Disclaimer: Despite my best efforts, I don't own Harry Potter and never will. Everything un-canonical is mine, unless otherwise specified.
A/N: Thanks again to everyone who put me on Alert! Also, another special thanks to Nibble-Ett, because you reviewed again!
Be Free From GuiltOutside Number 4 Privet Drive, a storm raged. The winds howled and blew like living things in torment. The windows rattled in their panes. The rain came crashing down like anchors in the sea. It was a stormy night for the first time in a long while.
Inside the house, even while the wind howled and the windows rattled, a young man slept peacefully for the first time in a long while. He did not dream of his godfather's death, as he had for so long, but of something else instead. He dreamt, in fact, of this…
BreakBreakBreakBreakBreakBreakBreakBreakBreakBreakHarry Potter woke up in an unfamiliar room with an unfamiliar person sitting next to his bed.
Or was she unfamiliar? She reminded him of something, though he was fairly sure that he hadn't seen her before. It was difficult to tell without his glasses. At any rate, he trusted her. He didn't know why, but he did.
A voice woke him from his thoughts. "There you are, dear," it said, while the owner of the voice put his glasses on his face.
The woman's face swam into focus, and he looked at her, trying to place what had jogged his memory. She reminded him of Mrs. Weasley, but somehow he got the feeling that that wasn't quite what he was remembering.
"Hello," said Harry. "Err…If you don't mind my asking, where am I?"
"You're safe, don't worry," replied the woman.
Which was, thought Harry, very nice to know, and also not at all an answer to my question.
"Don't worry, dear, you're not anywhere dangerous," repeated the woman. "My Son wishes to speak to you, and he could not do it from where you were. Not properly, anyways." There was a knock on the door.
"Ah, that'll be him," said the woman. "Come in," she called.
A tall man with insanely bright red hair walked into the room. "Hello, Harry," he said gently.
"Harry, this is Son. I'll be leaving you two to talk," added the woman.
"Wait!" called out Harry. "Who are you?"
The woman smiled at him. "I'm the Mother," she answered. "Goodbye, Harry. I'll see you again, don't worry." She left the room.
Harry looked at the Son, who smiled at Harry.
"I'd like to talk to you. But I suppose I should ask you if you have any questions."
Harry thought for a moment, then nodded. "Yes. I do. What did you do to me?"
The Son raised an eyebrow. "Do to you?"
"Yes. I should have panicked when I got here. You could have been Death Eaters, for all I know—not that I think you are," he added hastily. "But I'm not even panicking now that I've worked out that you did something to stop me panicking, if that makes sense."
The Son nodded. "It does. As for what we did to you, we simply stopped you from panicking." Seeing the look on Harry's face, he added, "I realize that's not very helpful, but it's the best I can do."
Harry sighed. "I've got other questions, but they can wait. What do you want to talk about?"
The Son looked slightly unsure of himself, but said, "I wish to talk to you about Sirius' death."
"What do you mean?" asked Harry. To himself, he added, And why am I not surprised he knows about that?
"You are still convinced it was your fault. Even here, in a place that dampens emotions, you still feel that guilt. It was not your fault. It is as your friend Ginny said: Sirius Black was his own man, and quite capable of making his own decisions."
Harry realized that the Son was right—despite the fact that he hadn't felt any intense emotion since coming here (and that was odd enough), not even the pain he usually felt when Sirius' death was mentioned, he still felt extremely guilty about the part he played in his godfather's death.
He shook his head at the Son. "It is my fault. If I hadn't messed up, there wouldn't have been a battle, and Sirius wouldn't have died."
The Son, who had been standing by the door, came and sat down on Harry's bed. "So," he requested casually, "tell me how you could have stopped his death."
"I could have remembered that Snape was an Order member. Or I could have remembered about the mirror. I could have tried to do Occlumency harder."
The Son nodded thoughtfully. "So what you're saying," he said, "is that you could have remembered that the teacher you hate the second-most of all and who treats you abominably because of your parents is an order member. And that you could have remembered about something that was given to you secretly at Christmas, despite everything that had happened before and would happen between Christmas and June. And that you could have tried to learn a subject that was being taught to you by the aforementioned teacher in a very stupid way for you?"
Harry nodded reluctantly. When the Son put it like that, it seemed so…trivial.
The Son looked thoughtful. "Well, Harry," he said, "I've got some bad news for you. You're not perfect."
Harry jerked his head up to stare at the Son angrily. "I know I'm not!" he half-shouted.
The Son raised an eyebrow. "Harry, it sounds to me like you're berating yourself for making some very easy mistakes. That seems to me to imply that you think that you should be perfect. You're human. Humans make mistakes. It's natural. If you didn't, how would you learn?"
Harry shook his head stubbornly. The Son, seeing that he was not getting through to Harry, sighed. "Harry," he said tentatively, "I need to show you something. Just close you eyes and lie down."
Harry did so, and the Son made a motion with his hand over Harry's body. Suddenly his saw something, a vision of a might-have-been.
Sirius was being tortured by Voldemort. He screamed, his back bucking like he was being electrocuted. Suddenly, the door burst open and Harry stormed in. "Leave him alone, Tom," he said in a voice like cold steel.
"Oh yes?" said Voldemort. "And how exactly do you plan to stop me?"
"Like this," said Harry, and he tossed an old muddy boot at Sirius. It landed, and Sirius was suddenly back in Grimmauld place.
A few hours later, the news came. Harry was dead. "No," breathed Sirius, slumping over his dinner, "no. It's all my fault."
He was careful to keep away from people for the next few hours. It wasn't too hard; everyone was wrapped in their own grief. At the end of the evening, he hid in his room and plunged a dagger into his heart. His last words were "Harry…forgive me."
The vision was over. Harry looked up at the Son in horror. Even here, he felt the horror. "What was that?" he practically hissed.
"That," replied the Son, "was something that might have been. Sirius committing suicide because he thought it was his fault you were dead."
"What? But that's stupid. It wasn't his fault!"
"No?" the Son raised an eyebrow. "Sirius was lured there so that Voldemort could capture you. It was a trick. He thought you were being tortured. He checked, but Lucius Malfoy impersonated an Order member. There were other ways to communicate, but he was in such a rush he forgot about them. He never bothered to learn locating spells, so he didn't know where you were. How could it not be his fault?"
"What do you mean, 'how could it not be his fault?'. Voldemort has fooled Dumbledore, so of course he could fool Sirius! And if someone told him I was there, of course he'd rush off! And he just never thought tracking spells were important! It's no more his fault than—"
"It was yours," interrupted the Son gently. "Go back to what you just said and think about how it applies to you."
Harry did so, and once he was finished he nodded reluctantly. "You have a point," he admitted.
The Son smiled at him. "Yes, I do. Now do you believe me when I say it's not your fault?"
Harry thought for a moment, then nodded. "Yeah. I guess I do."
"Good," said the Son. "I was worried I wasn't getting through there. Any final questions?"
Harry shook his head. After that immense revelation, he didn't think that he'd be able to remember left from right, never mind think up any questions.
"Okay. Now, Harry, I'm going to return you to your bed. You won't remember any of this—you're not ready for it yet—but you will remember that it isn't your fault."
He made a gesture, and Harry fell into darkness as a question occurred to him. What does he mean, how would you learn?
BreakBreakBreakBreakBreakBreakBreakBreakBreakBreak
When Harry awoke, he was in bed in Privet Drive, and he wondered why he had the sense that he should be somewhere else. He sat up and suddenly felt that something was…not wrong, exactly, but…lost?
He leaned against the head of his bed and thought. He couldn't remember any dreams, so it wasn't anything he had dreamt. What was it?
He glanced over at the letters he had opened yesterday and found the answer. He was missing his guilt! He didn't know why, but today it was just as obvious that he wasn't responsible for Sirius' death as it had been that he was yesterday. He supposed it must have been Ginny's letter—but as convincing as it had been, and as much as he could see the logic in it now, he hadn't understood it yesterday.
He shrugged. Did it really matter? He knew that he wasn't to blame now, and he had—at least in part—Ginny to thank. Speaking of Ginny…he glanced at the clock. It was 8:00. The Weasleys weren't here yet, and he hadn't packed. With a sigh, he bent to his work.
TimeBreakTimeBreakTimeBreakTimeBreakTimeBreak
Harry glanced at the clock a second time. It was now 11 o'clock, and though he knew the Weasleys might not be here for a while, he was getting impatient.
At that moment, he heard the doorbell ring. There was the sound of Uncle Vernon opening the door and then roaring.
"Boy!" he shouted, "The freaks are here!"
"Coming, Uncle Vernon," he shouted back.
Grabbing his stuff, Harry ran down the stairs. To his surprise, it wasn't just Ron and Mr. Weasley—the twins and Ginny had come too.
"Hello, Harry," said Mr. Weasley. "Hop in," he added, gesturing at the car.
Harry stared. The car, another Ford Anglia, was a bright electric orange.
"Nice, isn't it?" said Ron, beaming. "It's to celebrate the victory of the Chudley Cannons.
Harry exchanged a look with Ginny. "Very nice, Ron," he agreed obligingly.
"Here," said Mr. Weasley, "let me get your stuff in the car." As he spoke, he moved Harry's things from the sidewalk to the trunk. Harry noticed that the car was suspiciously able to hold his things which, while not many, nevertheless should have taken up more space than they had.
He hopped in the car and smiled. As Mr. Weasley got in, he reflected that it was nice to be going to his true family—and, with them, his true home.
A/N: It's not quite as long as the other one, I'm afraid. I'm sorry about the abrupt ending, but I couldn't think of a way to write the car ride. Hope you like it!
