented Daydream Charms out there?’ Delilah shook her head and the man led her to a different part of the display, where several claret-coloured boxes were displayed, labelled ‘The Rapture’. His manner was so easy and frank that she was surprised to find she no longer felt in the least bit awkward. He picked up one of the boxes.
‘We developed those specifically for students to spice up snoozing through a History of Magic lesson; pop one and enter into a realistic hour-long daydream. A bit exciting, but nothing X-rated. You get the idea. But when we started developing our adult range, we thought we could go one better: these ones you mix up yourself, and you can either add one of your own hairs if you just want to live out your wildest fantasy, or one of your own and one from the object of your affections, if you have someone specific in mind. You mix it up at bedtime and it can last five to seven hours. Very realistic, but it has a mild neuromuscular blocker in it, so you won’t writhe around gasping or anything. Obviously you can use it any time, but it’ll knock you out so it’s designed to be used overnight.’
‘That’s amazing,’ Delilah said, taking the box from him. ‘What exactly happens?’
‘Well, that differs from person to person,’ he explained professionally. ‘The product is designed to react to your body chemistry and tap into your fantasies. It’s sort of like a dream, but much more controlled, so it won’t get weird halfway through, or drift off into a nightmare, and much more engrossing. We’ve had no complaints yet, but obviously there’s a full money-back guarantee if you don’t enjoy it. Hasn’t happened yet though.’
Delilah remembered Terry’s hands in her hair and on her neck at the bottom of the garden, lit by the soft glow of the circling fairies, and his fingertips dragging up the inside of her thigh…
‘I’ll take one,’ she said breathlessly.
*
Delilah enjoyed a long, leisurely meal in the cosy dining room of The Mugwump’s Hump, drank three large glasses of elf-made wine, and read the first few chapters of a book called Lilith’s Lovers by Scarlett Lorelei, an impulse buy from a second-hand book shop featuring a nude woman on the cover with wispy hip-length hair, who was sensuously cradling two serpents that slithered around her waist and legs. She finished a tremendous bowl of strawberry ice cream and asked for the bill at a quarter to eight, which the affable barman brought with a complimentary shot of Ogden’s Old Firewhiskey, which she downed in high spirits, much to his appreciation. Stumbling out of the pub into the sunset, she made her way giddily down the Alley with bulging bags bashing against her bare legs, until the stately archway leading back into the Leaky Cauldron’s courtyard hoved into view, with Professor Snape standing stiffly beside it.
‘Evening, Professor,’ she said jauntily as she approached.
‘You are drunk,’ he said dispassionately.
‘No!’ she said, a little too forcefully. He fixed her with a mordant stare, which she managed to return steadily for all of three seconds before her lips began to twitch and she dissolved into hysterical giggles.
‘Yes, I see,’ he said drily. ‘Sober as a warlock.’
‘Lighten up Professor,’ she hiccoughed, ‘this is the first fun I’ve had in ages. I’m almost feeling back to my normal self.’
‘Heaven help us.’
This only made her laugh harder, and she staggered and dropped one of her Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes bags, so that WonderWitch bottles rolled over the cobbles. She dropped to her knees to gather them up but then couldn’t get the neck of the carrier bag open with her hands full, and ended up dropping the bag again. She saw the Rapture box slide out, and frantically scrabbled to snatch it up before Snape saw it, again losing her grip on the rest of the bottles in the process.
Once she finally had the bag and its contents under control she straightened sheepishly, feeling Snape’s eyes boring into her.
‘Finished?’ he said laconically. She nodded, and he grabbed her upper arm and Disapparated.
‘Oh God,’ she groaned in the gloom of Grimmaud Place’s hallway, clutching her stomach. ‘I do hate Apparating.’
‘It’s not much fun on a stomach full of Firewhiskey,’ Snape said pointedly. ‘I need to write a note to the headmaster, then I’ll leave you.’ He made for the kitchen, still talking so she had no choice but to follow. ‘As you know, the school term begins on September 1st. The Hogwarts Express leaves at 11am, and a member of the Order will arrive to escort you to the train station at 10.30am.’
The fires had been lit in the kitchen, and her toast plate from that morning had been spirited away by the House Elf that had still managed to evade being seen. Delilah filled the kettle at the sink, tapped the hob with her wand to light it and set the kettle to boil, whilst Snape pulled a sheet of parchment and a quill from the pocket of his travelling cloak and rested them on the wooden table.
‘Won’t it be you?’
‘I am a teacher,’ he said witheringly. ‘I have rather more important things to be doing on the first day of term.’
He turned his back to her and leaned over the parchment. Delilah watched his shoulder blade flexing as he wrote, his cloak concealing his moving arm and the sheet of parchment. His right palm was flat on the table, the tendons on the back of his hand tight and raised from bearing his weight. She took a tentative step towards him, and he didn’t pause. The sound of the quill scratching rapidly against the parchment was almost lost to the plashing effervescences of the kettle on the hob and the thin, crooning whistle that was already emitting from its spout. She reached out a hand and, without knowing quite why she did it, carefully plucked from his travelling cloak a single hair that was trapped in the fibre, glinting golden-dark in the firelight like a splinter of black jasper.
