Prologue: Naked (ney-kid)

Bare, stripped, or destitute.

Defenseless; unprotected; exposed.

September 7th 2003

Four years have passed, it has been four years since I returned. Timmy is an extremely intelligent child; he is very lively, happy and too inquisitive for his own good. He is the only spot of light in my dark, disaster ridden life; the only reason I continue to live through life's tedious motions. I still haven't paid HIM a visit; he doesn't know we have a son. Imagine his reaction upon finding out. I hope he takes it kindly, when the time comes. I would have told him that Timmy was his, but I don't think he would have believed me. Just imagine someone coming to you and telling you that they have given birth to your son. Keep in mind that said person is one you despise, and have despised ever since the day they set foot in Hogwarts. Personally, I wouldn't take it too kindly. Frankly, I think I might hex them into next week. Knowing that this is the way I might react, how can I ask of HIM, of all people, to understand?

Six years ago, I would have done it, tell him I mean, just to see the look on his face. To see his shields fall, his eyebrows furrow slightly, showing too much emotion is deemed unseemly by any and all Slytherins after all, and seeing those lips I still dream about, purse in confusion and disapproval over feeling something as degrading as confusion. Especially since it is caused by a mere Gryffindor, and one not so bright in HIS opinion.

I digress. What was I saying earlier? Oh, yeah! Timmy, my son. He of course has had a few incidents where accidental magic has come forth to grace us. Nothing too dangerous, just a few blown pots and jars, and a little more broken windows, and just a bit more burned miscellaneous objects, some of which are of dubious origins. But he wouldn't have been my son, or HIS, if he didn't exhibit accidental magic when he is experiencing somewhat strong emotions. Those bouts are not so rare but quite far in between.

September 21st 2003

I miss HIM more and more each and every day. You might think the ache would dull over time, but do not delude yourself; no such thing happens. The pain is always there; an ever-present reminder of what I have momentarily, and maybe eternally, lost. After four years of self enforced celibacy, not that I have felt attracted to anyone and had suppressed it! But I know that if that had happened I still wouldn't have acted on it. I still love him, I always will.

Even now after four years I still wear that ring he gave me, a thin, wide black band made of a metal I have long forgone the search for its identity, with an intricate silver star engraved on the inside.

I haven't seen him since I returned. It has been four years. I have escaped the Wizarding World since then. I wanted to be away, needed to be away. I have left my friends, as little of them as I still have, without a word of farewell. I know they looked for me, and looked extensively. But I could never bring myself to return. I don't think that I will ever be ready to return, even when the time comes when I can see him again without being shunned. How am I ever to know if he will still want me? Especially since I have changed quite significantly since last we met. But the wait is near over, four years have passed and less than six months are left before I can confront him knowing that I could possibly stand a chance.

I chose to raise my son in Muggle London, secluded from the Wizarding World... I chose Muggle London for many reasons, one of which is I'm a nobody here, you might argue that I could have been a nobody in somewhere as ungodly secluded as Australia or Alaska (no offense intended). But my argument for my choice would be that I can't chance being recognized by the Wizarding population there, and frankly I don't think I could bear to uprooted so, leaving the Wizarding world is one thing, but leaving Britain altogether is quite another. I also believe that my son should know as much of the Muggle culture as is possible while still retaining his Wizarding status, wizards after all do tend to undermine the true power the Muggles hold.

I must leave now, or I will be late picking Timmy up from school...

September 24th 2003

Timmy is sleeping, he seems to be exhausted. I had enrolled him in what Muggles term grade school, or elementary school, I'm not so sure. They had accepted him even though he is, at four, a year younger than his peers, they had no choice after he sailed through whatever tests they could produce for children his age and even a year older, but it had been decided that he should at the very least spend the beginning of his education amongst children whose ages did not surpass his by no more than two years. (I am unsure as to the age children are admitted into grade school in Britain, it should be either five or six, but for the sake of this story, let's assume it's six)

Their schedule and activities seem to be quite eventful, because my son comes home tired, does his homework, if he has any, talks about his day incessantly, then plays, fatigue doesn't seem to thwart him from terrorising me and vandalising our home, until dinner time comes, which is not a specific time due to who his parent is, ahem. After which he just collapses into a deep slumber.

Anyways, I'm thankful he's asleep. I don't want him to see me when I'm in this state of emotional undress. I have already gone through a bottle of Muggle whisky, with another bottle of brandy rests on the floor, beside me, halfway empty. Today marks the day Voldemort decided to raid Hogwarts seven years ago. The day so many died because of me, because I was unable to save them and finish him off from the start, or at the Department of Mysteries two years before that, or at the graveyard for that matter. I know I won the war, but I am no hero. I am the man who was the reason for the murders of so many, and the torture of many more, what kind of hero is that?

Every year, at this time, I would feel this pain. It never lessens or ceases. When I was with HIM it wasn't so bad. It was as if we lived in a world of our own making, secluded from everybody else. While I was there, he was my rock. He had lived with his feelings for a longer time, and had come to peace with how he feels towards the war, the losses both sides had suffered and his role in it all. He repeatedly told me that it wasn't my fault that all those people died, that even if I had died and Voldemort lived he would have still killed, he would have probably killed even more, only then nothing and no one would have been able to stop him. As for those of my friends I had lost, whenever I told him that their death was my fault, that no matter what is said, they made the decision to stand beside me in battle, to fight for their freedom against a tyrannical megalomaniac.

For a long time I believed him, I believed all he had said. After all, I had no reason to think it false. But about a year after my return, even though I tried my best to cling to those beliefs, I lost the battle. I had returned to a world just out of war, still doing its best, struggling to rise from the ashes, to reassume its role as a formidable entity. I had returned to a world where people loved me for saving them, hated me for the death of their loved ones, and constantly questioned my whereabouts.

I made sure no one knew who I was, or that I had returned. I moved to Chelsea, acquired a subscription to the post so I could keep informed of my world's happenings, sent my friends a letter telling them that I am safe and settled, but I will stay away, to come to term with all that has happened...they accepted my self-enforced isolation, albeit with reluctance, and I acquired a new Muggle identity.

I finally got the anonymity I have been seeking since my first day in the Wizarding World...

September 25th 2003

I am positively drunk. A friend of mine, Laura, has taken Timmy for the week. She has a daughter a year older than Timmy, and they are really close. I just hope that their friendship will survive his induction into the Wizarding World...

Laura knows that I face difficulty getting through this time of the year. I believe that she has her suspicion that I had had a traumatic experience around this time before Timmy's birth. Thus the sleepover. She takes Timmy away to give me time to sort through my memories, to mourn whatever it is she believes I'm mourning.

She is currently my closest friend and confident. She knows that I am decidedly gay, and that Timmy is my biological son. I still remember the first time she heard Timmy ask me about his 'other Daddy', the look on her face will forever be printed in brain. She looked so surprised and confused, and then somewhat hurt, hurt that I hadn't confided in her. After I told Timmy that his 'other Daddy' lived far away, but is always thinking of him, he went back to play with Amy, Laura's daughter, a smile adorning his face; he always did. I then turned around to take care of that hurt expression that had clouded Laura's face a while before. I told her that we were currently separated, in terms of living space at least, that my 'boyfriend' was sequestered in some cabin in a remote area conducting research; research that had kept him away from us for some time past and for some more to come. She had nodded, but I knew she hadn't understood why two people would separate for years but still remain together, she didn't believe it possible for a relationship to endure separation for the length of time and distance mine had. I could tell that she understood my unwillingness to explain further, she had grudgingly accepted that there were things in my life I couldn't explain to her. And ever since whenever the subject of Timmy's 'other Daddy', or 'Papa' as he had come to call him of late, comes up an amusement would flit across her face and her eyes start twinkling, especially if other people are around, namely the parents of the kids in our children's class.

As for the matter of my son's conception. Laura believes that he was conceived at the stage where I was 'confused and experimenting', her words not mine, and that my girlfriend at that time had left me never to come back to look for her son! You see, Laura is a Muggle, and I couldn't very much go up to her and tell her that actually I had been the one to bear Timmy, and that I had conceived him with another man, let alone tell her who that man truly was, and why we truly weren't together.

September 26th 2003

Today is the seventh anniversary of the battle that ended in victory, the one which ended the war, the one later to be called The Battle of Hogwarts. Today marks seven years since I disappeared. I still remember that day as if it was yesterday...