A/N: Welcome to Unknowns, Part 3! If you've not read Part 1, you could get by, but if you've not read Part 2, you'll be very lost. I sincerely encourage you to go back and read both. This is going to be a dark story, and while there will be flashes of happiness and the ending will having resolution, I won't say it's quite a happy ending, because I don't think life works like that. Welcome to the story, if you're new, and welcome back if you're joining us from Part 2.

Above all, enjoy, and please read the A/N at the bottom!

-C

Can I sail through the changing ocean tides? Can I handle the seasons of my life? – Landslide, Fleetwood Mac (Stevie Nicks)

DECEMBER, 2023

Catherine Potter stood in the Hogwarts grounds, staring out at the Black Lake. She'd snuck away from the ceremony when she began to feel queasy and she vomited in a rosebush before wandering back toward the tented gathering. She stared at the crowd of people gathered for the funeral, all their real and feigned emotions.

She was supposed to be among them. She was supposed to feel something for the death of her younger daughter, but all she felt was empty and misplaced.

"Mrs. Potter?"

She forced a smile as Columbine Peakes approached, Cora and Jimmy's eldest, and Cynthia's best friend. Cynthia was Catherine's – well, her only child, now. But her eldest child.

"Cyn said your husband was looking for you. Is everything alright?"

"I'd say I needed some air, but as we're outside," Catherine said, gesturing around her as though pointing at visible air. Columbine nodded, understanding. "Have the officials and other such pests begun to filter out, Colly?"

"Not yet, no. Cyn's gone back to Potter Manor with your husband, with a headache. That's why they sent me. They said to come back when you're ready."

"Thank you."

Catherine pressed the girl's hand – although Columbine was eighteen, and already a woman – and walked a bit further up the lake. Already in her forties, with a daughter fully grown, she felt ancient, except when she thought of Cecilia's death. Girls weren't supposed to die at fourteen.

She would have been fifteen today, had they not been burying her. In a manner of speaking.

"The pests are motsly gone," said the smooth, deep voice of Severus. Or rather, Headmaster Snape, now. "Cynthia has gone with her father?"

"Yes, Colly's just said," Catherine said, feeling a shiver down her spine. "What happened, Severus? Celia was always so careful. I just don't understand."

"It wasn't her mistake. Rose is an exemplary teacher, but no one can be wholly vigilant against the follies of idiots and dunderheads. Mostly, the worst to happen is a blown cauldron, a melted desk. But you know there are always reactions…."

He shrugged. The years were weighing on him more heavily than her father and father-in-law, but perhaps this was the responsibility of his station. The gray in his hair and beard suited him, and age had dried out his skin and scalp to take care of his more unfortunate problems. She'd tried to set him up on a date or two, but nothing stuck, and she knew he only went to humor her.

"Keep an eye on Cynthia," he said softly, pressing her hand. "Remus said she took it very hard. Feels responsible."

"She wasn't in the class," Catherine said for what felt like the hundredth time that day alone. "Nothing she could have done."

"No, but being Head Girl, and Celia being her sister, she feels responsible. Are you going home directly?"

"No," she sighed, rubbing her forehead again. "No, I'll stay on a bit. It's been too long since I spent any time at Hogwarts. If you're offering a drink, I'd take it."

His eyes darkened, and she knew it was the wrong thing to say. She and Harry and Ryana hadn't touched a drop of drink since they went clean, all those years ago. Her father had stayed clean, too, and her siblings, to be safe. Catherine told him she was joking, although she wasn't sure she was, and his eyes said quite plainly, he wasn't sure, either.

"I believe there's chocolate and butterbeer on offer," he said sternly. "I trust it is all you'll partake of."

She murmured her agreement and was led upstairs before something ghastly happened, like the Minister for Magic giving his personal condolences – family or not. Draco could offer them later, in person, in private, like a civilized human and not a politician.

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Harry tucked in Cynthia for the first time in years, fighting a bout of tears as he kissed her forehead. She looked so like her mother at eighteen, with slightly darker hair and slightly lighter eyes, but the same fragile beauty. Cecilia had been beautiful as well, but simpler and stronger and more effervescent, like Harry's mother would have been with dark hair and eyes.

"I love you, Cyn," he said as his darling girl – not a girl anymore, but all he had left – wincing in pain at the words.

"I'm sorry, Daddy," she said, hugging his neck the way she had when she was little. Harry whispered it wasn't her fault and he loved her, but he knew the words meant nothing now. He would repeat them in the morning, and every day after, until they did begin to mean something again. Like he'd done with his wife, when he was afraid of losing her.

Sometimes, it was all that could be done.

/-/

Columbine felt a shiver run down her spine as she sat by the lake, where they'd spread Cecilia Potter's ashes. To die at fifteen was the most haunting and terrible thing she could think of, and worse stil, it was her best friend's little sister, a girl she knew so well.

"Colly?"

Coreen, Columbine's younger sister, was ambling over with a small group of friends, including Cynthia's cousin Gareth. Unlike the Potter and Peakes girls, Gareth Black was not a Gryffindor, but a Hufflepuff like Cynthia's mother.

"Hey," Columbine said with a weak smile, much like the one Mrs. Potter had given her earlier. "If you're looking for Cyn, she went home for the holiday. I expect you'll see her, Gareth."

"I don't know," he said, his voice deep and soft like his father's. "Aunt Kitty isn't likely to want visitors. That's what my grandfather was saying. And he doesn't expect she'll go to the family Christmas party at Aunt Caro's and Uncle Damon's. I may not see her until the train, like the rest of you."

Columbine nodded, but it wasn't what she wanted to hear. Normally, Cynthia was queen of the school. Not simply because she was Head Girl, but because everybody loved her. They either loved her beauty and grace, or social standing and power, or her warmth and generous spirit. She had the bearing of a girl who knew she was the best in the room, but she managed it in a way that never made anyone feel less.

And Columbine loved her for it.

"I suppose I'll write her," she said softly. "But I ought to wait for tomorrow, oughtn't I?"

No one answered, but their silence spoke volumes.

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Rabastan stood in the tent, holding a glass of wine he'd used to toast the passing of his sister's granddaughter. Cara had gone home, too pained to deal with the mess of reporters and politicians. Sirius had retreated upstairs to the other professors, and Catherine and Harry had likely taken Cynthia home. Rabastan had no reason to stay, but he didn't feel ready to leave. He ambled over to Narcissa and sat beside her, frowning.

"I rather thought we were done with these for a while," she said softly. "So many during the war, more for Sirius, and then Lucius…. Well, Sirius put on a good show of sorrow for me, but I know he didn't give two figs whether Lucius lived or died."

"Did you?" Rabastan asked, a smile in his voice not reaching his lips. Narcissa stared back levelly for a moment, no answer.

The eerie thing was, he really wasn't sure how she'd felt by the time he finally died. He'd never been an easy man to live with, Lucius, but they hadn't had an unhappy marriage, by most measurements.

"I never fathomed Sirius wouldn't be the first to go of his family, of what's left of it," Narcissa said sadly. "As horrible as it was to lose Celia, though, I'm glad it wasn't Catherine."

Rabastan hummed his agreement. Every time Catherine was ill, Sirius started talking about retirement, even if she only had a head cold.

"I couldn't read her," he said softly. "Catherine. How d'you suppose she handled it?"

"You know her," Narcissa said with a sigh. "I'm really not sure she has."

/-/

Sirius rolled a small, humming ball in his hands, cool as metal but made of some material he couldn't pronounce. Severus bought it for him as a gift on Cecilia's birth, fifteen years ago, to calm his nerves. She had been the fifth of sixteen grandchildren, and by the time she came along, Sirius was an anxious wreck every time one of his children announced a pregnancy. Cynthia's birth had been a miracle and an ordeal, as had Cecilia's, and Laura screamed like she was dying in all three of her labors.

The only easy births in his children's households were those of Catherine and Harry's dogs. Paddy, the last funeral he'd attended, had mated with Sophie and they had four puppies not terribly long before Paddy passed away.

Death had seemed a smaller thing back then, distant even though close. Looking at the ashes that were all that was left of his granddaughter, floating out over the Black Lake on an errant wind…. Sirius had never felt death so close and large and looming. Not even in his time during the war, when it felt like a constant marker of his footsteps.

"Why did you opt to cremate her, just out of curiosity?" Remus asked Catherine gently.

She hadn't wanted to go home yet, and as Sirius knew she'd lock herself away once she got there, Sirius was going to hang on to her long as he could keep her at the castle.

"A few things," she said, and she accepted a cup of tea from James. "One, there wasn't much…left of her to bury traditionally. Not…not…." She closed her eyes and squeezed the lids together tightly. "She also wanted it. I know it sounds strange," she said with a hollow laugh. "I doubt Cynthia's stopped to think of that sort of thing. I know I really haven't. But that's how Celia was, you know? She told me when she started Divination, she wanted to be cremated when she did. Not if, you know? When." Catherine made a choking sound. "Harry tried to talk to her about the complications, the wand, all that. She was quite insistent. You know how she got. Like Lily."

Sirius nodded, glancing back out the window. He'd not been around when the accident happened. He was taking a group of students to a meeting of the Wizengamot in one of his free periods – a treat for high performing NEWT level students. Cynthia had been in the group, and Gareth. When they arrived back at the school, everything was in chaos. Severus told him there'd been an accident, and he just knew it was one of his grandchildren. He had nine about the school, seven in the castle at the time. Odds were good.

When he heard Potions accident, it could only have been Cecilia.

"The thing I just keep asking myself," Catherine said softly, "is why this had to happen to me. But I suppose I'm paying my dues."

"What?" James barked abruptly. "What are you talking about?"

"All my sins without a scratch?" she said, her anguish just beneath the surface of her mask, the one she wore for the public. Sirius's chest ached every time he saw it, as he'd never wanted her to need one. "All the things I've put you all through, put Harry through, and still I live in wealth and privilege and love I don't deserve? This is my penance, my dues."

Sirius felt sick to his stomach, but he could hear a ring of truth in her words, and he'd wondered as much just that morning as he prepared for the funeral. He wondered if whether this loss and suffering wasn't fate catching up to him after all his running.

"Don't be ridiculous," Severus said, injecting the voice of reason into their little soiree. "Cecilia's death was a tragedy, an accident, and absolutely no one's fault. Not yours, not Rose's, not Harry's, not Cynthia's. The next person I catch blaming themselves for it will be receiving a sharp slap across the cheek and the dose of some very strong potion of my choosing."

Sirius glanced up to see Severus was looking at him pointedly, and Sirius smiled sadly. Severus could threaten all he wanted, but Sirius would never stop blaming himself. He'd spared his daughter from the brunt of agony, from every imaginable consequence for even her worst actions, but he could not find a way to fix this hole in her life, nor to patch it in his own life.

Sixteen grandchildren, but the loss of just one left him feeling terribly destitute and alone, as though sixteen were not so large a number after all.

/-/

Some nights, Cara slept at the castle, and some nights Sirius came back to the cottage, but this late in their lives, they almost never slept alone. She settled into bed at the cottage, though, and she knew tonight she would be alone. If not in body, then in spirit. Sirius was so crushed at the loss of their granddaughter, and at the lack of conversation with Catherine about the loss, he wasn't himself and might not be himself for some time.

Cara didn't mind. It was a horrible thing they were suffering, and he needed to work through the grief in a way that made sense for him. And although she enjoyed spending more time with him in these later years of their lives, wizards tended to live well past their sixties, and she didn't feel an urgency to spend every moment with him.

She might check in on him in the morning, she decided, before the students came home en masse. If he wasn't too torn up, she might check in on her daughter later, who was likely devastated, despite her cool and collected exterior. Catherine had never said out loud, but after the difficulties they had during Cynthia's birth – even with Severus's treatments – Cecilia's conception and healthy birth had been something of a miracle.

In fact, Cara suspected Catherine and Harry had tried several more times, with varying levels of lack of success, between the two girls, and decided to stop at two for practical, medical reasons.

Cara's own pain was dull and distant, and she knew it would hit her later, when Sirius had time to process and Catherine finally let out her feelings, but for the moment, she needed to focus on babysitting for Caroline and keeping an eye on Cynthia and Catherine and Sirius, for Harry's sake at the least.

/-/

Lily sat in a corner of the tent, the leftovers of her granddaughter's funeral. When James reached out to tell her there'd been an accident at the school, Lily understood all those times when Catherine or Caroline had been injured, or near death. She understood the terror and smallness Sirius must have felt, what he must have been feeling in that moment, because both of Lily's grandchildren were Sirius's as well.

Cecilia had been so bright, so energetic. She'd played Seeker, like her father, and there had already been talk she would play professionally, maybe play for England. She'd had her mother's Potions talent, but not the drive for Rose Lestrange to offer her extra lessons the way her mother had from Severus.

She sighed, watching the guests mill about, no longer talking about Cecilia, but about their own affairs and social matters. She could see Rabastan speaking to Narcissa, likely about Catherine or Cynthia. Perhaps about Sirius.

Lily closed her eyes and wondered about her son. He'd gone through more than she wanted to consider just to have a nice home, a wife he loved, and a small family. And now even this was being ripped apart, and for no reason at all.

"Madam Potter."

She looked up and saw Draco there, and he sat beside her as she nodded to him.

"I'll express my condolences to you," he said softly. "I doubt the rest of the family is in a place to receive them, certainly in an official capacity." Lily nodded. "I just wanted you to know, the official investigation is complete. Multiple departments assure me the incident was entirely accidental, with no negligence or malice from any party. Even Fabian Prewett confirms."

"I rather expected as much," she said, smiling tightly. "Severus assured me, and you know Severus hardly ever wrong. You needn't have involved Aurors for such a thing, much less the head of the department."

"For the most powerful families in wizarding Britain?" he said with a snort. "Yes, Madam Potter, I most certainly had to. The world does not change so rapidly."

She closed her eyes. Forty years on, and she could see how little things had changed. Yes, she didn't have to fight for her right to exist in the magical world anymore. But the likes of Sirius and Rabastan and Narcissa still ran the world and everyone in it. Lily was lucky enough to be part of the set because she and James fell in love, and more so because their son fell in love with Catherine. But she couldn't forget Parvati Patil, still living in hospital with large portions of her life missing, unable to sleep through eight hours without a medication dosage.

Not everyone was so lucky as Lily.

"Do me a favor, Draco," she said, careful not to refer to him as the Minister, making certain he understood to what capacity she was speaking to him. "Keep an eye out for Cara in all of this. She will be strong for her husband and her daughter and her granddaughter, but she may not look out for herself. And I will be watching out for Harry, but I can't watch them all."

"I understand completely," he said softly. "You can count on me."

A/N: So, Harry and Catherine had two children, one is dead, and everyone is struggling to find meaning in an accidental death that was no one's fault. Draco is the Minister, Fabian is Head of the Auror Department, Severus is Headmaster, with Remus as Deputy Head. And Sirius and Cara have sixteen grandchildren – or, did. Fifteen now.

Just for you new readers, I will post once a week, on Saturday, every week until this 38 chapter story is all posted. I've even got inklings for doing another Part, probably in the past. We'll see. If you want more frequent postings, there's a way! For every reviews posted between my regular weekly updates, I give one bonus chapter. I've had weeks with no bonuses, and this past week was a rush of 32 bonus chapters! If we have another week like that, I'll have to do quite some pushing, but we'd have the whole story posted a bit quick… So maybe take a little mercy on me?

Also, if you're having a hard time keeping track of the characters, their relationships and relations, their children, their jobs…. I've got a list I add to weekly on my Profile, and I'm updating it TODAY to match up with the Part 3 jump forward in time. But don't hesitate to ask if you feel lost!

Review Prompt: Want to leave a review, but not sure what to write? Would you rather be buried, cremated, or donated? I'm for cremation, personally. The others have always struck me as pretty weird.

Q&A: Ask me anything! About the story, about my writing, about my favorite food…whatever! I answer questions here!

Cheers!

C