WHO: Lumos Boot and Byron Kettleburn WHAT: Practicing Memory Charms! WHEN: Tonight WHERE: Lumos' house WARNINGS: None!
Having Byron in her house without the buffer of Terry or their other friends was starting to become oddly familiar to Lumos. Though, she supposed, their memory charms lessons had just been a different sort of buffer and he’d said himself he was only there because he needed something from her. But he’d stopped feeling painfully out of place there, at least. Which was something she couldn’t have said even with their usual buffers.
“Hi,” she said after opening the door to find him on the other side of it. Stepping back to let him pass, she couldn’t help asking, “How was your day?”
Byron gave a heavy-shouldered shrug as he walked past her into the house. “Same old same old,” he said, turning to look at her while she closed the door behind him. “How about you?”
“About the same,” she said, giving him a much lighter shrug in return. “Do you want anything before we get started? Water? Tea? Something to eat?”
“I’d take some tea,” he said, combing a hand through his hair to work out the residual nerves his being there brought up. They were nowhere near as bad as they used to be, when he’d have to catch a buzz to polish them off before he could bring himself anywhere near her house. But thanks to how much there was still unsaid between them, a thread of tension remained.
“Coming right up!” The smile she flashed him was tight around the edges and when she turned away, she allowed herself a deep bracing breath before ducking into the kitchen to boil water and measure out tea.
As she poured water into their mugs, she thought about asking why he needed to learn the memory charms so badly because it was still strange that he would ask her for help. It had to be something more than the vague excuses he’d already given her. Asking her for help seemed to be against his principles so it had to be serious and for something specific.
But when Lumos passed a mug to Byron, she couldn’t bring herself to ask. And when they were in her garden shed with Henry the training head, she still didn’t ask.
Instead, she instructed, and Byron followed the steps she described as dutifully as he could. His cleverness had always been a matter of quill and parchment, not spells or following orders. But at this, he was determined, and Lumos was a patient teacher in the face of his repeated failure.
“This time,” he said, practically to himself as he eyed Henry the head. “You’re going to wish you were never born, pal. If you can even remember it when I’m done with you.”
Passing her hand over her mouth, Lumos wiped away a smile. “Poor Henry,” she said, unable to wipe away the trace of amusement in her voice as easily.
Byron angled a quick, wrinkled-nosed look at her before he turned his attention back to Henry and the obliviation he still wasn’t entirely sure he could perform. But he held his wand level anyway, and in a clear voice said, “Obliviate.”
The sensation of performing a memory charm defied explanation, even for someone as skillful with words as Byron. He saw Henry’s memories flash before his eyes and passed them by until he found the one Lumos had told him to look for. It was over in an instant and Byron took a step back.
“I think I did it.”
Lumos slipped around him to check on Henry’s memories, her wand out and her expression thoughtful as she filtered through nearly the same memories Byron had. “You did!” she said, excited, turning a smile on him that came easily now. Unsure still how to celebrate, she raised a hand for a high five.
After a moment of looking slightly dumbfounded, Byron cracked a grin and returned her high five. “I didn’t think I was ever going to get that one,” he admitted, shaking his head at Henry. “Why’d you have to be so hard-headed, huh?”
“I knew you could do it,” she said, sincerity creeping into her tone. She cleared her throat and placed a hand atop Henry’s head. Looking down at him, she tried to keep her words light when she added, “Henry didn’t, but he’s been through a lot.”
“What does he know, anyway?” Byron scoffed. “I’m pretty sure he has a memory of putting salt in his tea somewhere in there.”
“Have you never done that?” she asked, glancing away from Henry, her eyebrows raised in surprise. “It’s awful!”
“I’ve been fortunate enough to’ve never had a sugar and salt mix-up,” he said, distaste evident in his voice. “But I can imagine, unfortunately.”
“Henry doesn’t have to imagine,” she explained. “So you see? He’s been through a lot.” She smiled because she wasn’t being serious and gave the head one more pat before drawing her hand away. “Do you want to try again?”
Even as Byron took his stance, he let out an exaggerated sigh and a feigned whine of, “Do I have to?”
“Afraid so,” Lumos laughed, reaching out with her wand to reset Henry memories with a tap. “If you do it again, though, I won’t give you any homework.”
“Hard to argue with that,” he replied, a grin briefly tugging at the corners of his lips before he forced himself to focus again. Another deep breath later and he was back at it.
By the time they finished for the evening and left Henry behind in the shed, the sun had set, giving the impression that they’d been working at this for far longer than they really had. For his part, though, Byron was famished and he readily accepted an invitation for dinner. It was that or takeaway, and the boxes he’d already vanquished were beginning to pile up in his flat.
“So, why’d you want to become an Obliviator anyway?” He leaned over the counter to snatch a bit of tomato out of the pan. “I always thought it seemed kind of stuffed shirt for you.”
The question caught Lumos off guard and she blinked at Byron for a moment, watching the stolen tomato’s flight as she tried to remember the answer. “I needed something to do after Terry was born,” she said finally, rubbing her cheek with the back of her hand before shrugging. “And I like charms.”
Byron shrugged too. “Fair enough,” he said. “It’s not as weird as your becoming an Auror or something.”
“I’d make a terrible Auror,” she said, breathing a laugh that bordered on nervous. She started to spoon food onto their plates, giving Byron a little extra chicken because he probably didn’t eat well on his own. “I don’t have to ask why you became a journalist.” She handed him his food.
“Is it that obvious?” he asked with a snort as he accepted the plate and the first home-cooked meal he’d had in at least a week. Around a mouthful of chicken, he added in a distinctly flat tone, “Living the dream, here.”
“It was for a while, though, wasn’t it?” she asked, a sympathetic tilt to her head.
When Byron finished chewing, he cleared his throat and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. “Yeah, it was pretty great until Fudge,” he said and paused to run his tongue over his teeth. With a shrug, he readied another bite on his fork and said, “Go figure when I finally hit the front page, it has to be right when the paper starts to go downhill.”
She reached for her own plate and her own fork and prepared her own bite while she tried to think of something to say. “You could think of it as satire,” she offered. Mostly she wished she were hopeful enough to suggest he wait it out. It felt like the Death Eaters had their teeth sunk into all their lives, though. “But I’m sure that wasn’t what you ever had in mind.”
“It kind of is what I had in mind,” Byron said and raised his eyebrows at her as he took another bite. “Couldn’t you tell?”
Lumos wrinkled her nose and took a bite, chewing her food thoroughly before asking, “Is that what the memory charms are for? So you can make people forget what they’ve read?”
“I wish,” Byron said, laughing despite a full mouth of vegetables. He swallowed and cleared his throat again. “I’d love to erase that Nott piece from people's memories.”
“But that was the start of a very lucrative new career for you!” she said, reaching out to bat at his arm with the back of her hand.
“Not exactly the career I wanted,” he said, gathering some rice on the end of his fork and making a move like he planned to fling it at her. He redirected it to his mouth at the last moment.
“Hey!” she exclaimed, lowering the hand she’d tossed up to protect herself, trying and failing not to laugh. “No throwing food!”
“I’d never,” he said, dropping his fork on his plate and placing his hand on his chest in feigned offense. “I’d just righteously clog your toilet.”
“Oh my god, I’ll make you pee outside,” she said, pointing at him sternly with her fork. The corners of her mouth were twitching, though.
“In your garden?” He raised his eyebrows. “I could probably ruin that too.”
“What? How?” she asked, against her better judgement.
“I could start with clogging your hose,” he said and took another bite, grinning at her around his fork.
Lumos breathed out a laugh around her own bite of food, lifting her fingers to her mouth while she chewed and swallowed. “What if you promise not to clog anything of mine and I promise to be nice to you?” she asked, busying herself with another bite.
“That’s a fair trade-off,” he said, nodding thoughtfully while he stabbed at a tomato. “And if you ever decide to write a journalist, I’ll give you the undercover scoop to repay you for the lessons.” He put the tomato in his mouth before he added, “And the cooking.”
“Oh, I don’t really write anymore,” she said, pushing a piece of chicken around her plate. She glanced up at him with a smile. “But that’s a fair trade-off, too. Though…” She glanced down at her plate again and speared her chicken. “Maybe you should buy me dinner sometime.”
Byron raised his eyebrows and set down his fork so he could reach for his drink. “Like...takeaway or something?”
Taking a bite to buy herself some time, Lumos nodded while she chewed. Finally, as casually as she could manage, she said, “Yeah, you’re over here enough. And Terry will be home soon and he eats.”
Dropping his skepticism, he caught onto her casual air instead. “Ugh, he hasn’t outgrown that yet?”
Swallowing around a lump in her throat, she shook her head. “Afraid not,” she said. “At least not the last I heard.”
“I guess that means I’ll have to have dinner with the two of you.” He shrugged. “Might as well make it takeaway.”
“I don’t mind cooking dinner, though,” she added quickly.
“Well, if you’re offering,” he said, with a nod to his plate. “I don’t mind you cooking dinner.”
“That’s sorted, then,” she said with finality, giving him a nod and a brief smile. She silently ate a few more bites and didn’t look at him until she spoke again. “So why did you need to learn memory charms?”
He’d figured she’d ask eventually, but he’d procrastinated on having to come up with an explanation, so he took an extra long time to finish chewing his food while he tried to think of a reasonable excuse. He washed it down with his drink to buy a few more seconds. When he finally answered, he didn’t sound entirely certain.
“I’m going to clog Malfoy’s office toilet,” he said. “And I don’t want any witnesses.”
“Byron.” Her turn for skepticism, she raised her eyebrows now.
“I figured it’d come in handy,” he said with a shrug. “Trying to expand my skill set. Rhys is even trying to teach me how to duel.”
“But you —” She cut herself off, on the verge of saying he actually liked Rhys so of course he’d asked Rhys to teach him how to duel. She pushed what was left of her food around her plate with her fork and struggled to make her point without acknowledging he didn’t like her. “You asking Rhys for his help makes sense.”
Byron sensed there was something else to what she was saying, but he decided to ignore it and shrugged again. “He offered, actually.”
“But you asked me for help?” She watched him closely. “It just seems like it’s more than just expanding your skill set if you’re asking me.”
“You’re an Obliviator,” he said, a note in his voice erring in equal parts on defensive and deflective. “Was I supposed to ask Lestrange to teach me?”
“No,” she said quietly, eyes firmly on her plate. “It just doesn’t make sense that you’d ask me unless it was something important.”
“It’s so I can obliviate the Hugo Notts I have to interview,” he said, shrugging yet again. “If I ask them a question they don’t like — obliviate them. No harm done.”
“Okay,” she said, raising her fork in surrender. But something about his excuse didn’t sit quite right with her. It didn’t make sense that wouldn’t just say that right off. She just wasn’t sure how to push it any further.
“Okay,” he echoed, giving her a slightly wary look before he went back to his dinner. “This is great, by the way.”
“Oh, thanks,” she said, giving him a tight smile before glancing back at what was left of it. “You can take the leftovers home if you want.”
“That’d be brilliant.” He returned her smile, but he knew he’d made things awkward again. He stared down at the remainder of his chicken and moved it around on his plate. “And uh, thanks for teaching me this stuff anyway.”
“Of course,” Lumos said, giving him a smile that came easier. “You’re getting better and better at it, too. I wish I had something we could celebrate with, but…” She glanced around at her cabinets. She had a pretty good idea what was inside each one. “I don’t suppose I could interest you in a celebratory jammie dodger?”
“You have jammie dodgers and you haven’t already given me one?” Byron shook his head. “What kind of host are you?”
“A terrible one,” she answered with a laugh. With a nod at his plate, she added, “Finish that and I’ll break them out.”
“Cheers to that,” he said, lifting his cup of water and taking a sip before he dug into the rest of his meal.