Title: An Claidheamh Soluis
Chapter Summary: Not much, actually. Lots of talking and awkward silences…
A/N: Sosorry for the delay. I've been sick and getting sicker. Hope you like!
Chapter Six
"I cried, Moony. I actually cried. I'm so ashamed!" Sirius dropped his head into his hands dramatically and sighed loudly.
"You know Padfoot; there are situations where it is socially acceptable to burst into tears. If this kind of situation had ever happened before, I'm sure it would be right up there with weddings and funerals," Remus consoled him tiredly, handing the red-eyed convict a cup of tea that he gratefully accepted.
"You're just saying that because you cried too." Sirius took a sip of the tea and winced as the burning aftertaste of Firewhiskey scalded his already aching throat. "Oh Merlin, imagine if Snape ever found out! All five of us there in the Hospital Wing, bawling like little girls!"
Lupin rolled his eyes, but said nothing. He knew from experience of Sirius' behaviour that he was focusing on something trivial in order to hide from focusing on the bigger issue. He himself found himself doing it more and more these days.
A silence descended upon the room; not awkward, but not exactly comfortable either.
"Do you think they'll be okay?" Sirius' brow was creased in an expression of deep thought.
"We can only hope," Remus replied.
Sirius' eyes lifted from the plush carpet to meet his friend's eyes. "That's not a very helpful answer, Moony."
"Well, I don't know," Remus sighed. "I mean, we all assumed they would, didn't we. We all thought, if Lily and James were here, they'd know what to do. They'd know what to say to Harry about such-and-such a problem. They could help us. But what if they can't? We, along with the entire Wizarding World made them into these mysterious, powerful enigmas! We forgot the real James and Lily and played along with the idea of "The Potters" and "The Boy Who Lived"! They might hate Harry, or he might hate them! It might be too late for them to ever be a family!"
This statement was met by another very significant silence.
"You know what hurts the most?" Sirius broke the silence once again with a quiet mutter and a troubled expression. "All this time, all the time I spent in Azkaban, I… I believed they were here. Watching us. Watching Harry. Taking care of him when I couldn't be there to fulfil their wishes. But they don't have a clue.
"I talked to James every night in Azkaban. Told him how I felt, told him of my plans. And he doesn't know. He was really gone. When they came back, when we came back, that's when I realised it. And God, Moony, it was like losing them all over again. Even though they were right beside me, I started to grieve for them. Does that even make sense?"
Remus was quiet, pensive. "No," he answered finally. "But then again, none of this makes sense." He looked up at the large grandfather clock on the wall. "I guess," he sighed. "We'll have to wait and see how things pan out."
"Hear hear," Sirius muttered, sloshing his tea around in the cup. "Moony?"
"Yes?"
"Got any more of that Firewhiskey?"
After their tearful reunion, Lily, James and Harry sat down on James' bed in the Hospital Wing to talk.
But they didn't.
What they actually did was sit in the most awkward silence any of them had ever experienced. Nobody wanted to look at each other.
"Well," James cleared his throat. "Harry, I'm sure you have questions."
"Er, yeah." Harry thought hard. "The problem is I don't seem to be able to think of any of them right now."
"Yes, well, that can often happen," Lily said wisely.
"Yeah," Harry replied, staring at the floor.
"Well, when you think of them, we'll be glad to answer them, anytime."
Harry nodded his thanks.
And that horrible silence returned.
"So Harry," James started, leaning across his wife to meet his son's eyes. "Do you play Quidditch?"
Lily smacked him angrily across the back of his head. But it was too late; Harry's face had lit up.
Once again, James thought happily, Quidditch has proved to be the saviour of us all!
BACK FROM THE DEAD!
The Minister for Magic, Cornelius Fudge confirmed late last night that James and Lily Potter, along with escaped convict Sirius Black have returned to the Wizarding World alive. Although thought by many as a tactless prank, or scheme by He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named, the Minister has confirmed that the Ministry believes it to be the real people.
Most readers will remember the death of the Potters almost fifteen years ago because it led to the downfall of the Dark Lord when he killed these two parents of young Harry Potter. Harry, who is of course a loyal reader of the "Daily Prophet", killed the Dark Lord only minutes later. Sirius Black was once close friends with the Potters, but was convicted of the murder of twelve Muggles and Peter Pettigrew only days after You-Know-Who fell. He served twelve years sentence in Azkaban before escaping three years ago. Black has since been found innocent of all charges by the Wizengamot in the last month. He joined the Order of the Phoenix and partook in the battle that occurred in the Department of Mysteries last June. Little is known of this battle but we knew that he was blasted through the Veil that hangs in the Death Chamber. Rumours of this veil are widespread but nothing has ever been confirmed as to its power. Black insists he doesn't remember what happened after he fell through the veil, and only came to when he woke up in the Hospital Wing of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry several days after he and the living, breathing bodies of Lily Helena Evans Potter and James David Potter were found on the floor of the Death Chamber.
Possible side-effects of the miraculous event of this event are not yet known. Black seems to look the same, but the Potters were the most unusual. There has been no report given by the Ministry of Magic as to how these three managed to find their bodies and it is rumoured that James and Lily's bodies have little aged, though the extent of this is not known.
It is also not known if this was a once-off event of if this veil can actually be used to raise the dead…
Continued on pages 2, 3, 6
Page 4: What we know about the Veil
Page 7: Harry Potter's interview about the Dark Lord last year
Page 8: Interview with Cornelius Fudge, Minister of Magic.
Dumbledore looked up from his paper, and sighed. This wasn't good.
He hadn't even had time to tell the Weasleys yet.
It was a normal day at The Burrow.
It was also breakfast, and as it was another normal day, the house was in complete and utter chaos! Bill had Apparated home the week before, to the unending joy of his mother, but unfortunately he brought his new fiancée Fleur with him, which didn't exactly excite anyone in the house.
Fleur was a bit, er, different from the Weasleys.
The boys (Fred, George and Ron) adored her, of course, and after a few days they got used to her and even stopped gaping! Even Mr. Weasley seemed to be under her spell, though not as strongly as his sons. Ginny and Hermione (who arrived the same day Fleur did) had taken to calling her Phlegm behind her back and using false French accents whenever she was out of earshot. When she was around though, they were angels, smiling sweetly (even when she talked to Ginny as if she was a toddler and made one very snide remark concerning the bushiness of Hermione's hair).
Fred and George had been staying in the flat over their shop in Diagon Alley, but after several entrepreneurs including Ollivander and Florean Fortescue disappeared, their mother had ordered them home, and secretly they were more than glad to do so. Charlie was abroad on Order business, and Arthur worked 18-hour shifts some days working for the Ministry. Somehow, Fudge had managed to survive another election (though nobody had the slightest idea how) against Rufus Scrimgeour and was working the Ministry hard to uphold all his election promises, the main one being that he would stop Voldemort and his followers. Percy still remained the "huge pile of owl droppings" that he was (to quote one Fred Weasley) and refused to make contact with his family.
And as Ron, Hermione and Ginny spent most of the time they could away from the house, and Bill was away working in Gringotts most of the time, Molly Weasley was almost always left with Fleur.
She tried very hard to feel happy for her son, for he was obviously head over heels in love, but the problem was the Fleur was such high-maintenance She frequently complained about the English weather, food, company and lack of things to do, which irritated Molly no end. And she dealt with this as she always did, by taking it out on other people, and shouting at innocent (though there never was such a thing, in Fred and George's case) bystanders.
Today, Ph-Fleur was complaining about the lack of beauty parlours in the English countryside. "I do not unzerstaand! En France, we 'ave zese beautifying places everywhere! Ze Eenglish people do need zem so very much! Just theenk what you could do with your hair, Hermione, if you gave it ze proper attention!"
Hermione gave a forced smiled and stabbed her eggs rather violently.
"Et tu, Molly? Eet is not right for a woman of your age to look so, so, how you say? Tired et…dishevelled!"
Mrs. Weasley slammed a plate in front of Ron, her expression livid.
"And Ginevra, yo-" But whatever Fleur thought was wrong with Ginny they never got the chance to find out. Two owls swooped down, one with a Hogwarts crest on it, the other being the owl that delivered the Daily Prophet daily.
Molly took the letter from the Hogwarts owl, frowning as she did so, because Hogwarts letters always came in bulk, and not for another few weeks.
"It's from Dumbledore," she said shakily. And so it was.
Her eyes scanned it quickly, lips pursed.
Molly looked up several minutes later to see the owl that delivered the Daily Prophet desperately dodging the eight pairs of hands trying to grab it.
"Mum, will you pay this bloody bird please? It won't give us the paper until then!"
Molly threw the window open and directed the bird outside, instructing it to come back tomorrow with both editions. She turned around to see everyone staring at her in confusion (they even stopped eating!).
"Read the letter," she ordered them tiredly, and sat down to finally eat her own breakfast.
Arthur, to save time, read the letter aloud.
"Molly and Arthur,
I will be arriving at your house at a quarter past eleven this morning. Please remove the Anti-Apparation wards at exactly that time. I have important news for you all. Please do not read the Daily Prophet until I have told you this news. I cannot stress how important this is! DO NOT read the Prophet!
Yours sincerely,
Albus Dumbledore.
PS. Ask me what my favourite fruit is. The answer is mango."
"Well, that doesn't sound good, does it?" Bill looked worried.
"Something must have happened," Fred said.
"Something bad enough that he wants to tell us personally," George decided.
"Do you think….maybe it's about Harry?" Ginny's comment caused a solemn silence.
"It could just be," Molly tried to comfort them, "that the Prophet got its facts wrong- and it wouldn't be the first time! - and Dumbledore wants us to know the truth instead of the garbled version!"
This pronouncement was met with much chatter and voicing of opinions but it didn't matter because by that time it was thirteen minutes past eleven and Molly and Arthur jumped up to take down the wards.
At exactly fifteen minutes past, Dumbledore appeared. He smiled pleasantly and greeted everybody personally, though Molly did notice that he looked rather tired and worn out. She wasted no time in telling him so, and then proceeded to sit him down in the finest chair in the house and make him a cup of tea (after, of course, he had announced his undying love for mangoes).
"Thank you, Molly. You know, I find that nobody makes a good tea quite like you do!" Mrs. Weasley blushed at his praise, to the amusement of her sons.
But Dumbledore's face soon turned grave.
"I'm afraid I have some rather startling news for you. If you please, I ask that you listen carefully and do not interrupt me, because it is a rather confusing story and I'd prefer that you would listen to it first and then ask questions."
And he started to explain the miraculous events of the past week.
"So they'll be here tomorrow?" Harry had left his parents twenty minutes beforehand when they became tired. To say that the meeting hadn't been awkward would be a lie. In fact, awkward is the only word that could be possibly used to describe it. Any conversation they made was mostly light, and filled with uncomfortable silences that stretched on for what seemed like hours.
But Harry had to admit that he had never been happier in his life. A new warm glow filled his insides; a new hope. He would never have to go back to the Dursleys, never have to be lonely. He had a real family now.
"Yes," Dumbledore assured him. "They should be here around noon, I suppose."
And even if it was a family that he didn't know, he was confident that they would become more comfortable with each other. He could imagine it must be strange for his parents, too. Last night, as far as they were concerned, they had a one-year old baby. Now they had a sixteen year old. That would be hard for anyone to take in.
"Where's Sirius?" he asked, trying to control the excitement in his voice. It seemed so long ago that they had last talked comfortably; he had so much to tell him!
Dumbledore smiled gently. "I believe he had the same idea as your parents and went back to bed. This is the first day they've been up for so long, and they are all very weak and easily tired. You can see him in the morning." Harry knew that his Headmaster was telling him, in his own roundabout way, not to exhaust them. "Now, I believe you must be very tired. The house-elves have brought up your trunk, so you can be the first person in Hogwarts to return to your dormitory. I would imagine it would be strangely quiet, but I'm sure you'll find you'll have space to think."
Harry nodded dumbly, completely lost in thought.
"Goodnight, Harry," Dumbledore told him softly, and swept past, disappearing before Harry realised he had gone.
"'Night, Professor," Harry whispered to the empty space where Dumbledore had stood, when he emerged as if from a trance several minutes later.
Thinking to himself that he'd better get a hold of himself, he made his way to the Gryffindor Common Room. In fact, he was so busy thinking that he should concentrate, he forgot to actually concentrate, and passed Peeves, the Bloody Baron, Moaning Myrtle, and several dancing suits of armour without even noticing. He jumped when he realised he had reached the portrait of the Fat Lady. Then he realised with a groan that he didn't know the password.
"Oh, it's alright, dear, they told me you were coming! It is wonderful news about your parents, isn't it! And even that Sirius Black, even….even if he goes around defacing irreplaceable art! (at this point she shuddered as if she was remembering some sort of indescribable torture. Then again she probably was.) But, Dumbledore says it was all a misunderstanding and I'm quite willing to believe him, because the Sirius Black I knew when he was a student here would never have done something so, so horrible and disgusting and, you know, he was a wild child when he was here. Him and his friends…."
And Harry, without the password to shut her up for once, was left standing there for quite some time, waiting for her to remember to let him in.
But after this quite significant amount of time, when Harry finally got into the Common Room and by himself for the first time in over a day, he found he didn't want to be alone at all. Though his dormitory was a welcoming sight, and his bed looked more inviting than it ever had, it was just plain strange to be without Ron, and, well, all of the Gryffindors, really. He didn't even get into his bed; instead he grabbed a blanket and went down to the Common Room to think.
There was no way he would be sleeping that night.