Chapter Text
“I don’t care what Dumbledore says,” Vance tells him.
Bartemius tries not to grin. It would ruin the moment. If she’s trying to gut him with nothing but her glare, she’s certainly giving it her all.
“I know you.” She continues, now crossing her arms. “You haven’t forgotten anything.”
Bartemius doesn’t say anything. He just stares at her, unblinking, straight-faced, with a touch of puzzled innocence to his expression. He’s learnt over the past month or so that this makes Vance squirm more than anything he could ever say. If he keeps it up for long enough, her whole face will be overtaken by a series of tiny twitching motions, beginning at her eyebrows, shuddering right down to the corners of her mouth, like a bird ruffling out its feathers. She’ll open her mouth as if to say something, but when his eyes don’t waver and his face doesn’t change, she’ll glance away, press her lips into a stiff line and turn her glare on the door.
Bartemius will grin to himself. Later, he’ll mark up another tally point on the crumpled parchment that lives in his nightstand.
Today, though, Vance halts the motion by taking a deep, undignified sniff of the air, which is always a few degrees too cold and reeks of Mrs Skower’s All-Purpose Magical Mess Remover. It’s this that he blames for the ever-present cough he’s developed, the tightness in his throat. Bartemius bites back his scowl as Vance’s face smooths out and she settles back into her armchair. He swallows. Breathes in, breathes out, doesn’t cough. This is the only armchair he remembers, but Bartemius can say with relative confidence that it’s the ugliest one he’s ever come across. It’s covered in lint, striped red and white and speckled with stains of an unidentifiable brown. Like a mouldy peppermint. Vance is always perching on the edge of it, because the springs are wearing out and it’s the only comfortable way to sit on the vile thing.
“You must have a plan.” Vance insists, and the armchair groans, as if in agreement.
“Sure.” Bartemius says, with a grin, as lazy and slow as he can make it. Vance’s frown deepens. Every Sunday, without fail, Vance works herself into a seething rage over Bartemius and his missing memories. All he has to do is sit back and watch her tie herself into knots trying not to bash his head in. It seems this week won’t be any different.
Bartemius quite likes Sundays.
He’s a criminal and a liar, the way she tells it. She’s yet to tell him anything specific about either his crimes or his lies. It hardly matters. Bartemius hasn’t done anything worse than sit inside this room. Wood-panelled walls. Blue tiles. Vase of shrivelled old flowers beside the tiny bathroom. Window in the door. He can pace from one end to the other in the dark without tripping a single time. People pass in the corridor.
It’s called a hospital.
“You’ll snap right into it the second anyone waves a wand near you.” Vance snaps, shifts her weight again. The armchair protests.
Now that he’s got barely any memory, people speak to Bartemius as if he won’t remember what they’ve said. It would be irritating if it wasn’t so useful. Bartemius knows that he can make her flinch if he moves too suddenly, if he flings a hand in her direction. It’s something to do with the twenty-fourth of June. What exactly, he doesn’t quite know.
People are much easier to control than to understand.
“What’s a wand?” He asks her, just to make her face twitch again. She’s got the sort of face that anger must’ve lived in for years, nesting in the harsh lines between her brows and at the corners of her mouth. And there it is, flaring back to life, all under his deft guidance.
“Don’t play dumb.” Vance says, and curls her lip, like she’s expecting him to jump through hoops trying to win her approval. It’s too bad for her. Bartemius can see himself snatching the wand from her fingers. Driving it through her hand, into the plaster of the wall.
He decides against it. If he did, they’d interrogate him, and he’d have to get through an explanation without bursting into laughter, and it’d be such a bother, much more than it’s worth. He runs his tongue over the back of his teeth.
She sniffs. Excessive sniffling is a symptom of influenza.
“Are you ill?” Bartemius asks her. “Or just stupid?”
“You’re the sick one. You’re sick in the head.” Vance tells him, staring firmly down at the tangle of wool on sticks in her lap. Bartemius glances at them as them click together. Vance pokes a stick through a loop of wool. The thread splits. “It’s called knitting, as you bloody well know.”
Her fingers move faster. Her wool is a deep red. Bartemius makes a note of this. Watches her fingers move and her brows press together. Her hair is thinning, her roots turning from black to wiry grey at her temples. If she’s a witch, which she is, she ought to be able to do better than that. If Bartemius had a wand, he wouldn’t waste his time knitting. He’d do something bigger. Maybe blast the wallpaper right off and shred the door to pieces. But he doesn’t. Probably never will, if Vance has her way.
Vance sits with him on the weekends and Fridays. He knows this because the first week he was in a proper room, the Healer tacked up a calendar on his wall. It’s got brightly coloured birds on each page and neatly ruled columns and makes note of his medication schedule in tiny colour-coded markings flash rather obnoxiously if he takes the wrong dosage. Bartemius spends most of his time staring at it. Vance spends most of her time hunched over her knitting. When she thinks he’s asleep, she likes to rummage through his nightstand. She thinks he doesn’t notice, but her boots click terribly on the tiles, and the hinges on his nightstand groan when she pulls open the drawers. There’s nothing in there but parchment and a crumpled crossword, but he supposes she thinks she’s going to catch him plotting murder underneath 2 Across, 3 letters, common domestic pet.
It doesn’t make any sense. If he were to crush Vance’s windpipe, he wouldn’t write it down. Besides, it would be difficult. Too difficult. Vance is quick. He wouldn’t be able to catch her. Like the hummingbird on the calendar.
It’s July 1985’s bird, its beak half-buried in a flower, its wings a blur of iridescent green. Bartemius watches it until the lights flick off.
***
The water in the hospital shower is never quite hot, always comes in a trickle, not a rush. Even so, what little steam there is still worsens the tightness in his chest, makes it harder to draw breath.
When he’s finished, he braces himself against the wall to stop the room from spinning, the walls from swelling and shrinking with every breath. Through the dizziness, he squints at his own face in the cracked, dusty mirror. Vance is right about one thing. He looks sick. Half-dead. Worn out, pale as milk, like his skin’s been papered right over his bones. The skin around his mouth, down his throat, is red raw, shiny. He’d had blisters, up until last week. He rubs at the skin with the back of his hand. It stings. Peels off in dry flakes. Bartemius turns away from the mirror. Finishes pulling the robes over his head. No buttons, just a sack of striped fabric in the same forlorn grey as the bathroom grout. He picks the loose threads away from the sleeves. His chest is tight.
He ignores the ointment he’s supposed to smear over the peeling skin. Bartemius walks over to the wall, to his calendar, with his hospital-issued slippers slapping against the tiles. He crosses the days out. Two sharp lines in black, right through the fourteenth of July, then exactly five steps back to his bed. It’s raised at one end to keep his head up, which is supposed to make sure he doesn’t choke in his sleep. The bedframe squeals when he climbs back in. Like it’s going to splinter under him.
He pulls the covers up. The pinching red bracelet they’ve labelled him with slides against the sharp scent of detergent clinging to the sheets. Bartemius crosses his arms in front of his chest. It always aches at night, like he’s breathing in broken glass. Something about the cold.
The little bracelet tells him that his name is Bartemius Crouch. At night, he rolls the name around his tongue. Spits it back into the air, into the shaft of watery light from the corridor, which he’ll pretend is moonlight and not fluorescent strip lighting. The syllables don’t match his robes, don’t fit right in his mouth. Bartemius. Bart. Batty. He hooks a finger into the bracelet and spins. It scrapes over his skin.
Red means he’s not to be approached unarmed. He shifts.
Creature Induced Injuries – Amnesia. Highly Dangerous, Highly Unstable.
Right above the bracelet, there’s a mark writhing under his skin. He traces the lines carefully. Slowly. It’s the most interesting thing about his appearance. A skull with a snake curling through the mouth, sliding over the teeth. On occasion, he swears he can feel the ink sliding under his fingers, searing pain, like the snake is eating away at his veins. He traces, counts the visible teeth. In the half-light, the snake seems to move. The bracelet covers the very tip of the snake’s forked tongue. He lifts the plastic away from his wrist to let it breathe. The snake’s tongue flickers. It’s tasting the air. Or perhaps it’s just a trick of the light.
Vance doesn’t have a mark. No one else does.
It’s his. The only thing that’s his.
On Sunday, Vance flinches when he runs his fingers over it. She eyes it with the sort of disgust one might normally reserve for sewerage, and Bartemius makes up his mind to spend the day chewing the bracelet off. It will disgust Vance, if nothing else.
The bracelet is tacky. Tastes of plastic and sweat. His spit dribbles down the length of the snake, drips off his elbow.
Vance watches the spit drip into the bed with a faintly disgruntled expression.
“They won’t change your sheets until Wednesday,” she says. She’s perfectly still, but behind her eyes, he can see a shudder running through her. He adjusts the angle of his arm. His teeth pierce the plastic.
“Stop that.” Vance’s lips have gone tight. She reaches for her wand, tucked under her shawl. Bartemius grins. Her eyes dart to the door.
“Or what?” Bartemius speaks through a mouthful of plastic. Vance swallows.
The plastic tears. Bartemius spits it out, tosses it away, limp and red and covered in neat round handwriting. It lies slain on the sheets. Like a dragon with its spine snapped in two. The snake’s tongue flickers again, tastes freedom on the air. He rubs at his wrist. Grins.
Vance has to call the Healer, after that. Bartemius counts fifteen seconds between Vance reaching over to ring the little bell and the Healer knocking three times on the door. Unlocking, stepping through, locking it behind her. She’s a round, rosy-cheeked woman, and is almost more of a nuisance than Vance, listening with her brow faintly furrowed as Vance gestures at the bracelet. Bartemius pastes a perfect picture of innocence on his face.
“It was itching.” He tells her. Vance scowls at him. He grins at her while the Healer’s bent over, fiddling with the bracelet. She fixes it back onto his wrist with a careless wave of her wand. It’s far too loose the first try. She taps it again and the plastic tightens, toughens. He flexes his wrist. The plastic rubs against his skin.
It’s always the same Healer, bustling about the room with her wand tucked behind her ear and a loop of keys dangling from the chatelaine at her waist. Her smile, gleaming, white, professional, never reaches her eyes. Her real name is not Susan, though she’s informed Bartemius that’s what it is. She must not realise the tape she’s stuck over her name badge is peeling at the edges, but that’s exactly the kind of carelessness Bartemius has grown to expect from her. Her name’s not Henrietta, but it could be, though it might be Helena or Heloise or Heidi or Hestia.
“…and some fellow on the ground floor’s gone and had his left arm Transfigured into silk at Gladrags, so I reckon you’d best stick to Malkin’s for now,” Susan or Helena or Hestia tells Vance, as she tips a thick potion the colour of lard into a measuring glass. It splashes up the side of the glass. “Tell Dedalus that, won’t you?”
Vance nods stiffly. She’s watching Bartemius.
“Tea, then?” Susan asks Vance, sliding the tray of potions off the trolley. It levitates down to his side. Vance accepts.
Bartemius is never offered tea. He wouldn’t drink it, anyway. Even if it would help with the iciness in his throat, loosen the aching in his chest. They could slip anything into his cup.
They slip enough into him as it is. Stinging liquids in the tiny glasses that smoke at the edges and leave him with pounding headaches, lethargy, tremors in his fingers. They burn when he swallows. His throat has never felt drier. Potions and lukewarm porridge and toast that tastes of sawdust.
“Have you been using the ointment? Twice a day?” Susan asks him. Bartemius shakes his head.
“Forgot.” Bartemius says. His voice is hoarse. Susan purses her lips. Like he’s a misbehaving student. Bartemius would like to wring her neck for that. Instead, he runs his tongue over his teeth.
“Try to remember, won’t you? It’ll help with the scarring. And you’ve got extra Haleurus Draught if you can’t stop coughing.” Her voice is high. Like a bird screeching at the crack of dawn. She nudges the tray closer. “You’ve got all these to take the chill off, and then–”
“Don’t bother.” Vance says. “He doesn’t listen.”
Bartemius turns a tiny glass around in his fingers. Warming Solution. It’s bright orange and fizzing. When he swallows, his chest will feel like it’s burning. Susan glances towards the door, then down at her wrist. Catches herself and looks back at the tray. She’s twitchy all over, tense with urgency. Bartemius wonders how much it would take to wipe the smile clean off her face.
He lifts the glass.
Susan shouldn’t make herself so easy to read. Bartemius slams his knee against the tray.
Glass shatters. Purple and cream and gold potions flow across the tiles, swirling around the shards. It’s like art.
He sips at the orange potion. It tastes rotten. Heat spreads through his chest.
Susan doesn’t flinch, but her eyes do widen slightly.
“I’m sorry. It was an accident.” Bartemius says, very quietly. He makes sure never to speak above a whisper around Susan. It drives Vance mad.
Susan just sighs and waves a hand at him, in a kindly, middle-aged sort of way, though she can’t be much older than thirty-five. There’s a particular kind of thrill to it, watching Susan or Heidi or Hestia scramble to repeat the same motions, less clean, less practiced. A sweep of the arm that goes slightly too wide, a fumbling of the flasks, all her measurements off by a millilitre or two. No one is as perfect as they pretend. Not even Vance, who looks as if she’d like to dig his liver out with her fingernails.
“I’ll take care of it.” Vance says, as Susan pushes the new tray back at Bartemius, with the same professional mask as always. “I know you’re busy.”
“Oh, you can’t, I’ve got to make sure he drinks them all.” Susan watches Bartemius finish the orange potion. This time, she glances at the clock. He takes his time selecting the next potion.
He stretches out each sip. Swills the liquid in circles, watches it spark and hiss and bubble, smells the steam rising in spirals and tries to name the scents under his breath. Smoke, wet wool, sugary syrup. A flavourless golden potion that helps his breathing. The cold blue draught he’s supposed to inhale, which Susan leaves on his nightstand. A draught of Pepperup Potion. He gags on the ones he finds particularly unpleasant, just to watch Susan reach for a bucket, strain her smile. It makes Susan squirm as the clock ticks further from the hour. Vance’s frown deepens with every passing second.
When he sets down the final glass, it barely clinks against the tray before it’s jerking back to the trolley, rattling away. It’s fifteen past. Susan’s knuckles have turned white.
She sets off at a brisk walk, clatters over the threshold. The door swings open for her, as if sensing her presence. On the other side, she fumbles with the lock, her face framed in the tiny square window of his door, her brows furrowed and the smile, at last, dropped from her face. Bartemius hooks a finger into his bracelet and spins it. Further down the corridor, he hears her footsteps quicken, break into a run.
He runs his tongue over the back of his teeth to stop the grin.
“That was cruel.” Vance scowls at him, crossed arms, like he’s a cockroach she’s scraping off the sole of her shoe. Bartemius shrugs. Vance isn’t much fun.
She bends over her knitting and doesn’t say another word all day. That’s fine. Bartemius doesn’t need her. He watches the hummingbird on the calendar instead. Its beady eyes drill into his. Iridescent feathers.
Vance’s knitting clicks.
It’s dull work, being trapped in a room with someone who hates you.
That’s why Bartemius prefers Mondays.
***
Dedalus Diggle, a bubbly little man with remarkable sideburns, brings him crumpled crosswords out of the Daily Prophet. Filled with new words, yes, but the real power lies on the other side, in the snippets of information in the articles printed on the back. Usually, it’s celebrity gossip, lengthy opinion pieces on the engagement of the bass player of the Weird Sisters, or an interview with Celestina Warbeck. Even still, words are a kind of power, when laid out in the right order. Vance mumbles words to herself, and the water jug pours itself. Susan whispers them under her breath, and she can see Bartemius’ heart pumping through his ribs, trace the flow of blood.
Please and thank you and a smile with bared teeth gets him extra parchment and a new crossword.
“I’ve finished it.” Bartemius tells Dedalus when he’s combed the article through for any scraps of information. He thrusts his three completed crosswords across the bed. “May I have another?”
Dedalus chuckles. He’s cheerful, talks more than Vance. Bartemius has him wrapped around his finger. With Dedalus, it’s important to remain polite, pull manners and etiquette over the hunger in your eyes. Like curtains around a bed. Ask questions, speak softly. Play up the coughing and the headaches and the fatigue. You’re a small animal, weak and frail and utterly dependent on the mercies of cheerful old men clad in purple top hats.
“My, you go through them fast,” Dedalus says, turning his hat in his hands. Bartemius thinks about ripping the hat from Dedalus’ fingers and shredding it into pieces. Difficult. Bartemius’ fingernails break very easily. The tops of his fingers are scarred, and his skin is growing back in puffy white layers. Susan’s told him he’s not supposed to bite them, but Susan’s a fool.
“How was your weekend?” Bartemius asks Dedalus, as he takes the stack of new crosswords from him. Dedalus goes off on a great ramble about the discovery of some comet or other. Bartemius is only half-listening as he glances through the fragments of articles on the backs. The arrest of a man over illegal Fwoopers in Northampton, two members of England’s national Quidditch team spotted buying ice cream in Diagon Alley, and a Ministry review of Hogwarts’ staff recruitment process, beginning this August. Bartemius saves the third article, flips back to the first crossword.
“…shall have quite the story by next Monday, I think, and Susan– you know Susan, don’t you?”
“Of course.”
“Sunday afternoon, we’re off for a spot of stargazing. Spectacular views, you know, you can see the whole sky. Well, so long as it isn’t cloudy, but that’s solved easily enough with a touch of charms.” Dedalus says, and his eyes twinkle knowingly.
Bartemius remembers the stars spiralling overhead, but it’s detached. The Bartemius in the image has no body, no mind, nothing. Still, he does have an image of the sky. It’s something. He doesn’t admit to it, though. It’s better to be thought ignorant, innocent. Helpless.
“What are the stars like?” Bartemius asks Dedalus, wistful and quiet. He wets his lips.
It’s almost comical, how fast Dedalus deflates. Bartemius can see the pity churning behind his eyes.
“You mean to say you don’t remember the stars?” Dedalus says. He’s frowning.
“If I had a window, I could.” Bartemius says quietly. He runs his tongue over his teeth. He’ll be out of here before October, if he gets his way, and he will.
“Well,” Dedalus says, with a thoughtful twitch of his moustache, “I’ll see what I can do about that.”
Decent people are easy prey.
Fwooper is the answer to 9 Across, 7 letters. A brightly coloured bird with a high-pitched, twittering song. Bartemius scrawls the word in the front. Susan’s told him he ought to write things down on his parchment, but Bartemius can remember most new things on his own, and his head’s empty enough as it is.
“Do you think I liked stars? Before?” Bartemius asks Dedalus as he fills out the crossword. 4 Down, 5 letters is sheep, which are like pillows on legs. 12 Across, 9 letters, respiratory illness, is influenza. A hospital is a place for sick people. Bartemius is sick in the head.
“I wouldn’t know.” Dedalus says, but his eyes flick away too quickly for it to be true.
“Alright.” Bartemius says, with a tone of disappointment and quiet resignation. It’s an excellent combination. He’s quite proud of it. He finishes the last letter of 2 Down, 5 letters, the colour of grass, with a flourish. Counts to five in his head as Dedalus fiddles with a button on his waistcoat.
“One might think you did.” Dedalus says. “You were rather close with people who did, after all.”
Bartemius grins.
***
There’s a row in July 24th’s crossword that refuses to be filled and a pounding headache behind Bartemius’ eyes. He stares down at the crossword in his lap. 5 Down, 11 letters. Controversial young wizard born on July 31st. The second letter is an A. It is five days away from July 31st, and Bartemius cannot for the life of him remember who’s birthday it is, though it feels familiar. He rubs his temples. The empty row will bother him when the rest of the crossword is finished. Even if he can’t see it, if he tucks it away in his nightstand, he’ll be able to feel it eating its way through the wood. It’ll hang in the air like a bad smell.
It’s difficult, finishing crosswords with barely any memory. Facts and animals and books dart around his mind. Like spiders fleeing from the light. If it were up to him, he’d simply ask Dedalus for the whole newspaper, but even Dedalus wouldn’t be so stupid as to grant him that. Not when no one’s told him what he did, who he is, what happened in June.
He picks through the backs of the other crosswords for any news, but he’s only coming up with Celestina Warbeck’s summer salad recipes, lettuce and gherkins and toad legs.
The headache throbs.
The only other thing he finds is a reference to numerous poor staffing choices by Headmaster Albus Dumbledore which culminated last June, when the latest candidate for Hogwarts Defence Professor was exposed as a devoted– before the sentence is cut off by a jagged tear where the page ends. Still, Bartemius slots this article among the stack of useful ones in his nightstand.
He asks Dedalus about the missing birthday over his porridge. It’s lumpy, with dried raspberries.
Usually, when he asks Dedalus this sort of question, about Celestina Warbeck, or the Weird Sisters, Dedalus will laugh, and he’ll pull a thick book out of a pocket it shouldn’t be able to fit inside, and they’ll flip through the pages together until they get right to the back of the book. It’s got a good dragon skin casing and entries will appear out of thin air when you write your new word down. Dedalus says that the entries come right out of his own head. Everything he’s ever known about a topic. It’s called an encyclopedia.
“Well, it’s quite befuddling, fascinating, how knowing something leaves marks in your head.” Dedalus usually tells him with a finger to his wrinkled chin. “Sort of a hollow, once it’s gone. The book sees the shape of it, fills it in, you know.”
Today, Dedalus doesn’t pull the book out.
“July 31st, birthday.” Bartemius offers the crossword up.
Dedalus freezes with his spoon halfway to his mouth and porridge slops back into his bowl. A speck of dried raspberry clings to the spoon.
“Dear me, dear me… well… I’m not quite…” He sets the spoon down and begins to pat at his pockets. “I don’t…”
He falls silent.
“You don’t know?” Bartemius says, with just the right amount of disappointment. He wets his lips.
“Yes! Yes, that’s all, I simply can’t remember.” Dedalus pounces on the offered excuse, which means that 5 Down has everything to do with Bartemius. Dedalus’ hands are jumping from his hat to his waistcoat to his robes. “I’m sure… well, it would be better of you to ask Albus, if he visits again.”
“Alright.” Bartemius says. He tucks the crossword back into his nightstand. When he emerges, Dedalus has found a squashed, half-empty package of Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Beans. His fingers are scrambling to open the packet.
“Bertie Bott’s?” Dedalus asks, his voice quivering slightly. His eyes dart to the nightstand, back to Bartemius’ face.
Bartemius accepts. It wouldn’t do to let Dedalus know how futile this distraction is. He picks out a blue bean, the same colour as the hospital tiles, the colour of the potion he’s supposed to take when his headaches get bad, possibly dish soap or candy floss. He turns the bean around in his fingers. There are tiny specks of darker teal suspended in the lolly. He’ll wait at least a week to ask about 5 Down again, even though the thought of the crossword squares sitting blank for that long is itching at the back of his eyes. If he seems like he wants it, he won’t get it.
And he needs the name. It feels important.
“I’ve gotten an agreement for you.” Dedalus tells him, as Bartemius chews his bean. It’s toothpaste. His mouth fills with cold mint. “They’re taking you up for a press conference of sorts, so I thought we’d do it at evening, head there a little early. They’ve got windows in that room.”
“You did?” Bartemius says. Spits out the words with just the right inflection, shock and awe and sickening gratitude. He’d gag if he wasn’t so pleased with himself. Dedalus beams. “Thank you.”
“It’s no trouble, no trouble at all.” Dedalus nibbles at the corner of a pale brown bean. He gives a satisfied sort of hum. Bartemius drums his fingers on his knees.
“What flavour’s that?”
“Roast beef.” Dedalus says. Bartemius grimaces. Susan brings roast beef, dry and limp and chewy, for Sunday lunches.
Dedalus seems to be enjoying himself, though, which is good for Bartemius. He’ll ask for four crosswords next week.
***
When August comes, Bartemius flips his calendar and tears the July page out, hummingbird and all. He saves it in his nightstand. Takes it out again to stare at the iridescent feathers. The colours seem to shift through every hue, green and blue and shimmering, tiny wings blurred. Like a heartbeat. Pounding incessantly. The hummingbird beats against the walls of his nightstand all week. Like it’s in the throes of death, suffocating beneath his crosswords and articles.
He’s not sure what about the creature is so fascinating.
“Hummingbird.” Bartemius finds himself telling Dedalus on a Thursday afternoon, his eyes hungry, watching as Dedalus plucks a scraggly little quill from his shirt pocket and prints HUMMINGBIRD in the back of his encyclopedia.
“Funny little birds, aren’t they?” Dedalus muses, chewing the end of his quill. He flips the page over. Bartemius reaches for the book. While Dedalus fiddles with his pocket watch, Bartemius begins to learn everything Dedalus knows about hummingbirds.
“Here,” Dedalus says, removing a crumpled sheet of paper from his pocket, when Bartemius is halfway down the first page. “Crosswords for you.”
“Thank you.” Bartemius does not look up, though he ought to at least count them, check if he’s been given four and not three. He brushes a finger over the illustrations, done in spindly green ink, moving under his touch, smooth as the mark on his left forearm. He can feel the wings beating, the speed of them. Feathery, light. Like the touch of the wind, the rush of it through his lungs, dizzying, flying up high on a summer night.
He learns that their wings beat at eighty rotations per second, that they feed on nectar, that they can fly backwards.
“We ought to put him up on your wall, don’t you think? Seems a shame to lock him away.” Dedalus has lifted July 1995’s hummingbird up, is examining it with his quill between his teeth. “I know a few charms, things to make it fly and the like.”
July is the hottest month of the year, which means it might be sunny outside. Flowers and green-ink hummingbirds and yellowing grass. Bartemius’ stomach twists. He runs his tongue over his teeth. He can picture it. The little bird, darting from the doorframe to the calendar to the corner. He’ll watch it in the night. It’s a good idea.
Besides, if it’ll keep the old fool happy, Bartemius will get more crosswords out of it.
“Alright.” Bartemius says. Dedalus beams at him. The smile itches at some forgotten corner of his mind. He reaches for the crosswords. Four. Just as he’d asked. While Dedalus is occupied fiddling with the hummingbird, Bartemius flips the pages over. The thin face of a bespectacled boy with messy hair stares up at him. The face seems familiar. Tugs at his gut. Read more on page twelve, screams the caption, Harry Potter: DELUDED OR DANGEROUS, LOONY OR LIAR.
The boy doesn’t look much like either. Really, he just looks startled.