Chapter Text
The rain came down in a steady sheet. It beat against everything and tried to work its way into interiors. Cold rainy days, common in England at that time of year, made everyone a little more glum. Native islanders longed for the sun and often treated warm, sunny days as something of a national holiday. This day, however, did not provide an uplift to the spirits. Yet an aware and clever traveler could withstand just about any weather and make due with local amenities. Hence, Dennis sat in the Cascara Cafe enjoying a warm cup of coffee and a side order of sourdough toast and jam.
“Honestly,” he whispered as much to himself as to the ghost hovering near his left shoulder. To his right rain ran down the sheet of glass making the world outside ripple in odd ways. “Rain doesn’t bother you.”
The spirit said nothing and simply watched the wizard study the map spread out before him. The waitress asked at one point if he needed any assistance finding some place. Dennis told her he looked for the remains a small fifteenth century settlement along the River Avon. The waitress laughed and told him the location likely got paved and built over centuries ago. Bath, he reminded himself once the chuckling young woman moved on to another customer, got settled thousands of years ago. Thus, he agreed with the waitress’ estimation. The rail thin wizard mixed freely within non-magical communities with such ease he needed no charms or glamour to mask himself. Dennis could look as muggle as they come. He rarely noticed other witches or wizards in larger cities and believed they, too, mastered the art of muggle urban camouflage.
“It’s near a bend in the river by a large old oak,” mumbled Dennis to himself after few minutes of leaning in close to study the map. “That bloody well describes half of Somerset, doesn’t it?”
“Aye,” the ghost replied in a very faint voice even the wizard barely heard.
“But I guess if you haven’t been out of the castle in a couple of hundred years, you mightn’t know how it looks now. Still… by the old oak tree? How long did he think these trees live?”
“Ages,” the ghost answered.
As happened with greater frequency when Dennis worked on a new case for a ghost, he seemed to attract the local haunts when he began to focus on a specific area. How they knew he could see and hear them, that he would acknowledge their presence, remained a mystery the wizard thought he should solve. However, the to-do list in his head did not leave any room to suss out an answer to that question. Only one more day remained to him to investigate Bath and discover all he could. In two days time Dennis would spend the following three helping Mariusz Odpadki and Rapid Removal with a rather knotty waste issue. The life of a magical bin man tended to be harrowing in a manner few could guess. Dennis routinely hid this fact from his parents.
Visiting Bath made Dennis uneasy since it constantly called to mind everything he endured in securing the destruction of the Heptagon, an ancient Roman device used to combine spells often to very disastrous results. Four of his five druid compatriots died in the effort; two lingered for several weeks before the damage done during the mission overcame them. He pushed the map away from himself and focused on his toast.
“Here,” the waitress said ten minutes later and dropped a copy of The Daily Telegraph on his table. “You look pretty damn tired of that map.”
“It’s just the bad instructions I got. No one ever accounts for the changes made over the centuries. It’s like they think time stands still,” quailed the wizard in temporary hiding.
“Maybe it does?” The waitress replied in a thoughtful manner before wandering off. The bottom of her tan apron wafted about as her legs pushed against it.
“It does some for some more than others,” Dennis quipped and glanced over his shoulder.
“Indeed,” the nearly invisible ghost rejoined.
Dennis grabbed the muggle newspaper and began to scan headlines. In the months since destroying the Heptagon, the world seemed to be turning on its head. The United Stated entered what promised to be a protracted war in the Middle East and dragged along several other nations with it including Great Britain. The events of the terrorist attack in New York city, and then in England and Spain, the previous year continued to strongly reverberate throughout the world. Buried well below the fold a small story about renewed and intensifying fighting along the Indo-Chinese border continued to worry the international community. It seemed a regional war erupted although few knew anything about it or the central cause. Reports of equipment and troops being sent to the area around Badrinath and Bampa in the Uttarakhand province appeared disturbing, but details remained sparse.
“They don’t even talk ‘bout this on the telly or the wireless. You’d think they’d want everyone to know if China invaded India… or even the other way around. They both got nukes,” the wizard muttered. “And why’d they pick a mountain area? Can’t imagine what’s so worthwhile in that location. No one would have the advantage there.”
“I haven’t the faintest,” the spirit answered the rhetorical questions.
“You and me both.”
“Pardon?” An older woman sitting at the table next to Dennis’ asked.
Dennis realized too late he spoke the last part quite loudly in his confusion to make sense of it. He shot an apologetic expression at the woman and hunch his shoulders. She smiled, nodded her head, and then turned around to face her fare. Dennis did the same as he contemplated what he needed to do in order to make any headway in the current investigation. Given the scant information given to him, a return to Hogwarts with a recent map in hand seemed to be the only option.
“Thou art a prat, Snot, toddling off to heaven’s know where,” Peeves needled him an hour later in his favorite whiny voice that could make a cat’s hair stand on end.
“Bath, you cloud-brained ninny, and you knew where I was going” rejoined the wizard in a faux exasperated fashion. “It existed long before your parents got down to it.”
Peeves snorted in indignation, but Dennis heard something far more subtle in the reaction. The few students in the hallway watched with a mix of awe, fear, and revulsion. The former student wending his way toward the lower halls to find Hugo the Wanderer, a spirit who arrived at Hogwarts some four centuries before and never left. The correctness of his name remained a constant debate for those who documented the haunted history of the castle. Hugo, like many of the other ghosts, did not like to discuss how he came to be trapped on the material plane in an ethereal form.
“Your jibes miss the mark, Weavy Creevey, and I need not take this affront from thee!”
“Then don’t.”
The poltergeist let out with an awful cackle as his merriment and mirth took over. Instead of throwing one of his patented snits when bested in a verbal joust, Peeves enjoyed the trading of insults too much to take them truly to heart. Dennis reached the stairs and began to time the moving treads. His mother complained about escalators every so often, but it seemed reasonable to assume she would entirely balk at the stair situation at the school. Regardless, Dennis kept his eyes fixed on the movements, made an adjustment in his calculations, and then neatly stepped onto the staircase that came to halt next to him. It took about thirty seconds to actually reach the floor he intended: two below the main and one above the kitchen level. Hugo liked to wander the classroom halls and be among people.
“You chose poorly for this one,” Peeves grumbled at him. “Dost thou understand this Hugo is merely an interloper among us?”
“Two-thirds the ghosts here came from somewhere else, Peeves. Look at Lord North, and Sir Nicholas wasn’t even executed anywhere close to Hogwarts,” Dennis reminded the temperamental incorporeal being.
“Therein lies my point! We are beset on all sides by enemies from within who doth wish us ill!”
“You really need to stop watching American television!”
The famed, perhaps infamous, poltergeist let out with another high pitched laugh that caused the hair stubble on the back of Dennis’ neck to try and stand up. The somewhat portly ghost slipped through the air like a lost dirigible. The muted colors of his clothing, a rarity among spirits as nearly all went about in a colorless attire, made him more visible. However, Peeves could make himself very noticeable when not attempting some prank requiring invisibility.
“Capons and jackanapes all across those waters, and we should be thankful none take abode in our kingdom,” the poltergeist said with a bit more ire than he did when speaking about students.
“Huh? You really are following the news,” mumbled the wizard as he approached the area where Hugo liked to spend his time.
Dennis began to sharpen his gaze as he searched for the tell-tale signs of the haunt as Hugo drifted along or kept himself in a corner. The living wizard never understood why ghosts would hide themselves in such a manner. In that respect, Peeves proved more than an outlier as he fully enjoyed making his presence known whenever he wished. The end of the hall approached where it turned a ninety-degree angle, and the vague outline of a middle-aged man could be seen if one squinted just right. Dennis approached.
“Hugo?” He quietly said the ghost’s name.
Hugo, or at least the outline of his head, glanced at Dennis and then upward.
“Peeves? A little privacy please.”
“Thou art as addled-pated as the one with whom you wish to treat,” Peeves grunted in clear annoyance.
However, Dennis felt as much as watched the spirit disappear. No one seemed able to explain why he could sense Peeves’ presence. Professor Flitwick developed a hypothesis the Unbreakable Vow the young wizard enacted with the thousand-year old ghost likely sharpened his perception regarding the poltergeist. That sounded as reasonable as any explanation Dennis heretofore concocted.
“That one is meddlesome,” Hugo’s faint voice stated.
Unlike Peeves who spoke in a mishmash dialects and vernaculars he acquired over the ages, Hugo spoke in a more modern tongue. Occasionally he would lapse into phrasing or terms used during his tenure of life, but he mostly stayed up-to-date in the developments of the English language. The late man, dressed in a simple smock over his flax shirt cinched at the waist under which he wore wool leggings and half-calve leather boots of highly questionable quality, stared both at and through him. However, his eyes appeared more or less a black-and-white version of his original orbs, so it did not disturbed the wizard.
“True, and you know he’d take it as a compliment to hear you say that?” Dennis rejoined.
A brief flicker of a smile played along the insubstantial lips.
“Right. Okay, I need to ask you some questions about Bath,” the young living man began.
The ghost seemed to tense and appeared ready to bolt.
“Not about what happened to you, but where,” Dennis quickly added. “The Bath you remember is not the same Bath of today.”
Hugo calmed, yet remained visibly skeptical for all he could be barely seen.
Dennis approached the wall nearest the departed man while pulling out a map of Bath he liberated from the Bath Visitor Information Centre. He unfolded it and began to smooth it against the stones of the wall. Without needing to be asked, Hugo hove closer toward him and began to stare at the large unfolded square of paper.
“This how Bath looks now,” Dennis began. “There’s a bend here in the northeast. The main one in the south where the city is located, and kind of one over here to the west. So, show me where the tree was you told me to find.”
“This is confusing to me,” Hugo’s voice arrived like a whisper.
“It’s been four hundred years, Hugo, and a lot has changed. I’m not sure any of the trees from your time sill exist.”
The clock tower shook the castle as it announced the time. Doors flew open along the corridors and began to vomit students into the hallway. Since becoming a regular sight at Hogwarts as he completed tasks for the ghosts and portraits of the school, most of the students tended to ignore his presence. Rumors swirled Dennis tried to discern the cause of the human physical transformation into a ghost, and some outright accused him of murder in pursuit of that study. The more able-minded teachers and students regularly poo-pooed the notion. Hence, students tended to cut a wide berth around the former student. Robes swirled as talk erupted into the air. Dennis continued to hold the map against the wall until the din subsided.
“The bend where the city sits was not as pointed,” Hugo said when silence reigned in the stone hallway.
“Was your tree in that area?”
“Nay, but… it deceives my eyes. This… waterway is new to me.”
A ghostly finger pointed to the Kennet and Avon Canal.
“I think this was added a few hundred years ago. The locals restored it ‘bout ten years ago. Not sure it flowed like that in your time,” Dennis tried to relay what little information regarding Bath he gleaned during his brief stay. He leaned closer and closer to the map he held up to get a better look in the dim lighting of the hallway.
“It did not. I remember bogs and swamps in some parts where the land rested lower than the river. We would see small floods that replenished the fields in the springtime just before planting began.”
“Like the Nile.”
No one could stare as blankly as a specter. It typically conveyed confusion or disbelief over some factoid beyond their reckoning. Dennis began to realize they started to reach the limit of Hugo’s ignorance concerning the man-made and natural transformations of the land where he once lived. In that regard, Hogwarts took on the aspect of a slow growing tree: it took a thousand years for the castle to reach its current configuration. Restoration following the Battle of Hogwarts did not improve upon the irregular design of the environs, but sought to preserve the castle as it appeared before the fight. Despite whole sections being entirely new, the place looked in need of a good repair. As such, even Peeves periodically found himself at a loss to pinpoint exactly when certain features got added or removed.
“Is my cause hopeless, sir?” Hugo inquired following a long and pregnant silence.
“Not really. At least not until I throw in the towel,” replied Dennis.
“You should not waste good cloth.”
“It’s an expression,” the wizard stated. “I think it comes from boxing or wrestling. Throwing in the towel means the person quits or surrenders. My parents picked it up from the telly and like to use it.”
“Aye, fisticuffs. I never fared well in such contests in my youth,” the older man, older by centuries, responded with an odd bit of personal information.
“Neither did I. I’m, ah, a bit too thin for that. I’ll stick to wands, thanks.”
Dennis got graced with another brief flicker of a smile. It took a moment before he heard the unintentional double entendre in his words. Yet he could not be certain how much of his past Hugo knew or understood. Given what occurred in his fifth year and the following two seemed to make his sexuality public knowledge to all but the most sheltered of the castle inhabitants.
“Listen, I have some other business I need to get to for a bit, but I really need you to think about anything else you can tell me,” Dennis informed the ghost. “I’ll put this map up in Professor Flitwick’s favorite classroom so you can study it some more. I’ll be back next week, and we can talk about it then.”
“Thank you,” Hugo said and began to drift backward toward his original location.
“We can figure this out.”
Hugo nodded his head. Dennis heard as much as saw the silence envelop the late man. It seemed an almost impenetrable wall. The demeanor signaled a change in mood, and the wizard respected what it meant. He tilted his head once before folding the map and heading toward another section of the castle.
A short stop to receive a haranguing from the portrait of Professor Artura, another to get tips on where to find good beer in Bath from Professor Bragur, and a courtesy greeting with Professor Ceallaigh in the courtyard completed a majority his ritual salutations as he passed through the school. The rainy weather discounted a visit to Lord North and Missus Hughes, his daughter, and they would understand his lapse in social niceties. He also did not visit Professor Flitwick who he knew to be teaching that day in another section of the castle. Armed with that knowledge, Dennis made a beeline for his friend and mentor’s favorite classroom with the map flapping in his hands.
“Not that it’s any of my business,” Duncan Creevey rumbled at his son, “but what about them magical libraries you go to? Wouldn’t they have older maps of Bath?”
Dennis gaped at his father while his mother hissed out a laugh. Whether magi or muggle, his friends found it rather quaint the young wizard dined with his parents during the evenings when he happened to be in town. Those friends tended to forget he continued to live at home with them. In ways he could not entirely fathom himself, staying with his parents and paying them a modest rent did more to keep him centered than anything else in his life. Duncan and Jill Creevey spent the last several months railing at their son when he finally told them a very brief and highly inaccurate and incomplete history of the destruction of the Roman artifact. He never used the word volcano or stated people died in the effort. Thus, it their renewed skepticism regarding his on-going involvement in solving issues for the ghosts at Hogwarts.
“Ah, that was my plan for tomorrow before I go to work,” Dennis outright fibbed.
“Always at the top of your list, eh?” His mother teased him while his father drolly rolled his eyes.
The lone Creevey brother stabbed at the pork roast sitting on his plate. Although a notch above middling as a cook, his mother always managed to dry out any pork cut. She tended to treat it all like sausages and failed to take into account the added fat. He poured more gravy onto the piece he attempted to saw with a knife. His father appeared wise in that he never complained about the food she presented. Dennis learned the hard way to follow his lead.
“Well, maybe not at the top,” the young man dryly mused. “That place is creepy.”
“Must be for a wizard to say it,” Duncan murmured.
The Creevey’s ate in silence for a few minutes and worked at masticating the loin roast served to them. Dennis ate more than his share of the carrots and peas, and put a serious dent in the offered salad. Unlike everyone else who thought he needed fattening, Dennis’ parents never commented about his weight, or lack thereof, as the trait ran through both sides of the family. However, it seemed to skip his parents’ generation.
“I’m thinking of heading to Brighton for the weekend,” he said after ten minutes of fighting with his food to saw it into reasonable chunks.
Throughout England, Brighton carried a reputation as a haven for gay individuals. The smirks he watched grow on the face of his mother and father told him what they thought. He shook his head.
“Just glad your getting out there again after… all that,” said his mother in a pleased if small voice.
Her bobbed hair looked frozen in place with hair spray. Dennis once offered to make his mother a product that would hold her hair in place if she gave it the right command. Jill Creevey acted horrified at the thought of applying a magical substance to her body. Her son also privately considered his tinkering might be construed as the misuse of a muggle artifact by the Ministry of Magic. His attempt to distract himself from the memories her comment raised concerning Cameron Vall failed in its entirety. Dennis stared at the table. Even after nearly two years on from the event did not ease his extreme dislike for the Aurors’ office who enacted the memory alteration, the Wizengamot who used a drumhead trial to approve the action, and the Ministry that sanctioned the whole cursed situation.
“This Casper fellow sounds decent enough,” his father quietly commented. “Maybe you should bring him round for tea one of these days.”
Dennis silently nodded his head. The fact his father acknowledged one of his latest trysts, at least one the young man openly admitted, dovetailed with the fact his parents truly liked Cameron as a person. They also commented on how they found it miraculous he mingled in the gay community of witches and wizards. Given what occurred when Dennis fell in love with a muggle man, he vowed to never make the same mistake. Yet his disdain for magical kind even in light of being one of them never lifted. The magi world did as much emotional and psychological harm to him as it could in retribution over the fact he would not divulge details regarding the Heptagon or Peeves the Poltergeist. He also faced continued negative attention from revealing the myriad of magi-muggle relationships that never got treated the same as his and Cameron’s relationship. Only Luna Lovegood and the staff of The Quibbler publicly took his side. He shipped them a dozen pair for the Aural Pictograph Glasses so they could continue to expose the hypocrisy of the Ministry of Magic and the Wizengamot in failing to evenly apply justice.
“Yeah, he’s a bit of all right,” Dennis stated and let a weak smile play on his lips.
“Just all right?” His mother knowingly questioned.
Dennis and his father snorted in unison at her unspoken assertion. Although they completely adjusted to the reality of their son’s sexuality, the topic of sex itself remained mostly unexplored. Granted, they seemed entirely aware of what happened, but never deigned to discuss it with him. The young man often privately sighed in relief their inquisitiveness regarding his life found limits. Yet they did not so easily forgive him when he mentioned some of the real danger he faced in destroying the Heptagon. He never told his parents people died in removing an evil from the world. The word volcano dominated the hysteria because his involvement ran too deep, and he somewhat agreed. Hence, talk about Casper Gorst seemed a nice and safe alternative to discussing either his vocation or avocation.
“Well, he’s rather fond of Teachers, and he wants to see if we go watch a filming over in Bristol. He got a thing for mug… your kind of television programs. Got to admit the shows on the Wiz-Viz are total crap,” explained their son.
“Dennis!” Jill tutted his name.
“Lot of worse adjectives he could’ve used,” Duncan commented and then proceeded to gnaw on a piece of the roast before his wife could take a verbal swipe at him.
“No, Mom, it is. They’re starting to serialize Wipple and Derge, and they’re not even starting from the first book.”
“Which one is that?” She inquired.
Dennis gave a short description of the famed sleuthing duo consisting of a pompous centaur and his toadying alchemist friend. He read the series while in school, and the tone between the first three books from the mid-1970s and the subsequent forty-nine that followed read much different than starting book. He told them how Norvan Derge did not originally appear as the obsequious sycophant seen in the later volumes, but incredibly hostile toward Wipple for some very good reasons. Dennis sided with the early and original version of Derge. Rumor swirled that Lord Voldemort and his followers threatened the duo if they continue to investigate and write true crime stories. Hence, the series lost all touch with reality as they routinely solved overly complex and preposterous cases based on the incredibly fortuitous and unlikely emergence of critical clues at just the right moment.
“You know how I am about police procedurals, so maybe let me have a look and I’ll tell you if they’re bad or not,” his mother suggested.
Jill Creevey loved television cops, as she called them instead of constables or inspectors, and Duncan and Dennis sometimes debated where they fell among the fictional crime solvers she adored. His mother got angry when they reached a consensus they likely did not crack the top ten list.
Dennis nodded and replied: “Fine. I’ll set you up for an entire day when I get back from Brighton, but don’t blame me if it starts to suck IQ points out of your head. I never recovered mine from reading five of the books.”
His mother looked aghast while her husband coughed and grunted as he tried to disguise his laughter. Jill Creevey threw a dangerous glance at both men. After a minute, she began to smirk. Even muggle police programs sometimes became very implausible. Given Wipple and Derge existed in the magical realm, the implausibility reached untold and perhaps unimaginable heights. The great majority of magi who enjoyed the books did so as they categorized the stories a high fantasy. Few believed they solved the cases as wrote, except for the first three books.
Following the meal whereby Dennis and his father got relegated to clean up duty, as per the norm when Jill cooked, Dennis sat in his room and tried to figure out his schedule for the next week. Mister Odpadki could only estimate how long it would take to clean up a mess created by a witch and a wizard trying to out-do one another in a spell casting contest. The degree to which the two warped the local fauna and flora required expert handling, and the Ministry called in Rapid Removal to deal with it. Dennis could all but hear the galleons clinking in the man’s voice. Mariusz Odpadki tended to side with Dennis in disdain for the practices of the Ministry in a whole host of areas, and then went out of his way to charge them exorbitant prices for even the simplest of jobs. Dennis approved of his employer’s demeanor.
In the midst of his planning, the Wiz-Viz Tuner began to vibrate. Dennis pulled it from his backpack and set it on his desk with the glowing name facing upward. He then jammed his wand into the hole neatly bored into the side. A small rectangular area emerged from the device like a window shade being drawn in reverse. Casper sat grinning at him.
“Hey, handsome,” the man said.
“Stop it,” Dennis grumbled while his face turned a shade of pink. The reaction made Casper chuckle. “I was just figuring out my schedule, and your timing is perfect.”
“I’m magical.”
Dennis rolled his eyes at the bad pun. Casper again snickered. The square face topped with shaggy dark brown hair, dotted with blue eyes, a lean nose with wide nostrils, and a thin set of lips proved a welcome sight. The two met when Sasha brought Dennis to Brighton to recuperate from the ill-fated trip to Italy where Dennis got forced into taking a human life. The act continued to gnaw at his mind despite knowing Sasha’s life hung in the balance. The days spent in Brighton did help restore Dennis to some degree, and meeting Casper played a large role in that for all Sasha and her uncles Ollie and Reg did to help him.
“How much time are you making for Brighton?” Casper asked.
“Depends on how long it takes with the job. From what Odpadki told me, it’s one hell of a mess. Said the witch and wizard involved both got ninety days at Moore’s Hall and a two-thousand galleon fine.”
The man on the other end of the connection whistled in dire appreciation. His semi-transparent image glowed, but it did not obscure his features. Dennis’ parents expressed a bit of admiration and envy regarding the Wiz-Viz Tuner. His father likened it to Dick Tracey’s two-way wristwatch, and the reference forced Dennis into London and the library to understand what his father meant.
“That alone tells me it’s a lot worse than what the Ministry told us,” Dennis stated as he glanced at the doorway to make certain neither of his parents stood within earshot. The picture hanging opposite his door provided enough reflection to see further down the hall. “They’re also sending some folks from Scamander’s Preserve to assist in case there’re any animals they want to capture and study. I’m thinking ‘bout roping in Neville Longbottom from the Herbavarium. He bailed us out of tight spot a couple of years ago.”
“Sound serious,” Casper remarked and pursed his lips. They disappeared into a thin folded line.
“Half the company is involved in this one. It’s going to cost the Ministry a fortune.”
“How much will you get?”
Dennis shrugged. He never like to guess what Mister Odpadki charged his clients or how he paid his employees. Sasha, however, confirmed on several occasion her father remunerated Dennis at a higher rate than the other workers since he never panicked and seemed prone to devising actual solutions to knotty problems. He learned through other sources, chiefly Chet and Nedwina and a slew of other elves, his yearly salary ran treble that of the average Ministry worker drone. Given Dennis worked three days a week on average, it meant he got paid even more handsomely in the long run. Mister Odpadki gave him ample time to pursue his interests in assisting the Hogwarts’ portraits and spirits.
“Always sounds like you earned it,” Casper responded, and then glanced around. “Ever tell your folks exactly what it is you get into?”
“Are you mad?” Dennis barked. “They’d lock me in a copper and iron cage for the rest of my life!”
“You’d be like poor Livia de Lisle.”
“Fuck right off!”
The two glared at one another in a mock anger. Dennis broke first and started to grin. He kept promising Casper a trip to the Hekate Museum to see the final resting place of Black Livia de Lisle, one of the most notorious witches to ever turn dark. Her crusade against Edward Longshanks, and ultimately the entire magi world, lasted for over forty years and extended past the regent’s death. The only iron maiden to ever be used sat in the Hekate Museum in a restricted section. Livia de Lisle’s remains reportedly remained inside the iron maiden made from copper and iron. The legend stated it took her four months to die. Dennis could swear he felt her staring at him through the lightless window slit in the front face of the contraption on the one occasion he got to see it.
“You still owe me a visit there,” the man reminded him.
“I know. I was thinking maybe this winter when things slow down. It’s just work, work, work for a bin man,” the strawberry-blond haired wizard sighed.
“Now who needs to go fuck off? You spend more time running around the country than you do on the job!”
“Can I help it if I’m good at what I do?”
Dennis feigned broad innocence. Casper began cackling at the display. More than anything, the wizard from St. Albans loved the easy sense of humor and playfulness of the wizard from Brighton, late of Salisbury. They often spent hours just laughing at the dumbest things that popped into their heads. The friends Dennis made in Brighton thought them a bit mad until they heard some of the stories of his adventures. Then they knew him to be completely mental in some regards. Casper loved to read aloud from The Quibbler when Dennis submitted a story he believed Luna’s readers would enjoy. More than once he sat listening to Casper’s melodic voice extolling his various exploits. It embarrassed Dennis to no end, but he never stopped the practice.
“Hey, still want to see if we can catch a filming of Teachers?” Dennis queried to take the conversation onto a different track.
“Love to! You know that. I’ll check their productions schedule and see what’s happening where,” Casper quickly latched onto the idea.
Dennis knew the man formed some sort of contact within the crew of the show, but Casper never revealed a name. It stood to reason a witch or wizard feigned being a muggle in the past at either the BBC or in television production. Most muggles never realized the number of magi in their midst as more than a few infiltrated their ranks in search of employment. Sometimes Dennis liked to wander around major cities wearing a set of Aural Picto-glasses to determine the scope of magi intermixing with muggles. The count often staggered him.
“Where’d you just go?” He heard the man from what sounded like quite a far distance away. Even in the strangely translucent glowing image, his blue eyes twinkled.
“Just thinking ‘bout how many magi I see in muggle areas,” he truthfully admitted.
The specter of Cameron Vall, about whom Casper knew everything and found the entire history a serious blight on the Ministry, seemed to always hover about. It nearly rivaled the invisible presence of Dennis’ late brother in his life, although memories of Colin became rather warming as time moved forward.
“Facking Ministry,” Casper rumbled in a fair approximation of Irish-tinged voicing.
“It’s done and no going back, but… well, there’s some interesting prospects about the future.”
The illuminated face began to smirk. Although they never talked about exclusivity in their relationship, Dennis found an ever increasing list of reasons to go to or be near Brighton ever since Casper found employment in the city. His mother even commented on his developing predilection while wearing a remarkable controlled visage. His father's suggestion they take Casper fishing, a private code they developed, simply exposed the truth in all its glory. Dennis decided to let the relationship evolve and go where it will.
“But that still doesn’t tell me when you’re coming down,” Casper returned to the principle subject of the call.
“I’ll know more in two days when we can actually assess the situation. Odpadki doesn’t play coy with the facts, and he already told me it’s a mess. Might be worse than anyone expects.”
The radiant, fuzzy-around-the-edges image nodded. Although he did express some worry over the most troubling of stories Dennis related, Casper also stated he thought Dennis a highly accomplished wizard in nearly every regard. The younger wizard shied away from the compliments by saying it only showed how much more he needed to learn. Casper’s magi friends, once they heard several of the stories, called Dennis an absolute door knob for not accepting the accolades. Of course, only Casper knew about the human cost of some of his exploits, and Dennis extracted a promise from the man to never reveal those facts.
“Well, give me a shake when you find out,” Casper requested and referred manner in which a Wiz-Viz Tuner would violently vibrate when a call or message arrived. Once again, the magi tendency to try and replicate muggle technology often led to unnecessary and unwelcome contrivances.
“Will Casimir give you shit for late notices ‘bout your schedule?” Dennis inquired.
“A little, but he never says no. Who else will he get to work for him?” Casper trotted out one of his favorite statements about his employer.
Casimir Cammack, proprietor of a middling magi hotel in Brighton, tended to run through staff like sifting sand through a sieve. Casper managed to become one of the man’s longest-tenured hires since he never took anything the man said on a personal level. More often than not, he laughed away the vitriolic statements. Once, after a particularly heinous tirade, Casper called in sick for three days. The hotel floundered as the most conscientious employee went missing and the needs of the guests went wanting. Cammack lost business, and a bad reputation regarding the hotel began to foment. In the guarded magi circles, a less than stellar reputation could kill a business faster than Avada Kedavra. Dennis learned some vital inter-personal management skills from his close friend as a result. However, he never needed to use them with Mariusz Odpadki and only the occasional surly client. Casper, conversely, constantly employed the tactics against his employer.
“Casimir actually owes me some down time, so I’ll use it whenever I damn well please.”
Dennis grinned at the confident delivery. He personally did not like Casimir Commack and the wizard always opted to stay at the Simbi House whenever he needed a night’s lodging. He never forgot how well he got treated at the establishment. Moreover, Dennis became a recognized face among the Simbi staff, including a recent elf hire.
“Maybe we should say in two weekends ‘stead of this upcoming one,” Dennis further suggested.
Casper frowned.
“Or maybe not,” he rapidly amended.
“You start doing that whole put it off ‘til next weekend biz now, and it’ll become a bad habit with you. Sasha warned me how you get with all those investigations.”
Dennis privately damned the fact Sasha Odpadki got to know Casper. She exploited the situation in almost egregious fashions. Mostly, Sasha forced Dennis to take time away from both his vocation and avocation to tend to himself and his relationships with living people. In some respects, she partially became a personal manager. Their time in Italy proved to her Dennis’ life tended to be far more intense than he ever admitted. She never revealed to anyone what happened, but he could see it never left her mind.
“Right,” he partially agreed in a lackluster tone.
“You’re pathetic,” Casper snickered, “and as transparent as a ghost sometimes.”
“Speaking of ghosts, I’ve got to go talk to Peeves one of these days ‘fore he goes nutter on me.”
“He’s already a nutter.”
Although they never met, Casper formed an decidedly negative opinion about the poltergeist based on what Dennis considered limited and superficial knowledge. The two times Peeves saved the former Hogwarts’ student notwithstanding, the appellation of poltergeist seemed to sway his friend’s opinion. Moreover, the use of the Unbreakable Vow with a postmortem person appeared to cause a bit of revulsion in nearly everyone. It seemed reasonable to Dennis to fight that battle gently and slowly over time.
“Well… maybe.”
Casper rolled his eyes, but said: “I’m holding you to ring me up at least by the day after tomorrow. That’ll give me a little bit of time to prepare.”
“Prepare for what?” Dennis guardedly queried.
“Making sure you actually get around to enjoying yourself… and I’m banning you from bringing your damn backpack. You only get to bring your wand. I’ll cover everything else.”
“Casp…”
“Shut it, Creevey. Like I haven’t had time by now to figure out all your little tricks,” Casper hotly interjected. “If that backpack comes with you, it’ll pull you away somehow. Merlin only knows what you got stashed in there. I swear the thing acts half alive most of the time… and don’t get me started on that bleeding notebook of yours. I think it tried to bite me last time you were down here.”
Dennis sat back half-offended and totally impressed at the degree of understanding Casper gleaned about him. He silently admitted his notebook began to act quirky due to the amount of magical information it contained and the fact he practiced new charms on it all the time. Sometimes he overlooked the lessons he learned from the Youngman sludge pits and the vicious magical slurry the artisan managed to create from old discarded magical paints and varnishes. Although he chaffed at the suggestion, he also thought it might be a wiser course of action to leave his pack behind if he actually intended to relax.
“And you know I’m right, right?” Casper concluded in a gentler tone.
“Yeah, maybe,” Dennis said and shrugged.
“Such a git.”
The casual insult carrying no real intent made Dennis smirk. Sasha routinely called him much worse and meant it at times. The droll expression on Casper’s face reminded Dennis how handsome he found the man. The first night they met and danced informed him of a real desire to forge a close relationship with another man, something he repeatedly denied himself after Cameron except on rare occasion. Casper never pushed, and that tipped the scales in his favor.
“Listen, love, I can tell you’re kind of distracted by planning for what’s coming up, so I’m going to leave off now,” the man stated, and Dennis quickly realized his expression got misread.
“Casper?”
“No, no. You need to focus and get ready. I get that if what I know ‘bout what you do is anywhere close to the truth.”
Dennis scowled.
“See, you play it down to keep your folks from worrying, so I have to imagine it’s twice as bad as you say it is. I don’t think muggle dust men ever have to face a bin that can attack them. Never realized how… I guess how fucking insane we magic folk can be at times,” Casper rejoined.
“Can’t say as you’re wrong about that.”
“Then don’t. Let’s just close the call and you can get back to sorting out your life.”
Dennis laughed at his phrasing. Casper smiled as well, and yet looked entirely determined. They both began to nod at one another.
“Right,” he said through a small laugh. “I’ll ring you up or leave a message in the next day or so once we know what we’re dealing with.”
“Do that, and, Denny…” the man replied and held a pause until Dennis fully faced him, “don’t worry if it doesn’t work out for this weekend. I understand. I really do. So, go out and do that voodoo you do so well.”
A snort ripped out of Dennis. One of the men he liked to snuggle with on occasion turned out to be a huge film fanatic. He especially like broader, bawdy comedies. Thus, Dennis learned the line from an old film titled Blazing Saddles, only to learn form his mother the line came from an even older song. Dennis researched it during one of his library trips. By the time he discovered a muggle composer named Cole Porter wrote the line in 1929, Dennis already began using the phrase among the magi he knew. It spread like wildfire among the younger witches and wizards. Hence, the phrase got casually bandied about on a regular basis.
“I will. You, too. Give Cammack something to worry about!”
Casper laughed and raised a hand in farewell. Dennis repeated the gesture. Then, he reached down and withdrew his wand from the tuner. The luminescent square of light disappeared without a sound, and the world appeared much darker to the wizard. He sighed.
“I really hope this is going somewhere with him,” Dennis mumbled to himself.
With that confession he set to work figuring out how to manage his time. It all hinged on what they would find. It reminded him of an item he mentioned. After flipping the Wiz-Viz Turner onto another face and jamming his wand in the slot, something like an mixed email and messaging application appeared on the screen. Unlike the muggle variety, Dennis only needed to speak what he wanted to appear in the message. Once more the practical magic delighted him at a core level of his consciousness. Thus, he notified Neville Longbottom the brilliant herbologist might likely get a call to consult on the issue Rapid Removal faced. He also asked that Neville to refrain from talking about the request until such time as they fully understood the situation. Once satisfied with the content of the missive, he sent it zipping off through a real ether toward intended recipient.
“Got a feeling we’re going to need all the help we can find on this one.”
It went without saying Neville proved himself a valuable ally on two serious occasions when he immediately noted the gravity of the conditions of the job. He likely saved Dennis and Mariusz Odpadki from getting killed the first time Dennis turned to his former schoolmate. Satisfied with he knowledge he lined up a needed resource for a just-in-case scenario, he began to tinker with the details of the next two weeks of his life.
Dennis woke halfway between midnight and dawn. He sat up and looked around his darkened room. The house remained in perfect quiet and stillness. Yet he could not shake the feeling someone, or something, entered his room. It felt vaguely threatening. His finely tuned senses, however, could not detect any living or spectral presence. After a few minutes, Dennis chalked it up to a bad dream and lay back down. Sleep slowly resumed.