Prologue
Part One: And Here the Carousel Stopped
1st November 1981
The young woman at the desk looks up, only to see the dark-kissed eyes of an old classmate peering back at her from over the rim of his spectacles.
"I already know it's all over," comes her greeting. She has never heard him say "hello" or "goodbye" or any such salutations; she doesn't see why she should exercise courtesy if he doesn't. She turns back to her work in front of her; there is a lot of correspondence to forward, and she wants to pretend that things are going on as per normal, just as she has been pretending all along even throughout the war.
"You do know, don't you?"
There is a tone of insolent mocking in his answering question. He takes off the spectacles as he sits down, folding the sides and unfolding them again. He repeats the action. Folding, then unfolding. Good. This means that he is really nervous, because she knows that he only ever repeats actions when he is nervous, and because the spectacles are really Evan's, the pair Evan used to hide behind when he wanted to provide an excuse for his callous silence, his long fingers twisting and untwisting in his lap. Damn Evan, bitter, cruel, beautiful Evan. Damn Timothy, who never said anything, never realised anything. Damn Severus, because his presence reminds her of Evan and Timothy.
Damn damn damn damn Tom Marvolo Riddle. She shoves a stack of correspondence aside with too much force. Severus, from across the desk, half-smiles. Damn him.
"What are you going to do now?" she finally asks, because this has been bothering her for a long time. Bothering her with an attachment coming along with it, all the anger and the grief and the fallen hopes that she had for Evan Rosier and Timothy Dreyfuss and Severus Snape, the former deceased, the second beyond repair, the latter here, and yet not here. She hates that she has always had to look out for the three, in her own way, and she hates even more so her helplessness at not being able to look out for the three. She hates all these. It drapes like a loose noose around her neck, as if she is still waiting for a penance she must pay, and the waiting, she knows, is worse than the penance.
"I'm going to work for Dumbledore. As Potions Master," he replies, his eyes on the spectacles. "Dumbledore has already prepared my rooms. Near the dungeons. I'm to be the Slytherin Head."
She stares at him, almost wonderingly. His eyes are on the spectacles. Finally she finds her voice. "How can you be so calm, Severus?"
"I'm not, Pamela. I'm not," he returns her gaze this time, unflinching, and she almost turns away. Almost.
Instead she replies, voice calm, "Then you'd better stay over at our place before the school term starts again. Though you'll have to excuse our dear Pansy she likes to wake us up at night."
"Parkinson wouldn't mind?" he asks, an unnecessary question, but one for politeness's sake.
She returns her eyes to the parchments across her table, "He will, of course. But I won't."
In front of her she watches Severus Snape rise from his seat out of the corner of her eye. He leans a hand onto the desk, placing the spectacles to face her.
"You never minded, did you? You never did, Pamela. Dependable Pamela," he murmurs, so that she almost misses the words. But she will never miss his last parting shot, which he adds, almost as if in an afterthought, "Goodbye, Pamela."
And that is the last time Pamela Parkinson nee Zabini sees Severus Snape, even as he leaves behind Evan Rosier's thin wire-framed spectacles, folded, lying on the front of her desk.
1st November 1981
"And from thence we see the destruction of the human heart, of eyes too greedy for their owner's soul," there is a pause here, for dramatic affectation. "Or lack thereof."
The young man leans away from the table, and if he were to speak truth he is also leaning away from the conversation. It is overwrought, anyway, and he is not made of the kind of eloquence that can rebuff the speaker with enough justice. He dislikes this man already. He dislikes this man because he did not see the blood and the grey matter and the white matter and the flesh and the debris and the blood and the blood and the blood but he believes he knows it. He dislikes this man because he did not hear the screams and the low-voiced growls and the mumbles of throats ripped and the groans and the moans and the calm-voiced curses spoken from a velvet tongue and the steel beneath the silk of candy-coated red-dripped threats and the silence, the deafening silence, and yet he believes he can speak of it.
The young man closes his eyes, tucking his hands into his robes, repeating to himself, softly, "I am Remus Lupin. I am Remus Lupin. I am Remus Lupin. I am Remus Lupin..."
I am Remus Lupin, and I am twenty-years-old, and my best friends James and Peter and Lily are dead, and my best friend Sirius killed them.
And I am alive.
And I am alive.
It doesn't feel good to be alive, he thinks. It doesn't feel good to be coming out of a war and being able to say that I have done nothing against my own honour.
He tucks his hands tighter into his robes, until the fingertips press against the skin through the thin material. The nails dig into the flesh. I am Remus Lupin.
I am Remus Lupin, and I have done nothing against my own honour, because I have done nothing.
1st November 1981
The young man sits on the slowly swiveling chair, turning round and round and round and watching the world move and tilt about him, round and round and round and round.
This is the end of the world, he had whispered the night before, to himself, clutching onto green silk, as he watches the ink-drenched midnight sky flood with a brilliant green, and he knows that Evan Rosier and Severus Snape would have laughed. Would have laughed, if the former isn't dead and the latter isn't close to the equivalent in his own mind.
My friends, this is the end of the world as I know it, he thinks, and out loud he whispers, "If only this is the end of the world."
Pamela can carry on with life, but he cannot. He can see her in his mind's eye now, working through stacks of correspondence, answering each with clinical politeness and an arid accuracy, and she will return home to shut out her daughter's screaming cries in gurgles which have not been formed into words, and she will have dinner with her husband and they will drink red wine without thinking it looks like blood.
Severus can carry on calmly, but he cannot. He can see him in his mind's eye now, first taunting Pamela in a belief that he can lay her mind and her heart to rest but in reality only managing to worry her more, and then he will return to Hogwarts Castle and be suitably taciturn towards McGonagall and Dumbledore and they will take him for normal and sane, and he will measure out suitable ingredients and make himself a Calming Potion and he will drink it and manage not to remember Evan Rosier for a few minutes.
He feels drunk on something, perhaps grief, and the sensation is holding him in midair like a never-falling paper airplane, the kind Evan Rosier liked to fold and enchant, when he wasn't folding his spectacles, which weren't ever for any practical use anyway, just for hiding behind his own lack of articulation of so many things. But he himself had spoken even less, and now he knows he should have said more. In his physical spinning round and round and round he wishes that everything in his mind's eye and in his heart would stop and that time would stop and that...
And that he wouldn't be left behind when everything stops, because everything has stopped and he, Timothy Dreyfuss, once a seventeen-year-old Slytherin with only Pamela and Severus and Evan Rosier, has been left behind by Pamela and Severus and Evan Rosier.
1st November 1981
"I cannot forget
I cannot forget
Come on home
Come on home
But don't forget to leave."
Because we are so strong. So bloody strong.
The young man leans over the counter, not moving save for the impatient shaking left leg of his, balanced on the side of the tall stool on the ball of his foot, and his eyes are bloodshot, as the crooning melancholic voice of the singer washes over him in fresh fresh fresh wave of despair. In his hand is the graceful bend of a glass of something full of alcohol and sin and tears and all too much illegal magic, and in his head he sees only the faces of James Potter and Lily Potter nee Evans and Sirius Black and Peter Pettigrew and Remus Lupin and Timothy Dreyfuss and Pamela Parkinson nee Zabini and Severus Snape and Evan Rosier. Evan Rosier, his older brother. Evan and Pamela and Severus and Timothy had promised him. They had bloody promised him. And they had been so bloody strong.
Sweet Merlin, Evan and Pamela and Severus and Timothy. You were so bloody strong.
He doesn't want to go home, because he knows Pamela and Severus will not be there and Timothy will be there and Evan will be there in every corner, because he was always the one to return the books to their proper places and buy paintings and insist that all the drapes had to be green and black and the sheets had to be green and black. He doesn't want to go home, he doesn't want to go home, he doesn't want to go home
I am Owen Rosier, and I am only seventeen, and all of you lied.
"Owen," comes a voice that seems very very far away. He wants to groan, but has no energy. Young Bill Weasley. "Owen, it's best if you went "
"Home?" he whispers, and slowly he lifts his head enough to face the boy, his flame-red hair swimming in technicolour in front of his vision. The bright blue eyes are like twin flames of the purest fire. This young boy, he thinks, suddenly almost giggling, is so bloody strong.
"Yes," replies Bill Weasley, but his voice is wavering. Then it comes back stronger again. Stronger. "Though I think it'll be better if I bring you to the Burrow, for the state you're in. Mum'll fix you up, and you can share my bedroom. Or Percy's; his is neater, anyway. Come on "
"Will you be bloody strong for me, Bill?" he asks his younger schoolmate. "Will you?"
The boy looks at him, in bewilderment, but the bright blue eyes cannot tell lies to him. "Yes, Owen, of course. Now let me take you home, please, Dad says that it isn't yet safe yet, not really."
And so Owen Rosier lets him, and he only wishes he could promise the same to himself.
Part Two: A Spinning Coloured Carousel
1st September 1987
"Owen," comes the voice of the young little girl in his arms, her flame red hair straight and long already about her shoulders, her bright brown eyes wide. "Tell me about You-Know-Who."
Such a simple request. He should be breathing a sigh of relief, because the young little girl in his arms can be so difficult, but instead he stiffens. But he tells her, without telling her what really happened to himself and what really happened to so many other people. It is a condensed truth without any lies, still.
"So many people died?" the young little girl in his arms asks, her bright brown eyes still wide, looking at him. He almost flinches at her clear-eyed gaze. "Even..." she pauses here, fingering the second button from the top of his Oxford shirt, "Your brother Evan?"
For a minute he stares at her, and slowly his voice finds a way up to his tongue, clawing through his throat. "How did you know about my brother?"
"Bill told me. But he told me not to tell you that he told me," she states simply, with the guiltless disposition only a child can have, living in a reality where death is still natural and so very far away. "But mummy says that death isn't going to separate you. She says you will still love your brother."
She says you will still love your brother.
He forces himself to smile, and refuses to let himself let go of this young little girl who chooses not to search for a solution without death. Suddenly he wishes that she will always remain this way, and that there will be no way death can touch the ones she will love, and she will never believe that she cannot still love the ones who have gone away.
She returns his smile, her bright brown eyes crinkling, and neither of them, sitting by the window on a warm late summer's day, will know that in only five years' time, all that Owen Rosier wishes for Ginny Weasley will never come true.
1st September 1987
She watches her daughter sit with the Malfoy boy, and she fancies that her black hair and her pale skin and her little upturned delicate nose looks perfect next to the Malfoy boy's pale colouring.
Such is the whim of a mother, she supposes, that even her practical nature is at a lost when it comes to her daughter. Her daughter, who after the death of her own quiet, stable husband, is really all she has. One day, she thinks, my daughter will marry Draco Malfoy, and at the wedding I can see all that I have left be taken away from me.
Such a selfish thought, and she brushes it aside quickly.
"Pamela," murmurs the dry, British tones of her hostess, "What a lovely picture they make, don't you think?"
Graciously she nods, smiling, "What a lovely picture, yes, Narcissa."
"How is Gabriel and Oleander? And their son Blaise? Draco tells me Blaise is rather a quiet boy."
"Fine, yes. And Blaise has always been like that - he is very much like Gabriel, when he was young. And it has done good for both Gabriel and Oleander that they should have Blaise; such is the comfort, I suppose, of a young son in their older years." Her hostess nods at that, seemingly pleased with her answer.
"And," continues her hostess, blue eyes careful, "have you heard from Severus? Or Timothy? Or from Evan's younger brother, Owen?"
Voice calm, she replies, truthfully to her old friend, "No. No, I daresay I haven't."
"Lucius will be inviting Severus soon for dinner, perhaps "
"No, please, Narcissa."
The blue eyes look away, and there is a thread of recklessness that was the old Narcissa in her voice as she next says, "I saw Timothy the other day."
Despite herself, she replies, "My thoughts now, Narcissa, are only with the living with my daughter, as I am sure now your thoughts are on Lucius and your son."
She feels the Narcissa from after the war returning again, the Narcissa as colourless as her son's white cheeks. Narcissa draws away.
"Well then, perhaps another souffle, Pamela?"
They both know again that they are safe. This is the calm before the storm.
1st September 1987
"Excuse me, sir, but could you please direct me towards the nearest tube station? I'm afraid I've misplaced my mother," comes a clear girlish English voice from somewhere around his waist, and he looks down in time to see a young Muggle girl whose bushy brown hair seem to be in too much of an abundance for her small face. Her eyes are a clear middling brown, the colour of elbow patches on tweed jackets.
"It's just down the road from here. I'm going in the same direction, so you might want to follow me," he replies carefully, not wanting her or anyone else to believe that he should want her to follow him. He doesn't want anyone to follow him. He only wishes, in a far-off barely-closed wound, that he never did follow anyone.
"Good. Thanks sir, I would like to, yes," replies the girl, and he notices that her front teeth are just a bit awkward and big compared to the rest of her teeth, even as he feels a bubble of irritation escape through his chest. Not caring to reply, he nods gruffly and continues on his way, reluctantly listening to the girl's steadfast steady footsteps on the gravel alongside himself, and thinking that her footsteps remind him of Pamela.
Pamela. He walks faster. And the girl trips, almost, in an effort to keep up, and a dull satisfaction registers in his mind because now the hurried footsteps are none of Pamela's.
He knew he should not have chosen to walk, and that he should have Apparated instead. At least they are nearing the station, now.
"Hermione!" cries a woman from nearby, in front of them. Her eyes and her hair are the same shade of brown, and even as she speaks the girl has run towards her already. "Mum!"
He tries to veer away before the reunited pair notice him, but the girl, the damned girl, is too fast for him. "Mum, this is Mr. Dreyfuss. He directed me here so I could find you."
He stares at the girl, quickly, and asks, "How did you know my name was Dreyfuss?"
"It's written on your briefcase. Your first name starts with a 'T'. I'm thinking it could be Timothy," the girl replies, cocking her head to a side, her expression utterly serious, "You look like a Timothy."
"That's our Hermione, sir," her mother smiles, "sorry to inconvenience you, but thanks a lot all the same."
He covers up his own shock quickly, and throws the girl with her words and her mannerisms away from his mind as a coincidence. Instead he nods, quickly, and murmurs the expected salutations.
And then he walks on, he, Timothy Dreyfuss, ready to leave everything and everyone who knows him.