14. Choosing my Confessions

A crystal flutter of snowflakes against the window woke Jade on Christmas morning. She flexed her arm, numbed by the weight of James's sleeping head, and grimaced as blood prickled back into her fingers. 'You are sleeping in your cot tonight, Mister,' she declared resolutely as she did every morning. James regarded her with drowsy grey eyes. She held him close, breathing in his milky baby-powder scent.

Those stormy eyes innocently blinking at her were searingly familiar. Jade remembered waking up last Christmas morning, shivering in wonder at the memory of Sirius's touch lingering on her skin and his metal eyes meeting hers in a glance of understanding. She gave her baby a wistful, lop-sided smile. It had been so unlike her to be impulsive about an intimate relationship...to be impulsive about anything, she admitted wryly to herself. And yet...the connection that drew her to Sirius was so profound that what happened that dark afternoon seemed compelled by inevitability. Not love. Not then. Two damaged, haunted souls sought each other in pursuit of mutual oblivion. But what they'd discovered in the sanctuary of their hours together...that was love. And Jade would have sold her soul for one more second.

James tugged insistently at her breast, his tiny hand patting her skin in a determined, rhythmic pulse. As warmth and sustenance ebbed between them, Jade thought how much her child resembled his father in lust for life – that restless energy that had Sirius pacing the house like a caged tiger. Misery constricted Jade's throat at the injustice of that life being obliterated as arbitrarily and finally as a candle snuffed out in the wind. A voice from long, long ago crooned, 'ask your daddy when he's coming home...' James's gentle suckling and his soothed murmurs gradually quietened Jade's anger and dulled her pain. She wondered how it was possible to feel lonely and complete at the same time...A part of Sirius was with her always, and a part of her was missing for eternity. She sat motionless for a long time after James had completed his feed and his dark lashes drooped in slumber, holding him so that she felt his baby heartbeat against her own, staring at the snowflakes whispering against the window pane.

A hesitant tap at the door startled Jade from her musings. With a practised movement she flicked her sweatshirt – which had belonged to Sirius until she appropriated it, and was so worn that the black had faded into grey – swiftly into place. 'Come in.'

Harry shifted awkwardly from one scuffed-sneakered foot to the other. 'I...um...' He looked as though he had neither slept nor brushed his hair since the previous evening. 'I just wanted to say sorry if I've been selfish or anything...I know you miss him too...'

Jade blinked, taken aback. Ginny's remark about Remus the night before must have struck him painfully. She bit down on the tiny seed of jealous knowledge she had learned to live with; that for Sirius Harry had always come first. 'Harry, you don't have to feel sorry for anything.' She took a deep breath. 'To be honest, I thought you'd resent me...'

He shrugged slightly, conceding that the thought had crossed his mind. 'But you made him happy for a while...'

Jade's heart ached for Harry and she thought if she tried to speak she'd only cry. She knew how hard it was for him to stand there and say that. Wordlessly she smiled into his sad green eyes, and held his godson towards him. It was so much easier to hug and be comforted by a baby.

Harry sat at the foot of the bed, where he had sat and wept last summer, and took James in his arms. He held his godson awkwardly, but Jade saw some of the tension drop from his taught shoulders. James stirred, and his little fingers fixed themselves around Harry's thumb. His stormy eyes flickered open. James seemed to look at Harry, his tiny hand still clinging, and then...a dimple danced in his cheek and...he smiled. Unconsciously, Harry smiled back.

Jade couldn't contain the gleeful squeak that escaped her. 'He's never smiled before!'

Harry looked at her in wonder. 'Seriously? His first smile...?'

'First ever. For you,' Jade grinned with exultation in the brilliance of her child, and at the expression of bewildered pride in Harry's face. '...Sweet child of mine...'

'I remember the first time I saw Sirius smile,' Harry reflected, still mesmerised by those innocent smoky eyes. 'When we were coming back from the Shrieking Shack that night...and he asked me to go and live with him, before he escaped...' he fell silent, absently stroking the tiny fingers curled around his thumb.

'Sirius talked about you all the time, he was so proud of you. He couldn't stop saying how much you reminded him of your father...' Jade hugged herself for warmth, feeling the familiar soft-worn cotton against her skin. She hesitated, wondering if she could say what she needed to without it sounding like a lecture, or a trite platitude... 'You know he cared about you more than anything? He'd want you to be happy...to live your life...'

'I know,' said Harry, with rare conviction.

James regarded him solemnly, before stunning his mother and his godfather with that miraculous grin. And then he stubbornly refused to demonstrate his newly-acquired charm for the rest of the day, despite Molly's prattling, Ginny's tickling, Fred and George's exuberant spinning about the kitchen, and Arthur's dangling of Christmas ornaments and random Muggle playthings.

Jade longed for James to lighten the gloom with that smile when she found Molly weeping over a complete family photograph. And she wished he would oblige them with a diversion when Hermione returned that evening from Christmas lunch with her parents, in a foul temper. Burdened with a large cardboard box, she stamped her feet in the hallway, and shook her hair and coat so that the clinging snowflakes skittered all over the floor, before marching down to the kitchen where she dumped the box unceremoniously on the table.

'What's that?' asked Ron curiously.

'A CD player,' Hermione replied tersely.

'A what?' Ron examined the box with a puzzled expression.

'Muggles play CD's on them,' Harry explained helpfully.

Ron closed his eyes in exasperation. 'And those would be...'

'Music, Ron,' Hermione snapped in a tone of irritation.

He flinched. 'I was just asking...'

'They're Muggle machines that Muggles use to listen to Muggle music.' Hermione sighed and turned her back on them, staring at the snowflakes drifting across the icy sky.

'Fascinating!' exclaimed Arthur, and Jade shot him a silencing glare.

'Don't you get it?' Hermione asked gloomily. 'My parents think I shouldn't be involved in the Wizarding World because of everything they're hearing about Vol- You-Know-Who...they're trying to turn me back into a Muggle. They bought me this thing, and went round asking all their friends what CD's Muggle teenagers listen to. They want me to get a mobile phone so they can call me at school. I tried to explain that Muggle technology doesn't work at Hogwarts, and they got all upset...They have prospectuses from Muggle universities lying all over the house, dropping hints about how I'm wasting my potential...being a witch.'

'Satan's child...unnatural evil under our roof... possessed by demons ...' Jade vividly recalled the expression of fear and abhorrence in her mother's eyes the day her letter arrived from Hogwarts... 'They'll never understand,' she said slowly and bitterly.

'Sounds like a job for you, Dad,' George joked, apparently trying to lighten the mood. 'Clearly a Misuse of Muggle Artefacts, trying to seduce Hermione with them.'

'It's not funny,' Hermione snapped, her voice choked with tears, and she dashed out into the courtyard.

Ron hesitated, glancing at Harry who gave him a brief, encouraging nod. He took a deep breath and followed Hermione outside.

Molly gave George a reproachful look. 'Perhaps we should send the Grangers a letter...explain things properly,' she suggested. Arthur nodded, and muttered something about Muggle post offices as they went in search of parchment.

Jade, Harry, Ginny, Fred and George looked at one another in awkward silence. 'I was just trying to cheer her up, honest...' George mumbled guiltily.

'It's okay,' Jade consoled. 'She needs to know she's got friends right now.'

Ginny looked at Jade and nodded. 'Yeah, she does.'

Through the window Jade could see Hermione and Ron talking earnestly in the darkening courtyard, seemingly oblivious to the snowflakes clustering their hair. Hermione wiped her eyes, and Ron gave her a tentative one-armed hug and squeezed her hand before they returned to the warmth of the kitchen, their damp clothes steaming slightly in front of the fire.

'Sorry, Hermione, I didn't mean to...' George apologised.

Hermione gave a watery smile. 'That's okay...we're stuck with it now, so maybe we should see if it's any good...'

Fred and George needed no further invitation to tear through the packaging, pausing only to marvel at the chunks of polythene and their possible uses in Weasleys' Wizarding Wheezes. 'Wow, it looks like one of those alien spaceship things!' exclaimed George studying the rounded contours of the appliance.

'Doesn't it need electricity to work?' asked Jade, wondering if she was being obtuse.

'A minor technicality,' Fred declared, flicking his wand at the machine. A red light started blinking and its lid popped open.

George was examining the selection of CD's tucked into the box. 'Think of the potential...' he mused, grinning wickedly. 'Hey! Fred! Look at this!' He was laughing so hard he could barely read the title. 'Right Said Fred'.

'Gimme that!' demanded Fred, snatching the box, and scanning the list of tracks. 'Too Sexy...we have it in writing, girls!' He winked at Hermione.

'Sorry to disillusion you,' Ginny smirked. 'But my sources tell me nobody listens to them any more.'

Fred looked crestfallen. 'Still...'

'Keep it,' Hermione said, nodding at the CD, which Fred was still examining intently. 'Have fun. I'm going to...read for a bit.' She wandered off, and once again Ron looked to Harry for reassurance, before wandering after her. Fred and George Disapparated with loud cracks, eager to barricade themselves in their room with their new acquisition. Harry sighed and followed them mundanely via the stairs, mumbling something about Buckbeak's Christmas dinner.

Jade turned her attention back to James, who was overtired and fretful. She paced the kitchen with him held against her shoulder, hoping that the rhythm would lull him to sleep.

'Maybe music would help,' suggested Ginny. She picked a random CD from the pile and inserted it into the machine. 'A girl in my dorm has one of these,' she explained in response to Jade's puzzled look.

Jade reflected that Hermione's parents must have some redeeming qualities, as she felt James relax almost instantly to the melody, and within minutes Ginny reported that his eyes were closed. She laid him gently in his crib and flopped into an arm chair.

Ginny sat in silence, curled into her chair, listening to the lyrics that filled the room with liquid emotion.

Life is bigger
It's bigger than you
And you are not me
The lengths that I will go to
The distance in your eyes
Oh no I've said too much
I set it up

'I hate this song,' she said suddenly, her voice harsh.

Jade regarded Ginny for a moment, realising that this reflected a plea to confide rather than to change the record. She remembered Sirius sitting in this kitchen, a long time ago, fixing her with his intense grey eyes and dark smile, saying 'tell me...' She held Ginny's gaze. 'Why?'

The direct question seemed to hold an inexorable compulsion. 'Everyone talks about everyone else round here,' Ginny observed dully, frowning at the floor and absently twisting her fingers together. 'So I suppose you've heard about what...happened in my first year, with the Chamber of Secrets, and the diary...?'

Jade nodded, looking intently at Ginny. Her downcast eyes were shadowed with weary grey smudges. 'Dumbledore brought it up in an Order meeting, when they thought Harry was being...possessed too. Your parents did not seem impressed that he mentioned it.'

Ginny sighed. 'They think if they never talk about it they can make it so it never happened. That I'll be their innocent baby girl again. Everyone else forgot about it, even Harry...after he saved my life, and he thought You-Know-Who was possessing him too. He FORGOT!' Her voice reached a slightly manic note, as she stood up sharply and paced back and forth across the dark tiled floor.

'I wouldn't mind if people forgot what they knew about me,' Jade said ruefully. 'I hate the way they look at me as if I might suddenly fall apart or jump out of the window or start slashing my wrists if something goes wrong.'

Ginny stood still and looked at her sympathetically. 'I know...I felt so bad that everyone had to find out like that. I'll kill Snape one day,' she snapped, clenching her hands in white-knuckled fists. 'But...maybe I don't understand properly, but that's over for you now. You know you'd never do it again... This is never going to be over, because I can't stop thinking about what I could have done...those people could have died instead of being petrified, and Harry could have died, and it would have been my fault...and I dream that he's still in my head and it's all happening again...' Her voice trailed to a whisper, and she sank back into her chair, staring trancelike into the fire.


That's me in the corner
That's me in the spotlight
Losing my religion
Trying to keep up with you
And I don't know if I can do it
Oh no I've said too much
I haven't said enough
I thought that I heard you laughing
I thought that I heard you sing
I think I thought I saw you try

Ginny's brown eyes reflected devouring flames as she continued, her voice leaden with hopeless regret. 'And that's why I don't think I'll ever be with Harry...because I can never stop feeling filthy and violated and...ashamed. He's Harry Potter the Boy Who Lived, and I'm the girl who almost destroyed everything. Riddle didn't just make me do things like a puppet. I knew...I realised that he was the evil inside me, possessing me...and I tried to tear him out. I threw his diary away in the bathroom.' Jade sat completely still, absorbed in the pain and fear lacing each word of Ginny's story.

Ginny paused, inclining her head so that red hair curtained her face. She took a shaky breath. 'Then I found out that Harry had somehow ended up with the diary and I panicked. I'd told Riddle every dream I ever had about Harry; that my worst fear was that he'd never notice me and I would be alone forever because I could never love anyone else. Riddle knew every intimate detail. I was out of control. I would rather have been expelled than have Harry read that...and have him find out that I'd strangled the roosters and written on the walls in blood...so I tore their dorm apart until I got my book back. And then...'


Every whisper
Of every waking hour I'm
Choosing my confessions
Trying to keep an eye on you
Like a hurt lost and blinded fool
Oh no I've said too much
I set it up

Jade recalled the way Sirius had spoken about Azkaban, each word poisonous on his tongue, as Ginny continued slowly. '...And then, I knew I needed to get rid of the diary, to tell someone that Riddle was consuming me, destroying me, that it was as if he was raping my mind and I had no power to stop him... But I couldn't, because... because I needed him. He was the closest friend I had, the only person I could talk to...only he understood me. I was alienated from everyone around me, and I clung to him because I had no one else. I felt so guilty and used, I was afraid of talking to anybody, in case they found out. The more he made me think about everything that haunted me, the more I depended on him. I had to keep the diary to protect Riddle...I loved him more than I hated him...I was obsessed with writing to him, addicted to his letters. How sick is that?' Ginny demanded in a nauseated tone.


Consider this
The hint of the century
Consider this
The slip that brought me
To my knees failed
What if all these fantasies
Come flailing around
Now I've said too much

'I woke up lying on the floor in the Chamber of Secrets. Harry had saved my life, he was covered in blood and I couldn't stop crying. Then Dumbledore told Mum and Dad that Voldemort had enchanted me, and Harry showed them the diary...and I thought I deserved to die. I was in hell. I lay on my bed listening to this song over and over again. And I believed Harry would hate me forever because of what I did, because of the evil inside me. Riddle didn't just possess me...I let him, I gave him my soul.' Ginny's voiced faltered and she bit her lip hard, a crimson gash in her pale face.

A log in the fire crumbled into smouldering coals, and the wind lashed icy snowflakes against the window.

Jade looked at Ginny intently, taking in the sick pain written across her face, the chillingly familiar depth of disturbance in the dark eyes that met hers for an instant. 'Ginny, you have to understand Riddle violated you. It's just like you said...he invaded your mind, you were the victim. Just as a rapist gets gratification from the victim's terror, your fears gave him strength, so he made you dwell on those thoughts in order to extract that fear from you. He manipulated you and poisoned your mind. He made you believe you needed him. You can't blame yourself for being possessed. The fact that you even came close to overcoming it shows how strong you are.' But even as Jade spoke the words she knew it was impossible to explain away that guilt, that intimate mental torture, just as her own livid scars would never stop making her vulnerable.

'You know Harry experienced the same thing...' Jade continued thoughtfully, watching Ginny tear into her fingernails. 'Voldemort possessed him too, and spoke through him. He knows – a little – how it feels...and he's going to be haunted by Sirius dying, forever...You're probably the only one that can understand what he's going through. You need each other...'

'But he forgot,' Ginny said simply, pulling at the frayed edge of her jeans. 'I thought he could talk to me about being possessed, that maybe I could help him...but he forgot. And I try to be there for him, but he never tells me how he feels...he never talks to me.' She paused, winding a strand of long red hair around her finger. 'And then I go and put my foot in it...like last night.'

'That needed to be said,' Jade said quietly. 'Nobody ever thinks about what Remus is going through, what losing Sirius meant to him....'

'Yeah...but...I never know if Harry wants me around, if he wants to talk about stuff...' Crookshanks padded across the room and leapt lightly onto Ginny's chair, curling up in her lap and purring through the silence.

Jade sighed. 'You have to remember... firstly, he's a boy. They don't tend to be good at talking in general – look how Ron is around Hermione. Secondly, he was basically alone for ten years of his life. He's still learning about functional relationships...And so are you...do you ever tell him how you feel? Do you think you could trust another person enough to tell them your darkest thoughts and fears this time?' She paused, looking intently into Ginny's bright brown eyes. 'Tell me again why you broke up with Dean?'

Ginny smiled sadly. 'I miss him, you know. Not because I was in love with him, but when I was with him I felt strong and normal and not...tainted.'

Jade looked into Ginny's brown eyes with a twisted smile. 'And you broke up with him because...?'

'Because you never know when you're going to run out of chances to be with the person you love,' Ginny said eventually, looking at James sleeping in his crib.

Jade sat there for a long time after Ginny had gone to bed, staring into the dying embers of the fire and thinking.

I thought that I heard you laughing
I thought that I heard you sing
I think I thought I saw you try
But that was just a dream
That was just a dream

She had almost fallen asleep when she heard the front door creak open and soft footsteps on the stairs. By the faint light of the coals glowing in the fireplace, Jade saw Remus standing in the doorway. His shadowed face appeared exhausted, and yet the deadened, shuttered expression in his eyes and been replaced by an aspect of peace. He smiled wearily, and slumped into a chair. Jade placed another log on the fire and poked the coals in a shower of sparks. The crackling flames woke James from his slumber. He regarded the new arrival curiously, firelight flickering in his smoky eyes.

'Sorry, I didn't mean to wake either of you,' Remus apologised. 'I was just going to make some tea...would you like some?'

'I'll get it,' Jade volunteered, scooping James from his crib. 'Will you take him for a bit?' Remus nodded, and Jade lowered her sleepy baby into his arms. As she leaned towards Remus, an earthy scent drifted from him...reminding Jade of a dimly green-lit forest clearing and a sacred cairn, a place where one could confess the burdens of one's heart and make one's peace with the shades.

James settled into Remus's embrace, blinked his dark-lashed stormy eyes, and smiled.

Lyrics quoted are of course Losing my Religion by REM (canon: released in 1991 on the album Out of Time)