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The post-apocalyptic world was so quiet. In the before times, the Knight Bus had been full of sound: screeching brakes, chattering customers, thumping bass from the radio Ernie always turned up slightly too loud. But even on quiet nights there were soft snores, the hiss of the hot chocolate maker, and the ubiquitous hum of magic underneath it all. Now, the quiet felt jarring and wrong, no matter how many silent mornings added to the count Stan scratched into the dashboard.
When a knock shattered the silence one brisk morning, Stan froze. Most of the population was dead – people did not just pop by for a cup of tea. He armed himself with a broken bedpost and peered through the peephole. At first he saw only the desolate stretch of countryside dotted by broken down cars, but when he lowered his gaze, he saw a tiny figure, bleeding in several places and dressed in soiled clothing. Before he could stop himself, he pulled open the door.
“Professor Flitwick?”
The man’s face was caked with dirt and dried blood, and his hair was filthy and matted, but there was something unmistakable about his smile. Stan had not been on the receiving end of many professors’ smiles, so he could still recall Professor Flitwick beaming as he had handed back Stan’s 10/10 homework on color-changing charms (copied from Adam Willoughby, but that was beside the point). Professor Flitwick had been generous with his smiles, grinning as students filed into class, as though he had truly enjoyed spending his life teaching wand movement and incantations to a bunch of teenagers. It was the same now: this man with a split lip and a missing front tooth was happy to see him.
“Mr. Shunpike. Long time no see. I wish we were meeting under better circumstances, but...” He made a careless hand gesture, more suited to dismissing dismal weather than the end of the world. “Could I come in?”
The food and water stores were dwindling, and the past months of surviving through sheer force of will had taught Stan nothing if not to look after himself and only himself. Yet he remembered Flitwick passing out Chocolate Frogs to his students before Christmas, and he nodded.
“Watch your step.”
Stan’s heart pounded in time with the pounding on his door. Cold sweat broke out on his forehead.
“Stanley Shunpike! We have orders from the Minister for Magic to search these premises.”
BANG! The door blasted open. Several robed figures barreled in. One pressed a wand tip to his chest while the others tore open drawers and tossed the contents of closets onto the floor.
“What are you looking for? I don’t have anything, I swear!”
Nobody answered. Nobody so much as looked at him. Not when they took him at wandpoint and Apparated him to a holding cell at the Ministry. Not when countless Aurors and Ministry officials marched in and out of the dimly-lit room, muttering in low voices. Not when one of the Ministry men cleared his throat and announced that Stan was being charged with Death Eater involvement. Not when another Auror grabbed his arm and yanked him to his feet, knocking his cup of tea to the floor.
“Where are you taking me?”
But he knew, even before the cold washed over him and the damp air filled his lungs.
At first he shouted, proclaiming his innocence and condemning the Ministry for falsely imprisoning him, spitting profanities and cursing Rufus Scrimgeour. When they tossed him into a cell, he rattled the bars and kicked the wall and howled with wordless rage. Then the Dementors extinguished his rage with the first rattling breath, and all he could do was plead. After a few more breaths, he went quiet.
The morning air cooled Stan’s face. He scanned the area, eyes peeled for intruders, but there was no movement save for a few dry leaves blowing in the wind. The bus’s hood popped open with a satisfying click. Stan rolled up his sleeves and set to work.
“I thought it didn’t run.”
Stan started at the sound of Flitwick’s squeaky voice, banging his head on the hood.
“Fuck!” He rubbed his forehead. “Sorry, Professor.”
Flitwick smiled, tugging at the healing cut on his lip. “Civilization has crumbled, Mr. Shunpike. You don’t have to apologize for swearing. And you don’t have to call me Professor.”
“Right.” Stan frowned. “What is your first name?”
“It’s Filius.”
“Filius.” Speaking the name felt strange, as though McGonagall or Dumbledore were going to appear from around the corner to berate him for disrespect. “Well, you can call me Stan, if you like.”
“Alright. Stan.” He gestured at the bus. “So does it run?”
“Well, not yet. Ernie, the driver I used to work with, installed a backup system that runs the Muggle way, just in case. Problem is, he hadn’t worked out all the bugs before everything went kaboom.”
“But you think you can get it going?”
The hope in Filius’s voice ignited a tiny spark inside Stan. For the first time since he had started fiddling around under the hood, he believed he really could get this old bus on the road again.
“No promises, but Ernie taught me a few things, and I’m pretty good at fucking around with things until I figure them out.” He nearly apologized again and grinned.
“That’s as good a strategy as any. Mind if I keep you company? I’ll keep quiet if you need to concentrate.”
Stan chuckled. “No need. I think better when I’m talking. My mum used to say I only shut up when I was sleeping.” His chest tightened the way it always did when he let himself think about his mum. “Madam Pince threw me out of the library for talking so much, I finally quit going to the library.”
Filius settled on a rock. “Yes, I remember you talking your way through Charms. It didn’t matter who you were sitting next to. You’d talk to anyone!”
“Exactly! I’ll talk to myself if I have no other option.” His smile slipped. “I mostly talk to myself these days.”
Filius adjusted his position so he was sitting cross-legged on the rock. “Well, not anymore. I’m all ears.”
Stan didn’t have to be told twice. As he messed around under the hood, he made up for the past months of solitude. He talked of his time working on the Knight Bus: favorite and least-favorite passengers, bizarre destinations, quiet nights with Ernie. He shared stories from his Hogwarts days and his childhood before. He rambled about his Quidditch team (the Tornados), his favorite and least favorite artists (The Weird Sisters and Celestina Warbeck, respectively), and whatever else popped into his head.
“You have the right mind for fixing things,” Filius observed as Stan loosened a bolt.
“Do I?”
Filius nodded. “You look at things and figure out how they work. You’re smart.”
A laugh burst from Stan’s lips. “Are you taking the piss?”
“No.”
Stan rubbed the back of his neck, smearing grease into his collar. “Nobody’s ever called me smart before. I barely got four O.W.L.s.”
“There are different ways to be smart,” Filius said simply. “And your way might just save our lives.”
“How’d you learn to do this?”
Stan leaned against the side of the bus as Ernie leaned over the hood, his thick glasses almost touching the engine.
“My dad showed me. He was a Muggle – fixed cars for a living. I always thought I’d teach my own kids, but… Anyway, after Ellen died, I needed something to keep me busy, so I started tinkering again. It comes back to you, like riding a broom.”
Ernie’s voice carried a hint of sadness, but he cleared his throat and it was gone again.
“Here.” He handed Stan a wrench. “Help me.”
Stan turned the wrench over in his fingers. “I dunno anything about engines.”
“Only because nobody’s ever bothered to teach you. You’re good with your hands. You’ll pick it up quick.” Ernie checked his watch. “Or you can go home early. We haven’t had a customer in hours.”
Stan thought about returning to the cramped flat he shared with his mum and her latest boyfriend, a cook at the Leaky Cauldron who drank often and smiled rarely.
“Nah, might as well stay and get paid. What do I do?”
A bright smile lit Ernie’s face. “Alright. You see those? Those are the spark plugs…”
“What do you miss most?”
Stan and Filius were seated in the section of beds they jokingly called the dining room. Filius put down his spoon, wiped a bit of chocolate pudding from his mustache, and leaned back against the headboard.
“Cherry syrup and soda,” Filius said, his voice choked with yearning. “Rosmerta always put an umbrella in the glass. And staff meetings.”
Stan looked at him in surprise. “Really? I would’ve thought they’d be dead boring.”
“Oh, they were. But Minerva and I kept each other entertained. We used to throw Every Flavour Beans through Professor Binns when he dozed off.”
Stan snorted with laughter and choked on a bite of pudding. “You’re joking!”
“I’m not.”
Stan imagined the two of them having drinks at the Three Broomsticks or griping about grading essays. The thought made his chest ache.
“But what I miss most is the flash of pure joy on a student’s face when they managed a difficult spell for the first time.” A tear rolled down his cheek and pooled in his mustache. Stan looked away, unwilling to watch his former professor cry.
“What about you?”
Stan took a bite of pudding and let his mind drift back to the before times. “Cauldron cakes. I’d give my left bollock for a cauldron cake. And listening to Quidditch matches with Ernie – he almost crashed the bus once when the Tornados missed a penalty shot. And nights at the pub.” He closed his eyes, and the bus fell away. He felt the alcohol warming his chest as he slipped out the door at the end of the night; he smelled the cigarette smoke as he took a deep breath of cold, bracing air. When he opened his eyes, Filius was watching him intently.
“Mostly I miss when it wasn’t so fucking quiet,” he finished, and this time it didn’t feel wrong to swear in front of Filius.
Neither of them spoke for a few moments. Filius cleared his throat.
“It won’t always be so quiet,” he said. “We’ll get back to normalcy someday.”
Stan nodded. The combination of the vivid memory lingering in his mind and the earnest quality of Filius’s voice made Stan almost believe it.
“Ever killed anyone?” Stan kept his gaze fixed on the engine, remembering Filius’s battered face and haunted eyes that first day he had knocked on the door.
Filius heaved a deep sigh. “I was at the Battle of Hogwarts, Stan. A lot of people died there, even before everything blew up.”
Stan sneaked a glance at Filius and saw the answer in his face, even if it hadn’t quite been there in his words. He thought about all the shadowy half-formed Imperius memories and wondered for the hundredth time just how many people he himself had killed.
“Do you think about them?”
Flitwick tugged at his mustache. “Sometimes. Just enough so I don’t forget. But you can’t dwell
on that too much. You have to keep looking ahead.”
Stan nodded and returned to fiddling with the piston.
“Say we get this running,” he said suddenly. “Then what? We drive around looking for survivors?
People will want to kill us, and we’ll have to keep looking for food, and what if we can’t find more gas? What’s the point? It’d be easier to give up.”
Flitwick smiled, showing his chipped front tooth. “Sure it would, but we’re not built to give up. If
we were, we wouldn’t be here.”
Stan’s stomach rumbled as he groped in the cupboard for a can of beans or bag of crisps he had somehow missed. His fingers brushed a glass bottle, and he grinned.
“I found Ernie’s stash,” Stan said, plopping the bottle of Ogden’s in front of Filius.
Filius traced the faded label. “I never was much of a drinker, but I did have a drink after the Potters’ funeral, and then after Dumbledore’s funeral.”
“Do you want to save this, then? In case I kick the bucket?”
“You’re not going to kick the bucket,” Filius said, his tone matter-of-fact. “And neither am I. Not for a good long while, so we’d better drink this now.” He divided the contents of the bottle into two glasses, grimacing when he took the first sip. “Needs an umbrella.”
They lounged on the bed, taking tiny sips of the Ogden’s and swapping stories. Cheeks pink and eyes bright, Filius described a dueling championship he had won in his youth.
“My opponents laughed at me. They called me pipsqueak and goblin boy, but they went quiet when I beat them all.”
“You proved them wrong.” Stan tipped the last drops of firewhisky into his mouth, savoring the heat on his tongue. “People laughed at me, too – the posh, Sacred Twenty-Eight kids. I had the wrong name, the wrong accent, second-hand everything. They called me spotty and stupid.” In the silence, he heard their laughter ringing in his ears. “I didn’t exactly prove them wrong, though.”
“You’re still alive.” The edges of Filius’s words were softened by the whisky. “I’d say you proved them wrong.”
Stan gripped the broom handle with sweaty hands. His knee smarted from the last fall, and a thin line of blood trickled down his shin. The old Cleansweep faltered as he pushed into the air.
“That’s it, Stan, you’re doing it,” his mum called.
He rose higher, and his stomach lurched. “I’m going to fall again.”
“You’re fine! Keep going!”
He drifted up, above the patchy grass and rusting swings. The sun warmed his face, and a light breeze tousled his hair. His mother clapped and cheered below. He smiled and waved, joy coursing through his body, but then the broom lurched and he tumbled forward. The ground rushed toward him, and he landed in a heap of limbs, his mother’s cushioning charm preventing another skinned knee but not the hot rush of frustration and disappointment.
“I can’t do it.” Tears sprang to his eyes, and he wiped them away angrily.
“Rubbish. If everyone gave up after a couple falls, the broom industry would go under. I broke my wrist when I learned to fly. Gran had to take me to St. Mungo’s. You’re already doing better than me.” She brushed dirt from his uninjured knee and pulled him to his feet. “Get back on the broom, Stan.”
Stan’s knee throbbed, and he thought longingly of the cold glass of pumpkin juice and the cauldron cake waiting for him at home, but he mounted the broom and took off into the air.