An Interference of Portraits

Magic

'That much is clear from what you've been doing while abroad. It'll come. Something will come up. Have you got any photos I could see? I'd like to see,' Draco said. He was looking at me, twisting the stem of his wine glass unconsciously.

'The pictures on the wall in the Snug are all places I visited,' I said evasively.

He raised an eyebrow and waited expectantly so I summoned an album from my bedroom and moved to sit beside him, taking him through my route from Europe to Africa, through the Middle East and into South-East Asia, up to China, and then Japan, the Philippines, to Australia and New Zealand, across the Pacific to South America and then North America and into Canada before the homeward journey.

'You should put up a huge map of the world on the wall in here and put pins in it of all the places you've been,' he said, studying the small map I'd stuck in the front of the album.

The album was mostly of the people I'd met or travelled with. I'd taken the purposeful decision to use a Muggle camera. Partly because it was easier if I was in Muggle areas to get them developed and partly because I knew I'd be meeting Muggles and Magical kind alike.

'Who's this?' Draco would ask if someone appeared in more than several of the photographs as he turned the pages.

'Johan,' I said when he pointed to tall white man with his arm slung around my shoulders. 'I meet him in Greece. Dutch, from Utrecht. We travelled down through Africa together.'

'Magic or Muggle?

'Magic.'

'Did people know who you were?' he asked, an eyebrow raised as if ready to mock me.

'Some,' I shrugged. 'But I said already, it's not so big a bloody deal outside Britain. Voldemort's terror hadn't reached elsewhere so people didn't really get the danger we were in. Some did. But it didn't even touch others. They were my favourite times because people didn't stand on ceremony and behave as if I was someone important tosser to be greeted and kowtowed before. I could just get on with being me and experiencing life.'

'I don't know, aren't you still a tosser, even when you're not pretending to be important?' he teased.

I elbowed him sharply but laughed. 'Probably.'

Draco continued to look through the album. 'Oh, this is the orphanage.'

'Yeah,' I said, launching into telling him about the people and the kids.

'There's so many children.'

'The numbers increased after we ran the raids. Most of these were relocated back to their parents or sent the proper school for Magical students, depending on their age. There's a bit of a difference between what St Eulalia has compared to the Orange Tree in Nepal. It's an eyeopener and reminder of privilege. And as I say, I don't want to do a disservice to the people of an area by painting it all as a picture of abject poverty and neglect or whatever. That's only in pockets, in the same way that we have pockets of the same here. But I want to do more. For me, the problem is that there are so many cities with so many orphanages, how do I pick who I support? Do I focus on what's on my doorstep or think about further afield?'

They were rhetorical questions and I was glad he didn't try to answer.

'You're wearing the same clothes you wore out there,' he observed neutrally. When he'd seen my t-shirt, he'd raised an eyebrow and said, 'well, you're certainly short.' I was indignant, considering there was only an inch between us.

'Yeah, somehow it made sense to me this morning when I dressed.'

He went through the next pages in silence.

'Johan again?' he said quietly after studying a close up of Johan's face for a while.

I loved that photo; Johan's lips were tellingly swollen and he looked sun-kissed and healthy in the glow of the setting sun where we sat on the beach under Mount Mauganui.

'Yeah. We met up again in Auckland. Travelled a lot of New Zealand together. Then I went on to the Pacific Islands and he headed north into Indonesia.'

'Are you still in contact?' he asked casually, '...with anyone you travelled with?'

'Odd postcards. That sort of thing. But not really. Last I heard, Johan was in Mongolia. It's a different community when you're travelling. Back home... well, it's home. It's another life. A bloody world away, literally. Like these guys here,' I pointed to Pedro, Hans, and Monika, three Muggle friends I'd made in Peru. 'They gave up their normal lives to live out on the shores of Lake Titicaca. They'll never go back home. We got on great but now... well, we're too different. It's the same for all the travellers and backpackers I met. We were all running from something or searching for answers. I didn't achieve either in the end so I came home. I don't need to bring them into that or the fucking awful complications of my life. It's been better to stay in contact with people like Dhanvi and Aanga who ran The Orange Tree. They're more important to me.'

I may have sounded cynical when I said to Draco that underprivileged kids pulled at heart-strings but I knew the truth of it. I was deeply affected by what I'd been involved with when I'd worked with Dhanvi and Aanga. So much so, that I'd ended up becoming a patron for their orphanage. It had been really hard to walk away from them all.

'And have you got any pictures of Teddy?' Draco asked. 'You said Aunt Andromeda sent you a whole album's worth. I've never met him.'

I summoned the other album from next to my bed. In comparison, it was filled with magic, moving photographs, starting with Teddy as a baby with a little soft quiff of turquoise-coloured hair, through to him as the current rampaging toddler that he is with hair that sometime raged red or rebelled purple. He certainly captured Tonks and the mischievous side of Remus in character. And I could already see both his parents in his face though he hadn't learnt to change his features yet. It was mostly his hair that changed colour. Sometimes I wondered how Dromeda coped with him, he could be wild but he was also a very bright little boy. Maybe that's why he was wild; he needed stimulus.

I watched Draco study the pictures of his aunt with Teddy.

'Have you ever met her?' I asked.

'No. I told you mother's been in contact, didn't I?'

'Yeah.'

'Just letters though. And the odd photograph. But I don't think either of them know how to make the step towards seeing each other. Probably need to find some neutral ground.'

He turned the page, finding the end of the collection where there were photos of me with Teddy taken in the last few months since I'd returned.

'He clearly adores you,' Draco said with a smile.

'I'm not sure how you can suppose that,' I said, rolling my eyes.

'Because in every single photo, Teddy has black hair. And look at the way he's looking at you here.'

He was pointing at a photo where Teddy and I were laughing at something I'd long since forgotten but in the picture, he was shoving his hands all over my face and across my glasses and pulling at my nose.

'Do you see him often?'

'I try to see him every week,' I said.

'Have you set aside a bedroom for him yet?'

'Yeah. I know what I'm going to do for him. After I finish the dining room.'

'I think I'm jealous...' Draco said wistfully as he looked at the photograph of me and Teddy again as we laughed together.

'Of Teddy or me?' I joked.

He looked at me momentarily but didn't answer. Instead, he said, 'I probably ought to be getting back.'

'Okay,' I said, thinking that these partings were always ever so awkward, like there was something more to say but neither of us knew what.

***