Clifton Gardens, Maida Vale. London. June 1997.


Edgar Carstairs woke with a start, sitting up in darkness. It was a hot summer's night and the world was at peace relative to the past few months that had followed before the Battle of Hogwarts. He laid his hand flat against his chest, feeling for a racing heartbeat beneath the old band t-shirt. His dream had taken him back to the battle - Angela, her sharp and catlike face oddly at peace as she continued to sleep next to him, had not participated. Thank God.

A crinkle appeared between his pale eyebrows and he grasped for the memory of the dream, why it gave him such a start. An odd, clicking sound from the ceiling distracted.

"Virgil," the wizard murmured tiredly to himself, slipping out of bed. "Virgil!" he called out in a louder and anxious voice as he recalled why he'd woken up.

The townhouse in Maida Vale was four stories high but extremely narrow. So narrow, in fact, that it barely fit two rooms on each level. Edgar had to cross the creaky floorboards of the second floor towards the winding stairwell in order to climb up to his youngest's bedroom.

He fumbled clumsily to grab hold of the bannister, sleepy walk turning into a confused run - passing two portraits on the wall who appeared disgruntled by this untimely interruption to their naps. Virgil's bedroom door was directly across the landing and had been left ajar in the seasonal heat.

"Virgil?" Edgar pushed it open further to let himself in, a softer tone. Moonlight cast stark blue squares against the room floor and he caught glimpses of tall shelves lining the walls. A veritable library for the frail five year old boy who was most quiet with his fair head on a pillow or in a book.

His son, in a favourite pair of periwinkle blue pyjamas, was sitting up in bed clutching its buttercup sheets and staring at him with a terrified expression. Everything else in the room was floating. Tens and tens of books, a vase with fresh daffodils still dripping water, reading lamps, clear glass marbles that he nearly walked right into.

As soon as Virgil saw his father, everything dropped with a loud crash. "I'm sorry!" his voice was so small and so soft that it barely sounded against the room settling down. "I didn't mean to, I'm so sorry. "

The buoyancy of normally non-buoyant objects didn't bother Edgar; it was just one of the erratic ways Virgil's magic manifested, as strange or pointless as any other wizard child's.  He was worried about the emotional peak that must have preceded it.

"Virgil what are you sorry for?" Edgar sat on the edge of the bed and kindly held his hand out, but the younger Carstairs flinched at the movement. "Hey. Hey, what's the matter?" a pause as he lowered the hand and swallowed nervously - he had thought it might have been a part of his sub-conscious, that dream. "Virgil. Did you see what I was dreaming? Were you inside my dream?"

It had been the most peculiar image, watching his sleepy little boy appear in Ravenclaw tower amidst a tangled duel between medley'd peers and dark wizards. Popped out of nowhere like a drowsy sleepwalker.

Virgil bit his red lips and released his blanket, hands going around drawn up knees instead. A tiny nod. God, he was so small. Edgar had woken up from the sheer worry someone might have accidentally stepped on him in the battle.

"More of a nightmare really, wasn't it. Has this happened before?"
            Another nod.
"Are you alright? Right now?"

No response. Virgil's blue gaze dropped to the floor, he wiped his eyes of sleepy tears neither could see in the dark. The older wizard clambered on to the bed so that he was sitting next to his son, protectively draping an arm around the boy with a resigned sigh. This was not the first time he thought he had noticed Virgil in one of his dreams.

He looked up at the doorway, where Angela Carstairs stood watching them in a chambray dressing robe and with slender arms folded worriedly across her flat chest. The crash had startled her out of bed. Husband and wife stared at one another in silence. Their son was quickly falling asleep leaning against his shoulder.


***

       "It's not natural. Even for Leglimens, I'm sure." Angela sat on his desk in the study - which was just above the ground floor and the only room there; more of a studio, full of working tables and music sheets and a shiny new pianoforte.

She lit a cigarette as Edgar opened a window to let the cool night air in.

"We'll have to find a tutor either way. Someone with a sense of privacy," he returned to the desk and let her light his own cigarette, their gazes meeting over the flame. "I don't want people prodding at him."

Angela set down the silver lighter and took his hand, squeezing it and smiling with restraint (all her smiles were restrained and pointed and seemed to say more than any of her words). It would be morning soon. They didn't want to sleep just in case the little one was still wandering. Adeline, their eldest, had fortunately not stirred at all on the top floor.

      "Poor Virgil. He's so sensitive, you know..." the true Carstairs murmured in that cold way of hers, after a beat. "That's his problem."
"Some people are," he replied without commitment. "You look tired."

It was the truth. Angela shrugged, leaned in and held her cigarette away before kissing his cheek. "You look worse, dear."

Edgar raised an eyebrow at the witch he had married, turning his head so that their lips touched instead. He brushed a lock of dirt blonde hair behind her ear and breathed in the subtle scent of her lavender shampoo. They weren't perfect parents - and maybe if he were home more often he would have caught on sooner to what was happening with Virgil's tendency.

But they were together, at least, and they were trying.