Waverly realized this was what she needed from Virgil. She never wanted anything from anyone, but unless she told someone what happened the only thing that kept it from being a dream was the mark on her wrist. She'd wanted to own the experience completely when she'd walked into Hookers, but it had been far more than she'd expected. Virgil provided enough of a vessel to contain the overflow.

She still felt something like guilt that her experience had been her choice, but his hadn't. That as much as Hooker had creeped her out, he'd taken Virgil.

"The rules serve everyone," she said leaning forward again to take a drink. A comfortable Waverly smirk returned to her face, that thing she did.

Both stories told, Waverly realized there was a piece she didn't know about Virgil's.

"Did you go to a Healer after?" If he thought of it as an attack - a thing which Waverly still couldn't tell - you'd seek a healer. "You and your ... friend?"

She'd had to fend off her mothers with a stick; she wasn't going to get dragged around, not after their previous hysterical reaction.

As they retreated from the heady delights of being bitten, Virgil felt something hot and anxious tighten around his heart. "Did you go to a Healer after?" she asked, a question you pose after sinister disasters and not after a night well spent. He touched his neck without thinking and nodded distractedly. It was hard to forget the hospital trip - especially because he was helping Healer Marrowbone with her Occlumency these days.

"My friend wasn't bitten." Virgil said after he surmounted the temptation to relive that night in memory. "But we went together, it was... fine. If you're feeling healthy and human now you probably don't need to see one," he added with a shrug.

She looked healthy and human anyway. Waverly would have made a divine vampire: she was beautiful and cold already, like watching a snowstorm from a distant vantage point. What made her so normal, so human, was her impulse to do things like get bitten by vampires or sell drugs. Would she lose that part of herself if she was turned?

Virgil finished his drink. "Are your mums really mad?" he asked more casually, keen not to dissect what led up to the hospital, how he had broken into sobs when he saw Yavin. "You should do something else awful, to distract them."

Waverly, coy and ominous, snorted suddenly and covered her mouth. She kicked Virgil in the ankle. The levity had come as a little surprise, like being walked in on. A moment before when she'd poked for more detail at his Fate Night she'd thought she caught something catch in Virgil. She didn't need to know what it was. She'd been thinking on that a bit, thinking on the things people hold close and how it seemed like everything was changing really fast when he suggested provoking the mothers further.

"It'd have to be actual murder," she whispered touching her finger to her thumb. "Or marriage."

She turned around on the stool and absently adjusted an earring.

"You're a sharply-dressed bad influence," she said. Waverly was currently hard-pressed to think of a way she could do worse than she was right now. They didn't even know about the Muse.

Murder and marriage, the two big M words. He would pay a good few galleons to see the look on Roh and Ballentyne's faces if their little witch announced a sudden engagement - the suddenness of it would be the first struggle for the wary mothers. "You're a sharply-dressed bad influence," Waverly remarked and Virgil bowed his head with a conceding gesture.

"I aim to please by displeasing," the blonde's thoughtfulness transformed now to that fickle state of Puck, blue eyes gleaming mischief. "Why don't you play pretend, let them think you're dating someone they absolutely hate? Or you could run away from home... I mean, from London."

To run away from home was the fantasy of most children at some point or another, and he wasn't an exception. Who, in a fit of anger or humiliation, hadn't thought of teaching everyone a lesson simply by running away? It was a very selfish punishment. And it was difficult, on a more practical level. Virgil did nothing by halves.

"If you're serious about distracting them, I mean." Virgil shrugged and glanced across the counter as the bartender returned with the jacket Virgil had come to collect. "But if this next full moon is as awful as the last, you won't have to worry, will you? They'll be distracted enough."

Ooh, a ruse. Waverly clicked her tongue and narrowed her eyes, impressed. A fake engagement opened the candidate pool wider if she didn't actually have to follow through with domesticity. A veritable rogue's gallery of horrible sons- and daughters-in-law trotted through her mind as candidates. As for running away, it seemed more like something a child would do. That and her mothers had been highly motivated to get her out of the house and on her own, so the impact seemed fleeting.

Virgil had more ideas than she did on how to deflect the heat; maybe he was making a list of his own. Waverly looked around at the prince's royal gardens. It was just a touch of envy. Who'd what to rebel against this? The carpet crowed hedonism. But no, Waverly wasn't actually interested in provoking the mothers further. What she needed was to lay low, because attention from her parents would mean further attention from the law and inevitably attention from her suppliers. She didn't want to admit it, but the near arrest had put her well out of her depth. The experience and the discovery of her Terry Hooker Special had whipped up a storm on top of that.

    "But if this next full moon is as awful as the last, you won't have to worry, will you? They'll be distracted enough."

"Oi, that's a bit dark, mate," Waverly replied turning back around. For as much as Iona got on her last nerve, Waverly had reason to worry about her. Iona was a high profile werewolf in a distinctly anti-werewolf climate. She remembered when The Flier had come to their home in the Daily Prophet.

"You're not wrong, though. Absit omen."

With that petition to the fates uttered, Waverly finished her drink. She felt cold again. The threads of family tethered her to the ground and pulling away only made them feel tighter.

            "Oi, that's a bit dark, mate," Waverly quipped, brought down from her high of mischief.

It was and she wasn't wrong to point it out. Virgil smiled to himself and reached across the bar to take the jacket he'd come to collect for tomorrow night. The best thing about his housemates is that they were used to the way he slipped in those dark, reckless little remarks. True enough to trope, Waverly admitted he wasn't wrong.

"Absit omen," he echoed in a soft voice as he folded the jacket over his arm and smiled at Wav. "Hit me up if you ever want to go to Hooker's again. I'll tag along, even if just to see how I feel about the place after what happened last time."'

This wasn't unusual Virgil behaviour - he had chosen to work on level nine, where he'd been left to die with his schoolmates. He didn't like being afraid of something inside his head and sometimes it was better to confront those fears.