He groaned, a low noise of frustration. This was stupid - she was still high and he wasn't much better. And she didn't care. Waverly didn't care or she didn't really understand what he was trying to tell her. Virgil ran his hands through his hair and smoothed it back out of his eyes. His chest was boiling over with so many different feelings he just wanted it to stop.

"It's not the point!" he exclaimed, more tearful than angry. "Memories aren't made out of thin air, Waverly! That was a living breathing person's thoughts! You don't even know who. And what if it had been a bad memory? What if something awful happened and you couldn't snap out of it?"

At least Virgil hoped the people whose memories they took were still alive and breathing. The alternative seemed far too grim even for him to consider. He knew why Wav was mad but he couldn't get over his own horror of what Muse actually was.

"Fuck, I feel sick," he closed his eyes for a moment.

Virgil's warnings and worrying weren't abating and as the last of her memory faded away, Waverly was coming closer to rights. Real life felt harsh and loud, even a peaceful London night that she and Virgil had carefully curated for themselves. Waverly opened her eyes and fully took in the state Virgil was in. It wasn't uncommon knowledge that Virgil had been getting into some truly weird shit since he left Hogwarts. Disappearing into the Department of Mysteries, shadowing the wary-making American mind-reader - and there, just now, he'd gone in after her, gone into her head.

"Sorry," she said, not meaning it in the traditional sense. Sorry, more like, what a mess this is.

"How do you know all this," she asked then, growing less agitated. What she'd lost was gone. Now she just felt light-headed and a bit ill. She wanted the gillyweed again, but no gumption to sit up and find it.

"I mean, you ended it, didn't you? You had a bad trip and pulled me out. Went into my head and pulled me out."

She closed her eyes again and slid down further. Bloody rude, that was. He wasn't supposed to do that.

Languid and miserable, he drew his legs up in front of him and rested his head against his knees. Waverly was coming down from her high, thank fuck. He was... alright. Nauseated still but the high was quickly receding. It was his emotional reaction he couldn't keep in check, pulling anxiously at nerves.

            "... and pulled me out. Went into my head and pulled me out."

Virgil looked up, swallowing the anxiety. "I didn't pull you out. I pulled the memory apart," he could feel the tears behind his eyes and he let them go, wiping his face again, "It was awful and I hope I never have to do it again." Even as he said it he knew that there was a chance he would have to one day.

Because of level nine or because he had to do for someone what he'd done for Wav. Virgil tried to focus, she had asked another question. Questions were good - they gave him something to hold on to.

"I'm a Legilimens, Wav, I've always been one. Since I can remember, okay?" he shook his head and breathed in and out deeply. "I can tell when something isn't coming from inside me and that hallucination wasn't. There's... there's like a weird feeling to it. And edges." Was he even making sense?

The wizard hesitated and then tried to stand. He grabbed the back of her deck chair, finding his balance. "I can't believe so many people take it. They're just... consuming other people's memories..."

Virgil seemed a little calmer but the intensity wasn't going down. He was more upset than she'd ever seen him. Desperate. As jarring as it was for her, Virgil was in pieces and Waverly couldn't help feeling responsible now.

"I didn't know it was going to be like that," Waverly said. The embarrassment of being so green was seeping through anger and resentment. She was sobered (if not sober) and it was unwelcome.

Waverly sat up again and put her feet on the ground. The Muse was still simmering on the pipe, the coal still glowing. Absently, she put it out and slid it a few more feet away. She had more gillyweed in her purse. She started looking for it.

"I don't remember it anymore. I just know it was good. I could've stayed. It was perfect," she said, her affect flat.

She found her shit and lit it then offered it to Virgil.

"You going to be alright? What happened?" What happened to you.

He smiled a little, weary but well-meaning, when Waverly said she hadn't expected for Muse to be the way it was. Neither had he. Virgil didn't hold it against her - they were both adults and they weren't pressured by each other into trying the substance. What he felt more keenly was disappointment in himself; he should have known better or he should have at least taken more precautious.

Grimacing, he accepted the gillyweed joint.

            "You going to be alright? What happened?"

Virgil lit up and took a drag to steady his nerves, even though the taste of smoke on an empty stomach made him feel sickly. His gaze dropped a moment to think before he could answer Wav. "It was a weird... sexy pub memory. But not, because you brought up Earnest before, which got me thinking about vampires, and I--" the wizard hesitated.

Couldn't hurt to tell her if he didn't mention Nemo. "And I got attacked by one at a pub last month. Worked its way into my high." Virgil handed her the gillyweed and sat on the edge of his own deckchair, shuddering. Terry Hooker. Nasty piece of work. He rubbed his eyes tiredly.

"I'll be alright," his voice carried a soft but sure conviction. "Just need rest and stuff. What about you?" Virgil deflected Waverly's concern out of habit: he looked at her searchingly.

Waverly could have laughed. "Well, I didn't get attacked by a vampire, Virgil! Oh my god."

Waverly snipped back the gillyweed and flopped back in the chair. She couldn't believe him. "You know, maybe lead with that next time. You had a window."

Not that it would have changed what they'd decided to do. They'd have still tried the Muse. She might have pried more, but he was pretty shook up.

"I don't remember mine," she said a little sadly and let the smoke drift out of her mouth.There wasn't anything left of the experience because, she figured, Virgil had torn it all up.  "I remember drifting off, you asking if I felt anything. And then you snapping me out of it. Hey, did you see it when you were up in here?"

            "Hey, did you see it when you were up in here?"

He laid back, cupped by the deck chair, eyes drawn back to the sky. "Yes. You were in some sort of street festival, in the day time. It's still somewhere in your head though." Virgil sighed and tried not to think about the memory still lurking in his own. "I've just shredded it so it won't reconstitute itself."

Not without some help, anyway. His head was beginning to throb - the coming on of a headache that would need something besides gillyweed to solve it. He didn't know what exactly. A part of him wanted to go straight to Yavin's house and tell him what happened, warn him about what Muse really contained. Someone should know! Someone serious, a grown-up.

Virgil definitely didn't feel grown-up right now.

"Good thing we didn't wander off the rooftop," he muttered, sitting up a little to glance over the ledge of the scintillating lights of London. "I'd like a more interesting obituary."

"You're being dramatic," Waverly drawled and closed her eyes. She was trying to make Virgil's description of her trip familiar, but all she was able to do was use her imagination and it wasn't genuine. Her mind's eye was just guessing at it, trying on different settings and cultures but nothing fit because there was nothing to fit it to.

"We weren't going to die. We're fine. Just relax."

She stretched out her long limbs and left her arms draped over the back of the chair.

"Hey," she asked after a second. Her inhibitions were not all that intact anymore and the dreaminess of the gillyweed was now saturating. "You're good ,right? You aren't needing to speak to a Healer or something? Because Muse is no kidding hush-hush. Uber quiet."

It would be very unfun if somehow she and Virgil giving it an innocent try ended up starting a chain of events that screwed up Waverley's relationship with Tam Handrow. She rather needed Handrow to think she could take care of business so that she and Gabby could afford their own place and Waverly could stay out of the daily grind.

           "We weren't going to die. We're fine. Just relax."

He laughed, shaking his head. Virgil was perfectly relaxed - the idea of nearly dying did not scare him anymore. Not since Abby and the Death Chamber. But he had to be real with himself: doing something like Muse was dangerous and especially dangerous on a rooftop with no sober friends to watch out for them.

The blonde wizard looked away from the view, and his eyes settled on Waverly. Hush hush. There was something funny about telling an Unspeakable-in-Training about secrecy.

"Don't worry," he shrugged as he answered her concern rather than her question. "It'll stay hush hush as long as you stay the same about what Muse really is, okay? If you tell people it's got memories in it, they're going to wonder how you know."

And Virgil didn't need anyone in Wav's criminal underworld looking for him. But he was going to tell Yavin; he made up his mind just now. It would be fine. He could keep Waverly's name out of it. Fuck hush hush. People's memories were being taken and Waverly was too caught up in her stupid rebel ways to realise the gravity of the situation.

Not that he could blame her. He got up, stretching his arms over her head and smiling at the witch. She was still same old Wav. Virgil had a soft spot for his alma mater. "I should run, need to sleep this headache off," he drew his wand, "you good getting back?"

He laughed. Waverly grinned. Good, he was good. Virgil being Virgil, chatting about dying. Things were on straight after all. She heard him moving around and she looked over him when she turned her assurance around back at her.

"Of course. Who 'm I going to tell?" First, she wasn't completely sure Virgil was right, and even if he was, Waverly wasn't as spooked about it as he was. And the third and fourth layers were a) she'd sell none of her supply with scary stories and b) it wasn't her business. The question was obviously rhetorical, so she left it there with just a finger over her lips as punctuation.

As long as they were both on the same page. Neither of them would make ado about what Muse may or may not be, none of them would rock the boat, because all was well. Or so she told herself a few more times. The math didn't work out otherwise.

Virgil got up to go and Waverly stifled a pout. "You going? Yeah, I'm good here.  Drink some water or something. Got to stay hydrated."

She lifted a hand to wave and blew him a chilly kiss.

            "Drink some water or something. Got to stay hydrated."

On his feet, wand in hand, Virgil nodded at Waverly. He could feel a gap between them. These days he felt it everywhere - like he was stood on a cliff opposite everyone else in his life and there was no way to build a bridge. "Bye, Wav..." he caught her kiss in his hand. "I'll see you around. Don't smoke too much of the good stuff."

Virgil gave his wand a flick and apparated from the rooftop garden, with a soft crack! in the air.