Chapter Twelve

Memory and Loss

Harry and Lily emerged from the cover of the trees and began making their way up the long slop towards the castle, whose light flickered brightly, urging them on. On occasion Lily stumbled, but she righted herself quickly, and insisted she could walk without help. Harry kept shooting nervous glances back at the trees and the lake. He couldn't help the unsettling feeling that they weren't safe here, that they wouldn't be safe until they were inside the castle. They reached the stone steps leading up to the huge front door. Harry chanced one last look behind him, and his blood seemed to slowly freeze inside his veins.

Dementors were pouring from the forest and sweeping up the long verge of grass towards the castle, in front of which Harry and Lily stood. Lily suddenly saw the dementors and screamed.

This broke Harry's paralysis. He wrenched open the massive wooden door and leaped through it, pulling Lily with him. He threw himself against it, and his shoulder screamed with pain, but he grimly pushed it closed. Lily backed out into the middle of the huge hall and Harry ran to stand beside her. His mind was whirling. How did they get here? Did they somehow have the ability to move through time? If so, why didn't they just go back into the past and kill him and Lily? Or were these dementors arriving from the present? His heart hammered in his throat. Lily pressed up close to him and they stood there in the moonlight, eyes locked on the door. Neither could speak. Harry's throat was constricted and he found it hard to breathe. The air tasted sour in his mouth and he wondered if it was just fear driving his imagination, or whether they were so close now that he could taste their smell on the air...

The door creaked and swung inwards. Lily gasped as a skeletal hand curled around it, pushing it open further, and then a dementor glided through, eerily silent, and other dark shapes appeared behind it. They were now trapped. There was nowhere to run in the castle without being cornered. Harry took a step backward, and so did Lily.

Now Harry took out his wand. His hand shook as he pointed it straight at the nearest dementor -more were now surging in through the half-open door- and shouted, "EXPECTO PATRONUM!"

A thin wisp of bluish-silver light flared on the end of Harry's wand, seemed to stretch out feebly, and then vanished. He thought, come on, you have to work now, you have to... "EXPECTO PATRONUM!" Again, that wisp of light flicked out and then faded. The nearest dementor was now about ten feet away. Harry's eyelids felt too heavy- he wanted to curl up and go to sleep. The dementor glided slowly, incessantly forward.

"Harry!" Lily shouted. She seemed to be across the other side of the room... no, miles away... she was in a different time zone. He was frozen to the spot, unable to move. Harry tried to think of his mother and father. He tried to summon a happy memory, but it was no good, all he felt was coldness, icy air all around him and the dementor getting closer. "Expecto... Patro..." He realized he could hear his parents voices ringing in his head.

"Run, Lily!" (Lily?) His confused mind thought in a detached kind of way. (Which Lily? Is that my mother or the Lily who is here with me now?)

"I won't let you hurt him!"

"Lily get away, run!" (Ah. My mother), he thought crazily.

"HARRY!"

The voices were screams now. He clapped his hands over his ears and closed his eyes, and didn't see the dementor leaning over him, enveloping him in its sickening folds of air, its face only inches from his own. Then Harry opened his eyes and looked into the dementor's face, and his mind went blank.

"NO! ILUVIUS MORI, YOU CREEP, GET AWAY FROM HIM! ILUVIUS MORI!!!"

The dementor in front of Harry seemed to pause, shrink back slightly, and then Harry watched, dumbstruck, as its robes turned grey and cracked, and then it simply disintegrated right in front of him, sending up a choking cloud of ash. Harry suddenly found himself able to move, and the sudden return of momentum sent him crashing backwards onto the floor. He landed on his back.

He raised his head just in time to see the rest of the dementors pause in their tracks as if hitting an invisible barrier, then they, too, began to turn grey and cracks appeared in their robes as if they were aging centuries before his eyes, and then as one they exploded, a thick grey cloud of choking ash filling the room. Harry's head hit the floor again and he stared up at the ceiling dazedly, and drifted out of consciousness.

Someone was holding him by the shoulders. He opened his eyes, and with no surprise at all, saw that it was Dumbledore. His long white beard was hanging down on Harry's chest.

"Harry, are you alright!?" Someone said behind him, and Harry recognized Hermione's voice. She sounded hysterical.

"Yeah..." he said dimly. His head felt like someone had loaded it with firecrackers and set them off inside his skull. He sat up slowly. "Lily... where's..."

"She's here," someone else said in a flat voice. It had the quality of someone who had become unhinged.

Harry turned his head. Behind Dumbledore, Ron and Hermione were standing, as was McGonagall, Lupin and Snape. Lily was lying on the floor a few feet away. Finchley was crouched next to her, and his face was very white. In the moonlight he looked like a ghost.

"She's dead."

Harry stared at him, a small frown on his face, and thought he had misheard. "But she..." he stopped. Looking at Lily's face, his heart seemed freeze over, and a deep, gaping chasm opened up in his stomach.

Lily's eyes were closed, and her face was very pale and still. There was a tiny rill of blood running from one corner of her mouth, down the side of her cheek, where below that he saw small drops of it on the floor. Her wand was in her hand, holding it so tightly that her knuckles were white. Harry blinked.

"She cast a spell," he said dully. "She cast a spell and killed the dementors." Looking around, he could still see that the floor was covered in a thick scattering of ash, piles of it in the places where the dementors had stood. He had some of it on his robes, and on his face. He wiped his mouth convulsively.

"We got here as quickly as we could," Dumbledore said softly. "But it was too late to save her."

"STUPID GIRL!" Finchley shouted suddenly, his voice choked with tears, and they all jumped. "I warned her never to use spells so powerful! She promised me she wouldn't!"

"She saved my life," Harry said flatly. He still felt numb and shocked, and cold all over, and now anger and grief was boiling up inside him. "If it wasn't for her I'd be dead!"

"Harry..." McGonagall said, stepping forward as if to console him. Her voice shook. "You need to be calm. I know a lot has happened to you in the last few years..."

"You don't know anything!" He shouted at her recklessly. "You're all probably glad she's dead and that Voldemort can't get hold of her powers and use them against you!"

McGonagall stared at him, white-faced. Aurian was glaring at Harry. Finally it was just too much. Harry couldn't stand them all staring at him, and he ran towards the door.

"Harry, please wait!" Dumbledore called after him, but he ignored it and bolted through the door out into the dark night.

He didn't have any clear idea of where he was going, and he didn't care. As long as it was away from the school, away from the girl lying dead on the floor who looked as if she could have been sleeping if it wasn't for the trickle of blood running down from her mouth, and the scattered piles of ash all around her...

He ran towards the forest. He ran past Hagrid's hut, and down toward the dark woods. The trees enveloped him in their leafy, cathedral-like vaulted passageways, and he ran through them until he felt a sharp pain stabbing into his side, and he leaned over, panting.

Sick grief, anger, and hatred for Voldemort and his dementors boiled through his veins. He thought of all the people he had known that Voldemort had killed. His mother. His father. Sirius. Cedric Diggory. Now Lily.

It was too much. He wanted to shout and scream but he couldn't, not this time. He simply had no energy left. He slid to his knees and began to cry silently, the tears slipping down beneath his cracked lenses and clearing tracks through the ash on his face. He picked up a leaf and crushed it beneath his hand, thinking, Voldemort, Voldemort, Voldemort...with a kind of impotent hatred.

He cried for a long time, and when it was over, he raised his head and looked around blurrily. He realized he had come to the place where Sirius had been attacked by the dementors when Harry was fourteen, and he was now sitting only a few feet away from the place Sirius had been lying. He realized Voldemort had destroyed almost everything he had ever cared about. It had started with his mother and father, and it had ended now, with Lily.

He had not known her very well but in time, they might have been good friends... in time, they might have grown close...

And he suddenly thought of himself walking up to Voldemort, pointing his wand at his face and saying, "avada kedavra, you bastard." And he thought of Voldemort's face twisting in fear and loathing, and then the spell hitting him and his screams splitting the air as he died, and how good it felt to have won, for it to finally be over.

A chill of cold air caressed the back of his neck and he shivered. He realized how useless this dream was. He was powerless to fight Voldemort, how could he have ever thought otherwise? He was just a boy. Voldemort was going to kill him, and kill everyone he loved, and Voldemort was going to win.

The question, Harry's rational mind thought with a kind of maddening sensibility, is what you're going to do about that. Voldemort is going to win, ok. But how do feel about that? Are you going to let him? Are you just gong to sit by and do nothing and let him beat you?

The answer, of course, was no. It didn't hit Harry with the speed of light. It didn't come in a blaze of fanfare, it just flickered through his mind and then left. He had drawn his hands into fists and his nails bit into his flesh, hurting him. He hardly felt it. He was gathering his courage, his will -preparing himself. For what, he didn't know. But he was going to be ready when Voldemort came, and he was going to go down fighting.

He climbed through the portrait hole and into the common room, and looked up to see Hermione and Ron huddled in front of the fire, which was almost burnt out. Hermione's head snapped up and she gasped, and leaped up from her chair.

"Harry!" she gasped, the tracks of tears still shining wetly on her face, though she was no longer crying. "We... we were so worried..." her voice faltered and she fell silent. Ron had also risen out of his chair and was looking at Harry with trepidation.

"Did you... speak to Dumbledore?" Hermione asked timidly.

"No," Harry said dully. "I didn't see anyone. They must've all gone."

"Yes, they... moved her... and cleaned up the mess..." Hermione said awkwardly. "Dumbledore will probably come and see you tomorrow. You won't have to explain anything-" she added quickly, with a nervous look at Harry's face, "-Dumbledore guessed what happened. He probably wants to make sure you're ok, though."

"Right." An awkward silence fell. Finally Harry looked up and said , "I'm going to bed."

Hermione gave him a concerned look ."Oh, al-alright. Um, look... Harry... are you sure you're ok? About Lily?"

Harry could hear his blood pounding in his ears, and wondered if he was going to get angry again, but only a terrible weariness overcame him. "Yeah. I'm ok."

Hermione continued to stare at him doubtfully. The anger surfaced. "Well what do you want me to say? Am I supposed to spill my guts to you every time someone I know dies?" his voice rose.

Hermione winced. "No! I... that's not what I meant... I just... was worried, that's all."

"Yeah. People do care about you Harry, even if you think they don't," Ron said bitterly. Harry looked at him, shocked. Ron stared into the fire. There was a long, uncomfortable silence which seemed to stretch on endlessly. Then Harry made a move towards the stairs.

"I'm going to bed," he said stonily.

"Fine," Ron snapped. "We've only been waiting up all night to see if you're alright. Why should you want to talk to us?"

Harry looked at him wearily. "Ron, I don't want to fight."

"Neither do I!"

"Then stop it, both of you!" Hermione cried. Her eyes had started to overflow and she brushed at them, annoyed. "I hate it when you're like this!" Suddenly she lost control of herself and collapsed back into her chair, sobbing. Harry and Ron both stared at her numbly. Finally Ron took a step towards her.

"Hermione..."

"No! Not until you sort it out!" she cried into her hands. The words came out muffled.

Harry glanced at Ron awkwardly. He thought back to the fight they had had two years ago, and how horrible his life had been without Ron. He didn't want to go back to that again.

"I'm sorry," he said quietly. Ron stood in silence for a few moments.

"So am I."

"Good," Hermione said, wiping her eyes. They looked puffy and raw. Harry felt a rush of sympathy for her, and guilty about the way he had spoken. He walked over to the arm of her chair and sat on it.

"I'm sorry about everything. Everytime I... Every time something like this happens, I blame people. I have to blame someone. I'm sorry if I keep shutting you out. It's just... it's... hard to talk about."

Ron was staring at him, looking crestfallen. Hermione was looking at Harry with rapt and sincere attention. "That's alright, Harry," she said gently. "But don't forget we're you're friends- we're on your side... so don't push us away, ok?"

Harry nodded mutely. Hermione reached up and took his hand in both of hers. Ron looked on sadly. Then he came over and sat on Hermione's other side, and put a hand on her shoulder. He and Harry looked at each other.The three of them sat like that for a long time.

Finally Harry stood up and announced that he was going to bed for the third time that evening, and Ron said he would, too. Hermione told them both goodnight and headed off in the direction of the girl's dormitory.

Ron and Harry climbed into bed silently, their friendship mended, and the silence hanging between them was an understanding one.

The next morning Dumbledore called Harry into his office. The door was open when he arrived, and Finchley was standing near Dumbledore's desk, a sad, but composed look on his face. Dumbledore himself stood up as Harry entered.

"Harry. Professor Finchley would like to... well, I'll let you speak, Aurian," Dumbledore said rather awkwardly, and sat back down.

Finchley looked at Harry. "Harry, I just wanted to say... I'm sorry about those things I said last night. Lily was a good girl. I... I loved her very much." His face tightened and Harry looked away, feeling his grief resurface. He shifted uncomfortably on his feet. "I don't blame Lily for what she did. I just wanted you to know that," Finchley said more firmly, mastering his emotions. He continued to look at Harry. "And I wanted to thank you. For being such a good friend to her. She lost a lot of friends at her old school. I was afraid she would try to distance herself, but..." he gave a brief, sad smile. "You, Hermione and Ron helped her overcome that. Thank you."

There was a long pause. Realizing Finchley was finished, Harry looked up again.

"Are you going to keep teaching here?"

Finchley blinked, surprised by the question, and gave Harry another smile. "If Dumbledore will have me, of course."

Dumbledore nodded needlessly, and there was an unspoken friendship in the air between them.

"I'm sorry I couldn't save Lily." Harry said suddenly. Finchley's face fell as if he had expected this, and he favoured Harry with a look of deep sincerity.

"Don't you dare blame yourself for this, Harry," he said gently. Harry stared intensely at his shoes and was silent.

After a minute Dumbledore leaned forward and said, "Harry, I want you to understand. There are many things we don't know about last night. How the dementors got into Hogwarts, for instance. How they found out where Lily was, and so quickly..." he paused, glancing concernedly at Finchley. "But we will take every measure to ensure that this does not happen again." He leaned back. "You have shown immense courage, many times while at this school, and you did a brave and valiant thing last night. No-one here thinks otherwise. No-one thinks ill of you. Do you understand that?"

Harry looked at Dumbledore and nodded. His heart felt too heavy.

"Good." His face softened. "Now, if there is nothing you wish to ask me, you may go back to your friends. I'm sure they're waiting for you."

Harry nodded, glanced once more at Finchley, and then hurried out the door and down the spiral staircase, heading for the Great Hall where he knew Ron and Hermione were waiting for him. On the way he happened to pass the corridor where he had first seen Lily. Sunlight was again streaming through it, falling into patterns on the polished floor. He stopped and stared longingly up the hallway at the window. A stream of sunlight winked off one of the panes, and Harry imagined he could almost see Lily's blonde hair glowing in the morning light. Tears burned in his eyes but he swallowed and wiped them quickly, aware that someone might come along and see him. With a last glance at the window he hurried around the corner and down the Grand Staircase, eager to see his friends again, and to leave that ghostly image far behind.