-Road of Life-
On the road of life, there are passengers and there are drivers.
This is the story of the road they travel.
-Six-
Disclaimer: Characters and setting are the property of J. K. Rowling. Plot's mine; may not be that great but I'm kinda attached to it.
Summary: We continue introspection on James' poem and his growing feelings for Clara, and the Weasleys make another appearance. We have two different kinds of Potter-angst. Also some (okay; a lot) from Clara's point of view, because we love her. ^_^ Just to keep you updated, it has now been nine months since Thomas died.
Challenge: Strange, isn't it. Well, it actually wasn't inspired by the song written here. See if you can guess- Hint: it's by Billy Joel.
-Six-
Sing When You're Winning
"Teardrops are a faded sign
Perfect, forgotten love of mine
To long for a touch that is divine
When comes the rain"
James frowned sharply at the parchment before him. Just like the last time, he didn't remember writing any of the words. Except last time, he'd actually sat in front of the parchment before they'd appeared. Granted, it had been three months since he'd last looked at that particular piece of parchment, three busy months.
Harry had been enrolled in Muggle grammar school at his Aunt Mioré's insistence, a last tribute to his long-dead love and perhaps a sign that he'd been able to let go of his past and his fear. He'd passed two new laws concerning broom safety, attended countless meetings, and promoted Arthur Weasley to the head of the Ministry for the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts. On top of all this, he'd done so much paperwork that he'd had to get a new prescription for his glasses.
James sighed, running fingers through his hair (too long once again, and this time with traces of gray). Speculation about what had happened to the parchment usually led to the same conclusion, and he'd been staring at it for a little over an hour. He imagined that, perhaps, someone was trying to tell him something, and wasn't being very subtle about it.
The someone he didn't know, but the something was quite obvious from the words on the page: As suddenly as he had fallen for her, and as hard; Clara wasn't about to recover from a broken heart just yet. James groaned and massaged his eyes with one hand. Why do I do this to myself? he wondered, and picked up the quill from the table.
*
Send someone to love me, I need to rest in arms
Keep me safe from harm
In pouring rain
Give me endless summer; Lord, I fear the cold
Feel I'm getting old
Before my time
*
The noise of the alarm was greatly annoying in the comfortable pre-dawn darkness, and an over-enthusiastic Banishing charm sent it flying across the room. The clockface shattered with the impact against the wall.
Clara McTavish groaned and sat up, wiping sleep from her eyes. Rover, who had been curled up on the end of the bed, stretched, meowed pitifully, and sauntered up to Clara, rubbing his head against her hand.
"Hungry, are you?"
He meowed again.
"I suppose that means I have to get up." Clara allowed herself a moment of reflection. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Clara McTavish, twenty-nine-year-old loner who talks to her cat. Is this how you cope with trauma? She chuckled bitterly to herself, remembering what James had said about it a month ago. 'I was drowning my sorrows, but my sorrows, they learned how to swim.'
She dragged herself out of bed and into the kitchen, poured out a bowl of dry cat food and some owl pellets into the bottom of Fido's cage, and then prepared her coffee, all in the darkness. Light was too much of a shock to her system at five o'clock in the morning. Clara ate her breakfast in silence as always, took a cold shower to wake herself up, and was the first to the Ministry office for the eighth week running.
Or at least, she thought she was.
"Aren't you here a little early?" a voice asked from behind her.
Clara jumped about a mile into the air at the sudden interruption and looked up from the contract she'd been writing out. "Merlin's beard," she breathed, waiting for her thudding heartbeat to return to normal. "Didn't anyone ever tell you not to sneak up on people like that?"
James Potter just grinned at her. "I'm known to be awfully forgetful of lessons I don't want to learn."
Clara scowled, but she knew it looked insincere. "What are you doing here this early, anyway?"
James pulled up a chair and sat across from her. "I've got a meeting with the Russian Minister of Magic in," he checked his watch, "five minutes."
"Ah," she nodded. "Setting up a location for the World Cup this July?"
"Yes, but it's difficult because we don't know which two teams will be participating yet."
"Makes sense."
"So what are you doing here so early?"
Clara turned her eyes up from her paperwork in time to catch the curious look James was giving her. She shifted under his intense gaze. It was as if he was trying to see through her. Instead of answering directly, Clara shrugged. "Nowhere better to be."
By the look on James' face, he clearly didn't believe her. But that was okay, because he was already late for his meeting.
*
There was something of a collective squeal as James opened the door to the Burrow later on that day- Harry had been away at Muggle grammar school in Ottery St. Catchpole, but afterward had walked back to the Weasley residence to stay until James got home from work. Before James could take so much as a step inside, he was thrown back against the doorframe. Five heat-seeking missiles hit him at intervals, and he couldn't help but laugh at the look on Harry's face as Sierra, Vera, Archer and Ginny careened into him from behind, squishing him up against his father.
"Hi, Dad!" Harry said, trying hard to breathe in the lack of space.
"Hello, Harry," James answered good-naturedly. "Have a good day?"
"Yeah," Harry managed to squeeze out. "Hey, you guys wouldn't mind backing off over there, would you?"
The human pileup disbanded itself, and Molly Weasley appeared. She looked at the children suspiciously. "You haven't been bothering him, have you?" she asked, looking in particular at her young daughter.
The children all shook their heads no with a look of slight fear on their faces, and darted out the door behind James before she could issue a reprimand.
Molly sighed, looking somewhat resigned and deflated now that she didn't have to scare a flock of eight-year-olds into submission. "Won't you stay for tea, dear?"
The Weasleys' kitchen was homey, with a large clock with funny hands and a comfortable, organized mess covering nearly everything. There were marks, beside names and ages, all up the sides of the door frame- James stopped to look and noted them: just about nose-level, one read 'Bill, 16;' and a bit lower, 'Charlie, 16.' Lower still, a lot lower, there were 'Ron, 5' (which was beside a very squiggly line; James thought to himself that Ron had probably been even more restless when he was younger) and 'Percy, 4.' At this time he caught himself and straightened, following Molly further inside the kitchen and, at her direction, sitting somewhat numbly in one of the worn chairs.
Almost before he could feel awkwardly well-off in the somewhat flunkey kitchen, he snatched another glance around it. On the refrigerator he saw numerous magnetized pictures and drawings; one, of a particularly thin and pale wide-eyed girl, chilled him for a moment. In her he saw his daughter as she should have been, hungry chocolate eyes that looked like they wanted to devour the world, somewhat unruly red hair, face spattered with freckles.
Morgana. James swallowed, turning his attention back to Molly.
Mrs. Weasley, on some subconscious level, understood. "Peppermint tea?" she asked gently, pouring a generous cupful and adding a good deal of sugar and cream.
James nodded and took the cup, grateful.
"Hard day?" Molly asked sympathetically.
He sighed. "Not particularly."
Molly regarded him sternly, hands on her hips. At that moment, James thought, she looked very mother hen. "Alright," she said, "Out with it."
James blinked. "What?" he asked, defensive. She can't know…
"You know very well what," she said, and dropped all pretense of being gentle. "You have the look, young Mr. Potter. I have six sons, and I'd be accursed if I didn't know it when I saw it."
I stand corrected, James thought rather dully.
"Tell me the story," Molly commanded gently.
And so he did.
*
The famous nine-year-old, Harry Potter, stood at the door to the kitchen, not really sure what he was doing there. He felt that something was amiss, but couldn't quite place his finger on it. Harry knew, in the way that one knows something without knowing how, that his father was tired.
That didn't mean that he understood.
So, on his quest for understanding, Harry stood there and listened to his father tell the story, a story that was still relatively new to him but one that he had memorized from start to finish. He listened, perhaps too hard, and turned away halfway through, feeling his eyelids prickle with moisture that he couldn't show. His heart was laden down with guilt, and just like every time he heard the story, a heavy weight slammed into his chest, knocking the wind out of him. Harry had always felt that his sister and his mother had died because of him rather than for him.
He turned away, then, when James reached the story's climax, and he fled to the closet he'd scouted out earlier. Ginny would be along to find him soon enough, and he needn't waste more time than he already had. Already he had heard her shout, "Ready or not!" and anyway, it wouldn't do for him to be caught.
*
Go easy on my conscience 'cause its not my fault
I know I've been taught to take the blame
Rest assured my angels will catch my tears
Walk me out of here; I'm in pain
*
A dark-skinned hand pointed accusingly and an angry voice raged in her head, behind her eyes, in her sleep. The man from her dreams was haunting her, wouldn't leave her in peace. He was like a bothersome wart that just wouldn't go away, but kept on getting bigger and uglier until she wanted to hide under her bed like a terrified four-year-old.
There was no sense in that, of course. He was a dream, and everyone knew that dreams couldn't hurt you. Especially not this horrible figment of her subconscious. Besides, with parents like hers who feared next to nothing, shouldn't she show a bit more mettle?
Vera Lupin rolled over in her sleep, reaching out to slap the man and tell him off, but instead whacked her arm off of the bedpost, yelled, "Ouch!" and woke up on the floor with a mightily throbbing head. How's that for mettle, she thought grumpily. Damned subconscious.
In a bed across the room, a boy her exact age stirred. "I told you," he muttered sleepily, "not to eat so much chocolate before bedtime. But do you listen to me? No."
"Be quiet," Vera grumbled, pulling herself back into bed. "If chocolate has anything to do with nightmares, it's a wonder I don't have nightmares every night."
"You do have nightmares every night," Archer grumbled back. "But I'm the one who always wakes up."
"Oh, really. Buy a set of earplugs, or something."
"Good night, Vera."
Vera, who was not done her lecture (in fact, it had barely started) tried not to be put out. "Good night," she said (somewhat grouchily, as she had not tried very hard), and buried her face in her pillow once more.
*
"So are you free then?"
Clara looked up, somewhat startled, and idly wondered if she'd misheard or if James Potter had just asked her out on a date. "For what?"
"For watching Harry tomorrow night when I have a conference in Romania. I'd send him to the Lupins," James said, looking apologetic, "but it's, uh, not a good time." Understatement: The full moon would be hanging low over the British Isle at the time. "And I don't want to overburden Molly- the twins are home from Hogwarts for a week…"
Wow. I have a really overactive imagination. Maybe I should get a life. "Of course," Clara said, trying to cover her shock at herself. "Er- what time do you need me, then?"
"Oh, around five," James answered, "but I'll be late. You can just stay the night, if you'd like. Work in the morning, and everything." He grimaced.
Clara nodded. "I'll be there," and he left, leaving her to ponder why, after that short exchange, she was feeling somewhat disappointed.
*
As my soul heals the shame
I will grow through this pain
Lord I'm doing all I can
To be a better man
- Robbie Williams, Better Man
*