Ready to Reboot [open]

She was here because no place felt like home like the place where your demons were spawned.

Jack often came to this point in her life, and a long night of drinking and making terrivle decisions always seemed to be the best decision - yes, it typically had terrible consequences, but the relief for even a night was enough to tell her it was worth it. And Jack Dyllan had one again come to a point in her life where she had little to claim for herself, and nothing seemed to point towards any hope for peace or happiness. There was poor little Sunny Dyllan, a tiny beacon of hope. But that beacon also served as a reminder - reminding her that families were broken, parents forgot their children, and love was not always enough. Sometimes caring did not cut it. And Jack was being reminded of that caring was not going to be enough to do right by others.

Jack was not a melancholic character. She did not like to wallow in her woes and celebrate the right to pity herself. It was a bitter pill for her to swallow when she found herself so unavoidably unhappy, because being unhappy meant someone else had won. It was hard to say who had won here though. It used to be easier. The Death Eaters. Vito. Chase or Andrew, on occasion. But there was no way she could say that Albus Potter had won. In the long run, she think he had. He would find a woman he really loved, and she would fall head over heels for him. Of course someone would - who wouldn't? Albus was a clever man, and he had goodness in him he did not recognize. Some other bleeding heart would find it in him - she could home. It worried Jack that he may find a du Hunt type character who squashed the good rather than coaxed it out. Even though he hated her, Jack would never stop caring what Albus was up too. And she was sure he would live a life that made her wish she could have jumped aboard when she had the chance. But she could not regret what she could not do. And if she could not love him now...

She could care. She doubted he would believe it, and she doubted he would realize it. And if he did, it would be when it was too late.

It was just like Nemo-

"No!" Jack said, pounding a fist on the bar. Patrons in the bar glanced about her, but she stared forward, completely serious, despite the gallon of whiskey in her. She was done going back. Chase was dead. Andrew was gone. Vito had disappeared. And Nemo was better off without her. She could not keep coming back to the hurt, the failure, the pain. Because there was pain now, and there were people now. She could move on with her life and find happiness if she forgot, for just one bloody second, that she had reason to be unhappy.

She took another swig, from the bottle. Because she was going to forget them. All of them. Vito. Chase. Andrew. Ariel. Nemo. They were going. They were going to drown in her memories, and her memories would cease to drown her. The next day, she would wake up without them. She would not be weighed down by guilt and what-ifs and shame. She would look for purpose, rather than being burdened by duty. She would settle this marriage bull and she would try to talk to Albus Potter. She would take Sunny to the park. She would fly. She would visit her teammates. She would invent fireworks. She would smile. She would relax. She would live.

And she was going to care. She was not going to stop doing that. Everyone person who came in - she was going to care. But she was not going to care when they left. She refused.

The flat was better protected than most. Fred would have expected nothing less of a Potter, a Slytherin one on top of that. Trustedly paranoid wizards, the lot of them. There were certain wards though, that made him pause. He'd never quite seen such a pattern before: vine-like, one ward interlacing through the other, one mistake sufficient to trigger the entire configuration. And there was that flesh-corroding doorknob....

The flat wasn't exactly Spartan. Well-furnished enough. It did look however, almost eerily like a hotel-room, rather than being the home of the young bachelor it was. Fred snorted at the thought. Albus's room in the Potter household, while it had lasted, had been rather creepily tidy too. No wonder he had been so terrified at the idea of adoption when he was a kid.

Though looking at the man now: the thin, white t-shirt stretched over the back slouching over the kitchenette counter, the precise way one thumb curled under the knife blade making brisk, chopping motions, the almost inaudible humming; Harry Potter could have himself been standing before him. Silenced shoes making their way across the mopped floors, Fred raised his right hand and placed it abruptly on Albus's right shoulder, index finger and thumb gripping the shoulder muscles. Simultaneously his head leaned forward, voice escaping between his teeth in a hiss and hitting his cousin's ear, "Al."

If it had been a decade earlier, Albus would have squeaked and jumped out of his skin, directed a blazing glare with his emerald eyes, then sulked for an hour. The man now simply ceased his chopping motions, wrist stopping in midair with a jerk; his back tensing so imperceptibly that Fred would probably have never realised it if his hand hadn't been resting on Albus's shoulder. He disliked the change.

Without raising his eyes, Albus intoned almost tersely, hand still in air. "You know I don't like that, James."

Fred's lips curved up, despite himself. He stepped back, releasing his hold and turned around and leaned back, spine pressing against the counter, face tilting back and cocking to the side, watching his cousin's. "I take offense to that. You know I'm much more handsome than that speccy git."

Albus stared motionlessly at him, for a few seconds, face blank. Fred grinned amiably back.

Then Albus breathed, "Freddie,". The knife dropped on the countertop with a clang, the arms came up and around, and Albus hugged him hard, the force pushing him back by a few inches.

"Oof." Fred let out a hiss, the force of the hug enough to knock the breath out of his chest and leave him slightly winded. His left hand came up and mussed up his younger cousin's hair untidily as he returned the hug, his lips stretching into a broad smile. Now this was the Al he remembered. "I'm awesome, I know."

"Twat." Albus said, even as he drew back, lips stretched into a smile from which the fondness couldn't be concealed. His teeth didn't show though. They never did. "No one really calls me Al nowadays so...."

"So you mistook your unbelievably dynamic, charismatic, favouritest cousin in the world for your twatty brother?"

Even if the teeth didn't show, it didn't matter. The barely-there gleam in Albus's eyes was enough. "So I mistook my egoistic, twatty cousin for my equally egoistic, twatty brother."

Fred let out a heavy, burdened-by-the-world sigh. "Six long years living in the vast world and bearing its cruel ways.....and this is the welcome I get."

Albus raised an eyebrow. It was a rather eloquent expression. "Bearing the three-thousand square feet Manhattan penthouse, with the night view and the jacuzzi. Very hard, I'm sure."

Fred waved his hand in a 'whatever' motion. Albus's mouth quirked to the left in that smirk he always had but never really showed, and asked in what was apparently supposed to be a concerned voice. "Very well then. How many hours does my burdened cousin get to spend in London this time?"

Fred shrugged nonchalantly with one shoulder, the mischievous twist of the lips giving the game away. "As long as my post running the Department of Mysteries lasts, I suppose. Being a high-ranked Unspeakable is rather tiring."

Albus's mouth opened soundlessly for a few seconds, pupils widening. Fred savoured the shock far too much than it deserved.

Then finally in a slightly raspy voice: "That's friggin' fantastic news."

"I know." Fred winked. There was almost no change in the smile as he said: "I've heard better news about you."

There was silence, for a few seconds. Albus wasn't smiling, anymore. He wasn't frowning, or looking angry or curious either. He just....looked at Fred, who looked right back unerringly and straight, hiding nothing.

"I don't know what you mean." Albus said, face betraying nothing. His voice echoed strangely for such a small room. And if Fred had to stop and watch and dig and pull out, he would see that the same quality reflected in his cousin's face, every line, every smile. Even his eyes echoed, because they were hollow. Like something quite essential had been gouged out and thrown away.

"I hear you're making new friends, Al." Fred's voice wasn't softened, or laden with emphasis. He didn't believe in lowering his tone in lieu of the topic. Simple, direct and to the point. He didn't completely believe in what he was saying of course. He trusted Al to be smarter, better than that. He was just waiting for Al to deny it. "Friends better left unmade."

There was silence for a long time. When Albus finally raised his head, Fred was finally struck with how much everything had changed. How much he had changed. He wasn't just hollow. There was a wall, hard and unassailable shimmering in his eyes, and a ring of steel to his voice that he had never possessed before. Or maybe he had, and just never cared to show it before.

"You know what the problem with you and James is?" Albus began, rather softly. His eyes said something else, hardening mid-speech. "The fact that you can never keep your long noses out of other people's business."

Then he raised his hand and patted Fred's shoulder. "Good to see you after so long, Freddie." He stepped to the side, and walked out of the door.

Thump.

There was a rather emphatic sound as his back hit the barstool. His left elbow found the bar counter, his legs stretching out and heels propped against the polished black floor; tilting the stool in a precarious position that left him in the most comfortable way to lounge back. The woman next to him was still staring ahead with an almost desperate concentration, and an obliviousness to her surroundings that would have left her dead in worse places, hand clutched in a vice-like grip around her glass.

Fred could sum up his feelings for Jack Dyllan in four sentences. One, she was a downright brilliant Beater. Two, she used to be (was?) his friend, and reminded him of Hogwarts. Three, she owned Weasley Wizarding Wheezes, and he felt relieved and resentful in equal parts for it. Four, she was apparently the last living person who had been in contact with Albus Potter and Fred needed answers. Now.

His hand tapped against the counter almost imperiously, and would have been interpreted as such if not for the downright knee-weakening grin. "One Devil's Cauldron." The bartender flushed, pushed him the icy-cold drink with red sparks spewing from the centre, and even as he downed a burning gulp, back of the hand coming up to wipe his lips; the voice came out unaffected and offhand. "You still owe me three Sickles for that bet, y'know."

Jack wouldn't have come to if she hadn't been dragged out of it. At this point, she would have gone on sitting and drinking and staring until the bartender brought in the sidewalks and turned her out. But there was the odd circumstance when her solitary drinking binge did not remain so solitary. Someone had taken a seat near her, her mind had partially registered that much, but she had not bothered to give the stranger much thought. She was much too focused on forgetting.

With each downed drink, they all became less important, less vivid. It didn't matter that Vito had been close to redemption, nor did it matter that he had not found it and continued on his destructive warpath until there was nothing left for them to share. It didn't matter that she hadn't saved Chase, nor that she had not held tighter to Andrew. It almost didn't matter that she had left Nemo behind. And it was starting not to matter that Albus Potter wasn't her friend anymore.

She heard a voice and her mind nudged her, informing her that the voice had directed itself to her. She finished off her drink and called to the bartender. "Whiskey. For variety's sake." She tasted the traces of her old drink that remained in her mouth before slowly looking I her side. A shock was certainly in store for her. Her eyes widened and her mouth tipped open slightly in surprise. She clamped her mouth shut as he spoke and sighed, putting her elbow on the bar and resting her head on her hand sloppily.

"If I recall..." Jack drawled, thinking with concentration. "There is a buffer period on bets. After six years the bet is null."

That momentary jolt, the slackening of the jaw was admittedly, quite entertaining. He had always thrived on being the focus of people's attention, back at Hogwarts. Bad habits are rarely ever dropped.

It didn't take more than a second though, for Fred to ascertain that something was wrong.

He should have gotten used to it, by now. The brisk autumn chills, the crisp leaves, the always threatening rain, the bustle. On the surface, Britain seemed the same as ever. Like porridge; not always the most exciting meal, but even the lumps accumulated at the bottom of the vessel tasted of home. But it had only taken him a week in London to realise that home was not the name of a place, but people.

Jack spoke with a croak to her voice that was scarce ignored, her throat bobbed and swallowed continuously. She looked ill. Her eyes had the same hollowness to them that - Fred sat up straight, the realisation abrupt - Albus' clear orbs had. She looked like the shadow of a memory.

James was gone. Albus was associating with Dark Wizards. Jack Dyllan looked nigh broken. What in the name of Merlin had happened to his home?

Whatever it was, he was here to set things right.

"Its rather annoying to have people throw that on your face after the first ten times you know. Its all I've been hearing the past week." Fred rubbed the condensed moisture on the glass tumbler with his thumb, lips curved in a recalcitrant smile.  "It's all: 'You need to give me my money' 'Oh sorry Fred, mate, but you've been gone for six years and I lost it.' 'Oi, when did you get a kid?' 'Aw Freddie, you've been gone for six years and now I have twenty.' 'Hey, gimme a drink Berta.' 'Nope Freddie, you've been gone for six years and Firewhisky's been outlawed for non-resident Brits, regardless of how devilishly handsome they are.' " The last voice Fred mimed was high and squeaky, accompanied by vigorous flapping of eyelashes. The blonde bartender over by the corner was by now quite openly gaping at him, he quite naturally winked back at her.

After that minor distraction, he remembered his performance; so Fred heaved a self-suffering sigh, then turned back to Jack, the smirk barely hidden. "Besides mate, I humiliated myself before the Slyther'sin's for that nasty lil' thing you called a bet. I don't think their prudish arses allows themselves to enjoy a good spot of cross-dressing, y'know. But, "Another sigh, then looking into the distance as a good movie hero does. "The destiny of generous souls is always o'ercast by shadow. Regardless of my sufferings, I think I can afford to forgive you three meager Sickles for the sake of our friendship. Provided you save me from the perilous, almost certain death that boredom shall bring, by offering your scintillating company."

Then his head turned, lips curving up in the reassuring, amiable smile that they smiled so well, eyebrow rising in a quirk. "So Jaquellene, my dear. How's Britain?"

Fred Weasley had always been, and surely would always be, a tad long-winded. Jack liked to think he loved the sound of his own voice, and liked his own quirks and mannerisms. Jack never minded, however. Though she would never say it to him (for dear of over-inflating his already dangerously large head to a bursting point) but he had an interesting way of speaking that always kept her at least mildly pleased. Though she was not in a mood to feel happiness (or anything close to it) she certainly didn't feel bad for the company she had found herself in.

His long story was nothing more than a complaint and she saw it for what it was. Every time he quoted someone, she took a nice swig of her drink, as she liked to make real life into a drinking game at any opportunity she could. She set down her glass as he concluded by horrifying the bartender and said, "Yes, that's right Freddie. It's no fault of yours. It can't be you, so it must be everyone else."

She was sure he had heard her say it before. It had been a handy phrase for her, and she had often used it when speaking to his cousin James. James always had it in his head that his professors, or the girls he liked, or his class partners had it out for him. He rarely found fault in himself before scrutinizing all possible ways he could shirk the blame. And this had been her constant chorus to him. Fred would surely remember.

He continued on and she let out a scoff, waving a hand. "Oh, please! Fred Weasley I have never seen you so much as blush. You don't have a bashful bone in your body. If I recall, you goaded me into waging the bet. You were tickled to have the opportunity to wear Katherine Scott's dress!" It was strange how easily this all sprung to memory. She was doing a terrible job of forgetting.

She took another long drink before calling for another.

He continued on, again, because it was what he did best. She bobbed her head, her mood and voice sobering significantly. "Oh, yes. Yes, I suppose I could keep you company. I am capable, in that capacity... I suppose."

She look up into her empty glass and sighed a little. A new drink replaced the old one, and she earnestly thanked the bartender. Fred asked about Britain and, like that, the whole drink disappeared. She let the glass fall with a thunk to the bar and repeated, "Britain! What is Britain, after all? It used to have a somewhat almost competent society. Talk to me, but don't talk to me about Britain."

Call him anything. Call him egoistic, arrogant, self-satisfied, inconsiderate.....whatever. He would incline his head and accept the insults with a knowing smile and a flourishing, overdramatic bow. But almost nothing changed the fact that the one thing that Fred Weasley loved, was to see the people who mattered, happy.

Why wouldn't he? It was one of the things he bloody well excelled at. Making people happy. Well, the important people anyway. He used to goad and tease James out of his sulks, settle Albus's ruffled feathers when he went off into one of his moods (as much as was possible, that had been one hell of a temperamental kid), flatter Rose out of her low self-esteem phases. It ran in his genes.

So when a spark of the old Jack lit itself, slowly, banging the glass down on the bartop and drawling sarcastic comments back at him, Fred felt a flash of triumph. He raised the left hand not wrapped around his glass, and pressed it to its heart, voice solemn. "You wound me, Dyllan. You compare me to a scallywag like James Potter? That idiot wouldn't know handsome if it smacked him in the face. Unlike I, who positively reek of it."

"As far as bashfulness is concerned......" Fred mused over his glass, then broke the charade completely and grinned. "I concede defeat. Its a horribly over-rated trait. And I was tickled not by Katherine Scott's dress, but by the expression on her boyfriend's face when I finally pranced out, all ponce-like in the Great Hall. Poor fellow didn't know what hit him." He tilted back his head, drained the entire tumbler down his throat and banged the glass down, relishing the burn. "Good times."

The woman across him meanwhile, had gone through three glasses already, and Fred's eyebrows had already reached his hairline. Maybe it was too early to feel triumph. Superficial amusement would not do, he would have to dig deeper. Jack spoke, and spoke like a thoroughly disillusioned veteran of thirty, not a woman in her early twenties out to enjoy the world. Who would believe that he was actually older than her? Somehow, the few years that had passed had aged her by a decade.

"I've heard." The joking tone was noticeably absent from his voice. There was a time and mood for these things. "I'm actually a part of the Ministry now, so I have a free view of the sinking ship. Almost lost my lunch the first time I heard of the marriage law." Thanks to the complexities of multiple citizenship however, and the demands and the whole 'unspeakable' aspect of his job, Fred was currently exempt from this joke of a legislature.

He leaned forward, elbow propped on the table, and cocked an eyebrow at his drinking mate. "So, what say? Run away to the Antilles?" A bittersweet, nostalgic question. A throwback to all the times the Potter-Weasley clan and its honorary members used to bundle up in the Gryffindor common room, sprawled over couches and armchairs and carpets, and hatch elaborate plots to just ditch the pressure, the fame, the expectations, and run away; to Sahara, to Bahama, to the Arctic, to anywhere their fancy struck them. To run away to Neverland, and never look back.

Jack waved a hand, but said nothing. She wished she extend her humor farther, but she was a bit out of wits currently. There was a bit of Jack waiting – two bits really. There was classic Jack, full of snarky quips and clever pranks. Then there was current Jack, the black pit of despair disguised with anger and political revolution. However, they were currently hiding inside of Almost Drunk Off Her Arse Jack, who could manage a cynical comment, a little joke, but overall could not seem to get her brain to work. She would have been much more reserved and secretive, much more earnest in the emotion she did show, if Fred Weasley had caught her at any other time. But, such was life – people would find her at the worst possible time, and things would not go according the plan.

Fred seemed happy to relish in the old days, in the good times, but Jack was seeking to forget, not to reminisce. Because her good times... well, she didn't know what to label as the good times. All the good times had been marred by the bad, had been interrupted, leaving her to think that the good times had never been good. She hated to be such a cynic, and she looked for the food. But the good made her feel so... so... what was this feeling, exactly?

Sad.

That was it. She felt sad.

Fred knew about the Ministry's latest bastard idea, then. An idea of rotten proportions that no one seemed to have fathered - for Jack simply could not find who was responsible. She curiously wondered, briefly, what poor woman would end up with Fred Weasley terrorizing her until the marriage law was overturned. Whoever it was, Jack hoped to be at the wedding. Knowing Fred, it would be an event no one would want to miss. It would be hilarious, at least. And in times like these, everyone needed a good laugh.

His suggestion almost tempted a smile out of her, but a long face immediately dragged the smile away, and her head drooped forward. "There's no running from this one, Freddie." She sighed. "And no more running from me either. I... I ran away. And I'm done with it. You ran away too - you might not see it as such. But you ran. And you came back just in time to need to run away again." She let out a long sigh. "Take Albus with you. I don't think he'd run with me, but you need to, both of you. I couldn't stand to see... but you should run." It made no sense, surely, to him. Jack's mind was turning her words over and over, and she would not say all that could have been said because, to tell the truth, Jack Dyllan was ashamed.

And it all had been going so well, too.

His fingers curled slightly, knuckles whitening. Fred had to push down the immediate, overpoweringly ferocious urge to defend himself, to strike out, assert that he had only done what was natural, move out to brighter horizons, that Jack had been too presumptuous and absolutely unjustified in accusing him of something as cowardly as running. But his features smoothened, voice clear and weighed down by nothing as he voiced, “There was nothing left for me in here.”

And if a minuscule, dark voice at the back of his head did whisper, that only weak people (like Jack) liked accusing others of their own weaknesses, his face showed nothing of it.

But……he was here to set things right. And right they would be, even if he had to turn the entire world on its head for it. “But I agree…to the fact that there’ll be no running this time.” His tone was light, but threaded with an inflexible, unyielding undernote, that was impossible to miss. His right hand reached out, thumping her shoulder once; reassuring smile in place. His eyes met her in a direct, straight glance that could not be refused, could not be rejected. “We’re Gryffindors, Dyllan. Time for us to take that to heart, eh?”

Then of course, that name slipped out from her lips. Albus. And added a whole new dimension to the conversation that Fred could not, for the life of Merlin, understand.

He leaned back, releasing the pressure; brow furrowing just a little. A puzzle. That had begun with him setting foot on his cousin’s doorstep, and now unfurled: in the guilt haunting the eyes of his childhood friend. There was something at work here, something behind the scenes not visible to the stranger’s eye, but its presence could be felt just as easily as the storm lurking in the humid, stagnant air. Albus’s eyes had merely hinted at it; Jack’s face was practically screaming it. Something so fundamental had altered that…….Fred could barely recognize his own family.

A relationship tree, with all its branches, etched itself on the blank, fresh pages of his mind. A thick, dotted line connected James and Albus, the two Potter brothers; the tension between whom had been perceptible even at childhood, but never fully shown. James, brave and noble and apparently the ideal one to be put on the display case, his brother skulking in the shadows, just as elusive. A thick line from James to his best friend, Jack: braver, brighter and for all that, more conflicted. And there it was, that question mark between the best friend and the younger brother, who had apparently never spoken more than two words to each other. That question mark was yet to be solved.

“He wouldn’t go anywhere with me.”  An overcoat of affection, a layer of acceptance, and somewhere a trace of disappointment, tinted with disbelief that he couldn’t quite keep out of his voice. But he had to tread carefully now. Pressure was not quite the right way of coaxing this out. One wrong word, one less than careful step, and everything would flounder and crash before he had time to mend it. “Albus is…different now. Changed.”’’

You wouldn’t know. Never spent more than an hour in his company, have you?

But that was the irony, wasn’t it. No one had.

“Look, Jack.” He was unapologetic. He was unapologetic when he bragged, when he joked, and now when he met her stare dead-on, poised on his goal, he was utterly unapologetic about it. “I think its been enough, frankly. My family has remained estranged for six years too long. We’ve been considerate of each other’s feelings and privacy and whatever other shit excuses we conjured to pretend not to be a family, for far too long. I’m here to knock sense into their heads, make things as they should be and…..I think you can help me.” The bar was quiet now, a lull in the club, a spot of silence in a crowd. “So if we have ever mattered to you, if you care a jot, you will know that I feel like a useless berk right now.”

“Tell me what’s wrong.”

Jack took another drink, finishing it off. That made... more than she could keep count of. Whoops. The bartender was ready with a Firewhiskey - she had given him a nice little list of drinks to keep her going for the night, just in case someone had come in and tried to talk some sense into her. Luckily, being responsible had never been a priority for her company. Fred sounded haunted and hollow when he feebly argued, but Jack was beyond reason and excuses. She was spouting. There was a lot in her that needed to escape and she had spent a long time keeping everything in. Part of her wanted to let it out and hope that it would stay out, unable to re-penetrate her and then she could be... well, that would mean freedom, wouldn't it? That would mean nobody and no thing had any hold on her and she could move on to bigger and better things. Whatever those were.

Her new drink was delivered and she sighed contentedly. "I'm not complaining, Freddie. I'm just saying. Some people had reasons to run, and some people had reasons to stay. That's the nature of war, and you better believe that's what's caused everything. War doesn't have to be declared for their to be war. War is all around us, in snide looks and words unsaid. Don't think there's peace because it's not real. War is gravity. It keeps everyone grounded." She derailed her line of talk by taking a deeper drought of Firewhiskey.

"Burn my throat, warm my soul. That's why we come to the drinking hole." She murmured the words of the song, one of many Nemo had taught her. She might have been purging herself of him, but that did not mean traces would not remain. Just as grains of her drink would remain in the curves of the glass, so would memories of her old roommate. Just like with the drink, these grains of memories would not be him, but they would always hold a taste of his flavor. No one was truly ever lost in this way.

Jack let out a bark of a laugh. "Oh, please. He wouldn't go with you anywhere before... It didn't take a change to make that true." Her laughter subsided however, as truth set in. So Albus really had changed? It was evident, even to Fred. She paused - was that it though? "Did he change though? Or are you paying more attention to him? Does he just not seem the way you always assumed he was? Maybe you've changed my friend. Or maybe Albus is getting more comfortable being himself around you, Freddie-friend. You see, it may be easy to pin a difference on a change in Albus' heart but I don't know if that would be right."

And if it was, she did not want to think that Albus really had changed. She didn't like to think that, because it might have something to do with her.

He continued to speak and though she knew it was only in her head, his words swirled in her ears like liquid spiraling down a drain. Her head rung with what he was saying, and she knew he was not doing it on purpose, but it almost felt like accusations. She hung her head, looking down at the hands that gripped her Firewhiskey glass. The wrinkles on her forehead felt heavy - she briefly wondered how much she had aged since she had arrived in the bar. If she had to guess, she would have to say thirty years or so. At least.

She let out a sigh. "You scoundrel - you know I f*cking care." It was quiet, and sounded more sincere and coherent than anything else she had said that evening. "There's a lot wrong. But I told Albus I wouldn't tell. I've disappointed him again and again and I refuse to do it anymore. I tried, Freddie, I tried to be good. But it doesn't come easy, I guess. I want..." She paused. "I want you to know that Albus might be in danger. But I don't think you can save him. He needs to fight it himself. And you need to be his cousin. And... if you can... see if he'll forgive me. I miss him." She paused, staring into her drink. A tear dropped into it and her strained voice cracked as she finally said, "I miss Albus Potter a whole lot, Fred."

"Burn my throat, warm my soul. That's why we come to the drinking hole."

Those meandering, tuneless words had no right to sound so forlorn. Eerie, even. Distant, drifting away; like the friend before him.

His eyes hadn't shifted from their target. There they remained, fixed, constant, probing; testing Jaquellene Dyllan. Gathering clues, arranging information, allowing everything to fall into place within his mind. It was a strange state of consciousness, where everything seemed blurry except the object in focus, like a hawk measuring out every inch of skin covering the rabbit scurrying on the ground, fifty feet below. Registering everything: the way she quietly spoke about his own cousin, with absolute assurance. She didn't seem like she was suggesting that Albus hadn't changed. She seemed absolutely affirmed on the fact.

"Didn't seem like he was getting more ' comfortable being himself ' round me." The barely there stress on the words, the almost-cynicism; Fred did not in all probability realise how much he sounded like the very subject of his conversation at that moment. It was a rare moment, but he was related to the Potter after all. But then the words sharpened, and the resemblance vanished. "Seemed more like he was too far gone to give a f*cking damn."

But even if Albus didn't seem to give a damn, Jack most definitely did. She spoke, and the more her words flowed out, quiet and rushed and breaking around themselves; the more Fred got the distinct feeling that he had stepped into an alternate dimension. A dimension where Albus was more than a skulking shadow and Jack, the invincible Triwizard champion, drunk herself sick in a bar over aforesaid man (and she was doing that and Fred didn't understand how the hell he hadn't seen it before) and James was still.bloody.gone. He sat there, one ankle still hooked over another, bar stool tilting back precariously. Sat there, in unusual, uncharacteristic silence; before thinking the hell and throwing himself into action. It had always looked better on him.

A sudden creak and the bar stool thumped back to its original, balanced position with all four legs on the ground. His standing up had been little less than a fast, fluid cascade of motion.

"Well, missing anyone and whining in a bar about it had never done anyone a whole lot of good."

His right hand swiped the glass out of her hand quicker than lightning. His left impacted the bar counter with a thump that was sure to make her turn towards him. Shoulders bent and tight, head lowered and cocked, face directly opposite hers; Fred Weasley was bent on making his words count. His eyes gleamed bright amber under the lighting. "Look, are you Jack Dyllan or not? Because the Jack I remember was not a whiner. No problem, " He brought the firewhisky glass down on her head, the bottom of the tumbler hitting it with a dull thunk, for emphasis. "I repeat, no problem, between people who care about one another is unsolvable. So you are going to get your ass off that stool, out of this hellhole and offered to Al as a peace offering, if needs be, right now."

Calm, direct instructions. They should be easy enough to follow. "You will go to his house. Do what it takes: curse each other, scream, kill one another, start crying like a couple of old maids, I don't care. But you will clear this up. Kiss and make up, by the time the night is out." He held out a hand, for a bout of Side-Apparition. She might just bolt if she went alone, after all. "Clear?"

Then of course, his own words sunk into his brain. Words that made too much sense, all of a sudden. Kiss and make up.

Kiss and make up.

Oh, crap.