Wigtown Wanderers, Beater 2

Prompt: Old and Young (opposites/dichotomy)

Additional Prompts: (object) postcard; (quote) "You cannot swim for new horizons until you have courage to lose sight of the shore."- William Faulkner

Word Count: 2501

Warnings: Mention of major character death, grieving process

Author's Note: I definitely created an OC here who happens to be the great-grandchild of Harry and Hermione Potter. I've taken a few minor liberties with plot elements and whatnot, but nothing major. Hope you enjoy!

From Tortola With Love

Elliot Potter carefully opened the door to the spare bedroom and slipped inside. He hated crowds at any time, but the one gathered at Potter Manor for his great-grandfather's wake was utterly unbearable. He didn't want to shake hands with everyone. He didn't want to hear how sorry they were for his loss. He didn't want to listen to ancient, over-told stories about how the amazing Harry Potter had saved the world. None of that mattered to Elliot. He just wanted a chance to say goodbye to one of his favorite people in peace, and it wasn't going to happen down there.

He quickly crossed the room and wedged himself into the small space between the bed and the window. It had been a few years since he'd hidden here during a game of hide-and-seek with his cousins, and it was a tight squeeze for his sixteen-year-old body.

As he wiggled and squirmed trying to get comfortable in the small space, Elliot's leg slid under the bed, and he felt his foot connect with something. Through a series of contortions, Elliot finally managed to snake an arm under the bed and grab a large, flat box.

He quickly pulled it into his lap and tried in vain not to cough at the dust he'd stirred up. There wasn't any label on top, which immediately piqued his curiosity. GranGran was obsessed with organization, even at the age of 120, and such a blatant omission gave the box's contents an air of mystery.

Elliot lifted the lid and found a thick, leather bound book. He could feel its slippery plastic pages sliding against each other as he pulled it into his lap—it was clearly a Muggle photo album. He was almost disappointed to find something so... normal. The only thing out of the ordinary were the words embossed on the plain brown cover: You cannot swim for new horizons until you have courage to lose sight of the shore. The leather around the words was shiny and hard, as though a hand had been run over the phrase many times, like a mantra or meditation for the viewer. The idea struck him as odd. One thing he knew for sure was that Papa Harry had never been afraid of anything — not even the most dangerous wizard of the millennium—and GranGran had been right by his side through it all.

None of this made any sense. Why would his great-grandparents think this album was worth hiding in an unmarked box in the house's most unused room? Why wasn't it on the shelf with the other family albums? Why did this inscription seem so important?

One of the only things Elliot hated more than crowds was unanswered questions. Curiosity got the best of him, and he slowly cracked open the album.

He was surprised to see the pages were filled not with pictures but with yellowed postcards. Elliot carefully slipped the first one from its slot. He didn't recognize the beach scene on the front, but the faded script in the bottom corner read "Tortola, British Virgin Islands". When he flipped it over the, the date scrawled at the top said August 1st, 1998.

Mione,

I know I said I wasn't sure about visiting Sirius' old hideout, but it's been nice. This property is a lot more welcoming than Number 12, and I found some letters Sirius exchanged with Remus while he was here. I can't wait to show them to Teddy someday. I'm still not sure about this "travel the world before settling down thing", but I am sure about trusting your advice. Gin will get over it in time, and, besides, I'm really starting to enjoy it. Who knows? Maybe I'll "find myself" out here, or whatever it was Lavender always said.

"Will write again soon! From Tortola with love, Harry," was crammed onto the very bottom of the card.

Elliot read the postcard again, his brow furrowing. Who was Gin? And he knew that Papa Harry's godfather had been named Sirius, but why had he been hiding out? He assumed the Teddy in the note was Uncle Ted, but who was this Remus character?

He was so wrapped up in his inspection of the postcard that he didn't hear the door open.

"Elliot?" a soft voice called. "Is that you?"

His head shot up, and he locked eyes with the old woman in the doorway. "GranGran! I was just…"

"Hiding from the crowds," she said knowingly.

Elliot nodded. She and Papa Harry had always been his favorites because each of them seemed to understand him so well.

GranGran closed the door behind her and shuffled into the room. Elliot tried to slip the album back in the box without drawing attention to it, but nothing ever escaped GranGran's sharp eyes.

"Digging around in the spare bedroom, were we?" she asked, eyeing the book.

"It was an accident, I swear!"

"So Harry's album just fell out of the box then, did it?"

Elliot's heart leapt into his throat for a moment. But then he caught the mischievous twinkle in GranGran's eyes, and he smiled a little.

"Well, I accidentally found the box. Opening it and reading a postcard might have been intentional."

"That sounds more like it," she chuckled. "Come here. There are a lot of stories about Harry and I, but I doubt you've ever heard this one, and now's as good a time as any to tell it."

GranGran sank onto the bed and patted the spot next to her. Elliot scrambled up to sit beside her, gently placing the album across their laps. She ran a wrinkled hand over the words on the cover, and he could clearly see the tears beginning to build in her eyes.

"GranGran, if you don't want to—"

"You know good and well I don't do anything I don't want to," she chided him softly. She silently conjured a handkerchief and dabbed at her brown eyes before continuing. "I know you've learned about Harry's role in the Second Blood War from your teachers at school and from your parents, but they can't teach you what it was really like. Papa Harry, me, Gramma Luna, your Granda Ron, Uncle Nev—we all lived it. We fought a war for our right to live freely. It was scary, and hard, and painful, and an impossible time. When everything was finally over…"

GranGran traced her hand over the words again and smiled sadly.

"People finally got to live their lives the way they wanted, didn't they?" Elliot supplied.

GranGran shrugged noncommittally. "Theoretically, yes. But many of us who'd played a large part in the war effort were thrust into positions we just weren't ready for. Society was looking at us to continue to lead the wizarding world into a new age, but we didn't know how to do that. We were just children who'd fought a war, for God's sake. We were barely keeping ourselves together."

"That's hardly fair," Elliot said, frowning. "That's a lot to expect of anyone, let alone a bunch of people my age."

GranGran snorted. "That's exactly what I told Harry. As always, he seemed to get more than his fair share of unwanted attention and responsibility thrust upon him. Everyone was expecting him to immediately take a position with the Aurors, marry Ginny, and start popping out babies for them to coo over. No one seemed to care that Harry was still dealing with all the trauma from his childhood and the war."

Elliot's nose wrinkled, and he shook his head. He had so many questions based on that information alone. He started with the simplest one. "Why did they want Papa Harry to be an Auror? I thought he was some kind of DADA teaching prodigy."

"He was," GranGran explained, "but most people wouldn't have known that before he actually started teaching at Hogwarts. They just expected him to keep doing what they'd always asked him to do. By the end of that first summer I could see that it was all becoming too much, so I packed his trunk and all but shoved him out the door with a Muggle plane ticket to the Caribbean. I told him he should travel the world before he started trying to settle down and live the life that was expected of him. I thought he deserved to experience more of life than saving the world and checking off boxes. He needed to be his own before the world or anyone else owned any more of him."

"So he just went somewhere because you told him to?" Elliot asked, raising an eyebrow at his great-grandmother

She returned the gesture. "Does that surprise you?"

Elliot cocked his head and thought for a moment. "Actually, no. That's pretty in line with what I've always seen of you two. Your word was gospel as far as he was concerned."

GranGran threw her head back with a laugh. "It didn't surprise me either. Shocked Ginny pretty well, though."

"Who is this Ginny I keep hearing about?" Elliot finally asked.

"Ginny Weasley—though I believe you know her as Auntie L."

"Uncle Nev's wife?" Elliot asked incredulously.

"One and the same," GranGran confirmed. "When they were younger, she looked a bit like Harry's mother, and he looked just like his father. Someone at the Prophet realized that and decided to run with the idea. The pressure to recreate his parents' lives, along with Harry's extended trip abroad, was one of the biggest reasons he and Ginny never got back together after the war."

Elliot nodded thoughtfully. "How long was Papa Harry gone?" He flipped through the numerous pages of the album. "Seems like there are a lot of postcards here."

"He was gone for almost a year and a half," she answered softly. "He was rarely in one place long enough for me to send letters back to him, but he never failed to send me a postcard from wherever he stopped. You can read them all in time, but I want to show you my favorite one."

GranGran flipped to the end and pulled out a postcard featuring an enormous white church on the front. Elliot swore it was the most beautiful building he'd ever seen. The back of the postcard was dated November 14th, 1999.

Dearest Mione,

Rome is amazing! The art, the architecture, the history, the food! You would love the Vatican as well—they have some of the oldest books in the world in their library. Someday we'll have to come back here together so you can tell me everything the tour guides forgot to mention. But that trip will have to wait for a while. I've decided to come home for Christmas again, but this time it's for good.

I don't think I'll ever be able to repay you for sending me on this adventure to so many new horizons. I've learned so much about the world, about people, and about myself, and I'm all the better for it. Without you, I never would've had the courage to lose sight of the shore. Thank you.

Wish you were here with me! Love, Harry

"So that's where the phrase on the front of the album comes from."

GranGran smiled gently. "Just before Harry boarded the plane, he told me that, for the first time since the end of the war, he was afraid. He didn't have anywhere he had to go or anything he had to do. He was completely on his own. I could tell that part of him wanted to run back to the safety of the wizarding world, where his future could so easily be mapped out by the expectations of others. The only words I could think to give him in the moment were this William Faulkner quote. It seemed appropriate for someone about to leave behind the pressures and comforts of home for the newness of the world beyond. At the time I wasn't sure if they were the right words to say, but they clearly stuck with him. After he wrote this postcard, I went out and bought this album specifically for the postcards he sent me."

"Why do you keep it hidden under the bed?" Elliot asked, his voice growing sad. "I would have loved to talk to Papa Harry about the places he'd seen and the things he'd done all over the world."

"I know you would have," she said. "But as much as Harry loved his time traveling the world alone, he never said much about it—and believe me, I asked. I think he wanted something to keep for himself."

"What do you mean?" he asked, flipping through the rest of the pages and catching flashes of places and names. There were some he recognized, but there were a lot he didn't.

GranGran traced her hands around the border of the postcard she held. "Harry lived a life that very few people could ever truly understand. His life before and during the war belonged to the world. His life after this belonged to his friends and eventually me and our ever-growing family. But the time he spent traveling alone? It was one of the few pieces of himself that belonged solely to him. He went to all those places and was never expected to be anything but a tourist. Never Harry Potter, never The-Boy-Who-Lived, never the best DADA professor in Hogwarts' history. Just Harry, the British man on holiday."

"I guess I can understand that," Elliot said softly. "But there are so many things mentioned in these postcards that I don't know anything about. Who was Remus? Why was Papa Harry's godfather hiding in the Caribbean? Why didn't he ever talk about these people?" He slumped back against the headboard, fighting back tears. "All my life, I've felt like I knew Papa Harry, but today I've realized that I didn't really know him at all, and it's too late to fix it."

GranGran leaned back next to him and rested her head against his shoulder. "Harry lived a lot of life. You knew a lot about most of it, but I'll admit there are some gaps in your knowledge."

"That's an understatement," Elliot muttered.

GranGran nudged his shoulder playfully. "Why don't you take this album home with you? You can read through his postcards in your own time and write down any questions you have about what you've read. Then you can come over one afternoon, and I'll do my best to answer them over some tea and biscuits. Are you amenable to that?"

"That sounds an awful lot like homework, Professor Granger," he teased lightly.

"I'll have you know, it's Professor Potter," she said loftily, tossing her curly gray hair. "And anything worth learning is worth learning on your own time, wouldn't you agree?"

Elliot ran his fingers across the words on the front of the album and nodded, smiling as he did so. One last lesson about Papa Harry sounded like the perfect way to say goodbye.