The wee hours, almost four in the morning. Mature for allusions to trauma.


He walked the length of Diagon in a daze, drawing from a toke of gillyweed the whole time. It was quiet. The Alley was a different kind of magic at night, with its damp cobbles dark and unlit shop windows mirroring your every move. Even the lamps weren't quite as bright, muted as they were by a slowly creeping fog.

The deed[1] had been done. Waverly slept on without the conscious memory of being bitten by Terry Hooker and Virgil walked down this street with his own memories stirring.

Sometimes he felt like an amalgam of every awful thing that ever happened to him; like he couldn't even imagine what his life might look like without the terrible traumatising bits. What he might look like. And it was hateful, to stand under a streetlamp breathing clouds of gillyweed in the hope of escaping it all.

Hooker's unbending grip at the base of his neck, fingernails digging. Someone else, a long long time ago, hissing into Virgil's ear. A growing sense of unease and grief. He dropped his joint and stepped on it, scowling.

None of that now. None of those thoughts, those thoughts were lies. He was bigger than those thoughts, better than them. Virgil glanced up at his bedroom window, which overlooked the alley. It made him think of Cepheus and their first date last month. If he went up to his room right now there would be nothing there but memories threatening to press down.

Virgil lit a regular cigarette, giving his hands something to do as he made his way back down the alley towards the little flat above the flower shop.

He would send himself ahead, to duck into Ceph's dreams and ask for the door to be opened. He would throw off his clothes and climb into bed, to be held. He would go straight to sleep and wrap himself in a cocoon of strange, unworldly dreams.

1.	2nd March - Find Me Sleeping