"ARGH!"

In consolation the landing was one of the softer ones, but in the dark, Lawrence could tell immediately where they'd reappeared just from smell alone.

"Willy! Why here!"

He yanked his left arm out of the grasp of his associate's grip, glaring at him. Shufflebottom's eyes were wide in the dark and he started to laugh almost immediately on getting his bearings. There hadn't been much time to think when disapparating, and Lawrence hadn't realised it had been Willy's intention to either, just that he'd seized the arm that wasn't wielding a wand.

"Only 'cos I were mucking out before we left." Willy explained, chuckling. "Tis only muck Mr Musgrave."

The response was as if to insinuate this was a perfectly normal way to re-enter the Shufflebottom farm in Godric's Hollow. Lawrence let out an incoherent but anguished exclamation at the confirmation of where they were. Much as he was glad to be safe, he didn't want to be sprawled on the dung of Shufflebottom's strange cross-breeds. Not all of them were herbivores for one. It reeked.

That and he was still panting from their failed attempt to work with the dementors that night. His lungs were filling with the stench, and it made his eyes water. The texture of the hill they were perched on was uneven and crumbly. It was an undignified slide to the bottom. Lawrence didn't want to think of the state of his already bedraggled cloak.

Willy joined him momentarily later with a big grin still plastered on his face. Lawrence put it down to the fact that the shorter wizard had to keep a patronus up, so his demeanour on these evenings was altogether positive. Meanwhile, Lawrence felt as if the world was trying to end inside him for being in close contact with the dementors.

"That didn't go right, did it?" Willy asked, somewhat rhetorically. To his credit, that was the truth, even if it was a understatement.

"No Willy, it did not." Lawrence confirmed quietly, shoulders heaving one last time in their recovery before he was calm again. The anxious nausea induced by the dementors was fading with being so far from them. The winter wind blew and he shivered. "They wanted to feed off us not where we wanted to take them." He put his hand to his head and thought better of it, knowing where it had just been.

"Got a plan though, right?"
"Several." Lawrence shuddered again for the cold and for being caked in crap. He wasn't about to elaborate on them to Willy, they were semi-formed and rather experimental to try the next time they encountered dementors.

"Cup'a cocoa?"
Lawrence was taken aback by the offer, and his expression gave this away easily.
"Gladys-May not home?"
"Yer not the only one with a plan Mr Musgrave." Willy grinned. That look told Lawrence that Shufflebottom thought he was about to be exceedingly cunning, which was almost always exceedingly stupid. Still, they were often fun attempts to watch. Shufflebottom headed off at a jaunty pace across his farm in the dark. Lawrence, less familiar with the terrain, followed his footsteps less steadily.

There were candles burning low upstairs in the farm house windows. Willy let himself in the rotting back door, and Lawrence hung back in the kitchen. Once shown where the relevant items were to assemble cocoa, his associate vanished into the house alone.

Lawrence paused by the hallway door after him, and cocked his head to listen. As he did, he waved his wand at the various ingredients to assemble them on the cluttered kitchen table. He was halfway through drinking the hot cocoa before he decided the lack of Shufflebottom was a bit worrying and he crept into the house proper to find out what had happened.

The former auror not been upstairs in Willy's house since they were at school. As he reached the top of the stairs he knew where to find the four Shufflebottoms. The house had once housed more of them. There was the strong sound of contented snores from what Lawrence remembered as being the master bedroom. The bugger had gone up and fallen asleep?

Lawrence paused in the hallway and tentatively pushed the door open. The Shufflebottom pair were fast asleep on the bed, Gladys-May under the covers, Willy face first on the bed beside her. Lawrence glanced about and spotted the cause on the dressing table: drowsiness draught. Willy had forgotten to leave the room quick enough after removing the top. As Lawrence observed he felt his own eyes grow heavy, so he pulled the door to silently before he felt the need to join them.

Alone in the hallway he could smell himself a little more clearly. Shrugging, he went in search of a long-overdue bath.