divided.

"I see you found the back garden," George started, watching Niamh flick a long column of ashes off the end of one of her clove cigarettes.

He sat down next to her on the step, watching as she paused for a second, cigarette half way to her lips, and scanned the 'garden' before her. A tangle of hardy weeds, thick vines, and ominous looking buds that had never opened, only withered. Gargoyles and serpent sculptures and dark verse inlaid in a winding path of cracking stone.

"You call this a garden?"

George winced. He knew she was trying to be sarcastic. Trying, however, was the operative word. With the current state of her voice, she couldn't sound anything more than scratchy and ill.

"Okay, if you could just...not talk, that would be great."

"Fuck you," she scratched at him.

"No, I'm serious. Your voice sounds so bad it hurts ME when you talk."

"Next time I'm mysteriously hexed, I'll be sure that it doesn't effect the sound of my voice so that I can avoid causing anyone else pain."

"What did I say about talking?" George smirked at her. "Look, here comes Fred. You can whisper what you want to say into his ear and he'll repeat it to me."

"I will hit you, George; I want you to know that."

"Muggle violence, Niamh, isn't that a bit below you?" Fred joined in easily, although he felt as if he sounded half-hearted.

"I came out here for peace and quiet, if you can't be quiet, I would like for you to go away." She took a long, slow drag on her cigarette.

"You probably shouldn't be smoking right now," Fred offered tentatively.

"Maybe you're right, but I haven't keeled over yet, and I really need something to help me calm down."

Fred sat down next to Niamh on the back step and leaned against her, it was the only way he knew to offer comfort, through contact, much the way his mother did. There was nothing that could be said to make her feel better, and he knew it. They had no more information on what had happened to her, or how to lift the hex. They were scarcely better off than they had been when Niamh had passed out on the floor of their shop the evening previous.

He felt incredibly frustrated, and to some extent, he needed comforting too. He wanted to shout at her. To tell her to run, far and fast, to get away from this side of his life. But he knew shouting at her would only make things worse, would only steel her resolve. Now he knew why his parents had fought so hard, tooth and nail, to keep him away from all this.

It wasn't because they thought he couldn't handle the responsibility of taking his life into his own hands. No. It was because they would have to sit by and watch him get hurt. And because they knew how hard it would be for him to become involved, in this way, with these people, and then have to sit back and watch them get hurt. It was the others you worried for, felt for. Not yourself. It was never yourself.

Niamh let her head fall to his shoulder and sighed almost inaudibly. He heard her whisper 'Thank you,' but wondered what on earth she could be thanking him for. There was nothing he'd done in the past day, in the past weeks, that was extraordinary. Nothing anyone else would not have done. In fact, he felt decidedly like a failure. He hadn't protected her from this, he couldn't fix this, he couldn't even make a proper joke to lighten the situation.

"Dumbledore will be here in a little while." Her head lifted off his shoulder and she looked between him and George quickly.

"Why?" This time George did not tease her for her lack of voice.

"Well, ehm, we haven't really been able to learn anything more about the attack on you," he began.

"Or at least, nothing really clear."

"So he's coming round to...to eh, well, he's a really good Legilimens, and he wants to see if he can, sort of, mine you for information."

"He reckons that even though you can't recall the information yourself, that it's all there, locked inside a memory."

"Ugh," Niamh groaned, "I hate that."

"Hate what?"

"Being Legilimens-ed, or whatever you call it." She covered her eyes in protest.

"You've been legilimens-ed before?"

"You haven't?" She peeked out between her fingers.

"No," they answered in unison.

"We had to learn occlumency in school." This time her hands were away from her eyes completely as she looked at them quizzically. "I can't believe you didn't have to learn occlumency in school."

"Professor Dumbledore is teaching Harry, giving him private lessons because...well, because he's The Boy Who Lived, but no one else has to learn it, it's not even an option at Hogwarts."

"Why did you have to learn it?"

"I guess they figured, if you weren't practiced at keeping your mind closed, if it wasn't something you did very naturally, even in a non-threatening situation, then you were vulnerable, and a liability to a community. They didn't want to risk the muggles we interacted with on a daily basis finding out, I guess...although, I'm not sure how they would have...Legilimency isn't exactly a muggle practice...I guess it was just like insurance, you know? Just in case."

"You know occlumency," George whispered, slightly awed, "I can't believe you know occlumency."

"Oh stop it, George; it's not as if it's my best subject," she snapped. "You'd know it too if you'd have gone to school in the States."

"Err, sorry, I didn't mean to..." He trailed off and she sighed.

"I'm just tired of everyone around here looking at me like I'm some kind of freak for the life I've lived."

"That's not what I meant at all..."

He recoiled, taken back by the conversation's sudden shift in tone, and completely unsure of where to begin, or how to make her understand where he was coming from. But then, that was the heart of the struggle, of the sudden confrontation. She felt misunderstood. Mis-fit for the world she had been thrust into so completely. Here, she was alone. The only American, torn between the two lives she knew, unable to choose either, unable to find anyone who could truly understand.

She did not say anything for a while, just sat there, straight and taught, puffing on her cigarette and staring off into space. They just sat there watching her. Even less sure of what there was to say or do than they had been only minutes earlier. They'd gotten through life on laughter, and suddenly that didn't seem like enough. Suddenly so much more was needed of them.

"I'm sorry," she started, "I know you didn't mean anything by what you said, especially not that, it's just...I'm frustrated and angry and feeling like this so far away from home is really difficult and...whatever. It's not fair of me to take it out on you. It's not your fault things have been...this way lately. It's nobody's fault."

"Don't be sorry, Niamh," George said as he leaned on her other shoulder.

"Yeah, it was George who said the boneheaded thing, not you," Fred offered simply.

And then, there was laughter between them again. So unexpectedly. The three of them dissolved into giggles, which bred hearty laughter, which grew and grew until Niamh was nearly choking on her own breath with it, doubled over and hugging her forehead. And in that moment, laughter was exactly what they needed. Not to laugh it off or to push it away with humor. But to release it. To get all of the knotted up energy out of their systems. To stop and point out that there was, still, humor in their lives if they just let it find them. It didn't have to be big, in fact, the smaller the better. The big things eluded them too easily, the big things were too potentially overwhelming in their absence, in the struggle to find them. No, they had to hold onto the small things in their lives in the face of an evil of this magnitude. Otherwise they would lose themselves to it, lose each other, before the battle even began.

"That hurt," she said, gasping for air and still hugging her head.

"Oh quit whinging," quipped George.

"Hey, ehm, guys...Oy!" All three spun around at the sound of Harry's voice. "Professor Dumbledore asked me to find Niamh, he'd like to speak with her in the sitting room." Niamh groaned.

"All right, I'm coming," she said, hoisting herself up off the stoop.

Fred and George remained seated and waved tentative goodbyes. Very quickly reality had crept back in on them. They were beginning to see that from there on out finding levity in their lives--perhaps more important now than ever--was going to become a full time job as well. Something that required as much effort as developing wireless extendable ears and keeping a business afloat. Sitting there, watching Niamh's back as she followed Harry inside, they hoped they were up to the task.

***

Sirius heard something crack against a wall somewhere above them and clatter to the ground in pieces, echoing as they went their separate ways. Perplexed he looked up at the ceiling in the direction that the sound had emanated from. Again, less than a minute later, the sound repeated, only the second time it emanated from a spot somewhere to the left of the original.

"What on earth is going on up there?" asked Molly, shocked and slightly exasperated, as she turned from dinner preparations at the sink and a third crash echoed down to them.

"Miss Cassidy is a little frustrated, and it turns out she has a pretty...aggressive way of expressing her frustration," Dumbledore offered, a wry smile tugging at his lips, as he entered the kitchen. "She'll be quite fine in a few moments, I assure you."

Sirius stood from his seat, nearly knocking the chair over accidentally as he did so. Turning to steady the chair he took a deep breath to compose himself before turning back to face the rest of the room.

"I'm, eh...D'you mind if I go and check on her?" he began, working toward the door. "I just, well, it sounds like she's wrecking the place and some of those things are, are priceless heirlooms, and...yeah, I just don't want her to damage some of the more..."

"Go, Sirius," Lupin said firmly.

Sirius scowled at his friend, whom he could see was biting back a smile. It was the same smile he'd watched Lupin share with Molly as he asked to excuse himself. The same knowledgeable, self-satisfied smile that had prompted the waterfall of explanations that rushed past his lips. Anything to make the smile go away. It said too much to far too many people.

Sirius took the steps up from the Kitchen two at a time. He was careful not to disturb his mother in the entrance hall (she always reserved her most strident judgments and piercing howls for moments when she caught him alone), and rounding the corner he took the next flight of steps at the same pace, only slowing down when he was four steps from the top. There he paused briefly to gather his composure and will his heart rate to slow down. Perhaps I shouldn't have run so many stairs, he thought to himself, not exactly a teenager anymore, am I?

"Woah there, lady," he said as he entered the sitting room to see Niamh standing with her arm pulled back, ready to hurtle a medium sized silver box toward the wall. He even found enough time to berate himself for saying something as stupid as 'Woah there, lady,' (as though he was talking to a horse) in the moment before he spoke again. "Those are priceless family heirlooms you're chucking at the wall, there. An ancient wall with immeasurable value to the history of the Black family, I might add."

"You're not funny," she spat dryly as she heaved the box, completely ignoring his request.

"Aresto Momentum," he said calmly, halting the motion of the silver projectile with a flick of his wand and then levitating it toward him. "I'll have you know this was my Mum's best solid sterling snuff box, worth untold fortunes on the modern market, it was given to her by a direct descendant of Salazaar Slytherin as a Christmas gift."

"Good for her," Niamh huffed, "Accio 'snuff box,'" she intoned, catching it with a bare hand and hurtling it forward in the same instant. There it made loud, crushing contact with the faded, paper-covered wall, long before Sirius even fully registered what she was doing.

"You have a pretty good arm," he mused, again levitating the box back into his own hands. "But don't try it again, Miss Cassidy, I'm afraid you'll find I can beat you at your own games." When she reached for another object sitting on an end table, he closed the space between them, blocking her access to the wall as best he could with his body. "What is it with you? Why are you vandalizing my house?"

Sirius almost smiled, but managed to keep the urge at bay, up close she looked even more angry and he did not want to bait her, not really. She whispered something under her breath which he did not hear, but understood when he turned in the direction that she had waved her wand. The wall, previously scarred from the effects of her need to express frustration, was looking as good as it possibly could have. It was, again, an almost-clean slate. (After all, the place was neither exactly new, nor exactly clean, so everything was relative.)

"I'm not vandalizing anything. Do you think I'd do something like that if I didn't know I could clean up the results? I've been breaking and repairing that snuff box for 5 minutes now."

"I know, we could hear you downstairs."

She did not flinch. She did not show remorse or even the slightest hint of embarrassment. Sirius watched her carefully in the silence. All he could hear was the sound of her breathing, as rushed and angry in its passage as the expression set in her eyes. The silence, however, lasted only a moment. There was too much frustration, too much rage in her body for her to remain still. This time, instead of family heirlooms, Niamh was hurtling pillows and blankets at the wall with all of her might.

"Do you do this often?" he asked. She did not turn, only balled up a throw and heaved it at the wall. It made a surprisingly solid thud before sliding to the ground.

"Only when I'm this angry," she replied matter-of-factly.

It was not the answer he expected. 'No,' he expected, 'this is a special circumstance.' He'd been waiting to hear something more along those lines. He was slightly shocked by her answer. He hadn't pinned her as one with violent tendencies, with this kind of rage tangled up inside her. 'Well,' he reasoned, 'it's not exactly tangled up inside her, now is it? ...It's more, tangled up in that blanket that just hit the wall...at least she's not bottling it up.'

Finally he reached forward and grabbed hold of her elbow, stopping her from throwing one of his mother's needlework pillows at the wall. At the contact, he could feel her body tense up through her skin, but just as quickly as the tension flooded through her, she melted into the couch. Gently, Sirius took a seat beside her. It was only then he noticed the tears dripping over her cheeks.

"Are you this angry often?" he tried again.

"No," she said, "I'm rarely this angry anymore."

"Anymore?"

"When I was an adolescent I probably did this once a week," she almost smiled through the tears, "I used to take all of the clothes out of my drawers and throw them at the closet door in my bedroom. The doors were hollow, and everything made such a satisfying thud. It helped. It helped a lot more than screaming or crying alone, more than punching a pillow. ...But at least then I wasn't wrecking things, putting my fists through walls or whatever. It was the safest form of destruction I could find."

"Safest form of destruction, huh?" This time he smiled. "Interesting."

"Don't tell me you've never been so angry that you wanted to throw things, to break things, to make something else show your pain."

"I wouldn't dare say that with a straight face, Miss Cassidy."

"Well, then, what did you do?"

"I used to break things," he confessed, "or at least, try to. Hogwarts wasn't so easily breakable as things in this house were, it was too solid, too old, too good. And things in this house were easily repaired with wizards as powerful as my parents around." He sighed and leaned back in the couch, still magically deepened by his earlier spell. He heard Niamh sniff. "Sometimes I took it out on other people, people who couldn't or wouldn't do anything about it. But then, sometimes I took it out on the wrong people, I mean, look at Severus, he's still dangling those things over my head..." He could hear himself saying these things, and yet, he was entirely unsure of why he was continuing to speak, to offer this kind of information. It was too incriminating. Quickly, he silenced and switched gears. "I was a right git when I was a teenager," he said, forcing a bit of a laugh, even though it wasn't quite funny.

"I think we all did that, to some degree or another." She wiped tears off her cheeks.

His heart had been banging around inside his chest, ricocheting off of ribs and sternum and flesh, until he heard her answer. He'd been ashamed of what he'd admitted. Mad at himself for admitting it to this relative stranger. For putting that kind of information in her hands so that she could judge him by it. It wasn't the impression he'd wanted to make, not at this early juncture, and perhaps, not ever. Sure, pieces of that boy would never leave him. But in the intervening 20 odd years, he'd grown and changed and learned a lot. Especially in Azkaban, but even more so, after Azkaban, after he saw what his actions had done to those most important to him...like Remus, and Harry. He didn't want her to see those pieces of him, unfiltered, so soon.

"I took it out on my parents and my little brother mostly. They were the safest. I could scream and storm and say awful things, do awful things, and they would have to forgive me. They were my family. ...Stupid, really, but then, that's the logic of a teenager."

They both laughed a little, awkwardly. Then they sat there, side by side, in companionable silence. Sirius was keenly aware of the space between them, and even more aware of the few inches of contact they had, where their knees met. Suddenly Niamh drew her legs up toward her body, wrapping her arms around her shins and resting her chin on her kneecaps.

"What happened?" he heard himself ask, again as though he was not the man speaking the words, unsure of anything but the urge to hear her voice.

"Dumbledore managed to find out what really happened last night," she whispered. He did not press for more information; he knew it would come at its own pace, when she was ready for it. "It was Mario, he hexed me. But he didn't do it because he knew who I was working for or what I was after. He did it because the date wasn't, uh...working in his favor, because he...because he wanted me to sleep with him."

She shivered and bit her bottom lip, eyes cast down. Suddenly, things seemed a lot different. Suddenly, he understood so much more. Sirius felt rage boil up inside of him. Suddenly, throwing his mother's snuff box seemed like a really great idea. Except, he needed to break something a lot bigger. Just breaking apart the pieces of the snuff box would not be enough. Just scratching the aging dry-wall would not satisfy him. With considerable force, the snuff box, which he had been holding in his left hand, was launched across the room. This time, instead of the wall, it made contact with the china cabinet positioned directly across from the couch, shattering panes of glass into thousands of small pieces.

"He didn't..." she said, into the humming silence that followed the crash.

The words slid past her lips on an insubstantial breath. Sirius found he did not know what to do with himself. Whether he wanted to grab her and hold her, or run from the room with his rage. In the end, neither was appropriate. Eyes trained carefully in front of him, he inhaled and exhaled again and again, focused on coming back down. For a time, the pair of them sat there in silence, staring at the jagged edges of the remaining panes of glass, still clinging to the frame of the cabinet doors.

Not long after, there were footsteps on the stairs in the hall. Enough footsteps to indicate that many people were charging up the steps at once, heading in the direction of the dreadful sound they'd heard. Niamh looked up at Sirius, her eyes pleading with him as they fought back more injured, angry tears.

"Please, don't say anything. I don't want them to know...they'll...the way they'll look at me," she barely whispered, "No one can know."

He didn't say anything. Only nodded his consent to her wishes. It was not his information to share in the first place; he would never speak a word of what he'd just heard to anyone. If Sirius had learned anything in his life, it was about the nature of secrets. Of their sacredness, their necessity. Giving things away made you vulnerable to the worst kinds of evil in their world. If he knew anything about Niamh in that moment, it was that she did not need to feel any more vulnerable than she already was.