Disclaimer : All characters belong to J.K. Rowling. I don't claim any profit from them.
Spoiler alert: If you haven't read The Deathly Hallows and didn't want to be spoilt, please leave now.
THE SECRET GLADE
The autumn breezes were rather blowy this particluar afternoon, the distant skyline blood-red with the fierce departing glow of a sun that has long since mildened. The far-off clock chiming sounded dull and bleak, monotonous perhaps, as a late, but hurried breeze lifed red and yellow leaves off the treadbare branches, making strange howling noises before whirling them all across the sky in an ecstatic dance.
A girl suddenly scrambled out of a clump of bushes, tearing her small ankles in the sharpness of the protruding thorns as she came; her breath vibrant and raspy, her face twisted with mortified horror. She scuttled beside a narrow strip of green turf that kissed a small, but sullen-looking wood of red-leaved trees still intact, untouched by the autumn's wake. The gushing and rustling sound of the river nearby could not suffice in muffling her desperate sighs for breath, nor had the gentle breath of the late rising wind sufficed in fanning her glistening brow.
"Please..." she was sobbing. "Please ... don't hurt me!"
It was as if the wind had stopped all of a sudden, into one, icy mass of solid air. And it was all around her, so concrete, that she could no longer see the trailing smoke of the distant chimney; nor feel how delicate the small dead leaf falling on her red-hot face was as it brushed against her skin. Slumping against a tree, her back to it, her eyes widened more and more in horror, her mouth quivering. Some would have seen a big, black thing swooping down from the sky above, and feel it Some would just have felt it without seeing. Either way, the feeling was the same - absolutely horrible. A terrible sense of cold and limitless despair it was, an icy trail of destitution.
"Help ..." she whispered. "Help me ..."
Suddenly, the blood-red horizon exploded in a brilliant flash of silver and white, so bright that for a moment it obscured everything else. The girl had to shield her face with her shaking hands with great effort, because she could not close her eyes out of pure shock for what seemed an eternity before the silver receded a little, and it become an outline of a stag with handsome antlers, sprinting out of nowhere, bringing with it light, and warmth, and strangely, assurance too. In a few seconds, it was over.
The panic-stricken girl, shaking so much that it was a while before she could withdraw her hands, at last moved them an inch. The light had gone, and the afternoon was as before. Her eyes, wide set, found a black-robed man standing in the stag's place, streams of misty white still leaking off the tip of his outstretched wand. There was no need to conceal that device in his part, since the girl obviously had seen the monster herself.
"That was close," he said as his features softened in the evening light. He looked as if contemplating to pocket his wand and looked at her a moment before realizing that she didn't have a wand of her own.
"Are you still at school?" he added. He was a few paces nearer now.
"N-no," she stammered, between sobs. "I-I'm a squib."
The man looked even more kindly as he came closer and knelt beside her, pointing his wand at the many scrapes and bruises on her ankles that healed at once the moment he muttered a soft incantation, the friendly, warm glow from its tip reflected upon his round-framed glasses that had seen better days. Peeping from his black fringe, directly on his forehead was a lightning shaped scar.
"There we are," he said as the bruises completely resealed themselves. The girl scrambled to her feet, looked directly at the man's friendly green eyes before putting on a weak, uncertain smile of confused gratitude and ran off as fast as she could.
The wind was howling as the man stood back up, his hair and robes now billowing. It was only a minute or two before he recognized a small green stretch of playground some distance away, a giant silhouette of a smoking chimney, and gnarled, skeletal outlines of the trees beside it. The river was still gushing undisturbed, unseen. There were a few children playing He could hear the noises from there even though he was now a little further off from where he last saw this place from this angle, in another man's memory, in another man's world long gone.
Life was still the same, it seemed. He had been here once, for real. But that little visit was best left unspoken of, because he had borne an invisible corpse beside him then, and laid it to rest just beyond the river, inside the wild woods.
The peaceful dead were watching him …
With a sharp crack, like a whip, the man disappeared, only to re-appear a short space away, within the red-leaved wood beside the river, its floor leaf-strewn and blazen. The noisy playground was nearer here. What looked like an old, gnarly stump from a distance, and which was now beside his black-booted feet here on the wood's floor, was in fact a small, but sturdy looking slab of grey, rectangular stone half-hidden by red and yellow leaves, half-buried on the neglected ground The man's eyes narrowed slightly at the sight of something he had not seen before : a white lily growing, with its dark green leaves so intertwined to the slab that it seemed to be growing directly from within it. The poor-looking, but otherwise livid plant was also half-hidden under leaves of red and yellow. He was surprised. Weren't liles long gone ... after summer? But this ...
The man's eyes still narrowed as they trailed from one end to the other, reading the name engraved upon the stone, nearly hidden now, under the lily's dark, blade-like leaves. That name, he had hated once, yes; hated with all his heart. But his hatred vanished the day its bearer died, a long time ago. It seemed like ages and ages, a whole different world and time… The leaves had left free the short epitaph at the bottom, which was clearly visible thus:
A man of outstanding courage and bravery.
The man, strangely, in spite of himself, felt his eyes misting slightly as he stared at the lily. He blinked quickly as he re-read the whole. His eyes flew at the single flower again, and then at the grey stone.
The cries of the children were the only sounds that broke the quietness of the glade.
Now he had begun to wonder what it was that drew him to this secret glade, a quiet, solitary place hidden from muggle eyes, to which he had first alighted several years ago, a body of a man hovering alongside him, hidden in an invisibility cloak. True, he had retrieved it from the Shrieking Shack the prievious day after everything else had settled down at Hogwarts, taking care as best as he could, to do it in absolute secrecy. Snape would have wanted it, yet he felt a little awkward now, in thinking that. He had always hated him, after all ; hated him with vindictive passion…
The lily had not been growing here back then. Why was it here now? What could it possibly mean?
So many questions he should have asked.
But then, he was always too blinded with fury and repulsing hatred in his presence.
Control your emotions, he said.
Harry Potter was crouching at Snape's grave again, clearing the dead leaves off its surface with a flick of his wand. The disheveled, red and yellow fallouts flew as if a wind had uplifted them … He was now looking at the lily, growing from a crack in the stone, lush all around that sombre spot. He gazed at it for more than a minute before breathing deeply as he pointed at the spot from where it sprung.
"Aguamenti"
Clear water burst out of Harry's wand in a little shower. The little deed done, he rose.
Wherever his mother, Lily, may be, her death had not been in vain.
He glanced at the grave once again and took his time before turning around.
Snape had seen to that.
Snape … and Dumbledore …
"Harry!"
Harry was now over fifteen paces away from the secret glade (which had resembled an old stump again) when he heard a sharp crack, and a familiar voice. He had been used to hearing that sound, and was not as startled as some might have expected. Yet, admittedly, his hand moved a fracton of an inch towards his wand, now safely tucked inside his billowing black robes.
"Where have you been?!" cried Ron, lowering his wand as he came, hastily shoving it inside his pocket. "I've been looking all over for you! Though it was a pure tip-off that led me to this place," he added.
"Got word on the office there was a Dementor seen gliding around here," Harry replied curtly. "I took care of it, Ron," he added quickly when he noticed Ron's look of pure shock and outrage. "There are a lot of things much worse than Dementors after all, aren't there?."
"Dementors," Ron muttered as he and Harry walked hastily away from the wood and the glade, the atmosphere getting more and more blowy by the second. "Hard to believe there are still those bloody things lurking around the place."
He looked round about him, noticing his surroundings for the first time. "Where actually are we, anyway?"
"Dunno exactly what they call this place," Harry replied. He pointed at a spot beyond Ron's shoulder. "There – down by the river's a street called 'Spinner's End', I reckon."
"Never heard of it," said Ron, shrugging. He straightened, looking at Harry clear in the eye. "Actually, Harry; the thing is – I've just come from the Burrow, and um, it's that – "
He paused slowly, seeing Harry's look of shock and surprise now that he had been reminded and jolted back to the present.
"Uh, yeah. Dementors. Of course everyone would understand perfectly that when someone's , um, about to be attacked, somewhere else in the world; It's uh, natural that you had to … no harm there, mate," he stammered, treading the ground with his toes. Ron breathed deeply when Harry said nothing, and looked at his flickering green eyes which now looked totally livid. "Now don't disapparate just yet, not until I've had my say, Harry. Hermione, mum, dad and Fleur are with her, and-"
"Just spit it out will you, Ron!" cried Harry desperately, his voice shaking. "How's Ginny?"
Ron beamed. "Oh, she's fine."
Apparently, he had been preparing for this, perhaps all the way from the Burrow, then to the Auror Office, and now here. His eyes did not wander from Harry's, and it was surprising that Ron had shown this much confidence when he had always been particularly jittery at times like these…
"It's a boy – " he said, grinning broadly. "Another boy…"
Now they were back again. All the revelry had passed. They were once again enclosed within a comfortable little world they had created for themselves not so long ago. Harry stood with his hand on Ginny's shoulder, his cheek touching her fragrant red hair as they looked at their second child sleeping peacefully on the small, hovering crib that rocked gently. Tiny little stars that sparkled dimly flew all around its wooden frame, and James was asleep in the next room.
"Isn't he beautiful?" Ginny murmured. "And would you believe … he has your eyes?"
Harry blinked, not taking his eyes off the little newcomer.
"I'll write to Neville tomorrow," he said after a pause.
"Oh?" Ginny looked at him, perhaps not expecting this. "Hermione's already sent owls to Neville, Luna, Percy; Charlie and George yesterday…"
"No.." said Harry. "This is different, Ginny."
He looked down at her confused face.
"I want him to be godfather,"
"Godfather..!" Ginny flushed in surprise and contentment at this wonderful new revelation.
"Yes," Harry continued. "Godfather to little Albus."
"Albus?" Ginny was even more surprised. Of course she knew that Harry had suspended their new son's christening upto this very moment, suspecting some kind of a surprise in his part; and she was right. Still, naming him after Albus Dumbledore was as unexpected as she had ever hoped and prepared for. She smiled as she saw Harry smiling back at her, and she nodded. They were looking at the baby again.
"Neville Longbottom," said Harry, now looking at the great painted tapestry above little Albus's crib – a beautiful picture of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry; a birthday gift from Luna for little James a little over a year ago. Each emblem of the four Houses was beautifully embroidered on each of its corners. "Godfather to Albus Potter-"
Harry's eyes drifted to the emblem of Slytherin at the bottom-right corner, and stopped there.
"To Albus Severus Potter," he added.
All was quiet at the secret glade around the lily and the stone.
The dead are at peace.
THE END