Yuri spent most of his nights in the park, sleeping in bushes or in the flower beds. He found that there was a big hydrangea near the fountain that he was just small enough to slip inside and sleep on a bed of relatively dry soil, the wide leaves and spreading branches of the bush meant that very little rain made it from the leaves down to where he made his nest in the dirt. On these warmer spring evenings it was actually relatively pleasant - Although there was that time the vampire in the park had threatened to eat him.

’Fanks fer that’ he said, actually genuinely, he wasn’t actually that long in Hogsmeade. He had spent so long in that bloody garden, moss growing on between his arse cheeks, spiders weaving webs in the gap between his ear and his cheek. The world in which he had been a troublesome urchin was very different – 10 years was a good as 50 in the lifetime of a poor child.

He scuffed his toe in the dirt, ’Well you aint rotten, if there are some decent ones there might be all right’ he grudgingly admitted. ’You ever been up to the school?’ gesturing vaguely to the hill atop which sat the imposing castle.

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