Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
Author: Penguin
Title: LIKE GLASS
Part 7
"If Mr Ollivander hadn't known that this is Potter's wand, and that Potter is alive, he'd have said that the owner of this wand was dead," Draco explained to a mystified and worried Lupin. "He says the wand is dead. I've tried to use it, and nothing happens when I do. Nothing at all. It really does feel... dead."
Lupin leant back in his chair, frowning.
"Could it be..." He stalled and thought. "Do you think... is it possible that the whole thing is due to a faulty wand? A misunderstanding? That Harry really hasn't lost his magic at all – he only thinks he has, because the wand doesn't work?"
Draco shook his head.
"No. He tried my wand, in London. Nothing. I know that really weird things can happen if you use someone else's wand, but here... no. Nothing. And he says he's tried other things, too, like Apparating. No use. Nothing."
"Of course," Lupin muttered. "How stupid of me to think even for a second that he hadn't tried everything possible."
"Mr Ollivander also says that wands normally keep functioning even when their owners die, but it's not uncommon for very powerful wizards' wands to die with their owners."
Possibly, Dumbledore's wand had died with him. There was no way of finding out now, as the old wizard had wanted his wand buried with him.
Lupin straightened up.
"I don't think we'll get much further tonight," he said. "Thanks for finding this out, Draco."
They rose, and Draco asked: "What now?"
"I'm going to London tomorrow. I'll probably stay until it's time for my full moon treatment. I've left Harry in Matron's very capable hands, and she has requested the help of someone she knows at St Mungo's – a very skilled healer, she says." He gave Draco a reassuring smile. "If you need me, I'll be at the Armando Dippet Memorial Library. And if you could get started at the library here at Hogwarts...?"
Draco nodded, then asked hesitantly: "Can I... Is Potter allowed to have visitors?"
"Of course he is, if he wants to." Lupin smiled again. "And I think he does."
Draco's heart leapt in his chest but his face did not register anything at all. He said good night to Lupin and quietly went back to his room.
He missed Lupin, who he had got to know very well in the later stages and aftermath of the war and grown to like very much. He hadn't realised until now how much he had also come to trust and depend on him. Lupin was in equal measure a friend, a stand-in parent and a mentor.
Draco let yet another heavy volume land with a thud on the dark wood table in front of him and felt the familiar smell of dust and dry, old leather rise from the pages when he opened it. Sunlight flowed in through the high windows and golden dust whirled and danced in the slanting rays. Draco sighed. This book probably didn't contain anything more informative or useful than any of the others he had read so far.
He decided to go AWOL for the afternoon, closed the book again and went outside.
The lake was a dark blue under the autumn sky; its surface rippling in the wind as if it was shuddering. Draco walked briskly, trying to clear his mind. He turned to glance up at the castle, and his eyes wandered automatically to Potter's window in the hospital wing.
He had been to see Potter this morning, a brief visit where nothing much was said. It had been one of many, and Potter always seemed pleased to see him, but then he was probably pleased with anything that broke the monotony of his days.
Potter looked much better already. He had lost some of that haunted, pained look and some of the terrible thestral-like thinness.
Draco wondered what kept him going. Did he still have hope? What was he thinking about? What did he think of Draco?
Draco shook himself. It didn't really matter what Potter thought about him. He was only going to assist with solving the mystery, and then he would leave and probably never see Potter again, at least not for a very long time.
He shivered suddenly in the cold breeze and wondered if the sun had been hidden by a cloud, but when he looked up at the sky, it was as blue and cloudless as before.
The window seat in his room was Harry's favourite spot. He had an excellent view and he could watch people pass by below him, but no one could see him unless they were actually in the room. Idiotically enough, he felt safe there.
Safe!
Nothing was more secure here than anywhere else; there were no guarantees for anything anywhere. Harry wondered what would happen when word spread that he had lost his magic. Perhaps he would have to leave the wizarding world.
He closed his eyes and tried to push the tremendous irony of the situation out of his head. For more than a year, he had done his best to leave all this behind. Leave everything behind, everything that was essentially him, and only exist in a haze where nothing could be seen, heard or felt very clearly. And then he had stupidly allowed himself to be shaken out of the stupor, allowed himself to feel the pain he had been trying to escape, allowed himself to be taken back to what he had tried to forget – perhaps only to be exiled again.
He didn't even want to think of what would happen to him then.
The only thing he could do was to exist in the moment, live minute by minute, like he had done in Muggle London. There was no past; there was no future. There was only the present moment, and it would soon be gone. Nothing mattered very much.
This was easy to do when you were on drugs. Sober, it was very nearly impossible.
Harry was being treated with potions, infusions and spells, and while his physical state had improved rapidly, his mind had not healed quite as successfully. The wall of glass separating him from the world was slipping, sliding, falling away at times. Always returning again, but slipping more frequently. This scared him. It allowed things to enter, things he had managed to shut out before. Now he was forced to feel and experience, to smell and hear and see – forced to participate in a world he had no desire to participate in because it was simply too painful. He didn't want to invest himself, his energy and emotions, in something that might be taken away from him again at any moment.
Harry looked out at the sloping orchard below his window. The grass was dotted with overripe, red and yellow apples that had fallen from the trees. A blackbird was hopping around in the grass, occasionally attacking a rotting apple, pecking at it with deep satisfaction. Suddenly it was as if the bird was inside Harry's head, pecking at his eyes with its sharp beak; his eyes were rotting, his entire being was rotting, decaying, falling apart… He covered his eyes with his hands, pressed his palms against them, to stop the pain, the sharp beak, the decay – stop everything, just stop.
He was relieved when the glass wall slid back into place and he could hide again. The things that slipped past the wall were so intense, too intense. He didn't want them. He didn't know what to do with them.
The healer from St Mungo's had long, daily conversations with Harry, but didn't make much progress.
"He is very difficult to get to know," she said to Lupin one evening when they had dinner together. "I can't get close to him. He replies to all my questions and he is always polite, but when I ask him to tell me about his background, his thoughts, his feelings, his reactions… he just slips away. He moves sideways just that little bit that makes it impossible for me to see, to catch the important things. There is so much pain in him – but he simply will not let me get to the core of it. It's too painful, perhaps. It scares him. The mere thought of having to face his own pain frightens him."
Lupin, weak and tired after the full moon, pushed his plate aside and wanted desperately to go to bed and sleep for a decade. He loved Harry very much, and he wanted nothing more than to see Harry get well, be happy, regain his magic and his confidence and come back to life. But he was so tired, and they didn't seem to make any progress at all. Harry had gained a few pounds, but that was the only visible result of their work so far.
After dinner, Lupin went to Harry's room to say goodnight. The boy was sitting on the window seat with Hedwig on his shoulder, and his face lit up in a warm smile when he saw who his visitor was. The smile was replaced with an anxious frown.
"You look tired," he said. "Are you well?"
"Oh, yes, it's nothing. It's only normal after a full moon." Lupin sat down on the chair by the desk. "How are you? You look better."
"I don't know," Harry said and turned his face towards the window. The moon was out. It was only a bright, inverted comma now against the velvet sky. "I feel much better physically. But…"
"But what?"
"I can't stop thinking," Harry whispered.
"Why should you stop thinking?"
"I can't stand it!" The boy's voice rose abruptly to a half-hysterical peak and broke off. "I don't want to think. It's too... it's too awful."
"What awful things are you thinking about, Harry?"
"What do you think?" Harry was looking straight at him now with an accusatory scowl, an accusatory edge to his voice. He felt attacked, so he wanted to attack. "About the war, about all the people who died, about... about... oh god. I can't do this. I can't stop. It's in my head all the time, like a film I can't switch off..."
Lupin was confused for a moment by the Muggle reference. He looked at Harry, who was hugging his knees and staring blindly out of the window. Hedwig left his shoulder, huffed by being ignored, and settled on the other window seat.
Harry buried his head in his hands.
"I failed them," he muttered into his palms.
Lupin stared at the back of the boy's bent head, thoughts racing through his brain, inconsistent, disjointed. Tousled black hair… soft but unruly. Like his personality. James, Harry... so alike, so different. Everything is connected; everything has consequences. Cause and effect, spreading like ripples…
"What did you say?"
"I failed them."
Lupin started, wide awake now. He asked stupidly:
"Who?"
The boy was wailing. He wasn't really crying; he was making a noise to try to shut out his own thoughts.
"No, no..." he moaned.
Lupin felt they had suddenly, unexpectedly, touched the core of Harry's depression. He shivered in fear, awe and anticipation as he realised he was finally, finally beginning to understand what this was all about. He rose from the chair but didn't dare touch the boy's shoulder.
"Harry," he said firmly. "You saved us from one of the worst tyrants in history. You didn't fail us. You didn't fail the world, that much is obvious."
Harry made a noise like a groan. Lupin continued, gently probing, instinctively groping his way into Harry's darkness:
"This is more personal, isn't it?" There was no reply. "You failed someone on a personal level? Someone close to you?"
The boy was still wailing, still hiding his face, shaking his head no no no, don't go there, don't touch me, don't make me hurt. Lupin wondered if anyone or anything could make Harry hurt more than he already did.
"Who did you fail?"
Harry looked up, and the pain in his face made Lupin gasp. In empathy, in recognition... He knew this pain, or a similar one. It was related to his illness, his own personal hell. His illness transformed him into something so far from his real personality it was impossible to grasp. It turned him into a mindless creature that injured, maimed and killed by instinct. It turned him into a monster; he became destruction itself. Lupin the wolf committed acts that Remus the human being couldn't conceive of.
"Remus, there are too many," Harry whispered. "Too many I couldn't save." He swallowed and tried to steady his voice. "All my life people have died around me, because of who I am. People I loved. My parents, Sirius... and that was only the beginning. People I barely knew died too, people who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time... like Cedric Diggory. He died because he was with me; only because of that. And take a look around, Remus. Who's left that I ever cared about? You. Neville. Tonks. A few more. But all the others – all the ones I couldn't save...! Dumbledore! Hermione! Hagrid! Ron, Ginny, Bill, Mr Weasley...!"
His voice had risen to a furious shout, and each name was accompanied by a vicious kick of his boot against the wall.
"Harry – "
"They would all be here it it weren't for me! They're all dead because of me!"
Lupin took the frantic boy by the shoulders and shook him, forced Harry to look him in the eye.
"No, Harry, you're wrong. You know you are. I remember," and he smiled a little, "I remember the teenage boy I taught how to produce a Patronus. He was insecure, perhaps, and scared, but also focussed and determined and eager to do the right thing, because he knew it was the right thing. You never lost sight of what was the right thing, Harry."
Harry stared at him in disbelief, still panting after his outburst.
"Remus, are you stupid? That boy... that boy disappeared ages ago. Sometimes I don't think he ever existed. I never knew him. I'm a hundred years old."
"No, Harry, he hasn't disappeared. You've always known what is the right thing to do, and you've done it. What you are saying now is... madness. You're mistaken on one very vital point."
"What," Harry said, not wanting to listen, not ready to believe anything he heard.
Lupin took a deep breath: "Many of those we loved and lived for are dead, yes. That's what war does – it destroys lives, and not only for those who are killed. War is cruel and inhuman, and yet it has always been part of human history. Yes, all these people are dead. Your closest friends are gone, as are mine – but not because of you. You didn't start the war. It began long before you were born. You became involved, and you didn't have much choice in the matter, but whatever choices you did make, you made to save us. Not to save yourself but to save others; to save what is good and right in the world. And – listen to me now, Harry. Are you listening? – you did save us. All these people who died – they didn't die because of you. They died because of him."
Harry stared at the older man, still breathing fast. He couldn't quite take in the words, but some of Lupin's speech was sinking in. He opened his mouth to say something, then closed it again... his gaze began to wander around the room... he tried to say something that drifted away and turned into a shuddering sigh. No, he couldn't accept this view of things. Lupin was right, in a way, but still so horribly wrong.
"Ron," Harry said and his voice was shaking, "I should at least have saved Ron. I could have, and I failed. He was right there next to me, and Voldemort... Voldemort..."
"Yes," Lupin said, "I was there, too; don't forget that. I saw it. What Voldemort did, and what you did. Believe me, Harry, you did everything you could. No one could ever have reacted fast enough. And Ron was there by his own choice. He knew the risks."
Harry was crying now, at last. "I had to survive," he moaned. "I had to survive. It was either me or Voldemort, and I had to survive to kill him."
Guilt is a difficult emotion to handle, hard to dispel by reasoning, however unfounded it is. And so much had been at stake for Harry, so much had been lost, that for him, on a personal level, there was no great difference between victory and defeat. Lupin did the only reasonable thing, the only human thing, and took the boy in his arms.
"You would have died for them, for us," Lupin mumbled above Harry's head. "We all know that. You've risked your life more times than anyone can count. You had to survive, you did survive, and it's time you stopped feeling guilty for being alive."
All the coiled-spring tension suddenly went out of the boy. He collapsed heavily against Lupin's shoulder, like a puppet when the puppeteer lets go of the strings.
Lupin held him.