Chapter 10
I hated sleep. I hated food. I hated the pepper up potions no one would give me because I didn’t have any money to pay them back. Trix called me a zombie. I fucking hated them to their unbruised bones where they didn’t store scars they couldn’t force off their skin.
Weasley had got his face in the news again for recovering stolen dark artifacts. I’d given them the lead without understanding it. Four cases with four witnesses describing four different suspects using different words, all of which reminded me of my nightmares. Weasley’s teams built on the connection and I slept worse knowing they thought me a prodigy. I hadn’t done any of the hard work. That was Trix, and Iris, and that fucker Ajax, who I hated. While they all worked hard, Weasley began staring at me in a way that felt too much like Potter accusing me of not being okay.
He told me I was burnt out. The whole team had been burning the candle from both ends. We needed a break. We needed to celebrate our wins. He would take us out. He knew a popular Auror pub, The Noble Hippogriff. I didn’t say I couldn’t go, I just couldn’t go. Or at least I thought I couldn’t go. Even when Weasley said I could go.
The back and forth between us was not my finest moment. If the trainees mocked us for being childish we had no defense. I just absolutely wasn’t allowed to ever leave and it wasn’t until Weasley told me he had checked, and then filled out all the paperwork to get my excursion preapproved, and then showed me the senior aurors’ sign off that I realized he just might be right on this one.
Outside.
The trainees were smiling at me like it was nothing. Like I was amusing.
Weasley was smiling at me with self satisfaction. Like he knew he’d done good and was willing to accept my gratitude.
I was distinctly aware that panicking now would be bad. I just couldn’t tell in what way. If I proved myself too unstable they wouldn’t keep me here in the DMLE. Not even if I cracked cold cases that got Weasley in the paper. They’d have to lock me up. Maybe Azkaban, finally. It would be cold and miserable and I still wouldn’t sleep, but they’d let me scream until my throat was raw and I wouldn’t have to fear anyone coming to check on me. Maybe Janus Thickey. My father once told me he’d rather die than go to Janus Thickey. How he’d roll in his grave.
Panicking outside would be worse so I didn’t do it. I don’t think the trainees noticed that I huddled in the middle of their pack. Probably they didn’t notice. Even if I never voluntarily went close to people before and they were all training to be detectives. They let me have the innermost seat at the bar so I could put my back to the wall and try to ignore the noise.
So fucking loud. I couldn’t hear my thoughts. I couldn’t hear the people I came with talking. I couldn’t hear anything but buzzing in my ears and my harsh breath as I didn’t panic.
They put beer in my hands and I gripped it but didn’t drink it. I stared at it instead of the people who came over to talk. Senior aurors to congratulate Weasley. Junior trainees, impressed by and envious of their peers. Harry Potter, to hug his best friend as they never did inside the ministry. Gone was Weasley chiding Potter on what he could be if he applied himself, and Potter chagrined for unearned flattery. They were just… golden.
Potter caught me looking and I averted my eyes, embarrassed.
I tried to listen to the two friends speak over the cacophony around me. Barely heard “Andi left me” and “good riddance.” Barely got caught looking again before I ducked away.
People came and went, went and came. Ajax gave up on his attempt to talk to me when I refused to look up from my still-full beer. Given time, they all left. It wasn’t gradual. Some secret signal and everyone realized they weren’t responsible for the basket case on their team. I wish their leaving made it quiet, but elsewhere the music had turned up and a speaker blasted it from behind me.
The fucking worst part was I didn’t recognize the song. It was catchy and I could see people singing along to it, but I’d likely never hear it again. It made me think of not being here anymore. Like, not just not in this space. More like… what would it matter if I didn’t exist. I wouldn’t miss anything. There was no new music waiting for me. Nothing waiting for me. No purpose to my life to speak of.
The entire booth was wide open but Potter chose to scoot in right next to me. He leaned close to shout over the music. Weasley asked him to keep an eye on me. Was I doing okay?
It was easy to turn to Potter in a way it was never easy to turn to the trainees I worked with. I’d forgotten my reason for living, but I hadn’t forgotten how to glower at the man next to me and bite out some scathing remark about his inability to take care of so much as a niffler. Potter nodded morosely. He admitted before I said as much that maybe Weasley needed me to watch him, since he was entirely drunk.
It wasn’t that he was a chatty drunk, just that he was an emotional drunk. He’d brood silently for minutes, then turn to me to share the least insightful drivel I could imagine about where it’d all gone wrong, or why Andi didn’t love him. He pulled out that damn box of his and swiped around on it until its pixels made a picture. The picture was Andi and another man who Potter said was named Raymond. Potter knew everything about Raymond. Clearly, this was one of the rare occasions he’d demonstrated his detective skills.
Do you think I’m unlovable?
The fucker actually asked that. He’d stared at me with eyes shining with unshed tears, his puppy crup gaze begging me to reassure him.
Everyone loves you.
What a thing to say before thinking. What an absolutely trite and useless thing to say. Potter actually crumbled at the words, like I’d punched him. Maybe he thought I was mocking him. Definitely he didn’t see the jealousy behind me saying it. Or maybe he did. He stopped talking to me after that. He tucked his phone away so I couldn’t see all those private pictures. He gave me the cold shoulder when I, pathetically desperate, tried to pull his attention back.
I shouldn’t be here, I reminded myself. I shouldn’t even exist.