CH67 - Reunited

The sun's rays shone harshly on Edmund's face, unobstructed in their path due to the cloudless sky. His eyes squinted as he turned his face downwards, angling the baseball cap on his head to better protect him from the direct light.

The wooden bench underneath him creaked due to his movements, but the yells of the hawkers and peddlers on either side of him drowned out its sounds.

Edmund and Jeremy were sitting together by the entrance of Diagon Alley, perpendicular to the brick wall that separated the magical marketplace from the Leaky Cauldron.

The area was bustling, far more than what was typical for the summer holidays. Its unusual business, Edmund decided, could only be attributed to the very same sun that was relentlessly beating down upon the waiting duo.

The English summer was much like its winter: filled with rain, rain, and more rain. Although the temperature rose during the middling months of the year, the forecast tended to remain consistent. And so, when the first week of July 1994 unexpectedly brought a spell of good weather with it, everyone was excited to make the most of it.

Like many other Londoners, however, Edmund had been caught flat-footed in the face of the foreign situation in more ways than one.

First, his already limited wardrobe had proved not to be suitable for the heat in the slightest. It was for this reason that he was now wearing jean shorts with tears at the knees where they had been magically altered and a thin t-shirt he usually reserved as nightwear. The mismatched outfit was completed with a pair of dad sandals he had been lent by Albert, his shoe size too big to borrow anything of Jeremy's.

Secondly, and more irritatingly, he had discovered that his pale skin simply did not tan. It only burned. Although he had bronzed a bit over the past week, it was interspersed with sections of fresh, pink skin that had needed to be regrown due to sunburn. If it were not for the tanning solution Cynthia had handed him with a teasing smirk, the patchwork appearance of his skin would have made him look like a freshly reanimated inferi.

Tapping his foot to the beat of a song playing on the wireless, Edmund found himself scanning his surroundings out of habit.

"Morning, Edmund!" an old man hollered from afar as he leaned on his cane.

"Good morning to you as well, Mr. Underhill! How's the ankle treating you?" Edmund inquired.

*-*-*-*

"How are you, hijo? No work today?" a grizzled-looking man sipping a bottle of iced water asked.

"Doing well, Sr. Sanchez! I'm free today, but I wouldn't mind being inside right now, honestly," Edmund laughed.

*-*-*-*

"Edmund! What's up?" a sweat-soaked girl with a duffel bag slung over her shoulder wheezed.

"Eh. The usual," he shrugged. "How about you, Sarah? Dance practice again today?"

*-*-*-*

As he said hello to yet another person on the street, Edmund smiled to himself contentedly.

The Knight Bus was a service first established in magical Britain in the 1860s by then Minister for Magic, Dugald McPhail. At the time, its invention was a highly controversial topic, considered by many to be far too muggle in its design. Slowly, however, the sheer convenience it provided won over much of the populace. There were many witches and wizards who were either too young, too old, or too unskilled to use alternative modes of transport. That was not to mention the numerous occasions where flooing, flying, or apparating was either impossible or unfeasible.

Its popularity meant that Edmund met many new people every day, and with his memory, he remembered each one of them vividly. This trait, combined with his kind demeanour, had ingratiated him with many of the regulars on the bus, causing his reputation to soar quickly.

"Well, well, well…" a sarcastic voice cut into his internal monologue. "Look who's Mr. Popular."

Edmund turned his head to see Cecilia standing a couple of feet away, her hands crossed over her chest, a grin on her face. Ben stood adjacent to her, also with a slight upturn of his lips.

"At this rate, he's gonna replace us in no time," Ben chortled.

"No way, bro. You haven't seen the people who come up to him half the time. Most of them are just grannies over the age of a hundred who wanna grab his cheeks and squeeze them," Jeremy denied. He paused for a second before coughing. "Both the upper and the lower ones, if you know what I mean. Not exactly the type of ladies he wants to be popular with. At least, I don't think so."

"Hi! Nice to see you, too. Yes, I've had a great couple of weeks away from Hogwarts; thanks for asking! How about you?" Edmund retorted.

"Ahhh, whatever," Jeremy pshawed as he moved to hug the two newly arrived members of their group. "No need to be a drama queen."

"Yeah, don't be a drama queen, Edmund," Ben echoed, his tone purposefully obnoxious.

Edmund rolled his eyes, huffing at his friends' antics.

Still, Ben patted his back enthusiastically when Edmund went to meet him.

Cecilia, however…

Cecilia's smile was stilted, despite her best efforts to mask it. He shot her a concerned glance but only got an uneasy grimace back.

"Have you guys already made plans?" Ben asked, unaware of the subtle byplay that he had just interrupted.

Jeremy did not waste a second to start babbling out a reply, and then the moment was gone.

Despite the underlying tension, the foursome still managed to have a blast on their day out. Each of them had gotten so used to seeing each other every day that being reunited after several weeks apart was exciting in and of itself.

At Slug and Jiggers Apothecary, they examined the simultaneously fascinating and horrifying ingredients the eccentric shopkeepers liked to have on display.

On a table in the Leaky Cauldron, they played beer pong with butterbeer, Edmund handily winning against the other three without missing a single shot.

In Madam Malkin's, Jeremy did an impromptu catwalk as he modelled tens of outfits, each more outrageous than the last. Even the shop assistants joined in on the fun, hooting and cheering each time the curtains to his changing room opened.

By sunset, they had practically toured the entire alley, leaving no shop untouched. To end the day, they decided it was only fitting to grab an ice cream at Fortescue's, knowing how rare it was to get a chance to enjoy it together.

After relaying their orders to the other two, Edmund and Cecilia were tasked with finding an empty table for them, which they were luckily able to do relatively quickly.

"Spill," Edmund said firmly as soon as he was able to erect a privacy ward around their location sneakily. "Something's on your mind, and I can tell it's bothering you."

Cecilia hesitated, before she finally sighed in acceptance.

"It's this…" she said softly, although her voice was slowly infused with a feral tone. "This Marvolo Slytherin! His act might fool others, but we Burkes know better!"

'Oh,' Edmund realized.

"Tom Marvolo Riddle dies, and Marvolo Slytherin is the new Lord of the house a decade later? Coincidence? I think not," she hissed angrily with rising momentum. "He's back, and the entire world is just watching the spectacle! Instead of being hunted down, he's being invited for interviews! Instead of being arrested, he's becoming the head of the majority party of the Wizengamot! Has the whole world gone mad, or have I?"

Edmund clutched her hand, silently willing her to calm down.

Her panicked panting slowed, but her frustration and fear remained. "You won't believe how difficult it was for me to convince my family to let me come here today. Dad and grandma have become paranoid, already closing down all the entries and exits of the manor. The war wards have been activated, and all non-essential trips to the outside have been cancelled."

Edmund suppressed his own self-loathing, knowing that now was not the time to wallow about the fact that he had to withhold the truth from her. Right now, she needed his support, not his misery.

"Things will work out," he promised. "You'll see. I won't let anything happen to you."

Cecilia snorted, though her heart was not in it. "And what are you going to do? Stop the dark lord all on your lonesome?"

Despite her defeatist attitude, Edmund could tell she was feeling better from the unclenching of her jaw and relaxed grip on his hand.

'Who knows,' he thought humourlessly. 'I just might have to.'