Chapter Nineteen: A Lock of Severed Hair

Harry knew the letter by heart almost before he finished it, because the words seemed to find echoes in his head and rebound themselves back, as if his skull were made of stone.

July 31st, 1997

Dear Harry vates:

This letter is to inform you of the deaths of your parents, Lily and James Potter, found in their cells at Tullianum this morning murdered by Death Eaters. They were identifiable by those parts of the bodies left intact, and as soon as they can be checked for traces of Dark magic by our Aurors, their bodies will be released to your custody. We here at the Ministry are sorry for your loss.

Connor made a strangled sound, and Harry looked up to see him staring at his own letter with a similarly strangled, twisted face. A moment later, he dropped his letter on the table as he tore himself free from Parvati's arms and ran.

Harry stood, speaking as he moved, so that no one else would think he had to accompany them. "We've just received news that our parents were murdered," he told the room at large. "Please excuse us."

He went after Connor, navigating easily by the sound of his pounding footsteps, the only ones in the corridor; if someone who lived in Hogwarts hadn't come to the festival, Harry didn't know who they were. Connor was making for Gryffindor Tower, but he got delayed by a trick step he would ordinarily have jumped over. By the time he freed his foot, Harry had reached him.

"Harry," Connor whispered, turning his head away. "Just. Leave me alone. I can't talk to you right now."

Harry ignored him, slipping his arms around Connor's waist and bearing his brother backward until he had him cuddled against his chest. His ears picked up the sound of footsteps following them, and he wrapped the Extabesco plene around them both without a thought. He didn't want to be found right now, even by Draco. No one else was likely to understand the depth of Connor's grief.

"Yes, you can," he said, running his fingers through his brother's hair. "I know that you don't think I'm sorry they died, but I am."

"Why?" Connor whispered. "They did horrible things to you, Harry. I know that, but I—I still loved them, damn them, and I don't expect you to feel the same way. Just—" His arms had found their way around Harry's shoulders by now, and seemed determined to clutch tight, despite his earlier words. "Just don't say anything bad about them, all right? I couldn't bear that right now."

Harry nodded against Connor's neck.

"I know that you're sorry about them the way you're sorry about anyone dying," Connor whispered. "But don't say that. Let me pretend that you're sorry because of who they were."

Harry tightened his clasp on his brother's back and said nothing. The truth was that his sorrow had more of an edge to it than that. He remembered Voldemort's words about taking everything he had loved from him too well.

The only reason Lily and James had died had been because Harry had loved them once, and Voldemort was determined to reap the world of everyone like that. They weren't prime targets. They weren't people he loved now. They weren't as easy to reach as innocents wandering the countryside; it must have taken a bit of effort to prepare the Tullianum raid, as a matter of fact. But Voldemort had meant it when he said Harry's love would doom someone else, and he was proving it.

The dissatisfaction that thought created was gnawing a hole in Harry's heart, eating a small corner of it and rendering it scraps.

Who might live, if I hadn't shown that I valued them?

For some people, of course, it was too late; Voldemort knew full well that Harry loved Connor and Draco and Snape and oh, so many more. But there might be others, further from him, whom Voldemort would consider targets and Harry wouldn't even think to warn. They could have lived if his enemy's hatred was not so cruel and so widespread, and if Harry had been a bit more cautious about his affection.

"I didn't realize how much I hoped they would change," Connor whispered then. "Well—James, at least. Not Lily. I'd given up hope of Lily. But as long as he lived, I thought there was the chance he might owl someday, asking to see me—us—and t ell us he was sorry, though of course it would never have been enough."

Harry nodded against his neck again, and wrapped his arms more tightly around Connor when he sagged. Then he made soft soothing, clucking, crooning noises, and Connor dissolved at last into helpless sobs.

Harry folded up the unfortunate thoughts and put them away. Even if they were true, and James and Lily would have lived if Harry hadn't loved them, this was no time to voice it. He couldn't do anything to convince most of the people around him not to love him, and Connor needed support far more than Harry needed to say stupid things. Harry would lend his support through the funeral, if Connor asked him to attend, and his strength. It was what he did.

The discontent had made a small place to lie down in his heart, but it could stay there. It wasn't really a new thought, after all.

Harry had often wondered what his life would be like if things could only have changed, or, rather, remained the same—if no one had ever known what Lily had done to him, if he had stayed Connor's guardian. This wasn't even his first proof absolute that people dead now would have lived if he had stayed that way. It was only a newer and sharper version of it.

SSSSSSSSSS

Draco had crisscrossed the hallway for the third time when he heard soft voices, and rounded the corner to see Harry kneeling in front of his brother, talking. Connor's face was a mass of tears, of course. Draco paused to push his worried expression into a stoic mask. He didn't care about Lily and James, he cared about Harry, but if Connor was actually grieving, he wouldn't want to see Draco's indifference.

Connor's virtues were blazing especially bright now, but they were occluded by the burst of Harry's topaz. He said something that made Connor shake his head from side to side, but Draco could only make out the words when he got closer.

"—of course I want you there. Just because you renounced their name doesn't mean that you renounced their blood." Connor had the good grace to hesitate, at least, and add, "If you want to come, of course."

"I want to be there," Harry said, and his voice was full of such soothing comfort that Draco had no idea what he really felt.

"Thank you, Harry." Connor squeezed his hand for one moment, and then leaned against him. Harry put his arms around him, and patted his shoulders twice. His eyes made Draco think about backing off. If anyone came looking to tease or bother Harry's little brother in the next hour, Draco wouldn't place a high priority on their lives.

He took a cautious step forward anyway, and Harry lifted his head and looked at him. Draco blinked. The gaze he was receiving now wasn't one he'd been subjected to in a long time. Harry was evaluating him as a potential threat.

He nodded, though, and whispered so that Connor's small gasping breaths almost covered his words, "What did you want, Draco?"

"Just to find you," said Draco. "To make sure you were safe."

"I'm fine."

Fine, my arse, Draco thought, but Harry's face was calm and closed. His eyes were the only things that challenged that impression, and they were full of burning wrath and fury for his brother's sake. If Harry grieved for his parents, if he felt their loss as a blow, Draco had no idea.

"We'll hold the funeral as soon as we receive the bodies," Harry went on, his hand moving up and down Connor's spine the way he would soothe a baby. "We're unlikely to want to linger. The funeral will be near Lux Aeterna. Lily's family would hardly want her body back, and James was a worthy heir of the Potter line at one point in his life. He should be laid to rest near his family."

And he sounds like he's planning a funeral for strangers, Draco thought. Which might actually be the healthier reaction. Damn it. There's nothing I can do until I know if he needs comfort or not.

"Will I be welcome to attend?" he asked.

"That's not my decision to make." Harry looked down at Connor. "What do you say about that, brother?"

"He can come," Connor's voice welled out, muffled. "But not if he says anything bad about them. I just—I want this to be a day when they're laid to rest. I don't want them as specters in our lives, of either cruelty or gladness."

Harry nodded. "And what about other people?"

"The same conditions apply to them."

"Of course," said Harry, and stood, easily carrying Connor with him because of his magic. "I'm going to get him to bed, Draco. You can tell the others that I'm fine. I'll be staying in Gryffindor Tower tonight."

"Tonight?" Draco couldn't help asking. "It's barely one in the afternoon, Harry."

"I know that," said Harry. "But Connor needs rest." Draco realized only then that the sobs had become snores, and Connor appeared to have dropped straight into exhausted sleep, though he still clung desperately enough to Harry to defy that impression. "And removing myself from him now would probably wake him up."

He turned and walked away. Draco licked his lips and couldn't resist one more call. "Harry, are you all right?"

"Fine, of course," Harry said. "Why wouldn't I be, given what they did to me?" And he rounded the corner and was gone.

Draco shook his head slowly. That was actually the reaction he supposed Harry should have, if he'd given up on caring about his parents altogether. He would only attend the funeral and show sorrow for his brother's sake. He wasn't grieving, he was sorry for Connor's grief.

Except that his acting is so convincing that I have no idea if that's what he feels, or not.

He turned to find Snape, wondering all the while what to tell him. Should they be concerned about Harry, or not?

SSSSSSSSSSSS

As Harry had thought, Connor didn't wake when Harry laid him down on his bed, but the moment Harry adjusted his position, he stirred and fretted, the way he had when they were still children sleeping in one cot and Harry would try to leave for a lesson. Lily had taken to telling him those early vows, while Harry was still too young to completely understand them, through the bars of the cot. Harry would lie still, arms around Connor, and listen.

He did that now, curling protectively around Connor and listening to the faint sounds that came through the Tower windows along with the sunlight. He lay there he didn't know how long, watching as the shadows shifted and the sunlight withered and waxed with each passage of a cloud. It was a warm day, at least to lie fully clothed under blankets and next to someone else's body heat. Harry didn't let the sweat trick him into releasing Connor, though. He wouldn't have let it happen if he were lying in the same position with Draco.

Or if Draco was comforting you—

Harry cut himself off with a small shrug. He didn't think he needed the comfort. The major emotion he felt about the death of his parents was regret for the reason Voldemort had killed them. From the angle that Draco and Snape would see it, he certainly should feel relieved and proud that they were gone; they'd done so much to hurt him. Draco hadn't grieved even over Lucius as much as Harry had expected him to, given what Lucius had done to hurt the Malfoy family name before he was called back to Voldemort. Snape despised James and hated Lily. And Connor didn't expect grief of Harry, but he needed support.

So it was most comfortable for everyone if he just remained the way he was now.

Harry watched the changing sunlight, and waited for Connor to wake up. He expected more tears, a need for more soothing words, and some questions about the unfairness of life. Connor was an adult, almost, but he hadn't lost someone so close to him since Sirius. He would need reassurance that the confusion he felt was all right, that a funeral near Lux Aeterna was all right, that even his tears could emerge because it wasn't wrong to grieve for someone dead.

In the meantime, Harry watched the sunlight track across the walls.

SSSSSSSSSS

Snape turned Harry's head slowly back and forth, peering intently into his eyes. Harry bore with it, his face absolutely expressionless, as it had been in the last few days since his parents' deaths.

That wasn't to say he was welcoming Snape's Legilimency into his mind. Every time Snape tried, even to catch a glimpse of the emotions he was sure Harry must be feeling, he met a thick, choking kind of mist he hadn't seen before. He was sure Harry wasn't suppressing his emotions, because he had promised not to do it again, but he was defending his thoughts.

And for the last few days, he had helped his brother plan for the funeral, comforted Potter when he needed it, reassured those people frightened by the sudden appearance of such dark news in the middle of a festival, sent formal condolences to the Ministry on the loss of so many of its Aurors, commiserated with Tybalt Starrise about the death of his brother Pharos, and acted all the while as if this attack had only affected those he loved and not himself, or people he had once loved.

It was quite maddening for Snape. But Harry's mask had not cracked once, nor shown any strain. Snape was close to having to accept that it was the truth, not a mask.

Well, there is one thing I have not tried. He had tried Legilimency on the sly, the offers of Calming Draughts and Dreamless Sleeping Potions, and surprising Harry when he was not with someone else and might let his guard down, but he had not tried simply asking him.

"How are you, Harry?" he asked, staring at him.

"Fine, sir." Delivered with no hesitation, and no flinching. Harry stood, eyes locked on his, as if waiting for more questions.

"How are you feeling?" Snape pressed. He half-wanted to grimace at such words coming out of his own mouth, but this was how—normal—parents talked to their children, and all the other roads had dwindled into nothing.

"Strong," Harry answered. "And calm."

That got me exactly nowhere, Snape realized. But he'd held Harry long enough. Harry was already glancing politely at the door, as if to remind Snape that he had a meeting to attend with his brother and a curator of pureblood traditions from Diagon Alley, who knew the details of how to arrange a formal funeral when both parents in the Potter line had died at once.

"If you need help," Snape said quietly, "you will come to me, won't you?"

"Of course," said Harry, a trace of faint surprise coloring his voice, as if he were surprised that Snape even needed to ask such a thing. "You or Draco."

And then Snape had to let him leave. He half-lidded his eyes, studying Harry's posture and the way he walked, and could see no clues there, either. He hadn't been skipping meals or sleep; that, Snape knew. He had simply picked up his role as tower of strength and guardian as though it were no strain on him at all, even though Snape knew it must be.

But with no evidence, all he could do was wait until—or in case—Harry asked him for help.

SSSSSSSSSSS

Harry gave a little shake to settle the tension in his shoulders as he emerged from Snape's office. The way that both his guardian and Draco had peered at him in the last few days was getting to him. They both wanted something from him that Harry didn't know how to give.

They wouldn't approve of his real emotions about his parents—not the regret, nor the dissatisfaction over the way things had fallen out and the yearning for them to be different. They would tell him sternly that his parents had been evil and deserved their deaths, or that of course Voldemort was only doing this to get at him and he mustn't let that happen. They would pile more strain on Harry than he could handle right now. He was doing well as things were. He wouldn't do as well if he had to defend and explain his emotions constantly along with everything else. The questions both Snape and Draco put him through were minor and tolerable, compared to that.

He hurried his steps. Connor was meeting with the curator in an abandoned classroom McGonagall had let them take over, near the dungeons. He didn't have far to go, but he was already late.

The curator, who was already speaking with Connor when Harry arrived, was a short man with silver hair and a long beard that reminded Harry of Dumbledore's. His robes were different, of course, covered with silver runes and symbols that proclaimed ancient heritage and his devotion to that ancient heritage instead of moons and stars. His name was Barnabas Followwell, apparently. Harry gave him a nod as he slid into the seat beside his brother.

Followwell studied him for a moment. "Your brother tells me that you have renounced your last name," he said.

Harry, though a bit surprised the man hadn't known that before he came, simply nodded again.

The curator sniffed. "Then you should know that there are certain duties you will not be able to perform during the funeral, because you are not considered to be true family of the deceased."

If I'd known how much trouble renouncing my last name was going to cause, I would have done it in private, Harry thought in irritation. He opened his mouth to explain that he'd known that and didn't mind refraining from those duties, but Connor actually snarled and broke in.

"Then we don't want that kind of funeral. We'll choose one that doesn't have these—these idiotic tendencies saying that only certain people can pick up a gong or play a flute or swing a censer. You've already been condescending to me because my mother was Muggleborn. Don't you dare start being condescending to my brother."

Followwell blinked a bit, and pushed his small, square glasses up his nose. "Young man, there is no need to be rude—"

"He just lost his parents," said Harry, leaning forward. "His parents whom he found out had abused him, and me, during the first eleven years of our lives. Tell me your feelings on the matter would be clear and uncomplicated. Sir."

After a moment, the curator nodded stiffly, and then withdrew a pouch from a thick braided thread around his neck. He spilled a mass of documents onto the table, handling them as carefully and reverently as if they were ancient parchments, though from what Harry saw, they were much likelier to be modern copies of ancient parchments. "As your legacy is split between the two of you—your brother has told me about your being his heir, Mr. Harry—this funeral may do." He separated one scroll from the rest and handed it over.

Harry picked it up and studied it. The list of customs at the top of the document was familiar to him, and while they were simple, they had a long history and were certainly profound and respectable enough. Best of all, this kind of funeral would allow for coffins that weren't open at all, which would be to their advantage. The Ministry had delivered James and Lily's bodies yesterday, and Harry had taken charge of them, so that Connor didn't have to see them. What remained of them was the size of his lynx form.

"This will do," he said. "What do you think, Connor?"

"Fine," said Connor abruptly, without even glancing at the parchment. He rubbed his forehead.

Recognizing the signs, Harry stood quickly and nodded at Followwell. "We'll ask that you deliver the instruments we need to us in three days' time, sir. That's when the funeral will happen."

"Wonderful." The man looked somewhere near happy. Harry wondered if he was grateful that this transaction was done, or if he simply liked using historical funeral customs, whether or not he liked the people involved. Harry suspected the latter, from the reverent way he took the parchment back. "I will send them to Hogwarts—or should I use the Lux Aeterna direction?"

"Here," said Harry, knowing that the man's owls wouldn't be able to get through the wards around Lux Aeterna. He glanced quickly at his brother, who was sitting with his hands clasped tightly around his head and muttering under his breath. "It was a pleasure working with you, sir."

"A pleasure." Followwell nodded back, though Harry doubted he thought that way, and departed.

Harry turned to Connor and clasped his forearms, pulling his hands away from his face. "Tell me what's wrong," he said.

"I hate feeling this way," Connor said, voice muffled. "Is this the way you felt before the trial, Harry? Thinking you should hate them more than you did? Unable to despise them as much as you wanted to, because you felt they were victims? I didn't feel they were victims then. And now I do. They're dead." He took a deep breath. "But that doesn't excuse what they did before death. But it shouldn't have to, I should be able to feel regret for their deaths if I like. But I don't know why it's so strong." He put his head back in his arms, yanking hard on Harry's grip to break it. "I hate this."

"They are dead," Harry whispered, and embraced him this time. "There is no need to apologize, Connor. Yes, I went through that confusion, and I wish that I could have spared you that set of emotions forever. But the hatred and the pity and the regret and the grief and the guilt are all real. It's better that you recognize them, rather than choosing one and castigating yourself for feeling the others."

Connor pressed forward into the embrace and held him strongly back. "I'm glad that you're here, Harry," he whispered. "Since Parvati's parents still won't let her visit me for long periods."

"I know," said Harry, and began to rub circles on Connor's back, which seemed to soothe him more than most other gestures. "And in a few days, Connor, this will be over. The loss will be there, but not as fresh."

"I'd punch anyone else if they said that," Connor muttered. "Especially Draco. But from you, it sounds all right."

Harry closed his eyes and gathered Connor closer, feeling ready to kill anyone who might try to hurt his brother.

SSSSSSSSSSSS

The funeral began under a gray-washed morning sky, with clouds hanging above the sea and letting glimpses of gold peek through. Harry watched the clouds sway, and wondered if the weather could have chosen a more perfect reflection of Connor's mood. It was better than burying their parents in either full rain or full sunlight.

The procession began at the beach where the Potters sailed their boats off into the east on Midsummer morning, near the waves. Connor took a step forward until he stood up to his ankles in the washing water. He held a boat like the parchment ones in his hands, but made of carved cypress wood, the symbol of death. Followwell had been able to produce one without much trouble; he kept such symbols for all the major pureblood families, he had assured Harry.

"The Potters came from the east on Midsummer," said Connor. His voice was soft and didn't carry far, but there wasn't a large crowd there in any case. Just Harry, Draco, Snape, Peter, and, standing off to one side and speaking very carefully to the rest of them when he did speak, Remus. "I am sending this boat back into the east in memory of my father, and my mother, who became a Potter by her marriage. By the name of Helen Potter, who defeated the Firestar Lord who had loved her; by the name of Ebenezer Potter, who gave his life to shut the Shining Gate against the last of the sidhe; by the name of Mafalda Potter, who pursued her own life's course and damned those who damned her; I give them back into the sea, and trust that they will welcome them."

He breathed on the boat, then placed it in the water. For a moment, it bobbed, and Harry was sure that it would sink to the bottom, that it was too heavy with its thick wood sail. Then a breeze that hadn't been blowing a moment before started to blow, and the wooden sail belled like real cloth. Connor stepped a bit away from it as it began to move, and then stood with head bowed until it vanished quietly into a wave that opened to receive it, like a mouth. Harry bowed his head with him.

Connor waded back to shore then, and flicked his wand to levitate the coffins. Both were for full-size bodies, though Lily and James made small and gore-soaked bundles in them. That didn't matter, Followwell had said; the coffins should honor what they had been in life, not what they were at the moment of death. And Connor had agreed, though Harry thought that was partially because his brother wanted this over with so badly.

They made a small procession from the beach, over the hills behind it, across the grass to the Potter graveyard. Harry walked in silence, and so did the rest of them, to commemorate the silence that James and Lily were even now passing through. Harry did see a shadow on the grass, though, and when he glanced up, a large gull was keeping perfect pace with them, gliding like a hawk, now and then tilting its head down to watch them with one bright, beady eye. Harry kept expecting it to cry and break the solemn stillness, but it never did. He was almost sure he saw the hand of the northern goblins in that. They might not have cared greatly about the Potter line, which after all had owned one of the linchpins binding their web, but they could acknowledge the vates who had freed them and his brother.

They arrived at last at the graveyard. It didn't look like a graveyard, and it had actually taken Connor and Harry most of a morning to find it. The ground was planted with a vaguely purplish grass that Harry knew was magical, though its magic seemed oriented to letting it survive the cold wind from the North Sea. Here and there, gentle curves, so soft they could almost be extensions of the hills, mounded the earth. Only when one drew close did one notice the tiny, ship-shaped stone in the center of each mound, containing a name and dates, and sometimes a longer inscription.

Followwell had prepared the stones for them, with Connor choosing the inscriptions. James's gave his name and dates, and the single word Father, Lily's her name and dates alone.

Harry came forward while Connor used his magic to open holes in the earth and then pile the disturbed soil off to the sides, ready to form the mounds when they were done here. The gull had alighted on James's coffin and stood there with head cocked, as if wondering what he was doing.

Even bloodline heirs who had disowned themselves were allowed a final farewell. And that was what Harry intended to give. He put his hand on James's coffin and bowed his head. Snape and Draco's eyes burned on his back. Harry ignored them. What he felt about his parents' death was his secret and going to stay that way, and it was not as though they could hear what he was going to say now. James had been living, and now he was dead. That was worthy of respect.

I wish you had been a better man, he thought. I wish you had had a better life. I wish I had known you better. I wish many things had been different.

He stepped away, and Connor came forward to speak his part. Harry kept one eye on him as he moved towards Lily's coffin. Connor was composed, as the Potter heir had to be for this part of the ceremony, and his voice resembled the surface of the sea that morning: hard, but variegated with all sorts of contrary emotions.

"We are laying my parents to rest today. I cannot claim my relationship to them was uncomplicated. They abused my brother and I." Followwell had said truth was best, and it seemed Connor would tell everything. Harry was impressed. He knew he could not have done it. "They were not the good people I thought they were for the first eleven years of my life. I will not say that does not matter.

"But they are dead now, and in a manner that no one deserves to perish." Connor put his wand in his pocket and pulled out a silver knife, holding it to his scalp as he severed two locks of his hair. "I will mourn them for the rest of my life, even if what I am mourning is more shadow than it is reality." He stepped forward, moving past Harry gently as he laid one lock of hair on James's coffin and one on Lily's. The gull watched him in interest, but didn't try to peck at the hair. "I shall send part of myself with them, the one remaining son of both their body and their blood."

He stepped back, and went to work widening the graves again. That left Harry to face Lily's coffin.

Harry studied it in silence. The box was plain, dark wood with anti-rotting spells worked into the frame, and silver clasps. He knew what lay inside it. He had seen the shadow of the skull and the severed neck against the wrapping.

Part of my life lies there, too.

It did, Harry thought, and, for just this moment, he would face it and admit it, and ignore the thoughts of what Snape and Draco would say about it. Snape and Draco had no right to dictate his emotions, or his response to what had happened.

She understood me in a way that no one else ever has. She was the first to give me a vision of the future. She was the first to teach me about sacrifice, about compassion, about what the world meant and that there were more people in it than just me. And whether anyone wants to admit it or not, she's part of the reason that I am who I am, and part of the reason that good as well as bad things happened—even if she never intended the good things. To deny that is tantamount to denying myself.

Goodbye—

And for a moment, the world seemed to turn bright and hard as diamond. The gull cocked its head to watch him in turn.

But Harry couldn't do it, in the end. He could not give her back the name of "Mother" she had so efficiently stripped from herself.

Goodbye, Lily. Would that I could mourn you more.

"Diffindo," he whispered, concentrating, and a lock of hair dropped from his head into his hand. He laid it on the coffin next to Connor's. He refused to look and see if anyone was watching him and gaping. What he felt for his parents was his, to guard and lock away if he wished, and to refuse to explain.

He did not truly believe that his parents would have much existence beyond the grave, not if they did not become ghosts. The world of spirits was so bewildering that even what little necromantic magic he'd studied, to free thestrals, gave contradictory reports. He was sending the hair not to accompany Lily on any journey, but in token and sign of what would never come back.

Connor lifted the coffins carefully, James first, then Lily, and lowered them into their graves. The gull stayed until the last moment, then took flight, crying loudly, over their heads. Harry saw more than one person start at that, but he tilted his head back and watched it soar into the multi-colored sky, gaining height with each beat of its wings.

"James Potter is passed," said Connor, and from the sound of it, he was fighting tears. "Lily Potter is passed. Ave morti."

And then the coffins were down, and Harry heard the shuffling sound of earth heaping in above them.

He did not look. He kept watching the gull instead, until it was a circling, dancing speck flown so high that it was hard to distinguish from the leading edge of a cloud.

They might ask him questions. Harry would not answer. For today, his mind was as silent, and as difficult to interpret for any augurer, as that sky.