Who: Kevin Entwhistle and Shannon Entwhistle What: Special Delivery Where: The Entwhistle Flat When: January 30, 1999 - Evening Rating: Some language
Kevin really wished he had been the first one home. Instead he returned from running errands to find his sister on her hands and knees attempting to clean blood and feces from the floor. He shuddered and the sight and gagged at the smell, his face asking the question his mouth did not.
“Special delivery,” she replied, tonelessly. “From someone who fucking hates us.” Kevin immediately withdrew his wand, when Shannon told him not to bother. “You can’t get it off with magic. I’ve already tried.” As he watched his sister for a moment, he noticed a slight twitch to her left eye, something he hadn’t seen her do in months. Something that first started when they were released from Azkaban.
Kevin ended up spending two whole nights at his parents’ house that Christmas. The first to recoup and the second to prepare. Before the sun rose on the morning of the 23rd, he was back on the road again, a stocked backpack over his shoulder. He knew that the full stomach and the restfulness he currently felt would not last long, but it was what he needed at that leg of the journey.
The next four months were much of the same for him. Cold. Lonely. At first he bounced around from one muggle town to the next, avoiding major roads and populated places. Spending nights in shoddy motels or wherever else they would take a person without ID, without questions. Wizarding locales were strictly off limits, but even if muggle areas he wasn’t always safe. After a brief run in with Snatchers in early March, he retreated from the public entirely, choosing the woods instead. It was there that Kevin began to rely on underground information, like hobos in the Great Depression. Small signs that let you know that certain places yielded food or certain houses were safe shelter for those on the run. But even those were constantly changing for fear that Snatchers would eventually catch on.
By the time Spring had arrived, Kevin was growing weary from the travels. His food supply was low and he was physically exhausted from always walking. It was eventually a bout of flu that did him in, stopping his journey dead in his tracks as he hid amongst the bushes shivering with fever and throbbing with muscle aches. That was where he was found by the Snatchers, curled in a ball and delirious. He remembered little to nothing of his trial and subsequent imprisoning and cared only when he could finally lie down and go to sleep.
When he finally recovered, Kevin spent most of his time doing something that he had rarely done at any other time in his life. He prayed. Kevin did it mostly because it made him think of his mother, who had probably lit dozens of candles at the nearby church for him, whispering the kind of worries she couldn’t share with her neighborhood friends. And perhaps it was the fact that Kevin’s prayers were answered - that less than three weeks from the time he was dragged into Azkaban - the war was over and the prisoners were released.
Shannon, on the other hand, had been a mess when she was finally freed. Eights months in Azkaban, ever fear and doubt you ever had manifested over and over by the presences of the Dementors, had snapped something inside of Kevin’s sister. When they finally returned back to their parents’ house on that May afternoon, she was an amazing contrast the world around them – bright, sunny and full of life. Shannon was thin, her hair brittle, dark circles under her eyes. She was twitchy and disorientated, often staring off into space and talking when no one was around.
Kevin was starting to see glimpses of that side of her again, as she sat their on the floor, defeated. Saying nothing, he went to the kitchen cabinet and pulled down two small plastic containers, each filled with tiny pills. From the bottle with Shannon Entwhistle printed on the label, he shook out two and handed them to his sister with glass of water as a chaser. She took them without comment in the way she had in the beginning when they were first prescribed to her. Kevin hesitated in front of his own container, debating as he had the other night. How long would he need to take these pills just to function like a normal person? Just in order to get a decent night’s sleep? If the war had stayed over, maybe it wouldn’t have been that much longer. But now that the hate and terror was sprayed all over his flat, the feelings he had spent months burying were coming rushing back.