English Girls, Approximately.

I very much appreciate the compliments contained in my latest review. It's a high honor and marvelous praise to be compared to Iris Murdoch, among other things! I'm pleased that the chapters are meeting such a nice reception; that's possibly the very best feeling of all. All of it was very kind to say, and I appreciate it greatly. It's a fine honor to have such generous responses and readers, and I'll simply have to do my best to put out chapters to keep you satiated. I hope I can live up to the challenge.

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She's sleeping like a baby
She doesn't know he wasn't
Meant for this.

Terry took a room at the Leaky Cauldron, and it lived up to its dripping name. It rained on his second day in London, and he had to borrow cups and bowls from the kitchens to catch the drops that slid between the cracks in his ceiling.

The third day it was grimy and dimly sunny, good enough weather to leave his dreary little room with moth-eaten curtains and dusty floorboards. Terry went out job-hunting.

The narrow streets and lanes of Diagon Alley were crowded with a bustling crowd, as usual; still, they looked slightly shabbier and wearier than Terry had ever remembered from his school days. He was suddenly struck by the idolatries of his younger days, the stores and windows and people covered in the gleam of virgin perfection—bright-eyed shoppers and brown cobbled lanes full of laughing children, twittering owls swooping overhead; shiny coins slipped into a bulging purse, feet pounding the streets, sucking on swirled candy canes and ice-cream cones, with low-hanging roofs shading the yellow sun; signs striped in vivid colors, swinging in the sweet-smelling breeze. It had all been some vision, vibrantly painted by the too-wide eyes of a child who had now grown up and knew when he was being sold for an naive fool.

But, no. It had all been like that, down to every gleaming Knut and sticky jelly bean. It had all been so different.

Money pouch slack against his hip, hands stuffed into his pockets, Terry slouched down the gray streets, not meeting the gaze of any of the witches huddled in the doorways, begging for a bit of coin, their children staring through him with blank eyes.

Everyone in the threadbare shops knew Terry Boot the war hero, but no one had a job for him, not even the witches in Madam Malkin’s, though they fussed over him enough. He was just leaving the shop, much to their protest—they were probably thinking about Terry Boot the war hero, Terry Boot the eligible, he remembered with a slight flush—when he stepped in a puddle in the gutter.

The puddle was considerably deeper than it first appeared, and Terry found his trouser leg nearly soaked to the knee. It’s only just now beginning to rain, a hissing mist that slips down the side of his face, drips down his nose, but the puddle is already large.

Terry lifts his foot out of the wet, curses his luck. He can already feel his toes squelching in his drenched sock; he tries to wring out his trouser leg the best that he can, but it’s beyond hope.

There’s a witch sitting on a bench nearby, shaded by a large black umbrella. She’s watching him—Terry can feel her eyes on his back. He had noticed her when he was leaving Madam Malkin’s, with a rather pretty face and a long tumble of chestnut locks under a smart black beret. Her long wool coat is tipped in a skirting of mud, but otherwise she seems untouched by the rain; Terry wants to either shout at her, or slop water on her—he isn’t sure which would be more satisfying.

Rather than either of those, he stomps over to the bench and tosses himself down. He can feel his pants dampening with more water, but by this time there really isn’t a point to caring any longer.

The witch is still staring at him. She isn’t even trying to hide it any longer; her blue eyes are fixated on him so strongly Terry would have to be wearing a bucket over his head not to notice.

“I’m sorry,” he bursts out, unable to contain himself any longer as he rounds on her, “but do I have something on my face?”

The witch starts, dropping her gaze to the rain-washed streets, hands suddenly fussing with the straps of her powder-pink handbag. “N-No,” she stammers, “not at all.”

“Then might I ask why you’ve been staring at me for the past few minutes?”

She bites her lip, then gives a sort of shake to her head and meets his gaze as she sticks out an elegantly gloved hand. “I’m Padma Worthing. Used to be Padma Patil, and then I married. It’s nice to see you, Terry, though I don’t suppose you much recognize me any longer.”

“Padma,” Terry says slowly, “of course, of course I remember you!” He takes her hand, most of his frustration pushed to the back of his mind for the moment. “I’m sorry—I didn’t recognize—you look well!”

“That’s because I am well,” she says with a little laugh, her dark eyes flashing—Terry can remember sitting by the Ravenclaw fire with her, chuckling at her wicked impressions of the professors, the way she would toss her hair over one shoulder and lift her lovely little nose in an imperious fashion; studying with her in the common room, sitting beside her at Quidditch matches. “You, however, look in need of a drink.”

“I wouldn’t turn one down,” Terry has to admit, frowning at his trouser leg. “I know a nice little place not too far from here—are you waiting for anyone?”

“Just wasting some time while my daughter takes her viola lesson from old Mrs. Pegabee—she has the apartment right next door to Madam Malkin’s.” Padma stands, offers Terry her arm. “You can share my umbrella, if you promise not to get too much mud on my coat, and we’ll walk to whatever charming place you’ve found for yourself.”

“That would be splendid.” Terry gratefully ducks under her umbrella, glad for an excuse to stop his job hunt for the day.

Someone like Padma Patil—or whatever her last name is—seems out of place in the squalor of Diagon Alley. She hasn’t lost her glamour, somehow—she was always the beauty of Ravenclaw House, and her smile hasn’t dimmed in the years since they’ve graduated. It smells like vanilla under the umbrella, and Terry briefly wonders if it’s her—Padma’s dusky skin seems to glow with its own light; her eyes glimmer over at him as she shoots him a smile.

“We used to read about you in the papers all the time,” she says, pursing her lips into a charming little bow. “When you got back, I mean—the Order of Merlin you received, and whatnot.”

If she hadn’t brought that up, if she hadn’t started talking about the war, the whole encounter might have been almost fun, but Terry can feel some part of him freeze inside, knows that his smile is growing more and more fixed by the moment. He hadn’t thought it, but some part of him had hoped that Padma wouldn’t turn out asking him all the same questions, wanting to know about the danger, the fear, the captures, the battles and the prisons and the skirmishes and the fights.

“Yes well,” he says, with a wooden laugh, “they wouldn’t quite leave me alone.”

“Mm.” Maybe Padma can tell that Terry wanted to avoid the subject; maybe she never really cared in the first place. The latter wouldn’t surprise him—Padma had always been caught up in herself and herself alone.

The rain is coming down a little harder now, pattering on the crown of the umbrella. There aren’t very many people outdoors now; a few beggars huddle in the doorways, their robes drawn close around them to keep out the cold. Padma is staring straight ahead, looking neither left nor right, and Terry starts to feel very awkward.

Fortunately the Glove is only a block more of walking. The cozy little pub is crammed wall-to-wall with afternoon patrons; Terry leads Padma across the crowded floor toward a small table squashed between the fireplace and a wall, taking her coat for her before struggling across the room toward the counter. The barkeep is a middle-aged man with long sideburns and wire spectacles who takes Terry’s order and bungs two butterbeers onto the scratched bar top. Terry takes a bottle in each hand and wades back to the table where Padma is waiting; he had hoped to catch a glimpse of Ginny Weasley today, at least say ‘hello’ to her, but she was absent. Must have had the day off, or something.

Padma grins at the sight of the butterbeers and easily twists the top off. “Just like old times,” she says, as they clink their bottles together.

The fizzy taste goes thickly down Terry’s throat, and he suddenly remembers that he hasn’t really had a meal yet today. “Haven’t had one of these in ages.”

“And why is that? Is it hard liquor for Our Hero these days?” Padma asks, sipping at her own bottle with a wicked little grin. “Goodness, perhaps you aren’t as saintly as all get-out.”

“Saintly?” Terry snorts, causing a flurry of the light butterbeer bubbles to come flying up the neck of the bottle and shimmy up his nose. “Hardly. Is that what they’ve said of me? Saintly?”

“Among other things,” Padma replies, with a wicked little grin, and Terry remembers again: Terry Boot the eligible, and he starts to flush again before shaking himself. She didn’t say that, that’s not what she means. She’s not hinting anything, you’re taking everything much too far.

“Enough about that,” he says rather quickly; Padma seems a bit startled by the sudden change in subject, but gives a shake to her head, sending her long chestnut tresses shimmering down her back like a waterfall wave. “It’s been—well, years, really.” When you left Hogwarts with your sister, when your parents marched you out the front doors before... You never saw any of it. “What’ve you been up to? Did you say you have a daughter?”

“Yes—Hatel,” Padma says, and a sort of glowing beam comes across her face that Terry has never seen before. She is proud of her daughter, she loves her daughter—it’s glaringly obvious. “She’s such a bright child, too—gets that from her father, I think. Well, for me, after school, and all”—it’s funny to hear Padma say after school, as though she ever graduated—“what with one thing or another, I ended up in a rather good match. I started work with my sister—you’ll remember Pavarti, of course—in our village, just putting together charms and little love potions. Pavarti would do a bit of fortune telling, she was always keen on that sort of thing, and we did a rare good business, with Muggles and the wizarding community both. Of course, things started to break down around then”—she was avoiding talking about the war entirely now, Terry noted. Though who could blame her really, he’d had a rather bad reaction the last few times it was mentioned between them—“but we were still doing a rather good trade in our love potions.

“That’s where I met my husband, you know. Michael Worthing—don’t know if you’ve heard of him, but he’s been in the news a lot lately. He’s a potions-maker, but he’s actually quite good at it, doesn’t have to cheat at all,” and she laughs here, and Terry smiles, knows she’s remembering when, years ago, a handful of Ravenclaw students had stolen the answer book right before a huge Potions test in a desperation to pass, and gone surprisingly unpunished. “Anyway, Mike stopped by the shop one day, wanted to take a look at some of the piddly little potions we’d been brewing up, because he’d heard that they were strong. It wasn’t that they were good potions—the love draughts were mostly cold tea sweetened with lots of sugar and some pink coloring mixed in to give it a more romantic air—but Pavarti and I were simply good at finding and then soliciting to people who were already deeply in love and just needed an excuse to realize it. So I explained the little hoax to Mike, who found it absolutely hysterical. He downed some of our love potion then and there, proclaimed himself to be absolutely besotted with me, and asked me to dinner that very night.” She took another sip of butterbeer, her lovely lips suctioning around the neck of the bottle. “We were married a year after that, and Hatel was born soon afterward. It’s been a right dream, really.”

Terry, who was remembering a very different Padma Worthing, one who was still called Padma Patil, with a mind like a steel trap and a clever, vixinish grin that twined around her lips from first year to sixth and kept all the boys of Ravenclaw House eating out of her pretty little hand.

“Wonderful,” he said through his teeth, not even caring that it was a lie. “It sounds great, Padma. I’m quite happy for you.”

“And what are you doing with yourself?” Padma leans across the table, gives him her new, smoky little smile. Somehow Terry misses her more wily grin. “Anything of interest? Anything of note?”

“Not particularly,” Terry replies with an awkward shrug. How to tell a former housemate of his unemployment, his dim thoughts of any sort of future, and a life of burgeoning emptiness that seemed to only flourish and spread in the coal-dark London.

“Oh come, come, come, there must be something worth telling!” Padma took another sip of her butterbeer.

“I only arrived here in London a few days ago,” he answers, a little irritated now. Is Padma patronizing him? Michael Worthing the potions-mixer must do well to keep his wife dressed so finely, and to afford viola lessons for his daughter. Padma may simply be rubbing this success in Terry’s face, but that was never her style. Is she being in earnest? “I took a room at the Leaky Cauldron.”

“Ugh, that old place?” Padma pulls a face, turning down the corners of her lovely mouth. “It’s a bit—dodgy, don’t you think?”

“I’ve never found it dodgy, no,” Terry answers, unable to keep a slight bite from creeping into his tone. “It’s always been perfectly all right with me.”

“Well, it’s right dirty anyway,” Padma continues gamely, “and you shouldn’t have to be living there! Aren’t you doing something for the Ministry these days?”

Terry can’t suppress a laugh. “Why the hell would I do that?”

“Well, I thought as a—a Sator and all, in the Cause, I mean, I would think that they would—”

“No,” Terry said. “They didn’t offer me a position, if that’s what you’re getting at. Come to think of it, it’s been a bit difficult to find a job at all, as it turns out. There’s some sort of economical slump going on—the Muggles have a word for it. What is it again? Oh, yes, a depression. Like a handprint in the ground, with the hand still pressing down on it—deeper and deeper, with more and more weight, until it’s like suffocation.”

Padma is looking more and more startled, her lamp-like eyes wide as she stares across the table in a sort of mingled confusion, surprise, and something like pity. Terry isn’t sure why he’s behaving like this toward her, but at the same time there’s something about Padma Worthing—how highbrow she is, how she wouldn’t look any of the beggars in the eye, though she obviously has Sickles to spare, how patronizing she is....

Terry stands up. I’m really going round the bend, even here. “I’m sorry,” he says hurriedly, “I don’t quite know— Look, I’ll pay for your drink. Don’t worry about it. And sorry I made you come out this way with me, and waste all this,” and Terry doesn’t know why he’s doing this, but he counts out the Knuts onto the scratched table, he’s mumbling instead of really talking, backing out toward the door. Padma is staring at him now like he’s grown another head, and Terry ducks out into the street to splash back to the Leaky Cauldron, being sure to step in every puddle and smash out the image of his face reflected back at him.