Of Myth and Magic

Chapter Two: Charing Cross

The house seemed emptier than usual. Smelled a bit strange, like something had died somewhere, despite the fact that he'd so recently pulled out the furniture, torn out the shelves, replaced everything he could afford to replace and taken a hair dryer and plastic wrap to the windows in desperate hope of staving off the worst of the draughts. If he lived somewhere different, he would have torn up the floors by now, but he knew, beneath the cold carpet in the study and the warped old wood in the lounge, there would be nothing but stone. No dead bodies, none of the things that haunted his nightmares: wasted, white, noseless faces; the flickering, forked tongues of snakes.

No her.

There was no one there to greet him when he pushed open the front door (hard, with the sharp bone of his hip - it always stuck in wet weather). It shouldn't surprise him, the absence of life, but for some reason, today, it did.

It had felt strange to sit on the train, alone. Startling the middle-aged woman who sat across from him, short, rose-tipped nose stuck fast in The Daily Mail, trying to pretend she wasn't looking up between paragraphs, judging to see whether or not he'd moved (or perhaps drawn a switch blade from his pocket, planning to rob her for necklace, worth no more than five quid at the cash for gold). He smiled at her once, but that only sent her red-faced back into her paper. She disembarked at the same stop, Cokeworth North, but hung back and bee-lined to the cafe, as though she was afraid he would follow her home.

Again, this sort of thing didn't usually bother him, but today, it did.

The walk from the station had been cold, damp, strangely silent, the town nestled in mist rolling in from the river. He could barely see the pavement beneath his feet. His mind was back on that street in London hours before, when he had tried not to look at her, with her cloud-like brown hair, her large eyes, her teeth that she tried to hide behind her fingers - he hadn't been able to tell, but perhaps they were a bit crooked, or a bit large. Enough to cause her embarrassment, regardless, though he had only just wondered what on earth he had said that had made her smile.

The fact that she asked where he'd come from had surprised him. He thought - no, he knew - that his accent was no different than hers.

"Yorkshire," he'd told her.

"Oh," she said. "Are you here for long?"

"No," he replied, "but I'll be back."

They hadn't exchanged anything more than names. No numbers, or addresses. It seemed as though she was growing more unsteady the longer they stood there, trying not to look at each other, watching the terraced houses as though waiting for a light show to begin. It must have only been minutes, but it had felt much shorter. He could feel a ticking in his head, his subconscious reminding him that he was running out of time. He didn't know what it was counting down to.

"Do you promise?" she had asked, finally looking over, her eyes meeting his.

He felt as thought his heart had literally stopped. Dropped dead into the cavity of his abdomen and sunk right behind his lower ribs. He pressed his hand to the bones, pushed hard, like he'd be able to feel its inability to beat beneath his palm.

She didn't look away.

"Yes," he said, and his heart sputtered back to life. "I promise."

*

It was two months before Hermione saw him again. A dull, damp autumn had given way to an even damper mid-winter, the rain driving down from a grey sky, narrow streets hazy with fog. The city teemed with black-coated Christmas shoppers: dashing off pavements, into shops, onto buses or down the stairs and escalators on the Tube. So many times, she thought it was him, but it never was.