Closest To Heaven That I'll Ever Be

32.

The first thing I became aware of was noise.

The second was that Pansy Parkinson was going to kill me.

Not intentionally, perhaps, but death was beginning to feel like a reasonable outcome of Side-Along Apparition after three glasses of alcohol and in heels.

The world slammed back into existence around me so quickly that my stomach apparently remained somewhere in Godric's Hollow.

"Oh, sweet Merlin—"

I stumbled sideways.

Daphne caught my arm.

Laurie collided with Pansy's back.

Pansy somehow landed perfectly upright.

Of course she did.

"Everyone alive?" she asked cheerfully.

"No."

"Peach?"

"I've died."

"You're talking."

"Ghost."

Daphne burst out laughing as she steadied me. "First time Side-Along Apparating with three other people?"

"Hopefully my last."

"You get used to it."

"I don't want to get used to it."

I closed my eyes for a second, waiting for the horrible squeezing sensation to disappear from my chest.

Then I heard Laurie.

"Oh, wow."

I opened my eyes.

And forgot about Apparition completely.

The Mooncalf stood at the end of a narrow cobbled street that I wasn't entirely sure I'd ever been down before.

Actually, calling it a building seemed unfair.

It looked like someone had taken an old wizarding theatre, thrown several hundred years of magic at it and then decided it wasn't dramatic enough.

The exterior was made from dark stone that almost looked black beneath the night sky, with enormous arched windows stretching across the upper floors. Silver vines crawled around the stonework, their leaves opening and closing slowly as though breathing. Every few seconds, tiny glowing flowers bloomed among them before dissolving into sparks.

Above the entrance hung a huge silver crescent moon.

A tiny Mooncalf danced across it.

Not a picture.

An actual moving silver Mooncalf.

It skipped from one end of the crescent to the other before disappearing behind the moon and popping out again.

"Oh."

Pansy turned.

Her grin was immediate.

"What?"

"Nothing."

"No. You made the face."

"What face?"

"The impressed face."

"I don't have an impressed face."

"You absolutely do," Daphne said.

Laurie pointed at me. "Your eyes went all big."

"They did not."

"They did."

I looked back towards the club.