Days were getting longer, brighter and more welcoming. It was even lightening the mood of the generally cold Hannah Bombay. The anniversary of her first transformation had just passed and that evening the healer had spent thinking over alone in her apartment. But she had new focuses now. Werewolf transformations were something she could do little about. The guilty verdict still hanging over her and Knox’s heads was also something she had no power over. Her revenge against Wolfgang Storm was something she could control as was her ability to help those lost souls seeking her and Greyfriar.

Tomorrow was a day that this particular witch had never really understood to importance of. Her mother had always flapped about her on the 19th of April.
“My baby girl is another year older! Hasn’t she grown! Like a perfectly rounded pumpkin!” Mrs Bombay would squeal, throwing her arms around her stiff daughter and jumping up and down in glee.
The young girl had once made the mistake of correcting her mother; she was in fact a day older. Yet Cindy Bombay wouldn’t have it and to this day Hannah didn’t understand the whole excitement and buzz people got around their birthdays.

So today she was 24 years and 364 days old.
At midnight she would be 25 years and 0 days old.
Another year older?
9125 days old.
1300 weeks old.
300 months old.
Another year older…
That numeracy didn’t work.

Nevertheless, people were supposed to celebrate their birthdays. So Hannah donned her high heeled shoes, slipped a bottle of red wine into her handbag and left her tiny apartment.

There were very few choices at whom to spend this one year older celebration with. She and Johann were going through a lack of contact phase. Her parents hadn’t spoken to her since calling off the wedding.
Greyfriar, therefore, seemed like the only suitable candidate.

This was why her figure now cast a shadow on the older wizard’s doorstep. Her hand lifted in the air and she banged on the door, waiting for a few moments. In her other hand was a small cake with a single candle.

The door opened and Hannah looked up from underneath the rim of her large hat.
“Happy Birthday.”

Spring was a beautiful time in Tilberthwaite Wood.  Everything was greening up and constantly a bit wet.  Things were coming up in Knox's garden, and volunteers sprouting in the grass and between his paving stones.  The vines that climbed on parts of his tiny stone house were freshening up and things looks significantly less grim. 

That afternoon, Knox opened the door and was happy to see Hannah Bombay! Who looked significantly happier than she usally did.  And she had a cake!

"Well, thank you!" he boomed as he wiped his hands on a half-apron.  He'd been cleaning his hearth and his hands were covered in soot.  "But you're halfway between early and late.  I'm a son under Scorpio."

Even as he said this, he swung the door wide to let her in.  They hadn't seen each other in the day time much, considering what brought them together the most often was criminal subversion.

"This is a nice change," he said on that chain of thought.  "No one dead or dying.  Just cake!"

Once she was in, he followed and set about washing his hands in the little sink which was tucked into a corner by the big cooking hearth that took over the entire wall.  The water ran grey and gritty from his thick hands. 

Whatever Knox was blathering on about being a son under scorpio, Hannah didn’t understand. But she said nothing yet. She didn’t even immediately mention the fact that she could be neither early nor late to a meeting they had never arranged. Knox Greyfriar was an odd wizard and with each encounter he became stranger.

Nevertheless, the odd wizard permitted her entry and Hannah stepped out of the bright spring sunlight and into the dark hut that Greyfriar called a home. How he lived in such a tiny place, she would never understand. It seemed even smaller today now that her own home had been resurrected from the fire and made to look habitable once more thanks to Uncle Lawrence. But this…this was small and cluttered. Certainly not the meticulous healer’s cup of tea.

Her eyes scanned around for a bare surface to place the cake down. The was a small gap on the dining table and she went straight for it. Next she lifted a hand to her large floppy hat and removed that, laying it on the pile of stuff Knox had covering his table. Perhaps the wizard would appreciate a sort out. Hoarding was neither practical nor healthy. The amount of things people found hiding in their hoarded piles of rubbish was worrying.

“Well we’re all dying Greyfriar.” Cheery as ever, Hannah offered her companion a smile. “But surely no one needs to be almost dead for me to pay you a visit. I need someone to share my 9125th day with and you are lonely and alone. I thought it was rather perfect. Cake?”

Knox smiled down at his sudsy hands.  Hannah's dry morbidity delighted him, although once it had annoyed him.  She simply had a way of enjoying the rain cloud in every blue sky.  A stacking array of jaded outlooks and hopeful desperation.  And she had cake!

As he came back around and dried his hands on his towel, he showed some confusion.  "Nine thousand and...oh! Your birthday! Happy birthday, Bombay!"

He granted Hannah her first wish and didn't move in for a great big bear hug.  Instead he just smiled and pulled a dusty bottle from under the work station. 

"You can't imagine the honor you do me by coming round my place on this special day.  I dare say if we aren't careful we're going to become friends.  This is Lagavulin.  A thirty-year.  Not too much younger than you, I think, although nearly half my age."

Drinking scotch in the middle of an afternoon was not usually something Knox did.  But Hannah? Cake? A birthday? Why there was no more perfect time. 

"You are at least thirty, aren't you? You're certainly cynical enough to be and if you aren't, you'll have me feeling more ancient than usual."

Knox was only in his fifties, not yet in his middle years as a wizard, but everyone around him just seemed to be getting younger.

As Knox stated that the 30 year old bottle of scotch he’d pulled from the cupboard was younger than her, Hannah blinked. Her brow furrowed and she tucked some stray hair behind her ear. She knew she had started to look less polished since becoming a werewolf. Her skin seemed paler, her hair wilder and her body more tired. But for him to think of her as half a decade older? Was he wishing her life away? And could he not count? 9125 quite clearly divided itself into 365 25 times. What imbecile didn’t know that?

“I’m about to reach 25 years.” Cake left on the table for the near future, Hannah decided to take the main, clear armchair for herself. She gently lowered herself into it, still watching Knox. “You look your age. The streaks in your beard and matted hair. The drop in your belly.” Her eyes analytically scanned over the wizard. “Your gait reveals that of a man in his fifties. Your teeth show decades of usage and the skin around your eyes is creased.”

Hannah had never considered that people probably didn’t appreciate being looked at so analytically. Some didn’t take it well but Johann had always found the activity fascinating. Sometimes the witch would spot signs of a forming disease or malady. Sometimes she’d just make comments on their health. Now she was just trying to assess why Greyfriar had added an additional five years to her age.

“Do I show any of those signs, Greyfriar?” A tiny smile twisted the healer’s lips. “Friends are honest.”

There was a moment of silence as Hannah's inventory of Knox's person was laid out between them like a layered cake.  And then,

"HA!"  Knox's confused expression broke out into a bellowing baritone laugh.  He slapped the side of his ample belly and showed his ivory-colored teeth in a giant, eye-crinkling grin.  "AH HA HA HA HA!"

He was shaking his head as he fetched them both a glass and two small unmatched plates and forks.  "Hannah Bombay, you're a flatterer.  There was a time when I worried that I wouldn't live past 25 myself and to find myself here now an aging, curmudgeonly, fat old man? It's a feat years in the making."

He poured and raised a glass.  "May you find yourself wrinkled, grey, and fat but not for many years! Cheers!"

Like a great bear, Knox’s raucous laughter sounded like a roar. Hannah stared at him, eyes wide in surprise. But fortunately he calmed and collected the drinks. As he did Hannah frowned down at the floor. What had been so funny? Did he find the reality of his aging situation that amusing? He really shouldn’t. His portly physique could pose problems later in his life and his greying beard was just plain scruffy.

Bombay took a glass of the wizard and glanced down at the liquid with mild suspicion. She wasn’t experienced with alcohol and didn’t handle it well. Johann could avouch to that.

"May you find yourself wrinkled, grey, and fat but not for many years! Cheers!"

Somewhat concerned, Hannah took a swig of her drink before looking back at Knox.
“At least you’re a pleasant fat old man.” She commented with a small smile, picking up on his point before the toast. “But you forgot hairy.” Yet here she was having very possibly made friends with the old fat curmudgeonly wizard. Despite the rocky start to their reunion, the turmoil had brought them together to now be working together helping those in need.

Knox endured Hannah's sour expression with a smile.  He drank with her.  Lagavulin was so rich and oderous that just lifting the glass to head level filled one's nostrils with a burst of earthy aroma.  Heavy, seasoned, sharp.  It was a whiskey that required careful tiny sips.  "Phew!" he gasped with a rasp. 

"Ice please."  He quickly obliged himself with an spell from his wand.  It might be sacrilege to a true connoisseur, but two cubes like diamonds sat in the golden brown liquor.  Better.

"So Hannah.  What is your birthday wish." 

He set himself down on one of the high chairs nearby his counter top work table and swished the whiskey in the glass.  Melt the ice a bit, soften the flavor.

The Greyfriar home was a small one. A small, middle of nowhere shack. Facts that Bombay had previously felt no need to hide. She had always been as subtle as a troll when it came to her opinions of Knox and his home and yet here she was sat comfortably in his chair, drinking his alcohol and having chosen to spend the eve of her birthday in his company. People changed and circumstances changed. His home remained a small shack in the middle of nowhere, somewhere Hannah would never wish to live herself. But it was a home nonetheless and she felt comfortable here and with him.

Yet his question caused a look of mild confusion to grace the healer’s features.
“My wish?” Lips parted in thought. She glanced towards the door considering what exactly was meant by this. Was she supposed to have a wish?

Then a smile appeared and the witch’s light brown eyes found his.
“That no-one but you remembers it’s my birthday.” She lifted the glass and took another gulp, closing her eyes as the strong liquid, reminding her much of cleansing potions, made its way down her throat. It appeared the alcohol was of a great strength, making Hannah’s head feel somewhat whoozy immediately.

Gently the glass was placed on a nearby table and Hannah carefully regarded a wizard she now called a friend.
“You know, it’s over a year since I met you in that cell. Since I was bitten and spoke to you like just another criminal. It is a few months short of a year since we were trapped. I blamed you for it all when the people I should have blamed were convicting us and ruining our reputations.” Her words were spoken slowly and she leaned forward in the chair. This wasn’t easy to say but at some point she needed to say it. Knox was the person she’d chosen to visit tonight and it was for a reason. No matter how much she moaned at him or belittled him or blamed him for being a coward in the courtroom, he’s stood by her and now he was showing the sort of wizard he was by helping these people from his spare bedroom.

“You may be a curmudgeonly fat old man set in his ways, but you’re a friend to me. I don’t know why. But thank you. I wish for that to not change. For you to keep opening the door of your little house and making a sometimes rude and socially inept healer feel welcome.”

Knox listened quietly as Bombay carefully performed what seemed like sacramental confession.  Naming the friendship they'd both tried to ignore.  He had to frown at the mention of their first meeting, one of the most humiliating and degrading moments of his life.  In that moment he would have never accepted the notion that they'd ever be sharing a drink in his cottage.

But here they were.  He didn't take for granted what it must have took the surly Hannah to be so open, and so he took great care not to interrupt her as he was known to do.

"You're breaking my heart," he responded in what he hoped was an appropriate level of 'curmudgeonry' that would make Hannah more comfortable.  He watched her, his eyes glinting a little. 

"You're a hard witch to knock down, you know.  I can't say I've ever met anyone so sturdy."  Knox, he was a man like a ship at sea - tossed easily on the waves.  Never capsizing but battered and soaked just the same.  Hannah - she seemed more like a lighthouse.  Standing tall in the lashing wind, defying even the most devastating of storms. 

He smiled at her without guard and nodded his head. "Indeed, my door is always open.  You're a true friend.  Stars, has it really been a year? How have we put up with each other this long?"

Knox punctuated the teasing query with a sip of the strong, dark whiskey.

As quickly as Hannah had shown her human nature and feelings for another person, she once more returned to her serious socially awkward self by sitting back in the chair and watching Knox.

"We had no choice." Her voice was calm, plain and to the point. She and Knox had had little choice when they'd been thrown together. They were a couple that never would have been friends without the circumstances that had forced it. So now, despite Hannah's regular denial that she cared for Knox, she had to see him as a close and appreciated friend. A rare friend on her part. Especially considering she only had two people she would consider to be more than acquaintances.

Yet despite her confession and Knox's response, Hannah began to feel somewhat uncomfortable with the words that were now in the air between them. She wasn't a witch who got close to other people, she didn't know how to be. But instead of making her excuses and changing the subject or making excuses and leaving, Hannah lifted the glass to her lips and drained the last of the harsh liquid, allowing it to burn her throat as it slid smoothly down to warm her stomach. She waved the glass at Knox with a raised eyebrow.


Several more glasses were poured and several more hours passed. The lightweight witch was becoming steadily more open and smiling while also growing more tired and intoxicated.

"Knox!" The young healer sat forward in her chair, legs crossed in the seat and hugging a pillow in her lap. Her right hand pointed her index finger in the direction of the bear like wizard. "You're not entirely inept at healing. In fact, one might say you are inept...." She frowned, looking down. "Ept.... You can heal! Can you not?" Bombay lowered her hand, her dark eyes still staring at Greyfriar. She'd wondered for months, feeling suspicious but hadn't before had the nerve to voice her suspicions. "When did you train?"

Knox only grew louder as he grew drunker and if he was prosaic sober, he was positively purple in his slurred prose after many glasses.  He drank heavily only on rare occasion and tonight his bulk seemed to offer no advantage over Bombay's slight form in regards to holding his whiskey.

Hannah complimented his healing and he flourished his hand in an elaborate salute.  "You do me a great honor, a master healer such as yourself deigning a compliment on myself - no more than just an aging apprentice! I did train of course, but it's quite a secret!"

He put a finger to his lips.

"I give myself away with my humble ministrations but none know of my dark past, of my shameful youthful years."

Despite the dramatic grimness of his words, he seemed to be enjoying the telling of the tale.

"London!  Nineteen seventy-two! I was a timid lad apprenticed to Madam Hana Woodley, a healer of some reknown who worked in the old ways, trained in an ancient coven.  I was good! Good enough, at least.  I saw myself going on to great philanthropic and benevolent missions to serve those most in need."

"But I fell, Hannah.  I failed.  I shamed the tradition of Healing and allowed others to sway me to betray the values I held so dear."

He shrugged openly, a look of theatrical sorrow on his face.  An expression that shielded feelings far more genuine and subtle.

Perhaps a normal witch may have beamed with pride at being referred to as a Master Healer by such a distinguished wizard yet Hannah Bombay didn’t respond in such a way. Neither did she agree nor disagree with Greyfriar’s appraisal, she simply watched him from the comfort of the cushy armchair as she drained her next glass and listened carefully to the large man’s tale, quietly pleased she had guessed correctly about any previous training in the healing arts that he may have had.

“You fell?” The young witch queried. Her brow knitted as she tried to imagine such a thing. The wizard sat before her, for all his faults and hairy obnoxiousness, was one who held his beliefs stoically. He irritated her with his high held beliefs and Merlin Almighty attitude, thinking himself above her and everyone else. It had been his distinguishing trait, one that she had regularly pointed out to him. So why was he suddenly so self-deprecating and able to acknowledge a betrayal of his beliefs?

“So you’re not the high and mighty wizard you try to pose as.” Her lips were twisted into a small smile and she regarded him with mild approval through slightly glazed brown eyes. “I knew it.”

She wasn’t sure if it was the alcohol induced intoxication or her normal self unable to read when people had said quite enough, but Hannah was suddenly eager to hear more. She pushed herself up from the chair, disentangling legs from the cushion and placing bare foot onto the cold floor to pace unsteadily towards the table beside Knox. Her thin fingers encircled the bottle of alcohol they’d been emptying and she poured some more into the glass in Knox’s grip followed by her own glass.

“What did you do?”

At Hannah's accusation that he was far less than met the eye, Knox held up his hands in resignation as if a great weight had been lifted off his shoulders.  Finally! He could let the mantle fall and be the unremarkable wizard he'd always wished he was.   He'd never before told this tale, no not to any living person other than his ex-wife Meredith who'd taken his secret kindly far away to South America.  Why tonight? Why to Hannah Bombay? Why at all?

Because tales were meant to be told.

"I fell," he repeated.  "I crumpled.  I toppled.  A tower built upon a cracked foundation can have no other fate.  My only greater sin than the weakness of my youth is my current predilection to waxing dramatic so I'll atone and be candid."

He paused for too long, not yet ready to shed his habit.  But then he lifted his chin and gloomed darkly. 

"I gave aide and abet to Death Eaters.  I mended their bones broken by a muggle's cricket bat.  I patched six holes made by three bullets.  I applied poultice, I administered salve, and dosed with potion and oils."

Despite whiskey's veil of levity, it was apparent that Knox's shame was real in the light of day and that he had good reason to hide this narrative.  Much could be forgiven from those days, perhaps, but Knox wouldn't dare presume to forgive himself. 

Even in her intoxicated stake Hannah found herself wanting to roll his eyes when Knox dramatized his misdemeanours as though writing them in his memoirs as opposed to telling a friend. Hannah had learnt over the past year that her companion here in this room was the dramatic sort. He exaggerated and over acted and now he had such horrors to tell. She was genuinely interested in the horrors. What she wasn’t interested in was the flourishment decorating them.

Yet when he finally did share his deep dark secret, Hannah leant back against the table where she’d been stood to pour them more alcohol. She stared at him, expression revealing a mild confusion. He felt guilty about healing death eaters? Hannah had expected him to confess a murder, a serious crime that would make her want to push him off his pedestal and soapbox. But he didn’t deliver.

“You healed Death Eaters?” And it was eating him up. Hannah sat on the arm of his chair and placed a hand on his, giving it a small squeeze. “I would do the same.” Her brown eyes danced, finding his gaze. “If that bastard Tarron Knight lay in front of me bleeding to death I would heal him. If the maniac that set fire to my flat was about to die I would help. That’s what healers do. That’s what the oath is. That’s why we’re helping unregistered werewolves.”

Hannah knew that setting fire to her flat or branding she and Greyfriar criminals wasn’t on the same par nationally as the crimes of Death Eaters, but she hoped Knox understood her point.
“you did what your training dictated. You did nothing wrong.”