15. Recessional

A/N: I promised myself no more songfic, but after going to so much effort to incorporate a CD player into the story, I couldn't resist just a few more lines, taken from Desperado by The Eagles (1973, re-released 1994).

Harry's feet squelched in the melting snow as he paced the tiny courtyard of 12 Grimmauld Place. He tramped harder and tugged his Gryffindor scarf up around his ears in an attempt to drown out the strains of music echoing from the kitchen. He glared at a crow squawking in the bare branches of a tree silhouetted starkly against the dismal grey sky. Harry was reaching the conclusion that all Muggle musicians – or those Hermione's parents thought Muggle teenagers listened to anyway – ought to be hexed for being spectacularly depressing.

Damn, he could still hear it.

And freedom, oh freedom well, that's just some people talkin'

Your prison is walking through this world all alone
Don't your feet get cold in the winter time?
The sky won't snow and the sun won't shine
It's hard to tell the night time from the day
You're losin' all your highs and lows
Ain't it funny how the feeling goes away?

He heard the scrape of a match being struck, and turned to see Lupin sitting on the steps, his cigarette trailing smoke into the misty air. Harry felt strangely cornered. Since Ginny's painfully truthful observation 'he's the only one that lost him twice', Harry had felt that he should say something to Lupin to tell him that he understood, yet 'sorry' seemed far too little, far too late.

Lupin smiled wistfully. 'This takes me back...your mother had this record.' He took a long drag and stared out at the bleak grey sky, lost in memory for a moment. Then he exhaled and snapped back to the present. 'Sorry, Harry, I shouldn't burden you with my ramblings.'

Harry shook his head. 'You can talk about them if you want to...and Sirius. I...' he trailed off, feeling the heavy blanket of guilt suffocating his throat.

Lupin was looking at him with that intent expression that said he knew there was something on one's mind.

Taking a deep breath, Harry started again. 'I know it was just as hard for you, losing him. I should've thought of that before.' He shrugged. The word was so small and seemed so insignificant, but it was all he had. 'Sorry.'

Lupin said nothing for a while. Icy slush had seeped into Harry's worn trainers, and his feet were freezing. He sat down on the bottom step and drew his feet up to the dry concrete, hugging his knees. Lupin rested his hand on Harry's shoulder for a moment as he passed over his cigarette in a gesture of solidarity that was all he had. As Harry watched the smoke drift away on the chill breeze, he heard Lupin say. 'That's the worst thing about grief, it makes us feel completely alone, even when we're not.'

Harry nodded despondently. 'I never thought about it, until Ginny said...' He twisted round as Lupin gave an unexpected chuckle. 'What?'

'Funny how some people can always make you see things in a different way,' Lupin observed meaningfully.

Harry hoped his cheeks were not as red as they felt. He fiddled with his knotty shoelace and then took another drag before passing the cigarette back to Remus and meeting his glance.

'So, have you had any discussions with a certain young woman?'

Harry shook his head. 'There's no way she still likes me. Hermione said she got over that ages ago. Although nobody knows why she broke up with Dean...' he reflected, slightly hopeful. 'And then she told me off after you...left the other day. She seemed really angry with me.' Harry wasn't quite certain whether Ginny really had come to his room in the middle of the night, or whether that had been another bizarre dream.

Frowning thoughtfully, Lupin stubbed out his cigarette before he said in a tone that sounded strangely resentful. 'Maybe you'll understand one day what it means to find someone who loves you enough to tell you the truth.'

Only half-comprehending, Harry nodded. Another thing had been plaguing him. 'But even if she did...like...me...' he hesitated, before the fear burst out of his throat. 'Look what happened to my parents! To Sirius. What if everybody I care about is going to get killed?'

He could see that loss reflected in Lupin's shadowed eyes as he said, 'there was a war, Harry, and there's going to be another one. People will die, yes. But not loving them isn't going to stop that happening.'

Harry remembered the words that had penetrated his raw grief in Dumbledore's office, as the sun rose on the first day Sirius was dead '...the fact that you can feel pain like this is your greatest strength.' He hadn't understood it then, and he wasn't sure he understood it now. He thought he wouldn't mind if his feelings faded away, that he could do without those rare moments when he felt he could conjure a patronus in a heartbeat, if it meant he no longer had to descend to the lows that threatened to drown him.

Lupin stared unseeingly at the steel sky that refused to snow. He turned to face Harry, and there was an unfathomable intensity in his tired eyes as he said, 'trust me, Harry, if you don't take the chance to tell her how you feel you could regret it forever.'

Harry nodded slowly. The crow gave a last squawk and flapped away into the cold grey distance. That strange silence of gathering snowfall descended, and a final refrain echoed through the courtyard.

You better let somebody love you, before it's too late...

It was all very well, Harry realised, to make a decision to take your heart in your hands in a manner that made asking a girl to the Yule Ball look like asking your best friend what time it was, but finding the chance to do so was another matter. Mrs Weasley had unfortunately not misread the signs that something significant had taken place between Ron and Hermione over Christmas, and had, for some reason Ron could certainly not decipher, appointed herself champion of Hermione's virtue, and hence developed a serious antipathy towards closed doors, with the result that opportunities for private conversations coinciding with moments of gathered courage were scarce.

Harry found himself dragging his bag down the stairs, his heart thumping heavily with unresolved uncertainty, and the memory of Sirius standing at that door the last time he left the house after Christmas, holding a parcel Harry hadn't thought to open until it was too late.

This time Jade was standing at the door, waiting to say goodbye, her blue-grey eyes very far away. Grief makes us feel completely alone, even when we're not. In her arms, baby James clung to the plush golden snitch his godfather had given him for Christmas, which was apparently his pride and joy, although somewhat bedraggled now. Harry placed his finger in James's free hand, and felt those tiny fingers gripping his tightly and trustingly. James crinkled his smoky eyes and smiled as Harry dropped a shy kiss on his forehead, and gave Jade a brief hug, before shouldering his bag and following Ginny, Ron, Hermione and Kingsley out into the softly falling snow.

Hermione and Ron were bickering already. Holding hands didn't seem to change that aspect of their relationship. 'Thanks goodness we get to go on the Hogwarts Express this time,' Hermione observed in relief, swinging her book bag jauntily.

'Well, if it hadn't been for Miss I-Need-More-Time-in-the-Library, we wouldn't have had to take the Knight Bus at all,' grumbled Ron, shaking snowflakes from his hat.

'Hey, break it up, you two!' Kingsley interrupted. He was waving rather helplessly at a taxi sailing past. 'A little help, please.'

Hermione stepped out and flagged down the next taxi, which screeched obediently to a halt. 'Kings' Cross, please,' she instructed the driver as they scrambled in.

Harry had thought that the train ride might provide his long-awaited opportunity, but Katie Bell swooped down on them the moment they appeared on Platform 9 ¾ and dragged Ron, Harry and Ginny off to a compartment for a Gryffindor team meeting. 'Two weeks 'til the Slytherin match!' she shrieked as Ron stammered his reluctance about this idea. Hermione curled up in the corner of the compartment, absorbed in her Arithmancy book, while Harry and the others attempted valiantly to concentrate on Quidditch strategies, and snowflakes flurried against the windowpanes.

Dusk was gathering as their carriage trundled through the wrought iron gates to Hogwarts. None of them had said anything, but Harry could tell by the way Ron, Hermione and Ginny's eyes followed the muscles rippling under the Thestrals' dark flanks that they could see them too.

The turreted castle and grounds were covered in a mantle of freshly fallen snow gleaming palely in the last rays of daylight. Ginny yawned and stretched as she climbed out of the carriage in front of the stone steps leading up to the castle. 'I'm so stiff, it feels like we've been sitting forever.'

Harry took a deep breath. 'Do you want to go for a walk then?'

Ginny gave him an appraising glace. He wondered if it was because his voice sounded squeaky and shaky, or just because it seemed a very odd idea to go walking when it was freezing cold and almost dark and dinner time.

Then she smiled. ''Kay.'

They wandered towards the lake, the excited laughter and chatter of the other students fading into the distance. Unconsciously, Harry's footsteps led him to the same place he had sat last summer, overlooking the lake lying as still as liquid metal under the final light of the sinking sun. Ginny turned to face him once they reached the edge of the lake. There was complete silence apart from the gentle lapping of water. 'Harry...' Ginny said softly, in the same moment that he whispered her name.

He looked into her eyes for a second that endured an eternity, and then he knew he didn't need to say anything at all. So he kissed her. And for the second time in his life, Harry was kissing someone as tears ran down her face, only this time they were mingled with his own tears, and he finally understood that the capacity to feel pain was strength if it meant he could feel love as intensely as this.

They stood there, simply holding each other as darkness fell, and snowflakes crowned their hair. 'You must be cold,' Harry said eventually. Taking off his scarf, he wound it gently around Ginny's neck, and brushed away the snowflakes clinging to her flaming hair. He took her hand to walk her back to the castle, and as he caught her eye Ginny smiled almost mischievously, although a trace of sadness lingered in her eyes.

'What?' asked Harry, smiling back.

'I owed Sirius a galleon,' Ginny confessed, blushing ever so slightly.

'What?' Harry asked again, completely perplexed.

'He and I made a bet, two summers ago. I said this would never happen, he said it would.' She grinned. 'He was right.'

Snow was sliding down Harry's neck, yet he had never felt warmer in his life. And for the first time, as he pictured Sirius's laughing grey eyes – sunlight breaking through a storm cloud – his memory held no bitterness.

Finis