Inside

Chapter Seventeen: The Test

Harry's POV

I sat on the side of my bed with my hands balled tightly in my lap, looking over at my desk. A picture of myself, Ron and Hermione from second year looked back at me; our happy faces smiling back at me, and filling me with that much more bitterness and guilt. What Narcissa Malfoy had told me, told Hermione… it just couldn't be true. It couldn't!

A storm had been raging inside of me since that night; and why had Draco been so fast to believe her? And Hermione? Why had they been so able to overlook logic and jump right to the first ludicrous thing they were told?

"You don't really know him though, Harry," I could hear Hermione's voice playing inside my ears. "Your Dad, our Dad… you never really knew him. You were a baby when he died, Harry. I know you've never been one to listen to anything negative when it came to him… But think, Harry," her voice went on. "You never listen to anything negative… there has never been anything but negative!

"We are all fast to protect our parent's when people make judgments on them, especially bad ones… But Harry, you never knew him." Just as quickly as her voice had started, it ended. The things she was saying; the things I was hearing her say… she had never said any of it. I knew, just as well as I knew I was being irrational with everything lately, that her words were just my own thoughts, protecting me by using the sound of her voice. Hermione. The logical one. The smart one. The brain of the three of us.

How long had she known? When had she first been told about all of this? I wondered, letting out a breath of air and leaning back on my bed. Could it have been at the start of the year? It easily could have… was. Hermione told us all of this, after weeks, months of acting out of character… She told us all of this, and we believed her then. I believed her then. I believed her just as easily with everything else I believed her with. I never questioned her or doubted what she was saying. I never had reason to; in all the time I knew her she was always so honest and logical, always so reasonable with everything.

Was that why she was acting so out of character? So not Hermione? Because she was trying to find enough evidence herself to believe what Narcissa told her? At first it was like I barely knew her at all, like we were never even friends in the first place… the weeks went by and she slowly because more and more herself; she was less secretive, more open to talk…

"I never did know him," I said aloud, looking over at the picture of my Mum and Dad dancing in the falling Autumn leaves, smiling at me; at each other. My Dad loved my Mum, that much was clear about them always… But did that mean that he would remain totally faithful while under the influence of alcohol? In is shown throughout history and books and things you read about in newspapers or read in magazine articles all the time that alcohol can make you do stupid things. It changes you, it makes you do things and say things that you wouldn't in a million years – or more – say or do.

I sat back up and brought my forehead down to my hands and let out a long, exaggerated groan. Was it really that I didn't want to believe what I was told, or was it that my Father and Mother were the only things I had since childhood I could hold onto? Was it that them dying when I was so young left open the option for me to make them whoever I wanted them to be? I didn't have memories or time with them to make and collect truth and fact… All I had to go on were pictures and things other people told me: the rest was fiction, fantasy. In my mind, I could make them be whoever I wanted them to be, I could make them be the kind of people they may have never truly been, the kind of people I wanted them to be.

In my minds' eye I could see everything so clearly - everything I had created - as if it were actual memory. I could see myself lazing about on the couch, my shoes propped up and Mum asking be to take my dirty shoes off her furniture. I would smile and let out a laugh and do nothing, and Dad would come in and tell me to listen to my Mother. He would cross the room, giving me a stern, playful eye, and walk over and wrap Mum into his arms and give her a long kiss, and ask what she was preparing for dinner. She would smile and laugh and tell him he would find out soon enough, and I would continue to look over at them, smiling at the sight of them so happy… so together… so in love…

At Christmas we would invite Hermione's and Ron's family over and have a huge celebration; Sirius would be there. We'd go out back and play a game of Quidditch as Mum, Molly, Ginny and Hermione and her Mum worked together in the kitchen cooking the big holiday feast, smiling and laughing together. We would be called back inside and complain that the game was almost finished – though we knew it wasn't, we'd just want to play longer – and they'd threaten if we wanted to eat to get our frozen behinds in the house. We would, as we always did each year, and end up being thankful they brought us in when they did, and we'd laugh and talk and smile as we ate Christmas dinner together. Then with expanded bellies and smiling faces, we'd retire into the living room and open up our gifts together…

Next morning we'd all wake up to find the house a mess; dirty dishes and gift wrap and trash all over the place. Hermione, Ron and I would wake early to surprise the adults with a clean house, and just end up stuffing ourselves with food from the night before, leaving an even bigger mess than what was already there. Mum would come into my room, see the three of us lazing about and watching muggle TV, roll her eyes and sigh, "Children…" We'd all shout back, "We're not children!", and she'd shake her head and walk down the stairs, pretending not to have heard it, as she always did…

But she didn't. She never did, there was no 'as she always did', because she had been dead for the past sixteen years. None of that ever happened, nor would it ever. She was dead, and Dad was dead, and Sirius were dead… dead and gone and never coming back. All of the "memories" I had created were just that: created, invented, and envisioned. The only place they ever lived were inside of me, and they weren't ever going to live outside of my mind. The only place they ever were was inside of me, and no amount of lying to myself or saying it out loud or pretending would make it anymore real than that… Real, they weren't even that. The only thing that made them real was the fact that I never stopped holding onto what I so desperately clung to: and that was lies and fantasy.

Wiping a loose tear from my eye I pulled my head away from my hands and looked back at my desk: the DNA test sitting silently, waiting to be opened. The strand of Hermione's hair I found on my jacket the night I attacked her and Ron laid out gently beside it. My own not far from hers.

I inhaled a deep breath of air and closed my eyes: doing this wouldn't change anything, I had to tell myself. What would it change? would I magically find out Hermione is my sister, run to my Dad and demand to have some answers? No, I couldn't, he was dead… and if he weren't, even then I don't think I'd be able to confront him about it. Who was to even say he knew about it? Remembered it? Alcohol was not only personality changing, but, as I heard, had a huge impact on memory. Maybe he did do it, and just didn't remember doing it… then it wasn't really his fault…

"NO!" I bellowed aloud, shooting up to my feet, "Stop defending him!" I forced myself to say, to think… to believe. If I do this, I thought, nothing changes. Hermione would have been told the truth, Draco and her wouldn't have believed a lie, and Narcissa would finally be at peace and have her daughter back. My parent's are dead: nothing for me changes, regardless of the outcome of the results. If I do this… my mind can finally rest, and I can go about my life with no more pretends: just the truth.

Wiping my sweaty palms across my jeans I pulled my chair out from my desk and sat down. "If you do this," I told myself aloud, "No more lies. No more pretending, and no more fantasizing. I can't keep defining myself by the one thing I don't have… When it is done, regardless of what the outcome is, I will send a letter to Hermione and Ron and beg their forgiveness… no matter what, I will let this go…"

I reached my hand forward and grabbed the box.

TBC