Philomenes wasn’t awake, nor was he asleep. He was in a doped up sorta fugue state, buried under a thick mass of sedatives. Apothecary Flint was good enough to keep him soaked in Living Death decoctions until he could barely lift his head by the time midnight rolled around.

And that was how he liked it.

The dark wood of the bar was cool under Philomenes’ cheek. His eyes were slitted to hazy crescents under the iron weight of his lids, gaze flicking after movements around the pub. Trying to, anyway. He was always a few beats off count, left staring at nothing where something might have been a bit before.

He buried his nose, bitten pink with cold, into the warm crook of his elbow. Wiped a bit of drool off on his sweater sleeve. The pale fluff of his hair was damp with snow melt, curls blown out to stupid proportions by the moisture. A half-empty pint of Black Chimaera lurked at his elbow.

This wasn’t an uncommon sight in the Knockturn Alley pub, the milk pale skinny slip of a thing lolling barely conscious on some table or other. Phil was usually polite enough to languish in a corner alone. Whatever had possessed him to pass out right at the bar tonight was unknown – and there was certainly no asking him. Phil probably wouldn’t be able to tell someone what month it was, when he was sunk this deep.

His eyes fluttered closed, and slipped off to sleep. For a few minutes, anyway.

Like clockwork, Philomenes jolted up with a squawk as if he’d been slapped with a stinging spell. His hands flashed to his arms, swatting at some unseen menace, a stray elbow sending his tankard smashing to the floorboards. Smothering sand and flesh chewing jackals danced on his senses even as the dank interior of the Black Chimaera solidified before him. Breath quick, grey eyes shot wide and pupils blown out to black holes, every nerve rigid. His remaining fingers scratched weakly at the bar, as if confirming where he was.

He was drunk. And drugged. In a pub. Not being eaten alive by Egyptian beasts in the black depths of a pyramid labyrinth.

Right.

Phil’s unsteady gaze drifted down to his spilled drink, but he made no move to clean it up. He couldn’t trust himself to stand right now, much less work a wand. He made some small groan of annoyance, and buried his head in his hands, kneading at his forehead.

“Hoi, whoever! ‘nother BC over here, if’n ya can be so kind. Please and thank’ee.”

Landis sat at the bar as well. No polyjuice, no mask, only an nearly untouched drink in front of him and his hands tight on the edge of the polished wood. His gimlet gaze was fixed straight forward, somewhere past the bottles on display against the far wall, and every now and again he would raise his glass to his lips without looking, sip delicately, and then place it down again.

He'd done nothing else for the past hour. It was a special occasion, not too long after the death of Mannie, and while ordinarily Landis liked to stay to the shadows, to disguise his own slightly effiminate figure as a burly ex-Azzie or cloaked enigma in order to be left alone amid the decidingly rough lot here at the Black Chimaera, today he came  as himself. He hadn't known Mannie well, but he'd known him well enough, and today he owed the man at least the courtesy of wearing his own face.

Besides, things were happening now. There was a tension that hadn't been there before among the regulars of the Black Chimaera, a rippling among the ranks spurred on by Mannie's death but which had been long in building. Even the non-WBA patrons could sense it. There were too many outsiders poking their noses in - reporters, the Ministry, even some students at Hogwarts. The Knockturn crowd was beginning to draw together, and Landis, usually so cautious, felt a stirring sympathy in his blood that had led him here again and again over the past few nights. Things were changing, and there was great urgency in his desire not to miss out. Whatever happened to make the crowd so restless, to have Cinaed so hard-eyed and grim, Landis needed to ensure his own part in it. It was not ambition this time so much as uneasy and unfamiliar fear.

Of course, not everyone could read the current quite so well as he. The fellow down the bar from him shifted in his sleep, an easy and stupid victim for the picking. Landis was not the type of predator to swoop down on him, but there were plenty who were, if - judging from the looks of him - the sleeping man even had anything worth taking in his pockets.

Then again, Cinaed could be surprisingly stubborn about that sort of thing. He probably wouldn't let anyone touch the stranger, even if he was an awful eyesore.

An awful, noisy eyesore. With nothing better to look at, Landis noted idly the way the man's fingers scrabbled, white to the bone, against the bar top just before he let out a sharp screech and shot up, flailing at the air and sending his tankard bouncing off the ground. Landis' pale eyebrows rose, and he allowed his upper lip to curl in a sneer as the man panted and looked weakly around, then sank his head into his hands. The man looked wild-eyed and jumpy - and the sound he'd made was too shrill, so shrill. Perhaps he had some Banshee in him, to produce that sort of shriek. Landis would not be surprised.

When no response came (at least not swift enough for his satisfaction), Philomenes shakily pressed himself up from the bar. He swiveled his head around, blankly peering around the pub. His hands dragged down his shirt, patting himself down making certain that all his little caches of change were still safe.

Falling asleep/slipping unconscious/being generally doped up to the point of defenselessness so much in public made Phil adopt a policy of spreading his money out across his person. Mercy knows he’d nick money off some idiot sprawled out like a ragdoll. Didn’t mean he’d make it easy for anyone entrepreneurial enough to think the same about him.

The blonde thing – alright, blonde man – sitting down the bar from him was wearing quite a pretty little sneer on his face. Maybe he was. He looked terrifically blurry at the moment. Philomenes slipped his hands away from his face, threaded his fingers through his hair. He leaned heavily on his elbows against the bar’s dark wood, thank for the solidity – sitting up unassisted wasn’t much of an option right now. He wouldn’t look at all intimidating sprawled on the floor.

…he would have his booze, though.

Philomenes showed his black gap, flashing a half-smile that was more teeth than warmth. Those big, pale eyes peered through the haze of his hair at the man down the bar. Cold voice, silken voice, even through all his smoke and sleepiness.

“Pray tell what you’re lookin’ at, princess?”

The man must've caught his sneer, for he raised huge pale eyes through an equally pale fringe to Landis. Landis knew that look, although he was used to it on less hostile and more dreamy features; years of experiencing Dazmond at her worst (best?) had taught him to catch even the slightest hint of drowsy limbs or drugged-out eyes. She was the only one to catch his mercy in such a condition - this man's boneless slumping and clearly tortured head earned him nothing but disdain. As if he really needed another drink. The only other thing it garnered him was the slightest idle interest, just a vague moment of wondering on Landis' part exactly what was wrong with him. His story must be very pathetic, and very dark, and Landis had an interest in knowing the darkness in people (thankfully without the burden of empathy).

Surprisingly, the man's voice was nothing like his appearance - smooth, almost cultured, curling around the gutter words like they were wine in his mouth. He had something to learn about instilling coldness in his tone, though; well, Landis could teach him that. Under other circumstances - in another mood - calling the blonde princess might've been enough for a curse. As it were, he let his tone carry his chilly contempt.

"Tell me, is it really that difficult to guess." It wasn't a question, no more than the other man's baring of teeth had been a smile.

Philomenes laughed. It wasn’t a common thing these days, or ever. Laughing, singing, shouting – never things he liked to do, because it nudged perceptions a bit closer to the truth of halfbreed than his mangy appearance ever could. But there it was, bright and musical in the dingy place as fingertips fluttering over piano keys. It sent him dangerously swaying in his seat for a moment there, and he had to grasp the bar even tighter for support. The laughter died away swift as it came, once the lucid sliver of his brain caught it.

“Aye, pardon my rudeness dear.” Phil waved his mangled hand, sweeping Landin’s words out of the air like an annoying bit of smoke. “Ice princess, right right. I get it. Don’t have to try so hard – you’d be pretty if you smiled, you know, got all your teeth and all that.”

Feeling much more confident in his balance than he had any right to, Philomenes extricated one hand from the bar and fished around his coat pockets until he procured a slim silver case. “’scuse me, miss,” he said, quite politely, smiling and dipping his woozy head like a true gentleman. He flipped it open, plucked out a hand-rolled violet cigarillo, and ignited the tip with his wand.

After a quick drag, shimmering gold smoke curled into the damp air and billowed out of Phil’s cracked lips when he chuckled again. At himself, at the stranger, it wasn’t certain. Everything seemed quite droll, here and now. The scent of violets, tobacco flowers, and something distinctly else clouded the air around him to join the sting of spilled booze.

“Gracious me,” Philomenes said simply, fluttering his teacup saucer eyes at the man against the bite of smoke. “I do hope you didn’t go through my pockets while I was out. That would be terrifically rude of you.” Pronunciation crisp and gleaming as if he weren’t really a guttered pub crawler, just an actor (who was really quite pleasant looking under all the ugly stage makeup) playing pretend.

The man laughed, and for an instant the bleak smoky air of the Black Chimaera lightened and filled with notes as bright as birdsong. Landis blinked, raising his head, and caught out of the corner of his eye a number of other people doing the same. That laugh - it was bizarre and somehow familiar. Something he had heard before, and difficult to forget... Landis narrowed his eyes at Phil, tilting his head appraisingly to the side.

But the man distracted him with his jovial words, laughter still lurking, and his overly affected gestures. "Not pardoned," Landis wanted to snarl, or would have before that musical laugh, but that would have been a loss of control that Phil, however irritating, should not have been enough to bring out. He supposed it was the setting - here, now, in something like mourning, and then interrupted by a scrawny madman with no respect. Did he even know? Doubtful. Now that he was thinking about it, Landis vaguely remembered the man's pale form sprawled over tables in here before on the handful of occasions he'd visited the Black Chimaera during operating hours. But surely recognization of the missing element - Mannie - would have depended on state of consciousness. Judging from this brief experience, Phil was probably not often conscious. It was a miracle that he was still alive and well. Relatively well, that was, only missing a couple of fingers and looking a few dozen meals short of fit - and his under-eye shadows were even worse than Landis'. Rather, it was a miracle that he'd picked just the right pub not to be harassed in. It was quite the opium dream in itself, the Black Chimaera.

“Ice princess, right right. I get it."

"I doubt you do," Landis replied, his sneer now apparently carved in stone. Pretty smile indeed.

But he watched distantly while Phil went through the motions of medicating himself, Landis' own fingers tapping lightly against his glass as Phil's deftly flicked out a cigarette. A faint golden haze quickly wandered down the bar, and Landis waved away the smell of violets, ignoring the faux-manners and the "misses". He retreated briefly into his glass, pale eyes rising over the top to gaze at the back of the bar as he thought. Now that he had something to analyze - in this case, that laugh - he was much less likely to rise to Phil's continued taunting. It wasn't so difficult to ignore, even if he hadn't had the mental challenge. If Landis were to rise to every occasion where his sexuality had been deliberately confused, well, he'd have been in Azkaban years ago. The number of eviscerations pre-Hogwarts graduation alone would have been astronomical. And while such confusion was rare these days, given his decidingly masculine shoulders and hard male features, there were no end of jokers who thought his long hair or slender waist meant him soft. They were often proven wrong.

Still, there was the slim, slim possibility that Phil was really just too drugged to tell the difference. Judging from his smile, it seemed doubtful. But vain as he was, Landis wasn't so insecure in himself as to snap back. Although plenty of insults rose to mind, name-calling was so very juvenile. Even in retaliation. Especially in retaliation. He glanced back over at Phil just in time to catch madly fluttering eyes.

"Wouldn't dream of it," he responded, but it sounded a little distracted - for some reason, whether it be the eyes or the smoke, something about the man clicked. His eyes narrowed intently and his upper body turned toward Phil in an unnerving display of utter attention, fingers still caught on his glass but otherwise unoccupied and silent. Then the niggling sensation of familiarity was rewarded, and blonde eyebrows rose as he drawled, dry tone, with just a hint of surprise, "Philomenes Kecklepenny."

Yes, that was it - shorter hair, thin and fey, but undeniably the boy who had been only a year or two above him in school. Philomenes had been more delicate-looking then, much like Landis actually, for all that Phil had always been so blazingly, hauntingly pale. He'd run with the same sort of crowd as Dazmond, which meant Landis had been exposed to him a few times, but besides their somewhat similar interests in the Dark Arts Phil had always been too jittery and too talkative for him. He would've paid the older boy no attention if not for the fact that he was a little off in a way that was difficult to forget. Landis had heard that laugh before, oh, yes. Even if it'd only been once or twice, he remembered it still.

The vacant smile faded, those huge eyes narrowed up steely as sickle curves. His lips pulled back, exposing more teeth, and he huffed a plume of smoke out his nose that could have made a Welsh Greenback blush.

“And where,” the sleek softness was gone from his voice; it was colder now, brittle, like cracking ice, “did you here that?” His volume was slowly creeping up the decibel counter with every syllable. Not shouting, far from it, but the sudden upward shift said that wouldn’t be too far off if he got pressed much harder.

Philomenes squinted through the dimness, trying to make out the man’s face and connect it to something. But no, everything was blurry and his memory was leaking like a sieve. Nothing could be done for it.

He snorted and rolled his eyes to the rafters, lips falling open around a fresh exhale of smoke. Philomenes looked for all of England like an annoyed wealthy woman in those few moments, if in expression alone. All he was missing was a long drag and an ermine stole.

“Why, princess. Darling. Dear. It seems you have me at a disadvantage,” he snapped. Philomenes glowered down at the bar, lips still tugged into a tight sneer. He righted his tankard, poked his wand at the dregs, and murmured the words for a replication spell. He didn’t have much of a grasp on stopping the effects, in this state, and the tankard overflowed just enough to spill a bit more black liquor on the bar. Oh well. No skin off his nose.

Cigarette cocked daintily in his three-fingered hand, Philomenes took a deep swig of his drink.

“Oh, please,” he drawled. “Don’t hurt me, girl. But do what you must.”

Kecklepenny's obvious distress soothed him a little, the crackling, snapping, noise-building notes in Phil's voice a counterpoint to the smooth musical quality of before, but in this case far more satisfactory. Landis smiled, a gently smug curve of lips almost as frosty as his sneer.

"Calm down, boy. I've no desire for you to break my glass with your hysterics."

His mild warning-turned-insult was needless, however, as Philomenes quickly and visibly calmed himself. Landis watched with some malicious amusement as Phil lolled his head back and expelled a cloud of shimmering smoke, then snapped back upright to glare. Oh, how very frightening. "Oh, yes," Landis purred, sarcasm curving lovingly around each word. "Your flowery little nicknames have me cowering in my finely-made boots. You don't remember me? Pity."

Yes, at a disadvantage was how Landis liked him. What a fine mess Keckleberry had turned out to be. The feminine epithets were wearing thin, however. Maybe it would be all right if he gave Kecklepenny just a little zap, barely a curse... to clear his mind, of course. Landis' hand twitched on the polished wood in contemplation of the act, but no, Cinaed would never allow it. Of course, Cinaed was not in sight. Decisions, decisions. No, he was in too good of a mood right now for that - save the cursing for a low. "But then I suppose that's the natural outcome of dosing yourself so heavily into filthy disarray."

“Right right. My vision has cleared. The blazing fire of your masculinity blinded me for a mo’ there. Take off your belt and you could chip my teeth from here, I bet. Your very presence makes my baubles shrivel in shame,” Phil told his drink very matter-of-factly. His eyes flicked up to the other man , he flashed another gap-toothed grin. “I hope your machismo is appeased.”

The heat of drink flooding his throat oiled up the cogs on his laugh again, just enough for a silver bell peal of it to jump out and brightly resonate through the bar again. “Stars above, though. Anybody tell you that you hiss like a wet cat? ‘cause you do. You really do. Shit, love. Say two words to you and you go and get your knickers in a twist.”

Philomenes nodded seriously, lips compressing.

"And that is never my intention. With...with knickers, I mean."

There was that grotesque hand again, swatting Landis’s sentiments away, wafting shimmery smoke in his face. True enough, he couldn't tell his arse from his elbow when he was sunk so deep. Wasn't going to refute that last bit, not even going to try. It would look a bit absurd, what with how he could scarcely force his eyes to focus.

“Aye, aye. I don’t give two shits about who you are. Jus' tell how you heard of me, come on then. Getting coy and coquettish-like’ll just make me think you’ve got a shine for me, and mercy knows neither of us want that.”

Philomenes’ smile didn’t dim a watt, even as he set about the business of laying into his tankard proper. Those big pale eyes did the smiling for him as he carefully (carefully as he could manage, anyway) watched the man over the metal lip.

“Do we?”

To perhaps both of their surprise, Landis' tiny smile blossomed into a grin, head tilting infinitesimally back in a brief laugh. "Quite," he drawled, grin still quirking the corners of his lips, and drank from his glass again. He was nowhere near the bottom, but he glanced down along the bar in idle search of Cinaed again, wondering with no particular urgency whether he'd see the man before he left today. It was fine if he didn't - Merlin knows Landis was accustomed to making his own orders - but he'd have liked to express his condolences, all the same.

Then came that laugh again, making him twitch and slide blue eyes back down the bar to Phil. It was too silvery a sound to come from such a person, and this was twice in as many minutes - surely he had not laughed so much at school? It was bizarrely distracting.

Almost enough, in fact, to make him not notice that he was being compared to a wet cat. Landis watched, narrow-eyed, and didn't respond. What was this, some round-about form of apology? Landis had his own reasons for being touchy today, but he wasn't about to explain that to Kecklepenny.

"We went to school together," Landis replied shortly, tiring of the little game, that one at least. Coyness was not his usual, and he'd no intention of beginning a new personality trait for the sake of tricking some boozed-up boy out of his memories. Particularly when it was so likely to be misinterpreted... as per the man's smiling next question.

"We do not," he replied tartly, trying not to look too annoyed. 

“Oh, right right. You and five-thousand other blokes.”

Philomenes sighed, air rushing through his teeth and slumping back down onto the bar. He looked about like great boy-shaped balloon deflating. Didn’t narrow it down much, but the blonde fellow at least…wasn’t one of his hundred Scot cousins, some pet from Borgin & Burkes, or some nasty black market piece of work he may or may not have stolen some change from.

“Why’re you so pissy then, yeah? Oh, didn’t I…?" he mumbled, pale cirrusy brows disappearing into his cloud of hair. "...did I? Why, my stars and garters.”

He propped up on his elbow again, and extended one long, willowy limb down the black bar towards the other man. Huddled shoulders, slanted eyes, and his voice dropped like a stone to the bottom of a well. Philomenes would never say he was particularly well-behaved during his time at Hogwarts. When he had all his teeth and still slept like a human being, there was no denying Phil was a bit…well, dreamy if he’d say so himself. All the girls (and some boys) in the Ravenclaw common room who’d gathered to covertly watch him over their books while he brushed out his silvery hair by firelight couldn’t be wrong.

Needless to say, there were a few debacles with moony-eyed girlfriends. More specifically, moony-eyed girlfriends who didn’t belong to him.

“I do hope I didn’t put the blocks to your little girlfriend or some such. That was years ago though, mate. You have to move on sometime. C’est la vie and all that.” Airy, flighty, dreamy. Philomenes was smiling faintly, but in a way that said he wasn’t entirely present right now. Not so much smiling at Landis as he was at the candle over the man’s shoulder.

Those long white lashes fluttered down over his eyes, pressing close to his cheeks, gaze cast away demure as a virgin girl. He leaned in closer, near toppling off his seat, and whispered conspiratorially.

“Between you and me? She was a slag anyway. No real loss.”

"Don't be ridiculous," Landis said, but he was more surprised by the thought than anything, and the widening eyes, eyebrows raising, faintly astonished tone all spoke to it. Of course this had never been the case, and he was startled to think that it had been for anyone. He hadn't remembered Phil as being particularly attractive - in fact he'd never given him much thought at all. Full of himself, wasn't he?

"I didn't recognize you until now.  You hardly - " Landis waved a hand in a languid, sourceless gesture, eyes dropping to the counter as if in exasperation before he dismissed the thought. "You're presumptuous. And delirious. Tell me, why aren't you off dreaming in some dank alley rather than irritating other people with your hazy self?"

“Tch. Don’t need to look so bloody shocked,” Philomenes snapped. “Veela blood don’t make that too difficult, you know. All I gotta do is…I dunno, sing the overture of The Magic Flute and their little hearts would break to pieces. Should have seen it. They really liked my hair, too. Skinny slips of Slytherin girls with face like marble all wanting to pet it and such not.”

Phil ran a spindly hand through his pale tresses, eyes shuttering closed as if he were trying to call up the memory of it. He was honest. He missed having all his teeth and all his fingers and all of his conscious mind working as it should and actually having you know, friends and girls and girlfriends. But hell if he’d ever say that to anyone. Why he was even thinking it was beyond bizarre. Opiates, potions, spells, booze – all of that usually kept any semblance of feeling he had squished down to something small enough to be tucked away. Whatever. The whole place seemed somber tonight.

“I don’t miss it, but I do. Shit was a lot simpler then, too. ‘sides. I’m out in alley because I’d freeze and die and all that – oh, I know, love. ‘Why yes that sounds like a good idea, you ought to go freeze and die, Philomenes Kickleberry, dear, because I’ve got a unicorn horn shoved so far up my posh arse it’s addling my ability to say anything bloody original.’ Aye, there.” He smiled, and toasted his glass to Landis. “Said it for you. Don’t need to waste one pretty puff of breath on it.”

That quicksilvery laugh again, watery and distant, and Phil bowed his forehead down onto the cool wood of the bar top. Back where he’d started. There was a slick pop as his weakly applied spell slipped out of his drink, puddling it back down to its dregs. He wearily lifted his head and glowered into the glass before tucking back down to the bar.

"Who's goddamned ears do you have to serenade to get a drink in this place? Where's...where's Cin? Where's that surly girl who slings bottles? Hell..."

Well, that explained the tinkling laughter. Landis took a moment to be faintly horrified over the fact that his attention had been caught by a male with Veela blood.

...moment over. 

"I find that hard to believe," he said, but he wrinkled his nose as he spoke, as if he could envision the silliness of those past Slytherin girls only too well. For all their pretended apathy, girls could be like magpies, attracted to anything shiny.

"You're too kind. But waste valuable unicorn horn on something like that?" Landis made a dismissive sound like the clicking of tongue and teeth, something like a tch. "Surely you jest." He took another slow, leisurely sip, his expression smoothing out to near unreadable. "My apologies for your lack of entertainment, but I'm hardly here for your amusement. By all means, return to contemplating the bottom of your mug or - what was it earlier? The wood grain? I'm sure the view's fascinating."

For the third time came the laughter, and even if he hadn't known its Veela origins Landis would still have found it annoying. It was too high, too pleasant, and as he'd noted earlier, too distracting. It screamed to his instincts look look, but there was nothing to see but a scrawny druggie and Landis was getting tired of that view. Still, it was weaker this time, and followed by Phil's sinking of his head back down to the wood.

Landis gave him a long look out of the corner of his eye, but said nothing. Instead he took another drink, longer this time, throat working as he drank. He drained the glass and pushed it away from him with a finger. Then, eyes bright, he turned his head to meet Cinaed Tawse as the older man appeared out of the back room and came into the light, drawn by their discussion or his own impeccable sense of timing, whichever.

The door separating the pub room from the rest of the inn swung shut behind Cinaed as he came in lugging a hefty sized keg.  At first, he paid little notice to the scraggly-headed bloke at the bar, his attention glazing right over him in favor of the other blond sitting next to him.  He offered Landis an initial nod in greeting, saving the more thorough extended hand for when he'd set the keg down safely behind the bar.  The Scottish Chocolate Ale was proving to be a quick house favorite - he went through an easy keg a night; more now that the pub was seeing even more business than usual as a remarkable variety of folks came in to pay tribute to Mannie. 

The old, disgruntled Death Eater hadn't been, exactly, the most charming of blokes.  But, he was one of the originals.  Had joined the ranks of the dark-hooded Death Eaters from the very start and had incurred the Ministry's wrath when he'd been arrested.  Twenty-seven years...twenty-seven years the man had survived in Azkaban before finally being released; the last six years of which he'd spent as Cinaed's neighbor.  In many ways, the Manfred Ashford had survived Azkaban but his social skills had not.  He'd had no chance of employment outside of Knockturn and even inside the alley, there were few really clamoring to hire him.  But, even inside Knockturn, there were those willing to recognize the man for who he was and give him the respect he was due.  Those had been the ones who'd been gathering in the pub in solidarity. 

In solidarity for a veteran of the first war, a survivor of twenty-seven years under the dementors - a man brutally cut down by a worthless, spineless mudblood who was ashamed enough of wizards to pretend to be a muggle around his own parents.  The depths of the insult to their community were impossible to fathom. 

Still, he was surprised to see Landis there without disguise.  "Good to see you, mate," he offered, extending a hand across the bar.  "Come by for the occasion?  What can I get for you?"  Finally, he glanced down the hall at the pale kid.  The lad looked vaguely familiar, though Cinaed couldn't place where.  He'd been a few years ahead of Landis.  Without a name, there'd be few that would connect Cinaed to the scrawny, uncertain Scottish lad that had been arrested and expelled his sixth year. 

"Who's your friend?"