Apologies for my overwhelming slowness in all things related to fanfiction. That seems to spread out to life in general at the moment. New anti-depressants stole my writing mojo and ran away to the hills far yonder with it so nothing has happened quickly. I'm slowly getting back into the swing of things.
This is a sister piece to Giving Up; a 'what if' they hadn't found the breaking child in time and now everyone has to pick up the pieces that are left behind. You are warned; this is dark, potentially triggering. Please review though, even if you hate it with a passion. I like hearing what you think... And it gives me motive and mojo to keep on writing, however slowly that might occur.
And so, with no further ado, welcome to the shards of glass that have been left behind. Try not to cut yourself.
Chapter 3: A Tincture of Poppy
The Hospital Wing is completely out of Calming Drafts. There are three vials of Dreamless Sleep left and a half dozen Tinctures of Poppy and a various selection of infusions. At the rate we are going, I'm going to be reduced to Cheering Charms.
I have never known anything like it. Even when there was a Basilisk roaming the walls and petrifying students at random, I never had quite a run like this on my stocks. I have Severus making up extra batches as I speak because my order isn't going to come in until the end of the week. At the earliest apparently. The nation has run dry of Calming Drafts.
All because the Boy-Who-Lived has died.
Of all the students to die on my watch, it just had to be Harry James Potter.
A faint sobbing from outside gets closer to my doors and it's with a heavy heart that I turn to deal with yet another distraught and overcome student. I do have to wonder that if anywhere near as many of these devastated young fans had showed Potter this level of appreciation over the last couple of years, if we'd be standing at this point today. However, it is not my job to question. My job to fix, heal, mend and send my young charges away in fine health. I've failed one boy but that is no reason to fail those who remain.
The youngster is led in by Minerva, and it is no secret I am getting more concerned about her with every day that passes. She's been a tower of strength for students of her own house and even those from other houses, but with each day she seems to grow thinner and greyer. Even more so than Albus perhaps, she has grown old. She hasn't chosen to confide in me but I've known the woman for too many years not to see the real toll the death of her student has had on her. I saw the façade crack when we found the boy's body but otherwise she might have been of stone. Except stone doesn't wither away day by day. Stone isn't as frail as us mere mortals. It is frailty that I can see now.
For the moment though, it is easier to focus on the hysterical first year student than my all too composed colleague. There's more I can do for Miss Adams, at least immediately. There is also less chance of getting my nose hexed sideways. I don't trust Minerva's temper these days. But calming infusions don't take long to make or to administer and within an all too short period of time I've got a relatively calm first year…and the Deputy Headmistress of Hogwarts who seems determined to fall apart where no-one can hear her cry. Determined to fall apart where no-one will be there to catch her.
Glancing across at my colleague speculatively, I can see her attention is fully taken by the steadily calming first year sat on the bed, although Miss Adams doesn't look up to notice. However, looking closely I can see the new strain lines that show on my colleague's face, the dark bags under her eyes and the now sharp lines of her face. She doesn't meet my eyes but I know what I'd see in her gaze all too well; grief, heart-ache, sorrow and despair. Guilt. Shame. And fear. So many emotions all hidden within those dark green eyes, all held constrained by an iron clad will.
She's seen each and every one of these children through their own personal hell these past few weeks and she has done it completely alone completely alone. She's held them as they cried, heard their anguished guilt, supported them through their guilt, their horror, their unimaginable anguish. Not that there haven't been those of us offering help, offering support, offering a shoulder to cry on. Myself, Filius, Horace, even Severus in his own inexplicable way. Yet, she has pushed those of us willing to support her away and so she has done it all alone.
"Minerva," I start stridently, not allowing any of my insecurity into my tone. Minerva could hex me across the room with virtually no effort and we both know it. I may be the master of this domain, but Minerva is not one of my charges. I have to step with care. "Would you step into my office, please?"
Her glance is sharp and short and I can see that she's about to rebuff me, to walk out with a vague comment and a generalisation.
"It's about one of your students, Minerva," I follow with before she can say anything else. Those green eyes meet mine suddenly, her gaze focussed and intent. "There's someone I'm concerned about."
There's no word of a lie in either of those statements. It is about one of her students. Harry was one of her students and always will be unless I miss my guess. And there is someone that I'm concerned about. It is merely that she is standing in front of me looking more world worn and haggard than I have seen in many years of working closely at her side. Of course there are other students I am concerned about; the sixth year Gryffindors have taken the harshest beating from this; Longbottom, Granger and Weasley in particular. They aren't the only ones though; the Lovegood girl seems to have stepped even further off whatever little sanity she had before and is now living in her own little world. I don't have it in me to try to bring her back yet. I just hope she can find some solace there that she cannot find here.
Without even thinking, I set two highly sugared cups of tea in front of us. I know all too well that Minerva doesn't take sugar in her tea, but at least I can be certain of some sustenance, regardless of how minimal.
"Minerva, surely you have to recognise that this isn't healthy?" I don't bother to beat around the bush. Some people respond best to a softly, softly tickle a dragon approach. With Minerva I long ago discovered that you are far better off sticking your head into the fire and just hoping for the best. "You need to talk to someone. If not me then…"
"Poppy…" Her voice is stern and yet I can hear the tiredness that edges it. She takes a deep breath and stands as if to leave. "I thought this was to do with one of my students."
"Sit down, Minerva." I wince at the unexpected sharpness in my own tone. Minerva isn't one of the students and I cannot treat her like one, but worry and concern makes me harsher than I had actually intended. "Please. Sit down. You can't be there for the students who need you like this, Minerva, not properly. It's not fair on them and it's not fair on you. It's not fair on anybody. None of this is. But you can't take it all upon yourself. Your shoulders are not wide enough for that kind of burden. Nobody's are."
After a long moment, my older colleague sits down; slowly and stiffly, a movement that fits the new lines on her face more than her actual years. Without saying a word, she holds a piece of parchment out to me, the quaver of her hand only noticeable to one who has been trained to see. I scroll down it quickly, flick my eyes back up and run down it more carefully, barely believing what I'm reading. I would never have thought that Arthur would pull his children from the school. I'd never realised just how much the child had hidden from us. Bars on the windows. If I ever get my hands on those muggles, I swear on the grave of Merlin himself…
I come back to myself with a start. It is no wonder Minerva looks so grey. She hasn't just lost one of her boys. She's lost three of her pride of young lions in the same foul swoop. She isn't just hurting, she is breaking.
"Minerva…" I start slowly, my heart shattering into pieces for this proud, stern woman who is watching everything she has built turn to ash. Her boys. Her self-worth. Her faith not only in herself but also in Albus, in Hogwarts, in the foundations of her life. "You can't just blame yourself, you know. Arthur is in many ways right; we could all have done so much more."
"In the boy's first year, he came to me for help and I sent him away with a flea in his ear…" Minerva's voice when it finally comes is hoarse, weary and grief-stricken and she won't meet my eyes. These are words that have been circling in her head since the day we found the child, this is what has been eating her alive. "Second year, one best friend petrified and the others youngest sister taken to a chamber of horrors, he risks a Basilisk alone. After being reviled for being a Parseltongue and isolated by the entire school no less, whilst I stood by and did sweet nothing. He walks into my office waving a blood covered sword that's almost as big as he is, tightly clutching a young girl we as the responsible adults had all given up as lost. Brave, fool-hardy, nothing short of idiocy. Two twelve year old children found the Chamber of Secrets and took on a basilisk on their own!"
I hardly dare move, I certainly don't dare speak. Minerva has barely spoken to anyone since we found the young Potter boys body. She has confided in nobody. She has stayed strong and stern, refusing to break, refusing to even bend. We all knew how much she must be grieving. We all knew how much she must blame herself. And yet she wouldn't let any of us close enough to share that pain with her. She has held herself aloft. Until now. There is anger in her clipped tone; there is pain, there is hatred and there is grief in that voice which finally cracks under the strain of these last few weeks.
"Third year…" Finally, this steadfast colleague of mine meets my gaze with her dark green eyes and I near stop breathing at the pain residing within them. The guilt, the hurt, the devastation. This is what she has been hiding. This is what she hasn't allowed any of us to see. "Third year that irrepressible and kind-hearted young man was the only one willing to listen, to give the man he believed killed his parents the chance to explain and to make things right. Reckless, potentially fatal, utterly stupid behaviour that put himself and his friends in mortal danger and yet because of it, he saved an innocent man's life, Poppy. A man we would have handed over to the Dementor's without even blinking."
I don't have many portraits on the walls of my office; one of my father and another of my mentor. Neither of them shift easily and yet with the force of the power shaking them near off the walls, both vanish without a word, likely into the Hospital Wing itself. Minerva hasn't touched her wand, doesn't even seem to realise the shock waves of power that are breaking from her. Magic is always more powerful when propelled by strong emotion; Minerva knows that as well as anyone.
It was the force of her grief and heart-break that brought the walls of the Room of Requirement down; walls that haven't been rebuilt. I don't know if they will be in my tenure here. It is that force now that she is tapping into, utterly unaware of it in her misery. This isn't something I have any right or ability to stop. Unless it is siphoned safely, Minerva could potentially lay waste to a wing or more of Hogwarts and none but Albus himself could hope to mitigate the damage. Or perhaps Severus. That man has hidden talents that surprise even me occasionally.
"For three years, Poppy, my boy somehow managed the unlikely, the improbable, and the downright dangerously impossible. Regardless of his age, his inexperience, his relatives. Despite all of the things that should have changed him, stopped him, warped him. Despite everything…" Here, her voice truly cracks. I saw Minerva cry when we found young Harry's body. I watched helplessly as tears tracked down her face and the walls crumbled into rubble around us because nobody can bring back the dead. I thought that was terrifying. Nothing can prepare me for the sight of my old colleague now though. Her voice is harsh through her sobs. "How did I not see it sooner, Poppy? The boy darted from one narrow escape to another, somehow always managing to come out with his head held high. Surely, I should have seen… Surely, I could have done something…"
There's nothing I can say. There's absolutely nothing I can say that would make Minerva feel better right now, because she's right. We all should have seen. We all could have done something and yet none of us actually did. We failed him badly and we have nobody to blame but ourselves. We let the child alone to try to live up to the near impossible expectations that the world had for him. And when he inevitably fell short, as he always had to as the standards were so high, when the wizarding world deserted him, who stood by him? Who could the child rely on?
"And then he was placed besides adolescents several years older and told to compete. And then Cedric died and everything fell apart, the world bayed for the boy's blood and he believed he was the only one who could save Sirius by running in half cocked…" Once again, Minerva's voice cracks and falters. I've heard the muggleborn students use the phrase 'drawing blood from a stone', I've never understood what it meant but this must surely be close. "He must have felt so alone, Poppy. So utterly, completely alone. And even then he spends his last words telling us it's not our fault. Not to blame ourselves. He'd come through so much. How can I look at the faces around me and not see the broken, bleeding child that I failed so badly, Poppy?"
"Harry was never alone, Minerva," I say softly, gently. "He might have felt it, but if he'd have come to you…"
"He did, Poppy!" The cracks and crashes around us are testament to this woman's sheer will. The slight whoosh of my floo sounds but I don't bother to turn and for once Minerva doesn't seem to notice. There aren't many who can come straight through to my office, although anyone has access to the Hospital Wing itself. I can't see any reason for Albus to be gracing me with his presence, so the options are limited. "He came to me about the stone, he tried to talk to me about Sirius, he even tried to talk to me about Umbridge making him carve lines into the back of his own hand! Throughout all these years, Poppy, the boy tried to come to me. So when he really, truly needed someone there for him, is it really any shock that he didn't see my door as open? That he didn't trust me enough to confide in? That he didn't think I cared enough to help him? How could he!? Arthur is right! He thought he had to be self-sufficient. When he cried, he cried alone. When he bled, he bled alone. When he died…"
She doesn't have to finish the sentence. He died alone. He cut his own wrists in the dead of night. He bled out and died without anyone even realising there was a problem. By the time the Gryffindor boys woke up to that empty bed and tear marked parchment, it was far, far too late. In a castle full of people who would have died for him, the child died painfully alone. There isn't anything I can say to right that wrong. There aren't any words capable of smoothing over the gaping wounds that his death has left. Arthur is right; in time, perhaps these cruelly sharp edges will become blunt and we'll be able to think about the boy without it hurting quite so much. But for now, and for a long time to come, Ronald isn't the only one who is going to cut himself on the jagged fragments of his memories.
"He died alone, Minerva, with no one beside him."
Minerva stands and whirls around to find Severus standing at my shoulder, he'd moved so quietly even I hadn't heard him approaching across the room. For an instant there's rage in her eyes, but it vanishes as quickly as it came and she sinks brokenly back into the chair. Severus steps gently behind her, laying a thin pale hand on her shoulder with more compassion than I thought the younger man was capable of. His dark, hooded eyes meet mine for a moment and in that look I can read more than I am comfortable with. Guilt, grief, fear and somehow, gratitude.
He knew as well as I did that someone had to approach Minerva. Someone had to break her barriers down. If I hadn't done it today, he likely would have tomorrow, next week or next month. And would likely have found himself being hexed sideways for his trouble. But even knowing that, he would have tried. At the touch of the younger mans hand on her shoulder, Minerva seems to steel herself once more and makes as if to stand yet the firm pressure he exerts prevents her from doing so.
"We failed him, Minerva." Severus continues softly, his tone at odds with the harsh words. "We both failed Lily's son. And he died alone and afraid, haunted by his grief and his shame. Whether we saw James' face or Lily's nature, we both failed him."
Minerva seems to crumple in her chair and I leave the room quietly, letting Severus take this in hand. Passing the floo, I pick up the container that Severus has dropped to the side. A re-stock of Calming Drafts and Dreamless Sleep if my guess is correct. He must have worked through the night to get them ready for me. His voice is low and quiet and once a few steps away it is difficult to make out more than the odd word. I close the door quietly behind me.
Miss Adams is still on the bed, fast asleep now.
But I've caught sight of a very pale Mister Longbottom staggering past the Hospital Wing. There are other students left indeed. Some in need of more help than others.
I step outside to follow the young man briskly. I'm not letting another one slip through my fingers.