Fast Car, a harry potter fanfic

Author's Note: This one-shot is linked to the tragic ending of my longterm fan fic My Everlasting Love (which can also be found on this site) and shows what happened to Mary's family after her death in October 1981. For those of you who are reading You Only Live Twice, the content of this short will become relevant in that story later on. The song I used for inspiration is Fast Car, originally by the wonderful Tracy Chapman, but I had Mutya Buena's version in mind when I wrote it. Both versions can be found on YouTube.

Dedication: To all my faithful readers, who are sticking with me despite the lack of recent updates…

Disclaimer: I own nothing of the magical world JK Rowling created. The plot and characters of this one-shot on the other hand…

Fast Car

A flash of lightning momentarily lit up the dark sky. It had rained all night and a rumble in the distance was announcing yet another imminent thunderstorm. The downpour had turned the sandy road into a bumpy river of mud. A young woman called Jenna, who had just put her luggage down at the beginning of the road, shivered in her long travelling cloak.

The cold November wind was causing drops of rain to fall into the back of her collar and she wrapped her scarf a little tighter around her neck. She rocked back and forth on her feet for a moment, her hands nervously fidgeting with the hem of her sleeves. She turned back and glanced at the large clock on the wall of the barn. Eight thirty… What was keeping him? He should have been here already.

You got a fast car
I want a ticket to anywhere
Maybe we can make a deal
Maybe together we can get somewhere
Any place is better
Starting from zero got nothing to lose
Maybe we can make something
Me myself I got nothing to prove

Finally Jenna could see the headlights of the old and dark red Citroën Dyane appear in the distance. It seemed to take the car an eternity to reach her and she cast a nervous look over her shoulder. If he would see her and come out to stop her…

Finally the small car came to a halt with screeching brakes. Jenna stared at it for a moment, watching the wipers go up and down the front window with little shrieks each time they moved. Then she opened the door on the passenger's side - it opened with another creak and Jenna found herself thinking this car was in use of a really good oiling - before poking her head inside. "You're late."

She was greeted by the twinkling greyish green eyes from her boyfriend William. "You try driving this thing down the M25 during rush hour when you're not used to it. Frankly, I wouldn't even know it could drive if my dad hadn't told me. I only ever use it for flying, remember?"

"Yeah well," Jenna said testily as she sat down and slammed the door shut (with another creak), "you could have driven a lot faster once you got off the M25. Or travelled by air after all, that might have been even better."

His eyebrows rose ever so slightly. "In an area full of Muggles where I'm not even allowed to make the car invisible?"

Jenna grinded her teeth. "Whatever." She cast another look at the door of the large house ahead. "Look, can we please go?"

Will followed her worried gaze and frowned. "Are you afraid he'll come out?"

See my old man's got a problem
Lives with a bottle that's the way it is
He says his body's too old for working
His body's too young to look like his
My mama went off and left him
Wanted more from life than what he could give
I said somebody's got to take care of him
Packed up school that's what I did

Jenna gnawed on the nail of her thumb and didn't answer Will immediately. Truth was she did not know it would be alright to leave her father behind like this. But he was beyond the point of helping and she had to get on with her life. To actually continue living instead of giving in to this destructive process of slowly dying inside, like her dad seemed to prefer.

It had not always been like this. They used to be one big happy family: dad, mum, Jenna, and her older sister, Mary. Mary, who – together with her daughter Erin - had been viciously murdered by a group of Death Eaters on the same night Harry Potter defeated Voldemort. Betrayed by the man she loved. It was still hurting Jenna to think about how Sirius Black sold out his own fiancée and child to the Dark Side. How he could willingly leave his girlfriend and child alone when he knew Death Eaters were about to attack them… It sounded nothing like the guy Jenna had known: the Sirius who she had idolized, who had bewitched their mother with his charm, who their father had seen as his own lost son.

Needless to say the news of Sirius selling out Mary and Erin to Voldemort had shredded their family to pieces. They had not even been able to say goodbye. By the time Jenna and her parents arrived at
St. Mungo's, Mary had already died from exhaustion. The only one around besides Healer Pierce had been Remus Lupin. A numb Jenna had sat next to her dad when Remus told them what happened; she would never forget the sight of her father taking in the bad news. Jenna could also still hear the devastated cries of her mother, but nothing stuck by her more than witnessing the light in her father's blue eyes, so like Mary's, diminishing more and more with every word.

"Jenna?"

Will's soft voice called her mind back to the present. "What?"

"Are you afraid your dad will come after you?"

"No…"

"-Because if he does, I will hex him into oblivion. You know that, right?"

Jenna looked down at her hands and felt a lump in her throat. She often found herself wondering what Mary would have done. Her sister had been truly brave and fought with the Order of the Phoenix. She would have known what to do in a split second. Unlike Jenna, who was starting to feel more doubtful by the minute. She looked into Will's eyes and felt herself calm down slightly, but gulped when he put his hand over hers. "I said I would come and get you if you needed me. You're safe with me, Jen."

He gently squeezed her hand and she looked up at him, blinking rapidly. "I know," she whispered.

"Good." Will started the engine by tapping his wand on the dashboard twice. "Ready?"

She cast a final look at the house and stables she grew up in. The only place besides Hogwarts holding memories of Mary, but also the place that marked the downfall of her father. Jenna sighed. There was nothing left for her here. "I'm ready, let's go."

You got a fast car
Is it fast enough so we can fly away
We gotta make a decision
Leave tonight or we can die this way

Jenna could not help think about her father's eyes while the car was soaring through the dark rainy sky. Those eyes who had never sparkled again ever since Mary died. Not even a year later when Jenna's mother was ready to pick up the pieces of their lives and start over. Jenna could not agree more. The only bad habit the stress around Mary and Erin's death had made her take up was that she couldn't stop biting her nails. As for Mary, of course Jenna would continue to miss her big sister every day, but mourning till eternity would not get her family any further.

Unfortunately her father failed to come out of his depression. Even worse: it seemed he did not even want to feel better. His distrust in people and unpredictable mood swings had already cost him his job as doctor and he had started to seek his comfort in alcohol. A year later Jenna could count the days she had seen her dad without holding a glass of whisky on one hand. His alcoholism was not something her mum could cope with. After spending two more years on trying to get him off the booze, something snapped inside and she left to find a job on the other end of the country. She begged Jenna to come along to Nottingham, but she felt she could not leave dad behind. So her mother moved to Nottingham and eventually remarried a rich investment banker, and Jenna stayed to take care of her father.

I remember we were driving, driving in your car
The speed so fast felt like I was drunk
City lights laid out before us
And your arms felt nice around my shoulder
And I - I got a feeling that I belonged
And I - I got a feeling that I could be someone, be someone, be someone

Jenna noticed Will was squeezing her hand again. This was when she noticed that she had pinched her eyes shut the entire time. They were now flying over the Cotswolds and the many lights of the houses below were making the landscape look like a carpet made out of fairy lights. She tried to smile at her boyfriend, who was giving her another encouraging squeeze, but she noticed her facial muscles refused to work along. Was she doing the right thing here?

You got a fast car
I got a job that paid all our bills
Stay out drinking late at the bar
See more of your friends than you do your kids
I'd always hoped for better
Though maybe together you and me would find it
I got no plans I ain't going nowhere
Take your fast car and keep on driving

Her father would never say it aloud, but Jenna knew that he had loved Mary more, possibly even wished it was the other way around. That it would have been Jenna to die young, and not Mary. Jenna could not really explain why she knew this. It was a gut feeling, or maybe her father's true feelings were expressed in little acts, like the polishing of that framed picture of Mary as a baby with a cloth every single day. Or that he always visited Mary and Erin's grave in Godric's Hollow twice a week and spent hours crouching in front of it, musing on memories of happier times.

One time when Jenna suggested to leave the graveyard early so they could visit the cottage where James and Lily had died, he shot her such a disturbed and furious glare that if looks could kill, she would have dropped dead right on top of Mary's grave.

And now she had left him. With nothing more than a goodbye note on the kitchen table. Guilt was already swarming around in her stomach like a nettled swarm of bees. Was her father able to survive without her? She groaned in frustration and fiercely rubbed her eyes until dark spots were dancing in front of her eyes. "Will, are we doing the right thing?"

"Of course we are."

He sounded so convinced that it rubbed off Jenna in the wrong way. "But I just left my father! An alcoholic for Merlin's sake! What if he does something to himself?"

Will sighed, trying to stay calm even though they had discussed this many times before. "Jenna, you're only gone for two days. You'll visit him on Tuesday and then again three days later. It's better this way, Jen, and in his heart your father knows that too. You're twenty-one years old. It's time you moved on with your life. To-" He hesitated. "To move on with me."

She looked at him and couldn't help but smile. The two of them had been together since her fourth year at Hogwarts, but unlike Jenna's best friends Bob and Victoria, they not move in together right after graduation. Instead, Jenna stayed at home with her father. She tried taking care of him while simultaneously trying to complete a course on cursebreaking at Gringotts, but of course this did not work and she was forced to give up her study in the end.

Will was doing better at the Healer Program. Like Mary, he had been chosen to become a Spell Damage Healer. He was recently working under a certain Ching-Lu Wong who, Jenna knew, used to be a friend of Mary's. Will lived in a small apartment in Balham, but always said Jenna was welcome to join him whenever she decided to take the big step. He told her he was friends with the barkeeper of the Leaky Cauldron and that she could work there to save up some money and go back to studying eventually. And so, when her father threatened to hit her because Jenna discovered a secret stash of Jack Daniels in his office and had emptied every single bottle in the sink, she decided she had had enough and used her owl Nemo to write a S.O.S.-note to William. He immediately owled back and promised he would pick her up the next night at eight thirty. And now here they were.

Will landed his Citroën in an abandoned side street of his Balham flat and parked it right between two expensive-looking cars. It had finally stopped raining and he got out and used his wand to levitate all the luggage out of the car and onto the pavement before hooking his wand onto his belt. "Right," he grinned. "Better take this up by hand before Mrs. Goose-Busters sees what I'm doing."

Jenna could not prevent a giggle from rising up her throat. "Mrs. Goose-Busters? Seriously?"

Will's eyes were twinkling in the light of a nearby lamp post. "Yep. She's as nosy a neighbour can get."

He gave her another wink before picking up her trunk in one hand end Nemo's cage in the other. "See you upstairs."

"I'll be right up."

She watched Will walk away, shushing an annoyed Nemo who was hooting indignantly because he accidentally kept banging the cage on the stairs. Jenna shook her head and turned around to pick up the last suitcase on the pavement when something got her attention. A sudden cold breeze made her hair blow around her face and she looked up at the sky. The fierce wind was blowing some of the thick clouds apart, revealing a half moon and – extraordinary on a stormy November night like this – a few clear stars.

One star in particular was standing out. It was shimmering brightly in the dark sky as if it was trying to say something. It could have been Jenna's vivid imagination, but she could swear she was hearing a distant whisper in another rush of wind that was blowing past her.

"Nice going, sis."

Jenna looked up at the sky once more and could see the shimmering star for about just another second before it disappeared behind the next cloud. She blinked a few times before - for the first time in years - her tired face broke into a sincere smile, because she finally understood. Jenna knew that instead of always wondering what it would be like to be in her sister's shoes, she had now acted exactly like Mary would have done. And Jenna knew that although the next days were going to be hard, it would be worth it in the end. She was finally free.

You got a fast car
Is it fast enough that we can fly away
We gotta make a decision
Leave tonight or we can die this way

- The End –

A/N Love it? Hate it? Let me know. Sound off in the reviews, thanks!