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Chapter Text

It wasn't like Mrs Mooney was the first to think of putting stray cats in her pies. She was just fast enough to have first pick.

"If anything-" Najwa Lahmar clubbed a cockroach with her rolling pin, making the sole diner of her shop jump, "I ought to get some credit for catchin' them pigeons with stale bread and guttin' the bastards for my pies."

The customer-- Well I guess you'd have to pay to be a proper "customer" --slowed his chewing and looked down at the large greasy bite he'd just taken from his pie. Najwa scoffed.

"How many have you eaten today?"

He swallowed. "Four."

"And you liked 'em all, yeah?"

"Yes, mum!" he gave a firm nod. "Very much, mum!"

"Then what have you got to worry about, what's in 'em?" she chastised, flicking another roach off the counter. "They taste the same whether you know or not."

He looked between Mrs Lahmar and his pie. She stared back at him impatiently. He steeled himself and took a hesitant bite, careful not to offend her with his expression. To his surprise, he didn't have to be. She was right. The creamy center of the pie, the chewy crust, the salty tang of the filling- they were all the same as the first time he bit into one. He blinked, licked the grease from his lips, then continued eating as before.

Najwa sighed and looked into the street. It was good that someone could stomach this shit because she certainly couldn't. She'd have to do much better than pigeons and very soon. But cats weren't the easiest to catch, and most things bigger and slower could bite back. She rolled the dough, eyes glued to a lawyer from uptown sitting on the curb to tie his shoe. A wandering roach crunched under the pin, wings gummed with dough.

"Toby!!" a distant voice bellowed.

Talib's head snapped to attention. He shot up from his booth and slung his bag across his back with one hand while stuffing the rest of the pie into his mouth with the other. His hand only grazed the handle of the door before he spun to face Mrs Lahmar and bowed deeply.

"Thank you for the pies, mum!"

Mrs Lahmar waved a floured hand at him. "Get on, now, don't want that charlatan boxin' your ears again."

Pirelli might have called his name two or three times by now, and he had a short fuse.

Talib bolted out the door, pushing past agitated clusters of people. They gave him dirty looks or swatted at him, and he dodged them while licking the remaining grease from his fingers. He was grateful for the free pies, yes, but there was so much more he wanted to say to Mrs Lahmar. She was the kindest soul who had ever spoke to him.

The first time he found her shop, he'd just been trying to dodge a couple of men who'd bought Signor Pirelli's "Miracle Elixir." After being laughed out of a club for reeking, they wanted more than just their money. Talib stumbled through her door heaving, bruised, and cut up.

"You poor thing," she'd said.

Since then, any evening he could sneak away for a few hours he found himself drawn to her shop. Her pies weren't all bad-- the herbs she used perfectly masked the gaminess of the pigeon --and he saw how hard Mrs Lahmar worked, but he'd be lying if he said the pies were still the only reason.

In eight years he couldn't remember the last time he'd had a hot bath and a warm meal. No one-- 'Cept a nurse, once or twice, maybe --had ever held his face so gently, spoken to him so softly, and definitely not since this apprenticeship.

Pirelli, the red-faced peacock waiting for Talib in the square, had been his only way out of a worse deal with a shady circus. Pirelli glowered down at Talib, then struck him across the face. Talib reeled, but caught himself and quickly straightened again next to Pirelli. Though his first master had towered over him as a child, Talib was much older and now stood only a head shorter than Pirelli.

"Where-a were you?" he questioned in a thick, vaguely Italian accent.

Talib knew not to answer and waited stone-faced as Pirelli spat froth and insults at him. His lecture was complete foreign-sounding gibberish for the audience of this "traditional" Italian upbringing.

While Pirelli wasn't the most skilled of the folks Talib had worked under, his network was rich. He shaved nearly all the clergy in London because he claimed to have shaved the pope. Talib just had to push through a few more months and then he'd have enough until he found something else. He'd ask Mrs Lahmar but---

Pirelli smacked him again, and Talib felt the cut of a thick gold ring across his cheekbone, just below his eye. He stumbled, then slowly righted again. A weak tear of blood glided down his cheek.

Just a few more months.

"Do you understand?!" Pirelli shrieked. "Answer me!"

"Yes, Signor Pirelli." A drop of blood fell from his chin and onto Pirelli's boot.

Pirelli sniffed down at him with a last spiteful glance before he turned back to the banker he'd been chatting with.

Talib clenched and flexed his hands at his sides, running his tongue across his molars to scoop the last crumbs of Mrs Lahmar's pies from his teeth. He'd be back soon, the first chance he had. Just as he had been every free moment of the past few weeks.

It wasn't like she got nothing out of it. Talib couldn't stand the thought of allowing Mrs Lahmar to give away her hard work for free, so he often did menial chores for her around the shop-- mostly cleaning, watching the pot on occasion so she could sit. If she had any money, she'd hire him herself. The poor thing worked himself until he dropped on any task Najwa set him to. The shop had never been so bug-free as the afternoons he spends there.

Miranda Mooney had a helper, after all. A cute little brunette who seemed to do all the real baking while Miranda socialized. She chit chatted with all sorts in there-- doctors, soldiers, politicians and their wives --and that meant she knew everything. Najwa needed that kind of leverage. Social sway was her only chance at having any kind of power as a single low-born woman, unless she felt like buttering up some swollen pig to get her name in his will. Najwa wasn't above it, but the thought of massaging some pompous jackass's shoulders for the next few years made her stomach turn worse than her pies did.

The only reason she could afford the shop in the first place was because the ghost stories scared everyone else away. Morbid tales about a tormented beauty, a stolen child, and an innocent barber who died in prison. Najwa knew the stories were true, of course. She couldn't forget the face of that poor woman wandering through the streets. Nothing much left of her, now, with her mind half gone.

The poor thing ought to have taken a steak knife to every throat in the judge's house. All those wicked aristocrats with bloated egos and cold dead hearts... There wasn't an innocent soul in the building, and if the Lord had sent the rapture that night the whole party would have been engulfed in hellfire.

Alas, the poor widow was too gentle. Wasn't much left for her to live for, with her child taken by the same brute what had violated her and her husband dead in bloody Australia or wherever they transported men. On more than one occasion a customer's rude attitude had tempted Najwa near to clobbering them with a rolling pin, but she'd hold the oven door open if the dear ever had the wherewithal to shove Judge Turpin in.

Would get a nice juicy pie outta that one, Najwa mused, watching the judge's beadle toddle off to a meeting past her window. The crust would have to be mighty thick to handle all the grease... unless I strained the meat before using it in the filling...

She shook herself from her thoughts. Not like Turpin would disgrace himself being seen in here no way. Look at me fantasizing about sick nonsense when there's work to do.

But the thought didn't go away. Now that the idea had wormed its way into her head, she couldn't help but ruminate. The judge was an impossibility, that much was clear. But if Najwa could get a spare womanizing drunkard-- Hell, if Najwa could get Miranda to stretch her neck on the chopping block, she'd have pies for days. Good and hearty ones, too, from the way Miranda's been eating.

Najwa spooned lard into the next tray of pie tins and dropped the ladle back into pot, sloshing the oily sludge onto the floor beside the oven. She leaned down to wipe it before the rats got to it, then felt something scuttle across her left foot. She yanked up the hem of her skirt and crushed the bug under her right, then used a rag to sop the mess from the floor.

With her head beneath the counter, she didn't hear the bell above the door jingle. A tall dark figure stalked into the shop carrying nothing but a small bag that he almost let drag the stones beneath his feet. Coarse black curls fell over his sunken eyes that scanned the shop. It was different than he remembered.

It certainly hadn't always been a pie shop, much less one so carelessly tended. A roach scrambled towards him. He barely lifted his toe and crushed it when it slipped under his foot. The figure glanced back up to the pies on the counter, each less appetizing than the last. They were lopsided, under-baked, and appeared as hard and cold as if they'd been sitting there for weeks.

Had it been foolish of him to hope that he'd open this door to a beautifully graying wife and their cheerful daughter, just starting to come of age? Of course. But hope was foolish, just like love. And mercy.

Focus, he reprimanded himself. He couldn't afford to be distracted, or his heavy heart would crush him. You have one goal. Finish it.

This was the place he needed to be. He was owed this, at least. The darkened room above the shop was promising. The same curtains he'd drawn the day he'd closed early to go to court, just as he'd left them. He hadn't known it, but it was his last day as many things: as a free Brit, as a gentle soul, as Benjamat Bunsuk.

Though his body lived, Bunsuk was truly dead. He was nothing without his wife, his daughter. The love had been ripped from his heart. And after fifteen years in the shithole where the blessed Queen sends her undesirables, the last of his humanity was gone with it. He was wholly unrecognizable, most of all to himself. The grim face that stared back at him in the mirror frightened him-- the dark eyes held no compassion.

"My name is Sirius," he mouthed to himself. "I'm looking for a room. Is the one above your shop available to rent?"

Frankly, it was nauseating returning to Fleet Street. Then again, everything about London sickened him. At least rooming here would provide some level of comfort. The familiarity was both an ease and an insult to his suffering. How dare the sun keep shining on London as if he hadn't been dragged from Lucy's embrace, left to wonder if she and Johanna were starved or dead in an alley?

His grip on his bag tightened as silent rage surged through him. It was agonizing constantly being reminded of his loss, but he had a mission. His purpose may not be divine, but it was more than righteous:
Until Judge Turpin's blood drained from his body, until his wretched soul was wrenched from him and damned to hell for eternity, Sirius Tosi must live.

Sirius set his jaw and turned on his heel. A deserted shop did him no good. Maybe those pies had actually been sitting out for weeks. The state of this shop didn't suggest anyone had been here for---

A light gasp chirped behind him.

"A customer!"

Chapter Text

Najwa came over with gooseflesh, like the shop had dropped twenty degrees. Haloed in the light from outside, the shadowy figure looked impossible. The dark circles under his eyes made them small and beady, as if he was looking at her from the end of a black tunnel. He was tall and lean-- not like he was always strong, but like he grew to be through discipline. Though his skin was like baked clay, it looked far from warm, and his hair was so black it shone violet like a raven's wing. Like a phantom come home to his haunted house.

Sirius watched a head of curls like wine pop over the counter with a puff of flour. Two wide eyes bore into him like hot coals in an ashen face. Her plump lips parted in a gasp. Mrs Lahmar (he presumed, from the shop name) stood statuesque as she took in Sirius's image, her skin reflected the midday light like polished bronze. Not even a heartbeat moved her breast. It could be shock, but her eyes asked the million questions her lips couldn't... and that could mean recognition.

"A customer!" she managed to gasp.

He reached for the door.

"Wait!"

Najwa flew from behind the counter, patting her hands off on her apron. The customer whipped his face towards her with a mix of confusion, caution, and panic. His eyes searched hers-- for what, she wasn't sure. She guided him away from the door and to a seat. Ghost or not, he looked lost.

"Sorry about all that-- Sit ya down --Right you are! Just haven't had a customer in weeks! 'Cept that poor li'l beat-up thing, but he don't really count seein' as he don't pay," she rambled as he reluctantly lowered himself onto the bench. He stared down at his hands as he rubbed them anxiously.

"Did you come here for a pie, sir? Forgive me if me head's a little vague-- Just thought you was..." Najwa frowned. The stranger's hands froze as he looked back up at her.

"...A ghost, is all," she continued, shaking her head and smiling. "Like I said, no one comes in here, not even to inhale. Would you like a pie, sir?" she asked again.

He gave a stiff nod. Najwa flicked a roach off the best (or least-disgusting) pie she'd baked. She'd been saving it, in case Talib got some more time to himself, but it seemed unlikely with how hard Pirelli had him working. She placed it in front of the stranger, then quickly returned to the counter to fill a mug.

"Thank you," he said quietly.

"I'll give you fair warning, sir, you're probably holding the worst pie in all of London. Or, well..." she counted the other pies on the counter, "the seventh worst? Ninth, at best."

Sirius considered the pie. Certainly not the worst thing he'd been served in the last fifteen years, but the hardtack on the ship this morning might have been preferred. Still, it was food. He lifted the pie to his lips and took a bite. His teeth sank through the top as the pie deflated, grease bubbles frothing around the break. The bottom, amusingly, did remind him of a ship's biscuit. But his amusement was not enough to stop his reflexive retch as the lardy mixture hit his tongue.

Before he could spit the fatty mess back into the tin, Najwa was standing over him again with a napkin and mug full of ale.

"Drink this, love," she sighed. "You'll need it."

He scraped the pie off his tongue. "Thank you," he repeated, a bit more genuinely.

He grabbed the mug and took a deep swig, choking a bit on its kick but chugging the rest. Any flavor was better than the pie.

"I know how bad they are-- I make 'em, after all. With the price of meat what it is, when you get it... It's a wonder no one's keeled over from eating one, yet. Nothin' more than lard, all greasy and gritty like that." Najwa folded her arms and leaned against the counter. "Mrs Mooney's shop is all the rage, these days, using cats dyin' in the street and stale toast. But look at me ramblin' on again. Times is hard, sir, what can I say?"

"Isn't that an empty room above your shop? If times are so hard, why not rent it out?" he wiped his mouth on his sleeve. Mrs Lahmar turned to look at him, and he set his eyes back on the mug in his hands.

"Heaven knows I tried, but no one will go near the place," she began. "People think it's haunted. Years ago, somethin' happened up there... Somethin' not very nice."

The stranger looked back up at her questioningly. Everyone around here knew what had happened-- It was all anyone could talk about for years. That meant he wasn't from around here... or he was lying.

"There was this barber-- a proper artist with a knife, she was, and beautiful --Benjamat Bunsuk. But they transported her. For life. If she hasn't died out there, yet, she might as well have."

" 'Transported?' " he echoed, staring into space. "What was her crime?"

"Foolishness," Najwa sighed.

"She had this pretty little wife, pure dear. And these two men wanted her like mad, Judge Turpin and his Beadle. Really the only thing they'd take was---" Sirius made a sound like a sneeze suddenly"...but she wouldn't give 'em the time of day."

As she spoke, Najwa watched the stranger's face closely. His expression never fully changed, but he would flinch ever so slightly whenever she mentioned Lucy. The mug in his hands never stopped moving; he rolled it between his palms, squeezed the sides, tapped his fingers on the lip.

"They couldn't stand her rejections, so they shipped the poor blighter off south, leaving her all alone with their year-old daughter. Kept wheedlin' at her, they did, but she still wouldn't budge. It just kept gettin' worse for her. But her daughter's a beauty-- Johanna's her name, lovely little Johanna."

"Please." Sirius gripped his empty mug in both hands. "Go on."

"My," Najwa slowly approached his hunched figure, "you do like a good story, don't you?"

As she drew closer, Najwa could see the hairs that cast a halo around his face in the light were gray, and lines that suggested he once smiled often. His distant stare was rehearsed, but Najwa saw the pain in his eyes. She decided to pour over it all in unrelenting detail. Not a bit of gossip she had heard or rumor that simmered through town was omitted.

"Beadle comes to Lucy to beg her forgiveness on behalf of Judge Turpin who, he says, blames himself for her hardships. The both of 'em insisted she come to his house that night," she continued.

Sirius's face fell. He recognized the lie from a story he had heard early on in his exile. A locksmith there for killing the lawyer that lured her unsuspecting daughter to a masquerade to humiliate her in front of an audience of his friends. The locksmith beat the lawyer to death the next day and was shipped out within the week. Benjamat, she hadn't known about those kinds of parties, had she? Or she might have warned her wife of the depravity of the upper crust the moment the judge laid his bleeding eyes on her. Maybe Benjamat would have acted sooner. But Sirius now knew.

And his face gave it all away. Najwa hurried now before he could regain his composure, spinning the sickening yarn. As her chance customer dreaded, Lucy had gone to the party, her faith in the judge's penitence rewarded with upper-class barbarity. Her drunken panic was enough evidence for the judge to convince the crowd she was hysterical. In her deepest grief, Lucy was committed for insanity without another embrace from her child.

It was too much to hear. Sirius had worried Lucy and Johanna were dead-- from hunger or sickness, likely --but the cruelty of that depraved fiend was unimaginable. How Lucy had suffered alone all these years, he couldn't know, and he couldn't amend.

The mug shattered in his hands as he shot up from his seat. His eyes-- dry for over a decade --moistened with tears.

"Would no one have mercy on her?!" he cried.

In one motion, Najwa swayed to catch his movement and plucked a handkerchief from her pocket. He couldn't feel her, but she gently cupped his hands in hers. His shoulders shook as he breathed heavily, eyes fixed on the vision plaguing his mind. Najwa brushed the glass from his hand, then applied slight pressure to the cuts to stop the bleeding. She smiled gently.

"Ah," she whispered. "So it is you. Benjamat Bunsuk."

Sirius's head snapped down, eyes focused on Najwa in an instant. He grabbed her suddenly, stepping toward her. She took a careful step back.

"Not 'Bunsuk,' " he hissed, as Najwa's back heel tapped the wall behind her. His blood streaked her forearms. "Not 'Bunsuk.' 'Tosi,' now. Sirius Tosi."

Now that she knew, Najwa couldn't unsee it. He was the same as before, under the years of isolation. That same beautiful barber she'd admired fifteen years ago. She had to admit that Mr Tosi was a good deal more handsome. There had always been a roguish charm, but now he was proper rugged. Yet even when he looked at her in admonition, there was a longing to his gaze that spoiled his emptiness, his desperation.

"Where is she?" he demanded, dark brows meeting in the center of his forehead. "Where is Lucy?"

"She poisoned herself-- Arsenic from the apothecary down the corner," Najwa began slowly. "I heard from a neighbor a week after she was released---"

A shuddering breath shook Mr Tosi's shoulders. Najwa brought a hand up to stroke them gently. He swayed precariously over her now, eyes losing focus again. The energy he'd had a moment prior almost gone.

"...And my daughter?" Tosi asked at last.

Najwa stilled her hand on his shoulder. "He's got her."

"He?" Sirius glanced at her, still dazed. Najwa took a breath to continue, then closed her lips and looked down. His eyes widened with clarity.

"Turpin?"

"They say his conscience wouldn't allow him to leave the poor girl alone like that, so he adopted her. Took her in 'as his own,' as it were."

Sirius's grip on her arms tightened, but his legs began to give. He pressed his shoulder and head against the wall behind Mrs Lahmar, closing his eyes.

"Most folks say it was good luck for her, with the money he has an'..." she offered, trailing off when his eyes opened again and she could see the anguished fury he cased in a stony face. "Most folks, anyway."

"Fifteen years," Sirius seethed, "sweating in a living hell on a chumped-up charge."

He released Mrs Lahmar's arms, taking a step away from her and balling his hands into fists. His nails dug into the fresh cuts from the glass.

"Fifteen years dreaming that perhaps I might come home to my darling Lucy and Johanna."

Sirius turned his back to Mrs Lahmar, slamming his open hands into the floured counter. It stung his palms, but was not enough to distract him from the molten lead that seemed to churn in his chest. He clenched his fists again, scraping splinters of wood and stale crumbs under his nails. Again, he pounded his hands on the counter, knuckles splitting against it.

Najwa watched his heavy breathing slow. Tiny glimmers of sweat had started to bead on the back of Mr Tosi's neck, reflecting light under his shallow collar. His muscles were taught and agitated under the thin white shirt. Ever so slowly, Najwa left the wall and approached Sirius from behind.

"Let them quake in their boots-- Judge Turpin and the Beadle..." he said somberly after a moment as Najwa's gentle fingers found his pressure points again. "For their hour has come."

"Ah, you're going to get them, are you?" she softly chuckled. As noble as it sounded, he was nothing but a runaway convict. A passionate one, at that, but a nobody nonetheless.

He exhaled harshly through this nose. As much as it angered him, Mrs Lahmar's laughter nudged Sirius back to reality. His fantasies of slitting the judge's throat were grand, but he currently had no money and nowhere to sleep. He looked down at his hands, bloody and clumped with flour.

"I'll have them," is all he said. He took the handkerchief from Mrs Lahmar's hands and began to clean his own.

Najwa rubbed Mr Tosi's shoulders in silence, watching his calloused hands work over themselves. She had always admired their gentle power. Tosi was strong, yes, but more importantly he was dexterous. His strength was pointed and channeled carefully through his fingers, whether he was fastening a button or gliding his razor through overgrown whiskers...

"Wait," Mrs Lahmar said suddenly. He hadn't fully noticed her hands on his back until they stilled. "I know what you need."

She rushed towards the oven, mind already strides ahead of her. Najwa knew what could bring vitality back to him.

"I hid 'em, when they said they'd be cleaning this mess out. Cracked in the head, wasn't I? Times as bad as they are... But it felt wrong to sell 'em, given the tragedy," she rambled, patting the bricks over the low fire. "But I couldn't think of nowhere else better they should be. Even when I moved in, it's still their home, innit?"

Several bricks in the wall seemed rather loose, but one visibly shifted when it met Mrs Lahmar's hand. She let out something between a huff and a laugh, then hoisted herself up towards the crest of the brick oven for better leverage. In all her boisterous mannerisms, Mrs Lahmar was stocky and incredibly agile. Her short frame sat easily on the belled curve of the oven under the slope of the wall, and she held herself in place effortlessly by placing her heeled shoe out in front of her. In the midst of his tumultuous mind, Sirius found himself fixated on her catlike ascent. Her opposite leg swung lazily beneath her, toe dangling a good foot off the floor.

In this position, Mrs Lahmar was able to wrestle the loose brick from its place, revealing a small pocket within the wall. She removed a cloth wrapped tightly around something like a small rod. Then came her equally feline descent as she shifted her weight and dropped almost soundlessly to the floor, only her heels marking the soft 'clack' of her feet meeting the tile.

"See?" Mrs Lagmar said. She returned to him, offering the contents like a sip of fresh water. "You can be a barber again."

Sirius stepped closer to her, looking down. His old friends smiled back up at him, cradled in Mrs Lahmar's soft hands. She had done well to wrap them so carefully- They were exactly as he'd left them, as if it had only been hours since he held them last. But his body knew it had been much longer.

Unable to stand the itching a moment longer, he reached out to caress the textured detail of one before wrapping his fingers around it. Sirius lifted the piece closer to his face in disbelief.

"My friends." His lip trembled slightly, imagining a smile.

Najwa watched as Mr Tosi's eyes glimmered with light again. He wrapped his hands around the handles so tenderly, held them so intimately. When his eyes found them, it was as if nothing else existed. Whatever he saw reflected in the metal hypnotized him the moment Najwa lifted the razors to his eyes.

"My, them handles is chased silver, ain't they?" Najwa crooned.

"Silver," Mr Tosi responded, barely a whisper. "Yes."

He stared deeper, searching for something. Najwa studied the engravings, unsure of what they were looking for but complementing the pace of his process. There were three creatures framed in a nest of nettles: A stoat, a cat, and an owl. The cat sat in the center of the scene, playfully swiping at the owl close to the blade while the stoat pounced on its tail.

Beautiful.

"These are my friends," Sirius said to himself. He flicked one open.

Benjamat was skilled, but the quality of her original razors had always disappointed her. For better or worse, whatever ache Benjamat had, Lucy always made her own. She recruited her mother and they found enough money to buy Benjamat a new set of engraved silver. The smith had chosen the animals in the design from a children's story, apparently, but now Sirius couldn't remember what it was.

They had always been his "friends," from the moment he first used them. What else would one call something so reliable and comforting?

Sirius lifted the blade above his eyes, watching sunlight dance over the etching. Its flickering grin soothed him. He imagined the blades shrouded in darkness, cased in stone. How could they be sure they were still real, if no one could recognize them? No steady hand had been there to direct them to their purpose for fifteen years. They must have feared no one would ever truly see them again.

I've come home, now. We're together again. Sirius held them closer.

If these were all he had left of himself, they could be enough. They had stayed perfectly still for him, waiting for him. He studied the blade, so close to his face his eyes crossed. It was something so ordinary but, if wielded by the right force, could take a human life.

We'll do wonders, won't we?

Sirius's ears began to ring with the rush the thought gave him, but it might as well have been his friends singing their excitement. They were delighted to aide him in his well-earned revenge, he could tell.

Najwa watched Mr Tosi closely, fascinated. A thousand different pains seemed to pass through him in the moments after he held them until it looked like the blades had taken his soul, entirely. Then his lips twitched, straining to remember how to smile. Najwa moved to his side so she could continue to ponder the engravings.

Maybe the animals were his family, she reasoned. Johanna could be stoat-ish if she's at all like her father.

"Don't they shine beautiful?" she hummed absently, amazed at how quickly life had returned to him. As cold as a corpse when he had entered only minutes ago, Mr Tosi was as warm as if he was holding the sun now.

"Merely silver..." he breathed, just as vacant. She could scarcely make out; "Soon you will drip precious rubies."

It was like an incantation. Najwa moved behind him to look out the window towards the stairs, keeping an arm outstretched toward him. She hadn't been up there to clean in a minute.

Might be some buggers nested up there, now. She scoffed to herself. Poor thing just sat down for the first time in fifteen years and you think he's worried about a bit of dust?

Sirius felt his spirit swell with bloodlust. If he couldn't have his life back, he would take the Judge's and the Beadle's. He'd known it all along, but his energy had been unfocused because it seemed so impossible. Now that his friends were in his hands, he would have them soon. A smile finally broke across his face.

"At last, my right arm is complete again!" he almost sobbed, rejuvenated.

After a moment, Najwa finally spoke: "You can move in here, Mr Tosi."

The spell finally broke, Mr Tosi's eyes pulled away from the razors for the first time. He looked around as if seeing the shop for the first time. Then Tosi turned to face Najwa. There it was again, that desperation. He looked up at the stairs.

"It's bloody awful what those pigs did to you and your family," Najwa said, opening the door of the shop and nodding up. "I'll help you right it, if you like."

Standing in the doorway where she could catch the sun, Mrs Lahmar looked like a candle against the cold gray behind her. Sirius blinked, then closed his razors and started after her. When he reached the door she extended her hands; they were draped in the cloth she'd kept them safe in.

"I'm your friend, too, Mr T," Mrs Lahmar assured him. Then added, laughing, "Oughtta have at least one that ain't metal."

Sirius gently placed his friends into her hands.