It wasn’t uncommon for Xeno to spend days on end without setting foot in their flat. It was never particularly intentional, but a couple hours wandering around the outskirts of London seeking out ghosts would morph into a wildflower collecting expedition, and then they’d have to make their way up to Hogsmeade to give Edgar a handful of flowers and a cheeky smile, and then Alice, or Pandora, or Dorcas would be in the Three Broomsticks having a drink, and that would be an adventure all of its own, after which Xeno would turn up in Sybill’s quarters at Hogwarts with a mostly-full bottle of wine and they’d caper around the Black Lake for a bit and suddenly it was two days later and probably time to head home. It was after such a series of adventures and distractions that Xeno bounded up the stairs, skipping every other step with long, ungainly strides. And it was after such a series of adventures that they stopped short on the landing as if coming to the end of a string, eyes growing wide at the sight of the door to their flat.
The door, painted in a cheerful riot of colours and abstract designs, was wide open, the knob hanging limply from where it had either been jostled aggressively or wrenched askew. And through the open doorway, it was as if the normally disordered clutter of the flat had been animated and compelled to attack itself. Books and papers littered the floor, completely obscuring the rug that lay underneath. The couch was shoved to a side, one foot practically in the fireplace, its cushions ripped and pulled apart, bleeding stuffing onto the floor. A shelf had been knocked off the far wall, the plank resting against the hulking mass of the printing press in the corner and the jars full of curiosities it had held shattered and scattered across the ground.
Xeno didn’t know how long they stood there, a couple steps outside of their flat, just looking, but suddenly it was as if they were released and they let out the breath they’d been holding in a very quiet, “Oh.”
They crossed the distance to the doorway in a few rapid steps, and then proceeded to inch their way into the middle of the chaos, wincing as their boots crunched on shards of broken glass. It was impossible to avoid stepping on things, but they tried regardless, gently tiptoeing around ripped papers and a collapsed stack of Quibblers as if the objects couldn’t possibly withstand any more abuse. They didn’t think they could bear leaving bootprints on their notes and photographs anyway, regardless of the state the objects been reduced to. Nothing about the chaos seemed real, but it tied knots in Xeno’s stomach and had their heart in their throat regardless.
Xenophilius had always desperately envied the resolute optimist. But the world was often a dark place, riddled with unfairness and useless anger, and they’d learned long ago that people were not always kind. And so, as they picked their way through their flat, finding the happy chaos of the rooms to have been replaced with indiscriminate destruction, the part of them that had adapted to roll with the punches competed with the part of them that wanted to shove all the assorted debris of their life off of the bed and hide there forever.
It was a silly thing that broke the hazy surrealism of the scene for Xeno in the end. Long fingers, which had been brushing over misplaced objects and items with a delicacy incongruent with the chaos, stopped sharply. They blinked down at the little ceramic dragon, its neck and leg broken off when it had fallen from the mantle to the ground, bright blue paint standing out starkly on the pieces of parchment scrawled with their looping script that littered the floor. And then they hitched a startled breath and crouched down to scoop up the pieces in their palm, dropping back to sit on the uneven surface of books and magazines behind them in a clumsy stumble of a movement, attention entirely on the dragon resting in their cupped hand.
Xeno couldn’t remember a time when they didn’t own this particular dragon. It had been a birthday gift, or so their parents had told them when they were six years old and suddenly inquisitive about the origins of the unassuming ornament which they hadn’t been allowed to play with because of its fragility. When they were left alone in their room they would pull over a chair to reach the dragon where it sat, safe on a shelf, and pick it up with a reverent sort of delicacy, bringing it with them to sit on the floor and trace little fingers over the pattern of the scales.
The dragon lay, broken, in Xeno’s palm. They stared at it, eyes half hooded and expression detached, biting down too hard on their bottom lip. And then, in a sudden burst of movement, they scrambled to their feet and started towards the door with much more determination than they had entered the flat with. They needed to go to the Ministry. That seemed like a sensible thing to do. They’d go to the Ministry and say their flat had been broken into, and someone with some sort of fancy badge would sort it and they could come back and clean up and everything would be back to normal again.
They tucked the dragon into their pocket as if it could shatter at any moment.
