Petunia was massaging the ghost’s head with concentration, and the strands of his hair — dark and shiny — slid between her fingers like threads of silk.
The ghost, relaxed by the massage, had slid down a bit and tilted his head back slightly to make it easier for her, and Petunia’s gaze kept catching on his rounded knees sticking out of the water, or his hairless chest with dark areolas of his nipples.
Each time she immediately looked away and swallowed nervously.
She was afraid to even think about what would come next.
It was a pity she couldn’t wash his hair forever, enjoying its softness and silkiness.
Petunia reached for the ladle to scoop water from the tub, couldn’t resist another glance at the handsome man — however shameful!
— and unexpectedly noticed that his chest hadn’t moved an inch, as if he wasn’t breathing.
Everything inside her went cold, and in an instant, the meaning of the vision he had shown her became clear.
Washing a corpse.
She mechanically scooped up water and began rinsing the thick foam from his hair, but at the same time, her mind was racing, trying to understand the situation.
She had blown the horn she’d found in the empty fireplace hall.
Had there been any other meaning to it, besides the fact that it was a completely mischievous act?
The boy Diggory, by doing what she did, had awakened the cruel White Witch, who brought winter and many troubles to Narnia.
And what had she, Petunia, set in motion?
Wasn’t it after that that she felt someone’s attention on her?
And that shadow in the guard tower, when she was running from the city?
She tried to remember what the silhouette she’d seen had looked like and unconsciously pulled too hard on his hair.
Catching herself, she muttered an apology, but the ghost didn’t react, as if it hadn’t hurt him.
Oh, right, he’s dead.
He can’t feel pain.
Petunia sighed quietly, put down the ladle, wrung out his hair, and twisting it into a tight bun, secured it with a couple of hairpins on top of his head so it wouldn’t get in the way.
“Lean forward, I’ll wash your back.” The ghost obediently complied with her request.
Petunia soaped up the washcloth and carefully ran it down his back.
The snow-white skin of his back was crossed and disfigured by several unhealed wounds.
The singed edges of skin and flesh spread apart like the peel on a boiled potato.
Petunia thought the marks looked like they were from a whip, but then where did the burn marks come from?
“Doesn’t it hurt?” The ghost shook his head.
Gathering her courage, she ran the washcloth along one of the wounds, but the ghost didn’t even flinch, and she began to move the washcloth a little more boldly.
When the ghost had appeared before her on the first day, she had given him water.
On the second day — food, made from the produce she had gathered with her own hands.
Then they had missed a day because of the rain, and Petunia suspected that the washing was supposed to have happened yesterday.
And for today, the vigil by the grave remained.
Moving the washcloth up and down, Petunia repeated to herself: drink, food, washing, and sleep.
This simple formula was familiar to her.
Not from Lily’s books.
They had a lot of nonsense at first glance, but if you squinted and told yourself that magical science was also a science of sorts, then the content of the school textbooks was quite logical.
No, Petunia had known about this even before the professor from Hogwarts had come to their house and handed Lily that very letter.
She paused to re-soap the washcloth, but the wounds, covered in soapy lather, looked as if she had only irritated them more, and she hurried to scoop up water.
When she splashed water on his back, the traces of the wounds washed away with the foam, leaving only clean, smooth skin.
Petunia ran her hand along his spine in disbelief, but her eyes weren’t deceiving her.
The terrible wounds had disappeared, as if they had never been there.
The ghost turned around, raising his eyebrows questioningly.
“The wounds on your back are gone…” she stammered, and he nodded seriously, as if that was how it was supposed to be.
Oh, alright then.
Petunia doused his back with water once more, washing away the remaining foam, rinsed and re-soaped the washcloth, then moved to the side to be more comfortable working on his arms.
On his snow-white wrists, she saw bruises and burns, skinned knuckles and torn fingernails.
On his left arm also missing were his little finger and ring finger, how had she not noticed that before?
But as soon as she rubbed thoroughly with the washcloth, his hands returned to their original state: the fingers were all there again, and all evidence of the very bad things this man must have endured in his life had disappeared.
By this point, all the embarrassment at the sight of a perfect naked man in her bathtub was gone, and she treated her task as if she were cleaning an ancient statue of its filth.
Especially since that’s exactly what it looked like.
Under her washcloth, terrible bruises and unhealing wounds vanished, as if washed away by water; the skin on his bloodied wrists and ankles restored itself, and improperly healed bones returned to their natural shape.
Petunia even suspected she had one of Lily’s magical gadgets in her hands, but no.
She had bought this washcloth after leaving her parents, at an ordinary dry goods store.
The clock showed almost midnight when Petunia finally finished.
The ghost rose from the water — all pale-skinned and gleaming, like a statue just hewn from a block of stone.
Petunia patted him dry with a towel, removing the remaining water, and then handed him a clean sheet.
He wrapped himself in it like a toga.
Petunia was absolutely breathless at such beauty, and when he additionally pulled out the hairpins and his dark hair spilled over his shoulders and back, cloaking him like a strange cape, she almost lost the last remnants of her sanity from the aesthetic shock.
She flinched toward the tub to pour out the filthy, dirty water, but the ghost deftly caught her by the arm and shook his head.
She relaxed.
Really, it was already night.
She’d deal with it tomorrow.
“Then lie down,” she pointed at the bed.
“And I’ll watch over your sleep.” It was a little funny watching a tall man try to fit into a bed that was clearly too small for him.
Finally, he solved the problem simply by moving the pillow to the other end and lying with his head toward the window, while his bare feet hung off the bed toward the hearth.
Petunia came over to cover him with a blanket and, after a moment’s thought, leaned down and placed a brief kiss on his forehead.
“Sweet dreams,” she whispered and nodded toward the table.
“I’ll be here while you sleep.
Until morning.” He blinked twice, showing he had heard her, and closed his eyes, becoming in appearance indistinguishable from a dead man.
Remembering the vision, Petunia placed Lily’s magic candle on the windowsill, and its cold light further illuminated his peaceful, clean face.
After standing by the bed for a moment, Petunia, trying to tread as quietly as possible, returned to the table, poured herself a cup of rosehip infusion, and opened the diary.
She had to stay awake all night, not leaving the body, not getting distracted by anything, until the sun rose.
Taking a sip from the cup, she picked up the pen and began to write down everything that had happened to her today.
Starting with the ring and key found in the pockets of the trousers (remembering the key, she looked around for it, found it on the table, lying against the wall, and just in case moved it closer), and ending with the fact that a ghost was sleeping on her bed, there was a tub of water standing in the room — as dirty as if she had hand-washed the entire Buckingham Palace — and what she was supposed to do and what awaited her was completely unclear.
As if in answer to her thoughts, a noise came from outside.
Petunia jumped and pricked up her ears.
The noise repeated, but it was still so quiet that she couldn’t make out its nature.
She waited a little, trying to breathe only every other breath so as not to miss anything, but the noise didn’t repeat, and she returned to her notes.
After finishing, she flipped through the filled pages, but they were quickly used up, and for a while, Petunia just sat, looking at the clock and silently counting the movements of the second hand.
At the three thousand one hundred forty-fifth count, she heard a horse’s neigh and the clatter of hooves from outside, which first grew louder and then faded just as quickly, as if a wild horse had galloped past the farm.
Petunia lost count.
She waited a few minutes, but the noise from outside didn’t repeat.
It was boring just sitting there, so she picked up a book and stared at its title.
The gold-embossed letters had previously looked like gibberish, but now Petunia recognized the few that were on the ring.
True, here above them there were no strokes, but one dot or even a group of three dots.
She looked at these letters, wondering how these words were pronounced, and gradually her head began to clear.
“‘The History of Fëanor and His Sons,'” she read what was written in larger type.
And slightly below, in a smaller font, it was clarified: “‘in the days of their greatest glory and greatest fall.'” What she read sounded like the title of a boring historical chronicle, but if this book wasn’t from the ordinary world, then it would probably be interesting.
Petunia opened the cover and prepared to read, but at that moment, footsteps were heard outside.
Someone who walked across the yard not slowly, but not quickly either, exactly as a person familiar with the place would walk, crossed the yard, climbed the steps onto the porch, and knocked on the door.
Petunia flinched like a frightened rabbit.
Her gaze darted to the door, which — oh, scatterbrain!
— was not bolted!
A thought flashed that she should get up and close the door, but getting up was exactly what she couldn’t do.
All strength had left her body at once, making her legs as weak as jelly.
“Miss Evans,” came Mr.
Cory’s voice from behind the door, just as deep and resonant as she remembered from their only meeting, “I apologize for such a late visit.
But I completely by chance,” he chuckled, “remembered that I have something for you.” Mr.
Cory?
Petunia let out a long, relieved sigh.
Well, that explained why he hadn’t gotten lost — he’d lived here himself before.
She pressed her palms against the tabletop and pushed herself up with all her might, forcing her disobedient body to stand.
She made it!
Only a couple of steps to the door, but her legs really weren’t cooperating.
She struck her thigh with her fist in annoyance.
She had decided to invite him in, but the dead man in her bed suddenly jerked as if struck, his mouth opened in a silent groan, and his whole body began to shake.
Frightened — what happened, everything was fine!
— she rushed to him, but tripped over the tub and fell, hitting the floor painfully with her barely healed knees.
Tears sprang from her eyes, and blood flowed from her lip, which she had bitten to keep from screaming.
But the moment she was next to him, the ghost seemed to sense her presence through his deathlike sleep and grew still.
Petunia, breathing heavily through her mouth, forced herself to get up and sit on the edge of the bed, then wiped her wet chin with her palm.
There was blood on her hand.
“Miss Evans?” Mr.
Cory called her again.
His voice was calm and friendly, as if it wasn’t him being made to wait on the porch in the middle of the night.
“If it’s inconvenient for you to come out, you can simply invite me inside,” he suggested, and Petunia suddenly thought that the Mr.
Cory she had met at the bar hadn’t given her the impression of a man who would obediently wait to be invited.
He was more the type to loudly announce his intention to enter and then come in anyway, whether he was invited in or not.
And besides, wasn’t this strange?
The pain in her bitten lip sobered her up, forcing her to think rationally.
Her knees hurt so much anyway that she wouldn’t have found the strength to get up and go anywhere.
If he needed to give her something, wouldn’t it be more logical to use the mailbox?
Why drag himself out here in the middle of the night?
She glanced at the dark window.
The light from the magic candle drowned out everything that might be happening outside the window.
But if she shielded her eyes…
Petunia shifted along the edge of the bed toward the window, almost sitting on the ghost’s hair, and, cupping her palm to her forehead to block the light, pressed her face to the glass.
That night, the moon over the farm was especially big and bright.
Like a shining giant sickle, it hung in the middle of the dark sky, outshining both planets and stars, perfectly replacing the absence of a streetlamp.
In the rays of its deathly pale light, Petunia saw on her porch a formless, swirling shadow.
The shadow stirred and repeated in Mr.
Cory’s voice: “Miss Evans, may I come in?
The thing I brought is truly very important for you.”