A Study In Yellow (Justin Finch-Fletchley)
Title: A Study in Yellow
Author/Artist: hiddenhibernian
Prompt: Justin returns home after a year abroad, to a proper English downpour. Also inspired by prompt 124
Pairing(s): None
Word Count/Art Medium: 8,800
Rating: PG
Warning(s): None
Disclaimer:Harry Potter characters are the property of J.K. Rowling and Bloomsbury/Scholastic. No profit is being made, and no copyright infringement is intended.
Notes: I'm very grateful to my amazing beta S. M. M., who did a fantastic job spotting stray commas and other errors, while also providing witty and insightful comments. Any remaining mistakes are my own. I've drawn heavily on Hippothestrowl's excellent time line for the Battle of Hogwarts, and am indebted to him for sharing it. This story is firmly set in the bookverse, and it's canon-compliant to the best of my ability.
Summary: If he'd gone to Eton instead, none of it would have happened. Justin was quite sure he'd never see Hogwarts again.
Maybe he should have gone to Eton instead. Right now, he would have been fretting about how his exams had gone instead of preparing to go to war. Would his grades have been enough for-
Justin couldn't make his imagination stretch to guessing what he'd want to do at university if he'd been a proper Muggle. If everything had been different. It would never happen, so there was no point in thinking about it.
There were a lot of things Justin avoided thinking about the summer after his sixth year at Hogwarts. Most of the time, he was quite successful in pretending even to himself that it was a summer like any other. The day of his disappearance from the Muggle world was rapidly approaching, but as long as he didn't acknowledge it he was able to potter around the way he usually did during the holidays without anyone being the wiser.
He only slipped up once.
His cousin Cressida was getting married to some fellow barrister, and she'd invited all the Finch-Fletchleys to the wedding. Justin wasn't very keen on weddings in general, but he liked his cousin.
Besides, they'd all want to know why he didn't want to go if he declined. The last thing Justin wanted was to kick up a fuss just before he was leaving, so he dutifully marked the day in his calendar and made sure he had a clean suit.
On the day of the wedding, they all piled into the car and drove down to Oxford. It was hot to the point of suffocation before his father got the air conditioning running, and even then Justin was sweating as soon as he got out at the church.
The service was all right; he even managed an embarrassed sort of prayer, before it all went to pieces at the wedding breakfast
Cressida had seated Justin on his own, with some other distant cousin and some slightly weird friends of hers who were much older than him. The wedding guests were dressed in morning grey suits and colourful dresses, and if they weren't calling out to acquaintances at other table, odds were that they were chatting loudly about how late the meal was running.
Justin could have sworn that the ceiling was descending slowly towards him before it suddenly stopped. The elaborate arrangements of lilies and something frothy-looking Cressida had spent ages choosing seemed to be hovering in the air.
The crisp linen tablecloth and the meticulously arranged row of wine glasses suddenly didn't seem real, as if he were watching a film. Or like he was in a film, he wasn't sure. Surreptitiously, he looked around him.
No one else seemed to have noticed anything out of the ordinary.
Staring at the butter dish in front of him, Justin forced himself to breathe in and out steadily, trying not to make a complete fool of himself.
He thought he had succeeded until he looked up, straight into the eyes of his brother Rupert, who was at the next table with some of Cressida's London friends. They were looking tipsy already.
Rupert tilted his head towards the French doors open to the gardens and slipped out of his seat, leaving his top hat behind perched on his seat.
After a minute Justin followed him, mumbling an excuse to cousin Imogen as he squeezed his way past her. She didn't even pause her monologue about her pet alpacas.
Once outside, the spinning slowed down and the world seemed to be revolving gently rather than reeling out of control.
Rupert offered him a cigarette, still without a word.
“No, thanks. Still don't smoke.”
“Suit yourself. It helps, though.”
Justin didn't ask with what. Instead he let the heat from the afternoon sun lingering in the stone wall behind him settle in his bones, dispelling the feeling of being a spectator to someone else's life.
“Sometimes I think I'm going crazy,” he admitted, looking out on the impossibly perfect lawn before them. “I don't know what's real, this or- or what's happening in my world.”
It wasn't until he'd already said it that he realised that he'd picked a side without even noticing.
Ever since he'd first got his Hogwarts letter all those years ago, Justin had always insisted that he was a Muggle too. He wasn't going to abandon his family just because he could go where they couldn't. Rupert had argued with him then, and Justin knew hadn't changed his mind since.
Fortunately he didn't bring it up now.
“I know,” his older brother said instead. “You think both worlds can't exist at the same time, and yet they do. Only most people are oblivious to what's happening so close to their quiet little lives.”
“Yes,” Justin replied, a little taken aback. ”Yes, that's exactly it. They have no idea, none at all, and now the war's on their doorstep-”
“What, here?”
For the first time Justin saw his brother as a soldier. Rupert had lost the slouch and looked as tense as a coiled spring. His shoulders were squared and there was a fierce look in his eyes as they swept the lawn for any threats.
There was a sharpness to him that Justin recognised from wizards he had met. Mad-Eye Moody had it, and so did Snape. It was a strange thing to see in his own brother, and a little reassuring.
Perhaps Justin would be able to find the same fortitude in himself, too.
“Relax, they're not about to burst in on us,” he hastened to reassure Rupert, while hoping very much that he was right. He was a Hufflepuff - Justin didn't think Voldemort was going to hunt him down specially. “Things are- There's a war going on in my world, and it might spill over to the Muggle- normal world.”
Quickly, he explained to Rupert in very broad terms what was going on, including the misdirection charms he had wrangled out of Professor Flitwick before leaving Hogwarts. Hopefully he'd be able to protect his family from detection by anyone magical.
“What about you? They can still find you, can't they?” Rupert was frowning, and still hadn't abandoned his soldier's stance.
“I know. That's why I'm leaving the day before I'm due before the Muggle-Born Registration Commission.”
“You- No, that's not on. No. Justin, you're seventeen - you're not going off on your own. Not if there is a war on. Forget about it. I won't let you-” Rupert was almost sputtering.
Justin hadn't seen him this animated since before he'd been sent to Bosnia, just after he'd graduated from Sandhurst.
Rupert had come home for good after a year and a half, but the easy-going elder brother with the ready smile seemed to have been left in Bosnia. They'd got a stranger with flat eyes and curt words instead, and now it suddenly occurred to Justin that Rupert mightn't want the same thing to happen to his younger brother.
Justin had made his mind up long ago, though.
“It's no use. You can't stop me,” he said, trying to sound confident. “Even if you could, would you really want me to hide away? Don't get me wrong, I'll go underground but I will fight.”
He jutted out his jaw and tried to stretch an extra inch to match Rupert's height. It was equally useless as when he had been ten years old and a foot had separated them, but it seemed to work anyway.
“No. I want you to be careful, though,” Rupert said eventually.
“As careful as I can,” Justin promised. He didn't particularly want to die, so it was an easy promise to make. It wasn't until later that he realised that keeping it might be a different matter.
In the beginning, it was almost a bit of a lark.
Justin had known he wouldn't come back to Hogwarts after Dumbledore's death, so he had asked around the DA before leaving after the funeral. Out of the names Nigel from the DA had whispered to him, Tonks had been the only familiar one.
She'd visited her old house when she had been stationed at Hogwarts the year of the Dementors, and Justin remembered her well. It was hard not to - he'd never met anyone else who could change the colour of their hair at will, never mind all the other stuff she could do.
Justin became a member of the Muggle-born Clean-up Operation, together with Penelope Clearwater.
Tonks was their link to the Order of the Phoenix, but her involvement only stretched to teaching them a few handy charms and passing on names and addresses of Muggle-born Hogwarts students and others who may be targeted. Penelope and Justin travelled around Britain, laying protective charms and warding the homes of their old school friends as best they could.
Some names were a surprise: Justin hadn't known Tracey Davis' family was Muggle. It only went to show that Gryffindor and Slytherin were labels stuck on you, not shorthand for what you really were.
Some of the people he'd gone to school with would do well to remember that.
Penelope turned out to be a good sort, even if she was a bit stiff in the beginning. She hadn't been too impressed with being assigned to someone who was only seventeen, but Justin liked to think he'd won her over eventually.
For months they worked together without incident, mostly creeping around suburban neighbourhoods in the dark where the biggest challenge was not to set off any dogs.
Hiding under a hedge for several hours in the pouring rain while waiting for the Creeveys to go to sleep wasn't too bad - not when they took turns imagining more and more outrageous reasons why the next-door neighbour still had a Christmas tree up in August.
“She's been dead since January, and no one's come to see her.”
“Idiot. She's sitting there, watching Coronation Street.”
“That's her ghost, of course. Are you a witch or not?”
“What's that?” Penelope craned her neck to see across the neat hedge into the Creeveys' house.
“It's-” Justin cut himself off and grabbed Penelope's arm. Her muffled squeak made him loosen his grip a little, but he didn't apologise. He was busy staring at the figure in dark robes moving silently across the Creeveys' lawn, blond hair shining in the orange streetlight.
Somehow, Justin had been expecting two of them. His mind seemed to be stuck in a curious loop, wondering who it was and why the single Death Eater wasn't wearing a mask.
“STUPEFY!” Fortunately, he didn't need to think to act: hours upon hours of DA training had the spell on the tip of his tongue before he knew it.
“Petrificus Totalus.” Penelope looked pale, but her wand was steady.
They cautiously advanced to the lawn and the lifeless man on the ground. No one else seemed to have noticed anything amiss; the restless flickering of the TV screen next door was the only sign that anyone else was still awake.
Justin kicked the fallen man's cloak aside, revealing nondescript clothing underneath - he couldn't even tell if it were wizarding or Muggle.
“Recognise him?”
“No. Do you?”
Tonks had given them a list of known Death Eaters. The only ones Justin had met were Snape and the two Malfoys, and this wasn't any of them.
“No. What do we do now?”
They looked at each other.
Justin was fairly sure that Penelope would agree if he suggested sending a Patronus to Tonks to ask for help; she looked as lost as he was feeling.
He didn't say anything.
This was their job - they were fighting in a war, they couldn't run to the teacher and ask for help when something finally happened.
Standing on the suburban lawn somewhere in Shropshire, he felt entirely cut off from all the normal people around them, who slept and watched TV and ate dinner without knowing that there was a war being fought in the shadows outside.
He could still be one of them: if he hid his wand and went somewhere no one knew him, no one would know he was a wizard...
That would be the act of a coward: Finch-Fletchleys didn't run and hide when they were needed. Justin squeezed his wand tighter and stretched his back a little, just like when he tried to look taller next to his brother, and tried to solve the problem at hand.
“Can't we Obliviate him?” he suggested, trying to ignore how dry his mouth felt. .
“Won't he just come back later, then? Besides, I don't know how to do it.”
“Me neither,” Justin admitted. He'd thought Penelope would, but perhaps it was unfair to expect a witch who'd only been out of Hogwarts a few years to know all the spells he didn't. “We need to get the Creeveys out of here, anyway - otherwise they might send someone else.”
It was very tempting to give the unconscious Death Eater a good kick, but Justin restrained himself to pocketing the man's wand. Tonks could pass it on to someone who needed it.
“Penelope, what's the furthest from civilisation you've ever been?”
They left the nameless Death Eater on a rocky island north of Skye. Justin had gone sailing around Scotland one wet summer with his uncle, and he remembered the place well, since they'd spent two miserable days there waiting for a storm to die down.
There were no Muggles here, just rocks and seagulls and green grass. The coastline was visible, so if the Death Eater were a strong swimmer he'd be able to get to the mainland. If not, there was a shipping route nearby, so he would be spotted before he could starve. Maybe he'd even be grateful to the Muggles for saving him.
It wasn't ideal, but short of murder it was the best they could think of.
Penelope grew thinner and thinner as the nights drew in. After they found the Turpins dead one morning in November, the twitch in her left eye wouldn't go away.
Justin would have liked to believe that he was bearing up decently under the circumstances, but he didn't seem to be able to do anything right. He didn't know enough spells, and the ones he knew he wasn't very good at. The responsibility to keep them clothed and fed fell on Penelope, since Justin had never had to fend for himself before. He knew that wasn't right, even without Penelope resenting it more and more as the winter wore on.
The old farmhouse they were using as a base was getting colder and colder as the temperature fell, and Justin's attempts to stop the wind from creeping in seemed equally useless whether he was using spells or Muggle means.
It was difficult to know if what they were doing made any difference. Apart from the nameless Death Eater they'd put out of action months ago, all they had to show for their efforts were a rake of sleepless nights and some spectacular failures.
He didn't care what Penelope said; Justin was certain he'd laid the Shield charm over Laura Madley's house correctly. The Death Eaters must have broken through it. They were powerful witches and wizards; it was ridiculous to think that a seventeen-year-old who hadn't even finished school would be a match for them.
Nevertheless they carried on, tuning into Potterwatch whenever they could. It helped, knowing they weren't alone. The enormous kitchen they were camping out in seemed a little brighter when the voices of their friends made the shadows retreat.
Penelope was better at recognising the presenters, since she'd spent much more time with the Weasleys than Justin had. He hadn't known she'd been going out with Percy Weasley at school before she told him, but it made sense from what he knew about the former Head Boy. Penelope had been ambitious too, before the war.
The Weasleys were an easy topic of conversation when other subjects became tense.
When Penelope told him that Ron Weasley was laid down with Spattergroit, Justin hummed and looked appropriately concerned. He reckoned he knew Ron quite well. The chances that he'd be conveniently confined to his sickbed when Harry Potter was running for his life were slim to none.
Ron and Hermione were out there somewhere with Harry, and Justin hoped like hell that they were doing something to get rid of Voldemort.
He didn't quite know what they possibly could do, though, and Penelope's mysterious hints about prophesies and Fate failed to reassure him. Wizards were far too prone to attribute chance to Destiny in Justin's experience.
Nevertheless, all their hopes seemed to be pinned on Harry, no matter how daft it seemed to rely entirely on another seventeen-year-old runaway.
When Christmas came and the roof of the barn was covered in frost, Justin had to fight an almost physical urge to go home.
There would be mulled wine and a Christmas tree in the hall, the neighbours coming over for a sherry after church on Christmas Day and the house bustling with people all over the holidays, mistletoe pinned above the kitchen entrance and the smell of snow in the air, and he missed it like he'd miss his own limb if it were cut off.
He could be home in a few seconds.
Justin rose from the log they used for want of something better to sit on, and prepared to spin around to Apparate right there. They'd be delighted to see him-
Rupert wouldn't be.
Rupe was the only one of them who knew, really knew, what Justin was up to, and he certainly wouldn't approve of his younger brother putting their family at risk.
Going home would be an indulgence, and Justin knew he couldn't afford it.
Most of the time he felt hapless, like he'd stumbled onto the scene at a play and didn't know his lines, but now he filled with purpose. He mightn't be particularly good at it, but he was doing his bit for the Order of the Phoenix and Dumbledore's Army and for Harry Potter. Their war mightn't be within the remit of Her Majesty's Armed Forces, but it was real and he was as much a soldier as his brother had ever been.
He sat back down, but this time his back was straight. Penelope was staring into the fire, and didn't seem to have noticed him getting up.
“Happy Christmas, Pen.” Justin raised his glass of cheap red they'd splashed out for in the local supermarket. “To you and yours, wherever they are.”
Chapter 2
“Justin!”
He tried to bat the flies away; they were extraordinarily persistent. As soon as it had started getting warmer, flies had appeared everywhere in the farmhouse. He was sick of having to fight them, even when he was sleeping-
“Justin, wake up!”
It wasn't flies that were in his face, it was Penelope's hands. He sat up, rubbing his eyes.
“What's going on? I thought we were resting until tonight?”
“We're needed at Hogwarts!” Penelope's face looked like she couldn't decide whether to be petrified or delighted. They'd both learnt a lot in recent months, and Justin wouldn't like to be pitted against her in a fight.
He quickly pulled on his boots and grabbed his wand, ready to go, and then he remembered.
The day Rupert had been going back to his barracks after the wedding, a worn-looking wooden box had been left on Justin's bed. For months, it had been stashed in the old shoe-box Justin was using for his personal belongings. Penelope didn't even know he had it, and it hadn't felt right to bring it out on their patrols.
Now, it was time.
“Are you coming? We're needed at the Hog's Head in Hogsmeade! Can you Apparate there on your own?”
Penelope did have a tendency to assume everyone else was useless in a crisis.
Justin had never seen the barman look agitated before. There were people everywhere, trying to be quiet but failing in the midst of greetings and urgent admonishments (“You will listen to me, Ginny!”). He lost track of Penelope and found himself creeping down a long, winding tunnel squeezed in between a Weasley brother whose name he didn't know and an elderly witch he recognised from his O.W.L.s.
He tried to turn around and offer her his arm, but she'd have none of it.
“Pish and tosh, young man - get moving instead! There's a battle on, you know.”
“If you say so, madam. Please look out, there's a sharp bend coming.”
Eventually they emerged in a gigantic room that reminded him of a circus tent; only the rough stone walls suggested that they actually were at Hogwarts. The noise had abated when they walked through the tunnel, but it was back now.
“Aurors and trained duelists, this way!” a tall, dark wizard bellowed, and to Justin's surprise the elderly witch detached herself from his elbow and tottered after him.
“DA members, follow me!” a familiar voice hollered - it was a battered Seamus Finnigan, who looked more in charge than Justin had ever seen him. Colin Creevey, looking as eager as always, was already flocking to him, along with Alicia Spinnet and Katie Bell.
“How have you been?” Alicia asked Katie, and Justin suppressed his snort just in time. He was a little giddy - seeing so many of his friends he'd never thought he'd see again made it feel like he was back in the good old days. Before Muggleborns were hunted by the Ministry, when going to Hogwarts had been the best thing that had ever happened to him.
“Justin, old chap - fancy running into you here!” Seamus said with a creditable attempt of copying Justin's accent. Even as they left the room and emerged into a familiar corridor with drawn wands, it only took their eyes meeting to set off another round of what would have been giggles if they'd been girls.
“Where are we going?” Colin asked, and all hilarity dissipated. Justin tried to remember what year he was in - he looked very young in the flickering light from the candles illuminating the corridor.
“We're on sentry duty. He-Who- Voldemort is about to attack at midnight, and our job is to make sure no one gets through the main entrance undetected.“
It sounded quite professional, and Justin wondered who was in charge of strategy. It was reassuring, in a way: it wasn't just him and Penelope anymore, faltering on their own.
He wondered where Penelope was, and whether he'd see her again.
“Quick, we need to be ready by midnight!” Seamus marshalled his troops, brandishing a set of keys for the gate house. Without being told, Justin started casting his usual wards on the building: if there was anything he'd learnt this year, it was protective charms.
A quick inventory revealed several charmed Galleons left from the DA, so their line of communications was secured.
“Someone should be on the other side,” Justin mumbled to Seamus. “Look, it's a great angle to attack anyone coming through the gates.”
Seamus looked conflicted in the faint light from his wand.
“Not you, you've got to stay here. Me.”
“Justin-”
“It's not about getting through the night unscathed, it's about winning.”
“I'd like to think it's both,” Seamus said with a trace of a grin on his face. “I need the rest here, but you're right - we do need someone out there. Be careful, and look before you curse - we're expecting reinforcements.”
There was no time for goodbyes. Justin crept out through the side door and flitted across the path leading up to the castle just before the clock in the church in Hogsmeade struck midnight.
He clutched his wand and waited.
There was a sweet smell on the air: something was in bloom in a garden nearby. Hogsmeade was silent. Lights were on everywhere at Hogwarts, but they were too far away to hear anything.
Seamus had told them to scarper back to the castle if they came under attack, but he hadn't seemed too concerned at the prospect. Justin wondered if the Order still had some spies, or if it was just a logical assumption. Naturally, the front gates would be well protected, so would Voldemort's forces even bother with them? Then again, he didn't seem to be the type to opt for the servant's entrance.
Justin was staring so hard at the gates that it took several minutes before he noticed. It was only when he dared to cast a quick look at the castle behind him that he saw that Hogwarts castle was under attack.
Brief flashes of spell light lit up the facade of the castle, and he could see dots moving in the sky - Voldemort must have wizards on brooms to charge from the air. The sky above the Forbidden Forest was red.
It had begun.
He forced his attention back to the gates he was set to guard, but he couldn't help turning his head back to the fighting every few seconds. Had they been sent out of the way, so the grown-ups could fight? It didn't seem fair, when Harry-
An ear-splitting bang of protesting metal hit his ears and Justin perched on the balls of his feet, ready to attack.
“Alohomora!” someone roared on the other side of the gate, and Justin would have sniggered if he hadn't been trying to remember the slight variation on the Blasting Curse Penelope had shown him last week. Was it twisting his wand slightly to the right side?
“Deprimo!” the voice on the other side barked, to no avail. Behind them, the sound of the fighting was getting closer. An unearthly howl had pierced the silence first, and several loud bangs had followed.
“Sod this,” the voice huffed. “Open it!”
Suddenly the lights from Hogsmeade disappeared and Justin stared at the gate, his mouth gaping.
A... thing was blocking the light.
It was even higher than the gates that moved and appeared to have arms and legs. Arms it currently was using to lift the gates off its hinges, despite the metal squeaking in protest.
Reading about giants in his textbooks had been one thing; seeing a creature from his childhood fairy tales in the flesh almost made him drop his wand. With a start, he remembered what was in his pocket - it might work better than magic against the giant.
The gates to Hogwarts held for another half a minute, and by the time the last, agonising squeak died down Justin was ready. He planted his legs wide, trusting the shadows and his Disillusionment charms to keep him hidden.
Several things happened at once.
The giant, followed by a number of smaller figures in black cloaks, burst through the gates and were hit by a barrage of spells from the gate house. Most bounced back, causing some of the windows to break in a rain of glass shards.
And Justin pulled the trigger on his grandfather's service revolver, hitting the giant square in the face. He'd always been good at target practice, ever since his father had taken him down to the edge of the forest on their estate and shown him how to use a gun.
For a moment it seemed to be enough to stop the assault, but the attackers roared and stormed forwards.
“GET BACK, GET BACK!” Seamus' voice hollered. Justin hid as the invaders ran past him, quickly checking there were no more coming before sending of a volley of spells hitting them in the back. Penelope had been telling him for weeks war was no time for fair play.
He almost got one of them, before a small contingent split off and went back to secure the gates. Justin ran for it, hoping the others had made it out before him.
Before he reached the castle he was afraid of being stuck on the wrong side, but as he came closer it became evident that the attackers had broken through the defences already.
He had to jump over bits of armour to reach an entrance, but managed to get in without anyone being the wiser.
Inside the castle, pandemonium reigned. Justin didn't dare to stop to pull out his gun, and after narrowly escaping a green curse from a masked Death Eater he stopped thinking about anything other than survival.
He remembered those corridors: his feet seemed to move of their own volition as he dodged creatures he'd never seen before except in his nightmares. Every so often he saw a friend in the melee; Seamus had made it back to the castle and together they brought down a snarling, biting beast that couldn't decide whether it wanted to be a man or a wolf.
“Nice going!” Seamus panted, before they were separated by a crumbling staircase.
On the upper levels there were monsters of another kind. Percy Weasley knocked down a Death Eater so his mask fell off, and Justin recognised the blond wizard he'd last seen on a tiny Scottish island.
He raised his wand, and then wavered. Penelope could say what she wanted; he just couldn't bring himself to kill a defenceless man in cold blood. When the Death Eater scrambled to his feet and launched himself onto Percy's throat, however, Justin made himself Stun him in the back.
As the invaders gained ground, the fighting and the curses got more ferocious until Justin was defending the giant staircase step by step with a gaggle of Order members and students.
Their opponents froze as soon as they heard Voldemort's voice echo through the castle. Justin let his wand drop, too, only to be admonished by Professor McGonagall: “Never let your guard down, Finch-Fletchley - this isn't the time to play nice!”
“It's a ceasefire! Look!” A dark-haired witch Justin didn't recognise pointed downstairs, where they could see their opponents retreat. Being stuck on the staircase temporarily prevented the group they'd been fighting from following their comrades, but they soon extracted themselves, too.
It seemed like they'd been fighting for an eternity, but when Justin made it to the Great Hall it was still dark outside. The battle must only be a few hours old.
Harry wouldn't turn himself over - Justin didn't need Professor McGonagall to tell him that. The hall was full of whispers about a secret plan and hidden weapons, but there was no telling which parts had substance and which were only wishful thinking.
He had headed to the Great Hall for directions, to get his orders for the next part, but once there the bodies laid out on the floor stopped him cold.
A Weasley, he didn't know which one.
Professor Lupin, who somehow looked smaller in death.
And Tonks, who'd never, ever given up, who'd always seemed to know what to do and how to keep on fighting even when the Ministry had fallen and everything seemed hopeless.
Death seemed to have drained all the vibrant colours from her and only left a black-and-white version behind.
Next to her lay Morag MacDougal, who never had possessed Tonks' rainbow hues even when she'd been alive. She looked like she was asleep, her often disapproving mouth slightly turned up in a smile instead.
There were more bodies, but Justin turned away in search of the living instead. He didn't want to see who else was dead. He didn't want to think about who he'd killed, either, but he didn't seem able to stop.
He'd hit a slim witch who'd been going for Susan Bones in the back with a Reducto. Hitting people in the back seemed to be his specialty this evening. When Death Eaters had threatened to surround their little group on the stairs he'd used his first Unforgivable. The screams from the witch he'd hit as she'd tumbled down to land with a sickening thud on the flagstones far below hadn't deterred him, and the spells he'd used had got more and more vicious as the fighting grew to a crescendo.
It struck him as slightly unfair that the battle would just stop in the middle, so they'd have to stop and think rather than keep cursing.
“Justin! You made it!” It was Ernie, who Justin hadn't seen since Dumbledore's funeral. It stood to reason that Ernie would be here. He was the most principled person Justin had ever met, and seeing Ernie made it easier to believe he was doing the right thing, using Unforgivables or not.
“I did. Good to see you.” They shook hands, like they always had when they met again at Hogwarts after the holidays.
Fighting when you'd lost all hope turned out to be different again.
When Voldemort presented them with Harry's dead body, the defenders seemed to gain a second wind, even as the giants forced into the castle. Justin tried to get his revolver out again, but it was quickly knocked out of his hand and he had to cling onto his wand instead.
He saw Bellatrix Lestrange die, and cheered as she fell.
Harry's appearance stunned him back to himself, and as Justin saw his friend defeat Voldemort with a defensive spell it seemed like the world was putting itself to rights again.
None of them slept much afterwards, not for days. Time passed strangely in a haze of exhaustion and elation, and Justin seemed to lose hours here and there amid cleaning up the wreckage and finding his friends.
He even got a few words in with Harry, who looked as dazed as Justin was feeling - not even the Saviour of the Wizarding World knew quite how to deal with the war finally being over.
Justin didn't feel like himself again until he was sitting with Penelope and Neville on the front steps in the sun, a few days after the battle. They'd spent days clearing off the lawn in front of them. If you squinted, you could pretend it was just an ordinary day at Hogwarts.
“You haven't gone home yet, then?” Penelope asked.
“No. I think I want to- to let things settle first. I think I'd prefer not to be a blubbering mess when I finally show up. A few days won't matter,” Justin said.
Neville scrunched up his eyes against the sunlight and peered down towards the lake. “It's easier here, isn't it? Everyone knows what it was like. I couldn't imagine explaining Voldemort to my family, much less being in a battle.”
“Not everyone can have a Gran who fought with them,” Justin pointed out. Ever since he'd seen her charge at a Death Eater twice her size he'd had a soft spot for Mrs Longbottom.
“She's great, isn't she?” Neville said fondly.
The day before he was due to go home, Justin came across Luna Lovegood in the Great Hall. She was sitting at what had once been the Gryffindor table, surrounded by notes and torn-off bits of parchment. They'd always been friendly, ever since the DA. Luna wasn't half as strange as she appeared to be, not when you got to know her properly.
“Hello, Luna. What are you up to?”
“Hi, Justin. Just organising my notes.”
He sat down on the bench opposite her, resisting the temptation to read her loopy handwriting upside down.
“Notes for what, if I may ask?”
“Oh, didn't you hear? I'm trying to work out who did what in the battle. It'll help, you know. For the families-”
“Oh,” he mumbled, already rising again. He'd be a happy man if he never had to think of the Battle of Hogwarts again.
Except the very end. He didn't mind that bit so much.
Chapter 3
They'd agreed to spend their last night at Hogwarts in the Hufflepuff quarters: Justin, Ernie, Susan Bones and Hannah Abbott. It wasn't like the old days, but it was comforting and familiar and for the first time Justin felt like things might get back to the way they used to be when Hogwarts had been repaired.
They'd put the common room to rights as well as they could, and bid each other goodnight before heading down the tunnels to their respective dormitories. Ernie and Justin settled into their old beds, after a cursory examination revealed that the bedclothes weren't too dirty.
Justin had just drifted off to sleep, when a desperate cry roused him. He fumbled for his wand as he threw the bedcovers aside, and ran up the tunnel towards the common room with Ernie in tow.
There were more cries, and they seemed to come from the girls' dormitory. They eyed each other - they'd never tried to get in, but they'd seen other boys being thrown back by the wards.
“HANNAH! SUSAN! Are you all right?” Ernie yelled, while Justin tried to think of spells that could get through where generations of students had failed.
“Fine, we're fine!” someone yelled from the other side, and they stood back a little. It was half an hour before a dishevelled Hannah came out. They'd sat down by the fire as they were waiting. She landed heavily in a yellow armchair next to them.
“It's Susan,” she explained tiredly. “She's got those nightmares, from the battle”
Justin had nightmares too, but he hadn't admitted it to anyone.
“The worst one is Morag dying. You remember Morag MacDougal?”
They nodded. Justin remembered her thick Scottish brogue and how she'd turned her nose up at Hagrid's Flobberworms when she had been alive, and her pale face as she'd been laying dead in the Great Hall during the battle.
“She died in Susan's arms - she was hit from behind and fell right onto Susan. And now the poor girl can't fall asleep without dreaming about her.”
“How awful,” Ernie said. There didn't seem to be anything to add to that, and the crackling of the fire filled the silence.
Justin tried to rise, and found that he couldn't make his legs move. It took several minutes of listening to the rapid beating of his own heart before he could extract himself, trying to look like noting was amiss.
“Excuse me.” He almost ran back into their dormitory, before bolting the door to the lavatory behind him.
Finch-Fletchleys didn't run from the truth, he thought absently as he retched into the sink. Finch-Fletchleys didn't attack innocent women from behind either, so what did that make him?
Staring at the white porcelain he saw Morag falling, over and over again.
Justin didn't know how long he stayed in the lavatory. When he finally was able to move, it was bright enough that he didn't have to fumble to find his way out. As he tried to push it open, he found something blocking the door from the other side.
After a moment of terror when Justin thought he was locked in, the mumbled apology outside told him that Ernie must have been lying in wait for him with his back against the door.
Splendid.
“Are you all right?” Ernie's voice was hoarse from sleep.
“Yeah. Fell asleep in there.” Even the dim light in the corridor was enough to give that away as a lie, judging by how red-rimmed his eyes had looked in the bathroom mirror, but Ernie didn't challenge him.
“Listen, Ernie, I think I- need a bit of a break. From the wizarding world, I mean.” It was true, even though it wasn't the full truth.
“I can understand that. Certainly, if I had the option I'm not so sure I wouldn't go myself...” Ernie looked almost wistful and Justin had to bat down an impulse to invite him to come with him.
For once there was something he could do for his best friend, who had done so much for him. Ernie had always done his best to explain pure-blood customs and make Justin feel welcome in the wizarding world. Now that there finally was a way for Justin to do Ernie a good turn in return, he held back.
He wasn't a very good friend either.
The next day their goodbyes were muted. The exuberance in the wake of the battle had long since evaporated, and it was more common than not to see sombre faces at work restoring Hogwarts to its former state.
Justin wouldn't be contributing to that either, he realised as he Apparated home.
A year later, he was quite certain he'd never be back to Hogwarts again.
Justin had made himself go back and see his family straight away after leaving the castle. If he hadn't, he'd had the feeling he'd just set off one day and never come back, and they deserved to know he was alive.
It had been strange to be back in his old life, pretending that nothing was different. Sometimes, he caught his parents talking between themselves with urgent expressions and furrowed brows, but they never asked him anything he didn't volunteer.
For that, he was deeply grateful; there were too many things he couldn't bear to explain.
He'd been afraid to face Rupert: it felt like it was written on his forehead what he'd done, how he'd failed, but his brother said nothing. He simply offered Justin cigarettes, which he kept declining, and they shared the silence as Rupert smoked, hiding out by the kitchen entrance.
After two weeks' leave Rupert went back to barracks, and Justin reckoned it was time to consider the rest of his life. His parents had repeatedly offered to send him on a gap year, and in a fit of optimism he decided to take then up on it.
Maybe getting away would make everything fall back into place.
His best friend from before Hogwarts, Sebastian, was currently in Thailand on his gap year, and before he knew it Justin had a one-way ticket to Bangkok and a backpack full of flip-flops and shorts.
He realised his mistake before he'd even made it out of Bangkok International Airport.
The terminal seemed to be full with young Westerners with pale, excited faced and he couldn't have felt less like them if he'd tried. Even his body was wrong: his scars from the battle were still an angry red, and he looked like he hadn't seen the sun for years. The noise and the heat suddenly became unbearable.
He turned around abruptly, bumping into a group of American tourists and only extracted himself after several minutes of excuses.
Justin went straight to the British Airways counter and got a ticket for New Zealand instead. At least it wouldn't be hot there.
It was raining when he came home.
England in June wasn't very different from New Zealand, no matter how much he would have liked to think there was a peculiar English quality to the rain. He dumped his battered holdall on his bed and went searching for Rupert, who was supposed to be home too.
Rupert was standing under the eaves of the stables with an unlit cigarette dangling from his hand. Justin parked himself next to him, back against the wall and looking out over the fields behind the house.
“Still not smoking, eh?”
“Mum'd kill me.”
“I think you'll find she'll forgive you almost anything, now that you're back.”
“Maybe I don't want to die from lung cancer.”
Rupert gave him a long look, but remained silent. They listened to the soft whispers of the rain, as if they'd spoken last week instead of over a year ago.
“So you're back for good, then?” Rupert meant back to their world, back to the life he'd been born into. Not the one that had been sprung on him at the age of eleven.
“Yes.”
“Going into the bank too, I heard. Mum will be insufferable.” They both knew he didn't mean that. Their father was another matter. He'd long given up on either of his sons following in his footsteps, and Justin approaching him about career advice had made him a very happy man indeed. He seemed rather more confident about Justin's suitability for the business world than his son was.
There didn't seem to be much more to say.
The next few weeks brought trips into the City on overcrowded trains, limp lunch sandwiches that would have thoroughly depressed the Hogwarts house-elves, and a haze of acronyms. Justin slept, ate and dreamt of SMEs, CPFFs, EBIT and EPS.
He hardly noticed that the weather had improved, not until he woke up to the rain again on a Sunday morning. He'd been planning to get through a few of the textbooks that had been recommended to him. Armed with a cup of tea from the housekeeper he made a decent start, diligently ploughing through page upon page of financial basics.
It was hard to believe he'd once had textbooks that bit back.
Justin was just about to tackle “Anatomy of a Merger” when there was a diffident knock on the door.
“Ernie!”
“I hope I'm not intruding-”
“Come in! Please sit down!” Justin cleared a bunch of The Economist magazines off the chair next to his.
They smiled at each other, but didn't shake hands this time. It was odd, seeing Ernie surrounded by Muggle things.
“Dreadful weather,” Ernie volunteered after a minute.
“Awful. Was it as bad in Scotland?”
“No - a light drizzle, nothing worse. I Apparated down, of course.”
“Naturally.” Justin couldn't think of anything else to say. He wanted to know what was going on at Hogwarts, what their friends were doing, but asking outright would bring on questions he didn't quite know how to answer.
Perhaps he ought to have known that Ernie would tackle his absence head on.
“So when are you coming back, then?” Ernie asked with what presumably was supposed to be a look of indifference. He'd never been good at that sort of thing.
“I don't think I am, really.“
Ernie's silence worked better than words would have.
“I've started working at the bank with Father. It's a little confusing at times” - that was a massive understatement - “ but I'm getting the hang of it.”
Ernie looked at him with an air of light puzzlement, as if he'd forgotten where he'd put his glasses.
“Would have been easier if I'd gone to Muggle school, of course, but I seem to be able to hack it anyway.” Justin felt compelled to add.
“But you didn't go to Muggle school - Eden, or whatever it was. You went to Hogwarts,” Ernie pointed out. “Because you're a wizard.”
“Well, I don't have to be, you know. It's not compulsory.”
Ernie Macmillan, who had nine generations of pure-blood ancestors behind him, looked earnestly at Justin: “You are one. You'll always be a wizard, whether you like it or not. It's in your blood. You don't have to pretend to be a Muggle when there's a place in our world for you.”
Justin's eyes suddenly felt a little hot, and he glanced away for a moment.
“It's not that I don't appreciate that,” he said when he was certain that his voice was under control again. “It's just that it would have been better all-around if I'd gone to Eton instead.”
“If you'd gone to Eton, a lot of people would have been dead.”
“You can't know that.”
“I can make a reasoned guess. Look, I'm quite sure I know what this is about.”
Justin had never been more annoyed with Ernie, not even when they'd been arguing over whether Harry Potter was delusional when he said Voldemort was coming back: “Do you? Maybe you could enlighten me then?”
Ernie didn't take any notice of the way he almost spat out the words.
“I know you most probably killed Morag, and if I know you at all, you'll be fairly cut up over that. No matter what side she fought on.”
It was almost a relief to have it laid out like that, no matter how uncomfortable it made him to have Ernie know what had driven him away.
“Well, then you know. If I'd gone to Eton, Morag would still have been alive. She didn't deserve to die.”
“Maybe. And a lot of other people would have been dead, and they deserve to live, too.”
“That's not the point.” Justin almost got impatient with him. “Ever since my father showed me how to use a gun, I've had it drilled into me that you're responsible for what you do. If you use deadly force, you alone are responsible for the consequences. I should have looked - I should have known.”
“No one knows what side she was fighting for, did you know that?”
“But it doesn't matter! She wasn't going to kill Susan, so I shouldn't have hit her.” Justin didn't have his wand, so he tried rolling his pen the same way he usually did. It wasn't as good. “I was a bloody schoolboy, not a soldier - I should never have-”
There were so many things he never should have done.
"What should you have done then? Stood idly by?” Ernie was still entirely calm.
“Perhaps not, but I should have known better. Done better. I didn't know what I was doing half of the time!“ he finally admitted.
“None of us did, you know. That's how it goes - they don't give you a manual at the door.”
Justin almost laughed at that, and Ernie seized his chance: “You can only ever do your best. 'Hold fast and carry on'.”
The familiar Hufflepuff motto pulled Justin up short and Ernie ruthlessly pushed his advantage home: “I don't know what sort of Muggle banker you'd make, but I know you're a good wizard. We need you.”
“But I-”
“There's plenty that has done worse, if that's what's worrying you. No one is blaming you. We were there too, remember?”
They had been, too.
Justin felt a sudden surge of affection for his friends, his Hufflepuff comrades-in-arms who had stood up and been counted when it really mattered. He didn't blame them for what they'd done in the thick of the battle, and for the first time it occurred to him that the same leniency should perhaps apply to himself.
“Perhaps,” he admitted eventually, and Ernie had the good sense to shut up.
When a loud crack signalled Ernie's disappearance Justin went straight to the attic, with nary a look at the mountain of reading he ought to be doing instead.
The rain was smattering against the roof above him, drops of water landing in uneven clicks and taps. The Finch-Fletchleys didn't often throw useful things away, so after a hundred and fifty years at Wolverton the attic was rather full. His Hogwarts trunk was still where he'd left it after sixth year, a little dusty around the corners but still satisfyingly solid.
Justin knelt next to it, and carefully took out item after item.
A set of robes. A Quidditch magazine. A copy of The Quibbler announcing Voldemort's return. His Hufflepuff scarf. A Basic Blaze Box from Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes. Two quills, one with the feathery part broken. Eventually, he reached the bottom and pulled out a lovingly wrapped object, about ten inches long.
He stared at it for a long time before he unfurled the velvet fabric.
Perhaps you could do bad things and still be a good man. Perhaps- perhaps there was a way back to Hogwarts for him, back to where there were things to do that really mattered, in ways that owed nothing to return on investment but had everything to do with loyalty and courage and faith.
Good intentions weren't enough to save the world, he'd learnt that. It hadn't occurred to him before that they were necessary if you were ever going to get started, however.
He pulled out his wand and felt the satisfying weight of oak in his hand again.
Justin smiled. Ernie had been right: he was a wizard, and it was time he stopped pretending otherwise.
Author/Artist: hiddenhibernian
Prompt: Justin returns home after a year abroad, to a proper English downpour. Also inspired by prompt 124
Pairing(s): None
Word Count/Art Medium: 8,800
Rating: PG
Warning(s): None
Disclaimer:Harry Potter characters are the property of J.K. Rowling and Bloomsbury/Scholastic. No profit is being made, and no copyright infringement is intended.
Notes: I'm very grateful to my amazing beta S. M. M., who did a fantastic job spotting stray commas and other errors, while also providing witty and insightful comments. Any remaining mistakes are my own. I've drawn heavily on Hippothestrowl's excellent time line for the Battle of Hogwarts, and am indebted to him for sharing it. This story is firmly set in the bookverse, and it's canon-compliant to the best of my ability.
Summary: If he'd gone to Eton instead, none of it would have happened. Justin was quite sure he'd never see Hogwarts again.
Maybe he should have gone to Eton instead. Right now, he would have been fretting about how his exams had gone instead of preparing to go to war. Would his grades have been enough for-
Justin couldn't make his imagination stretch to guessing what he'd want to do at university if he'd been a proper Muggle. If everything had been different. It would never happen, so there was no point in thinking about it.
There were a lot of things Justin avoided thinking about the summer after his sixth year at Hogwarts. Most of the time, he was quite successful in pretending even to himself that it was a summer like any other. The day of his disappearance from the Muggle world was rapidly approaching, but as long as he didn't acknowledge it he was able to potter around the way he usually did during the holidays without anyone being the wiser.
He only slipped up once.
His cousin Cressida was getting married to some fellow barrister, and she'd invited all the Finch-Fletchleys to the wedding. Justin wasn't very keen on weddings in general, but he liked his cousin.
Besides, they'd all want to know why he didn't want to go if he declined. The last thing Justin wanted was to kick up a fuss just before he was leaving, so he dutifully marked the day in his calendar and made sure he had a clean suit.
On the day of the wedding, they all piled into the car and drove down to Oxford. It was hot to the point of suffocation before his father got the air conditioning running, and even then Justin was sweating as soon as he got out at the church.
The service was all right; he even managed an embarrassed sort of prayer, before it all went to pieces at the wedding breakfast
Cressida had seated Justin on his own, with some other distant cousin and some slightly weird friends of hers who were much older than him. The wedding guests were dressed in morning grey suits and colourful dresses, and if they weren't calling out to acquaintances at other table, odds were that they were chatting loudly about how late the meal was running.
Justin could have sworn that the ceiling was descending slowly towards him before it suddenly stopped. The elaborate arrangements of lilies and something frothy-looking Cressida had spent ages choosing seemed to be hovering in the air.
The crisp linen tablecloth and the meticulously arranged row of wine glasses suddenly didn't seem real, as if he were watching a film. Or like he was in a film, he wasn't sure. Surreptitiously, he looked around him.
No one else seemed to have noticed anything out of the ordinary.
Staring at the butter dish in front of him, Justin forced himself to breathe in and out steadily, trying not to make a complete fool of himself.
He thought he had succeeded until he looked up, straight into the eyes of his brother Rupert, who was at the next table with some of Cressida's London friends. They were looking tipsy already.
Rupert tilted his head towards the French doors open to the gardens and slipped out of his seat, leaving his top hat behind perched on his seat.
After a minute Justin followed him, mumbling an excuse to cousin Imogen as he squeezed his way past her. She didn't even pause her monologue about her pet alpacas.
Once outside, the spinning slowed down and the world seemed to be revolving gently rather than reeling out of control.
Rupert offered him a cigarette, still without a word.
“No, thanks. Still don't smoke.”
“Suit yourself. It helps, though.”
Justin didn't ask with what. Instead he let the heat from the afternoon sun lingering in the stone wall behind him settle in his bones, dispelling the feeling of being a spectator to someone else's life.
“Sometimes I think I'm going crazy,” he admitted, looking out on the impossibly perfect lawn before them. “I don't know what's real, this or- or what's happening in my world.”
It wasn't until he'd already said it that he realised that he'd picked a side without even noticing.
Ever since he'd first got his Hogwarts letter all those years ago, Justin had always insisted that he was a Muggle too. He wasn't going to abandon his family just because he could go where they couldn't. Rupert had argued with him then, and Justin knew hadn't changed his mind since.
Fortunately he didn't bring it up now.
“I know,” his older brother said instead. “You think both worlds can't exist at the same time, and yet they do. Only most people are oblivious to what's happening so close to their quiet little lives.”
“Yes,” Justin replied, a little taken aback. ”Yes, that's exactly it. They have no idea, none at all, and now the war's on their doorstep-”
“What, here?”
For the first time Justin saw his brother as a soldier. Rupert had lost the slouch and looked as tense as a coiled spring. His shoulders were squared and there was a fierce look in his eyes as they swept the lawn for any threats.
There was a sharpness to him that Justin recognised from wizards he had met. Mad-Eye Moody had it, and so did Snape. It was a strange thing to see in his own brother, and a little reassuring.
Perhaps Justin would be able to find the same fortitude in himself, too.
“Relax, they're not about to burst in on us,” he hastened to reassure Rupert, while hoping very much that he was right. He was a Hufflepuff - Justin didn't think Voldemort was going to hunt him down specially. “Things are- There's a war going on in my world, and it might spill over to the Muggle- normal world.”
Quickly, he explained to Rupert in very broad terms what was going on, including the misdirection charms he had wrangled out of Professor Flitwick before leaving Hogwarts. Hopefully he'd be able to protect his family from detection by anyone magical.
“What about you? They can still find you, can't they?” Rupert was frowning, and still hadn't abandoned his soldier's stance.
“I know. That's why I'm leaving the day before I'm due before the Muggle-Born Registration Commission.”
“You- No, that's not on. No. Justin, you're seventeen - you're not going off on your own. Not if there is a war on. Forget about it. I won't let you-” Rupert was almost sputtering.
Justin hadn't seen him this animated since before he'd been sent to Bosnia, just after he'd graduated from Sandhurst.
Rupert had come home for good after a year and a half, but the easy-going elder brother with the ready smile seemed to have been left in Bosnia. They'd got a stranger with flat eyes and curt words instead, and now it suddenly occurred to Justin that Rupert mightn't want the same thing to happen to his younger brother.
Justin had made his mind up long ago, though.
“It's no use. You can't stop me,” he said, trying to sound confident. “Even if you could, would you really want me to hide away? Don't get me wrong, I'll go underground but I will fight.”
He jutted out his jaw and tried to stretch an extra inch to match Rupert's height. It was equally useless as when he had been ten years old and a foot had separated them, but it seemed to work anyway.
“No. I want you to be careful, though,” Rupert said eventually.
“As careful as I can,” Justin promised. He didn't particularly want to die, so it was an easy promise to make. It wasn't until later that he realised that keeping it might be a different matter.
In the beginning, it was almost a bit of a lark.
Justin had known he wouldn't come back to Hogwarts after Dumbledore's death, so he had asked around the DA before leaving after the funeral. Out of the names Nigel from the DA had whispered to him, Tonks had been the only familiar one.
She'd visited her old house when she had been stationed at Hogwarts the year of the Dementors, and Justin remembered her well. It was hard not to - he'd never met anyone else who could change the colour of their hair at will, never mind all the other stuff she could do.
Justin became a member of the Muggle-born Clean-up Operation, together with Penelope Clearwater.
Tonks was their link to the Order of the Phoenix, but her involvement only stretched to teaching them a few handy charms and passing on names and addresses of Muggle-born Hogwarts students and others who may be targeted. Penelope and Justin travelled around Britain, laying protective charms and warding the homes of their old school friends as best they could.
Some names were a surprise: Justin hadn't known Tracey Davis' family was Muggle. It only went to show that Gryffindor and Slytherin were labels stuck on you, not shorthand for what you really were.
Some of the people he'd gone to school with would do well to remember that.
Penelope turned out to be a good sort, even if she was a bit stiff in the beginning. She hadn't been too impressed with being assigned to someone who was only seventeen, but Justin liked to think he'd won her over eventually.
For months they worked together without incident, mostly creeping around suburban neighbourhoods in the dark where the biggest challenge was not to set off any dogs.
Hiding under a hedge for several hours in the pouring rain while waiting for the Creeveys to go to sleep wasn't too bad - not when they took turns imagining more and more outrageous reasons why the next-door neighbour still had a Christmas tree up in August.
“She's been dead since January, and no one's come to see her.”
“Idiot. She's sitting there, watching Coronation Street.”
“That's her ghost, of course. Are you a witch or not?”
“What's that?” Penelope craned her neck to see across the neat hedge into the Creeveys' house.
“It's-” Justin cut himself off and grabbed Penelope's arm. Her muffled squeak made him loosen his grip a little, but he didn't apologise. He was busy staring at the figure in dark robes moving silently across the Creeveys' lawn, blond hair shining in the orange streetlight.
Somehow, Justin had been expecting two of them. His mind seemed to be stuck in a curious loop, wondering who it was and why the single Death Eater wasn't wearing a mask.
“STUPEFY!” Fortunately, he didn't need to think to act: hours upon hours of DA training had the spell on the tip of his tongue before he knew it.
“Petrificus Totalus.” Penelope looked pale, but her wand was steady.
They cautiously advanced to the lawn and the lifeless man on the ground. No one else seemed to have noticed anything amiss; the restless flickering of the TV screen next door was the only sign that anyone else was still awake.
Justin kicked the fallen man's cloak aside, revealing nondescript clothing underneath - he couldn't even tell if it were wizarding or Muggle.
“Recognise him?”
“No. Do you?”
Tonks had given them a list of known Death Eaters. The only ones Justin had met were Snape and the two Malfoys, and this wasn't any of them.
“No. What do we do now?”
They looked at each other.
Justin was fairly sure that Penelope would agree if he suggested sending a Patronus to Tonks to ask for help; she looked as lost as he was feeling.
He didn't say anything.
This was their job - they were fighting in a war, they couldn't run to the teacher and ask for help when something finally happened.
Standing on the suburban lawn somewhere in Shropshire, he felt entirely cut off from all the normal people around them, who slept and watched TV and ate dinner without knowing that there was a war being fought in the shadows outside.
He could still be one of them: if he hid his wand and went somewhere no one knew him, no one would know he was a wizard...
That would be the act of a coward: Finch-Fletchleys didn't run and hide when they were needed. Justin squeezed his wand tighter and stretched his back a little, just like when he tried to look taller next to his brother, and tried to solve the problem at hand.
“Can't we Obliviate him?” he suggested, trying to ignore how dry his mouth felt. .
“Won't he just come back later, then? Besides, I don't know how to do it.”
“Me neither,” Justin admitted. He'd thought Penelope would, but perhaps it was unfair to expect a witch who'd only been out of Hogwarts a few years to know all the spells he didn't. “We need to get the Creeveys out of here, anyway - otherwise they might send someone else.”
It was very tempting to give the unconscious Death Eater a good kick, but Justin restrained himself to pocketing the man's wand. Tonks could pass it on to someone who needed it.
“Penelope, what's the furthest from civilisation you've ever been?”
They left the nameless Death Eater on a rocky island north of Skye. Justin had gone sailing around Scotland one wet summer with his uncle, and he remembered the place well, since they'd spent two miserable days there waiting for a storm to die down.
There were no Muggles here, just rocks and seagulls and green grass. The coastline was visible, so if the Death Eater were a strong swimmer he'd be able to get to the mainland. If not, there was a shipping route nearby, so he would be spotted before he could starve. Maybe he'd even be grateful to the Muggles for saving him.
It wasn't ideal, but short of murder it was the best they could think of.
Penelope grew thinner and thinner as the nights drew in. After they found the Turpins dead one morning in November, the twitch in her left eye wouldn't go away.
Justin would have liked to believe that he was bearing up decently under the circumstances, but he didn't seem to be able to do anything right. He didn't know enough spells, and the ones he knew he wasn't very good at. The responsibility to keep them clothed and fed fell on Penelope, since Justin had never had to fend for himself before. He knew that wasn't right, even without Penelope resenting it more and more as the winter wore on.
The old farmhouse they were using as a base was getting colder and colder as the temperature fell, and Justin's attempts to stop the wind from creeping in seemed equally useless whether he was using spells or Muggle means.
It was difficult to know if what they were doing made any difference. Apart from the nameless Death Eater they'd put out of action months ago, all they had to show for their efforts were a rake of sleepless nights and some spectacular failures.
He didn't care what Penelope said; Justin was certain he'd laid the Shield charm over Laura Madley's house correctly. The Death Eaters must have broken through it. They were powerful witches and wizards; it was ridiculous to think that a seventeen-year-old who hadn't even finished school would be a match for them.
Nevertheless they carried on, tuning into Potterwatch whenever they could. It helped, knowing they weren't alone. The enormous kitchen they were camping out in seemed a little brighter when the voices of their friends made the shadows retreat.
Penelope was better at recognising the presenters, since she'd spent much more time with the Weasleys than Justin had. He hadn't known she'd been going out with Percy Weasley at school before she told him, but it made sense from what he knew about the former Head Boy. Penelope had been ambitious too, before the war.
The Weasleys were an easy topic of conversation when other subjects became tense.
When Penelope told him that Ron Weasley was laid down with Spattergroit, Justin hummed and looked appropriately concerned. He reckoned he knew Ron quite well. The chances that he'd be conveniently confined to his sickbed when Harry Potter was running for his life were slim to none.
Ron and Hermione were out there somewhere with Harry, and Justin hoped like hell that they were doing something to get rid of Voldemort.
He didn't quite know what they possibly could do, though, and Penelope's mysterious hints about prophesies and Fate failed to reassure him. Wizards were far too prone to attribute chance to Destiny in Justin's experience.
Nevertheless, all their hopes seemed to be pinned on Harry, no matter how daft it seemed to rely entirely on another seventeen-year-old runaway.
When Christmas came and the roof of the barn was covered in frost, Justin had to fight an almost physical urge to go home.
There would be mulled wine and a Christmas tree in the hall, the neighbours coming over for a sherry after church on Christmas Day and the house bustling with people all over the holidays, mistletoe pinned above the kitchen entrance and the smell of snow in the air, and he missed it like he'd miss his own limb if it were cut off.
He could be home in a few seconds.
Justin rose from the log they used for want of something better to sit on, and prepared to spin around to Apparate right there. They'd be delighted to see him-
Rupert wouldn't be.
Rupe was the only one of them who knew, really knew, what Justin was up to, and he certainly wouldn't approve of his younger brother putting their family at risk.
Going home would be an indulgence, and Justin knew he couldn't afford it.
Most of the time he felt hapless, like he'd stumbled onto the scene at a play and didn't know his lines, but now he filled with purpose. He mightn't be particularly good at it, but he was doing his bit for the Order of the Phoenix and Dumbledore's Army and for Harry Potter. Their war mightn't be within the remit of Her Majesty's Armed Forces, but it was real and he was as much a soldier as his brother had ever been.
He sat back down, but this time his back was straight. Penelope was staring into the fire, and didn't seem to have noticed him getting up.
“Happy Christmas, Pen.” Justin raised his glass of cheap red they'd splashed out for in the local supermarket. “To you and yours, wherever they are.”
Chapter 2
“Justin!”
He tried to bat the flies away; they were extraordinarily persistent. As soon as it had started getting warmer, flies had appeared everywhere in the farmhouse. He was sick of having to fight them, even when he was sleeping-
“Justin, wake up!”
It wasn't flies that were in his face, it was Penelope's hands. He sat up, rubbing his eyes.
“What's going on? I thought we were resting until tonight?”
“We're needed at Hogwarts!” Penelope's face looked like she couldn't decide whether to be petrified or delighted. They'd both learnt a lot in recent months, and Justin wouldn't like to be pitted against her in a fight.
He quickly pulled on his boots and grabbed his wand, ready to go, and then he remembered.
The day Rupert had been going back to his barracks after the wedding, a worn-looking wooden box had been left on Justin's bed. For months, it had been stashed in the old shoe-box Justin was using for his personal belongings. Penelope didn't even know he had it, and it hadn't felt right to bring it out on their patrols.
Now, it was time.
“Are you coming? We're needed at the Hog's Head in Hogsmeade! Can you Apparate there on your own?”
Penelope did have a tendency to assume everyone else was useless in a crisis.
Justin had never seen the barman look agitated before. There were people everywhere, trying to be quiet but failing in the midst of greetings and urgent admonishments (“You will listen to me, Ginny!”). He lost track of Penelope and found himself creeping down a long, winding tunnel squeezed in between a Weasley brother whose name he didn't know and an elderly witch he recognised from his O.W.L.s.
He tried to turn around and offer her his arm, but she'd have none of it.
“Pish and tosh, young man - get moving instead! There's a battle on, you know.”
“If you say so, madam. Please look out, there's a sharp bend coming.”
Eventually they emerged in a gigantic room that reminded him of a circus tent; only the rough stone walls suggested that they actually were at Hogwarts. The noise had abated when they walked through the tunnel, but it was back now.
“Aurors and trained duelists, this way!” a tall, dark wizard bellowed, and to Justin's surprise the elderly witch detached herself from his elbow and tottered after him.
“DA members, follow me!” a familiar voice hollered - it was a battered Seamus Finnigan, who looked more in charge than Justin had ever seen him. Colin Creevey, looking as eager as always, was already flocking to him, along with Alicia Spinnet and Katie Bell.
“How have you been?” Alicia asked Katie, and Justin suppressed his snort just in time. He was a little giddy - seeing so many of his friends he'd never thought he'd see again made it feel like he was back in the good old days. Before Muggleborns were hunted by the Ministry, when going to Hogwarts had been the best thing that had ever happened to him.
“Justin, old chap - fancy running into you here!” Seamus said with a creditable attempt of copying Justin's accent. Even as they left the room and emerged into a familiar corridor with drawn wands, it only took their eyes meeting to set off another round of what would have been giggles if they'd been girls.
“Where are we going?” Colin asked, and all hilarity dissipated. Justin tried to remember what year he was in - he looked very young in the flickering light from the candles illuminating the corridor.
“We're on sentry duty. He-Who- Voldemort is about to attack at midnight, and our job is to make sure no one gets through the main entrance undetected.“
It sounded quite professional, and Justin wondered who was in charge of strategy. It was reassuring, in a way: it wasn't just him and Penelope anymore, faltering on their own.
He wondered where Penelope was, and whether he'd see her again.
“Quick, we need to be ready by midnight!” Seamus marshalled his troops, brandishing a set of keys for the gate house. Without being told, Justin started casting his usual wards on the building: if there was anything he'd learnt this year, it was protective charms.
A quick inventory revealed several charmed Galleons left from the DA, so their line of communications was secured.
“Someone should be on the other side,” Justin mumbled to Seamus. “Look, it's a great angle to attack anyone coming through the gates.”
Seamus looked conflicted in the faint light from his wand.
“Not you, you've got to stay here. Me.”
“Justin-”
“It's not about getting through the night unscathed, it's about winning.”
“I'd like to think it's both,” Seamus said with a trace of a grin on his face. “I need the rest here, but you're right - we do need someone out there. Be careful, and look before you curse - we're expecting reinforcements.”
There was no time for goodbyes. Justin crept out through the side door and flitted across the path leading up to the castle just before the clock in the church in Hogsmeade struck midnight.
He clutched his wand and waited.
There was a sweet smell on the air: something was in bloom in a garden nearby. Hogsmeade was silent. Lights were on everywhere at Hogwarts, but they were too far away to hear anything.
Seamus had told them to scarper back to the castle if they came under attack, but he hadn't seemed too concerned at the prospect. Justin wondered if the Order still had some spies, or if it was just a logical assumption. Naturally, the front gates would be well protected, so would Voldemort's forces even bother with them? Then again, he didn't seem to be the type to opt for the servant's entrance.
Justin was staring so hard at the gates that it took several minutes before he noticed. It was only when he dared to cast a quick look at the castle behind him that he saw that Hogwarts castle was under attack.
Brief flashes of spell light lit up the facade of the castle, and he could see dots moving in the sky - Voldemort must have wizards on brooms to charge from the air. The sky above the Forbidden Forest was red.
It had begun.
He forced his attention back to the gates he was set to guard, but he couldn't help turning his head back to the fighting every few seconds. Had they been sent out of the way, so the grown-ups could fight? It didn't seem fair, when Harry-
An ear-splitting bang of protesting metal hit his ears and Justin perched on the balls of his feet, ready to attack.
“Alohomora!” someone roared on the other side of the gate, and Justin would have sniggered if he hadn't been trying to remember the slight variation on the Blasting Curse Penelope had shown him last week. Was it twisting his wand slightly to the right side?
“Deprimo!” the voice on the other side barked, to no avail. Behind them, the sound of the fighting was getting closer. An unearthly howl had pierced the silence first, and several loud bangs had followed.
“Sod this,” the voice huffed. “Open it!”
Suddenly the lights from Hogsmeade disappeared and Justin stared at the gate, his mouth gaping.
A... thing was blocking the light.
It was even higher than the gates that moved and appeared to have arms and legs. Arms it currently was using to lift the gates off its hinges, despite the metal squeaking in protest.
Reading about giants in his textbooks had been one thing; seeing a creature from his childhood fairy tales in the flesh almost made him drop his wand. With a start, he remembered what was in his pocket - it might work better than magic against the giant.
The gates to Hogwarts held for another half a minute, and by the time the last, agonising squeak died down Justin was ready. He planted his legs wide, trusting the shadows and his Disillusionment charms to keep him hidden.
Several things happened at once.
The giant, followed by a number of smaller figures in black cloaks, burst through the gates and were hit by a barrage of spells from the gate house. Most bounced back, causing some of the windows to break in a rain of glass shards.
And Justin pulled the trigger on his grandfather's service revolver, hitting the giant square in the face. He'd always been good at target practice, ever since his father had taken him down to the edge of the forest on their estate and shown him how to use a gun.
For a moment it seemed to be enough to stop the assault, but the attackers roared and stormed forwards.
“GET BACK, GET BACK!” Seamus' voice hollered. Justin hid as the invaders ran past him, quickly checking there were no more coming before sending of a volley of spells hitting them in the back. Penelope had been telling him for weeks war was no time for fair play.
He almost got one of them, before a small contingent split off and went back to secure the gates. Justin ran for it, hoping the others had made it out before him.
Before he reached the castle he was afraid of being stuck on the wrong side, but as he came closer it became evident that the attackers had broken through the defences already.
He had to jump over bits of armour to reach an entrance, but managed to get in without anyone being the wiser.
Inside the castle, pandemonium reigned. Justin didn't dare to stop to pull out his gun, and after narrowly escaping a green curse from a masked Death Eater he stopped thinking about anything other than survival.
He remembered those corridors: his feet seemed to move of their own volition as he dodged creatures he'd never seen before except in his nightmares. Every so often he saw a friend in the melee; Seamus had made it back to the castle and together they brought down a snarling, biting beast that couldn't decide whether it wanted to be a man or a wolf.
“Nice going!” Seamus panted, before they were separated by a crumbling staircase.
On the upper levels there were monsters of another kind. Percy Weasley knocked down a Death Eater so his mask fell off, and Justin recognised the blond wizard he'd last seen on a tiny Scottish island.
He raised his wand, and then wavered. Penelope could say what she wanted; he just couldn't bring himself to kill a defenceless man in cold blood. When the Death Eater scrambled to his feet and launched himself onto Percy's throat, however, Justin made himself Stun him in the back.
As the invaders gained ground, the fighting and the curses got more ferocious until Justin was defending the giant staircase step by step with a gaggle of Order members and students.
Their opponents froze as soon as they heard Voldemort's voice echo through the castle. Justin let his wand drop, too, only to be admonished by Professor McGonagall: “Never let your guard down, Finch-Fletchley - this isn't the time to play nice!”
“It's a ceasefire! Look!” A dark-haired witch Justin didn't recognise pointed downstairs, where they could see their opponents retreat. Being stuck on the staircase temporarily prevented the group they'd been fighting from following their comrades, but they soon extracted themselves, too.
It seemed like they'd been fighting for an eternity, but when Justin made it to the Great Hall it was still dark outside. The battle must only be a few hours old.
Harry wouldn't turn himself over - Justin didn't need Professor McGonagall to tell him that. The hall was full of whispers about a secret plan and hidden weapons, but there was no telling which parts had substance and which were only wishful thinking.
He had headed to the Great Hall for directions, to get his orders for the next part, but once there the bodies laid out on the floor stopped him cold.
A Weasley, he didn't know which one.
Professor Lupin, who somehow looked smaller in death.
And Tonks, who'd never, ever given up, who'd always seemed to know what to do and how to keep on fighting even when the Ministry had fallen and everything seemed hopeless.
Death seemed to have drained all the vibrant colours from her and only left a black-and-white version behind.
Next to her lay Morag MacDougal, who never had possessed Tonks' rainbow hues even when she'd been alive. She looked like she was asleep, her often disapproving mouth slightly turned up in a smile instead.
There were more bodies, but Justin turned away in search of the living instead. He didn't want to see who else was dead. He didn't want to think about who he'd killed, either, but he didn't seem able to stop.
He'd hit a slim witch who'd been going for Susan Bones in the back with a Reducto. Hitting people in the back seemed to be his specialty this evening. When Death Eaters had threatened to surround their little group on the stairs he'd used his first Unforgivable. The screams from the witch he'd hit as she'd tumbled down to land with a sickening thud on the flagstones far below hadn't deterred him, and the spells he'd used had got more and more vicious as the fighting grew to a crescendo.
It struck him as slightly unfair that the battle would just stop in the middle, so they'd have to stop and think rather than keep cursing.
“Justin! You made it!” It was Ernie, who Justin hadn't seen since Dumbledore's funeral. It stood to reason that Ernie would be here. He was the most principled person Justin had ever met, and seeing Ernie made it easier to believe he was doing the right thing, using Unforgivables or not.
“I did. Good to see you.” They shook hands, like they always had when they met again at Hogwarts after the holidays.
Fighting when you'd lost all hope turned out to be different again.
When Voldemort presented them with Harry's dead body, the defenders seemed to gain a second wind, even as the giants forced into the castle. Justin tried to get his revolver out again, but it was quickly knocked out of his hand and he had to cling onto his wand instead.
He saw Bellatrix Lestrange die, and cheered as she fell.
Harry's appearance stunned him back to himself, and as Justin saw his friend defeat Voldemort with a defensive spell it seemed like the world was putting itself to rights again.
None of them slept much afterwards, not for days. Time passed strangely in a haze of exhaustion and elation, and Justin seemed to lose hours here and there amid cleaning up the wreckage and finding his friends.
He even got a few words in with Harry, who looked as dazed as Justin was feeling - not even the Saviour of the Wizarding World knew quite how to deal with the war finally being over.
Justin didn't feel like himself again until he was sitting with Penelope and Neville on the front steps in the sun, a few days after the battle. They'd spent days clearing off the lawn in front of them. If you squinted, you could pretend it was just an ordinary day at Hogwarts.
“You haven't gone home yet, then?” Penelope asked.
“No. I think I want to- to let things settle first. I think I'd prefer not to be a blubbering mess when I finally show up. A few days won't matter,” Justin said.
Neville scrunched up his eyes against the sunlight and peered down towards the lake. “It's easier here, isn't it? Everyone knows what it was like. I couldn't imagine explaining Voldemort to my family, much less being in a battle.”
“Not everyone can have a Gran who fought with them,” Justin pointed out. Ever since he'd seen her charge at a Death Eater twice her size he'd had a soft spot for Mrs Longbottom.
“She's great, isn't she?” Neville said fondly.
The day before he was due to go home, Justin came across Luna Lovegood in the Great Hall. She was sitting at what had once been the Gryffindor table, surrounded by notes and torn-off bits of parchment. They'd always been friendly, ever since the DA. Luna wasn't half as strange as she appeared to be, not when you got to know her properly.
“Hello, Luna. What are you up to?”
“Hi, Justin. Just organising my notes.”
He sat down on the bench opposite her, resisting the temptation to read her loopy handwriting upside down.
“Notes for what, if I may ask?”
“Oh, didn't you hear? I'm trying to work out who did what in the battle. It'll help, you know. For the families-”
“Oh,” he mumbled, already rising again. He'd be a happy man if he never had to think of the Battle of Hogwarts again.
Except the very end. He didn't mind that bit so much.
Chapter 3
They'd agreed to spend their last night at Hogwarts in the Hufflepuff quarters: Justin, Ernie, Susan Bones and Hannah Abbott. It wasn't like the old days, but it was comforting and familiar and for the first time Justin felt like things might get back to the way they used to be when Hogwarts had been repaired.
They'd put the common room to rights as well as they could, and bid each other goodnight before heading down the tunnels to their respective dormitories. Ernie and Justin settled into their old beds, after a cursory examination revealed that the bedclothes weren't too dirty.
Justin had just drifted off to sleep, when a desperate cry roused him. He fumbled for his wand as he threw the bedcovers aside, and ran up the tunnel towards the common room with Ernie in tow.
There were more cries, and they seemed to come from the girls' dormitory. They eyed each other - they'd never tried to get in, but they'd seen other boys being thrown back by the wards.
“HANNAH! SUSAN! Are you all right?” Ernie yelled, while Justin tried to think of spells that could get through where generations of students had failed.
“Fine, we're fine!” someone yelled from the other side, and they stood back a little. It was half an hour before a dishevelled Hannah came out. They'd sat down by the fire as they were waiting. She landed heavily in a yellow armchair next to them.
“It's Susan,” she explained tiredly. “She's got those nightmares, from the battle”
Justin had nightmares too, but he hadn't admitted it to anyone.
“The worst one is Morag dying. You remember Morag MacDougal?”
They nodded. Justin remembered her thick Scottish brogue and how she'd turned her nose up at Hagrid's Flobberworms when she had been alive, and her pale face as she'd been laying dead in the Great Hall during the battle.
“She died in Susan's arms - she was hit from behind and fell right onto Susan. And now the poor girl can't fall asleep without dreaming about her.”
“How awful,” Ernie said. There didn't seem to be anything to add to that, and the crackling of the fire filled the silence.
Justin tried to rise, and found that he couldn't make his legs move. It took several minutes of listening to the rapid beating of his own heart before he could extract himself, trying to look like noting was amiss.
“Excuse me.” He almost ran back into their dormitory, before bolting the door to the lavatory behind him.
Finch-Fletchleys didn't run from the truth, he thought absently as he retched into the sink. Finch-Fletchleys didn't attack innocent women from behind either, so what did that make him?
Staring at the white porcelain he saw Morag falling, over and over again.
Justin didn't know how long he stayed in the lavatory. When he finally was able to move, it was bright enough that he didn't have to fumble to find his way out. As he tried to push it open, he found something blocking the door from the other side.
After a moment of terror when Justin thought he was locked in, the mumbled apology outside told him that Ernie must have been lying in wait for him with his back against the door.
Splendid.
“Are you all right?” Ernie's voice was hoarse from sleep.
“Yeah. Fell asleep in there.” Even the dim light in the corridor was enough to give that away as a lie, judging by how red-rimmed his eyes had looked in the bathroom mirror, but Ernie didn't challenge him.
“Listen, Ernie, I think I- need a bit of a break. From the wizarding world, I mean.” It was true, even though it wasn't the full truth.
“I can understand that. Certainly, if I had the option I'm not so sure I wouldn't go myself...” Ernie looked almost wistful and Justin had to bat down an impulse to invite him to come with him.
For once there was something he could do for his best friend, who had done so much for him. Ernie had always done his best to explain pure-blood customs and make Justin feel welcome in the wizarding world. Now that there finally was a way for Justin to do Ernie a good turn in return, he held back.
He wasn't a very good friend either.
The next day their goodbyes were muted. The exuberance in the wake of the battle had long since evaporated, and it was more common than not to see sombre faces at work restoring Hogwarts to its former state.
Justin wouldn't be contributing to that either, he realised as he Apparated home.
A year later, he was quite certain he'd never be back to Hogwarts again.
Justin had made himself go back and see his family straight away after leaving the castle. If he hadn't, he'd had the feeling he'd just set off one day and never come back, and they deserved to know he was alive.
It had been strange to be back in his old life, pretending that nothing was different. Sometimes, he caught his parents talking between themselves with urgent expressions and furrowed brows, but they never asked him anything he didn't volunteer.
For that, he was deeply grateful; there were too many things he couldn't bear to explain.
He'd been afraid to face Rupert: it felt like it was written on his forehead what he'd done, how he'd failed, but his brother said nothing. He simply offered Justin cigarettes, which he kept declining, and they shared the silence as Rupert smoked, hiding out by the kitchen entrance.
After two weeks' leave Rupert went back to barracks, and Justin reckoned it was time to consider the rest of his life. His parents had repeatedly offered to send him on a gap year, and in a fit of optimism he decided to take then up on it.
Maybe getting away would make everything fall back into place.
His best friend from before Hogwarts, Sebastian, was currently in Thailand on his gap year, and before he knew it Justin had a one-way ticket to Bangkok and a backpack full of flip-flops and shorts.
He realised his mistake before he'd even made it out of Bangkok International Airport.
The terminal seemed to be full with young Westerners with pale, excited faced and he couldn't have felt less like them if he'd tried. Even his body was wrong: his scars from the battle were still an angry red, and he looked like he hadn't seen the sun for years. The noise and the heat suddenly became unbearable.
He turned around abruptly, bumping into a group of American tourists and only extracted himself after several minutes of excuses.
Justin went straight to the British Airways counter and got a ticket for New Zealand instead. At least it wouldn't be hot there.
It was raining when he came home.
England in June wasn't very different from New Zealand, no matter how much he would have liked to think there was a peculiar English quality to the rain. He dumped his battered holdall on his bed and went searching for Rupert, who was supposed to be home too.
Rupert was standing under the eaves of the stables with an unlit cigarette dangling from his hand. Justin parked himself next to him, back against the wall and looking out over the fields behind the house.
“Still not smoking, eh?”
“Mum'd kill me.”
“I think you'll find she'll forgive you almost anything, now that you're back.”
“Maybe I don't want to die from lung cancer.”
Rupert gave him a long look, but remained silent. They listened to the soft whispers of the rain, as if they'd spoken last week instead of over a year ago.
“So you're back for good, then?” Rupert meant back to their world, back to the life he'd been born into. Not the one that had been sprung on him at the age of eleven.
“Yes.”
“Going into the bank too, I heard. Mum will be insufferable.” They both knew he didn't mean that. Their father was another matter. He'd long given up on either of his sons following in his footsteps, and Justin approaching him about career advice had made him a very happy man indeed. He seemed rather more confident about Justin's suitability for the business world than his son was.
There didn't seem to be much more to say.
The next few weeks brought trips into the City on overcrowded trains, limp lunch sandwiches that would have thoroughly depressed the Hogwarts house-elves, and a haze of acronyms. Justin slept, ate and dreamt of SMEs, CPFFs, EBIT and EPS.
He hardly noticed that the weather had improved, not until he woke up to the rain again on a Sunday morning. He'd been planning to get through a few of the textbooks that had been recommended to him. Armed with a cup of tea from the housekeeper he made a decent start, diligently ploughing through page upon page of financial basics.
It was hard to believe he'd once had textbooks that bit back.
Justin was just about to tackle “Anatomy of a Merger” when there was a diffident knock on the door.
“Ernie!”
“I hope I'm not intruding-”
“Come in! Please sit down!” Justin cleared a bunch of The Economist magazines off the chair next to his.
They smiled at each other, but didn't shake hands this time. It was odd, seeing Ernie surrounded by Muggle things.
“Dreadful weather,” Ernie volunteered after a minute.
“Awful. Was it as bad in Scotland?”
“No - a light drizzle, nothing worse. I Apparated down, of course.”
“Naturally.” Justin couldn't think of anything else to say. He wanted to know what was going on at Hogwarts, what their friends were doing, but asking outright would bring on questions he didn't quite know how to answer.
Perhaps he ought to have known that Ernie would tackle his absence head on.
“So when are you coming back, then?” Ernie asked with what presumably was supposed to be a look of indifference. He'd never been good at that sort of thing.
“I don't think I am, really.“
Ernie's silence worked better than words would have.
“I've started working at the bank with Father. It's a little confusing at times” - that was a massive understatement - “ but I'm getting the hang of it.”
Ernie looked at him with an air of light puzzlement, as if he'd forgotten where he'd put his glasses.
“Would have been easier if I'd gone to Muggle school, of course, but I seem to be able to hack it anyway.” Justin felt compelled to add.
“But you didn't go to Muggle school - Eden, or whatever it was. You went to Hogwarts,” Ernie pointed out. “Because you're a wizard.”
“Well, I don't have to be, you know. It's not compulsory.”
Ernie Macmillan, who had nine generations of pure-blood ancestors behind him, looked earnestly at Justin: “You are one. You'll always be a wizard, whether you like it or not. It's in your blood. You don't have to pretend to be a Muggle when there's a place in our world for you.”
Justin's eyes suddenly felt a little hot, and he glanced away for a moment.
“It's not that I don't appreciate that,” he said when he was certain that his voice was under control again. “It's just that it would have been better all-around if I'd gone to Eton instead.”
“If you'd gone to Eton, a lot of people would have been dead.”
“You can't know that.”
“I can make a reasoned guess. Look, I'm quite sure I know what this is about.”
Justin had never been more annoyed with Ernie, not even when they'd been arguing over whether Harry Potter was delusional when he said Voldemort was coming back: “Do you? Maybe you could enlighten me then?”
Ernie didn't take any notice of the way he almost spat out the words.
“I know you most probably killed Morag, and if I know you at all, you'll be fairly cut up over that. No matter what side she fought on.”
It was almost a relief to have it laid out like that, no matter how uncomfortable it made him to have Ernie know what had driven him away.
“Well, then you know. If I'd gone to Eton, Morag would still have been alive. She didn't deserve to die.”
“Maybe. And a lot of other people would have been dead, and they deserve to live, too.”
“That's not the point.” Justin almost got impatient with him. “Ever since my father showed me how to use a gun, I've had it drilled into me that you're responsible for what you do. If you use deadly force, you alone are responsible for the consequences. I should have looked - I should have known.”
“No one knows what side she was fighting for, did you know that?”
“But it doesn't matter! She wasn't going to kill Susan, so I shouldn't have hit her.” Justin didn't have his wand, so he tried rolling his pen the same way he usually did. It wasn't as good. “I was a bloody schoolboy, not a soldier - I should never have-”
There were so many things he never should have done.
"What should you have done then? Stood idly by?” Ernie was still entirely calm.
“Perhaps not, but I should have known better. Done better. I didn't know what I was doing half of the time!“ he finally admitted.
“None of us did, you know. That's how it goes - they don't give you a manual at the door.”
Justin almost laughed at that, and Ernie seized his chance: “You can only ever do your best. 'Hold fast and carry on'.”
The familiar Hufflepuff motto pulled Justin up short and Ernie ruthlessly pushed his advantage home: “I don't know what sort of Muggle banker you'd make, but I know you're a good wizard. We need you.”
“But I-”
“There's plenty that has done worse, if that's what's worrying you. No one is blaming you. We were there too, remember?”
They had been, too.
Justin felt a sudden surge of affection for his friends, his Hufflepuff comrades-in-arms who had stood up and been counted when it really mattered. He didn't blame them for what they'd done in the thick of the battle, and for the first time it occurred to him that the same leniency should perhaps apply to himself.
“Perhaps,” he admitted eventually, and Ernie had the good sense to shut up.
When a loud crack signalled Ernie's disappearance Justin went straight to the attic, with nary a look at the mountain of reading he ought to be doing instead.
The rain was smattering against the roof above him, drops of water landing in uneven clicks and taps. The Finch-Fletchleys didn't often throw useful things away, so after a hundred and fifty years at Wolverton the attic was rather full. His Hogwarts trunk was still where he'd left it after sixth year, a little dusty around the corners but still satisfyingly solid.
Justin knelt next to it, and carefully took out item after item.
A set of robes. A Quidditch magazine. A copy of The Quibbler announcing Voldemort's return. His Hufflepuff scarf. A Basic Blaze Box from Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes. Two quills, one with the feathery part broken. Eventually, he reached the bottom and pulled out a lovingly wrapped object, about ten inches long.
He stared at it for a long time before he unfurled the velvet fabric.
Perhaps you could do bad things and still be a good man. Perhaps- perhaps there was a way back to Hogwarts for him, back to where there were things to do that really mattered, in ways that owed nothing to return on investment but had everything to do with loyalty and courage and faith.
Good intentions weren't enough to save the world, he'd learnt that. It hadn't occurred to him before that they were necessary if you were ever going to get started, however.
He pulled out his wand and felt the satisfying weight of oak in his hand again.
Justin smiled. Ernie had been right: he was a wizard, and it was time he stopped pretending otherwise.