There was something metallic in the air. It felt like a never-ending ringing, made the ground feel as solid as clouds, made Dorothy look over her shoulder every few steps. Sheâd avoided the first war because she was a coward. She wasnât sure what she would do if another one were to break out. The thought terrified her - it cut to her core, like a cold wind or a steel knife. How were they to engage in a war without magic? How could they fight against an enemy that had already bested them once, simply by locking them up like cattle and draining them dry? Dorothy glanced up at Arjun. Heâd fought in the first war. They didnât speak of it much, but Dorothy knew the names of most of the survivors, having kept careful track of them from the yellow-belly of her apartment. Teach me to be brave, she thought, studying the angle of his jaw. Her gaze moved away from him to the streets ahead. âMe too.â It was all she could say in response. Her words were failing her - a strange thing for a writer to lose, but no stranger than a witch losing her magic. The world was on its side.
In the pause between them stopping at his door and him speaking, she spun a thousand stories for what lay behind the door. Dorothy didnât consider herself a jealous person. Sometimes, she felt like her interior was salted earth, or a tangle of bramble thorns and sharp edges, a place where nothing could take root, not even jealousy. But, still, some small insecurity in the back of her mind painted a beautiful person waiting behind the door, some concerned and lovely elegance here to provide comfort that Dorothy couldnât. She pushed the thought away, quickly, barely giving it the short life of a few seconds. Ridiculous. It hardly mattered and she knew it wasnât true. Instead, he spoke of decorating. Her brow furrowed, and for the first time in hours, a smile began to tug at her lips. It felt partially hysteric. She tried to picture what could be behind the door, thinking of her own apartment, an eclectic mix of dying plants and comfortable rugs and too many mugs. âIâm sure itâs not that bad,â she said, stepping in after him. As she glanced around, she realized, he was right.
It looked like an advertisement for expensive suits. There was nothing here to indicate that anyone lived here, let alone Arjun. She stepped further into the house, turning in a slow circle, taking it all in. The laughter started in her stomach. It bubbled up through her throat, and she let out a single giggle before her hand slapped over her mouth. She couldnât help it. She was exhausted, terrified, reeling â on a better day, she would have made a smart remark and let it go. But the absurdity of the day caught up with her, and she laughed, quaking in the center of his living room.
âSorry, sorry,â she breathed, trying to get herself under control. âItâs not that bad, Arjun, I promise, itâs just. Not what I was expecting.â She looked at him, warmth flooding her chest, and she smiled, shaking her head. Another quiet laugh, and then the fit was done. âYou should have had your manager call me,â she said, grasping at normalcy, aiming for the teasing tone their previous conversations carried. She moved, running her fingers delicately over the leather of the couch, her bed for the evening. Another smile appeared on her mouth, this one tender, almost affectionate, thinking of how he must have looked juxtaposed against the backdrop of decorating done by someone who didnât know him.
Not that she knew him. She caught herself, risked a glance in his direction, trying to gauge his reaction to her. Dorothy didnât look long. Just enough to catch a glimpse of his face, and then she was staring back at the leather underneath her hand. She wasnât sure when this had started. This hot coiling in the space between her lungs and her stomach that flared when she saw him, this shyness, rendering her incapable of maintaining a level of cool. Itâs adrenaline bonding, she thought, plucking a term from her memories, poring over books to figure out what made Quidditch teams work so well. Itâll wear off. A lie, but a comforting one. She wrapped her arms around herself, fingers clutching at the fabric of her shirt, and moved towards him.
âWhereâs your kitchen? Iâll make us some tea.â She wanted to reach out again, just to place her hand on his arm, feel the fabric of his shirt, the warmth of his being, reassure herself again and again that he was okay. Her fingers reached out, but she kept her hands on her own arms. Boundaries.
The feeling that day was much like the feeling the day that Arjun joined the fight the last time. Terrible things had happened, and as a result, they needed to fight to preserve what little balance they had. Arjun had only ever known war, between his childhood with his IRA parents to the war culminating in Dumbledore vanquishing Grindelwald, Arjun felt most comfortable in a fight. The peace that had followed the last war had left him feeling uneasy, as if he was waiting on the precipice of something. Now, it felt like they truly teetered on the edge, ready to fall over and off the cliff into another all-out war at any moment. The war this time, however, wasn't going to be amongst themselves, but against a darker, deeper threat lurking somewhere out there, waiting for the perfect opportunity to strike again. Arjun couldn't help but feel a sort of panic grip at his chest at the thought. He was more than willing to fight for what was right, but he needed to know who he was fightingâotherwise, it was pointless. Otherwise, all he had to hold onto was the hope that he was doing the right thing and the fear that he wasn't.
That restlessness translated into the way he talked about his flat, the anxious way he prised the door open and prefaced the interior. If he was going to try and create an interior that reflected him, he didn't know what it would look like. Would it look like the carpet-covered furniture of his home in Belfast? The minimalist cottage his mother lived in up in Scotland? He felt like he was just a raging sea, turbulent at all times and never able to stay still. Having a home was about staying still, putting down roots, but he felt like a sapling caught in a hurricaneâtrying desperately to plant itself in the ground but torn from the earth at every given moment. Arjun didn't know how he was supposed to translate that into coffee tables and armchairs, so he didn't. He didn't think he was meant to have a home, anyway. Not a real one, at least. He was meant to be on the move, meant to be constantly changing and evolving into something new. Though, perhaps that was just what he told himself, for fear that if he put down those roots, they would be torn up before they got a chance to grow.
At her laughterânear hystericalâArjun couldn't help but start laughing himself. Maybe it was sheer relief, maybe it was incredulity at his dumb luck to get out of yet another life-threatening situation almost unscathed, but he started to double over. "No, no, trust me," he said, shaking his head. "I know exactly how bad it is." Arjun's apartment looked like what every teenage boy thought they wanted their adult home to look like, but Arjun knew better. Arjun knew that the coldness of his home represented the way that he distanced himself, and he wasn't going to try and unpack that too much. Now was not the time, today was not the day. Instead, he just tilted his head back and laughed some more, for the first time that day feeling some of the anxiety ebb away. He always felt lighter around Dorothy. She had a way of making him feel like maybe he deserved to put down roots.
He turned to look at her, nodding once. âItâs through there,â he said, gesturing to the hallway behind her. "Do you want, erâ" He paused, looking over her disheveled clothes. "Listen, I think Charlotte left some of her things here the last time she was here. I bet her clothes would fit you?" He pursed his lips lightly and tried to come up with the best way to put it. "You just, uhâlook a little uncomfortable. And if you're going to stay here a while, I don't want you to be." Arjun felt awkward bringing this up, maybe because mentioning Charlotte could give Dorothy the wrong impression, maybe because he was worried about making some sort of bad impression. Regardless, he gestured vaguely towards his room upstairs. "I could go grab them for you. If you want." He tilted his head to the side inquisitively.
Selfishly, Arjun wanted Dorothy to get comfortable so that she would stay longer. She was the only person he thought could make him feel any better after the events of that day, and the only person who knew about the horror of what it was like going under that stage and realizing that they were well and truly trapped. It had made the events of the rally that much more real and that much more dangerous. The man on the stage had thought of everything and trapped them like rats on a sinking ship. Arjun wasn't sure anyone would get the real gravity of that fact except for Dorothy.