Chapter Five:

Weep My Weary

Involved Again

The following day was wreathed with warm sunlight and clouds so close and thick as to disillusion you into thinking you could just reach out and grab a handful.

Aleasia had gowned herself in sheer violet so to keep away the heat of day, and while other professors were the epitome of decorum Aleasia was seen by several students hastening to the great hall for breakfast twenty minutes late! Indeed, having failed to remember that breakfast was now to be served at eight in contrast to nine during the holidays, Aleasia scarcely had time for a shower.

She was seen running down corridors with her lecture notes clasped in her teeth while her hands were busy securing her hair at the back of her head with a silver clip.

It was with enthusiastic anticipation that the students of Hogwarts School of witchcraft and wizardry were heard rumoring among themselves of Professor Karly's mysterious past and what her classes would entail.

And they were none of them disappointed!

For each of her classes, the students were only permitted into her class once she had observed them duel a partner. Then she walked to the front of the room and introduced a guest they were many of them familiar, Professor R.J. Lupin. The students stretched out at their desks and for ninety minutes observed a duel between two well-established wizards, taking notes on the correct posture and etiquette for dueling as Professor Karly pointed them out.

By the end of the day, as the students and staff gathered once again in the great hall for supper, the grand dining hall was abuzz with exciting recollections and exaggerated tales of their first day of school and the new defense against the dark arts instructor, Professor Karly.

Before the evening meal had finished, before the moon had made her ascent into the dimming sky, a letter had been sent into the boy's dormitory in Gryffindor tower with instructions to leave the bit of rolled parchment on the bed of Harry Potter.

So it was, nearing the nine O' clock hour, as Harry was stashing away the remaining contents of his trunk which had failed to be unpacked the previous evening, that the young man noticed the letter lying on the top of the scarlet coverlet of his four-post bed with his name scrawled across in unfamiliar script.

Curious, he untied the thin gold ribbon securing the mysterious scrap of parchment and read the inscription.

Harry Potter,

Please meet me in the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom, in secret, as soon as you receive this letter. –Aleasia Karly, Professor

Furrowing his brow in confusion, Harry quickly stuffed the note in his back pocket, grabbed his wand from the side table where he had set it, and turned around -- only to bump into Ron.

"Where you going?" He demanded.

"Oh, er, left my bag in the great hall. Better go get it." He lied, hurrying past his friend lest he have to offer any further explanations.

Ten minutes later found him stepping cautiously into the classroom he had been asked to, unsure of himself for answering such a curious summons. Walking silently into the room he found Professor Karly sitting behind her desk, rapidly scripting her quill across a long length of parchment.

"Er," Harry cleared his throat hoping to catch her attention.

She glanced up quickly, a smile gracing her young face as she caught sight of the boy.

"Harry!" She greeted. "Come on in, I'm sure you're more than curious as to find out the reason why I asked you here?"

He nodded, striding further into the room. Aleasia gestured to the small armchair situated beside her desk and he took a seat. Setting her quill aside, she rolled the parchment lying in front of her into a tight tube and tucked it into a desk drawer.

"So, Harry, how did you find your classes today?"

Still unsure of this unexpected meeting with his professor, Harry attempted to answer casually. "Better than last year, I 'spose."

Aleasia grinned. "Yes, no doubt you are thrilled to be rid of, er, professor Umbridge."

A moment of silence passed between the two as they shared a tentative grin. Then Aleasia cleared her throat and straightened her back in her chair.

"Well, Harry, I shall keep you in suspense no longer. I asked you here tonight on behalf of Professor Dumbledore. He requested that I work with you this year, one on one, to help you tap into some of your, er, more substantial powers."

"But I don't—"

"Oh, yes you do." Aleasia stood, striding between each row of desks and picking up stray litter that had found itself there sometime during the day. "I'm sure you must be irritated past endurance from everyone insisting you shall one day be standing beside Dumbledore as one of the most esteemed wizards to ever draw breath, but there is some base of truth to it. You have, locked inside of you, powers that most could never even dream of. My job this year, is to help you find the key."

Having finished her inspection of the classroom, Aleasia walked back to Harry. Leaning her hip against a desk just a few feet away. She crossed her arms over her chest and regarded him with an avidly curious look. "I have known Albus Dumbledore almost my entire life. Indeed, I have come to regard him as the father I never had. And in all these years, never have I heard him speak so often of one particular student. He greatly esteems you, Harry, and not only because of the role you shall lead against Lord Voldemort."

Suddenly taken by a surge of compassion for the life this young boy must have lived, she walked over to where he sat and placed a warm hand against his cheek. "He has come to care deeply for you, for the person you are and the person he sees that you will become. You must not never doubt that."

Harry sat there, staring unabashedly into Professor Karly's eyes, and listened to her words with an ever-increasing interest. He felt her hand pressed gently against the side of his face and he marveled at a woman being able to show such compassion and affection to a boy she had just met. But he knew, from an instinct he could not place, that the emotion moving across her face was sincere, as were her words of comfort. And suddenly, so moved, Harry had to force back a lump of feeling rising in his chest lest it erupt and he make a fool of himself. He nodded his head, assenting to what exactly he couldn't have said, but somehow, someway, his professor seemed to have understood, for her smile brightened and she retracted her outstretched arm.

"Good. Then I shall meet you here in the classroom every Saturday evening at eight O' clock. If anyone asks, you can simply say that you are, well, taking remedial potions again this year. I am sure our dear Professor Snape will be more than willing to back our tale."

One day led into another, and soon the days led into a week, and that week led into another week, until those weeks become a month.

For Aleasia, the days were filled with as much joy as pain, as much hope as despair, and as much love as hate. She found a passion in teaching, passing the knowledge she had culminated over the many years of her lifetime onto younger, more impressionable minds that still had many years in which to learn what had already become second nature to her.

She watched her daughter blossom as she earned new friends and mastered her studies. It was almost as though her spirit had finally recognized 'home.' All at once it did not matter the places they had been together, the places they had left behind, all that mattered was that Malyia was finally living amid her mother's memories. She was coming to know the people who were most dearest to her mother's heart, the people her mother had considered family, the people who centered in the tales her mother had told her all during the years she was growing up.

And to Aleasia, it felt magnificent to be back amid those people, amid those memories. She enjoyed teatime with Minerva, luncheons with Albus, late night chats with Remus. She loved immersing herself in the work of the Order as she had once before. Knowing that she was fighting evil and making a profound impact on people's lives was all she had lived for at one point in time. But years had passed since then, she had become a mother and had made sacrifices in order to better give her daughter a more secure environment in which to grow up in. She had slowed her pace and so rarely had the satisfaction of using her magnificent powers in the fight she had always felt they were meant for.

But she had no regrets, held no remorse for her lost endeavors. For, she had embarked on the greatest journey of her life in becoming a mother. Truly she had.

But it did feel good to be home. To be fighting once more for the cause.

She enjoyed her private lessons with Harry Potter, the boy who lived. She began to know him, his likes and dislikes, his familiar mannerisms, that which made him laugh; that which made his short temper flare. She began to care for him. It was not a difficult thing to do. He was an enchanting young man, and often times, she came to find, he could evoke the near same emotions that she held for her own daughter. The same worries, concerns, the same pride in accomplishments. It made her feel secure in the knowledge that this was the boy her daughter had chosen to befriend.

Hermione Granger and Ronald Weasley also became fast favorites. Perhaps it was only because she knew them outside of class. They attended Order meetings from time to time, and occasionally she would invite Harry's two closest friends to join them in one of their private lessons. But she came to enjoy them more than any of the other students, came to enjoy teaching them better than any of their classmates.

But so too did she grow miserable.

Each day she would endure meals, seated at the same table as the man who still held her heart in callous hands. Each day she would meet with him and fellow Order members, and they would lean over the same scrolls of parchment, talk to the same groups of people, contemplate solutions to the same vexatious problems. But never would he see her alone. Never would he offer her so much as a word or so little as a smile.

Perhaps she was as big a fool as any. But somewhere in the back of her mind, jumbled in with all of yesterday's thoughts and tomorrows planning, she had hoped desperately that the soul binding love they had once shared would somehow heal the wounds and fill the voids. That the feelings they had so passionately shared would reawaken and force their hands together once more.

But never did it happen, and as each day passed so did another chance, another heartbeat stilled, another ounce of breath deflated.

Until she grew so very weary of it all.

"No Harry, you are trying too hard."

Harry sighed, raking a hand through his black hair in frustration; he threw his wand on a nearby table and turned his back on it as though it had betrayed him. They had been at this for hours now, it was well past midnight, and it showed no signs of ending any time soon. He tracked with wary eyes as Aleasia lowered her own wand, her hands coming to her hips in a stance that clearly communicated her growing impatience. "This should be easier for you, Harry. You should not have to waste so much time in concentration. You have dueled the dark lord before, has he or his minions ever left you an opening long enough that you could take so much time to wield a spell?"

Harry shook his head, an irritated groan getting caught in the back of his throat.

Aleasia sighed, walking closer to her student and placing a reassuring hand on his shoulder.

"Do not be so hard on yourself. It is still early in the year, perhaps I am expecting too much of you too soon."

"No!" Harry pulled himself away from her reach, angry with himself for being unable to strike Aleasia even once during their duel. "I can do this! I know I can do this! I have to--" His voice faltered, his mind resounding with the prophecy Dumbledore had told him of the year before as it had so many times since he began training with Professor Karly.

"Harry, you do not have to defeat the dark lord tomorrow, nor the day after. But time has a way of running astray when you are most in need of it. You must be ready." Aleasia reached out for him again, placing both hands on either of his shoulders, forcing him to meet her eye. "It may seem that we are all expecting far too much of you and far too soon. But I shall not stop pushing you, Dumbledore will not stop pushing you. Because if we do, it might just cost you your life."

But her words only furthered Harry's anger. He was well aware that his days were limited, they did not all need to keep reminding him! "I'm scared dammit! I don't...I don't stand a chance of defeating Voldemort. I can't even get past your defenses once, how am I supposed to--"

Aleasia tightened her hands upon his shoulders until her nails were nearly biting into the skin beneath his shirt. She shook him roughly, once, twice.

"You will not ever speak this way again! Is that understood? You shall defeat the dark lord, Harry! You will because you have far too much to gain from his destruction. You will because you have far more reason then does any one else. It is not fair that you are expected to do this, to battle for your life against Voldemort. It is not fair that we are all depending on you, weighing so much of our own hopes and dreams unto your shoulders. It is not fair! I know it is not fair! But you have been chosen Harry, and you would not have been if you truly did not possess all that it took to vanquish Voldemort once and for all. You have what all who have come before you lack. You must have faith in that. You must believe in that as though it were a God you were praying to. Only then will you be able to tap into the deep stream of your powers. Only then will you stand a chance."

She pulled him to her chest then, cradling his head into the crook of her neck as she might have held Malyia. She allowed her tears to run freely down her face.

"Weep, Harry. Cry your heart out. I will hold you until they dry."