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Officially, the rehearsal had ended almost an hour ago, but none of the instruments had been put away yet. Peter was sitting cross-legged on the floor noodling on the banjo, somehow mixing high-energy bluegrass licks into a loping, lazy twelve-bar blues rhythm. Mike sprawled across the sofa with his twelve-string in his lap, picking out the backing chords to Peter’s improvisations. Micky was tightening and loosening the heads on his snare and floor toms, trying to get them to sound the way they had two days ago before (despite Mike’s periodic comments that no one but Micky had noticed the difference, anyway). Only Davy had drifted more than a room away from the bandstand; he was poking around in the kitchen, trying to find something to eat that wasn’t cold cereal.
“How did we end up with two boxes of Sugar Pops and no cornflakes?” he called back into the den.
“Sorry, that was my fault,” Peter replied, his fingers still flying across the fretboard. “They were out of the cheap kind, and -”
“And you like the Sugar Pops better anyway, I get it,” Davy sighed. He fished a box of crackers and a jar of peanut butter from the back of the cabinet. The crackers were still relatively fresh; he couldn’t say the same for the peanut butter, but there was enough left at the bottom to make a snack. He unscrewed the lid and took a whiff; it still smelled okay. After inspecting the contents for mold and bugs, and finding no evidence of either, he decided it was probably fine and started hunting for a clean knife.
Micky tapped experimentally at the snare. “Does that sound better?” he called across the room.
Mike pulled himself to something closer to sitting up. “It sounds exactly like it did ten minutes ago,” he answered. “Which I already told you was fine.”
Davy dropped into the empty slot Mike’s feet had vacated on the couch, plate of peanut butter crackers in hand. “Yeah, Mick, if you’re going to fuss about something, let’s work on the harmonies on ‘Star Collector’ again. The drums are . . .” He left off in the middle of the sentence, his eyes flicking to the window. “Hey, when did this fog roll in?”
“What fog?” Mike turned halfway around. “Whoa, yeah, that’s a real pea-souper out there.” He frowned. “That came in pretty sudden, didn’t it?”
Peter looked up and nodded. “It was really clear at sunset, and that was only about half an hour ago. I remember, ‘cause the sun was really pretty on the water.” Davy watched him steal one of the crackers.
Micky peered out the window, eyes narrowed. “Yeah,” he hedged, “sometimes the Pacific’s just like that.”
“It oughta remind Davy of home,” Mike teased.
“Yeah,” Davy said vaguely, “it sort of does.” He set the plate down between Mike’s guitar and himself. “I think I feel a little homesick, actually.”
Peter’s gentle grin had faded. “Actually, me too.” He looked up at Mike. “Which is a little weird, ‘cause I don’t remember it doing this much back home.”
“It doesn’t do it at all in Texas, except near the Gulf coast,” Mike answered, “and yeah, I’m starting to feel a little down, too.”
A tall shape suddenly loomed out of the fog at the window, and the lights went out. The air was filled with hollering and Davy’s peanut butter crackers as the four Monkees jumped for cover; Mike and Davy scrambled over the sofa as Peter scuttled around the edge to join them behind it and Micky dove behind the kick drum.
Only a dim outline of the figure at the window was visible against the twilight fog outside. It was taller than Mike by well over a foot, and draped in something like a hooded cloak, or perhaps a dark shroud. A hand slipped from the folds of the cloak and pressed against the window; the faint light glistened wanly off of it, as if it were wet, and the skin was nearly colorless.
The fingers looked a little too long to be human.
Four voices sounded in a terrified cacophany. Peter shrieked like a five-year-old and yanked the afghan off the sofa and over his head. Micky yelped in outrage behind the drum kit. Mike grabbed his hat and yelled, “What the crap is that thing?” Davy tried to make himself even smaller and whimpered, “Oh, no.”
A rustling noise emanated from the figure, as if something had moved under the cloak. The temperature in the room seemed to drop; Peter shivered, even under the afghan. Davy glanced at the top of the stairs, his eyebrows knitting.
Mike forced himself to poke his head out from behind the sofa. “Go away! Whaddaya want?” he demanded.
“Don’t talk to it, Mike!” Micky popped up on the drum stool, his stick bag in his left hand. “You don’t want its attention!” He yanked a drumstick out of the bag, muttered “no” at it, and tossed it behind him.
“Maybe,” Davy murmured to Peter through chattering teeth, “we can sneak up the stairs and - throw things at it?” Peter merely tried to wrap himself tighter in the throw blanket.
“Well, what am I -” Mike’s words, punctuated by clouds of vapor in the chilly air, were interrupted by the glass shattering under the gray, oozing hand. The figure seemed to ooze through the empty pane instead of climbing, and the rustling noise took on a heavy wheezing overtone as it drifted towards the sofa.
“No,” Micky said to another drumstick, “and no, and no, - yeah!” He leapt to his feet, flourishing a new stick from the gig bag. “Expect - oh, crap, not that one either!” He threw it viciously at the hood of the rapidly advancing cloak; it impacted with barely a sound. The figure didn’t seem to notice as it placed one bizarrely long arm on the back of the sofa and leaned over.
“Expect what?” Mike yelled back, trying to put himself between the intruder and his bandmates. Peter was curled into the fetal position, sobbing quietly to himself. Davy, already on his knees, help up his hands as if to plea for his life, but no words made it past his chattering teeth. Even Mike flinched, shivering in the cold aura that rolled off of the hooded invader. It ignored him, looming over Davy as the wheezing grew louder.
“A-ha!” Micky crowed triumphantly, seizing the last item from the bag; it was darker than the rest of the drumsticks, and missing its bead. He jumped over the floor tom, squeezed his eyes tight shut in concentration, and waved the stick over his head. “Expecto Patronum!”
A streak of silver shot from the end of the shaft and interposed itself between the cloaked figure and Davy. Coiling, it gathered up more and more of itself, a glittering silver fog pouring from where the drumstick’s bead should have been, pushing the hooded figure back and away from the sofa. Wide-eyed, Mike scooted back, his arms spread as if to shield Davy and Peter from - whatever was going on.
The shimmering silver coalesced into a distinctly leonine shape, crouched on the cushions and blocking the black shroud as it tried to swipe past it on the left. It opened its mouth in a silent roar, shaking its mane and baring its fangs. The hooded figure took a step back.
Micky opened his eyes. “Keep moving, you pillar of slime!” he shouted, his face reddening; his words formed white puffs in the cold, clammy air. “Get outta here!”
Mike poked his face around the lion made of light and silver, like the start of a black-and-white movie. A silent one, apparently. He shook his head and looked at the black drapery where the figure’s face should be. “You heard him,” he announced, trying to keep the quaver out of his voice. “Go on, now, git.”
As if on cue, the sliver lion leaped from the couch and barreled into the hooded figure, knocking it flat to the floor. The figure scrambled backwards to get out from underneath it, both its hands visible now - too long and too grey to be a human’s, at least a living one’s, with scabs and splotches of a darker color, barely distinguishable from the black of the robe. The lion advanced on it, its great paws hemming it in; it turned and scrambled back through the broken window, and the lion leapt through after it.
Micky jumped off the bandstand, stick still held out and up, and nearly stumbled. “And stay out!” he shouted, racing to the window. “Oh, right, fog. Mobiliventus!” he cried; a breeze swirled the fog and began to break it up. Micky pressed his face to the glass and watched the lion push the fleeing shroud all the way back into the sea.
With a flicker, the lights came back on. Mike tried to stand, and succeeded only in stumbling over his own feet. “Holy Toledo, Mick, what was that?”
Micky waited until the waves had closed over the retreating figure’s hood before he lowered his hand. The lion jumped over the deck railing, then through the window, and nuzzled Micky’s hand like a huge cat before uncoiling into the strands of silver and fading away.
“And that, too,” Mike added; this time he managed to pull himself to standing. Davy whimpered from the floor and grabbed at the arm of the sofa to steady himself.
“It’s a lion; what did it look like?” Micky said, less snappily than usual.
“More like a projection of a lion on some kind of 3-D screen,” Mike answered. “You, uh - you got anything you want to tell us, Mick?”
Micky sighed; for a moment, he looked like his normal manic energy had drained right out of him. “In a minute. How are Pete and Davy?”
“I’m fine,” Davy lied; he tried to stand up and ended up mostly seated on the sofa.
Mike leaned down; the bassist was still cocooned in the afghan and quaking like a leaf in a storm. “Pete?” he said, softly. “Can you hear me?”
“Mike?” came the nearly-inaudible reply. “Is - is it really you?”
“Of course it’s me,” Mike said gruffly. “Pete, can you sit up?”
There was a moment of silence, then a short shuffling. “Um, I don’t know,” Peter finally admitted.
“Pick him up and set him on the sofa, and then you have a seat yourself,” Micky ordered. “Pete, I’m going to have to break into your secret chocolate stash that we all know about.”
“You always do,” Peter said mildly.
Micky at least attempted to look embarrassed. “Yeah, but this is an emergency.”
Peter curled his fingers in the afghan and edged it away from his face. “Go on ahead. It’s okay.”
Micky shifted an old pickle jar on the counter and grabbed a handful of chocolate kisses from the jar labeled ‘Old, Nasty Licorice’ behind it. Tucking the butt end of what Mike was pretty sure was not actually a drumstick under his arm, he shredded the foil off of one of them and shoved it in his own mouth, then strode out of the tiny kitchen and tossed one to Mike. “Eat that,” he ordered, “and then let me know if you need another one.” He messily unwrapped another two, leaving a trail of little foil bits across the den, and shoved them into Davy’s hands; Davy popped them both into his mouth obediently.
Mike chewed thoughtfully at the chocolate as Micky unwrapped two more. “Wow,” he mumbled around the sweet mouthful, “I hadn’t realized how glum it had gotten in here.”
“You should be warming up, too,” Micky explained as he tilted Peter’s head up with one hand and coaxed his mouth open with the other. “Here, Pete, we gotta get some of this in you.”
“I can feed myself,” Peter protested, but he let Micky pop the chocolates into his mouth one at a time anyway. He visibly relaxed after the second one. “Oh, man,” he sighed, “I thought I’d never be groovy again.”
“That’s what they do to you,” Micky said, scowling. “Pete, I’m giving you two more. Take them as soon as you can sit up.” He pressed them into the bassist’s palm; Pete relaxed his grip on the afghan and curled the paper tags around his fingers.
“So, I asked once already - what was that thing?” Mike considered his own internal state. “And why didn’t we just jump it? I mean, there’s four of us, and only one of it, and what I saw of it didn’t look that tough. But I never even thought about it. It seemed hopeless.”
“That’s exactly it. Hopeless.” Micky looked at his two friends sprawled helplessly on the sofa and the one still leaning on it for support; he grabbed one of the kitchen chairs and dragged it over, then perched a foot on it instead of sitting. “Davy, you wanna take this one?”
Davy went saucer-eyed for a second, then tried to look confused. “Why - why would I know anything about it, Mick?”
“You can’t con a con man,” Micky chastised him. “First, you recognized it. You’ve seen one before, or at least a picture. Second, your first impulse was the same as mine. Where’s yours, under your pillow?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Davy protested. It didn’t sound at all convincing; even Peter seemed skeptical.
Micky’s voice got a lot quieter. “And third, it was heading straight for you, not for me.”
Davy reddened. “You’re barking up the wrong tree, Mick.” He tried to stand up, but his ankles failed him; Mike caught him before he toppled into the coffee table and lowered him back to the sofa again.
“Okay.” Micky looked grim. “I didn’t want to have to do this, but you’re not leaving me any choice.” He tugged the stick from under his arm. Mike looked down at it; it really did look just like a drumstick without a bead - but it was made of a darker, redder wood than the rest of Micky’s sticks, and the grain was less even. Clearing his throat, Micky dipped the stick in a complicated pattern and announced, “Invenio Veneficus!”
A sputter of sparks jumped from the tip of the stick - no, the wand, Mike corrected himself internally - and curled up into a fluttering plume of smoke. Micky pivoted the wand in his hand so it was pointed at the center of his chest; the smoke solidified into a bright green check mark with a cheerful ‘ding!’ He turned it to point at Mike; the check dissolved back into smoke, then popped into a red X-shape with a sharp buzz.
Micky pulled his mouth to the side, raised his eyebrows, and said quietly, “Last chance to just admit it.”
Davy looked almost as scared as he had when the shrouded thing broke the window, but he said nothing. Sighing, Micky pointed the wand at him; again the smoke coalesced into the bright green check mark and dinged. Davy let out the breath he’d been holding and dropped his head into his hands.
Peter had finally recovered enough to pay attention. “Oh, do me, do me too,” he said breathlessly.
“Why would -” Mike started, but Micky shrugged. “No, it’s cool, it’s not like this is tough or anything,” he assured the guitarist, and pointed the wand down at Peter. The smoke seemed to blink several times, then snapped into a bright blue question mark with a sound like a slide whistle.
“What does that mean?” Peter asked, staring at it.
“I have no idea,” Micky admitted. “It’s never done that before. It might explain how you could see that thing, though.”
“Oh, hey, that’s right,” Davy exclaimed. “But - then how come Mike could see it?”
“Oh, now you’ll admit you have a clue,” Micky groused.
Davy shrugged, palms up. “Hey, cat’s out of the bag now. Where’d you learn that one, anyway?”
“It’s common practice here. Third year, I think.” Micky scratched his head. “Good question, though.”
“Sure,” Mike agreed. “You know what else is a good question? What in the goddamn hell was that thing?”
Micky glared at Davy, folding his arms. Davy sighed and looked up into Mike’s face, sparing Peter a glance along the way. “It’s called a dementor. They’re kind of - they’re the essence of everything that’s not groovy and far-out, you know? They suck everything that’s good and warm and kind and joyful out of a place, or a person. They can bring up the memories of the worst things that have ever happened to you if they get too close, drown you in them almost, and if one decides it likes what it’s getting out of you, it can suck out everything that makes you you, y’know what I mean? Like, afterwards, you’d just be a shell.” He shuddered.
“And,” Micky added, “They’re native to cold and swampy places in Europe, Asia, and Great Britain.”
“And Ireland,” Davy agreed. “There’re supposed to be a lot of them in Siberia.”
“Not,” Micky pointed out, “to sunny California. Or to America in general, for that matter.”
“Oo.” Davy’s lower lip twisted. “I didn’t even think of that.”
“I’d never seen one before in the ugly, rotting flesh,” Micky said, finally sitting down. “Just pictures.”
The conversation paused for a moment. Mike checked on Peter, who seemed to have regained most of his color, then turned back to his other two bandmates with folded arms. “So,” he said, in the calmest voice he could muster. “You’re both witches?”
Davy snorted, then covered his mouth with one hand and chuckled into it. “Wizards, mate. Witches are chicks.”
“Actually,” Micky corrected him, “some of us out here, especially up around San Fran, use ‘witch’ for both sexes. It’s sort of a support-for-women’s-lib thing. But yeah,” he continued, turning back towards Mike, “personally, I prefer ‘wizard’ as the title.”
Mike nodded, as his gaze drifted back towards the bandstand. “And you keep your magic wand in your gig bag with the rest of your sticks.”
“I prefer to think of it more like, all of my sticks are magic wands, and this one’s just a little bit more than the rest.” Micky smiled a little. “Maybe it’ll teach the rest of them a thing or two.”
Again, Mike nodded. The pause stretched uncomfortably. Finally, he exploded, “And you weren’t going to tell us any of this?”
Micky picked himself and the chair back up off the floor. “Well, remember that I didn’t know Davy was one too until I realized that he not only could see the dementor, he knew what it was,” he protested.
“And I had no idea about Mick until he started the Patronus Charm up there,” Davy pointed out, gesturing back towards the bandstand.
Mike blinked. “That was the lion thing, right?”
“Yup,” Davy chuckled. “And really, a lion, Mick?”
“Dad’s a Leo,” Micky explained. Davy looked at him quizzically; Micky frowned back. “You know how it works, right?”
“I was never any good at it,” Davy shrugged. “That’s part of the problem; I was never all that good at any of it. Even if I’d had my wand down here, I’m not sure I could have done much about the dementor.”
Peter finally sat all the way back up. “Can I see your wand, too, Davy?” he asked, eagerly.
“Wait,” Mike said, scowling. “If we let you go get it, you’re not gonna, I dunno, teleport your butt out of here or anything?”
“He shouldn’t be able to,” Micky smirked. “The Pad’s got half a dozen charms on it; to Apparate out of here, he’d have to be a lot better than me.”
“It’d probably be only my arse that made it out,” Davy grumbled, getting to his feet. Micky winced; Mike thought about asking, then thought better of it. Davy trundled up the stairs slowly, as if his feet were heavy.
Micky slumped a bit in the chair. “Mike, we’re not supposed to ever do magic in front of non-wizards,” he explained, not quite looking his bandmate in the eye. “The only exceptions are our parents and family if they’re not wizards already, if we get married to one, or if we have to use it to save someone’s life. And I couldn’t tell you and then not show you, you know?”
Peter nodded. “I’d’ve believed you,” he said earnestly, “but I don’t think Mike would’ve.”
“Damn straight I wouldn’t’ve,” Mike said sharply. “Which I guess makes your point.” He looked like the admission tasted bad; Peter wordlessly offered him another chocolate.
A pair of shorts flew off the upper balcony, followed by two white tee shirts and a towel. “Ah!” Davy’s muffled voice shouted from the second story bedroom. “Found it!”
“Not under his pillow, then,” Peter mused.
“The bottom of the dirty laundry hamper, from the looks of it,” Mike agreed.
Davy trundled back down the stairs, looking much better than he had going up. “Actually, there’s a false bottom to the suitcase I came over to the States with,” he explained. “It’s been in there the whole time; I haven’t touched it since I packed it. I forgot,” he continued, gesturing at the tee now hanging off of the staircase railing, “that I still had the rest of this in there.” He twirled the wand in his fingers; his was shorter than Micky’s, not quite as straight, and of a much lighter wood. “Here you go, Pete. Have a look.”
Peter took it eagerly, then looked over at Micky. “What happens if I wave it?” he asked, sudden concern wrinkling his brow.
“Nothing,” Micky said with a grin. “It won’t work for someone who’s not a witch or a wizard.”
“Probably nothing,” Davy corrected. “Remember, your spell didn’t give him a ‘yes’ or a ‘no,’ just the question mark.” Mike raised his hands and backed up several steps.
Micky nodded. “Point it away from us, just in case.”
“Like a test tube in chemistry class,” Peter agreed, handling it carefully before swooping it around like a conductor’s baton. Nothing happened; he shrugged and handed it back to Davy.
“Been a while,” Davy mused, and swished it back and forth twice. A shower of sparks spat from the end, and he grinned. “Nah, still got it!”
“Is this why all the weird stuff happens?” Mike asked abruptly. “Because you guys are wizards and the magic just leaks out if you don’t use it, or something?”
His bandmates exchanged puzzled looks. “What weird stuff?” they asked.
Mike boggled at them, then rubbed his forehead and dropped it. “So,” he prompted, “now we know that you two just happen to be wizards and that Micky would have been arrested by, I dunno, the wizard police if he’d told us that.” He glanced at Micky for confirmation that he understood correctly; Micky nodded back. “Which doesn’t explain why you never said anything, Davy,” Mike continued.
“Same reason,” Davy shrugged. “If I told you and didn’t show you, I figured you and Mick would think I was off my rocker, and if I showed you, I could get deported - same as breaking a Muggle law.”
“A what?” the other three chorused.
Davy stared at Micky. “Okay, them I understand, but - you don’t know what a Muggle is?”
Micky thought for a moment. “Uh, I’m guessing you mean a Mundane? Now that you said it, I think I remember the term, but it’s really old-fashioned here. You call someone that in the wizard clubs here, you’d get called a square, if they even understood you.” He grinned again, eyes crinkling. “Actually, ‘Square’ was the code term I and my buddies used, but I think that’s a California thing again. Maybe specifically Southern Cali, too.” Slowly, the grin faded, as he added, “So, back to my original question - why is a dementor in Malibu, and why was it coming after you?”
“This may be a long story,” Davy sighed. “If you really want to hear it, everyone get comfy.”
Peter shifted over on the sofa; Mike swung a leg over the arm and sat next to him. Micky jumped from the ladderback chair and squeezed onto the sofa on the other side of Davy. “We’re ready,” they chorused.
“Okay,” Davy started, “first off, what are relations like here in the States between the purebloods and the Muggle- whoops, sorry, Mundane-borns?”
“Purebloods?” Micky asked, puzzled. “You mean, like the Old Families?”
“Probably,” Davy answered, “but maybe you’d better explain who they are.”
Micky mumbled something and wriggled the tip of his wand; a shimmer of sparkles flew out and arranged themselves into a map of the country hanging in mid-air. “Well,” he started, “there’s about five big groups of wizards in the USA -”
“Wait,” Peter blurted. “You said you were going to get in trouble if you showed us magic and it wasn’t to save someone’s life. Shouldn’t you not do that?” His hazel eyes dimmed with worry, and his lip trembled.
Micky and Davy exchanged a glance. “Um, let’s leave that part until the end,” Davy suggested, and Micky mumbled his agreement.
“For right now,” Micky assured the bassist, “it doesn’t matter - you’ve already seen the heavy stuff, so little stuff like this won’t make things any worse.” He cleared his throat. “So,” he continued, “you’ve got the wizards who came over from England, mostly in Virginia and the Carolinas -”
“I’d’ve figured New England,” Mike interrupted.
“Too many Puritans, at least to start out,” Micky said, shaking his head sharply. “They’re there now, a few of them, but they only really started migrating up there after the Civil War, except for a few in Quaker country up in Pennsylvania.” He tapped the named states with his wand, and they lit up. “Then we have the ones who came over from France, who are almost all still in Louisiana.” Another state started glowing. “There were another group from Spain who were on the run from the Inquisition, and a lot of those went to Cuba and Mexico, but some of them ended up in Florida.” He touched the panhandle with the wand to light it. “And there were two waves that came over from Germany and Austria; the first one landed in Pennsylvania again, and the second one mostly landed in central Texas.” The largest state in the lower 48 glowed.
Mike nodded slowly, realization dawning in his eyes. “Around Fredericksburg, right? I always knew there was something weird going on up there.”
“I don’t remember city names,” Micky said apologetically. “The last big group is the American Indian wizards, and what they do looks a lot different from what we do. They also have the strongest unbroken traditions; witch hunts haven’t been a big thing here since about 1700 but they still happened, especially in small towns. Out on the reservations, though, they had a little bit of protection.” He cleared his throat and flushed slightly. “There are a few African-style wizards in the South, but mostly those didn’t, um, they weren’t the families who got brought over, mostly. And even when they did, they didn’t get much chance to train each other until about a hundred years ago, so most Black wizards have gotten trained in European-style magic instead - when they got trained at all. But things have gotten a lot better there in the last decade or so,” he hastily added.
Waving at the rest of the map, he went on. “So those are the groups that mostly started the wizard schools, but they really only have a lot of influence in their particular areas. It used to be that they were pretty secretive and only taught wizards who were born into those families, but enough wizards and witches were being born outside of them and didn’t know what they were doing that the Old Families started seeking them out and putting them in wizard school, just so they wouldn’t screw up and blow everyone’s cover. Most of them didn’t end up marrying back into the Old Families, either. So most of us have Mundane grandparents or great-grandparents, even if our parents are a witch and a wizard.” He paused, wondering for a moment if he should continue, then added, “Mom’s a witch, but she pretty much gave it up for her acting career; she said she didn’t want to end up in special effects. She didn’t pick it up again until after she’d retired to get married and have kids, and it turned out that I had the knack. Dad’s a Mundane, but he says there were always family rumors that one of his great-aunts was a witch, so there might be some hidden talent on his side, too.”
Micky stopped talking; the map fluttered and faded into a scattering of sparkles that winked out individually. Davy dropped his gaze and stared at his feet. Mike and Peter met each other’s eyes and raised their eyebrows, but neither of them disturbed the quiet.
Finally, after making a thorough study of his shoelaces, Davy looked back up. “It’s a little tougher in England and Scotland, especially right now. There are a lot of wizards - witches, too - who distrust the Muggles so much that they think Muggle-born wizard children shouldn’t be taught magic, or admitted to the wizarding world at all.”
“There are a few of the Old Families who are like that,” Micky admitted, “but it’s mostly the English ones, and they sort of got outvoted. Especially since the Spanish Old Families kind of think that’s offensive.” He grinned weakly, and added, “Chalk one up for the melting pot, I guess.”
Davy looked Micky straight in the eye. He waited for a minute, holding his gaze, before he asked, “So, do they call them ‘mudbloods’ here?”
Micky shrieked and dove across the sofa to clap his hands over Peter’s ears. “Not in front of the children!” he yowled.
Mike snorted. “What, Peter’s innocence is worth preserving, but mine isn’t?”
“You’re from the South,” Micky explained as Peter tried to clear his ears out again. “You’ve heard - well, worse.” Mike’s mouth made an O, then he put one cupped hand to his lips and mouthed something at Micky, who squeezed his eyes tight and nodded so hard his curls bounced.
Davy watched the exchange with a slightly annoyed amusement. “See, ‘cause that’s what I am.”
Micky got off of Davy’s lap and straightened back up. “What he means,” he said to Peter and Mike, “is that both his parents are Mundanes - sorry, Muggles - and he doesn’t have any witches or wizards in his immediate family tree.” He turned back to Davy, bringing his hands up under his own chin. “But - I mean, I heard all wizard kids in the UK get an invitation to the school up in Scotland, whatsitsname, Hogsmarts?”
“Hogwarts,” Davy corrected. “Yeah, I got my invitation and one of the teachers came out to talk to my folks. I ended up going. The first three years were a lot of fun, actually; I got sorted into Griff- never mind, that won’t even mean anything to you, Mick, but I loved the group I got to bunk with and I made a lot of friends.” He swallowed. “But about five years ago, things started to shift, mostly outside the school but inside it, too. I’m not a big guy, you know, even if I’m scrappy, and like I said earlier, I’m no great shakes at any of this. I didn’t grow up with it, and I’m not really a natural. The kids in some of the other houses used to try to beat up on me, and they were succeeding more and more; I couldn’t fight them off or magic them off. My housemates would rescue me as soon as they knew something was up, but they couldn’t be there all the time - I took some pretty bad beatings.”
Peter’s eyes were filling up. “Just because you didn’t have a pedigree?” he asked plaintively.
“Yeah,” Davy said bitterly. “They also did it to a couple of the other Muggle-borns that weren’t good enough wizards or boxers to defend themselves. The headmaster always punished them for it when they got caught, pretty harshly, too. They said he was playing favorites; he’d used to be the head of my house.”
“Sounds like he was just a decent guy,” Mike commented.
“Well, I sure felt that way about it,” Davy agreed. “I took my OWL exams and left after five years instead of staying for advanced study, and I pretty much went back to the Muggle world. But the wizarding world wouldn’t stay out of my life - I kept getting threatening messages from my old classmates. Some of them were starting to join up with this guy - a dark wizard, Micky, real bad news - who calls himself Lord Voldemort. His crew are really anti-Muggle, you know, they’d like to see all the Muggles either killed off or as servants to the wizards, and they felt like us Mudbloods - sorry, Peter - were traitors waiting to happen.” He stopped and swallowed. “I was worried that my folks would get caught in the crossfire, and I’d gotten into singing and acting by that point, so I figured I’d get out before things got really bad. So I came here, and didn’t even try to hook up with the magic scene, just focused on the music.” He stopped talking and glanced back and forth at his bandmates. “And here I am,” he finished.
“And you’ve done a pretty good job of keeping your head low,” Micky observed. “I mean, I wouldn’t have ever guessed if the dementor hadn’t shown up.”
“Yeah,” Davy sighed. “But it did, and that means someone over there knows I’m here, and that they don’t like my cutting and running any better than they’d’ve liked me staying.”
Peter and Mike exchanged another meaningful glance, and stood up; Peter wobbled a little on his feet, but he stayed standing. “Okay,” Peter spoke before Mike could. “We’ve heard your story and we understand. You can - I mean, we’re ready now.”
“Ready?” Davy asked; Micky bit his lower lip and looked away.
“Well,” Mike continued, “Micky made it pretty clear that we’re not going to be allowed to remember any of this, right? I mean, he didn’t say it, exactly, but it was all between the lines.” Micky looked pained, but he nodded anyway. Mike shuddered, then went on, “So - go ahead and mindwipe us or whatever it is you have to do, before the wizard cops show up.”
Peter added, “We don’t want to get you in trouble, Micky.”
Realization dawned on Davy’s face. “You want us to Memory Charm you before the authorities do it?”
“I’d rather it be done by a friend,” Peter said quietly.
Davy inhaled and raised his wand, then lowered it again. “I’d screw it up,” he said, looking at the floor. “I don’t want to risk - I mean, Pete’s got a few holes already.”
Micky jerked his head up, looking like he’d been shocked. “He does, doesn’t he?” he said, softly.
“I don’t think we can just both do them at once,” Davy said, bitterness welling in his voice. “You’re gonna have to do both of them, Mick.”
“Nope.” Micky stood up from the couch and stalked over to the window. “Too much evidence that something happened here.” He wriggled his wand in a figure-eight, shouting “Reparo!” The shattered glass leaped back into the frame, slotted itself together, and merged seamlessly into a single pane again. His customary manic grin stole across his face. “Man, I’ve missed being able to do that. Doing the dishes by hand is a drag, you guys know that?”
“I’ll bet,” Mike said dryly. Micky walked back towards them; Mike closed his eyes again, screwing up his courage.
Micky dropped back onto the couch. “Will you guys sit down already? We gotta figure out a plan, here.”
Mike opened up one eye. “Can you just get it over with, Mick?” He scratched under his chin. “I don’t wanna lose more of my brain cells to this than I have to.”
“I already said I wasn’t gonna,” Micky said, sticking his jaw out. “If the wizard cops noticed and thought it was a big enough deal to come running, they’d be here by now. My guess is that either no one has an alarm set around here, or if they did, they saw it was a Patronus and picked up the dementor. Remember, self-defense or defense of a Mundane is - not A-OK, exactly, but it’s sure not illegal.” He twirled his wand as if it really were a drumstick. “I guess America’s a little less uptight about these things than England. But even if they did show up, I’m not wiping anyone’s memory, least of all the people who finally figured out the harmonies for ‘Valleri’.”
“It’s the cowboy culture, maybe,” Davy hazarded. “But what about the other stuff?”
Micky tapped the arm of the sofa, thinking. “Wellll, we discovered that you were a wizard, and I had to use the Finder Charm to do that because you wouldn’t ‘fess up. I had to do the Map Illusion to explain the situation here to you, and I had to use the Repair Charm to fix the window the dementor busted, and then I had to do a whole bunch of serious counterhexes all the way around the Pad because hello, there’s a dementor on the loose.”
“You haven’t done any hexes yet,” Peter pointed out.
“No, but I’m about to in about ten minutes, because, like I said, there’s a dementor on the loose.” Micky scratched his head with the tip of his wand. “And you two,” he added, pointing at Mike and Peter with his free hand, “only saw the Patronus. I dragged Davy into the bedroom to compare wand sizes and do all the rest of that, right?”
Mike looked vaguely irritated but agreed, “Yeah, sure. Tall wet zombie in a black cape, big silver lion, you two locked yourselves in the bedroom for a while while we ate Peter’s chocolate stash and wondered what in the hell is going on.”
Peter smiled dimly. “I don’t even remember the lion. A phantom broke the window, and then I passed out, and when I came to Mike was taking care of me and you guys were having an argument.”
“If anyone shows up,” Micky finished, “and I’m not sure they’ll even bother at this point if they’re not here yet, everyone keep that story straight and we should all get out of that with our memories intact.” He narrowed his eyes in Peter’s direction. “At least, as intact as they are now. Pete, I think Davy may have hit the nail on the head earlier - I think someone’s Memory Charmed you already. You show pretty much all the symptoms.”
Peter looked bewildered. “But - why would anyone want to do that to me?”
“No idea.” Micky put a hand on his shoulder and grinned wickedly. “Wanna try and find out?”
Peter blinked; slowly, his features took on a more innocent version of Micky’s grin. “Well, sure!” he answered.
Mike shifted uncomfortably. “You think he was a wizard, too, and someone scooped it out of him?”
“Maybe,” Micky agreed. “Or maybe he was a non-wizard in a magical family - there’s a word for that, too, but it’s also kind of rude. Not as rude as the other one, but still not nice.” He dropped the grin; what was left was an oddly wolfish look. “Either way, I wanna know who messed with my friend’s head, and why.”
“Am I the only normal one in this band?” Mike asked plaintively, looking more at the ceiling than Micky.
“Nope,” Davy said, grinning. “I mean, you’re the one who put ‘Play, magic fingers’ in a song. And you could see the dementor, remember; Muggles aren’t supposed to be able to. You may not be a wizard, but I bet you’ve got a little something else in you. Something connected to the music.” He spread his hands. “Maybe something even stronger than me, just not the same flavor.”
Micky clapped his hands. “Okay,” he announced, “I gotta put half a dozen counterhexes on this place, and someone needs to mop that slime off the floor where the dementor fell over, and we need a plan for what to do if it comes back, and we gotta figure out how we can make sure the guys who are after Davy can’t find him, and we need to poke around in Pete’s brain to see what’s missing, and if we have time after all that, we need to figure out what Mike’s got that let him see that thing coming.” He paused. “And we oughta have dinner in there somewhere. And sweep Davy’s crackers back out from under the sofa.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Mike agreed. He headed for the closet where he’d last seen the mop, then stopped. “I’m guessing that you’re not seeing any big need for secrecy at this point anymore.”
Micky snickered. “I won’t tell if you don’t.” His eyes softened. “Besides, immediate family’s supposed to be okay. You guys are as good as brothers, right?”
“I kinda like it,” Peter said softly. “I don’t know if you guys are right about me, but - I don’t think I ever stopped believing in magic, not really.” He swallowed, his adam’s apple racing the length of his throat. “Even if it means monsters are real, too.”
“Unfortunately, they are,” Davy agreed. “Although honestly, after the dementor, about three quarters of them should be child’s play.”
Micky abruptly headed for the door. “So let’s get to it, guys,” he ordered as he strode out onto the patio, wand in hand.
Peter headed into the kitchen. “Do we want Sugar Pops or Sugar Pops for dinner?” he asked, opening the cabinet.
“Seriously, you’re just going to make dinner after all that?” Mike asked, rummaging for the mop.
“Why not?” Peter shrugged. “It’s just one more thing for Micky to be a know-it-all about, right?”
Mike allowed himself a small smile at that. “Yeah, I guess you’re right about that,” he allowed.
“I’m just glad,” Peter added, “that he never accidentally grabbed that stick out of the gig bag. I mean, he could’ve blown up the drum kit or something, and how would we explain that?”
The entire house trembled slightly as a faint green shimmer raced across the windows. Mike glanced out; Micky had both feet planted firmly in the sand, wand raised high, with a bigger smile than Mike had ever seen on him - and Micky smiled a lot.
Peter joined him at the window. “He’s really missed it, hasn’t he?” he whispered.
“Looks like,” Mike agreed. “Let’s just hope he doesn’t overdo it.”
“I don’t think he will,” Davy said, ducking around the staircase to join them. “I think he’s just glad not to have to hide that part of himself. Mick’s never been great at keeping secrets.”
“He’s better than me,” Peter objected. “But then, most people are.”
The house shuddered again. It had done worse during earthquakes, Mike decided silently. “Always a new normal around here,” he grumbled under his breath.
“Always a better one,” Peter agreed, and set four mismatched cereal bowls on the table for dinner.