27 May 1891 — Londonderry

Ford hadn't seen the wardrobe in four days. Under normal circumstances, this wouldn't have been concerning in the slightest. Even at the beginning, he'd only been checking on it every three or four days. After the first few weeks it had dwindled to once a week, then when April had turned to May it had become once every two weeks. He knew that the wardrobe was secure enough to hold it, and that the dementor wasn't going to get out on its own. Normal circumstances had ended when Ford had run into a werewolf in the Forbidden Forest, though. Now, the fact that he hadn't seen the wardrobe in four days seemed like an emergency — and even more so because he'd been actively looking for it as often as he thought he could manage without someone in his family asking where he was always running off to. He'd spent an hour in the woods on the twenty-fourth and had found the marker they'd put over the buried wardrobe, but no buried wardrobe beneath it. The marker must have gotten moved during the night, by a werewolf or something else. Maybe the wardrobe was still safely buried, but... maybe it wasn't.

He hadn't stayed in the forest after dark on the twenty-fourth or twenty-fifth, just in case the moon was still full enough for him to run into those sorts of problems. Yesterday, he'd stayed out in the woods long after he should have been asleep, but he still hadn't turned up anything. And it was probably fine, probably nothing was going to happen except that the dementor was going to languish and slowly starve — but he didn't know that, and he couldn't verify that that was what was happening if he couldn't find the wardrobe. There was no template for this, either, because to the best of Ford's knowledge this had never happened before — something he hadn't exactly brought up to Cash, either the night that it had started or in the letters he'd sent him this week. It hadn't seemed like useful information in either context, but Ford was getting to the point now where he wasn't sure what else he could do, and he was starting to think that maybe Cash deserved to know how entirely out of his depth he was at the minute.

It wasn't like there were any good alternatives to telling him, either. Just asking Cash to steer clear of Hogsmeade for the rest of his life was obviously not feasible. Which led to an important question: where could he actually talk to Cash? If Hogsmeade was out, that eliminated most of the semi-private places that Ford knew of, and he couldn't have a conversation like this in the club or in Diagon Alley. He'd considered asking Cash to come by the Ministry in the middle of the evening when everyone else would be gone, so they could take over one of the conference rooms, but that was unappealing for multiple reasons. First, he was worried that getting called into a Ministry room would spook Cash and make him think this was a Big Deal, even if it was only Ford who'd asked him to come in. Second, if they were discovered by some auror or something pulling a late shift, or even just one of the janitorial team, Ford would have to explain why he'd invited a friend over to hang around the Ministry after working hours, which was... not awesome. He'd considered the Muggle inn where they'd gotten curry back when this had all started, but had discarded that idea as well — too close to the problem, he supposed. And most places in Muggle England were a bit prohibitively difficult to navigate to, so: Londonderry. A place they'd both been before, but in which they were unlikely to run into anyone else they knew, and which contained (he hoped) no particularly negative memories or associations. Just in case things went... weird.

Ford had headed through the floo straight after work, but it took him a while to find Cash on the country road between the town and the manor. "Hi," he said when he saw him, already a little out of breath from all the nerves. "Sorry. I know this is weird. I know I'm being weird. I'm — really sorry. I didn't know where else to go to — anyway. Are you — how are you?" he asked, eyebrows raising with genuine concern. Again, it was probably fine and Cash was probably fine, but — what if it wasn't?

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Cassius Lestrange

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Cash was having a weird week — this was more or less to be expected, given that his birthday and all the swirling memories that entailed — but if he was going to rank all the weird things that had happened, this would be — up there. He hadn't known what to make of Ford's repeated letters asking if anything was strange or wrong and — maybe things were strange and at least a little wrong but not at the level they had been in the beginning of April. He wasn't being followed around by anything, and he was going to have to talk to Lucius tomorrow which had him freaked out, but — there was nothing to do about it.

And he couldn't avoid Hogsmeade forever or even for much longer, reasonably, so hopefully tonight in Londonderry would resolve it. He'd taken the floo from Chudley to Londonderry after practice and had gone to lean against a stone wall on the country road to the haunted house, listening to the distance sounds of wind of the quays and sheep bleating somewhere. He fiddled with his pocketwatch, flipping it open and closed and tapping his fingers against the winding mechanism. He wished that he was somewhere a little more wizard so he could mess with the practice snitch, but — this was fine. He didn't expect Greengrass to take long, since he was the one who had asked to meet somewhere private, and — there he was.

Cash pushed himself off of the wall and straightened when he saw him. His eyebrows drew together with concern at Ford's words and Ford's expressions, and Cash was wondering if maybe he should have been more worried than he was, but — he'd made it through Tuesday mostly intact, hadn't he, weird reality-slips aside? So — things were better than they could have been.

"I'm alright," he said, expression still concerned. "What's —" he started to ask the question while talking with his hand, but cut himself off and put it back in the pocket of his jacket. "Sorry. How are you?"

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How was he? Not fucking great, he could say that much. Beyond that, he wouldn't have even known what to say, because he hadn't stopped long enough to take stock. This had been a hell of a week. With everything that had happened in the past seven days Ford felt as though it ought to have taken more time. Seven days ago he'd had Macnair's pants carefully folded on the top of the desk in his room, next to a letter signed Yours, V. Macnair. That could have been a year ago, as far as he was concerned; it certainly felt like it. Probably the fact that he hadn't slept well (or much) since Saturday didn't help matters either, because it made the days feel so long, and he was anxious enough that ten minutes could feel like an hour.

"Yeah, I'm — not doing well," he admitted, running one hand through his hair. Cash was obviously worried about him and Ford really wished he wouldn't — the last thing he needed was to have something else on his conscious, if he was stressing one of his friends out for no good reason — but it wasn't as though lying about it would have done him any good. It would have just made Cash worry more, probably, and it wasn't as though he would have believed that Ford was fine just because he'd said that.

Part of him wanted to just come right out with the confession: I lost your dementor. That statement required a lot more context, though. He hadn't told Cash what he'd done with the wardrobe in the first place, and Cash had never asked. And there was no reason for Ford to assume he would understand enough about how dementors came to be to understand why Ford was checking on it in the first place, or why he was so anxious now that he suddenly couldn't. This conversation really needed to start back on April 8th, then, which... was daunting, in Ford's current state. He didn't know if he had the mental energy to get through this, but he sort of had to. It was Cash's life hanging in the balance (probably — if Ford's hunches and hypotheses proved correct, which maybe they wouldn't), so he deserved to know where things stood. But where to start?

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Cash bit his lip. "Oh," he said, although that had been more or less what he'd expected when he asked the question. Ford wasn't sleeping, and was summoning him back to Ireland in weird frantic letters, and he kept asking Cash how he was. There was a part of Cash that wondered — should he be more worried than he was? But being worried about himself felt immaterial, right now — he was more worried about Ford, who was stressed out and in front of him and admitting that he wasn't doing well.

"Can I — help?" Cash asked, knowing that it was a weird question to ask when he was talking to someone who had essentially saved his life a month and a half ago. But he wanted to help; maybe he could help, maybe that was why he was here in the first place. Something was going on, obviously.

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"No," Ford answered immediately. At the word help his mind had leapt to the most practical version of what that might mean and pictured Cash trudging through the Forbidden Forest helping him track down the missing wardrobe, which was obviously out of the question. Keeping Cash away from the wardrobe was the whole point. It took Ford half a beat to realize that probably wasn't what his friend had in mind, because Ford hadn't gotten around to actually telling him what was wrong yet. He felt a little ridiculous for having pictured it at all, but in terms of sheer ridiculousness it was really nothing compared to the thought that popped into his head next, which was: well, he's a seeker; finding things that don't want to be found is his job. And fledgling dementors were, in the broadest sense, part of Ford's job. What a team they made. Ford very nearly laughed and had to bite the inside of his lip to hold it in.

He was maybe not going to be able to make it through this conversation, Ford realized. He hadn't properly slept in days and he was anxious. He'd just had to prevent himself from laughing about something utterly stupid, and he hadn't even started telling Cash what was wrong yet. Maybe this was what it felt like to be hysterical. He'd only ever heard of that happening to women before. Maybe he'd be the first young man lost to hysteria.

No — he couldn't let himself slip that much. He had to get through this conversation, and then he had to figure out what to do about it afterwards, because being hysterical wasn't really an option when you had people depending on you. Maybe that was why he'd only ever heard of it happening to women.

"Okay," he said, less to Cash and more to try and force his thoughts into some more useful order. "Alright. So — I don't even know where to start," he lamented, but hardly paused to shake his head before pressing forward all the same. "So it's — about the dementor. I assume you gathered that much. It's — maybe fine," he added hastily; it seemed important to affirm this before he launched into some long-winded explanation of everything he'd been up to since the beginning of April. "I don't have any concrete reasons to think it's not fine. But it's — I've been checking in on it, since that night, just to make sure, and — now I can't, but it's probably — I mean, probably nothing's changed."

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And Cash had sort of figured, although he was hesitant to think on it too directly, that this had something to do with the dementor. Thinking of it in a distant sort of way and hearing it were two very different issues, though, and he couldn't help but glance over his shoulder, just for a second, as if the creature would be there behind him, lurking, pulling at everything the way it had in the hotel room. It wasn't — of course it wasn't, because if it was there Cash would have known already, he would have felt it the way he remembered in some of his nightmares since early April. He looked back at Ford.

"So it's probably fine," he said, "Right? Even if you can't check in on it — if it's not here — it's probably fine. I'd know if it wasn't." Well — probably he would know if it wasn't. He liked to think that he would have caught on, but he hadn't known what it was when he'd spent all day with it — so. The most Cash had was that he hadn't seen it, but he didn't want to point that out to Ford, who was — clearly freaking out in a way that felt familiar to Cash, although he didn't see it from the other side particularly often.

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Ford would have liked to say yes, because he would have liked to think that was true. It seemed impossible that Cash wouldn't know if something was catastrophically wrong, but the truth was that Ford couldn't say for sure. He didn't know, because he'd never done this before. He didn't think anyone had ever done this before, and he was making things up as he went along and hoping for the best. Before, he'd thought it would do Cash more good if Ford didn't let on about that. He'd wanted to seem confident, to give Cash hope in a situation that had seemed hopeless. Now that things were spinning out of control, though, he thought maybe Cash deserved to know more of the truth. (That didn't mean Ford was at all enthused about having to tell him).

"I don't know," he admitted, with a deep frown. "I think so. I hope so. But I don't know, because... I don't think anyone's ever done this before," he continued in a hesitant tone. "Or if they have they didn't write anything down about it. I've been trying to read up on it since it happened and — there's nothing. I mean, this doesn't happen," he said, running his hand through his hair again. "People don't survive this. So we're — pioneers, here," he said with a shrug, voice a little hoarse. "We're going to get through it, but there's no template for how to do it, you understand? But we're going to get through it," he promised.

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"So — I should be dead," Cash said, tone sounding almost matter-of-fact, and his eyebrows were raised but there wasn't much surprise on his face. He should have died last month, or maybe he should have died a long time ago — he sometimes felt like a ghost, but it was one thing to feel that, and another to hear people don't survive this. (Oh, he thought — this was the nervousness he hadn't been able to access a moment ago, now that he was facing the fact of it. He should be dead, and he wasn't, and — neither of them knew where to go from here, did they? So maybe it was inevitable, maybe he'd just chased it off for a moment, but — he didn't want to die.)

Cash pushed a hand through his hair. "Okay," he said, "That's — okay." It was distinctly not okay, but only one of them could freak out at a time, so he was trying to keep himself tethered, and if that meant standing still here with his hands in his pockets and worrying at the inside of his lip in between words, that was fine. "We'll figure it out."

Well. They would figure it out or — he would die.

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Ford flinched at the words, although he really didn't have any rights to react so strongly to this when Cash was, apparently, taking it in stride. Well, maybe not — he'd run his hand through his hair and there was a slight movement in his lower lip as though he were chewing at the inside of it but trying not to be obvious about it, so maybe he was alarmed but trying not to show it. Ford felt a surge of guilt at the idea that Cash might be putting on a brave face for him. It was just so ridiculous. Cash was the one who was in danger, the one who might be consumed by his own grief and trauma at any moment, and here he was remaining calm for Ford's sake. Ford was supposed to be protecting him from this. Ford was supposed to be handling it, so that Cash could just focus on himself, trying to rebuild his emotions from the inside.

"I'm sorry," Ford breathed desperately. It was the only thing he could think to say at first, even though there was much more that he could have tried to convey. He didn't know where to start, though, and he didn't know how to phrase anything. It wasn't necessarily that Cash ought to be dead, though he might have been. There wasn't much in the literature on how dementors were born, because it wasn't the sort of thing scholars tended to sit around and observe — as far as written history was concerned dementors simply appeared fully formed, oozing out of the dark places where despair was thickest and all traces of humanity had been swallowed up. Ford wasn't sure if Cash would have died if the dementor had been left to its own devices or if he would have just been left empty, the way people were after a dementor's kiss, but the distinction probably wouldn't be particularly useful at the moment. Being hollowed out wasn't any better than being dead.

"But it's weak," he continued. This was perhaps the only bit of optimistic news that he could share with Cash, so he wanted to say it, but it occurred to him as he did that if he didn't explain how he knew that it would probably sound like an empty platitude. Ford shoved his hands into the pockets of his jacket and looked off towards one of the trees, as though he expected to be chastised for what he said next. "I've, uhm. Been interacting with it pretty regularly. Because I thought separating it from you would starve it out but I didn't know and I wanted to — make sure it was working," he confessed.

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Ford was sorry, but Cash wasn't entirely sure why — Ford hadn't done this to him, and hadn't even really been involved until the damage was already well in place. So he let it roll off of him, hands still in his pockets, still trying to handle this new reality where this just didn't happen to people. He should have figured this out already, he thought — sometimes Cash thought he was a little too dumb to be a Ravenclaw, that things snuck past him too often — because Ford had clearly been shaken by the whole thing, but it wasn't as if he'd been in the right mindset. He couldn't stop chewing on the inside of his lip.

He didn't like talking about it, either — it made the hair on the back of his neck feel like something was watching him, as if just thinking about it would cause the dementor to pop up. "Oh," he said, again, wishing he could think of something else to say. He didn't think he liked the idea of Ford interacting with the dementor, either, not because he didn't trust him but because Cash didn't want Ford to be miserable on his account.

"And — it does seem like it's working?" Right, Ford had just implied that, but — maybe if Cash broke this down far enough it wouldn't freak him out as much, he thought. He was trying to sound as measured as possible, but — this didn't happen to people. So they were making it up as they went along. And that probably — well, that wasn't very promising for him, was it?

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"Yeah," Ford said with a nod. "It's —" he had started to try and explain how he knew, but realized immediately that this was going to require far too much context to make any sort of sense at all. Ford wasn't really sure if the way that he was classifying it made sense to anyone other than him anyway, but even if Cash could understand it in the abstract he didn't have enough of the details about Ford's life to recognize that I can sit with it for half an hour as long as I only think about our Bartonburg home and not our country home was something to be optimistic about. He certainly couldn't delve into the level of detail required to understand the nuance of what objects in the home he could think about without attracting a reaction from the dementor. It wasn't as though Cash would have wanted to know that much about Ford's whole life, anyway, even if Ford had been up for launching into a whole explanation of it.

"It's definitely working," he said instead. Cash would just have to trust that he had something to base this assessment on. "But if it got out it's still — well, if it got around you, it'd still be dangerous."

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Cash didn't know how to process this — he was glad it was working, but if they were both operating on this being new, then he was not entirely sure how much he couldbelieve it was working. He pushed his hand through his hair again, although his expression was otherwise mostly neutral, except for the knot of concern between his eyebrows he couldn't undo.

"We'd probably find out pretty quickly if it was out," he said, trying for levity and not entirely managing it, "Right?"

It was a dementor, they didn't really just — float around peacefully.

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Again, Ford wanted to say yes, but again he wasn't sure he could justify it. He would have thought the fact that nothing had happened — to Cash or to anyone — was a good sign, but he didn't really know, because no one knew. Maybe it was out wandering the Forbidden Forest, or maybe it had latched on to someone else but it was so small and unobtrusive that they hadn't even noticed it yet, and wouldn't until it had gotten considerably larger. Maybe it was lurking in the shadows somewhere, feeding on people who hadn't even seen it. Or maybe it was fine. Maybe it was still in the wardrobe, and he was telling Cash all of this for nothing.

"Maybe," he said with a shrug. Then, because he was frustrated (not with Cash but with everything else), he continued in a somewhat flippant tone: "Or maybe it followed the werewolf home. Who knows?"

He realized after the words left his mouth that this statement required some additional context, and ran a hand through his hair again. "Oh, yeah — I met a werewolf. That's how I misplaced it in the first place. I've — had a pretty rough week," he concluded with another shrug. "But anyway, I've got a plan to find it. I just — I figured maybe you deserved to know," he said a little lamely. "That I don't know what I'm doing."

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This time, the shock registered fully on Cash's face: his eyebrows shot up with concern, and he didn't bother fixing his expression. When he spoke it was just to say, "You met a werewolf?!" Never mind the dementor — a werewolf could have straight-up murdered Ford, and it would have been for Cash. And — Cash couldn't have lived with that. He wasn't worth it.

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"Yeah," Ford responded, with an expression that seemed to say that's the part that stressed you out? Cash had a dementor that wanted to devour his soul and it was currently missing and Ford had just admitted that he had no idea what he was doing, and had only been projecting confidence before for Cash's sake, but sure. The flippant redhead was the part that was truly concerning. Maybe Ford's perception on things was skewed, since he worked in the same department as the Werewolf Capture Unit and therefore heard people bandy about the word werewolf at staff meetings from time to time. He hadn't been enthused to meet one, by any stretch of the imagination, but even in the heat of the moment he'd been at least equally concerned about the fate of the wardrobe as he had been for his own safety.

"Like — a human one, though," he clarified, wondering if that was where Cash's reaction was coming from. "I got out just before the moon came up."

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Cash shrugged helplessly at Ford's expression, because he was still stuck on the whole werewolf thing. Maybe he'd made his peace with the dementor thing, over the past month and a bit — werewolves were something he never thought about, and he did not think that Ford would be able to handle on straight-on. Ford's last comment did nothing to ease his nerves, particularly, and Cash's breath hissed out in an alarmed exhale.

"That's — that's too close," he said, "If you hadn't made it, it would have —" he broke off. Ford knew exactly what werewolves did — better than Cash, probably, given his position in the Ministry — and Cash didn't understand why he was taking this so calmly compared to everything else.

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