Chapter Eighteen: Family Meeting

Anna had, at last, accepted intellectually that Remus had died, but she couldn't stop herself from thinking, Remus would have loved this.

And he would have. For to the funeral of one of the loneliest men that had ever walked the Earth came a crowd of people, several of whom Remus would have never thought would attend his funeral. Students of his from years long past appeared, and told whispered stories of how Professor Lupin had made sure that they understood, and enjoyed his subject.

Former pupils of Anna's came as well, to give their condolences; none of them were real Seers, but some with a Gift just strong enough to detect. The tales they told her of their lives after Hogwarts made her smile, and the ache in her heart subsided a little.

It was only when she gathered her skirts up to stand did she remember with sudden and vivid clarity that her husband was gone, and that she was in mourning. The black was supposed to be a reminder to everyone around her of her pain, but Anna found it a harsh reminder of what she was trying to avoid.

A strong hand clasped her shoulder. "Anna, can I get you something?"

She turned and looked up into the kind green eyes of Harry Potter -- the green eyes he'd inherited from his mother, who had once been her dearest friend.

A shudder ran up and through her back like quicksilver. The pain in that moment was so that she didn't think she could survive it.

Remus's kind voice, one that had never failed to calm her in even the direst of situations, echoed to the front of her mind from some distant memory. "Neither of us thought we would survive James and Lily's death, Anna my love. If we both got through that sane, we can handle anything."

She felt like screaming, like stamping her foot in a childish protest against a circumstance over which she held no control. It wasn't fair that he was the one to leave her again. Just once, she wanted to be the one to walk away.

"No, Harry." She closed her eyes against the fury and swallowed. "I… no one can get me what I want now."

Harry's mouth closed to a firm line, and he ran soothing fingers through her hair. "Just a while longer and everyone will leave, Godmother."

Anna was startled by his tone of voice. It was somehow formal and caring at the same time. "Oh, Harry," she whispered. The pain grew more acute, and she finally allowed herself to cry, small drops of liquid that tracked their way silently down her cheeks.

With the innate grace of a Quidditch player, Harry took her gently against him and rocked her back and forth. Around them, people politely ignored the scene. There was nothing, after all, they could do about a widow's sorrow.

Nearly silent footsteps approached them, and Anna looked up to see Orion, their son… a perfect blending of both of his parents' worst and best characteristics. Tears were in his eyes too, but they would not escape here, Anna knew.

Angrily, she wiped the moisture from her eyes and tried to sound cheerful. "Hello."

"Mother," Orion said quietly, and caressed her cheek, though she was still enfolded in the arms of her godchild.

She bent her head to accept the affection, but then took a step away from both the males and found herself staring face to face with a plain and solemn-faced child.

Well, plain, if one didn't have the Gift. She practically glowed with energy and love and… something else.

"May I ask your name?" Even though the circumstances were horrible, Anna could never bring herself to be less than kind to a child.

"Delia Williams, Professor," the girl said, and extended her hand.

There was definitely something different about this one. There was a maturity here, an understanding of adult concepts that no child should have at the age of eleven. She couldn't be any older than eleven.

Anna didn't understand why the girl hesitated, she just knew that she did. For goodness' sake, it's only a child!

Steeling her resolve, she took the child's hand, and Saw.

Flames, reaching, tearing up… Pain.

Swirling colors, reds and oranges.

A laugh from far away, high, with ever changing pitch.

Bodies. Bodies of friends, of loved ones.

The god of war on his chariot, sweeping down and felling the mightiest of trees.

A light, bright and direct of beam. Building, building, building, until it blinded.

A Healer and a Seer, dead.

With a gasp, Anna pulled away. She hadn't had a vision of that power and length in a very long time. Comprehension dawned on her. This was no mere child.

"We've got to talk, Orion Albus," she said sternly, staring him down, her eyes holding his to hers.

"Yes, Mother," Orion said, in a tone that not many had heard him use before. Total and absolute respect.

Harry took a step forward. "What's going on here?"

Anna took a deep breath. "I think we need to call a family meeting."

Harry simply nodded. "I'll let everyone know. The crowd's beginning to taper off, anyway. The sooner the better?"

"Yes," Anna said. "Let's go get you a glass of lemonade and a biscuit," she finally said to Delia. "I think I might need one, as well."

**

The meeting was held in the Lupin family room. A large fire crackled in the fireplace, and the walls were painted a soothing shade of sage green.

That was, in fact, probably the only thing soothing about it at the moment.

Harry and Ginny were seated at one end of the room, their children who had been deemed too young sent off to one of the still existing playrooms. As usual, they held hands, a unit in every sense of the word. Next to them sat Ron and Hermione, comfortable with each other and still very much in love. Ron had his arm draped over Hermione's shoulders, and every now and again he would play affectionately with her hair.

Anna, Orion and Delia sat together across from the other four, Anna and Orion careful not to look at each other, Delia careful to always look at her hands.

Sirius and Raina completed the triangle, sitting together, Sirius in the seat of a large comfy armchair that had been one of Remus's favorites, with Raina seated on the arm.

A long, uncomfortable silence had stretched out to minutes in length, and finally, Sirius could take it no longer.

"Well, we're here, aren't we?" he demanded, quite suddenly. "We'd best find out what's going on." A cough took his breath from him, just as suddenly as he had spoken, and Raina laid a comforting hand over his. "Otherwise," he finished, "there's no way we can make a decision about what to do, eh?"

Delia started to get up, but Orion stopped her and shook his head. "Not yet," he mouthed to her.

"Well?" Sirius asked.

"It is difficult to get my thoughts in order, brother," Anna said softly, and absentmindedly lifted the fringe off her face. "There're so many things… and so little that I understand."

"Why don't you start with what you do know," Raina said, her military training lending authority to her voice, "and then move on to the things of which you are not certain?"

"Perhaps Orion ought to go first. He knows more than I about our current situation," Anna said, a little bitterly.

"Mother," Orion rebuked her gently, "at the time this started, your primary concern was Father. I could hardly come to you with some vague Vision that hadn't even really started to take any type of shape yet."

"Nevertheless," Anna said, and shook her head, "you should have told someone."

"It's a little late now for 'should haves', Godmother," Harry commented, and as usual, every eye in the room was drawn to him. "We'll have to press forward with what we've got."

"Yes, of course," Anna muttered, obviously still not satisfied.

"Carry on, Orion. Leave nothing out," Harry commanded, and leaned back a little further, crossing his ankle over his opposite knee. "I have a feeling this is going to be very important."

"It began earlier this year, when Father announced that he was going to retire. That night, I had a terrifying dream, one that I didn't think could possibly be a Vision. It was too imprecise, too vague."

Ginny raised an eyebrow. "That is usually the form of Visions, Orion."

Orion shook his head in gentle disagreement. "There was nothing to gather from this – only a feeling of impending doom, a kind of dread that I had never experienced before. However, the next night, the dream did not return. I dismissed it as nothing. That was my first mistake.

"Several weeks later, I had another dream. Delia was in the hospital wing, and I Saw then, when I stepped through the door to see one of my other pupils, a green snake slithering around her bed, hissing and cackling to itself. I went on guard, looking for other Signs that something was amiss at Hogwarts.

"To my dismay, I found them. There was something not quite right about the way students returning from the hospital wing felt about the experience. Normally students complain about the medicine they had to take, or brag about the size of their individual wounds. More and more, they ceased to do so, returning quiet and focused inwards.

"That led me to believe that there something wrong at the hospital wing, but I had nothing I could set in stone.

"A couple of nights after I Saw the snake, I had another dream. In this dream, there was a larger snake than the one I had seen before, with a very female aura. The two had a conversation, and I gathered that the female was the male's mother. After a short time, the male devoured his mother, and grew larger.

"Then, suddenly, my Vision shifted. I saw a house-elf, and one of the students I had seen in the hospital wing, a young girl I had come to know as Delia Williams. The house-elf was quite still, and the girl was obviously very distressed. She picked up the elf, and in her desperation, whispered something.

"A white light blinded my sight for a minute, and then I saw the house-elf's chest rise and fall. I could only reach one conclusion. Delia Williams was a Healer.

"Before I could force myself to wake up, my Vision shifted one last time. I saw before me the site of a great battle. The snake had grown, fat and grotesque in its appearance. A group of warriors faced it, with wands and swords alike.

"Then I heard one man say, 'Be gone, snake! You have done enough damage in the world of Muggles and of wizards!'

"But the snake heeded not his words, and instead began to laugh, and said to the man, 'When one doesn't belong in either of the worlds, one cares little about the mere damage one causes.'

"And I felt, then, the ripping of the magical binding that holds the world together. It was sliced in two like a piece of paper in the hands of an errant student.

"Then, rising from the smoke and debris, a figure of a girl rose up. With her hands, she patched together the strands.

"A great light took my sight, once again, and I could see naught of the world of Vision or the world of the Real for a long time."

Orion took a deep breath. "The man confronting the snake was Sirius."

There was a pause in the room, where the air felt heavy, as though it could be weighed on scales.

"The snake was Ares Lestrange."

Harry cursed, rose, and ran his hands through his already unruly hair.

Ginny was the first to speak, her hand laid protectively over her stomach. "He's a Squib. Why couldn't the people in the Vision just kill him?"

"I don't know," Orion admitted warily.

"He may be a Squib," Ron spoke up, "but he's a bloody dangerous one. Last I'd heard, we'd had him under control."

Raina shook her head. "A few months is a long time to be gone, Weasley.  We lost track of him soon after you left."

"Well, this certainly complicates things," Sirius muttered in between quiet coughs. 

"No doubt," Anna agreed, and crossed the room to look at a picture on the mantelpiece of Remus and her on a holiday they'd taken before Orion's birth.

"He has the potential to become more dangerous than Lord Voldemort," Harry said, in a very reasonable tone.

Orion fixed his eyes on the man he'd counted as an uncle all of his short life. "Why do you say that?"

Harry sat back down next to Ginny and held out one of his long, callused hands. "One" -- he began to use his fingers to count -- "he seems to have no intentions of letting the wizarding population know that he exists at this point. For Voldemort, the glory was half of the reason to do what he'd been doing. Two, like Voldemort, he's been discriminated against all of his life. That can leave you with a bad taste in your mouth, to say the least. Ares is different in that he doesn't just want to get revenge and rule, he wants to destroy. Completely and utterly. Ron and I saw those tendencies the night we went after him."

"He's quite mad," Ron agreed, "and quite intelligent. The combination of the two makes him very perilous to deal with."

Ginny moved her gaze to Delia. "Which brings us to why you're here this evening, young lady," she said, not unkindly.

Unknowingly, under Ginny's gaze, Delia flinched a little. There was so much knowledge in those brown eyes, knowledge of things that Delia thought only she knew.

"I'm a Healer," she said simply.

"It's not quite the same thing as the ones employed at St. Mungo's, I would imagine," Hermione said, annoyed to find something that she didn't know hardly anything about.

"No, it's nothing like that," Delia agreed.

"It's more complicated than that," Orion started, but Delia cut him off with a glance.

"I can't think," she whispered to him in a slight panic. "I've got to… do something!"

"Ask," Orion reiterated. "He's very awake, very aware. It would be impolite to Heal him without permission.

With a final desperate whimper, she ran across the room and laid her hands on Sirius's arm. "Please, sir, you're driving me to distraction. Can I Heal you? What I did earlier was just a temporary relief."

Sirius opened his eyes and looked down at the little girl, short and pretty in the way all little girls are. She was so willing to help him.

"All right," he agreed.

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