About a Boy

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Walking the streets of London with a little girl, who'd have thought or ever imagined that his life would come to this? But it wasn't so odd as it seemed, their clothes, their mannerisms, their interaction and speech; no one would have thought them misplaced or odd and no one did.

The little girl didn't look very much like him at all but the way she walked and acted was close enough; he could have pulled off as her grandfather, he was really more the age of an older uncle but the way he carried himself and looked was too old, he was too washed and thin. But that's the way life tossed you sometimes.

She hummed and walked ahead a little wandering to the side here, looking in a shop window there. They weren't dressed poorly but they were no upper-class high society passers on the street. She was dressed simply and he even more so. Her name was Winter. He examined her face on many occasion and her name fit her face more then perfectly, he often thought of the child's name, he knew why but sometimes he still puzzled over the fact that her mother would allow such a name, it was not in Her style to name a child, much less her own, after the most desolate of times. She'd more over name Her daughter after himself. He smirked at this thought. Him, one of Her more unlikely acquaintances, and barely that, more like intimate persons to bicker with one another.

He watched Her daughter carefully, he knew it was only a matter of time before he must tell her of the letter he had received; he knew she longed to enter the world he had told her of. He too knew that she longed to walk through a magical barrier and be submerged in the world of her parents, she wanted magic and enchantment, spells and most of all she wanted the world her parents lived in; and she not only wanted the world, she wanted to search and scour every corner of it until she found them. Her strongest desire was to seek out her parents and rejoin them. If only it were so simple. There were so many things she did no understand about that world. So many evils she could not grasp or even understand. Things she had never seen or experienced. He was fairly confident in her personality to come out on top. But he knew there were things she should know before he let her go because he had to let her go.

He eyed her carefully, walking beside him in an airy manner, she wasn't really concerned with his presence but more so looking about the world, she liked people watching.

"I received your letter," and steady on walking he went, he barely let his eyes dance over to hers and forward again, pausing and clearing his throat he asked what he was afraid to ask, "I assume you still wish to study?" He didn't want her to leave, he needed her near so he knew she was safe but he knew there was nothing he could do.

"Oh, yes!" she almost squealed, almost. Not unnerved in the least by her uncles behavior she was jumping with excitement but stopped her self and walked slowly and surely. He smirked, he could see right through that walk, it might not have been his genes that she gathered such pose's from but he knew that walk and expression well enough.

"Right then, next week I will send Minnie with you to Diagon alley to collect your school things." He said, as they made their way toward a café. He could see her eyes wandering again, she was always looking at people, searching the crowds, looking for familiar faces.

Turning back to him she frowned.

"Won't you come with me instead?" she pleaded.

"No, there are something's better left behind" she quirked her eyebrow at him expertly and did not attempt to hide her disappointment. He ignored her pout and frown and kept his feet in stride, incidentally walking ahead of her.

"I suppose you wish to find your parents still?" he inquired, worry filling his mind but he could not stop a lovely image and a smile to erupt as well.

"Yes" she answered forcefully.

"Yes," he turned to her and slowed his pace by a fraction "I suppose that there's no reason you should not want to." Watching her face as she caught up to him he knew what was coming before it emerged from the young girls lips.

"Why won't you come with me Uncle Severus?" she inquired slowly. She knew she was picking through dangerous territory.

There was a long silence and she was ready to think of the subject as closed but finally he spoke "I don't want to I suppose, can't maybe. There is too much history there," he paused as if unsure himself whether his sentence were finished "there are too many things that are better left as is for now." He finished, mildly satisfied with what he had come up with for an answer.

Seeing that she would not get yelled at or get an icy stare she pushed deeper, "But weren't you a teacher at Hogwarts once? Minnie told me." She said, with a hint of craft in her voice.

He looked at her amusedly; she obviously was ready to push buttons "Minnie does not know when to keep her mouth shut sometimes." He said disinterestedly but with a finishing tone.

"But didn't you?" Winter persisted not satiated with such vague and unfeeling answers, "She said you were in league with powerful people."

Stopping at a nearby park he sat fluidly, as if he had meant to stop just there and sit just so, specificity on this bench, not because he was tired and his feet were aching. Waiting for her to sit and staring at the summer foliage around him he thought his words through before saying them.

"Yes, I suppose I was, but those people no longer are powerful, or are no longer the people I knew." He looked at her carefully, as if measuring her up, she was young, but not unintelligent. He raised his eyes back to the clouds.

"Let me tell you one more story." He said. However unlikely it looked of him, his stories were something to be desired by the young girl. Looking at him curiously she nodded and complied.

"Alright then; But there will always be others, won't there?" she asked tentatively.

"I don't really know. This is the story I have been saving for the very last, for two reasons, because I intended and still do intend for this to be my last story to you and second because this is a story that must be told right and it must be told right the first time around."

A bird few by and they both watched it until it disappeared "It's been turning in my mind these past ten years, and I try to hone it and perfect it, yet the time has come now that I must tell you and I cannot tell you the one I have practiced so many times in my head. So unnatural, so impersonal, this is something that needed no rehearsal, I know now. So I will tell it to you as it comes to mind, and I will tell it to you as our last story but perhaps someday there will be one more important to tell. I doubt I will live to the day." He looked at her, she was slightly confused he knew, but there was nothing he could do about that now; she would understand if not after the story, than someday.

"The story I tell you, you may not repeat, not to anyone, not to your most trusted friend not to your husband when you are old, not to Minnie—" He said sharply then mulling over his last words a second, shook his head and said "But I imagine Minnie already knows the tale somehow. Confounded nosy woman," he muttered, then continued "I do not mean that you may not tell others as to protect me, but to protect you, what I will tell you is not what is widely known to be true, in fact the only people left who know this tale, this truth, is myself, and I will tell you, and Minnie most likely knows." She nodded slightly and looked at him and waited. He smiled slightly and started his tale. "I am going to tell you about a boy I loved very much."