Late Afternoon


He made his way down the passage in plain black robes. Exhausted. They had done it, eventually.

At this very moment there were Futurists sitting in cells at the Ministry of Magic and Halloween festivities carousing down Diagon uninterrupted and muggles oblivious to Azkaban looming in the North Sea. There were Unspeakables, not unlike him, who could finally rest after watching the wizarding world fall apart six[1] separate times.

Virgil had just been to see a Healer - his legs went jelly after the final loop ended and Rothschild ordered him to be checked over as a precaution. He couldn't protest. The back of his neck felt like an elastic band had been stretched around the globe and snapped right back into him.

But he was fine, apparently. Simply tired and a little weak. There was his hair, of course, golden crown washed out to silver and white, indicative of nothing serious.

"Francis!" Virgil called out, spotting the senior Unspeakable leaving the ward in which Yavin was supposedly kept. "Is he awake?"

Pepper, who led the whole thing, was probably here to update the Department Head. He always respected Francis - but this whole incident further elevated Virgil's opinion of him. Firstly, the blood and time magic used to tattoo him. And most importantly, how he held it together at each and every loop.

V himself hadn't been able to do much besides his trip beyond time and death; with his wand shattered, he'd borrowed another and stayed close to help at Diagon Alley. Playing it safe while others apprehended the Futurists.

His older self, dead, dead and gone, perhaps not even in existence ever, told him to stay alive. So here Virgil was. Alive.

1.	Broken Clock

“Virgil.” Francis greeted, feeling like he had spent a week with the younger unspeakable, even if it had been the afternoon repeated six times. The weariness was clear on both their faces, and Pepper felt as if he’d gained more than a few grey hairs of his own. Gabrielle would no doubt tell him.

“Is he awake?”

“Drowsy,” he spoke more softly, glancing through the ward door where the Head of the Department of Mysteries, Yavin Morgenthau, recovered from his accident. He had been impaled by Virgil’s exploding wand on returning from beyond the veil. More exactly, he’d been impaled six times, but thankfully for the wizard, they had become much more prepared for the accident on each recurrence.

“He needs to rest, and I empathise.” He wrung his hands before the younger man. Despite the victory over the Futurists, he couldn’t help but worry how many times they had failed, and that they may not have the chance to resolve things with time if there was another attempt to pervert the boundaries between magic and non-magic populations.

“Have you been given the all clear?” He asked, in a fatherly tone, still very much on duty. His eyes swept up and down the seer.

Drowsy, so probably not up for more conversation. He would still go to sit next to him, though. Virgil knew it was out of his control but he felt at least a little guilty about what harm his shattered wand had done.

       “Have you been given the all clear?” Pepper asked.

V glanced down at himself, as if trying to see what the older wizard was seeing, and then back up with a shrug. "Fit as a fiddle," he answered, smiling tiredly. "All things considered. They couldn't tell me if this is permanent though."

He pointed at his own crown, meaning the hair. A part of him was absurdly annoyed by it. Being a blond was his whole thing. Outside of the Legilimens thing. And the Seer thing. And the violin thing, the fashion thing, the sleeping around thing. He was nothing if not self-aware.

Sensing the rambling exhaustion of his own thoughts, Virgil tried to snap himself back to the present. "Nothing feels real," he frowned and stifled a yawn. "What if I fall asleep and I wake up, and everything still feels like this?"

Ah youth. To be worried about hair colour.

“There’s hair dye, and charms.” He consoled Carstairs matter-of-factly.

“Nothing feels real. What if I fall asleep and I wake up, and everything still feels like this.”

“That,” Francis spoke gently, slipping both hands into his pockets of his corduroy trousers, “may never quite go away.” He gave a little shrug. “The perils of time travel, and another reason why we’re not meant to meet ourselves on the way back.” Paradoxes did things to your perception of reality, if not tearing everyone’s reality in the process.

“What happened today was new ground, something beyond what we have charted and explained. It would be more worrying if you felt perfectly ordinary.”

He lightly gripped Virgil’s upper arm, locking eyes in a fatherly manner as he delivered his wisdom.

“As for sleep,” Francis released Virgil, digging into his pockets of his waistcoat, clearly looking for something, “I think we’re due a week’s worth. Do you think you still have a bed at your family home?” He asked, still digging. It would seem like a queer question after a particular peculiar day. “Only you might prefer not to share a bed with yourself.”

A small case, like one might keep a pearl necklace in, came to his fingertips. He handed it to Virgil to open. “Just one turn per hour, and no more than five at a time.”

He might feel like this indefinitely...?

The idea sat uncomfortably at the back of his head, and sank into his gut like a stone. He had known this was work of a pioneering nature - it was exciting and appealed to both Virgil's curiousity as well as ambition. But there was a price to be paid, always. Touched by death and used by time.

Pepper's grip surprised him, even as it served as a welcome distraction from his thoughts. A bed at his family home??

But then a case was procured, and Virgil accepted it with swift realisation. But of course: a clockmaker's solution to a time traveller's conundrum. He opened it, examining the delicate Time-Turner. The same hands that inked his chest had made this, too. There would never be any getting used to the wonders of Mysteries.

"Thank you," V replied softly, shutting the case. "Really, Francis. For everything. I don't..." he trailed off for a moment and looked at the other wizard grimly. "I didn't know what I was getting into."

There weren't many people to whom he would make that admission. Virgil slipped the case into the inner pocket of his robes. "I have no regrets but I'm grateful for your advice, your concern."

He brushed it off when people worried for him, typically. He wouldn't do that again. It mattered. Virgil knew as much, now.

“I didn’t know what I was getting into… no regrets… grateful for your advice… concern”

“None of us truly did.” Francis agreed. “It’s the nature of being an Unspeakable.” His eyes swept over Virgil’s expression. “You did good, Virgil.” Francis gave him a nod of confirmation, feeling nothing more needed to be said, so as not to inflate the ego too far, or cast an anxiety that praised was covering up his shortcomings.

Pepper stepped to one side, his own bed calling him, and the company of his wife and children.

“Good luck on finding a new wand, by the way.” He added in a conversational tone, as if it were entirely ordinary to have one’s wand burst into pieces. He waved a hand vaguely as he made his way wearily down the corridor, more than aware that Virgil would not be able to resist checking on Yavin. “… Sleep well.”

Armed now, as he was, with a Time-Turner for sleep and a gentle reminder to find a new wand, Virgil decided against going straight home. Sleep could wait a little longer.

Yavin appeared deep in thought when he approached his space at the end of the ward. He could always tell when his mentor was in meditation - dark eyes lowered into a relaxed expression, the dynamic tension of his frame quietened to stillness. Without his glasses, he looked younger. But in the hospital gown, older, too. His neck still bore some bandaging.

Virgil sat on the chair next to the bed and waited. It only took a minute for the older wizard, propped up on pillows, to rouse from cogitations and smile softly at his visitor.

Like starlight, Yavin spoke into his mind, meaning V's silver crown.
       You stole that[1] from somewhere, Virgil accused with a soft snort, But thanks. How are you feeling?

Yavin shrugged. Tired.

Like all the rest of them, then. V pulled the chair closer and folded his legs up comfortably.

Sleep, he touched the back of Yav's hand. I'm going to sit here for a while.

For a second it looked like the old man was going to protest - but he seemed to change his mind, nodding once and then laying his head back on the pillow. Good. Virgil watched him close his eyes and resolved to wait until Yav was well in the dreamscape before leaving for his own bed in Diagon.

There was no point worrying Edgar or Angela. Sharing a bed with himself was, genuinely, the least of his strange happenings this Halloween.

1.	Howl's Moving Castle lol