Disclaimer: Humble fanfic...not mine...
Well...the end has arrived...many, many thanks to all those who have taken time to write a review...I appreciate each and every one! This is the second half of the epilogue. I would love to know any thoughts on this as a whole, so any final comments would be most welcome, if I may be so bold! Without further ado, then...
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Epilogue Part Two
Birth Days
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"I know where they buried her, after I did what must be done, though I have never been there.
Secrets die with people, and mine are safe in my immortality and in the grave of the dead girl who was once so full of life.
Logical thinking tells me our child would have been great, powerful, a noble heir of the union of Slytherin and Ravenclaw. I shall never know now. I walk my path alone…forever, the way it has to be."
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Vauxhall, London
4th October 1943
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Gladys Panting was not a bad nor an unkind woman, if hardened by the requirements of her employment. She was pleased to have been offered the Matron's job at the Vauxhall Road Orphanage, when Esme Cole had left to marry the Warden. Though the hours were long, the pay was reasonable enough to keep her in food, clothing and just a little gin on a Friday night. In these troubled times, it worked out well enough.
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On this particular icy morning in October, Mrs Panting was to be found in the kitchens of the Orphanage, talking in a low and confidential voice to the Cook over her third cup of tea that morning.
The girl had left the child on the front steps the night before, she told the older woman, as she lit up another black-market cigarette. Had looked little more than a child herself, come to that, but she'd knocked once and ran. Like they all did.
All Mrs Panting had seen, she said, had been a flash of long dark hair and some kind of dirty velvet coat slung around thin shoulders. This was all ,as the girl ran out of sight down the Vauxhall Road and then, suddenly, disappeared from view. It was quite as if she'd melted into thin air.
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The previous night had been pitch black and bitterly cold, especially for early October. The wind had whipped around, swirling the litter on the grubby London pavements , and pulling at the edge of the blanket surrounding the hours old baby boy with the black hair and slate eyes.
It was, said Mrs Panting to the cook, a jolly good thing that that dreadful boy Mrs Cole had warned her about had packed up his scant possessions at the end of August, and gone back to his Scholarship school goodness knows where, leaving nothing but a letter on the old, greying coverlet, said that he would come of age in December, and there would be no need for him to come back.
Still, the battered old iron bedstead would be easily moved by a couple of the bigger boys, to make room for a dilapidated wooden crib used by generations of orphans and looking almost sad and neglected as were its infant occupants
And so the child of the girl in blue stayed in the first room on the second floor.
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It was not long after the war ended that rich, well-to-do couple came up to the front steps of the orphanage and knocked on the door
The wealthy gentleman and his wife had lost their only son in one of the first air raids on London. He was to have been the only child the lady was able to bear, on account of her health.
They wished, said the gentleman to Mrs Panting, as he opened his well-stocked wallet, to offer a good, loving permanent home to an orphaned boy at their new residence in the countryside. They were instantly charmed by the large grey eyes and black hair of the handsome, laughing two year old that toddled into the room, clutching at the hand of one of the nurses.
"His name's David," said the nurse. "He's got no other. That we know of, at least."
Three weeks later, overjoyed, they took him home to Somerset for a happy, family Christmas.
As he grew older, he forgot all about the orphanage.
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Nine years later...
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Eleven year old David lived an ordinary life in an ordinary house.
Nothing strange or remarkable ever happened in the big house on the edge of the woods in Somerset, England. The young boy had lived a very happy life for the past nine years behind it's heavy, oak door, and today was set to be even happier, for today was his birthday.
The sound of raucous laughter and the pounding feet of a crowd of young boys, friends from David's village primary school, thundered through the orchard of the old house in the fading sunlight of early October. After the sun set, casting long shadows across the well-kept lawn, and the moon glanced off the sparkling glass of the large conservatory, David and his friends gathered indoors around the huge oak table as the pretty, laughing woman he had come to know as his mother carefully walked in, bearing an enormous home made chocolate cake, illuminated with eleven candles. The voices of his friends and family mingled in a rousing chorus of 'Happy Birthday'.
David pushed the black hair out of his eyes and smiled around at his friends as he took a great breath and extinguished the candles on his first try. The assembled company cheered, and David thought that in all his life, there had never been a happier day than this.
Outside the house, on silent, white wings, an owl flew through the forest, a letter sealed in wax and addressed in a curious, emerald green ink clutched tightly in its beak.
It regarded the house on the edge of the trees for a moment, and then circled once before passing it by... on its way to somewhere else.
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THE END
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