A/N: The first of the Narnian collection - see note on profile if you are an HP fan.

Going Back

"I shall go back tomorrow,

From Imbros over the sea,

Stand in the trench, Achilles,

Flame-capped and shout for me."

– Patrick Shaw Stewart, 1916,

It was the last night of the Pevensies' stay in the Scrubb household. For the last time, they had had a healthy vegetarian dinner. For the last time, they had had no unhealthy pudding. For the last time, all three cousins had sought to avoid catching the others' eyes, lest they read the same memory of the feasts on Ramandu's island.

They had bidden Uncle Harold 'Good night' and been reminded again to leave the windows open. They had piled into Lucy's room to discuss again just how Edmund and Lucy were to break the news of the Dawn Treader to Peter and Susan. They had been cut off again by Aunt Alberta coming up to order them all to bed properly. Now Eustace and Edmund were sitting on the sides of their respective bed and camp-bed, dawdling a minute more in the process of 'going to bed properly.'

"I suppose your folks will be here before lunchtime," said Eustace, firing a stray sock into the laundry hamper.

Edmund looked up in agreement. "Their telegram said 'about eleven.'"

Eustace gave a glum nod. "Then it will be back to school next week. You'll be cutting it fine for getting your things," he added in a sudden afterthought.

"No." Edmund grinned. "One of the benefits of a large family. Everything of mine is Peter's old stuff, and everything of Lu's is Susan's old stuff. We never have to shop. Being thankful, of course, that Peter's never been the kind of chap to scribble all over his books-"

His light banter broke off mid-flow. Eustace was sitting hunched, clearly not hearing, his fingers twisting together on his lap.

Edmund leaned forwards off the camp-bed. "It will be all right, you know. School. With – after everything. I know," he added, as Eustace's only response was a small, either uncertain or sceptical noise. "I went back to school after Narnia too, you know."

"You didn't have Adele Pennyfather and 'Spotty' Sorner and the Garrett twins. Thinking you were their errand boy."

"I had Wiggins and Bronwell Minor," said Edmund laconically.

"And you had Peter with you," Eustace continued in stubborn attachment to his problem.

"I'd had Peter with me all the previous year, too," Edmund observed. "And much good it had done me." He sighed. "Look, it looks hard, and it is hard, but just be your, er, un-dragoned self and then word will get round, and They will back off, and other people will stop scuttling out of your way whenever you appear and some of them start to talk to you … and whatever happens, you'll always be a bit odd, because something of Narnia always sort of clings."

"I'm not a king," Eustace objected.

King Edmund the Just gave him an exasperated stare. "That's not what I meant! What I mean is..." He paused. "You, I – the same Lion's backing you. And if He can deal with the White Witch and the Telmarines and the Island Where Dreams Come True, AND Wiggins and Bronwell Minor, I'm pretty certain Adele Pennyfather won't be a real problem to Him."

There was a longish silence, and then Eustace disentangled his hands. "I suppose so," he said in the tight tones of one who is holding determinedly to an idea without proven experience.

"Truly," said Edmund, rising to slap his cousin briefly on the shoulder, and then rolling quickly into a hump under the one layer of blankets Aunt Alberta considered hygienic.

"I'll write to you, as well," the hump remarked. "So will Lu, I'm sure, if you'd like and won't be ragged to death at school getting letters from a girl. Just like we used to do when we sent ambassadors off to Calormen and nasty places like that. And, Eustace-"

Edmund's head popped back out, his voice and eyes fighting a losing battle to conceal desperate longing. "You – you'll write if – if you – Go Anywhere? Won't you?"

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