Around midnight. Carstairs Household, Maida Vale.


He hadn't been back to sleep after returning from St.Mungo's[1] with Virgil and Nemo in tow.

They had managed it without waking his wife, Angela, who was still oblivious to the goings-on of this evening. Edgar sat in his small kitchen with a single stick of candle for light and a cup of hot tea to keep him company. It was a cosy kitchen that let on to a back garden; usually crowded even when it was just the five of them sitting down to dinner for the holidays. Now it was quiet and empty, gingham curtains drawn over the windows.

When the owl arrived the note had read: "Virgil + friend, vampire attack. Safe now. St.Mungo's 2nd floor. Come posthaste." Never let it be said that Yavin Morgenthau didn't know how to incite a quick reaction. Edgar had only given himself time to splash some water on his face before apparating straight to the hospital.

Matters hadn't been made clear there, either. Nobody wanted to make a report. His son was on the brink of sleep, Nemo not far from it either. She was a nice girl - he liked her at Stardust, a creative presence. Not the sort he expected to go looking for trouble.

And yet trouble had found them somehow.

Edgar finished his tea and got up, candle in hand. He made his way through the living room and foyer, then up the winding stairs past his working area on the first floor. His star patterned pyjamas glowed faintly in the unlit passageway. He paused at the door to Virgil's childhood bedroom, looking in. They'd left it ajar.

The two blonde wixes lay in the narrow bed next to a towering bookshelf, dreaming. He smiled indistinctly. They could almost be brother and sister like that,  tarnished gold hair mingling at the crown. Virgil was still holding her hand. An inanimate muggle poster[2] watched them from the wall behind, as strange to Edgar now as it had been when Virgil first brought it home from a market in Camden three years ago.

Edgar watched them a little longer. What did these children go around doing, when nobody was watching? Oh, he was that age once. People forgot easily, even in the wizarding world, what trouble they got up to when they were that young. Fresh out of Hogwarts or, like Potter in his time, still in school.

They would talk if they wanted to, in the morning. He stepped away and climbed the rest of the stairs to the master bedroom. Edgar wasn't going to sleep, no, but he would lay down in bed until the house was awake again. Thinking. Like father, like son.

1.	4th Dec - And For My Next Act
2.	From the Sandman comic, The Dream Hunters.