Hello, brother...

James lifted his eyebrows at Teddy's admission that he was right. James almost never heard something like that from his family. He was proud, to some extent, but the rest of him actually felt bad for the guy. After he'd run into Frank and Rose at the pub the other week, he'd started to wonder if he wasn't the strain amongst his family members a lot of the time. Aunt Hermione had sent Frank to check on Rose, instead of asking him. James wasn't exactly qualified in some way that Frank wasn't, but Frank was a git! It didn't make sense.

James, too, was something of a git. But not in the same ways, and he felt he wasn't as extreme of one. As Teddy sort of snapped at him in return, James felt himself actually give in to proper surprise, showing it on his face despite his better instincts. “I-- Well, yeah, maybe. But if you don't want to have it go wrong, then--”

But Teddy was up and moving about in a bizarrely anxious and impatient way. Not that Teddy wasn't often like that. But it didn't fit their conversation, and finally James put two and two together. And Merlin if he wasn't even more proud. What a story he had for Aunt Hermione, now! He had no qualms about bragging. He did, however, want to know what happened with whatever Teddy's apparent plan was.

“You better tell me what happens,” he demanded quite seriously. “Don't make me write to that woman, Ted.”

He was grinning, though, as he was pretty sure that he'd just fixed his godbrother's life, and if nothing else, he'd given him some clarity. So that counted for something, right? Had to. And Avery seemed gone enough for him that she probably wouldn't turn him away. So James was utterly confident that he'd won this whole encounter, and the one with the blonde as well.

“I'll get out of your hair,” he added, though. “I, too, have somewhere to be.”

Rather than heading towards the professor's floo, however, he strode out the door and gave a last dramatic, self-pleased wave before making his way down to the dungeons. One down, one (minus Albus) to go.

His heart was in his throat. He moved through the castle as though he could not see, blinking away the ghosts of regrets and near-unforgivable mistakes. He thanked whatever higher powers that existed that he did not run into any students or staff, especially Keiran. He couldn't imagine a worse time or a worse person to run into.

But it seemed that his mission was blessed.

The cold hit him like ice, not because it was that cold, but because it was a biting dose of reality, dragging him from the murky depth of convoluted contemplation as he struggled to break the surface. He took a breath and he could have collapsed, the air hitting his lungs like prayer hitting a priest. He blinked around at the grounds. Grounds that he now protected. Grounds he had once run and rolled across. Grounds his parents had died on.

His feet moved with a purpose bigger than himself. He spun on his feet and appeared on her street, her apartment building calling out to him like a beacon, where wrongs would be righted. He slipped inside with a twirl of her wand and crept up to the room, almost muscle memory.

He knocked. And he made sure that when he saw her face, his own would tell her everything she needed to know.

The door opened. "We need to talk, Bernice."