To Have and Have Not

Ronald Weasley knew that he was not the one who was supposed to upset about Sirius Black's premature demise; bereavement, after all, was an emotion reserved solely for Harry Potter.

Part of him recognized that he had no reason to be as upset as he was; he had barely known Sirius as a friend, let alone as a parental figure and the last missing link to long-dead loved ones. Yes, his grief did not even begin to measure up to what Harry and Remus Lupin were feeling, but it also didn't mean that he didn't care or that he was completely immune to human feelings of remorse and regret.

Over the course of the month since school had let out he had taken to extended periods of brooding: an activity that did not fit with his temperament in the least. Morbid thoughts about life, death, and the fine lines that segregated good and evil had crossed his mind repeatedly without his personal approval.

Until Sirius' premature demise the war had been an abstract concept, realized through the comings and goings of a dozen new faces. Now, everything had changed. Ron had never really known someone who had died. Sure, there had been Cedric, but Ron had never actually known him. When Harry had returned from the graveyard, bloodied and shaken, Cedric's lifeless body dragging behind him, his primary concern - both then and afterwards - had been for Harry. He had mourned with the rest of the school at the memorial for Cedric, but it had never really hit home that this was a living, breathing person who had died a terrible and brutal death. Come to think of it, he hadn't had a single genuine conversation with Cedric the entire time that he had known him. He had insulted him, praised him, even idolized him from afar, but had never known what his personal fears, joys, and whatnots had been.

It was different with Sirius. Ron had had real, genuine conversations with Sirius. Sirius had confided in him about his childhood, his life in Azkaban. Ron felt like he had truly known him. He had certainly admired him - had enjoyed his company and his conversation - not to mention the fact that Sirius had always done his best to treat him as something more important than just Harry Potter's best friend.

War was no longer distant and isolated. It was right here, among them. No longer was it relegated to the ranks of some other poor, unfortunate sod's family; someone else's friends.

Of course, Ron would never have voiced these thoughts aloud, and he hadn't told anyone about them. They were private. He couldn't help feeling a little bit betrayed when he thought about the huge gaping hole that Sirius' death had left in everyone's life.

These were not the only thoughts that plagued Ron, either. The fact was that he didn't really have anyone to talk to; all he could do was sit and brood and wish Harry and Hermione were around to unburden himself upon. Harry, unfortunately, was still exiled to the Dursleys', and would be for another week still. Hermione, who hadn't seen her parents since the summer before, had taken the opportunity presented by the extended holiday to take a vacation in the south of Italy. His parents, though he couldn't imagine actually confiding in them, were running around like maniacs on "official business" for the Order, and even were occasionally forgetting to provide dinner. Bill was working around the clock: his job at Gringotts and his side duties for the Order of the Phoenix occupied most of his time, and his relationship with Fleur Delacouer took up everything else. Charlie was still in Romania; the twins were wreaking havoc with the joke shop and juggling their new duties for the Order; and Percy was, well, Percy.

That left Ginny, the sibling that Ron had always been closest to. But he didn't want to unburden himself on his sister. Despite strong evidence that Ginny was quite capable of handling her own, Ron still wanted to protect her from the unpleasant memories. It would have been unfair of him to make her remember Sirius when she had known him even less than he.

Ron sighed loudly and stretched his arms over his head. He was once again home at the Burrow, in his room, and surrounded by Chudley Cannons posters tacked crookedly to the walls. And he was brooding. It wasn't so much the fact that Sirius had died that bothered him, but rather that it proved that people close to him could, and, in fact, probably would die before Voldemort was either vanquished or ruled the wizarding world.

The Weasleys, both because of their involvement in the Order and the sheer number of them, didn't statistically stand a good chance of escaping the conflict without a casualty or two. This was the root of Ron's discomfort: deciding which of his family was most likely not to survive the war.

And then there was the issue of the friends that would die before the war's end; something that Ron did not like to think about at all. Harry, of course, as The Boy That Lived, faced the most danger from He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. Hermione too was in danger: both from her association with Harry and from her Muggle heritage. Ron didn't think that he could take it if either one of them died at the hands of the Dark Lord or his minions. This year, too, there were new friends to look after: Neville the Brave, Luna the Nutter, Dean the Steadfast, Seamus the Repentant, and so on down the line to include even Parvati and Lavender.

Ron sighed again and got up from his bed. He needed to get his mind off of such morbid thoughts; it wasn't in his nature to panic about the future. Philosophical thoughts were best left to Hermione and Harry. As Harry's best friend, he was supposed to sit back and provide wisecracks and encouraging thoughts, never worrying about how things were going to get accomplished.

He could hear commotion down below through the Burrow's thin walls. Percy, thank Merlin, wasn't at home (he pretty much slept at the Ministry these days, and Ron couldn't say that he missed his errant brother all that much), so no one was adding to the racket by telling people to keep it down. The Order had been using the Weasley's rather large basement as a storage area for important papers, and various members of the Order had been coming in and out of the house at odd hours for nearly a week. Ron had sneaked down to the basement the day before while his parents were out of the house and had seen boxes and chests of various sizes stacked haphazardly about the walls. Other piles of papers were simply placed in stacks on the floor, protection charms cast over them to keep them safe from the damp. Now, however, things didn't seem to be running nearly as smoothly.

"It's alright, dear!" Ron could hear his mother saying in a shrill voice. "No, don't try to -"

There was another crash, followed by an apologetic moan. "Oh, Molly, I'm so sorry."

Ron grinned and started downstairs. Nymphadora Tonks had clearly run into something and dropped her load all over the floor. Tonks was forever knocking things over and dropping fragile instruments. This was no doubt the latest of four broken chests in as many days.

"Ron!" his mother called upstairs. "Ginny!" Ron reached the second-floor landing in time to see Ginny come out of her room.

"Yes, Mum?" she called down the stairs.

"Do come down and help me pick up the living room. We seem to have had a bit of an accident." Ron grinned at his sister and rolled his eyes. She smiled back and shook her head in mock dismay. They proceeded down the steps slightly more decorously than they had before.

Tonks had, Ron reflected as he and his sister surveyed the mess that had once been their living room, completely outdone herself. She was standing in the corner, the remains of a brown cardboard box scattered at her feet, looking mortified.

"I'm so sorry, Molly," she said, surveying the wreck she had made with a distraught gaze. "I don't know what happened."

"It's alright, dear!" Mrs. Weasley repeated a bit more forcefully than before. "Ginny, love, Ron," Mrs. Weasley pulled out her wand. "Help me clean up this mess."

Tonks was still wringing her hands as she looked at the easy chair flipped over the couch, the broken vases, and the cracked picture frames that displayed angrily shouting Weasleys. Ron wondered how she had possibly managed to accomplish all of this with one misplaced movement. Nevertheless, she had, and now it needed to be cleaned up.

"Don't worry," said Ginny cheerfully, "We've seen worse at the hands of Fred and George."

Ron gave Tonks an encouraging smile. "This is pretty much a once-a-week occurrence during the summer."

Tonks grinned and bent down to pick up a thick leather-bound book. "Guess we should get started then."

Mrs. Weasley was rummaging through the pile of papers on the floor. "Ron, you and your sister can pick up the papers and books off of the floor while Tonks and I work on repairing the furniture."

She came up with a stack of yellowed parchment and shoved it at Ginny. The pile was huge and all that Ron could see of his sister over it were her eyes, craning to get a glimpse of what she was holding in her arms. "What is all of this, anyway?" she asked, setting the precarious stack of papers onto the coffee table.

Mrs. Weasley dropped the picture frame she had just repaired with a crash. "Never you mind, dear," she said impatiently. "Just some papers for the Order."

Ron bent down and picked up a few of the pieces of parchment. It was covered with alternating lines of slanted, sprawling writing and magical language.

"It's just a pile of things we retrieved from Marlene McKinnon's house," Tonks answered Ginny.

Mrs. Weasley looked startled. "Nymphadora!"

Tonks shrugged her denim-covered shoulders. "What? It won't do any harm for them to know what's been going on for the last week." She put the heavy red volume on the coffee table next to the books. "I mean, it's not like they'll be able to understand this stuff, anyway. No one's been able to for years."

Ron looked down again at the paper clenched in his hands. He wasn't sure what Tonks meant: whether the handwriting was unintelligible or the magical lines were. Neither looked particularly readable to him. "What do you mean no one's been able to understand it?" he asked Tonks.

"Exactly what it sounds like," she replied. Mrs. Weasley shook her head and muttered under her breath, but let Tonks continue her story uninterrupted. "You-Know-Who's Death Eaters killed Marlene's family at her home, but they took her somewhere else and tortured her to death."

Ron glanced over at his mother. Her mouth was set in a disapproving line, but she was taking Dumbledore's advice to heart and letting her children learn all of the gory realities of war. He turned his attention to her sister; Ginny was staring at Tonks wide-eyed, her mouth open in shock.

"What kind of torture?" she asked.

That question was too much for Mrs. Weasley, who exclaimed, "Ginny! That poor girl's fate is hardly something to gossip about!"

Tonks shook her head gravely. "Your mother's right, Ginny. The details are far too gruesome to recount here." Ron felt a shiver go down his spine; clearly the three Unforgiveables were only the surface of You-Know-Who's arsenal. Tonks didn't seem to notice his discomfort and continued on with her story. "Anyway, Voldemort only sent his lackeys to do it, never telling them why Marlene needed to be bumped off. They had their fun and returned to their leader triumphant... or so they thought." Tonks leaned forward enthusiastically. "See, Marlene had been working on some kind of special weapon, using an unsurpassed skill in linguistics and magical theory to develop a spell that could bring about Voldemort's downfall." She picked up one of the pieces of parchment. "It's far from completed, but by leaving her notes behind, it has the potential to be brought to light again." She put the parchment back. "Unfortunately, no one else alive saw as Marlene did, and the spell remains unfinished."

Tonks paused dramatically. Ginny and Ron stared at her. "Not even Dumbledore understands?" Ron asked after a moment.

"Nope," answered Tonks with relish.

Mrs. Weasley grunted disapprovingly from across the room. "That's enough gossip," she chastised. "Now, please clean up this mess!"

Ron bent down and rummaged through the papers scattered on the floor. He picked up a piece with a diagram drawn on it. He didn't recognize any of the symbols scrawled across the sheet, but he did realize that there were several different languages: some of them were written in different runic alphabets and some were just illegible. He knew that trying to interpret what was written was hopeless in the extreme; it was his own fault that he had taken Divination instead of something more practical. Still, the papers were intriguing to say the least. He glanced around earnestly: Tonks was re-arranging the furniture - Ron winced as the rocking chair and the couch narrowly avoided a mid-air collision - and his mother was digging through the detritus on the floor and muttering to herself. He took his chance. Folding up the paper, he shoved it into the back pocket of his jeans and bent down to finish picking up.

Hermione, he knew, would be fascinated with the diagram. As the only person of his acquaintance taking Ancient Runes, she might be able to work out some of what was written. So what if wizards had been unable to solve the riddle for nearly a decade? It was worth a try, wasn't it?

Mrs. Weasley would not let Ron or Ginny leave until everything was placed exactly as it had been before the mishap. All of the papers and books were placed neatly in a large wooden crate conveniently transfigured from the mangled cardboard box. Then Ron had to get down on his hands and knees to check under tables and behind the grandfather clock, looking for any papers that may have gone astray. Finally satisfied after the rug had been lifted up and looked under, Mrs. Weasley let the children return upstairs. They went gratefully.

Ron was rounding the corner to the third floor when Ginny's voice stopped him dead in his tracks. "What did you take?" she asked earnestly as Ron started up the stairs.

He turned and looked at her, startled. "I didn't take anything."

His younger sister rolled her eyes. "Liar. I saw you." She leaned back casually against the wall and raised a sardonic eyebrow. "You looked up, checked around to make sure that no one was watching, and stuffed one of those papers into your back pocket." She smiled at him. "One would think that after years of sneaking around with Harry Potter and Hermione Granger, you would have become a much better liar."

Ron knew it was hopeless, so rather than bicker with his temperamental little sister, he decided to tell the truth. "I thought that Hermione would find it interesting, that's all."

Ginny shook her red head in mock dismay. "Right. Perhaps after she finished yelling at you for taking classified material, particularly something as important as that little slip of paper you're so desperate for her to see, she might have thanked you." She stood up straight. "Come here; I want to see it close up."

"You mean you didn't get a good enough look while you were scooping them up downstairs?"

"With Mum breathing down the backs of our necks saying," she affected the tone of their mother's voice " 'Ginny, dear, you missed a bit'? Hardly. I'm surprised you managed to take anything at all."

Ron laughed. "Alright." Ginny stood aside while he entered her room. She closed the door behind him with a reverberating slam.

"Now," she said, "fork it up."

Ron pulled the sheet of parchment out and handed it to her. Ginny snatched it out of his hand greedily. "My word," she breathed.

"Do you understand it a bit?" asked Ron earnestly.

"Not at all," replied Ginny. "But I can tell you what some of these alphabets are. See, I did a report on Runic Protection in Defense Against the Dark Arts two years ago. Some of the information's stuck."

She sat down on her bed and winced. "Forgot that I put that there," she said by way of explanation. She reached underneath her jumper and pulled out a small green-leather volume.

Ron stared at her aghast. "A lot of nerve you have telling me off for taking one piece of paper." He gestured at the book in her hand. "What the hell is that?"

"It's a journal," said Ginny, as if the answer was obvious. "I nicked it while you were busy playing James Bond."

"What?" asked Ron, puzzled. "Who's James Bond?"

Ginny shook her head. "Never mind. Muggle reference."

Ron made a tisking noise. "One week with bloody Dean Thomas and you act like you could be the new Muggle studies professor."

"Don't get touchy with me just because my love life's better off than yours is. It's not my fault that Hermione Granger is still seeing Viktor Krum."

Ron's mouth dropped open. "What?!!!"

"Never mind." She opened the journal and started flipping through it. "Huh. No diagrams in this one."

Ron was still startled by the Hermione/Krum comment. "I'm not jealous of Viktor Krum!"

"Yes you are," replied Ginny matter-of-factly. "Anyway - "

"I am not!" roared Ron.

"This really is not helpful."

Ron glared at her.

Ginny rolled her eyes. "Alright. I made it up. You're not jealous of Viktor Krum. Now could we please do something constructive?"

Ron grumbled.

"Oh!" yelled Ginny, finally looking fed up. "Fine. Be an immature prat. That's what you're good at anyway. Go away!"

He looked at her, aghast. "What!"

"I'll read this myself. Take your bloody diagram and go sulk in your room." She sank down against her pillows and stuck her nose in the journal. Ron knew that she was not going to pay attention to him anymore, so he grabbed the diagram off of the duvet and left the room in a hurry. He wanted to get some broom-riding in before dark.

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Portia McKinnon threw her quill across the room in aggravation. Ink splattered across the leather spines of the books in her bookcase. She stared down at the parchment in front of her gloomily. Little pictographs danced across the page, taunting her with their abstruseness. Her notebook lay beside her, the once pristine pages covered with her illegible blood-red scrawl - Portia only wrote in red ink.

She rubbed at her temples and groaned. She could feel a migraine coming on, and she could already tell that it was going to be one of those that made the whole nervous system hurt. Stretching, she felt the vertebrae in her spine pop back into place. Hours of sitting crouched over scraps of parchment covered in Babylonian cuneiform had not led to any revelations about lost civilizations, serving only to make her uncomfortable and cross.

Normal students went home for the summer. Or they got jobs. Portia had done neither. Now, two months into summer holiday, she was trying to teach herself cuneiform in her badly-lit Paris apartment. Her eyes hurt, her neck hurt, and her brain was buzzing with the complicated little pictures. She had been working on it for a month now, fourteen hours a day, and she was beginning to dream in pictographs. It wasn't exactly healthy, but Portia was determined.

Her stomach protested its skipped lunch as she yawned and rubbed the bridge of her nose. Standing, she leaned down and stretched out her legs: hours of sitting in one place had made them stiff and unresponsive. Returning to an upright position, she twisted around and worked on realigning the muscles of her back. She yawned again as she made her way into the little area that served as a kitchen in her two-room apartment. Her hair was escaping from the bun she had hastily put it in hours earlier and she brushed it out of her face irritably as she opened the icebox and examined its meager contents.

It looked like she had to choose from a block of Brie cheese, an apple, or leftover Chinese food. She reached for the Chinese carton and sniffed it, making sure that it hadn't become rancid. It didn't smell bad yet, so she removed it and shut the icebox door behind her.

Pulling a pair of chopsticks from the Shakespeare mug on the counter, she took a bite of the rice. It would have tasted better hot, but she had broken the microwave in an ill-advised attempt to make popcorn a week earlier and it would have been too difficult to put it on a separate plate and re-heat it in the Muggle toaster oven.

Swallowing, she made tisking noise. "Here, kitten," she called towards her bedroom. "Where are you, Connie?"

Connie was a nick-name for Cognac, Portia's year-old tabby familiar. Cognac emerged from the bedroom on occasion when he needed something or chose to be affectionate, but he spent the vast majority of his time playing on his castle-sized scratching post. (Portia had assembled it for him when she had first brought him home from the pet store.) Connie's castle was situated conveniently near the window, wedged in between the wall and Portia's twin bed. The dresser - because she had run out of wall space - was outside, in the living-room. The TV was on top of it, and her rather extensive collection of movies was intermixed with the books on her shelves.

She called for the cat again. "Connie!" A shadow detached itself from the darkening doorway and mewed. "There you are," Portia told the cat. "I was beginning to think that you had been eaten by a wildebeest."

The cat cocked his head and stuck his tail in the air. He meowed again.

"Would you like dinner now?" Portia dug around in the fried rice and picked out a few pieces of chicken. "Here," she said, dropping them at her feet, "you may have a little treat. I do apologize for missing lunch, but you didn't come out to remind me."

Connie sauntered across the living room and into the kitchen. He sniffed at the chicken.

"Go on," she urged, taking another bite of rice. "Don't look so bloody superior - you know that you want it."

The cat huffed, but started in on the chicken. Portia bent down and ran her hand over his sleek fur a few times. "When you you're done," she said, "just come into the living room. I'll be watching the telly."

There was, as usual, nothing particularly good on television. French television rarely had any variety to it, and Portia found herself switching the channels between the French news (accident on the Autobahn again) and movies in Italian. While Portia was struggling to comprehend the convoluted Italian movie given her rather limited grasp of the language, Connie sauntered out of the kitchen and jumped onto her lap.

She reached into the wooden, inlaid box on the small table beside her and took out a cigarette. They were hand-rolled: Portia couldn't stand the pre-made ones, and thus spent much of her time pre-rolling little brown cigarettes so that they'd be ready for her use whenever she needed them. She had just managed to light the damn thing and lean back to enjoy her film when there was a loud POP from her kitchen.

Had she not heard that same exact noise rather often during her stay in Paris, she might have jumped. As it was, she knew the sound well.

"Hello, Minerva," she said without turning around. "I do enjoy it when you stop by, but it would be nice if you announced your arrival before hand."

Minerva McGonagall was Portia's former guardian. A tall, formidable Scottish woman with severe black hair that was always pulled into a tight bun, she had raised Portia with an iron fist ever since Portia's parents had been killed in the Voldemort War.

"Are you smoking those things again?" Minerva asked sternly from behind her. "Dreadful habit."

Portia took a drag and exhaled the smoke slowly, allowing it to swirl around her in little curlicues. "Yes, it is a very dreadful habit, but I'm young."

Minerva snorted. "I should have never permitted you to take the lease on this apartment; you've turned into quite the little Parisian."

The younger woman grinned and ran a hand over the cat's sleek fur. "Would you like a seat?" she asked, turning off the television with a click of the remote. Minerva sat down on the worn love-seat across from her and stared down her long, thin nose in stony disapproval. Portia enjoyed her guardian's discomfort and sent out another puff of smoke just for effect.

Minerva shook her head. "Well, I suppose there's not much I can do about it besides make my disgust and disapproval known." She sat very straight on the edge of her seat. "What have you been doing with your time? I don't suppose you've got a job; still living off your inheritance, are you?"

The girl shrugged. "Yes, I suppose you could say that I'm still a dependent, but I am doing useful things." She waved the hand with the cigarette. Cognac, who had decided that he had quite enough shifting laps for the night, mewed and jumped off. "If you want, you can have a look at the detritus spread all over my desk."

Minerva stood up, her mouth still set in its prim line, and glided over to the desk. Portia took one last drag of her little brown cigarette and stubbed it out in the ashtray beside her. She watched her former guardian leaf through the various papers strewn without rhyme or reason across the desk. Despite their constant bickering, they were quite close. Minerva was not a motherly sort of person, and Portia had learned to forego that aspect of human comfort at an early age, but she did play the role of Affectionate Great-Aunt rather well. Those roles - aunt and niece - had given both of them a sense of freedom that neither would have otherwise had, given the situations into which they had been thrust with the death of Portia's family. During the school year Minerva had had to leave her in the care of a series of live-in nurses, but that hadn't stopped either one of them from developing a fairly solid relationship during the time that they did spend together.

"This is impressive," Minerva said from the general area of Portia's desk. "How long did it take you to understand all of this?"

Portia stood up and stretched. "I'm far from fluency," she said. "But it took me two months to get this far."

"You are a wonder," Minerva replied briskly. This was high praise coming from her usually stoic guardian, who only admired true accomplishments.

Portia walked over to the desk. Leaning against the wall, she crossed her arms over her chest. "Thank you," she replied.

Minerva put the papers back on the desk. "You're welcome." She looked pensive for a moment. "What would you say to coming and finishing your schooling at Hogwarts?"

"Pardon?" Portia was surprised. She only had one more year of schooling at Beauxbatons and she would be graduating the third in her class; it didn't make much sense to move with so little time to go until she could get a job and forage a life for herself.

"Would you come and finish your final year at Hogwarts?"

"Why?"

Minerva raised an eyebrow. "Why not?"

Portia walked back to the kitchen and pulled a bottle of wine out of the icebox. It, like just about everything else in Portia's apartment, was Muggle. Portia enjoyed Muggle conveniences more than she enjoyed their wizarding counterparts. "Would you like a drink?" she asked Minerva, waving the wine bottle.

"No," answered Minerva. "Well?"

Portia rummaged through the cutlery drawer for the corkscrew. "Well what?"

Minerva made an exasperated noise. "I wouldn't be asking you to make such a large change in your life if I didn't have my reasons."

Portia had located the corkscrew. Sticking it into the wine cork, she glanced at Minerva. Her guardian was shrouded in the half-light that permeated the back corner, but it was clear that Minerva was waiting for her response. Portia yanked and the cork came out of the bottleneck with a pop. She held up the bottle again. "Are you sure that you wouldn't like a slosh? It's a good vintage." Minerva shook her head and Portia shrugged. "Alright then, guess there's no need to get a glass." She took a swig directly out of the bottle.

There was another irritated clicking of the tongue from Minerva's direction. "Look, Portia," she said matter-of-factly, "I'm not asking you to do it simply because of a whim. I'm really quite worried about you here on your own, now that Voldemort is regaining his support base. I assume you've heard that the Ministry of Magic has finally admitted that a new war has begun."

Portia took another gulp of wine. She put the bottle beside her on the kitchen counter and reached up to rearrange her mass of black hair. "Yes, I have, but I don't see why I would be any safer in England than I am here. Besides, he managed to kill my parents the first time around - I don't see why he'd want me dead now."

"It's for my own peace of mind," replied Minerva, leaving the shadowed corner and walking towards the kitchen. She rested her forearms against the counter. "Would you at least consider it? France is not the sanctuary that you think it is."

"I seem to remember that it was your idea to send me to school here."

Minerva nodded. "Yes, but that was before he regained solid form. His supporters have been gathering since before the Quidditch World Cup two summers ago and recently it has become very apparent that he is approaching full strength. Despite the fact that his operations are centered in England, you would be safer there because of your proximity to a government that recognizes his return. Despite urging from your Headmistress, Madame Maxime, the French Ministry still will not send reinforcements across the Channel. The safest place in the world right now is Hogwarts."

Portia took another swig of wine. "Look, I don't see why I'd be in any more danger than any of the other orphans of the first Great War. There are hundreds of us scattered in various places and, apart from Harry Potter, none of us are on You-Know-Who's black list."

Minerva's thin lips curled into a bemused smile. But it was gone by the time she said, "That may be the case, but that doesn't make their families any less concerned for their welfare. Would you please consider it? You don't need to decide for a few weeks yet."

Portia studied her face. She looked pleading, an expression that Portia had never seen before. She decided to relent. "I'll think about it," she allowed.

Minerva looked relieved. "As long as you promise me that you'll think about it." She smiled, the mood suddenly much lighter. "It's funny that you're learning to read cuneiform," she said.

"And why is that?"

"It just is." She paused and looked thoughtful. "I have in my possession a number of your mother's old papers should you ever want to have them. Now that you've achieved maturity, you should have them. They're yours by right."

"I've been seventeen for three months," Portia said, slightly annoyed that Minerva was just now bringing this up, and a little wary about why she was discussing her mother's possessions directly after the conversation about moving back to England. It would be just like Minerva to use them as a form of leverage.

"That's true, but I'd honestly forgotten about them until now. I was looking for something in the basement the other day and came across them. They had been shoved into a corner - don't look so concerned, I had put a protection on them sixteen years ago when they first came to me, so they aren't damp - and forgotten about. You should have them. If I remember correctly, there were photographs and family histories in amongst them as well."

Portia shrugged. She had a picture of her parents that she had pinched a long time ago from Minerva's photo albums. Minerva had given her brief biographies of both of them when Portia had been ten, but she had trouble feeling love for two people she couldn't remember at all. They looked nice, happy, and young in her picture of them, but she didn't feel anything when she looked at the cheerful, waving image. Her father had been dark and swarthy, with curly hair, a long straight nose, and a mischievous glint in his dark eyes. Her mother, by contrast, had lily-white skin; long, light hair that framed her face in loose curls; and green eyes. They were laughing and hugging in the picture, caught up in the delight of life. In that respect, Portia was sorry that they were dead, but she didn't feel some deep connection when she looked at them; they were just prints on photograph paper, not real people.

When she had been little, she had kept the photograph underneath her pillow or tacked up to her wall at school. When she acquired her apartment in Muggle Paris, thought, she stashed it in a drawer, worrying that the moving images would be a bit suspicious in what otherwise appeared to be a nice, shabby, normal apartment.

Minerva cleared her throat. "If you do decide to come to Hogwarts this fall, I will just deliver the boxes there. If you chose to stay in Paris, however, I will send them here. It's really up to you."

Portia doubted very much that it would be up to her in the end, but she didn't say anything. She took another drink. "Alright, I'll owl you in a week or so with my decision."

Her guardian looked somewhat triumphant. "Do you need anything?"

Portia found herself wanting another cigarette. She raised an eyebrow. "Like what?" Lacking easy access to her box of tobacco, she satisfied herself with another swig of wine. It was a very good vintage indeed.

"Money, food," Minerva looked at the bottle of wine still clutched in her former ward's fist, "something moderately nutritional."

The younger woman smiled. "I had an apple this morning."

"Oh really?" Minerva looked incredulous.

"Yes, really. And there were vegetables in my take-out tonight." She paused and knitted her eyebrows together. "At least I think that they were vegetables."

Minerva laughed. "At least that's something." She reached into the pocket of her robes and pulled out her wand. "Well, I should probably leave. I'm sure that you want to go out on the town tonight."

Portia smiled wryly. "It's Wednesday."

Minerva didn't reply, but simply straightened her robes.

"Question before you go," asked Portia suddenly. "How do you manage to get through the French customs so quickly? Not that I really mind or anything, but I've realized that you frequently pop in for these little fifteen minute conversations and then go immediately back to Scotland. Since one is not supposed to be able to Apparate over country boundaries without splinching, how exactly do you manage to obtain fifteen minute visas?"

Minerva looked taxed. "You always do ask such ridiculous questions." And with a loud CRACK, she had vanished.

Portia looked at the spot she had been occupying and shook her head. "One of these times she's going to catch me on a bad day." She grabbed her half-empty wine bottle and walked back over her desk.