WHO: Byron Kettleburn & Lumos Boot WHAT: Two times the Death Eaters were a drag. WHEN: January 24, late afternoon & evening WHERE: Lumo's abode WARNINGS: Andy :(
All day, Lumos had kept her phone nearby just in case. She couldn’t tell if it made her feel better that Byron didn’t hext her earlier or if it was terrible. In the end, she decided she should’ve insisted he hext her afterwards to tell her everything was all right since apparently insisting worked on Byron now. (It didn’t. She knew better.)
She also wasn’t sure why she cared. The last time he’d cared about her was when they were fifteen and she was sure he’d written that off as something gastric. But the answer was Terry. Terry was why she cared.
So after work she’d gone home and nervously cleaned the kitchen. And then she’d nervously cleaned the sitting room and found eleven knuts in the sofa cushions. She’d been trying to decide if she wanted to nervously clean the bathroom or her bedroom next when Byron finally arrived.
“Oh, it’s you,” she said as she stepped aside to let him in, holding the door open wider.
“Don’t sound so surprised,” he said and pulled a face at her as he came inside. “I said I’d be here, didn’t I?”
“I’m not — yes, you did.” She closed the door behind him and rolled her eyes behind his back. She cleared her throat. “Do you want something to drink? I have everything.”
“Beer,” he said instantly. He tossed a slanted grin over his shoulder at her and tapped a fingertip against his head. “Should make it more interesting for you when you go rooting around in here.”
She narrowed her eyes at him briefly. “I said I wasn’t going to root through your head,” she said as she stepped around him. She made a vague, impatient gesture at a chair she’d pulled out for him and disappeared into the kitchen. After a few moments, she returned with an open beer for him and, despite the usual urge to drink when she was around him, nothing for herself. It was probably best to root around his head sober.
Not that she was rooting around in his head.
“Cheers,” he said, sinking into the chair and tipping his drink toward her before he took a long swig. When he lowered it, he squinted at her and asked, “Are you going to laugh at any of my jokes tonight or is this too much serious business?”
“I might laugh,” she said, sitting across from him on the sofa. Very quickly, her voice rising in pitch towards the end, “But you did have tea with Hugo Nott and I was worried about you all day so I reserve the right to be serious business!”
“Awww,” he said, the fact that he’d already had a drink or two before he’d arrived becoming more obvious by the minute. “You care.”
Forehead furrowing, she said, “Don’t make fun of me.”
“I’m not! You’re the one who said you were worried about me.” He slouched in his chair. “It went fine, though. Except the part where he tried to say his son’s a better student than ours.” Another swig. “Bastard.”
“I’m sure his son’s already had Death Eater training so he would be a better student this year.” Looking at Byron she wasn’t sure she’d stopped worrying about him. “Any other year, though, and Terry would have him beat.”
“Course he would.” He gestured with his bottle. “Especially if they factored integrity into it.”
That brought a very brief smile to her face, one that she quickly had to suppress. She passed a hand over the side of her head and got to her feet, reaching for her wand so she could stand over Byron. “Tell me what else happened.”
“He talked about how he wants the youths of Tinworth to inherit the crown,” he said, sparing her wand a single wary glance. “How nice a place it is to retire. How much he loves gardening. Spending the holidays with his son. It was the perfect interview for a puff piece.”
The tip of her wand started to glow as she very carefully began to poke around his head for his afternoon tea with Nott. She really hoped he wouldn’t let his mind wander. “Was he nice to you?” she asked. “Did anything seem off about him?”
“He was pleasant enough,” Byron said with a shrug. “I just took Robards’ advice and by the grace of Merlin, I managed not to take the piss. Not even once.”
An ‘I’m glad you listen to someone’ was on the tip of her tongue, but she found what she was looking for and she closed her eyes to pay attention, her lips forming some of their words as she listened to them. His memories seemed clean, though, and she felt a surge of relief when Byron’s quill didn’t record his last breaths and the tea didn’t seem to change anything in his head.
“You’ve left,” she said finally. “Do you mind if I look a bit further just in case?”
“Further?” Byron leaned away from her wand and angled a wary glance up at her. “What for?”
Lumos reached for his shoulder and tugged him back in. “I want to see if he had someone follow you.”
“No one followed me,” he said, furrowing his eyebrows even as he turned his gaze straight ahead and held still for her.
She still waited, though, to see if he’d change his mind. She looked carefully, more warily than before, but she didn’t go very far. She just wanted to make sure the temporal seams between him leaving Nott’s house and his next destination matched up. “All right,” she said, stepping away, sitting down on the sofa again with a sigh. “I’m done. I don’t think you were imperiused.”
“Well, that’s a relief,” Byron said, tipping more beer into his mouth. He lifted a hand to scratch a tingling itch on his head and tried to ignore the dull ache and fatigue her magic had left behind. “Now you won’t have to cut off my head.”
“I would just lock you up for a week,” she said matter-of-factly. She would’ve.
“Guess that makes today a lucky day for both of us,” he said and offered her a toothy grin before he down the rest of his drink.
Though she allowed that a weak laugh, Lumos was still a little worried about him. “You’re okay?” she asked.
“Yeah, fine.” He shrugged off the concern in her voice. “Let’s switch seats, though.”
“Okay,” she said slowly, unconvinced. She stood up and off to the side, staring down at her hands instead of looking at him. Quietly, she added, “Next time you should hext me to let me know you’re all right. So I don’t have to wonder all day if you’ve been killed.”
“You mean you don’t like the suspense?” Byron knew the answer and didn’t bother look at her for one as he shifted out of his chair to recline on the sofa. Discarding his empty bottle on her coffee table, he fluffed a throw pillow behind his head and grinned up at her. “Got it, mum.”
Lumos sighed and snatched up his empty bottle. “I didn’t say you could make yourself at home,” she said, though it was obvious she didn’t really mind.
“Don’t mind me,” he said, folding his arms behind his head and giving in to the alcohol-induced heaviness of his eyelids. “You’ll barely notice I’m here.”
“I don’t think you’re really fine,” she said as she turned to carry his bottle into the kitchen.
“M’definitely fine,” he mumbled after her. But by the time she returned, he was fast asleep, snoring away on her sofa. With another sigh, mostly at herself this time, she reached for a nearby blanket and draped it over him.
It must’ve been hours later when the sound of a door slamming jolted Byron awake. He sat bolt upright, frantically blinking the sleep from his eyes and squinting at the person in the dimly lit doorway. The sun must’ve gone down while he’d been asleep. How long had he been here?
When it registered it was just his host, returning home from wherever she’d been, he leaned back into the sofa with a sigh. “Oh, hey,” he mumbled. “I’ve got good news and bad news for you. Good news is you’re not being robbed. Bad news is I’m still here.”
If not for what she’d seen while she was out, Lumos might’ve actually laughed at that. But she’d spent what had felt like ages being hyper-focused on the task at hand, cool and calm so she didn’t spook the muggles whose minds she carefully molded around what they’d seen tonight. She was home now, though, and somehow she’d forgotten Byron was asleep on her sofa.
So what she managed was somewhere between a laugh and a sob. She wiped her hands over her face and she forced a deep breath through her lungs. “I have to tell you something.”
A veneer of concern slipped over Byron’s expression and he sat up straight again. “What is it? What’s wrong?” And before he could stop himself, “I didn’t get you pregnant again, did I?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “That’s — no.” She moved to sit next to him, perching herself on the edge of the sofa. She forced herself to take another deep breath. It was harder to hold herself together when she was in her house, sitting next Byron who had been — “It’s about Andy.”
Byron gave a jerk of surprise, his eyebrows furrowing in disbelief. “Andy got you pregnant?”
“No,” she said, managing to sound patient and gentle. “There was a Dark Mark in London. In Bethnal Green.” The entire time she’d been there had been a murmur in the back of her mind of Byron saying she wouldn’t have to cut his head off. And now. “It was Andy. He’s dead.”
It took a long moment for Byron’s sleep-addled brain to process what she was telling him. When it finally caught up, he stared at her with owlishly wide eyes. “What?”
“I’m really sorry.” She clutched her own knees so tightly her nails were sharp even through her jeans. “I don’t know what happened.”
Byron dropped his gaze to the surface of her coffee table and took a deep breath. He’d seen Andy alive earlier that day. He’d had drinks with him only a day or two before that. Andy’d been the one encouraging him to put his entire career on the line. Besides Terry, he’d been his biggest reason for moving forward with the mess currently littering every surface in his flat.
If they’d killed Andy for it, it was only a matter of time before they came for him. Hugo Nott could’ve killed him that afternoon and been done with it. The only reason he could come up with was that they didn’t know. Yet.
He swallowed down a lump in his throat and slowly turned his gaze back on Lumos. “So…” With a deep breath. “You’re definitely not pregnant?”
“Stop asking me if I’m pregnant!” Lumos finally snapped.
A halting laugh caught in his throat and he winced instead. “All right, all right,” he said, pushing the blanket off his lap and getting to his feet. “You’re okay though? Cause I’m just going to…” He tilted his head toward her front door. “Go.”
Something complicated coiled in her stomach and she stared up at him, a little stunned despite everything she already knew about him. “I’m — you don’t have to go.”
“No, I know,” he said with a shrug. But his mind was on the unfinished project at home he needed to find a way to contain before the Death Eaters found out about it. And besides that, he didn’t want to do this here, in front of her. “Um, thanks for telling me. About Andy.”
“Of course,” she said, scratching the side of her head absently. “And I’m — I’m fine, so you can leave.”
“Okay,” he said with a nod. “And, uh, thanks for making sure I’m not about to become a Death Eater puppet.”
Her breath hitched in her throat because ‘now you won’t have to cut off my head’ was ringing in her ears again and Andy’s head —
She pressed her fingers to her lips and gave Byron several emphatic nods. Thickly and from behind her hand, she said, “You’re welcome. You should probably go, though, because I’m going to you know and you probably don’t want to bother with that.”
Byron’s mouth dropped open as though he was going to say something, but his words got lost somewhere between his brain and his tongue. He hovered in front of her for a moment before he finally reached out and gave her a light pat on the head. “It’ll be okay.” He bit his lip. “At least you’re not pregnant.”
“Byron,” she sighed, her hand falling to her lap with what little exasperation her mind could muster, but a tear still trickled down her cheek and she hastily swiped it away.
“Yeah, okay, sorry,” he mumbled, pulling his hand back to his side and stepping around her coffee table. “We’ll talk soon.”
“We’ll talk soon,” she echoed.
Scolding him didn’t feel right after what she’d told him, though, so she got to her feet and followed him around the coffee table, to the front door. “Wait. I’m sorry,” she said, catching one of his hands and giving it a quick squeeze before letting go. “About Andy.”
“Yeah,” he said, wiping his palms on his trousers and hoping she hadn’t noticed them sweating. “Me too.”
He reached for the door handle and glanced over his shoulder at her. “I’ll hext you tomorrow. About the memory charms.”
“Okay,” she said, wrapping her arms around herself now.
“Okay,” he said, giving her a final look before he opened the door and escaped into the fresh air outside with an insincerely cheery, “Bye!”