A Murder Revisited

By Cheddar the Cheese

Summery: One man takes a trip to a place that seems to have forgotten time, and finds that love, life, and trust are the things life creates for us to make it bearable while we live it and that life lived in the past is hardly lived at all.

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters mentioned or implied by this work of fan fiction. All of it belongs to the great JKR.

Notes: I swore I would never write this but it wouldn't leave me alone. I think it's kind of melodramatic but why don't you tell me what you think be reviewing? Please?

"Some rise by sin, while some by virtue fall."

William Shakespeare- Measure for Measure.

The grass was higher than he remembered it being. It crept up the leg of his trousers and clung to the thin wool. It felt like impossible little fingers curling around his ankles, dragging him into the ground. Someone really ought to be held responsible for the cutting of grass at important landmarks, he thought as he looked around.

The whole place held an eerie feel. It was like the heavy mist of a fog. It wrapped its self in every crevice and crack in the stones, refusing to leave until the sunlight burned it all away. The only problem was there was very little sun here. The sun had died long ago, but while it had burned, it burned brighter than anything ever seen. Its like was never to be found again.

Those memories, in fact, were what kept the fog from completely obliterating the entire structure. He remembered the last Christmas they had spent in that house. James had called them all together saying that he wanted to celebrate like the world was ending. Lily had laughed along with everyone else but he had seen the sorrow in her eyes as they met his own. For that single moment he thought she might have regretted her choice. But then she blinked, and it was all gone. All of it was simply gone.

Now though, it was his turn to blink. The tears would not fall here- not on this ground. He would not allow himself to linger over what could have been. This whole hillside was a lasting testament to what could have been. It was the crumpled remains of what had once been a proud house over looking the valley below. Once, there had been gables and windows and valences- and a girl.

If he squinted in the early morning light, he could almost see her as she ran through the grasses toward him as they stole away for an afternoon of secret kisses and pilfered bits of cold toast. He could almost feel her slip her hand into his again as they slipped off towards the brook behind the house. James never went back there. The brook was safety.

She wasn't there now. He knew this. She was long dead and buried beneath the oak in the front yard. Next to James. But the more he thought about it, the more he realized that she had been dead to him a long time before that. She had been so distant in those months leading up to her death that at times he wondered if she hadn't known.

He pulled his legs free of the grasping grass and began to climb up the hill. The oak swung its branches to and fro in a gentle breeze. The longest branches swept the tops of the grey monuments. He pulled his black cloak closer to his shivering body and marched up- closer and closer to the memories he didn't want to face.

Here lies James Harold Potter and Lily Anne Evans-Potter

Beloved of us all.

He traced the letters with his finger, careful to keep his other hand tucked close into his cloak. Beloved. Now there was a strange word indeed. It was one of those overused words that nobody really seemed to know the meaning of. One of the others maybe, when they were children, might have known. Now he doubted very much that any of them really spent the time to care much about the nuances of a word like beloved.

There was no mention of beloved wife or husband or mother or father on the stones below him. It was as if there was no family to them at all. It read that they were simply two who shared the same name.

It might have seemed like that to others. They weren't affectionate in public and they rarely advertised much of their privet lives, but he knew that they were deeply in love. It was that very same love that had driven them into the ground so many years ago.

The pain of that night still cut into his soul. The two of them looked so happy, so perfect together that night as they assembled only their very closest friends and told them. "...hiding... Secret Keeper... No one can know." And even later when she had pulled him aside:

"I'm going to need you most of all, you realize. Please. Help us."

"I will." He swore he would help them. He would lay his own life down for them. All of them. Even for James who stole her away and killed him every day and every night. Yes, even for him.

It's funny how it's easier to lie to ourselves than it is to lie to others.

"I will..."

His heart wrenched as he told her that lie. Two simple words.

"I will..."

A tear slipped past his defenses. It glittered in the misty light and he wanted to tell himself that it was alright to cry here... to mourn. No one would ever know.

Another tear slid down to join its brother. There's no one around for miles and miles. No one had been here for years. It's alright to cry.

The tears were like glass as they each of them, one by one by one, crashed down to earth and lay shattered like old dreams below him. It was alright to cry... only if no one was around for miles and miles. It was alright to cry... only if no one has been here for years. It's alright to cry...

Tracing her name one last time, he whispered a soft, "I will," before standing again. His joints creaked as he stood to brace himself against the wind and he continued his pilgrimage.

Up past the tree to the place where the house had once stood. Most of the ground floor still stood strong against the wind and the years but the second floor was gutted and had crumbled down in on its self. Looking at it now, he wondered how it ever could have been the proud old house he remembered every night in his dreams. It seemed so lost out here.

The wind was picking up and he tried to pull his cloak closer to him, but the wind cut the old rag to ribbons. Shuddering, he pressed on.

There wasn't much left of the house once you got right up next to it. There were a few walls and crumbled stones but the vines and moss had claimed most of the coarse surfaces. Peering around the frame of the front door, he let his gaze wander over the remains of a once grand entrance hall. Great tumbles of stone stood where once had been beautiful stairs leading the eye up to the grandest thing of all. The ceiling of the entrance hall had been painted, centuries before, with great mythical and magical beings cavorting across an endless sky. Amid the ruble, the eye might be able to pick out a corner of blue but little remained of the masterpiece.

Unwilling or unable to face more of the ruined house, he moved on. Past the long dead gardens that Lily had taken so much pride in, and past the foundations of some ancient building no one remembered, he made his way closer to the brook.

The trees back here remained virtually untouched by time. He could almost pretend that it was still summer and she was still here and the last thirteen years had never happened. Almost...

He heard it before he saw it. It was a sound that frequented his dreams and, lately, his waking hours too. It was like a child who could not decide whether to laugh or to cry. It was like a Gryffindor lion, by all appearances, calm as anything but with a temper like a banshee. Lily had been exempt from the infamous redhead temper. There was only one time he'd ever seen her ever seen her lose her temper.

"We can't do this anymore. James knows. He knows... No, don't argue with me. Not you too damn it. Don't make me choose between you. I can't. I can't do that to him, damn you. I can't do that to... to us... We're a family. We're going to be a real family... You have to go... Please go... I won't say it again... Leave. Now. Please..."

Those last three words had cut his heart out.

"I still love you, you know. I will always love you, Lily. Always."

Now, the beck seemed to echo his words back at him like some demented parrot. The meaning was distorted and very altered in this newer time. It seemed so wrong now. Like a line out of context, made to fit.

I will... Always...

He hadn't realized how close he was to the edge until he felt to chill water seeping into his cracked leather boots. His toes went numb first, one by one. Biting back a grimace, he pressed on until the water washed over the tops of the boots.

The air was clearing. The mists were lifting. He could hear a lonely bird trilling out his first solo of the day- a lament for the passing night. The sun gently pressed its rays down on the canopy of trees above him but little light came down.

"You have to know that you were never meant to die, Lily. He promised me you would live. I never would have done it if there had been any risk to you. You have to know that. I swear..."

I will... Always... I swear...

It was getting harder and harder to tell the lies from the mess of tangled threads he had woven around himself for protection- threads that had eventually only made things worse. He was tripping, stumbling over his own folly. And one thread, the one meant most of all to protect him was wrapped tightly about his neck- a self-made noose. She was never supposed to die. Not here. Not that night. Not her. Never her.

Forcing himself deeper into the brook, he shivered as the water seeped up his pants leg and pulled him deeper in. He found, to his mortification, that he was crying again. Crying harder now, the tears came fast and hot in his hand. "I'm sorry, Lily. I'm so sorry. I'm sorry..."

There was a moaning from the trees as a heavy wind swept through, bending the unyielding branches and scaring the man in the water. Squeezing his eyes as tight as he could, he began to pray. Words without reason or coherence spewed forth in this, his litany for lost love. "Our father, who art in heaven, hallow be thy name... Protect me as I walk through the valley of the shadow of death... watch over your shepherds and lambs alike in love... Merciful are you, oh Lord, who takes up his staff against the wicked... And the greatest of these is love..."

Love... Four little letters had certainly brought him a long way. Love of friends and of a woman. Love was for the strong. "Why me then?" he asked the skies above him. "Why me? I wasn't strong. I was weak. I followed when I could have led. I was too weak to protect her... too weak to love... Love is for the strong." The skies gave him no answer.

The water had soaked its way up the fabric of his cloak and the garment hung damp and frozen on his body. He clenched his hands into tight fists and turned around slowly. He pulled himself from the water slowly and painfully.

That nigh had been about proving himself: "Look, Master. I have brought you the key to finding the Potters. It was here all along."

That night had been about finding the strength in himself to do what he had never before thought he could do: "It's Pettigrew. I have reason to believe he was made their secret keeper."

That night had been about love: "Let me deal with the mudblood bitch, my master. Please, my lord, that is all I ask."

That night had been about betrayal: "Dead? Lucius, what do you mean dead?"

And after that night, every day had been about redemption: "Please, Albus, I don't deserve your kindness. I don't even deserve your trust."

He brushed his hands across his face in an effort to wipe away his tears, but found that they had already dried. Instead he found two dry tracts of salt.

And isn't trust what it is all about? "I have found, my boy, that trust often means acting before you think about what it is you are really doing."

He staggered up from the stream and back up towards the house. From this angle, it didn't look so bad. It seemed like he could discern more of the fabled beauty that had once graced the hillside. He could almost pick out where the windows on the upper floors had been and he thought he saw the ghost of a curtain fluttering out in a soft summer breeze. From here, it looked like he might be able to make it after all.

I will. Always, I swear... I will always love you, Lily. I swear.

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