Chapter 5

Things were coming at me a little quickly. Mum, Dad, those I liked. Magic, beautiful redheads, good as well. Cranky, muscular redheads, not so much. Right now there were an awful lot of angry men in front of me, crowded into the front of the room, wielding little black sticks. I felt like an orchestra in reverse, with seven conductors.

I was a little scared.

I was trying to think of what to do. I wasn't even used to having this many people around, if I thought about it. All I could remember at the moment, aside from a few hazy memories of crowded streets, was being in the kitchen of a Manhattan apartment with Arthur, just the two of us, and I had had really no retainable experience with any more than that. Retainable experience, a theme of my life. Oh, I'd done plenty of things, they just didn't count in any way because I could not remember any of them. I was feeling a little unprepared, and a little angry, and trying to come up with a strategy. Maybe I should…run? Hide? Duck? Beg?

Instead I said, "You look like a box of kitchen matches." There was a moment of silence while the faces moved from angry to confused.

"They don't know what those are," my father said. "Boys, what's this all about?"

"What does he know? Where has he been? Why is Dad…" The questions began flying all at once from all of them. My father silenced them with a shouted "Quiet!" but there were mumbles about a "bloody dress" and "lilac" before it subsided.

One of them, tall and with what looked like a tooth of some kind dangling from his earlobe, stepped forward. He looked a bit more calm than the others, and a little regretful, maybe, at having stormed in. "James, we have a right to know where he's been and what happened with our father."

"That's certainly true, Bill, but it's not as if your father was taken from you by H – him – he was taken from us by your father."

A broader one spoke up. "He was taken from us? That's H-"

"Yes, this is the boy you played with as a child, Charlie. This is my son. His name is Deasil."

There was a peculiar emphasis put on my name, as if they needed to be reminded.

"Deasil?" This was a shirty-looking young man a few years older than me. He appeared to be smelling something horrible that no one else could. I thought, well, that's a special gift. "Well, we clearly have no idea what has been happening while they were gone, but it can't have been very savory. And an American yet -"

"Percy, mind yourself," my father said softly. This appeared to carry weight, though Percy looked resentful.

"Easy, Perce," one of two identical brothers said in a low voice. "If anything needs finding out –"

"-we'll get it out of him," the other one interrupted. I had an image in my head of two glowing sparks in an orbit around each other, held together by unbreakable gravity, forming a single atom of mischief.

"Boys…"my father rumbled.

"Well, honestly! We haven't seen either of them in fourteen bloody years!" Charlie shouted. "We want to know why Dad's so bloody different and why he took Deasil or whatever, and why he LEFT US –"

I watched a movie one night, a few nights previous, starring a huge gorilla.

The reason I mention this is twofold. One is that the persistence of memory is a precious thing to me, even now. I remember the glow of the television in the dark living room, and the whisper of street noise and sirens that is the backdrop to all life in Manhattan, and also one scene in particular, of a forest of tall trees, and of something huge and powerful moving through them the tops swaying and boles shivering with impact and bending as this unseen creature forced its way towards an unwilling sacrifice. The second reason is that from back to front these men were swaying and bending and stumbling into each other as an irresistible force pushed them aside. In a moment they had all parted, some smarting a little, to reveal their sister.

I had only a moment to see her face, examining me briefly for obvious signs of damage (I supposed), before she turned her back on me to face them. Here is another thing about memory. From what one of my brighter friends says, there seems to be pleasure associated with recognition. Satisfaction, maybe, as in the connection of neurons that enable you to make sense of things; oh, so that's why they call it a Harvey Wallbanger or a root canal or a Devil's Snare or something. Or relief, like when you're in a strange country and you don't speak or read the language and you find a chain coffee shop where everything's written in your language or you run into someone you haven't seen since high school who used to be a little annoying but has turned out to be witty, urbane and bilingual. Or maybe in the palace that history has built in our minds out of the lives of our ancestors, there are rooms where the need to survive, to persevere, has created a special joy in knowing and meeting-again that helps us to continue, that grounds us in now and shores us up for the future. Or I could be wrong. Anyway, seeing her again was maybe even better than seeing her the first time. My memory of her flowered and bloomed and gave me a gift I'd never had.

A past.

"I leave the house for an hour," she railed, "and all of you bloody cavemen scrape together one tiny wrong idea to share among you and start howling up here like a gang of monkeys. I'm surprised you didn't slip in your drool on the way up."

"Ginny, you don't under-"

"Don't tell me what I don't understand. This man has been through a great deal of shocks and you are not going to make things worse with your stupid questions. What on earth are you thinking? Nothing, that's what! Maybe you need a few wooden legs to keep you level-headed?"

I found my mind trying to make sense of what she said, I mean the visual aspect of making one's head level by adjusting the length of a leg, and sort of an image of thoughts or brains leaking out of one's ears if one weren't balanced, or …

"Out, the slavering lot of you, or you'll be clunking every other step!"

The two older ones appeared to consider it. The twins looked horrified, Ron looked mildly amused, and Percy opened his mouth to object, but as the chopstick flicked in his direction he cringed and took a step back.

"Come on, then," Ron said, "you don't want to test her, do you? Let's all have a seat down the kitchen and Lilymum will make us some tea –"

"No she bloody won't!" Ginny interrupted, getting her second wind, clearly. "If you think you can slope in to the kitchen and make her do anything for your lazy, sorry arses, you have another thing coming! She just delivered a baby and here you are roaring around the house like I don't know what…"

"Baboons?" I whispered.

She turned a look on me that did two things. It made me wish I hadn't opened my mouth, and it stirred my pot vigorously. I tried to look penitent, but that was spoiled by Ron's smirk and the twins' stunned expression. I felt like that had been the right thing somehow.

" – when what she needs is peace, and quiet!" This last had been shouted.

All of those boys knew better than to say a word. They should have known better than to laugh. They all, except for Percy, looked to be manfully struggling to control their grins as they all turned and headed through the door. My father went with them, eyeing Ginny with an expression I could not decipher. Bill was the last to leave, and he mildly said to her, "Leave us some, firefly," before closing the door.

The silence in the room was punctuated only by the sound of her breathing through her nose. I thought I'd sort of unobtrusively sit down and maybe assume the general color and shape of the furniture while she calmed herself.

I got a few seconds of that before she spun and glared at me. "And none of that!"

Apparently I had blended in a little. I'm not sure what I was doing, but I cut it out.

"I want you to tell me," she said in a low voice, "why I just kept my brothers from pummeling you."

I thought for a moment about what had happened to them because of me and sighed, looking her straight in the eye. Not difficult if you don't mind staring at the sun. "Honestly I don't know. I might have done a … hurting spell or whatever if I'd been in their shoes."

"A 'hurting spell'."

"Look, I don't know what you do when you're magical and you get angry. I barely know what I would do. They're mad at me because I'm at the center of a huge pile of misery that's been visited on them, and you for that matter. For all I know you just wanted them out so you could have first crack at me."

She said, "Maybe I did, I haven't decided yet. Maybe I knew I could fix whatever I did to you, and I don't like cleaning up my brothers' messes. Or maybe you're my patient, sort of, and I'm supposed to protect you no matter what." She ran a hand through her hair. "Maybe you can tell me what on earth is going on and help me decide."

"Help you decide whether or not to attack me."

"Take it or leave it."

It was what was on the table before me, and it was dinner time. Time to eat it.

"Your dad has come back."

She stopped breathing.

He's not like he was when he left. He's gone through some changes. He needs our help. This is what went through my mind. Guess what – none of that came out.

"You remember that woman, downstairs?" Amazing I can walk with that lack of grace. Knuckle-dragger.

She said, "Does she know…"

"Umm, no that's not quite…look, no one really knows why, least of all me, but … okay. All I can tell you about the last fourteen years, and most of it is hearsay, is that that woman took care of me and raised me, and also cast memory charms, bad memory charms, on me every day so I wouldn't know who I was. She taught me most of what I know, which is not much, but I never came to any harm, or any further harm anyway. I don't always like her a lot, but I always like her a little, and I love her in any event –"

"Is there any time you can foresee sort of getting to the point?"

I'm trying to, you're just so beautiful. "I'm trying to. It's just very complicated and I don't know all of it." And I'm trying to break it to you gently. So maybe you won't hate me as well. "The thing is, she wasn't always…like she is. She had another life once, and then a horrible thing happened, and then no one knows why but she…she changed, and she decided that I needed protecting and … and kind of abducted me and took me away."

Her brow twisted exquisitely. The sympathy in her expression was like a bow on a string. At the moment I didn't feel like I deserved it, but it was not unwelcome. "Well -" she began, weighing her words. "She must have thought she had a good reason, and it was near a very bad time. Maybe she was traumatized by the war and sort of lost her way…"

"Yes, exactly!" Maybe this would sort itself. "She lost her way. She's never really seemed – well, all there. I mean, always a little distracted. She used to look, oh, behind me or around me when we talked sometimes, and of course she was trying to hide the magical nature of life from me and everyone else, and she had really, really hairy arms, -" what was I saying? "-and I thought maybe she was Mediterranean, except sometimes the hair wasn't black, and she had a bit of an Adam's Apple, and her voice was low, I mean low, what could I have possibly, I mean it's not like I knew many other people, or any, and so there wasn't any…" Thank goodness it began to slow down. "… frame of…reference…or something…you know?"

"And just what…"she said, slowly. "Just what does any of this have to do with my…"

Her eyes (brown, now, I saw brown) at first looked glassy, then it was much worse. Her entire being said to me, "Does this really have to be so? Does the world really have this to offer to me? Did I do anything at all to deserve this?"

She sat down on the edge of the bed I'd been lying in before. "That woman, who took you away."

"Yes."

'That woman."

"Yes."

"Is my dad."

"More or less."

She thought for a second, staring at her hands in her lap, wand forgotten. She was making sense of it.

She looked right at me. "He's alive. That's something I'd always wished for."

I felt a lump in my throat.

"My brothers are wrong to be mad at you. You were just a child. Likely they just want answers."

"They should have them. So should you."

"And you," she said quietly.

"Wooden leg?"

She laughed suddenly, the kind of laugh that made me wonder what time of day it was, but certain there was sunlight involved.

"What?" she said.

"Sorry," I said. "You threatened them with a wooden leg?"

"Yes, well," she said, a little flush on her cheeks. "It's something I came up with at the hospital. People would come in from Quidditch matches or something with broken limbs that were too damaged to just grow the bones back, and sometimes mistakes were being made because we were trying to act too quickly to save the limb, so one day I tried transfiguring the limb of a young woman into wood to suspend the damage, and sure enough it worked. It's not quite that simple, but what happens is that as long as the material something's transfigured into is organic, the connection with the body is not broken and it's not rejected. Doesn't even hurt, really. Just a sort of tingling sensation, until the problem can be determined and the limb can be healed and rejoined with the body. Sorry, that's more than you probably wanted to hear."

I must have been staring intently at her, because she looked down and blushed a little. I found my voice, though it was a little wobbly. "No, not at all. That's amazing." She smiled a little then. "I mean, I missed some of it. Not sure what Quidditch is. I can guess about transfiguring, though. Anyway, you must be brilliant."

She stayed red. I was utterly charmed. "Thanks for saying so," she said. "It's one of those simple ideas anyone could have come up with."

"But you did, and … you did. No one else." I was sounding a little vapid to myself, but I wanted her to hear me. It sounded fascinating to me.

"In any event," she said, shaking something off, "where have you been, and why did he take you away?"

I sighed. "He was never very clear. He was trying to protect me from something, and hiding me was the best way he could think of to do it. We've been in Manhattan. I can't tell you much about it, because I don't really remember it very well. Just a few things."

She looked a little sad.

"What is it?" I asked.

"It's nothing," she said. "Just a lot to take in."

"I don't know much about people, but I don't believe you entirely."

She gave me a look that was a little fierce, but a little soft towards the end of it.

I said, "We're both going through a lot now. Maybe it's not my fault, but I still feel a little responsible…" A lot responsible. "And there's no reason to not be…"

"What?"

"Honest." I took a deep breath. I felt like something was taking shape around me as I spoke. "I promise I will always tell you what I'm thinking, even if it takes me a little while. We have something in common, and you've been helping me and I feel like you will continue to do so if you don't turn me into a toilet seat or something, and maybe I can help you. And your brothers. Things need to be sorted out."

There seemed to be a faint golden glow that was subsiding around her. I saw it mostly on her cheeks and in her eyes. I thought it must be my imagination. She wore a curious expression, her head tilted to one side as she regarded me before she made up her mind and spoke, though very softly.

"All right, then," she said.

We were still talking in low tones when my parents came in, about an hour later.

My dad was a little hesitant, and my mother a little … bemused, I guess.

"No transfigurations, then?" she asked Ginny.

"Not yet," she said.

"We thought you might want to come down for dinner," my father said. "Have a bite, and speak to our personal Unspeakable."

Ginny grinned. "Hermione's here? Good. We have some questions for her."

"Unspeakable?"

"Long story, Deasil, but there's lots of time to explain that." My mother was smiling at Ginny, a bit of sparkle in her eyes. "Ginny, I am so very grateful for you."

Ginny blushed again. "I'm happy to help."

"This goes beyond that," my mother said warmly, "you're a gift to all of us."

She ducked her head a little in response.

"Especially to me," I said.

Maybe a little loudly.

I got a few looks going down to dinner.

The dining room was very comfortable. There was a fire in the fireplace along one wall, and a long oak table was heaped up with food and lined with candles. At one side of the table there was a slender, bushy-haired woman standing with Ron, smiling warmly at him. He looked a little goofy smiling back. I felt like I had learned something. She heard us come in and picked me out of the group like the one thug in a garden-club lineup. A good bit of the warmth left her face, and I was sorry for that, as I was still unused to the thought that I would inspire other than at least evenness in someone. I saw, as she made for me in a businesslike fashion, that Ron looked from her to me and his eyebrows came up in what appeared to be sympathy, like the look Arthur gave me before he tried to wipe my memory the last time. I wondered briefly if Arthur had been giving me that look every time and it was only the one that didn't work that I remembered, but the woman had bustled around my parents and past a slightly annoyed Ginny and straight up to me. She looked as though she was unaccustomed to any sort of argument. She was going to get what she wanted from me, and no mistake.

"Mr. Potter, I'm Hermione Granger of the Department of excuse me?"

She said this last because I'd walked right past her as if she hadn't been there. There was food on the table and I wanted a lot of it, and I was unaccustomed to any sort of argument there. I sat down next to Ron and said softly, "Business before pleasure."

He snorted but managed to contain his laugh, for the sake of what I was fairly sure was his girlfriend.

Ginny found a seat across from me, her eyes full of merriment, and said, "How long has it been since you've eaten, Deasil?"

"Not sure," I said, eyeing a basket of bread. "I had a little breakfast about fourteen years ago, but since then I couldn't say."

My mother came forward and set a roll before me, saying, "Well, then, let's get you fed."

Her voice was soft and full of that "only people in the room" quality she had. I felt that in many ways, I was surely being fed. I'd been missing out on her kindness and warmth for so long, and I felt that I should be more angry about it, but that feeling was faint and far away. Maybe too much feeling in too short a time, but I couldn't really feel it. Just a hint of it, a remote memory.

"What did you call him?" Hermione asked, recovering and maybe a little indignant.

"His name," Ginny said. "Deasil."

"But…but that's preposterous! It's a travesty!"

"I don't think it's so bad," I mumbled through a mouthful of bread.

"Hermione," my mother began warningly, but she would not be deterred.

"Everyone knows who he is and he doesn't know his own name?"

"That's enough!" My father's voice was sharp. "He knows his name."

"But why does he think –"

Her mouth was moving, but no sound was leaving it. Ron had his chopstick pointed at her with a look of most profound regret. Resignedly he said, "You'll have to forgive Hermione. She means well, only sometimes she lets her curiosity get in the way of her respect for other human beings. She's truly brilliant, but sometimes you feel a bit of a specimen, d'you know what I mean?"

Her face was something to watch. Absolute fury, to embarrassment, to ire, then back around to embarrassment only slightly covered by self-righteous indignation.

"Ron has a point," my mother said reprovingly, and there was strength that brooked no foolishness in her tone. "You might consider thanking him for his tactfulness. And Deasil is our son, and this is our house, and you would do well to remember that."

Hermione gave a glance to Ron, and he waved his stick briefly at her. The first thing she said was, "You and I will talk later, Ronald."

"Why not now?" I said.

She looked at me blankly.

"I mean, if you're going to dress him down for saving you from verbal incontinence, why would you want to wait to do that until no one else is around? Unless you know you're wrong and wouldn't want anyone else to see you do it?"

I'm fairly certain my tone was gentle.

Her eyes widened into what looked like horror, and then shame filled her face like the tide coming in. I knew then that she was a driven woman but not a cruel woman, that her enthusiasm likely overwhelmed her empathy at first but not permanently. I wasn't sure how I knew, but I was absolutely positive of it.

"Has he met Luna?" someone said.

She managed to control herself and said, "You're right. I have no right to act this way. I'm only…it's just so fascinating and mysterious, and you've been gone so long and your parents must be beside themselves –"

"I know," I said just as gently as before. "It's a lot to ask of someone so curious and smart not to ask questions, but it seems that everyone's trying to limit my knowledge of what my name was before I was taken, and maybe they're right about that, even if I don't know why. I know I'm a Potter, but that's about it."

"We're sorry," my father began, but there's a reason to all of this…"

Ginny interrupted, "The short version is, we are who we answer to."