Firewhisky (A Love Story)

PART TWO

Hannah couldn't explain it, when after one day – a day when her nerves were the most frazzled, her confidence the most shattered, her wits at their end – she woke up to an overwhelming peace.

It was almost like she had chocolate pooling in her veins (in a not-deadly way, of course), warming her up, slowing her down, helping her to appreciate the fine details of her everyday life. The lopsided smile Neville gave her before kissing her and leaving for work. The almost imperceptible, affectionate tug on the belt of her dressing gown. The film left in his orange juice glass and the pulp at the bottom and the dissipating print of his lips on the rim. Everything's going to be okay, she thought. Eventually.

The peace was undoubtedly helped by the fact that she was between placements and enjoying a few days' rest before studies began again. "Of course, a Healer is never at rest," Poppy had told her, but Hannah supposed that Healers were sometimes allowed to put the lights down low and draw a bubble bath in the upstairs bathroom. And surely sometimes they might be able to turn the wireless on to the flying forecast and settle into scented water, blond hair streaming around their shoulders, skin turning petal pink beneath the surface.

She had just closed her eyes, listening to the wind speeds in the Shetland Isles, when there was a thundering knock on the front door.

"Coming!" she shouted, half-in her dressing gown, rushing to tie the sash as she tripped down the narrow staircase to the front hall. The person on the other side apparently didn't hear her, because they knocked again; it sounded like they were about to cave the door in.

She tore it open, her hair dripping in her eyes, and flung her dressing gown collar closed at the neck.

Then looked up, and up a bit more, into the hairy, smiling face of Rubeus Hagrid.

"Hello!" Hagrid was beaming as he doffed a deerstalker hat the size of a bin lid. "Mrs Longbottom," he said, scratching at his greying beard. "I don' suppose yer husband migh' be in?"

"He left for school twenty minutes ago," Hannah replied, still clutching tightly at her dressing gown.

"Ah," Hagrid replied, "I s'ppose tha' makes sense."

"Aren't you meant to be teaching today, Hagrid?" Hannah asked.

"Nah, not 'til the afternoon."

"All right," Hannah replied, at a loss for what else to say. Hagrid still stood there, apparently completely oblivious to her state of undress. "Well...is there anything I can do for you?" she asked.

"Dunno, maybe," Hagrid said. Still scratching. His hat looked like it had been lined with the entirety of a long-wool fleece, complete with dirt and dried blades of grass. "Don't s'ppose..yeh know, the...status of the thing?"

"Thing?" Hannah said, not having the faintest clue what he was talking about, her heart starting to race all the same.

"Yeh know," Hagrid pushed on, his voice dropping deadly quiet like he was making an illegal backroom deal. "The thing for Fang." His voice caught and he coughed loudly into his sleeve before adding, "Not doin' so well, the poor lad."

"I'm sorry, Hagrid—" Hannah began, thinking, Oughtn't that dog be dead by now?, but Hagrid clamped his mouth audibly shut, his lips slapping closed with a pop!, and he said, turning bright red, "Never min'."

"Sorry?" Hannah said.

"Best be goin'" Hagrid said, backing away.

"Wait!" Hannah called out, but he was already at the end of the garden, stepping over the fence. He must have not heard her, because he only smiled a nervous smile that took up half his reddened face and disappeared onto the street.