Title: Twenty-nine Months (A Sequel to Seventeen Months)
Author: eidheann
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: ~900
Summary: Fifty-two weeks have passed, and I still see your face.
Warnings: Past character death (not H/D). First person. Unbeta'd.
Disclaimer: All Harry Potter characters herein are the property of J.K. Rowling and Bloomsbury/Scholastic. No copyright infringement is intended.
"Hello, Mother." I stood staring at the stone engraved with your name, and felt the words dry in my throat. I took a deep breath, taking comfort from the squeeze of fingers around mine and tried again. "Hello, Mother."
My words trail off into nothing. Fifty-two visits and it still doesn't seem real to me. I hear your voice everywhere. I've lost track of the number of times I've opened a door expecting to see you behind it, certain you've been calling to me. The number of times I've had to stop and stare into a crowd, certain that the flash of white-gold moving through it is you. I know it's not. I know that now.
I spent the first six months in a daze. First I was certain you were still there. I wandered at night, rarely sleeping. I opened doors to check behind them and frightened the house elves. After a month, Harry forcibly wrestled me out of the Manor and back to the House of Black before setting Granger on me. She set me up with a row of Dreamless Sleep and told him to make certain I slept the next 24 hours and she'd look at me then.
I'm certain that's what he did. Granger was used to having him cowed. I know I awoke to cotton sheets and light streaming in from a window in the wrong direction with no real sense of how I'd gotten there. He was asleep in the old leather wingback in the corner, and his ancient elf brought in tea. It was the first I'd seen him without his glasses.
Granger came later. Waved her wand and lectured me. I don't remember that visit either. I don't remember anything except the way the dustmotes caught the light coming through the window, swirling with each word and exhalation, and the smell of bergamot in the mug of Earl Grey that Harry never seemed to be without.
He kept me there, doubtless also at Granger's orders. It didn't really matter where I was, I could still hear your voice, always when I was falling asleep but other times as well. Harry made a concerned face, but for the most part let me be.
Even once I realized, really realized, you were gone, I was certain you were a ghost haunting me. I still saw you, not just out of the corner of my eye, but in every crowd, in every mirror. Sometimes the you I saw was myself; the flash of hair, the pale brow. Sometimes it was Andromeda. For all that she most closely resembled Bellatrix, it was all in her eyes and her coloring. Her face is your face, the face I wanted to see so badly.
It was Teddy who was most able to bring me out of myself, at least at first. He pointed out, with faultless two-year-old logic that ghosts were only ghosts because they were sad. His voice and laughter could fill the house, stretching from his breakfast in the basement kitchen up to my room on the third floor. And you weren't sad. You hadn't been sad since before we were released from house arrest. You had love. You had family. You missed Father, but swore that those two things were all you needed to be happy. You knew the difference between want and need, and I knew you would still remember it even when you were gone.
Six months after you died, I smiled again. I don't remember what caused it, I was still at Grimmauld Place, surrounded by the sounds of life and people. I remember the look on Harry's face, one part joy, one part relief. It was still there when he returned at the end of the day, his trainee robes a darker brick color from exertion.
That was the change. Harry started bringing his friends around, and at least once a week we'd be eating dinner with someone beyond our usual four. Sometimes it was Lovegood and Longbottom, they seemed to be traveling together, documenting plants and creatures, taking samples to report in The Quibbler or more serious horticultural works. Sometimes it was Granger, and after a couple more months she brought her Weasley. It was awkward, it still is, but we both are making an effort to at least ignore each other. Granger positively glows with pride, as if we were a pair of particularly recalcitrant crups doing a new trick. Harry just seems relieved.
I can go back to the Manor now. Sometimes I just want to be alone. I avoid your room, preferring mine with it's familiar photographs and boxed snitch on the desk. Occasionally the smell of your perfume escapes, and I'm overwhelmed by memories of you.
Fifty-two weeks have passed, and I still see your face. I see it in the mirror when I smile. I see it in Andromeda when Teddy is being especially precocious. I see it other places as well, I know I'm being haunted. I'm being haunted by the memory. And your memory is as happy as you were.
I take a moment to breathe again, returning the pressure of Harry's fingers twined with mine, breathe and Andromeda's hand is on my shoulder, Teddy's weight leaning familiarly against my leg. "Hello, Mother. I miss you, but I'm happy."