Arcturus Hollingbury was asleep. Properly, deeply (somewhat beautifully) asleep. His long, inky black hair was spread across the pillow and his face was half obscured by it. Shoulders below the blankets raised and fell at a slow, steady pace, and a lazy kneazle cracked one eye open.

Johann peered round the bookshelves from the door, holding his breath. Establishing the dormant scene he pressed a finger to his lips in signal to Arc’s familiar. Without intruding further, he silently tiptoed away. It was a skill he’d altogether perfected in 277b when he and the healer had awkwardly held down a something-more-than-friends relationship. Johann navigated the creaky floorboards in his socks and slipped away down the stairs.

If he had neglected catching up with Arc the past couple of months then he was also guilty of neglecting the healer’s housemate. Elixa was already stuck into her books on the kitchen table, which only brought back startling memories of Durmstrang. Half an hour later, and up to speed on the details of both her training at St Mungo’s and a little too much about her exciting nights with Evangeline Kuester (he’d never look at his work friend in the same way again) Johann relented to let Trainee Healer Mordent study before her afternoon shift. It was nearing ten o’clock, when sleeping beauty would ordinarily rise on a rest day.

So he perched, ever so carefully, on the foot of Arc’s bed, to the left of the slumbering healer’s feet. He sported a casual fern green jumper beneath, and a pair of long, lanky legs in dark jeans stretched out across the floor in the direction of the door. After a friendly scratch in greeting, he let Rustle’s creaky meow and warm purr pull Hollingbury from whatever dream he’d fallen into. The kneazle had the superior technique.

If Arc had ever dreamed in recent days, it had probably been long forgotten by the time he rose every morning. Exhaustion saw to an empty mind that shut down the moment his head hit the pillow. That was all he remembered when his eyelids finally opened after a familiar warm, small and wet nose pushed its way past his hair onto his cheek accompanied by the breath of a living creature.

He limply lifted a hand and waved his kneazle away, sluggishly wondering if Rustle had had the audacity to walk over his face again. He did that, when it was time to get up in the morning and the healer had found his limbs heavy with fatigue yet unresolved. Rustle backed off politely, to his credit.

His head and neck were aching - not from the bed, but recovering from work the previous day. Somewhere under the covers his legs were handing him a bill on a silver platter and his brain was hastily trying to scrounge up some loose change from the sofa for the debt. Arc pulled himself up, hair spilling over his shoulders and obscuring his sleepy vision.

"You're being polite today, Rustle--" he murmured, turning his head. He caught sight of the figure at the foot of his bed. A brief moment, a flash of a sneering rictus that added to the shock solely from his memories. The next moment was Johann receiving the full brunt of a reflexively-cast "FLIPENDO"[1] at the end of a wand drawn from under the pillow.

He stared at the consequences of his reaction, finally gathering his full senses in the wake of the abrupt shock. "What the hell, Johann?!"

1.	Knockback Jinx

At the end of the bed, a single hand waved. The owner not visible to the occupant in the bed.

“Morning…” The greeting came more as a groan. “Take it you’ve not had any bedroom visitors since we were together then?” The question was rhetorical, posed without critique. A beat later, all six foot two of wizard reappeared from the bedroom floor, folding and unfolding like a garden chair until he was on his feet. He dusted cat hair from his jeans and ruffled his curls.

“I’ve been downstairs talking to Lix, but after Monday I thought I better come by.” Although he felt no further threat from Arcuturus, he kept an eye on where the other wizard put his wand. He might feel that flipendo later, but he was glad it wasn’t anything worse and he’d fallen short of any of the heavier pieces of furniture.

Monday had been beyond formal. It had been clinical. It was fair to reason that a hospital appoint would be clinical, but even the worst of the appointments in their past had been friendlier. If it hadn’t been for the signs of underlying preoccupation in his friend, Johann would had wondered if Arcturus had simply had enough of him. The irregularity at which they encountered each other made it easier to pick up on the changes. Gradual changes might pass Lix and colleagues by as the increments were imperceivable. Months were better yardsticks.

“Been ages since it was just us, hmm?” He added, keeping it light and breezy. He thumbed to the door, feeling it might be prudent to give Hollingbury some space after that wake up. “Shall I put the kettle on?”

"Merlin..." Arc dropped his wand onto the covers and buried his face in his hands, though it was only for a minute. He sent one hand flipping his hair back, clearing his face finally and letting him have a better view of the room and his visitor. The healer pinched the bridge of his nose, squeezing sleep out of his eyes as best as he could. "Are you alright? Did you hit anything? I didn't... mean to hurt you."

Monday had been one of the worst. He'd read about the varied descriptions and accounts of what lobotomy, a Muggle technique to calm the brain, felt like. If they were accurate, Monday would have been the closest he'd ever come to feeling that way. Sure, he had felt a slight happiness to see his old friend, but it was taken away by the need to do his job and not letting that infernal voice in his head speak for him. The last thing Johann - all of his patients, really - needed was a thorny personality.

Arc realised he'd been staring into the distance while recalling their appointment. He picked up his wand and set it aside pointedly on the side table. Various parts of him were now catching up.

"I should be the one putting it on," he said dryly. "But I doubt you want to see me becoming decent from this state, so go ahead. Better sights for you downstairs."

Arc was rightfully mortified at hexing him, but Johann shrugged it off. He suspected the healer had wished on more than one occasion in the past that he could have hexed Johann for what he’d put him through.

“Well Mr Hollingbury, I am an engaged man these days…” Johann teased Arc’s suggestion that Johann wouldn’t find pleasure in watching him emerge from the blankets. He wiggled his left hand and then pointed to the healer as he crossed the bedroom to the door. “You can make the second, if that makes you feel better.” Without lingering further, he pulled the door to. Only then, out of sight, did he grimace and rub parts of his anatomy that had hit the deck first.

Lix was gathering her books up by the time he sauntered back into the kitchen. It didn’t stop her from giving Johann a suspicious look.

“What was that bang?”
“Had to push him out of bed.”

She didn’t believe him of course. With all the familiarity of a wizard who had practically lived there once, Johann set about boiling the kettle and sourcing teapot, mugs, tea and teaspoons. He was just as nosy in their pantry as ever.

“You’ve drunk all your dreadful moonshine!” Supply had ceased as soon as Arc had arrived home from Malaysia. Elixa’s home brewing in the pantry had been potent enough to temporarily disable legs. There was a distant reply from somewhere outside of the pantry door. When he emerged, she was dressed to go, twisting her hair into a bun by the mirror.
“I’m off now, Arc. See you later!” She called up the stairs. The whistling kettle obscured any possible reply until he silenced it. Elixa blew Johann an air kiss as she walked purposefully to the living room fire and flooed to work.

“Coast is clear!” Johann called to the ceiling, smirking to himself in the kitchen.

“Well Mr Hollingbury, I am an engaged man these days…”

"That would be why," Arc muttered, covering his face with one hand so Johann didn't see his exasperated look.

Once Johann had left the healer freed himself from the blankets and sat on the edge of the bed to gather his legs back. What was Johann here for? "After Monday"? What did that mean? Monday had been terrible, no doubt that, but surely he wasn't checking in on him?

Looking at it logically, that's the most likely answer, replied the familiar voice. He knew today you weren't working - because your regular off-days coincide most of the time on the weekend - and he did see you after two months of no contact. What did you think was going to happen? He's not a stupid man, and you're not either. At least ONE of you bothered to reach out.

He got to his feet and stared at himself in the mirror on his wall.

I look terrible. He would have noticed.

"Shut up," he muttered to himself, then checked himself. If he kept this up he'd be going crazy. He went to change and at least give some semblance of normality to his room and himself, so that Johann wasn't holding a conversation with a physical mess downstairs.

He heard Elixa's voice call up as he emerged from the bathroom, followed by the almighty whistle of the kettle. Arc lingered on the landing until he heard Johann call to him, and he descended the stairs behind his furry companion dressed in just a jumper and old jeans. He wasn't feeling up to anything else today, and in fact fully intended to stay indoors unless a shopping trip for food was in order. He and Elixa took turns to do that, it was only fair since their schedules took them beyond normal hours.

"So," he said, not really looking at his friend - if he could muster up any feeling of happiness that a friend had come to visit - "why are you here? Free time and got bored?"

Hey daft sod, said the voice, I've been through this already.

Rustle’s paws pattered down the stairs ahead of Arc’s feet. The kneazle’s tail carried upright like a flag as he paraded his owner into the living room. Johann didn’t hide his lopsided smile at Hollingbury’s familiar. He much preferred a kneazle to Balfour’s disguised sphinxes with their utter indifference to him. Rustle was far more a faithful companion like Whiskey, Balfour’s obedient dog.

“So, why are you here? Free time and got bored?”

“Oh Badger, you sell yourself so low!” Johann replied, expressing disbelief with both arms. “Here have some tea.” He gave his good friend (for ‘ex’ seemed so concluded, and ‘healer’ far too formal for a social conversation) one of his best and brightest smiles. He extended Arc’s preferred domestic mug, handle foremost, gripped between his fingertips. He’d gamble that Arcturus hadn’t changed his tea preferences in his absence.

Rustle fussed around their feet, clearly hungry. Johann suspected the kneazle was rather adept at making out he’d not been fed to both residents, in the hope of something extra. The menagerie in Scotland certainly tried it when Johann’s work took him out of the normal routine. A forest of expectant eyes declaring ‘if you’re up at this early hour then it’s definitely our breakfast.’

“I thought to myself Monday it had been an ungodly age since we last caught up over tea, just the two of us. And you know how once I’ve got an idea I can’t let it sit.”

Johann looked far better than he'd been since those times when Arcturus had to deal with the sleeping potion addiction. That did lighten his heart a bit more than he imagined it would. He took the mug from his friend and sat down at the table, wincing at the aches twanging his muscles in his shoulders. Something had audibly cracked in his spine, he was sure of it.

He took out his wand from his sleeve and waved at the cat feeder to let out a good portion. Rustle never ate any of his hunting catches; he was more intent on presenting them to his owner regardless of any scolding that ensued when he would place the rats and mice on the bottom step of the stairs leading up to their bedrooms. Of course he would be hungry, but there was no complementary cheese this time to be had by either of them.

“I thought to myself Monday it had been an ungodly age since we last caught up over tea, just the two of us. And you know how once I’ve got an idea I can’t let it sit.”

"Yes... I know all too well." He lifted the mug and took a deep drink of tea, wrapping his hands around the ceramic rather protectively. Johann had got it right... all those times spent together and he still remembered. I never deserved him. "I'm glad you're much better now. You look better."

He tried to spare a smile, but it dropped after a few seconds. Weary soul. No fight left to fight. "Well... I..." This was the first time he'd genuinely had to struggle for a conversation topic, and it took him a minute to come up with something. "...how has life been for you? Nothing you've been... getting up to lately? Family life, being a parent, suiting you well?" Merlin, you could pretend to put a little more life into how you speak to him. "I suppose more responsibility is your forte after all?" Terrible. Terrible attempts.

“Yes… I know all too well.”

Johann’s smile only grew into one of his boyish grins. Arc quickly found a seat at the kitchen table while Johann casually leaned against the kitchen cupboards beside the teapot.

“Thank you, I do feel a lot better.” He agreed to Arc’s evaluation. He noticed the healer didn’t seem to share the joy of this success. Just as had happened on Monday. He logged away this observation without comment.

Instead, Arc attempted a conversation topic, which was progress. He might have ordinarily told Johann what his plans were for his day off and insinuated he intended to spend it mostly mute. When they’d been together there’d been more than a few evenings of Arc reading and Johann gradually, but not always stealthily, trying to distract him with limited success.

“Parental responsibility returns at the end of the week,” Johann obliged. “End of term, and Feliks is coming home for Christmas. We’ll have relatives coming out of our ears over Christmas. Even for a self-confessed extrovert I’ll be looking forward to a quiet moment.” He scooped up the teapot by hand, and arranged it on the kitchen table within easy reach of its owner. Breaking convention, he took a seat at right angles to the other wizard, far less combative. The odd things you learned from Penny Pickler’s persistent pamphlets. It set him at Arc’s right. Behind him, Rustle’s jaws made rapid work of the food Arc had delivered.

“What about you? Seeing your parents?” He asked, still thinking fondly on Lydia and Mordecai. They had been very good pseudo-parents to Johann when he and Arc had been together, and would remain on his Christmas card list for many years to come. He placed both elbows on the table and lifted his mug in both hands as he studied Hollingbury. “Don’t tell me you’re working the whole lot this year, or I might have to regift that ‘workaholic’ badge my team gave me as a semi-serious joke.” Beneath the table Johann’s long legs negotiated space with Arc’s, the two of them affording a much smaller sphere of personal space with their familiarity.

“What about you? Seeing your parents?” Oh boy. “Don’t tell me you’re working the whole lot this year, or I might have to regift that ‘workaholic’ badge my team gave me as a semi-serious joke.”

The attempt for laughter at the joke was absolutely pathetic, but at least he was trying his best to upkeep some semblance of societal norm. To hell with that, you could be doing be-- But he had to reply, and his parents...

"I've...stopped seeing them so frequently," he said, knowing that Johann would remember he had always gone back on Sundays to visit his sister's grave and have breakfast with his family. All of that had come to a stop. It hadn't been abrupt... first he had stopped going to the cemetery, but breakfast remained. Then the ring moved from its spot on his dressing table to his sister's. Then he had begun departing breakfast early, and then ceased completely behind the excuse of work. "Personal research and work. Well, work. You know me, Johann." Not very. Not anymore. He gave the man a wan smile that had zero meaning behind it. "Christmas is usual, of course. It will be good to see them. Sadly, not my maternal grandparents, but it's better than being alone."

...Oh wait. He had seen his father in recent times. But it hadn't been a time of bonding and relaxation[1], oh no. Hardly that. He had little to no idea of whether his father had spoken about this to his mother. That said, if it had been important, they would have owled him, and neither of them had done so.

He wasn't going to mention that, of course.

"End of term..." That was right, Hogwarts was breaking up for the hols. It seemed so distant now. "How do you find Hogwarts, whether by proxy or being there?" That's right, now you remember he never went to school here - what a good friend you are. "I haven't been back in so long myself either, but I'm sure it's still the same." Bloodied halls.

Arcturus looked down into his tea. "Haven't been to Hogsmeade in a while, too..." he murmured, trying to block out any attempt his mind was trying to make on looking back on those troubled times. The happier memories seemed to have disturbingly evaporated as he rummaged around for them.

1.	A Day When We No Longer Believe, Oct 13

As Arc mentioned his decline in routine to see his parents on a Sunday, his upbeat interest flickered to something more thoughtful.

“… work. You know me, Johann.”
“Uhuhm.”

“… it’s better than being alone.”
“Oh certainly.”

Arcturus looked as if he might say something else, so Johann lingered with his mug of tea resting on his lips, intent on watching. But rather than on his family, he switched the topic back again. Curious.

“It’s different to Durmstrang, definitely, but I think for the better.” He informed Arc. “Up until late I’ve only really stepped foot inside for the annual recruitment of young minds.” The two of them had experienced the wonders of a Hogwarts Career Day, and from the discussions in the small hours of the morning at Ceph’s at the end of summer, Arc had been called up for more awkward duties too. “Feliks seems to be overjoyed at being surrounded by so many other children and learning. He’s got a sponge for a brain.” He smiled, “I think you’d like him.” Maybe they’d meet some time in the future, if he ever convinced Arc to come and stay, enjoy a break in the Scottish air. It was clearly doing Johann a lot of good.

The nagging question could wait no longer. He set the mug of tea down with the decision.

“How are things with you, Arc?” He asked, with indirect eye-contact. “You seem a bit… glum…” 

“Feliks seems to be overjoyed at being surrounded by so many other children and learning. He’s got a sponge for a brain. I think you’d like him.”

Oh no. Ohnonono. Arc's eyebrows raised momentarily at the mere suggestion. He wasn't about to get himself involved with someone else's child and possibly screw up so many things. All the possibilities of everything going wrong in that instance flooded his mind. Something in him shuddered and he slammed the doors shut on the rush of infinite potential futures. Not right now. Not at this mome--

“How are things with you, Arc? You seem a bit… glum…”

He noticed.

His breath caught in his throat. It had to have been inevitable, right? His friends would know. Notice. If Arc so much let the cracks show... and frankly, he had done so the moment he sent his friend flying. It would take more than a blind person to not notice.

Normally to this question he would have smiled and waved it away, as he had done at work and with his parents. But with Johann, a friend he had once trusted deeply before you ruined it like the genius you are, the cracks had broken through the moment he'd appeared. There had to be a reason for it...


For attention. The mere thought left gouge marks in his chest.


Absolutely not! He has more important things to deal with than me.


He realised he hadn't answered for more than a minute. "Glum?" His voice sounded strained. "I suppose. Work has been... fairly draining lately." He was staring unseeingly into his tea as well.


No.


No!

He sighed and leaned his forehead against his hands, closing his eyes. There was no answer that he could give to Johann - no answer he could give without feeling like he'd shatter into a million weary shards. He just wanted to rest, to sleep, to set his mind to blank so he didn't think about anything. Sleep had been such a good idea.

He was so tired.

“… work has been… fairly draining lately.”

If Johann didn’t take the situation as seriously as he did, he might have admired the unfortunate symmetry between a past conversation between the pair. The roles had been reversed. Arcturus put down his tea and leaned his forehead against his hands, eyes closed. This was not the pose of a happy man.

Johann waited a moment, learning from the times Arcturus had been so keen to help he’d run off a hundred and two questions. From his mother’s worried and quick judgements. Instead, he sat motionless at the end of the table, blue eyes studying his friend with the intensity he did a stranger. He was looking for clues, for tells. Between Monday’s encounter and the response now, Arcturus Hollingbury was definitely not alright.

“Would it help to talk about what’s on your mind?” He asked gently. “I’m here, Arc, because I feel you could really do with a friend right now.” It had always been a pact in both directions, from that first night in the pub.

“Would it help to talk about what’s on your mind? I’m here, Arc, because I feel you could really do with a friend right now.”

Ask him. The voice was surprisingly docile. But it was a quiet moment in his head, where numbers weren't flying to and fro, and books weren't flipping through for a citation, a reference. A quiet, empty moment. Space.

Arcturus lifted his head, but only to rest his nose against his hands instead. How could he word it without giving away anything much? Why was he even thinking about guarding himself so hard? Focus, he told himself as he half-opened his eyes.

"When you had voices in your head," he said wearily, "were they yours, or someone else's? Or just - hallucinations? What were they, really?" There was nothing from the other side. He took a deep breath. "Did they exist to help, or to hurt? To watch, or to speak for you? What... How did you live with them then? Do they still remain...?"

Yes. It worked out. Johann was someone he knew who had mentioned this before. Arcturus had dismissed them before as a side-effect of having no sleep, but even with his abundance of sleep after trying to forget about his personal research he wasn't anywhere closer to a solution. Perhaps his friend might have an answer for him. And yet you think, 'How could he even answer... I'm sure I know the answers to those questions.' You're being redundant.

"And you're a critic," he said out loud, before he could stop himself.

It had worked?! Johann let go of a breath he’d been holding unawares. Arcturus had many questions, and Johann did his best to latch onto each of them, glad of his linguistic talents at that moment.

The questions tailed off and Johann drew a slow breath, thinking before he spoke.

“And you’re a critic.”

His eyebrows lowered before he could stop himself frowning at that out of place assessment. He was a what? He wasn’t… oh what … hang on. A vivid memory struck Johann. Arc’s office, a time of high anxiety, his mother’s pocket book, clapping a hand to his mouth and apologising.

“Aren’t they?” He replied instead, as if sympathising over a mutual friend. He ran the tip of his tongue over his lips and laced his fingers through the handle of his mug, picking up his train of thought where it had left off.

“I think they’ll always be there, but they don’t bother me so much now I’m getting better. We’re made peace.” He couldn’t rightly put his finger on the last time he’d perceived them, come to think of it. He hoped to reassure Arcturus at the outset. Not that he wanted to assume anything, but he had grown up with them, like imaginary friends, as far as he recalled. If they had arrived in his life as an adult he would have responded with far more fear.

“They’ve their own identities, different to my conscience.” His own conscience was far more an inner monologue. The others had been a whipped up frenzy of mania. “It was if I’d be speaking two or more conversations simultaneously in my head. It was why I used to always seem to be dotting about from one thought to another, and skipping ahead. The more stressed the louder and more assertive they’d become. But if we reason I’m not a seer, nor a legilimens, and not possessed or other, then they can only be conjured from my own head.” He lifted his shoulders in question, gaze in middle distance just past Arc, falling on the other end of the table.

Not keen to elaborate too far and prevent what must be rather needed dialogue, Johann refocused on his friend, and tilted his head, maintaining gentle curiosity.

“How are yours?”