CHAPTER TWO

Dashiell Peasegood, Obliviator

My name is Dashiell Peasegood, and I killed Harry Potter.

As a kid I always dreamt of learning Memory Charms like my father did for a living—I wanted to make my older brother, Arnold Jr., docile and stupid, so sometimes I would take a twig from the garden and wave it at him like a wand but it never worked and somehow it always ended up in his hand and he would be hitting me with it, drum drum drum, ha-ha Dash, listen to your hollow head.

When we were little and Arnold Jr. was angry with me all my hair would fall out or my toys would spontaneously brake, but nothing ever happened to him, no matter how angry I got. One year I got a toy broomstick for my birthday but when I sat on it, it fell right to the ground. Dad sat me down and told me what a Squib was and how he and mom would always love me anyway, but I knew that was a lie and that they were ashamed to have me as a son.

When I was eleven an owl came with a letter from Hogwarts for me, just like it had for Arnold Jr. two year before, but instead of being happy and picking me up and spinning me around, Dad shook his head and said oh, how awful, and Mum stared at me and cried while Dad owled Dumbledore to say it was all a big mistake, my son hasn't an once of magic in his blood.

But Dumbledore said it was no mistake, and in the wand shop Mr. Olivander looked around at all the boxes and boxes of wands and shook his head just like Dad did.

"I think for once old Dumbledore was mistaken," he said gently. But he kept handing me wands and making me wave them, and I waved them until my shoulders were sore and I was bawling to go home but they kept saying one more, just one more. Finally a little seven inch oak wand with a dwarf's thumb core spit out a little bit of spark and Mr. Olivander said, without a smile, "There it is."

Dumbledore wouldn't let them expel me from Hogwarts, even though I could barely levitate a feather and one time I was trapped outside the school for hours and hours because no matter how hard I looked at Hogwarts it was just an abandoned castle with a crumbling main entrance and a sign warning me to stay away.

"Just like what Muggles see,"Arnold Jr. said to me that night after I'd finally been rescued. "You're nothing but a common Muggle, that's what you are. A common Muggle."

Maybe just to embarrass myself I pointed my wand, which I'd been using to scratch my back, right between his eyes. Our dorm mates turned and all of them were laughing at me, what are you going to do with that, Dash? Shove it in his arse?

My chest grew hot and heavy and I felt a surge down my arm and before I could think I yelled "OBLIVIATE!" like I did in the garden when Arnold Jr. and I were little.

There was a great flash and the room was quiet. No one was laughing anymore, especially not Arnold Jr., who was swaying on his feet, one of his eyelids sagging like it was paralyzed. At first we thought he was joking, and soon the dorm mates were laughing uncomfortably: good act, Junior.

Then Arnold Jr. fell to the floor and wouldn't get up and wouldn't speak, though his eyes were open and he was breathing. He wet his pants and his jaw was hanging open, frothy white drool oozing from the corners of his mouth.

Arnold Jr. spent the next three months at St. Mungo's. My father said it was lucky I didn't know what I was doing, or my brother would have had to stay there for the rest of his life. Nobody blamed me, he said, and I knew that was a lie, too. He insisted I go back to Hogwarts and finish studying, and by my seventh year I could levitate a feather a couple of feet and had learned how to unlock a door with magic and a few other things, but that was all. My career path was crystal clear.

I was too young to be an Obliviator. I should have been in a nasty little flat somewhere in Hogsmeade, getting drunk, sleeping with a different girl every night, waking up with my hair in conk of vomit-Pomade just like every other no-talent wizard that somehow managed to squeak through Hogwarts.

Just like them I should have found a nice Muggle girl to settle down with, gone to work at a factory and forgotten I was ever a wizard. It would have been better for everyone. But I was an idiot seventeen-year-old and the Ministry recruiters--they kept using words like exceptionally talented and destined for greatness to describe me - the same words they used to describe the famous Harry Potter and words they never used to speak of Arnold Jr.

I should have known there was something wrong.

The first day of training they lined us up in a large room in front of crooked, dazed rows of Muggles, dozens of pink-eyed, pale Muggles, Oblivated so many times by now that their brains were mush and leaking in pins of blood from their ears. They were wasted and ragged and wore stained white frocks. But we didn't question the humanity of it; Voldemort was back and times were desperate.

Take their memories away, my instructor said, and I did. In one messy toss of a spell, my peers and I wiped their brains as clean as your Mum's kitchen floor. If you handed them a toothbrush they wouldn't have known what to do with it, and if you told them, they wouldn't have understood because we took away their ability to speak English.

Then came the Muggles who were fully aware and scared to death.

Take away their memories of ever being here, my instructor said, Points off for full erasure.

Arnold Jr. told my instructor that sometimes I cry when I try too hard, which wasn't true, but to go easy on me the instructor gave me an already loopy old woman who kept calling me Brian. She told me I needed more sunlight. Pale as death, Brian my boy, she said to me. She offered me invisible plates of brownies with invisible milk to wash it down. I took away the memory of her son first, an auror who had been killed by Death Eaters years and years before Harry Potter was even born.

Next was an angry man in a suit. Two of my instructor's assistants held him by the elbows. He screamed and spat like a rabid cat, kicking his legs out. My classmates laughed because the man thought he could escape and they clapped and egged me on.

Get him, Dash!

But there was something else. The man wasn't just angry at getting plucked off the street and kidnapped by wizards. Without thinking I turned my wand and touched the man's forehead and the whole room stopped to stare at me. I felt all around his skull, from his temples to nape of his neck, until I found where the most painful memories were stored. It was warm there. The memories played in my head like an old, old film through muddy water, but I saw and heard them just the same. I removed only the ones that would ease his anger.

When the man was three years old he owned a cat that meowed too much and his Dad would always yell and scream goddamn that fucking cat, until one day the cat had kittens and Dad put them all in a sack and left. The cat and kittens never came back and neither did Dad. His Mum told him everyday that it was his fault Dad never came back, if only you could have kept the goddamn cat from meowing, and the man grew up thinking that all women are nothing but pains in the ass, and who needs them anyway, because all anyone does is leave you.

At some point my wand fell to the floor and I just stood there holding the man's head with my eyes closed, whispering the spell I knew so well. And when I was done the man was practically purring with joy.

Amazing, my classmates said.

He's unbelievable, my instructor said.

I boasted and felt just dandy about myself for the rest of the day, but that night instead of dreaming wild fantasies of impressing women with my powerful magic skills, I awoke with nightmares of an old woman's loneliness, and old woman with a dead son named Brian and the angry man's cheating wife and missing father, both like an unseen fist around my chest and throat. I woke up choking and it was weeks before I could take a deep breath again.

The memories strangle me. It is their way of keeping alive; each and every one of my victims form a fiber in an ever-tightening rope around my neck and every day it's harder to breathe.

Someday they'll suffocate me, and I'll deserve it.

The night I murdered Harry Potter, Arnold Jr. woke me by tossing a galosh at my head. "Wake up, Dash-for-it! Old You-Know-Who strikes again!"

I sat to curse him. Everyone else in the Ministry barracks was half-dressed and ready to go.

"What's going on?" I said.

"Harry got him!" My fellow Obliviators cried.

"He's dead for good-"

"-Dumbledore's sure of it!"

"Right smack in the middle of hundreds Muggle houses!"

"A fiasco!"

"We're gonna be up all night!"

And my bunkmates laughed and rubbed their palms together as if we were to spend the evening at a topless bar.

The memories pressed hard.

Destined for greatness. Shit. I am a slayer of time and a taker of life, the violator and rapist of the only thing people have to measure the quality and meaning of their lives: memories. For who has truly lived when they've no one, not even themselves, to remember?

I dream about it every night.

Privet Drive is still smoldering though the rain beats down like darts on metal and the sidewalks are gleaming with blood.

The first wave has already arrived: a dying Dumbledore (they say the exposure that night is what finally killed him) is fighting off droves of Ministry officials and frightened civilians. Muggles, everywhere. Most are soft-minded enough to send dazedly into the darkness, but few of the policemen and Muggle ambulance drivers have been locked in their vehicles to await the more gifted Obliviators. These Muggles sit in shock, some crying, some beating and cursing at their windows.

The boy I now know as Ron is half mad. He sits in the wet debris, wailing, waving Harry's bloody school tie over his head. Hagrid, waist deep in the rubble, is tossing bodies and bloody planks this way and that, roaring Harry's name over the rain. Hermione's body lay abandoned on the sidewalk, her arms folded deliberately as if she were lying in a coffin.

All up and down the street the lights have been knocked out or put to sleep, but the scene is lit by an enormous full moon that clouds are struggling to dim and bury.

I am exhausted and on my eighth fireman. It is hard to feel his head through the sheets of rain, a wall of water. He has sprayed his hair with Muggle balding potions and it runs all down his face and turns my hands black. He sputters and I sputter and we are a sticky black sputtering mess. Arnold Jr. is calling me an idiot and clawing at my shoulder.

"Just wipe his fucking head clean! Can you do anything right-" Finally he tears me away and goes to work on the fireman himself.

When the fireman was five, he was happy to go stay at his Grandma's because his house was haunted and nobody believed him. But the ghosts followed him to his Grandmother's and in the morning his Grandmother beat him and made him mow the big lawn as punishment his lies. The ghosts followed him all around the garden all day, laughing.

I wheeze and Arnold spins around and tells me to stop acting like a Nancy, knocking me too hard on the back.

"Get in that fucking ambulance and take care of the drivers, Nancy," he laughs, and shoves me off toward a van with its lights still revolving and flashing and lighting up the rain.

"OH THANK MERLIN," I hear Hagrid call. He flings a chimney shaft out of the way and falls to his knees. "HE'S ALIVE!"

Ahead, the crowd is running into the wreckage toward Harry Potter. I hear the pop of someone Apparating, and everyone stops abruptly in a semi-circle, speaking soothing words to someone I can't see. I can't see who just Apparated to the scene but I can hear him, growling deeply, "GET AWAY FROM US! GET AWAY FROM US!"

I start to go up there but my brother twists my shirt collar from behind. So I get in the ambulance like a good boy and start working on the Muggles that have been stuffed inside. They're practically piled one on top of the other, and Arnold Jr. stands outside, hauling the ones I have finished out of the ambulance and shoving them off into the rain.

I am finishing my fifth Muggle when I hear a thud and Arnold Jr. isn't there anymore. The man I now know as Sirius is standing in front of me panting, some skinny boy buried in his arms. The boy's leg is mangled and caked with blood. I can't see his face.

"Are you an Obliviator?" He screams.

I nod.

"Take him," Sirius says. He shoves the boy at me. With a wave of his wand, he sends the last few Muggles flying out the back of the van. Most of them land face down on the pavement and two of them take off running, chased by a crowd of Ministry officials.

They leap over my brother, who is lying on the ground unconscious, big and blonde and strong, the exact opposite of me, dark, mousy, and thin, and I smirk and hope quietly that he'll stay asleep forever.

Sirius hops into the back of the van, slamming the doors shut. He pushes passed me and up to the front, where one Muggle still sits, crying and shaking.

"Drive," Sirius orders her.

"What?" The Muggle cries. She has a round face and shiny hair and might have been pretty, but her eyes are puffy and there is snot dripping down her face. "What is going on out there?"

Sirius draws his wand and points it at her nose. The Muggle knows by now what a wand can do; her Muggle friends have been sent out of this very van, dazed and wobbling away like zombies, and so she turns the key and the engine starts. From outside come frantic thuds - wizards beating on the side of the van. I hear Dumbledore calling for Sirius to come out, but Sirius is sealing the doors and windows. We drive away, the Muggle shaking and sobbing, Sirius cursing and stumbling around the van like someone trapped, and me, holding this boy in my arms.

The boy has a high fever. He's so hot it makes me break a sweat. For the first time I have the chance to look down at him. He is very thin, white in the face, and his forehead is swollen and bleeding in the shape of a--

"Oh my Merlin!" I scream. "Is this Harry Potter?"

"Yes," Sirius' voice is dripping with contempt, "Isn't it fucking amazing."

It is amazing. I'm holding the famous Harry Potter in my arms.

"Give him to me."

And I do. I don't think for a moment that he is kidnapping Harry Potter, because of the way he holds him close and so gently wipes the blood and grime from his face.

"You've got to fix his leg," I tell him, "It's swelling bad."

"I can't mend bones," Sirius tells me, "Can you?"

I shake my head. Sirius grumbles something about how we can't go to St. Mungo's and that he's done with magic anyway, he and his boy will get along just fine without it. Then suddenly he is staring at me. I move my hair, stuck in dark tendrils to my face with the rain and Muggle Hair Potion, so that he can see me better.

Back then I wanted to be famous. I am so very fucking pleased when he asks if I am Dashiell Peasegood, the exceptionally talented Obliviator.

"I am," I say smugly.

"Perfect," Sirius says, "Do the driver, and then I'll make her take us to a Muggle hospital."

At the Muggle hospital, Harry is whisked away and I turn to leave but Sirius won't let me. I have to stay and erase our being here, he says. He tells me if I try and Apparate he will find me and kill me.

"I can't Apparate," I guiltily admit.

"Good. Stay here," he says.

Hours later it is dawn and I'm so tired. We're in some werewolf's hut and minutes ago a man in rags crawled in and collapsed on the floor. Sirius tells me his name is Remus. Remus and Harry sleep painfully in the morning light.

Sirius refused the pills they tried to give him at the hospital and Harry hurts so bad that he squirms and moans in and out of consciousness. He is talking to Voldemort, pleading and begging with Voldemort to take the spell off him so he can bring Hermione back to life because she can't really be dead because Harry doesn't know Avada Kedavra and he doesn't want to. A couple of times he tries to get up but Sirius holds him down by the chest, talking to him, telling him it's alright but it's useless. The pain isn't going away.

Remus rolls over and asks for a blanket and tells Sirius to shut the light off.

"Remus, get up." Sirius says, "Wake up."

Remus mumbles without waking up that he's just gone through a transformation, and his bones are screaming, and bring him a fucking pillow and blanket, please, and maybe a fucking potion for his pain.

"Harry is here, Remus, and we've nothing for pain. I need you to get up and make something."

Remus doesn't seem to be very conscious. He mumbles for Sirius to be a good dog and rolls onto his back, his mouth slightly open, and appears to be asleep. Sirius charges across the room and takes him by the collar, and Remus screams as he forced to his feet.

"Merlin's fucking- what has gotten into you, Sirius?" Remus is unsteady on his legs and Sirius has to keep him from falling over.

Sirius drags the poor werewolf across the room and shoves his face into Harry's, who is still talking to Voldemort and writhing and sweating.

Remus snarls and straightens himself, shoving Sirius so hard that he trips over the table and lands against the wall. For a minute I think Remus is going to kill us all, but he drops to his knees and puts his hand on Harry's forehead.

"What happened?"

Sirius just stares at him.

"What happened?"

Sirius is still angry, so I answer, "He killed Voldemort. His leg was broken. Shredded. They fixed it at the Muggle hospital."

Remus is weak but he goes to the kitchen and brews potions for he and Harry's pain, then gets himself a blanket and pillow and falls asleep, snoring in the corner. Before he sleeps he tells Sirius, "Whatever horrendously idiotic thing you've done this time, I can't fix it until I've rested. When did I get so old? I…" and he drifts off to sleep like that.

I lean against the wall but when I doze off Sirius thumps me on the head.

"Fuck off, Arnold Jr. I'm sleeping."

"Boy, wake up. You're not at home anymore."

I sit up and look at him.

"Take it away," Sirius orders, pointing at Harry. I pretend I don't know what he is talking about, but what else would someone order me to do? Of course he wants me to take away a memory, because that is all I am good for.

"Take what away?" I ask innocently.

"All of it." He tears the blanket off Remus and lays it before me on the floor. Then he picks up Harry, who is no longer feverously mumbling because his pain is under control, and puts him on the blanket. "Take it all away."

Harry shivers on the floor.

I stare at Sirius.

"Take. It. Away."

"I-I couldn't I-I-"

"WHY NOT? I'll pay you. I'll pay you extra."

"But that's Harry Potter! He's a hero now."

"A hero," Sirius spits on my shoes.

I star at the gob of spit dripping down my dirty boot and I'm scared. "Shouldn't he be allowed to enjoy his victory over- over-?"

"ENJOY?" Sirius roars. "What does he have to enjoy? Nightmares? Guilt? Fear, pain, death?"

"Sir...who are you?" I ask. It is an accusation. Who are you to decide? Who are you to decide Harry's fate?

"Who am I? I'm Sirius Black. James asked me to protect him," Sirius jams his thumb into his chest, "to be his godfather. Not Dumbledore. Not Hagrid. Me."

I have no idea what he's talking about, but I've heard of Sirius Black, Sirius Black the murderer, and am suddenly scared as hell. I feel like I'm going to faint.

His face softens. He must see that I am afraid of him. "Take it away. Please. Let him forget that any of this ever happened."

I tighten my grip on my wand.

"He's just a boy," Sirius says. "He can't deal with this kind of pain. It'll drive him mad. He doesn't deserve it. He never asked for it. There is nothing for him now. Nothing worth remembering."

I just stare, and Sirius stares back. He's breathing hard now, looking as though he might cry.

"Anger." He says, his voice strained. "Anger and love for that boy. Other than that, there's NOTHING in here." He slams his flat palms against his chest. "Nothing. I won't see this boy disappear inside his own head. I won't do it, I won't do it, I WILL NOT DO IT."

I stare at the line of spittle on my boot, now pooling on the dusty floor. Sirius begins to pace, shaking, his breath coming in short, pained gasps

"He—" Sirius begins, and chokes. He coughs exaggeratedly and sighs to himself. "He can't end up like me. James would—he just can't end up like me. So do it. Just do it."

Who are you, I want to ask again, but I am too young and stupid. I should be drunk right now and lying in a pool of my own vomit, an udder disappointment to my family, and Arnold Jr. should be going to Mum's at Christmastime every year and she should be saying to him, "Arnold Jr., you've turned out so much better than poor Dashiell, that waste."

I kneel down and put my hands on Harry's forehead.

Crying. A man and woman screaming. Pain and dust and spiders, horrible things. Hissing, snakes, cold dead eyes, and red eyes, rats, broken bones, Dementors.

But laughter, too. So much laughter, light feelings and candy and Quidditch and girls.

No real fear. Not anywhere.

I let go of the boy's face, gasping for air. "I can't do it. There's too much here."

"Yes you can," Sirius tells me roughly, "I've heard about you."

"I can't," I insist.

I am still soaking wet. Nobody has offered me tea or dry clothes. I do the only other spell I can do efficiently, a spell to keep the memories from strangling me, if only for awhile. I can breathe again.

"It's easy to take away the memory of someone's death," I try explaining, "But someone's life— he would remember eventually, if he wants to. It will fight its way back."

"Do it."

"We're talking about fifteen years! He won't know how to eat or tie his shoe-"

Sirius takes me by the neck, his sweaty fist closing round my throat. "You're lying. I've heard Dumbledore speak of you. You're a fucking prodigy. You can erase any year of anyone's life, any minute of anyone's life. You can make people forget their own body parts. You can erase anything you want to. Don't play with me, boy."

Yes, I think, maybe I should remove your memories of Harry and myself. But I'm too scared.

"It would only be temporary," I say out loud, and this time I am not lying. "All those memories… they would seep back and drive him mad. It's impossible to keep someone's life from them forever."

"Then you'll stay with us. I'll pay you, whatever you want. Stay with us and keep my boy's pain away."

I opened my mouth to refuse when Harry stirs.

"You liar," the boy whimpers, "I don't want… I don't want to kill anybody… I don't want to hurt her…I hurt…"

When I think of Harry Potter I always think of some great warrior in armor, gallantly crusading against Voldemort, but this is just a little boy who should eat more, whose bones break just like anybody's.

I ask Sirius how much he will pay me, and he goes to the cupboard in the kitchen and throws twenty-five Galleons at me and says there are thousands more where that came from, and just fucking do it before Harry wakes up.

I put my hands over the weeping scar, around the boy's ears, over the top of his head, feeling out the memories. They surge forward, and before I get lost in them I notice Sirius glares as if his godson is being molested.

First, the woman and man. Mother. Father. This memory has been sucked to the front and stings there, white hot and blinding.

Obliviate.

You horrible, worthless boy! Look what you've done to Dudley's tricycle! Don't you run from me, I'll beat you within an inch of your life…

Obliviate.

You're a wizard, Harry.

Obliviate.

I'm Ron. Ron Weasley.

Obliviate.

Your Phoenix is crying…

Obliviate

There is only power…

Obliviate.

That's it Harry. Stand up nice and tall, just like your father…

Obliviate.

Why Harry, you've killed your little girlfriend! What on earth did you do that for? Oh stop, stop it now Harry. Don't be absurd. You know that dead people don't come back to life. What are you doing, Harry? You're going to take the whole building down with that flailing about…

Obliviate.

Once upon a time there was a boy named Harry Potter who set out one full moon to avenge his father and defeat the monster that had plagued him since before he could remember. He chose this night because no one else would try to help him and end up getting hurt. Sirius would be with Remus because it was a full moon and Ron was sick with the flu and Hermione was in the girl's dorm and wouldn't see him leave. But she did see him, and she woke up Ron and they followed Harry to his Aunt and Uncle's house, where Harry knew from his dreams that Voldemort was waiting for him, when he returned from school for the summer. Only Voldemort only found the house because all the protective spells had been removed from it, because Harry wasn't supposed to return there that summer or ever again, and so nobody would have gotten hurt if Harry had just stayed at Hogwarts that night, and for that he felt crippling, stabbing guilt, even in his sleep.

Ron and Hermione were under the Invisibility Cloak, but Ron fell over a rock and Harry spotted him. Harry turned Ron into to stone so he wouldn't get hurt. He continued into the house and he never saw Hermione until he was murdering her. There is a horrible curse called Imperious and if you use it, someone has to do whatever you want them to. Harry resisted as long as he could but soon enough Hermione was dead and the whole house was in shambles and about to crumble. Voldemort threw his head back to cackle and Harry experienced such a pure form of anger that he waved his hand and Voldemort's head came right off, as if Harry had swung an axe.

But he wasn't dead yet. Voldemort's spirit was strong and black and swirled up out of his bleeding neck like sludge out of a soft-serve apparatus. Harry took a deep breath and forced the sludge to gather right inside of him, into his Scar, into his mouth, into his eyes and nose and ears and skin, and what was inside him was so good and angry and noble that Voldemort's spirit choked and died.

And Harry bled.

He bled and ached, but Harry took Hermione in his arms and carried her to the front yard, because she couldn't really be dead and he didn't want her to be buried alive inside the crumbling house.

Then he went back inside and whispered to his mother and father, your son is on his way home, and let the house fall down around him.

For the next few days Harry is very ill. We have to make sure he is lying on his side because sometimes he vomits and a foul smell is coming from the cast on his leg. Sirius and Remus fight about it. Remus says let me take the fucking thing off and fix the leg myself, and Sirius says no, we're through with magic. But Harry's temperature is sky high and the memories are already starting to return. He keeps us up all night mumbling about Voldemort until he is thrashing and screaming and Remus bolts up and tears the cast away with his wand.

"What are you doing?" Sirius demands.

"I'm saving his life, you selfish fool idiot…"

I admire how fast Remus mends Harry's leg and wonder why Sirius didn't just bring him here in the first place. Remus holds Harry in his lap and makes him drink a pain potion, and Harry's fever breaks, but Remus says he still has to brew something to clear up the gangrene. Goddamn it Sirius, he says, why didn't you give him the antibiotics? And Sirius says the anti-what?

Harry looks around at all of us with weak eyes and we stare back at him.

"My glasses," he whispers.

Remus tells him his glasses were destroyed.

Harry's eyes fill with tears. "I didn't mean to kill her, Sirius," and he rolls over and hides his face.

Sirius has me by the arm. "Obliviate him again."

"What?" Remus says, "Are you mad?"

Sirius keeps starting at me. "Do it."

I look back and forth between the two of them and I don't know what to do. I wish I could ask Harry. Do you want to remember, Harry? How long until you remember, Harry?

Remus has Sirius against the wall again and they are standing very close to each other, so close their noses are almost touching. Both their faces are set.

Then Remus turns to me, and like the Nancy Arnold Jr. always tells me I am, I cringe a bit. Then man is thin and doesn't look healthy but I have seen his strength. But I'm not afraid. Something in me knows that Remus only throws Sirius around because he's so hardheaded it's the only way to get through to him. You can tell they've known each other forever and Remus is much wiser and very gentle and knows what he's doing. I am torn between wanting to run from him and wanting to touch my hand to his forehead to find out why he is the way he is.

"What did you do Harry?" Remus says, and holds out his hand. He wants me to get off the floor. He wants to be at eye level with me. He wants to make it harder for me to lie to him.

All I can do is sputter like I'm standing in the pouring rain and covered in black Muggle Hair Potion.

"What did he make you do to Harry?" He points to Sirius and his eyes are grey and pained.

Why? I want to know why. Before I can stop myself, I weave my fingers through Remus's hair and press my skin to his temples. He twists my arm around and I shriek like a little baby for him to stop, that's the arm Arnold Jr. broke, and he lets me go and takes me firmly by the shoulders.

I don't want him to have to repeat his question and twist my arm again so I answer quickly, "I took his memories away."

"Memories?" Remus says, turning sharply to Sirius, "What memories?"

"All of them," I say.

"Get out," Remus tells me. I glance at Sirius. "Don't look at him. Get out."

I start toward the door but it won't open, and Remus and Sirius are arguing. I think about the money, and I look at Harry, who has turned back over and is wearily watching the fight. As he looks back and forth his eyes have trouble focusing and his mouth moves but nothing comes out. He lifts his head but he's too weak and it falls right back down again. And he weeps. His eyes are swollen because he's never stopped weeping for days, not even in his sleep. According to my textbooks he is just fifteen now, but he looks so tiny it seems he can't be more than ten.

Again I think about taking Sirius' and Remus' memories and keeping Harry all to myself. But he's not a toy. He can't lay on that couch forever, but what will probably happen if I don't do what Sirius asks is that the Ministry officials will put him in a cell at St. Mungo's where he'll be magically bound and unable to do anything but lay on the floor forever and think about what's happened to him.

So it's up to me, because Remus and Sirius aren't getting anywhere with their arguing. Remus says Harry is a strong boy and he can handle it, and it's his pain to deal with Sirius, not yours. Sirius says no, he won't stand to see Harry suffer a moment longer, Harry deserves a clean slate.

Harry looks back and forth, back and forth at them until his eyes roll into his head and he is asleep.

"Hold him, Sirius," I say.

They both look at me, and Sirius squeezes Remus around the chest, pinning his arms to his sides. I feel all around Remus' head. He doesn't struggle, he just asks me quietly, please don't do this, don't do this to Harry. This isn't our decision, he pleads, it is Harry's and no one else's.

I like Remus' memories. A good deal of them are horrible, but they are soft around the edges, and this means he's made peace with them. They are all precious to him and I don't want to take any of them away. Except tonight. I take tonight away. Sirius does a sleep spell on him and again he and Harry sleep painfully in the little one roomed shack.

Remus is a werewolf and it is his deepest shame. When he was a little boy he got really sick but instead of taking him to a hospital, a man in a white truck came with a long white pole with a loop at the end. He put the loop around Remus' neck, and threw the pole over his shoulder, carrying Remus that way, with Remus floating above him like a rain cloud. Remus was taken to a werewolf kennel and put in a small cage where he had to go to the toilet and be sick on newspaper and they tried to feed him steak that wasn't cooked.

When they decided he was well they took him home, but his parents weren't there so they put a collar around his neck and chained him to the front stoop, where he sat for hours and hours and couldn't move. He didn't cry, not once the whole time, until his mother cried when she saw him filthy and chained to the porch. His father carried him to bed and Remus and his mother cried together. His parents never believed that he forgave them for sending him to kennel, right up until the day they died, but he did. He never blamed them.

I can't do it.

Even five years later Harry asks me every day about his scar and I can't tell him where it came from. I haven't grown. I'm still a coward.

But Remus was right. It wasn't our decision, they aren't my memories and I can't hold onto them any longer. If I'm too much of a coward to do it for Harry, I'll do it for myself.

Tonight, Harry Potter will know the truth.

Yeah.