A Sad Christmas Eve
The next morning he rose early, took one look at his mother, who was still (or again) sleeping off her drunk, and Disapparated close to the small cloister that had long been a hotel and had only recently been restored to its original function.
The door knocker made the impressive old oak door boom. Roy waited a moment, then an elderly Benedictine monk opened the door.
"Good morning, how can I help you?"
"Praised be Jesus Christ," Roy replied.
The monk smiled. "Now and forever. Amen."
"My name is Roy MacAllister, I'd like to speak to Father Patrick, Patrick Knight."
The monk looked at him for a moment. "I'm Father Matthew. Follow me, please."
He led him into a small office. For Roy it was a strange déjà vu, reminding him of his visit to the Death Eaters' graveyard when he had also been led into an office with Julian. Father Matthew asked him to take a seat.
"I'm deeply sorry, Mister MacAllister," he said gravely, "Father Patrick passed away about a month ago."
Roy sat in his chair in a daze. It took him a moment to realise what he had heard. Father Patrick, his Father Patrick ... He felt the tears coming, fought them down. Control yourself, he snapped at himself in his mind, control yourself, you are a Slytherin!
"Did he suffer?" he asked after minutes of silence.
"No," said the priest, "he was just decrepit. He died peacefully while asleep."
"Thank God."
"I suppose he sensed that he wouldn't be in this world for much longer. Back in September, he gave me a letter for you."
He opened a drawer and again Roy felt reminded of the graveyard keeper MacBride. Julian had learned then that his grandfather was still alive. He himself had to receive the farewell letter of a dead man.
"And this," said the priest, taking out a rosary. It was a simple rosary whose wood had turned almost black over the decades. Roy recognised it. It had been Patrick's rosary.
The priest cautiously placed the letter and the rosary on the table in front of Roy. Roy did not take them immediately.
"Would ... would you please leave me alone for a moment?" he asked shyly.
"Of course. If you want to talk to someone later, and I think you should, you'll find me over in the chapel." Roy nodded. He knew the chapel.
Roy waited a moment until the priest's footsteps outside had faded, then he reached for the old-fashionedly sealed letter and broke the seal.
My son,
read Roy, and had to smile, despite all his mourning. All priests loved to call their charges My son, but when Father Patrick called him that, the word used to have a special kind of depth and fullness.
When you are reading these lines, you will know that our Lord has called your old Father home. I am leaving lightheartedly, and yet it hurts me to have to leave you and to no longer be able to accompany you on your difficult path.
During my long life I was allowed to get to know many lovely persons who were dear to me. And yet, looking back, I would like to say that there was no one whom I owe more happiness and joy and who was more precious to me than you have been ...
The writing blurred before Roy's eyes. He put the letter back on the table and looked out the window into the clear sky of the sunny winter morning. Roy took a few deep breaths and continued reading:
I thank God that I have been privileged to see the confused and unhappy child that you once were mature into a young man who has succeeded, against all odds and against any worldly probability, in bringing to fruition the gifts with which the Lord has blessed him. I thank Him that I was allowed to stand by you on this path and to point you the way a little bit ...
A little bit? Roy had to smile again. Father, without you I would have been lost in a maze without a compass or a map!
I don't primarily mean your intelligence and your thirst for knowledge with which you explored the world in which you felt lost like in a hostile exile. I mean above all your early determination to give space to the Good that is in you and is in harmony with your true nature, and to close your heart against Evil.
Father, how could I have wanted anything else under your guidance?
You know it was not without worry that I saw you go to Hogwarts, but it seems to me that this world that has become your home is, despite all appearance, less pagan than the one that still calls itself Christian, but where countless empty churches testify to the contrary.
And yet I worry about you. I know what an effort of will it still takes you to keep your soul in balance. You simply don't have the natural mental stability of someone coming from the safety of a happy family, you can't have it and you probably never will. You will always – more than others – have to rely on people whom you can lean on. Be aware of this! You are very strong in a certain way, even admirably strong, but don't let people who love you misunderstand that you don't need them at all – with your tendency to protect yourself by closing yourself off, this is a serious danger.
You will have to found the family yourself that will keep you grounded. In this context, I would like to warn you about a modern misunderstanding that is responsible for the breakdown of so many marriages and families: Many believe that it is up to them to choose the right one – and consequently believe to have made a wrong decision requiring correction if their marriage does not turn out as dreamlike as they might have imagined, and to have to look for the right one once again. Under these conditions, you will never find the right one. For there is nothing to decide, only something to recognise, namely whom God has chosen for you. Trust God to send the right one to everyone, but woe betide anyone who doesn't recognise her because he imagines there must be a better one!
Don't worry, Father, I've found her. It's a pity that I can no more introduce Arabella to you personally, I would have loved to have been married by you. And what a coincidence that you died just in the very month when I recognised the right one, as if it were a baton change ...
But what makes me confident not to leave you too soon is your rare gift to keep yourself from sin.
(Apart from wrath, my dear, wrath is the only deadly sin you are really prone to! Of course, every human being can be angry from time to time, but I implore you once again to always make sure that you are controlling your wrath instead of your wrath controlling you!)
Your poverty never misled you to greed, your misfortune not to resentment against the luck of others, your enormous ambition not to rotten compromises at the expense of what is true and good. I have told you many times, but as these are the last words I am able to address to you, I would like to repeat it: To resist sin, one has to be incorruptible, and this very inner incorruptibility is the greatest natural gift of your character!
No, Father, this is not a natural gift. This incorruptibility is something I have learned from you, like everything I learned. In a Church whose bishops fear the Last Judgement less than the next opinion poll, you unflinchingly shrugged off the Second Vatican Council and its subsequent catastrophes and held fast to the true Catholic faith. You have even resisted popes! You neither sought nor loved the role of troublemaker, but calmly accepted it. You even used to celebrate the Traditional Latin Mass and your church was always crowded until they robbed you of your parish ...
I think this incorruptibility is something you got from your mother.
Roy's jaw dropped. "What?"
She was a neglected, unhappy young waif when she got pregnant with you. Everyone was telling her to abort you, no one she knew would have blamed her. On the contrary, she was blamed for not doing so. Every lame excuse, every pretext was ready, she only had to seize them. To her, the word applied exemplarily: "For wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and many are they who go in by that way. Because narrow is the gate and narrow the way which leads into life, and few there are who find it." (Matt. 7:13 f.) Your mother found this way for you because she strove for the good – and remember: She did not, like you, have a priest to show her the way! – and was incorruptible in this. If she hadn't been, you wouldn't exist!
I know you are angry with your mother and who would blame you? But please remember that everyone can only give what they have. Your mother received little herself and therefore could not give you much, but what she could give you, she gave. You have every right to complain – but no right to condemn her!
I asked Father Matthew to give you the rosary after my death. It has been with me since I was a child. It will remind you that I am always with you.
Your old Father and friend
Patrick
Roy picked up the rosary that Father Patrick had prayed many thousands of times. If any part of his soul was still on earth at all, it lived in this rosary, which Roy now carefully slipped into the left chest pocket of his jacket. He was not alone, his Father was with him.
Roy got up, left the office and went to the small cloister cemetery. He could have asked a monk to show him the grave, but he wanted to be alone, and it wasn't hard to find. From the inside pocket of his jacket he pulled a tiny bouquet of flowers, duplicated it with his wand, enlarged it and placed it on Father Patrick's grave. He remained standing in front of it for almost an hour.
Then he went into the monastery chapel, knelt before the Mother of God, took a candle and lit it for Patrick. Then a second one for his mother.
One by one, he lit a candle for each person who meant something to him. One for Arabella. One for Julian. One for Albus. One for Ares. One for Orpheus.
He saw the seven candles burning, hesitated for a moment, picked up an eighth candle without really knowing why he was doing so, and lit that one as well.
One for Harry.
Eight candles. He was not alone.
He stood up and was about to leave when he heard someone discreetly clearing his throat behind him. It was Father Matthew.
"May I ask you something, Roy?"
"Go ahead."
"What is that bouquet of flowers you put on Patrick's grave?" asked Matthew. "I never saw flowers like these before."
"You couldn't," Roy said with a grin. "It's a magical bouquet."
"Magical?" the priest asked, frightened.
"White Magic, Father. Nothing to be afraid of."
"Well," said the priest, looking at him thoughtfully, "Patrick told me that you are a wizard. I could hardly believe it."
"So I guess he also told you that I would never do Black Magic?"
Father Matthew smiled. "Indeed he did."
"I'd like to ask you a question, too: Can I marry a girl that is no Catholic?"
"Well, we would have to ask for dispensation, of course, but in principle this is possible. The young lady is Anglican?"
"No, she's a witch."
Now the father had to swallow before he could answer: "But who doesn't do Black Magic any more than you do, I hope?"
"Of course. Some of the wedding guests, though, might seem a little ..." Roy grinned, "er ... eccentric."
The priest now had to smile too. "We don't mind, we too are considered rather eccentric by most of our fellow men. – Would Patrick have wedded you?"
"Yes, he would" Roy said curtly. He knew it was true.
"In this case I won't stand in your way."
After a moment of silence, the Father asked: "Is there anything else I can do for you?"
"Shrive me, please."
When he came home, he heard his mother calling in a weak voice: "Roy?"
He stepped into the living room. She had sat up and was blinking around with glazed eyes.
"Have you cleaned up here?" she asked with a heavy tongue.
"Yes, I have, Mum." He hadn't called her "mum" for years. "And Merry Christmas!"
"Merry Christmas, my boy."
Both were silent. Then he said: "It's only Christmas Eve, but I want you to have your present now."
He conjured a vase filled with water, pulled the second tiny bouquet from the pocket, enlarged it and placed it in the vase on the table.
"Roy, what are you doing?"
"I am doing magic. Until now, I wasn't allowed to, outside Hogwarts. By the way, this bouquet is an everlasting bouquet. These flowers won't die, but turn into other flowers. So from now on you will always have flowers on your table."
"I don't have a present for you," she murmured guiltily.
"You can make me one."
"Yes?"
"Just drink as much as you need, but not more, so that we can still talk. – I'm going to put some fresh clothes in the bathroom and run a bath for you."
"Oh Roy, don't ..."
"You stink!" he snapped at her more harshly than he had intended. "My Christmas wish is that you don't stink," he continued a little more quietly.
"OK, OK ..." she said shyly. Then she put a bottle with anything high-proof to her lips. Her hands were trembling so badly that she spilled some of it.
When Roy saw the trembling hand and looked into her prematurely aged, bloated, destroyed face, it hit him: She won't live to see Easter, he suddenly knew. These are the last days you can be with her!
He wouldn't spend his holidays in the library.