Delan sat sideways in the booth seat across from me at a table in a pub he'd brought me off to in London. I was still shaking with shock or excitement or disbelief or something. There were way too many emotions filling me up so that I felt a bit like I was going to swell up with them like Aunt Marge.

At least I knew Declan Alectric would be able to get me retrieved and deflated should it really happen.

I stared at him.

He ordered two drinks and a plate of scotch eggs and I didn't even bother asking how he knew what my drink order would be or if I liked scotch eggs. He'd just say he'd been ordering them for me for years or something and I'd get even dizzier with confusion.

(For the record, yes, I found out that day that I love scotch eggs like so much and there's pretty much only one place in America, or at least in Nashville, that makes them and I hate you Declan for introducing me to something I love so much but can't get on a whim when I'm craving them.)

He was stared at the table after the waitress walked away, running his fingertip over the woodgrain.

"Okay, start at the beginning," I said finally. "How do you know me?"

He looked up. "Originally, I inherited your address."

"Inherited my address?"

Declan nodded. "It was in the vault."

"The vault. What vault?"

Declan stared at me for a long moment and then he said, "I inherited the remaining contents of Alphard Black's vault."

"Who the hell is Alphard Black?"

"Sirius Black's uncle." Declan smiled, "You'll meet him. You love him. He's pretty great. But he's gone now. All the best people are. Even time travellers eventually catch up with themselves." A worried expression came over his eyes then, and he stared for a moment at a knot in the wood.

"So how did you inherit Alphard Black's vault?"

"For now, suffice to say that I did," Declan said flatly. "It's very complicated and I don't really want to go into it right now... I've told you before so don't worry, you'll find out, but right now... just - it's too much, you'll go mental."

"Alright," I said slowly. He was right about me feeling overloaded so I let it go. Except, "Wait, is that the money that Sirius inherited from his rich uncle or something? He mentioned it in POA, didn't he?"

"Yes and originally, Sirius then left it to Harry Potter but Harry didn't need it and through the convoluted events previously alluded to, it found it's way into my name when I came of age."

"How old are you?" I asked.

"Rude to ask, isn't it, darling?" Declan's eyes twinkled with mischief.

I decided not to press it and jumped backward, "Also, like, I read about this stuff in a fictional kids book about wizards, okay, like - millions of people have read this series, there are frickin' theme parks and a whole movie franchise and even a Broadway show, okay, like... How? How does all that connect to the - to - to you?"

Declan laughed, "Yeahhhhh," he drew that out and shook his head, licking his lips as he thought about how to answer me.

I stared at him, waiting.

"They're marketed fiction, of course, because of the statute," he said, shrugging, "I thought you might have worked that bit out for yourself by now."

"So... so what? J.K. Rowling is a witch?"

Declan's mouth twitched. "Some of us know her by another name in the wizarding community, but yes."

I felt like my stomach had been flipped over itself for the hundredth time and drew a deep breath, running my fingers over my notebook's rings for the sensory grounding. "I mean you understand why I feel like I'm going crazy, don't you?"

"You are, too, you know," he said casually.

"What? Crazy? Yes. But I mean actually crazy, like out of my mind, like lost the plot, flipped out, off my rocker, mad, insane, they're coming-to-take-me-away-ha-ha and --"

"A witch," he interrupted.

I stopped mid-sentence and started just laughing.

The waitress came over at that moment and put a short glass of coke and whiskey with cherries and two ice cubes in front of me, then turned to put a pint in front of Declan and before she'd finished asking if I needed anything else, I was slamming the glass back down on the table and pushing it toward her, "Another one of those, please," I requested.

She picked up the glass, incredulous, and walked away with it on her tray.

Declan was grinning, chortling, "Damn girl."

"Talk."

"Dolores Umbridge wiped out the muggleborn records. You should have started at Hogwarts in 1997." He paused, thought a moment, squinted and said, "No 1998. You would miss the cut off. August 26, right?"

"Uh huh..."

"So yeah, you would've missed the cut off for '97. So 1998."

I stared at him.

"Normally Americans would go to Ilvermorny --"

"What?"

"American school of magic, it's in Massachusetts. Has Fantastic Beasts not come out yet?"

"No... They're filming..." I murmured weakly.

"Got it. So Skeeter hasn't released all the schools information yet."

I shook my head, just rolling with whatever he said at this point.

"Anyway, you were put on the Hogwarts list by your grandfather."

"Uh huh." I paused. "My grandfather wasn't --"

"Yes he was. Leo Martin was a wizard. He went to Hogwarts - Gryffindor. 1929 to 1936. Moved to America with his family to escape the Grindelwald conflict."

"You're full of shit."

"We've discussed this in depth."

"He moved back to the UK after World War Two, after the divorce from your grandmother. Your mother was an obscurial. And you've got some obscurial in you, too."

"What is a --"

"Goddddddd. I forgot how frustrating it was dealing with you when you didn't know everything yet," he sighed.

"Hey buddy, remember that you're the one that showed up on my door step with all this fantasy world bullshit. This is on you, not me. So I'm sorry if I have some questions, alright?" I flared, my anxiety making me mean. But dammit he'd been mean first.

Declan took a deep breath doing that thing yogis do with their hands to let it out. "Okay, you're right, I'm sorry." He paused, "Sorries form me are rather rare, so you better appreciate that I let that one go so easily."

I rolled my eyes.

The waitress returned again with my second drink and the scotch eggs. They smelled amazing.

Declan watched her walk away before he leaned forward and said in a hushed voice, "You've suffered depression all your life. You've felt a deep sense of false identity, a longing for a home you can't ever find... a sense that you're... not where you're supposed to be, not doing what you're supposed to be, and no matter what you do --"

"Is there a reason you're saying all this?" I asked. My throat was closing up in reaction to his words, my heart squeezing tight.

"It's the obscurial," Declan whispered. "Suppression of magic will do that to a person and it does one of two things. It either manifests itself as severe depression and can result in sucididal thoughts, or it turns the person meaner and meaner until it just... bursts out of them in an episode of anger."

I shifted, feeling exposed.

Declan reached across and grabbed my hand. He stared into my eyes and the sincerity in his stare brought tears to my own eyes and I felt my breath catch as my heart skipped a beat.

"It's going to get better."

"Is it?" I asked, my voice cracked, and I spoke barely above a whisper.

Declan nodded. "I promise."

Tears fellt over my eyes and I quickly pulled my hands out of his as I reached up and swept them away.

Declan sat back in his seat again and waited, reaching for one of the scotch eggs and eating it while I pulled myself back together. When my breathing had leveled out, he said, "Eat one of these, alright? You get dizzy when you don't eat properly."

"You know that about me?"

"Yes I know that about you," he answered. "We know a lot about each other. We spend a ridiculous amount of time together trying to fix Everything."

I reached for one of the eggs and held it, studying it. "And how is that coming along, then? Fixing Everything?"

Declan hesitated, holding the last bite of his egg in his hand, mouth open. "It's nearly done now," he answered.

God, I wish I'd known him then like I do now because now - now, looking back, I recognize the tone of his voice that day. I recognize the nervousness and the regret that was in his tone. Knowing now what I didn't know then...

I wish I knew when he was right now.

Declan, if you're seeing this...

But I'm getting ahead of myself, putting too much of my emotion from today into this narrative. I didn't know then, I didn't recognize it.

Because, as Declan said, I didn't know him yet.

"I just have a couple more stops to make before wrapping this all up," he continued, "And then... Everything will be fixed." He nodded resolutely and popped the egg into his mouth.

"So we succeed? At... at Everything?"

Declan nodded, but didn't fully meet my eyes. "We will have. Soon."

"God. You talking like that makes me dizzy," I said.

Declan laughed. "That's at least in part because you drank an entire glass of whiskey on an empty stomach - and by drank I mean pounded." He waved a finger lazily at the egg on the little plate in front of me. "Eat. You'll feel better."

I picked up the egg and took a bite. "Oh my GOD!" I groaned at the taste of it. "This is stupid good!"

Declan looked proud of himself and watched as I ate the egg greedily (and yes, he was right, I was freaking starving after all).

Then he grinned. "Before we go succeeding at saving the world - or at least some of the most wonderful people that have ever lived in it, anyway - we have a very important mission to take care of today."

"What's that?" I asked, grabbing a second egg off the plate.

"The first thing every witch and wizard does after finding out they are one," Declan answered, and he reached into his pocket and produced a small purple and blue crushed velvet pouch, which he tossed across the table to land in front of me.

"Woss thahh?" I asked around my bite of egg. I wiped my hands on my jeans and opened up the bag. Coins were inside. I looked up at him. "What's this for?"

Declan said, "Ollivander's."