28 Feb 2012
Tuesday, 9am
Mossley, Greater Manchester

Other than Godric's Hollow,[1] Nemo hadn't been outside London since she arrived in the UK a year and a half ago. She hadn't driven a car in even longer. When Virgil Carstairs had proposed the roadtrip to fetch his father an antique car from Manchester, Nemo had lifted her hands in the air, closed her eyes and blessed him. She hadn't realized how much she needed something like this. As a kid, all she'd wanted was to get out of the big emptiness of the rural expanse and live a life of lights and urban activity. She hadn't realized how much her heart might ache for something familiar.

And yes, she could technically drive. She'd confirmed as much to Virgil with an unimpressed shrug. She'd been driving since she was fourteen. An expired Iowa drivers license was still floating around in the bottom of her every day bag. It listed her name and old address and everything. And while she hadn't made herself known to English authorities, Nemo figured what you could do with one foot one could do with the other.

They'd met at the Stardust early in the morning and Apparated to Mossley together. She'd dressed for the occasion, in big dark sunglasses, french braids and a touring cap. And now here they stood in a cracked weedy car park looking at an antique car of a make and model Nemo had never heard of listening to a witch speak in an accent Nemo was not fluent to.

"So, uh, what's the mileage on her then," she asked through her chewing gum.

1.	1 Jan 2012 - Hollows and Staves

Virgil was still circling the car, smoking a cigarette and examining its condition. He was dressed in clothes that screamed London.

The owner was an elderly wizard who went by the name of Wodehouse, which almost certainly was not his real name, but Edgar was always in touch with those kinds of personalities. Wixes who lived on the edge of their local magical community and who harboured eccentric hobbies. Such as collecting muggle automobiles.

            "So, uh, what's the mileage on her then," Nemo queried.

He glanced at her from the other side of the car, rd lips twitching into a smile while Wodehouse rattled out answers in a reedy voice. The man was quite tall and thin and didn't have a single hair on his head, which would have given him a youthful appearance if not for a grey goatee.

"It's marvellous." Virgil interjected as he finished his turn around the car and blew a plume of smoke in the other direction. "Here's the rest of the payment," he reached into his pocket for a small velvet bag of startling weight. "Regards from Edgar."

This was normal for V. He was used to running errands for his father, and lucky for them he had today off from Mysteries; there were benefits to taking the odd night or weekend shift. He was glad he came anyway. It was a beautiful car, a '50s make that had been magically altered as a convertible.

           "Oh, w-well," Wodehouse placed a hand on the gleaming cream hood of the Jaguar Mark VII. "I've already said my g'byes, luv. You can have her right away."

Virgil's faint smile turned to Nemo.

Virgil paid the man then Nemo approached with as much casual swagger as she could manage, which was significant. Wodehouse dropped the key into her hand. The keychain was an enamel black cat.

"She's a real beaut. We'll take good care of her," Nemo assured him with typical savoir faire as she moved to climb on in, remembering to approach the left side. She settled in and immediately snorted at how dramatically undersized she was in the driver's seat. She was 5'3" and the car was clearly designed for someone a foot taller. She slid her hands around the large leather-wrapped wheel and began making note of the wood-veneer dashboard and its analog dials and gauges. To her right, the gear shifter. It really was a beautiful car.

As she waited for Virgil to get settled, she searched around for the levers to adjust the seat and height of the steering wheel, and then moved on to aiming the mirrors. Oh yes, they could do this. She inserted the key and gave it a firm turn and the Jag started to life.

"Ah!" Nemo cried and winced with glee at Virgil. It worked! Wodehouse gave her an unimpressed look; had she expected anything less?

He exchanged a few more pleasantries with Wodehouse while Nemo acquainted herself with the car, and was more than ready to roll away from Manchester by the time he hopped into the passenger seat. It was freezing but with a heat containment charm they would be fine keeping the hood down.

Virgil wanted to see the countryside. It was a wasteland, no doubt, but it would please him to see fields and farms rolling by even in the barren winter.

***

It wasn't long before they were leaving buildings and neighbourhoods behind in a blur, as well as most of the traffic. Virgil had ensconced himself comfortably, feet up on the dashboard with a road map unfolded across his lap. He was snacking on a tin of jammy biscuits placed between them. He felt... relaxed. Unconcerned.

There was something to be said about a change of scenery.

"Looks like we'll be driving through a part of the peak district," the wizard remarked through a mouthful. "Shall we stop to take photos? Somewhere on higher ground."

He glanced at Nemo, thoughtful. They hung out doing Stardust stuff but Virgil hadn't really spent much time with Nemo recently.  "Thanks for coming, by the way Neems."

At the outset, there had been a few shaky starts and drama-wrought intersections while Nemo got her bearings in the alien vehicle and managed around English traffic rules. But once you've stepped off ledge there's no choice but to fly and soon enough they were out of the traffic and Nemo felt tuned in. Virgil was extravagant. Nemo was the top of cool.

With Virgil navigating, Nemo was free to fall into a steady rhythm, the Jaguar doing what it was meant to do if well tended.The soggy and snowfree landscapes seemed small and near, black twiggy foliage, yellowed grasses, and grey treelines; February was universally dreary at this latitude probably, no matter what kind of agriculture was sleeping. It was nice to be out of the city. She might as well have been in orbit.

"Sounds sublime, dear," she said from behind her sunglasses. She trusted Virgil completely to be their guide, Nemo woefully uneducated on the geography and culturally notable sites.

"Thanks for coming, by the way Neems."
Nemo looked over and smiled. Virgil could be trusted in his sincerity.

"Thanks for inviting me. I had no idea how much I needed this, you know? Oh! Sheep!"

Nemo interrupted herself for perhaps the fourth time. A wooly huddle of a chilly flock was not yet dulled of its novelty. She'd already explained that sheep were a rare herd where she was from and that cows were the standard.  She settled back down and re-checked her speed and mirrors, and then continued.

"Ah, so cute. But yeah. I feel like we got busy. If we're not careful, we're going to grow up."

Nemo at seventeen was young enough to still be saying things like this. It was in her nature to forget that nearly everybody she knew well here was her elder by a few years; it was easy to forget Virgil was too. His place in the world was firmly carved out, but so spacious it was like he could go anywhere. No one seemed to ask anything of him, just the same as her.

He turned the dial on for the Wireless, pleased to find that Wodehouse had opted for one that tuned into the Wizarding network. Something soothing and classical was playing - modern, he thought, with hints of Chopin.

His heating charm kept in the warmth in didn't keep the wind out of their golden hair - he zipped up his jacket to the top and took out his cigarette case while Nemo exclaimed at the sheep. Virgil laughed, lighting a fag with his wand now that they were properly out of sight of muggles. Nothing but wintery fields and crisp air.

            "I feel like we got busy. If we're not careful, we're going to grow up."

"Too late," V slipped the wand back into his sleeve and blew out a circle of smoke before grinning at Nemo. "What does it even mean to grow up?" he held up a hand, counting. "Job, check. Flat, check. Nice threads... check."

He turned up his collar and leaned his head back, relaxed. "Boyfriend, check. All I have left is to develop a growing sense of nihilism and dread."

Virgil stuck his hand out of the car, tapping cigarette ash in their wake.

"Oh gawd," Nemo lamented in a deep voice, unhappy to reminded of Virgil's elderly status.

She reached for a biscuit then held it in her teeth as she checked her blindspot to change lanes around a plodding tanker truck. She caught the other driver's gaze follow them as they slipped by, two bright young things in a car that exceeded the expectation. She meep-meeped the horn in a friendly farewell, impressing no one. She bit into the cookie and set the other half onto her thigh.

"Promise you won't leave us behind when you're grey," she said giving Virgil a glance and offering her pinky. "Couldn't bear it to see you fade."

She hadn't expected to ask. She hadn't expected to want to.

He winked at the unimpressed lorry driver and stuck out his tongue as they slid past the tanker. Virgil was enjoying himself immensely - he even grinned at Nemo's quip about his age.

           "Couldn't bear it to see you fade."

The wizard took another puff of his cigarette, corner of his lucid eyes crinkling at the pinky offer. He hooked it with his own. "You think I'm going to fade?" Virgil's eyebrows went up playfully before he let go. "I'm going to go out with a bang. Like a star. Except I won't leave behind a black hole."

Or perhaps he'd go out like a candle, sputtering in the dark. He thought about it sometimes, about getting lost in all his meddling and secrets and magic and just burning up. At other times he wanted a quiet, meandering end to his life. He wanted flowers and tea and books and singing to himself.

"Keep going straight, veer right," he glanced down at the map unfolded on his lap. "There's meant to be a wicked view ahead. We can stretch our legs and take a photo for Angela."

Virgil liked to send his mother some of his photographs, and she was fond of the lake district. "Are you joining us for dinner, by the way?" he breathed out a plume of smoke.

As such things often do, macabre plans for Virgil's demise were tabled for important road trip business - namely perfectly English roadside attraction faire in the form of too-narrow pebbly side roads and cinematic vistas. At the moment, Nemo wanted to live forever.

"I could eat," Nemo agreed to the invitation, and steered them towards the exit. Virgil had mentioned it earlier and Nemo realized she'd been noncommittal.

"Why do you do that?" she asked, eyes on the driving. "You call your parents by their first names. They don't mind? I mean your dad I get..."

Edgar had the vibe of a fae to whom you should not tell your true name but who would also make you breakfast. Virgil's mother though, Angela, she seemed formal like a music box. Nemo had first met her the morning after Hooker's and dinner later today would be the second.[1]

Nemo finished the jam biscuit and dusted the crumbs from her black jeans. As they left the main road, she slowed them down to concentrate again on driving on the wrong side. It surprised her, this much suddenly open space on such a small island.

1.	5 Dec 2011 - Sister, Sister, Take Me Too

Their surroundings altered slightly, as the road gradually brought them to higher ground where there were less trees and a hint of the coming spring in scraggly green bushes. Soon, grass and lichen would be all there was up here.

            "Why do you do that?"

Virgil tilted his head back, closing his eyes so that he felt almost disembodied. Simply a soul speeding through the countryside.

"They don't mind. It's a habit," he explained in a bored but not unkind voice, "from when I used to drop into their minds without meaning to. They refer to each other as Edgar and Angela."

When he was feeling particularly mopey and missing his family, he did call Angela mum or mother. Nemo fit in so well at his house she could have been another sister; except, of course, she was sometimes better than another sister because she didn't have to deal with how he had behaved growing up.

"Yavin says it helped reconcile having to prematurely accept my parents as flawed beings... something like that." Virgil took a last puff and happily made use of the car's ashtray, luckily still functional. "What did you call your grown-ups?"

They never explicitly discussed Nemo's life. He knew she wasn't yet eighteen and he knew she had run away from something or some place - on an emotional if not literal level.

But it was hard to avoid the subject nowadays, with how close they were and how much she already knew about him. "Oh hold on, pull over right there. That's perfect."

The road had levelled out, rolling along the peak of a ridge that fell away to farmland on one side and the Lake District on the other.

Another mention of Yavin had drawn a quiet eyeroll behind her sunglasses. Virgil's mentor seemed somehow ever present and it was a little tedious, but Nemo couldn't put her finger on why she resented it, so she let it lie.

Ah, but they'd gently breached the mutually beneficial disinterest of Life Before Nemo. When she'd first arrived in England, she'd prepared all her evasions and covers about who she was, but they'd atrophied for lack of use. No one ever asked! She blurted out an honest answer.

"Mom and Dad!" Nemo laughed. How dare she be so mundane!

Nemo eased the Jaguar to stop and shut it off, leaving that big gap of silence that the engine noise had been filling. She dug into her purse for her own cigarette case, the one with the black cat,[1] then got out of the car for a stretch and look-around.

"It's beautiful."

It truly was. The depth of the landscape was striking, how so much detail could be packed into so many planes and layers. No wonder Angela Carstairs would appreciate a photo. But now Nemo was primed to think about her own mother who liked jigsaw puzzles with castles on them and how she'd promised to write. Fuck. Nemo lit a baby blue cigarette and took off her sunglasses.

"It begs a postcard, do you think?" She looked towards Virgil to see if he had his camera.

1.	First seen in 22 Oct 2011 - Calamity's Child

He felt his lips twitch into a smile. Nemo's accent never seemed more obvious than when she was saying mom right now, a word of conflicted meaning to many people.

It felt close to nature up here - simply a smooth road that ended on either side where dirt, lichen and moss began. With the car coming to a stop, the world felt abruptly silent; no wind raking through his stubborn hair, no radio blaring words half-heard, the purring of an engine once loved. Virgil hopped out of the car without opening the door.

The quiet was cold, in the winter. He had come out on the other side of the car. Across the road he could see a different view from the Lake District; a more barren, unpeopled landscape. He turned his back to it and reached for his camera as Nemo admired her field of vision.

            "It begs a postcard, do you think?"

"It does," he walked up to where the ground began to tilt steeply down, and knelt at the ledge. "Fifty pence, they'll rob you blind for a photo you could take yourself."

C-lick! C-lick!

Virgil lowered his camera, smiling grimly to himself. He got up to take a few steps back. "Okay, go on then luv," he played up a theatre cockney accent before dropping into Oxford posh. "Strike a pose for Queen mother," the wizard gestured with the camera.

Nemo loved Virgil's silliness. It was so charming and gay, so easy. She moved round and took a wide stance square to her photographer like she'd seen in fashions spreads. She held her hat low against her thigh, and tucked her cigarette behind her back. For mother. She offered Virgil a few different angles of her chin, then bounced over to take control of the camera.

"Now you, baby," she said sticking her cigarette between her teeth, affecting a gravelly New York brogue of a woman twice her age. "Let's pay your rent. Make me want a divorce, ya killing me, ya killing me."

After a few snaps, instinctively, she tipped the camera forward to check the digital screen for a preview of their work. Film, how droll. She pivoted and nodded.

"You want one with the Jag?"

He clicked away, taking enough photos of Nemo that they would have a selection if she wanted to send it to someone. Or if she just wanted to look at it for pleasure - leafing through albums was a wonderfully indulgent thing to do.

Virgil was less comfortable in front of the camera than his work onstage might indicate. He did a couple of straightforward and boyish poses, hands behind his back with his chin tilted down slightly. His blonde hair was sticking up in a stubborn way but it didn't look bad on him, as he knew. The wizard let Nemo capture a few flippant shots too; an imperious pose with hands on hips and tongue sticking out.

           "You want one with the Jag?"

Did he? A thought occurred to him and he unzipped his jacket before undoing the first two buttons of his shirt. "Yes!" he strode over to the front of the Jaguar, shaking his hair out before leaning against the hood. It was freezing.

"Does this look sexy? I want a photo to send Cepheus." Virgil pushed himself off the ground, practically laying on his side on the glossy hood, head propped up in his hand and long legs crossed at the ankles. "If he takes a shine to it it I'll give him a personal tour of ol' Betsy here."

He spoke in a mock American accent and patted the car with his free hand, winking jokingly at Nemo.

In spite of herself, Nemo blushed at Virgil's pose for his forbidden colleague - at more the innuendo than the actual image. She fanned herself with her hand, playing off the fluster with a laugh.

"Good, sir, do work," she said catching a few shots. Click, click, click!

That done, approached the car again to hand back the camera, a hop in her step. The neck strap had caught in the hairs at her nape. As she untangled herself, she made to sort out Virgil's love life.

"So, we're back onto Cepheus again? And Anton from New Years only a memory now?"

There was no judgement in Nemo's voice; she knew Virgil was kind-hearted and was clear about what he wanted. From what she remembered of New Years' Eve (when she'd had far too much to drink), she'd liked Anton. But Virgil had spoken of Cepheus the whole great long while Nemo had known him. She'd never met him, but had gathered a few things: older, sophisticated, life together, lived above a flower shop.