"An animagus?" he repeated, eyebrows raising of their own accord. He was incredulous, but smiling — at least until the tables turned and she started unexpectedly asking him about other girls. "What? Er — no," he blurted. He took his hand off of her back and increased the space between them as much as he could (which wasn't much; his back was literally up against the wall). A variety of facial expressions flashed across his face in short succession; he frowned, looked briefly guilty, looked surprised, and frowned again. Did Lily count as another girl? She was probably the definition of the phrase, come to think of it. They'd been engaged at one point, after all. Had he done her a disservice by having his first instinctive answer to that question be no?

"I mean —" he continued, stumbling. It wasn't as though Lily counted in the way that Miss Zelda was asking about. It wasn't as though he was in love with her, nor did she expect him to be, after so long apart (right? that was the conclusion they had mutually reached, wasn't it? and it had been mutual?) but it still felt a little crass to have been so quick to deny it, given their history. "Er — there was but — it's not — that sort of thing." What sort of thing? He couldn't have said. He hoped she knew what he meant, because he had no way to articulate it if she asked without going into far more details than he really wanted to. The amount of detail he wanted to give Zelda Fisk on his history with Lily, in case any third parties were wondering, was exactly zero.

"That's not what this is about," he insisted, feeling suddenly as though he were defending himself from an accusation he hadn't been expecting. He was having trouble getting his bearings in this new conversation they were apparently having, much less reaching any sort of coherent point. He was having trouble enough with full sentences. "It's not some — competition thing. I'm leaving," he reminded her, stressing the verb. "It's not — I can't — do anything for you. Or anyone."