Outtakes From a Marriage
Disclaimer: I don't own the Harry Potter universe; that all belongs to Jo Rowling and the moviemakers at Warner Brothers. The title for this story comes from a novel by the same name written by Ann Leary.
Of all his children, Harry thinks, Lily is the least like him.
She is fifteen now, soon on her way to becoming a woman in the wizarding world, and bright enough to carve out any future she wants for herself. But that is not why they are different. When he was her age, he was scrappy, the kind of Gryffindor who always got into fights with the Slytherins, the kind of kid who played Quidditch with a rough streak—a boy, he reasons, not this nature-loving, dreamy girl that he has brought into the world. When he was her age he was preparing to fight Voldemort; Lily is still exploring the forests around their house in the countryside, learning the names of the magical plants and animals, writing little stories in her muggle notebook.
Curiosity is the trait that unites them, the struggle to solve any puzzle, magical or not. On Sundays they sort out the word problems in the weekend edition of the Daily Prophet, a practice that frustrates James, his eldest son, to no end.
"I hate those riddle things," he denounces, glaring at the cheekily worded stanza. "When am I ever going to need to sort out rubbish like that?"
To which his father shakes his head, chuckling. "That's exactly the attitude I'm talking about, James. No knowledge is beneath you."
James's "attitude," as his father calls it, is something that Harry has been trying to break his son of for the past few months, claiming that he needs to get his head in check if he wants to make himself a likeable Quidditch player.
"Fair enough," his son carefully concedes, "but you didn't answer my question. When will I ever need a practical understanding of how to work out a riddle?"
His father takes a long sip from his coffee while Lily peers at this week's puzzle with her brow furrowed. "When I was in the Triwizard Tournament I had to sort out a riddle to get to the cup in the center, a riddle given by a sphinx, and when your uncle Ron and aunt Hermione and I went after the sorcerer's stone Hermione sorted out a riddle that saved all our lives."
This surprises James, who had expected a more general explanation. "I didn't know you had to get past a Sphinx in the Tournament," he says, some of his boyish awe for his father creeping into his words. Despite their differences, James loves his father fiercely and has always looked up to him in the way only a son can.
Harry nods, swallows. "Some of the vaults in Gingott's are guarded by Sphinxes, but not many. Most wizards don't like having to sort out a new riddle every time they want to get to their gold."
"Do you remember the riddle the Sphinx gave you?" James asks.
"Yes, actually." His father sits down his piece of toast and regards his son.
"First think of the person who lives in disguise, Who deals in secrets and tells naught but lies, Next tell me what's always the last thing to mend, The middle of middle and end of the end? And finally give me the sound often heard, During the search for a hard-to-find word. Now string them together, and answer me this, Which creature would you be unwilling to kiss?"
Lily looks up from the morning Prophet with her eyebrows raised. "That's a good one, dad."
During the summer before their seventh year Harry takes each of his children camping in the nearby forests, a tradition he'd started with Teddy years ago. This year it's Al's turn, and he has a feeling the trip could go one of many ways.
When he took James last year it had been pleasant and easy. He'd shown his oldest son how to hunt wild game, something Harry typically did for special dinners during the holidays. James had taken to it well enough, proving he was just as good at hunting foxes and quail as he was at finding snitches. He'd shared a bit of whiskey with his son, letting him get his first taste of it before the inevitable exposure he'd encounter during his seventh year.
But Albus is a little different from most of the children his age, quieter, a little moody. On more than one occasion Ginny has jokingly commented that Al reminds her of Harry at fifteen.
On Friday afternoon he's packing up the last of the things they'll need for the weekend, throwing all their supplies in his old rucksack still leftover from horcrux hunting. He takes it on auror missions now, the kinds that lead him into African jungles or the mountains of Eastern Europe. When his children see his faded green shoulder bag it's a sign that they won't be seeing their father for a while.
Ginny finds him just as he's securing the latch at the top, charms reducing the weight of the contents inside and expanding the space. She throws off her formal robes and begins to change into something more comfortable: muggle jeans and one of his faded T-shirts from his training days at the auror academy. He likes the look of his wife in his clothes, the smallness she exudes in comparison to his tall, broad frame.
Harry approaches her at the bureau and watches her carefully remove her jewelry, leaving just her wedding ring to glint against the orange light leaking in through the window, a golden shadow slowly ebbing across the floorboards. He wraps his arm around her waist, his hand on her hip while she turns to kiss him. By wizarding standards, they are still young, despite their children's notion that their parents are ancient, and it shows when they are alone together.
Ginny turns around and they kiss again, slower this time, the kind of kiss that still excites a burning in his chest that he associates with kicking off the ground on his broomstick or dodging a close hex. He gently pulls her lower lip in between his teeth, inciting a soft breath of air from her.
"You're home early," she comments, giggling a little when he kisses the skin on her neck, pressing them closer together.
"Things have been really quiet the past couple days and I wanted to see you before we leave tomorrow," he explains, tugging her hair out of the formal ponytail she's had it in all day. Her rich, copper-hued hair spills past her shoulders and Harry runs a strand of it through his fingers while she leans against him.
"I had a feeling you'd already be home," Ginny said, brushing his jet-black hair out of his eyes.
"Have you seen Lily?" He asks, hands skimming her sides the way he used to when they were teenagers.
She bites her lip, a gesture that Harry loves about her. "I think she's out back, but don't hold me to it. For all I know Lily could be halfway to the river by now."
He kisses her a bit more, quite a bit more, actually, and pulls away. "I'll find her," Harry says confidently. She doesn't doubt him. He has a precarious talent for hunting down their children when they want to be alone.
Behind the house amid the tall grass, Canis, their flat-coated retriever, is what gives her away, barking at the blackbirds twittering around the green leaves.
"Hush," Lily urges, colored pencils and drawing pad in hand. The scraggly black dog issues a second bark, his tail wagging excitedly as the birds in the arching elm tree vacate its branches.
She huffs in a dejected sort of way. "You scared them all off," she says, directing her words to the perpetually cheerful animal. Canis approaches her, licking her cheek. Abruptly, he catches sight of Lily's father crossing the garden, abandoning the fifteen-year-old girl in favor of Harry.
"Hey, boy," he says, scratching the dog behind his silky ears. He yips happily, circling his favorite member of the Potter household before trotting after him towards Lily.
"Hi dad," she greets, a few strands of her wavy copper hair flying loose from her messy French braid. She has tied most of it back with a white bandana folded into a headband, a look that Lily has been sporting all summer. Over the past few months she's amassed a wide collection of colors: royal blue, pearly lavender, Kelly green, and Gryffindor red (which clashes horribly with her hair, but she wears it all the same).
"Hello Lils," he says, sitting down next to her on the grass in their back yard, left of the garden. A light wind rustles the leaves of the elm before them while a few ground squirrels scamper into the underbrush.
She's filling in the skyline of her drawing, knowing that the sun will set soon and the light will never be right again, whereas the birds will come back another day when Canis isn't as vocal. Lily is what she calls a "naturalist," loving the outdoors and animals in particular. James used to tease her when she used that word to describe herself, asking if what she meant was "nudist."
"Like one of those nude nymph witches with leaves and flowers in their hair?" He'd asked, taking the Mickey out of her one evening at dinner. "Hear that dad? Lily wants to run around the forest completely naked."
"That's not what 'naturalist' means, James," Harry had corrected evenly. The teasing that goes on in their house rarely surprises him.
"I've got something for you," he says, pulling a book out of his pocket. "It's a muggle book, but I thought you'd like it."
Lily takes the paperback from her father, examines it—Walden, by Henry David Thoreau.
"He lived in a cabin by Walden pond for a few years and wrote about his life there," Harry explains, petting Canis absently.
"Thanks, dad. Where'd you get it?"
"A muggle bookstore."
Her red eyebrows arch thoughtfully. "I wouldn't know where to find a muggle bookstore even if I had to."
He chuckles and scratches the underside of the dog's stomach. "Have you seen Al today?"
"That sour worry wort? He's probably shut up in his room or something. I haven't talked to him all day," Lily says, flipping through the smooth pages. Harry can see the look of a thought forming in her features, brown eyes focused with her bottom lip between her teeth, just like Ginny.
Canis pants in the seasonal heat and he is reminded of the dreadfully hot summer following the defeat of Voldemort, the evenings he spent with Ron and their many bottles of wine in the Weasleys' dark garden after sundown, staying drunk all evening and quietly sneaking into Ginny's room well past midnight. He is often grateful that his children are far less imaginative when it comes to bad behavior, grateful that the worst he's had to deal with is James's fighting and Al's sour attitude and Lily's unconventional ways of thinking.
"I'm going to go track down your brother," he says, standing. Canis follows his steps like a shadow.
Lily does not need confirmation on which brother he is referring to. She makes a few more strokes of her pencil and promises to be ready soon for dinner.
Al's bedroom is typically the cleanest of his three children, but when Harry knocks on the heavy, cherry-wood door and slowly lets himself in, the interior resembles the aftermath of some of the raids he's participated in. There are clothes and books and various Quidditch supplies all over the floor, and Al's desk is covered in a variety of school books and what appears to be unfinished assignments.
He sits down on the edge of his son's bed, startling Al considerably. "Merlin, dad. I didn't hear you."
"Interesting book?" Harry asks, watching the teenager guiltily try to conceal the title.
"Er, yeah."
Al's bright green eyes dashed to the book and back to his father, who now holds it in his right hand.
The Magical Mind: Occlumency, Legilimency, and their Uses in the Mental Arts. A restricted book, Harry notes. No wonder Al looks so guilty.
"I shouldn't have, I know you keep those books like that for a reason—"
"It's okay, Al. You turn seventeen tomorrow. I'm not that strict."
His son visibly relaxes, slumping into the pillow he'd squashed against his headboard. Harry tosses the black, leather-bound volume into his lap. "What've you read so far?" he asks.
Al seems surprised by this turn in the conversation, but masks it much more easily than his previous guilt. "Just some of the introduction, and the instructions for how to do some basic Occlumency techniques. Practice stuff, mostly."
Harry flips the book open and glances at the section that Al was explaining. "Hmm. Useful, I suppose. I never read this part, actually. I got it for the information on Legilimency."
"You did?" he asks.
"Yeah. I'd already had Occulmency training, and I got good enough at it during the war that I didn't need any extra help, but I never bothered to learn Legilimency until later."
Al ruffles his hair in a gesture that reminds his father of the original James Potter. "You did so much by the time you were my age."
Harry searches his son's words for the slightest hint of the emotion he's sometimes heard in conversations with James, the tone that pleads: Why? Why are there no adventures left for the rest of us?
"How did you get Occulmency training?"
"Professor Snape taught me."
"Did he?" Al questions. He had always been curious about his middle namesake, especially since information concerning Snape isn't as readily available as information on Dumbledore.
"Yes. He was especially gifted at it. But I definitely wasn't, at least not initially," Harry chuckles. "Those lessons went horribly, to tell you the truth. I wasn't putting any effort into learning and he could tell that I was just wasting his time."
If Al found this explanation confusing he didn't press it. "Teach me."
It was his father's turn to appear startled. "What? Teach you Occulmency?"
"Well, yeah. I'm sure you learned when you were about twelve or something."
Ah, bitterness. He'd been expecting it.
"Fifteen, actually. And I didn't have a choice in the matter. I was having visions of Voldemort's thoughts while I was sleeping and Dumbledore thought Occulmency the best way to put a stop to it."
"Oh."
Al keeps his lips settled into a thin line. His father doesn't usually talk about Voldemort or the second war or even his work as an auror, really. He'd only known the basics about his father when he left for Hogwarts, which Al regarded as a huge mistake on his parents part. It had been one thing for James to tease him about the thestrals, but it was another thing entirely to not realize how famous his entire bloody family was.
"It's not pleasant."
He looks up, surprised that his dad is continuing his train of thought. "Learning Occlumency, you mean?"
"Yes," Harry says. "Or, at least, it wasn't pleasant the way I learned it. Imagine having someone press in on your head through your eyes and flip through all your memories, your thoughts—everything, personal or not, and while they're doing it you have to remain calm enough to comprehend the technique and develop a method to block them. It's difficult, and if there's anything you want to keep private—well, good luck."
Al gets the impression that his father is warning him, not shooing him off the way he would've if he'd been fifteen.
"They don't teach Occlumency at the Academy, do they?" It wasn't a question. Al knew the answer but he was pressing him to say it.
"No. They've tried in the past, I think, but it's really the type of thing that requires one-on-one attention."
The sound of the back door slamming reverberates throughout the house. That'll be James, Harry thinks.
As if the arrival of his oldest son marks the end of the Occlumency conversation, he stands, suddenly aware of how dark it is in Al's room with the sun nearly obscured by the horizon.
"You better pack." Harry says, leaning against the door-jam. "We're leaving early tomorrow."
"It'll get done."
He closes the door quietly behind him, letting Al simmer for a little bit before expecting him for his usual arrival at the dinner table halfway through the meal. On the last night of his son's childhood Harry allows him that one courtesy.
The Potter household features a plethora of both children and animals, and it seems that the only time they all emerge at once is for meals. When Harry enters the kitchen his wife's back is turned from him, her attention on the stovetop while James rambles about his day flying for the Falcons, the Quidditch team he was signed to just after leaving Hogwarts.
Lily's Siamese cat, Faust, is peering at the baked chicken that Ginny has just placed on the table. "Don't get any ideas," Lily warns, removing the slinky animal from her lap.
Lately, Faust has been especially daring, attacking Lily's caged moths just the other week. Canis is much better behaved, resting on his palate by the back door apathetically, his posture reminding Harry of his second son.
"Where's Al?" Ginny asks, twirling her wand over the dishes of carrots and green beans, sending them soaring over to the table.
"He should be down soon, but I'd give him a minute."
His wife nods, pouring herself a glass of Armenian brandy for Harry and herself.
Scratching the back of his neck, he asks his daughter about her moth collection, wondering if Faust has made any more hungry advances on their population.
"I got James to put a charm on their cage, so they've been alright. They've gotten so big. I'll have to release them much earlier than I thought," she explains.
Harry loves his daughter, but for the life of him he doesn't see why anyone would be interested in plants and insects the way Lily is. Last year she spent the summer "observing" a tarantula spiderling that Luna had given her, so when she asked if she could look after a few of the mammoth, green moths during the warmer months, Harry and Ginny had cheerfully allowed it.
"When will you have to release them?" Ginny asks, sitting at the table while Lily tosses a sliver of chicken to the cat.
"In a week or two, but definitely before the start of term. Although I'm sure Hagrid wouldn't mind me bringing them to school."
"Hagrid wouldn't, but McGonagall would," Harry says, handing James a basket of rolls after taking one for himself.
Al chooses this moment to wander into dinner. His late arrival doesn't surprise any of them, but it does cause a prowling Faust to be shooed out of his path.
"What riveting book did you have your nose in all evening?" James asks, pointedly slicing the meat off his chicken leg with a knife.
Al frowns at his older brother and starts to assemble a plate for himself. "None of your business."
"Boys," Ginny warns.
He presses his full lips into a line and relaxes them. "I was reading one of dad's books. How was Quidditch?"
James looks back and forth between his brother and Harry. "But the enchantment—"
"Is just a riddle," Harry finishes. "No magic involved. I figured that when you lot were old enough to read them you'd be old enough to figure it out."
"Looks like you're a little behind, bro," Al sniggers.
"How did you figure it out? Is that invisibility book in there?"
Al merely laughs at his brother and tucks into a hearty dinner while James pushes his food around his plate with a preoccupied expression on his face. Lily chats with her mum about the progress of the summer garden and absently strokes her cat, who is curled around her ankles, arching his spine.
Harry finishes one glass of brandy and listens to his family, thinking about the early start the next morning. Albus nearly chokes on his own water after hearing an off-color joke from his brother and Ginny shakes her head, her red hair long and full and still unwaveringly beautiful to him.
It's nothing monumental, but every part of the evening stays with him that night, rolling around in his brain as he traces the dimples in his wife's naked lower back, his breathing even and relaxed. She angles herself closer to him in her sleep and Harry closes his eyes, releasing any worries he has about Al and the tricky process of reaching out to his son. He falls into sleep after the waning of activity, an interlude in waking life.
fin