Chapter 12
I found Arthur upstairs, in the bathroom, shaving.
Stuff.
I don't want to talk about it.
Look, there was nothing wrong with it. In fact, I can sort of imagine a situation where it would be necessary, but I don't plan on being around for it.
After the requisite "sorry" and a rapid door slam, I said (under the door) that we needed to go, and it was very important that we do it soon. I opined that the fact that he was taller and quite a bit more manly in appearance would indicate that some things might be happening behind the scenes, and in fact this new need for shaving… things… would probably be another strong indicator. I further postulated that it might be nice for there to be two of them rather than one of him, and that issues of hair growth and gender identity might be sorted out in fairly short order if he could manage to get ready in a few minutes.
There was a silence, followed by a mournful, hollow voice, made so in the way that only a bathroom can.
"We've been together so long, Deasil."
It was a strange life, this.
"I know, Arthur…and Molly." I bowed my head against the door. It was cool against my forehead. "It must be the most intimate thing to be together in…in that way. It's just that … well, I think things are going to get bad if we don't do something soon, and even though I heard that from a complete lunatic I still think it's true. But I need your help to make it better, because I've got to find out from Molly how to fix this, and that means I have to sort of go in and look for it. Do you think that would be all right? I mean, I know I kind of just met her, but I think I've also known her for a long time."
There was no response, nothing that I could hear.
"Look, you two, I know this has to be impossibly hard, but I'm …I'm worried about you. I know I'm not your blood, but you've been my only family as long as I can remember, and I don't … I don't want anything to happen to you. I'd do anything to help you, and I owe you at least that, at the very least that. You gave up so much for me." I closed my eyes and thumped my forehead against the door. "I want to make this right."
The knob turned slowly, and the door opened. I was faced by a pair of knobbly, unusually smooth knees in, well, an abomination of a housecoat. It was the kind of coat that not only should never be seen outside of a house, not even to get the paper in as it would lower property values, but also should perhaps never leave a back bedroom on the third floor. With black velvet drapes. Wool should never have been forced into that shape, and that collection of colors, no, that bad-tempered mob of miscreant colors would have put a blind cave-dwelling fish right off its lunch, whatever it is that they eat, which I imagine is not that savory to begin with.
His hand was on my shoulder. "You've been as good as my own son for many years," he said in a slightly higher voice. "I trust you. We'll go along with you."
"If you trust me…" I said, my voice unsteady with emotion, "…if you really trust me, then you'll take a match to that bloody housecoat."
"Language, dear," he said creakily, but there was a hint of amusement in his voice. "Is it really that awful?"
"As much as it pains me to say it," I said, "It pains me more to look at it."
My head got a bit of a thump, but their hearts were not in it.
"I'll just finish getting ready," he said.
I took the door handle, and began to close it, saying, "You know, Arthur, there will come a time, probably soon…"
"Yes?"
"When you'll regret shaving some of that." I closed the door quickly.
•
I went downstairs, which was kind of fabulous, in the sense that I got to walk down a slightly round staircase to the front room, and if I'd been wearing a flowing gown, not that I took after Arthur but I gained a certain appreciation for that, then I'd have been stunning, or as stunning as a guy like me would be in a flowing gown. Well, maybe we should be abandoning this train of thought, or more like leaping off of this train of thought to an almost certain death that is still more appealing than the sight of me in that gown. But it still felt fabulous – wait a minute, I just want to point out that it's not that I would actually be wearing the dress, but that I wouldn't look good in it, that is at issue here. I mean, Arthur didn't always look like a slab of beef in chiffon – sometimes he really carried it off. Am I getting off the subject? Probably.
When I ended my fabulous walk down the stairs, my mother was talking with a soft-looking man, a lanky, gentle-looking man who held humor in his face like a present he was giving out, but slowly. He had dusty-brown hair and his entire, I mean entire outfit matched it. It was as if his head was trying to hide in plain sight over his body. He paused from a joke he was telling my mother and locked eyes with me as I came closer. It's hard to describe, but compared to the way my mother looked at me sometimes, which was a fierce sort of affinity, his look was warm, inclusive, and knowing. He was someone who knew me as a baby, and who loved my parents. I wanted to know this man.
"Deasil," my mother said, "This is Remus Lupin. He's an old friend of ours."
"Deasil," he said, shaking my hand.
"Remus," I returned in kind.
He looked back and forth between my mother and me and said, "He's got your eyes, all right. But he looks quite a bit like James, too. Trouble-maker?"
"His own special kind," she said.
"Good," he said, turning back to me, mischief playing across his kind face. "Lily thought I might be able to help you with some magic tutoring, if you're interested."
"Yes, definitely. How about a crash course in – what's it called?"
"Legilimency," my mother said, watching my father in the next room fussing over my brother.
"I think we might want to start with something a little simpler," Remus said.
"Well," I said, "I'm pretty good at hearing thoughts already – maybe you could just… think about what you know about it?"
He looked surprised, then thoughtful. "Never tried it that way," he said.
"Moony," my father said, "are you close to that time?"
"No, no, it's not my time of the month just yet."
No way. Totally had me fooled.
"Well, I must say," I said, shaking my head, "and I don't mean this in a bad way – I'm not sure what the good way is, but I mean no harm, anyway, when I say you're the most mannish-looking woman I've ever met. I mean, maybe Arthur wasn't so good at the cross-dressing thing but you're really good."
"Errr… not that 'time-of-the-month'. I'm a …werewolf." It came out as an attempt at being businesslike, as though there were a business where being a werewolf might be expected. But it didn't quite ring true.
"Werewolf?"
"There wolf. There."
"Shut it, James." His manner had changed a little. The mischief had vanished, replaced with rue, and possibly regret.
"Moony, how often do I get to make that joke in front of someone who hasn't heard it before?"
"By now? Never."
"Son," my father said, wandering over to Remus with my little brother, which indicated that this was no problem, "Remus is one of my oldest friends, and the dearest one of all of them. Really. He is intelligent, genteel, and well-read in all things magical. The only thing about him is that once a month he sees the moon and goes all hairy."
"Everybody loves you," I said.
It was a little quiet in there.
"Of course we love him, Deasil –"
"You look like you've got something you want to apologize for," I said, fumbling towards something.
Remus looked at me briefly before casting his eyes down and smiling a little. "You're sharp for someone who just got here," he said.
"Did you choose this life?"
"No," he said, returning his eyes to mine, "but I've chosen to live with it."
"So has everyone else," I said.
He looked a little irritated. "I know everyone has their own set of problems –"
"No. I mean everyone has chosen to live with you."
More silence. I was quite the silence factory. I must have been fabricating it in my sleep. He was examining his shoes again, but that tiny smile returned. "You're like your mother, do you know that? Smart and kind. Different, certainly – but you can't argue with genetics, I suppose."
I felt like the favor was returned. "I'm very happy to meet you," I said.
"Oh, we've met," he said, a little of his manner returning. "I held you when you were a baby, you know. It must be strange, hearing that from people you don't remember."
"A little," I admitted. It was funny. I kept feeling like I had something to live up to, even though I'd only been a little boy, like I needed to act a certain way or else I'd be seen as… I wasn't sure what. I told him this as we prepared to go to the hospital.
"As an impostor," he said softly, so that no one else would hear. "You feel like someone's going to tell you that you don't belong here, right?"
I wasn't used to having the truth gun pointed at me, but there it was. Direct hit. "Pretty much," I said. "Sometimes this feels like it's mine and sometimes it feels like it could never be."
"Stay around a little longer," he said. "I think the scales will tip in your favor."
•
Remus, Ron and I were sitting in a small room inside the hospital. I didn't know who St. Mungo was, and couldn't figure out how a secular culture somehow made rooms for saints. I mean, if magic was around, what would they take for a miracle? Anyway. Remus had agreed to sit there and think about exploratory Legilimency, and I was supposed to sit and listen to him do it. Yeah, that sounded logical. Sometimes the newness and the ludicrous nature of all of this, from my point of view, piled up around me like dirty dishes. I had to hand-wash each one before I could get anywhere. It kind of made sense that I could hear him. My consciousness of a life that now continued to change, rather than being folded in upon itself every day, left me with a vacuum of sorts, an emptiness of actual experience that pressured the world to fill it. And since I had a magical nature, many years of unexpressed magic had built up in me, and made things that were otherwise very difficult to do fairly automatic (for the moment) to the point of being constantly accidental, like Tourette's. Difficult to feel good about my magic when it's like having a garden party around sprinklers that keep turning on.
Remus said, "I'm ready when you are."
I had been holding my head in my hands, and I sat up and stared at him.
I can't describe it, really. The best I can do is to say that it's like hearing someone's voice in your head telling you things that you'd never heard before but that seemed familiar and now here they were, your thoughts, as if you'd come up with them.
It was a few minutes, punctuated by a few much-needed downward glances. Lupin was a good man. But you know, it's hard to walk around even in a good man's head. Someone named Tonks that he kept at arm's length, who had helped him research the more obscure aspects of Legilimency. Amusement mixed with jealousy as he watched James and Lily at school, where he'd first began to study the reading of the mind. And last, unrelated, the sight of thick black hairs puncturing his skin from within, clumping horribly between his knuckles as his fingers shortened and his hand elongated, tearing each tendon against his most desperate will, into a familiar terrible shape.
Someone had made me silent, finally.
"You saw," he said. Gentle and resigned.
"You're afraid of what you might do," I said. There weren't enough sighs. I was in a bed of them, tear-shaped, gray blooms of despair. It took me a moment to remind myself that the despair was not mine. "What would happen if you were to be alone in a room with someone you love when it came over you. That's your nightmare, right? That something horrible would happen, and you would wake up afterwards, when it was too late to stop yourself?"
"Yes."
"I think," I said, as I got to my feet and pulled him up with me, holding his arm stiffly as though I were a marionette, barely able to move myself, "that there is a difference between letting yourself turn into a werewolf, by not taking a potion, and letting yourself feel anything at all."
Something in him shrank away, though he didn't move. I looked him right in the eye.
It's all right to want to protect people from the wolf. But not the man. It's you that you're protecting. Why don't you let someone else help you with that?
I wonder still why it was such a surprise, in a face already gentle and compassionate, to see his eyes fill with tears.
"If you don't need my help anymore," he said, "I have to… to go see someone."
"We'll muddle through," I said. He clasped my arm, firmly, then turned and vanished from the spot.
"Like Fawkes," Ron said.
"Who?"
"Dumbledore's pet phoenix. Not a pet, really, they don't put up with that sort of thing. Every once in a while the bird gets to looking old and decrepit, and then he sort of goes up in a burst of flame, then a new baby Fawkes crawls out of the ashes, good as new. Lupin's been needing to have that broken for him for a long time. Maybe now he'll stop giving Tonks the brush-off. Kind of pointless, really. Bit of a foregone conclusion."
Tonks. Nymphadora. Always those round eyes, no matter what color. All he ever wanted.
"Yeah," I said. "No contest."
"Look," he said, coming around to stand with me, "I know you have a headful from Lupin, but… well, I just wanted to say I … bloody hell, I know you could just get it out of me, but something about that bothers me – I saw how you were looking at him and I'd just as soon – well, I'll just say it. I'm glad you're back with us, mate. I like that Lily and James are so happy, and you brought us back our parents, sort of, and you've woken up my sister and that, so I guess this is… thanks."
His face, open and guileless, smile-lined and freckled. A face you expected to see laughing. At this moment he wasn't.
"Be good to her," he said. "She's my only sister, and we'll all stomp you if she gets hurt. One after the other, and maybe all at once."
I tried not to think of what it seemed like I could do with magic. I tried very hard to think of his love for his sister who'd been through so much, as he had, and of the youngest boy whose only ally growing up was at times surely Ginny.
"I'd hold still for it," I said. He nodded.
•
What I wasn't prepared for was – well, actually, I wasn't prepared for any of this, but what I was least prepared for was what I saw in that hospital room.
Arthur was seated in a dark wood chair next to a bed, holding the hand of the woman who lay there. She was very still. Not still like sleep, or still like at peace.
Still like she wasn't there.
The way he looked at her face was unbearable. Longing, deep affection, and loss, loss greater than anything I could imagine in my short life. He had been with her, they had walked together and loved and had children and then in a moment it had all disappeared. Replaced by something infinitely closer and further away at the same time, a compulsive existence, a crushing together of selves, each thought split, of two minds about everything.
To fight the one you love the most for your own identity is a horror, but to surrender yourself so that the other might live is a tragic, rending nightmare.
It was the face of a woman I knew parts of but had never met, exactly, that I was drawn to. For someone her age there were precious few lines on her brow, and not much around the eyes. She had continued to age but her body had not experienced the events in life that leave a mark, and looked strangely smooth and delicate, as if made of paper, a hollow thing, a fragile thing.
"I look dead," Arthur said.
I moved to his side.
"I haven't seen myself in so long, I don't look familiar."
"Time's passed," I said.
"Without me," he said.
After a moment of silence he said, "Or me."
"At least we've been together," he said.
"That's what I always wanted," he said.
"Is that what made this happen?" he said.
"Yes, and … and I … I knew it wasn't right. When we married, I knew … we were meant to be together."
I hated to interrupt, but it seemed like the thing to do. "Molly, you arranged this, didn't you."
"After all I had lost, Deasil, all I had to lose. Even if I had to die. There had to be order."
I thought for a moment. "Call her, will you?"
Arthur looked up at me, finally. So tired, stretched thin from the pressure. His eyes focused momentarily on me before wandering, pulled away by a universe divided by two. Identity rippled across his face like dappled sunlight, and he sighed deeply.
"Pella," he said.
There was a loud crack in the room, which made me want to jump into my own shirt pocket. I suppose I sometimes startle a little easy. I was looking for the first time at a person who wasn't human.
She was very small, no more than two and a half feet tall. Her skin was pale and wrinkled, but finely so. Her large ears drooped towards her back and her eyes were luminous and yellowed. She was dressed in a short linen tunic and sandals. Her shoulders were lean but strong.
She looked at Molly's body, then at Arthur, then reached tentatively, gently towards Arthur, and adjusted his collar, which was a little askew. Then she placed her thin fingers over his.
"It wasn't right," Arthur said.
"I know," Pella said, in a perfect, high voice. It made me think of the sound that a wet finger makes on a wineglass rim.
"He didn't care, he would have destroyed everything. My family, everyone. All…"
"You prevented it," Pella said. "You saved the child. Both of them."
"But what has she done to herself?" Arthur said. His chin dropped and his free hand came up to press haphazardly against his face.
"She has the knowledge," Pella said, her voice airy and worn-through. "She has put it away with herself, in its place."
She looked at me over her shoulder, her eyes bright. "Along with a part of you. You can find this place."
I actually gulped. It was her knowing look. I felt it in my backside, if that makes any sense, and why start now. I wanted to talk with her for a long time, but later. For the moment, I felt galvanized and ready. I heard my own voice from a distance, as though it had started without me. "Molly, look at me now."
•
I close the door. They're off to a meeting of the order. Such good people, so full of enthusiasm and humor even in the face of these horrors, these awful times. I don't see how I could be that way. Even in my best moments I still see my brothers and when I think of my children I can't help but feel my chest tighten. Not my boys. Not my boys, and not the girl I'm carrying inside me. But it's all children, isn't it? Their little boy, who feels like one of my own even with that dark hair of his. He's a sweet one, rarely cries at all. Not like those squalling twins. My life. The din was quite overwhelming at times.
He's fussing. I don't know why. None of the usual things work. He's standing up in his little crib, holding the bars with his little hands. I don't quite want to leave him, so I send a Patronus to Arthur. Not that I feel incapable of handling one fussy baby, not after six of my own. I just want to know ours are all right. It's curious, but when I hear one baby cry, I always feel the need to know if any of mine are. Maybe I just want to give comfort when I can. And get some as well. My husband. This dear man, my dear man. No one knows what I know. I remember him laughing about all the practices we had to have to put seven quaffles through the hoop. And his private voice, the one only I have heard, telling me how dedicated he is to practice.
Merlin. That noise. The front door must have exploded. Death Eaters or worse. My babies. And this one. What can I do, it's only me. Fabian, Gideon, they were so strong, how can I possibly…
Wait a moment.
If he's mine. But they are all mine. I see all children in each one. If he's mine. If I can hide him. I can hide him behind myself. I can make him unknowable to them, but he must be mine, our blood must be shared –
Noises downstairs. Ignore them. A sharp small pain in my thumb, and then a quick silencing spell on the boy. This will hurt him a little, but it's for his own good. Our hands together, slick, mine is shaking. I whisper some words, remembering Lily, James, Remus, Sirius, my boys, my unborn, and I hope that what I have to give is enough. It must be enough. I love this boy like he was my own. No. He is my own. We share blood now. I can place myself between him and harm. My wand arm twists and points at his face. There is a flash.
The door splinters. It's so much worse. He's come for the boy, why the boy, what could he have to do with this. Doesn't matter. That ugly thing, red-eyed and less than human. He will not be allowed to. He's an aberration, a destroyer of life, of all that's right. There will be order. His wand comes up. My unborn girl. You'll be safe. You'll be safe.
There will be order.
Dead green light. A last, fluttering vision – my husband's face, twisted in fear and horror, as he stands in the doorway. Then only green, and the darkness.
My home. I need to be with him, more than anything I have ever felt.
And then I am.
•
Bill is holding Ron, having just taken him from Charlie. He smiles a lot when holding the baby. He loves his brothers more easily than any of them seem to, maybe because he's the oldest. Straight-backed and solid, but a little wilder than he lets on. He thinks it's a secret, perhaps having forgotten that I was a young man not too long ago. His looks at his brothers are looks I once gave to my brothers, when I thought my father wasn't looking.
Molly is off at the Potters', watching their boy while they go to another meeting. She needs to know she's doing something, contributing in some way, though it's too dangerous for her to be more active. When something needs doing, she won't wait until she's asked, and surely when there's a child involved she comes on the jump. Six, and soon to be seven, and yet there will never be enough children for my beloved, who has enough love, and worry, for every child there is. I'm still surprised at how much love I can have for her, after all this time – but it's been easy, really. She's an easy woman to love. All I had to do was know her.
The twins are following Percy around, waving their arms and making some incomprehensible gestures that may be intended to look like spell-casting. Percy is reasonably sure that they can't cast spells yet and is trying to ignore them, or at least not dignify their antics with a response. I'm not sure where he learned this strategy of ignoring from – he's only five - but it seems to make those two little terrors even more enthusiastic. I know he'll figure it out soon enough.
A glowing patronus enters the room – it's Molly's wolverine. A momentary thrill of fear passes through me until I hear her voice, not frightened, just – that little tone she saves for me when she wants an indulgence, a small comfort. I smile and call Bill over. You'll have to mind the boys, and Charles, you'll help, won't you. If the twins get too persistent, get them ready for bed, and I'll be back in a few minutes. Only – where have they gotten off to? I spend a few minutes looking for them, finding Percy by himself in the kitchen, and go upstairs into their room, walk down the stairs again and hear a floorboard creak behind me, and there they are, two grinning little angels creeping behind me. I grab them both and hug them amidst squeals of laughter. I love all of my boys. A moment of admonishment that they pay very little attention to, and then I say to them, "Daddy's going to go 'pop' now." Their eyes grow wide and they perch a few steps above the living room floor, watching. I give them a Weasley grin, a grand bow, and snap my fingers.
Though apparating is never pleasant, I distract myself by imagining their faces and their delight at the extra-loud crack I leave them with.
I appear just inside the gate to the – the door, the front door is missing. Burnt smell of spell discharge. Molly. I can't panic. Wood fragments inside. A voice, a scream from above. I throw myself up the stairs. I can't let anything happen to her. Pale, ugly light from a room down the hallway. A hissing sound like laughter. My legs are heavy. Nightmare. I reach the doorway and see her, see her in green light. Horror in her face, crushing something in me, and then her eyes focus on me, and soften. Don't do this. Don't, we're supposed to be together, we belong –
She falls.
The dark figure moves. The child cries. Wand. Green. Flash.
Something burns my face. After image of a black shadow, like a knife, shattering.
I'm alone in here, with H- with the boy. He whimpers. In front of him, on the floor, is Molly. Molly's body. Slack. Empty, not her anymore. She's always so full of – life. Not any more. My life. My only. No, this is not right. She was meant for me. We are supposed to be TOGETHER
Oh.
Hello, love.
Am I mad?
We'll see.
•
I fall back, sweating. I feel dizzy. Full. Too much them, too little me. I'm stumbling, I hit something and it falls, there are hands on me but I don't want them. I don't want to touch anyone. What am I doing? Sitting. Something wet and slippery in my hands. It's my head. I'm soaked in sweat. Good, I can feel that. It's my feeling. Only mine. Just mine.
A growl escapes me and I thrash back to my feet. "You wouldn't believe it," I say, breathing hard, my lungs, my chest. "You wouldn't believe it." I'm returning. "I'm returning," I say aloud. "Somebody … somebody write this down. Write it all down."
Things appear out of nowhere. I start talking. People start writing.
•
We see things that we are not immediately conscious of all of the time. You might walk right past the bundle of important papers you left on the table specifically so you wouldn't forget them and then get to your meeting and as you sit in the chair have a vision of them appear in your head, you remember walking by them but you didn't act on it – or maybe a note was left to you by your significant other and it was in plain view on the fridge but you coasted by as if in a dream and went down to get into your car to go to an important meeting and find it up on blocks, the car, not the meeting, that wouldn't make any sense, but as you're staring in shock at your car you remember first the red pen and the emphatic shape of the writing and then a few words come in, "wheels" and "gone" and "bastards", and then the whole thing edges into your consciousness, where it had been all along, though. Oh, you mean that seven foot rabbit.
By the way, I don't really go to meetings, and I don't have a car, and I would hope my other would wake me and tell me my car had been violated rather than let me lie in and write me a note, so I don't know where all of that came from. Ditto vis-à-vis the rabbit.
This train of thought is actually about how things that I didn't see when I was remembering Molly and Arthur, but that became apparent after someone in the room came to her senses, threw the paper and quill over her shoulder, and extracted my memory of their memories from my twitching head. Bright woman, Hermione. Although I must say she was initially swayed by my authoritative-sounding ranting. After playing these memories back in a bowl like the one we had back at the house, complete with appropriate gasping by everyone present except Arthur, who sat still and looked at nothing (and I at him, having seen these movies enough), Hermione went to a corner of the room and huddled with Pella, who seemed a little taken aback with Hermione's intensity, but was gamely interpreting what I'd seen and engaging in a whispered debate.
"The magic was in the doing of it," I heard her say in her clear sopranino. Hermione shook her head and began another theory, only to be interrupted by Pella once again. "It was in the doing, not the spell. It is not for me to say the way. It is what she did by trying to do."
My mother spoke from Arthur's side. "Why can you not say how it was done? Molly needs your help!"
"It is her way," the elf said. "She must be… no, I can not."
I became aware of Luna in the doorway, nodding her head and beaming.
"But surely…" my mother said.
Beside her Arthur – who was now a head taller than her – swayed on his feet slightly. "Very close in here," he said unsteadily.
"Someone open a window," Hermione offered.
"Not that kind of close," I said.
Luna was staring at the elf, taking her in and still nodding.
"This seems to be reaching some sort of crisis point," my mother said.
"Please," Hermione said, her voice rising, "there must be a way you can help us!"
Ron's voice suddenly, clear in the room. "What is it, Luna?"
I like Luna, because she too can silence a room. But it doesn't bother her, while it makes me a little uncomfortable. She said, "She can't help us."
"What?" I said.
"Why not?" Hermione was almost shouting.
"Because," Luna said softly, "Molly's spell was intended to hide H–Deasil from Voldemort, to make him unplottable, in a way. Has anyone noticed that we can't say the name he was born with?"
"What?" I said.
"She's right," my father said after a pause. "I thought I was being respectful of, you know, what he's grown up being called, but I came to realize when I was talking to Lily about him, that his name, it's sort of – on the tip of my tongue." He shook his head. "Merlin, did I live with him for four years and only call him 'Son'?"
"No," my mother said, "you also called him 'sport'."
"What?" I said.
"So it's the same spell that hid Molly, until – until someone went looking for her…" Hermione said. "Someone who wasn't in her mind when she cast the spell."
"But why wouldn't the spell allow his family to know him?" my mother asked. "We knew her thoughts, we knew what she was doing…"
"What did they name this boy?" Luna said.
"Deasil, we all know that."
"Why?"
"Because … because," Ron said, "it was something she didn't get right!"
"Huh?" I said.
"She went to cast the spell," he said, "and mucked it up a bit. It didn't hide him from Voldemort, it hid parts of him from us. Everyone she thought of, including herself."
"She didn't think of me," Luna said. "So it seemed obvious to me."
I thought it was still a leap, and that Luna was pretty sharp.
"Then why is he alive? Why did he survive the killing curse?" Hermione said.
"I know that," my mother said. She sighed and looked at me. "It was something I'd looked into shortly after he was born. Molly and I had talked about it a great deal. It's an old magic, basically a blood magic, that she forced by will and blood to work."
"That was the spell she cast?" I asked.
"No," she said. "She mingled your blood so she could have the right to hide you from Voldemort. Her spell went awry, but in the act of placing herself between you and harm, she invoked this old magic. She could be struck by a spell, even killed by it, but you were now protected." Her eyes glistened as she looked at Molly's body. "Her desire to sacrifice herself for you saved you."
"It was in the doing, not the spell," Pella said softly.
"What?" I said.
"And when Voldemort cast the killing curse at her she inadvertently hid herself away -" Hermione said.
"In the deepest center of her life," Luna said.
"As she had learned from Pella," my mother said.
"All right, people," I said. "Summary, please, before my head explodes. Sorry, bad choice of words. Sorry. But are we saying…what are we saying? Dad?"
"Okay." He squared his shoulders. "Molly shared blood with you so she could use some blood protection to protect you - in addition to Ginny, who was already protected - from Voldemort, and also attempted to use an elfish spell to make you unknowable to him, to hide the knowledge of you away, so he wouldn't think you were named in the prophecy and perhaps leave, I suppose. But she made a habitual error in her wand movement, causing the spell to go a little differently - in fact instead of you being unknowable to all but your family, it meant that you were partially unknowable to only your family. Not her fault, honest error, really, but in any event Voldemort cast the killing curse at her, and she appears to have hidden herself away, also using elfish magic similar, I think to –"
"To the magic elves use to make themselves invisible in a house," Hermione blurted, then looked embarrassed. Pella nodded reluctantly.
"Quite so," my father said.
I found myself moving to stand between Arthur and Molly. My mind was dull, and sluggish, and wanted to be away from all of this, and I was down fifty points, but there was just this one last turn of the key. I grasped his hand and placed it over hers, as Pella approached, with care and composure, to reverse something she was now able to see.
"She hid inside her home," I said. "You are her home, Arthur."
There was a warm feeling, and kind of like being wrung out like a towel, but in a good way. It was very bright in the room. I could see the blue of veins under Ginny's skin, and my father's hair stood on end. Lots of electricity. It was all – a lot. It was very much. And I must say, that in some goofy way I loved everyone in the room very much, and they weren't originally my feelings, but someone was helping me out, lending them to me, so I could see.
The energy in the room ebbed like a filament in a bulb. There were lots of redheads here, looking at the two people beside me, one standing and one lying down, all of them wide-eyed and still. I looked down at Arthur and Molly and saw what was different.
Her eyes were just barely open.
From a long distance away she came in, like a long slow tide. Her gaze flickered upward to Arthur, then settled on me. Miraculous lines appeared gradually around her eyes. She was smiling.
When she spoke it was with a voice of paper and wool, coarse with disuse.
"Harry," she said. "Your name is Harry."
•
"You were right," Arthur said a while later. Molly was sleeping after a long series of restorative charms and potions had been applied. All of the Weasleys but Bill were off eating and the room was otherwise clear of all but the three of us, her sleeping, him standing and maybe wishing he had brought better flats. His eldest son had gone to get him some clothes to wear and possibly get some distance from the weirdness of it all. Arthur held himself differently, as you do when you grow past six feet, and there was an unfamiliar yet charming undercurrent of whimsy in him, along with a completely unexpected philosophical bent which the crowd in his head must have pushed to the rear. His manner had gone from, well, befitting a man in a dress to more traditionally fatherly, and it was enough to make me wonder about myself that I found this utterly natural. But he was a caring man, a good man, and this showed even through his years of befuddlement and double-occupancy.
"It was mostly Luna, I think," I said.
"Well, I suppose she is quite brilliant, and we do owe her and everyone else a great deal - but that isn't what I meant. And especially Pella." She had recognized the elfish "secret-keeper" spell that Molly had somewhat cast, now that it was unhidden from us, and reversed it. "By the way, young man, do you fancy my only daughter?"
Uh.
"Fancy her?" Nice stall, play the dumb American.
"Find her attractive? Want to get to know her? Like her?"
"Errr…not wasting any time being Dad, are you?"
"No time to waste. Not wasting any time blowing up the living room, are you?"
"I suppose not. We just skipped right to that advanced stage of …whatever it is. No hand-holding – directly to explosives."
His gaze was direct, and no-nonsense, and kind at the same time. "I know I'm a bit out of practice at fathering… but you must be feeling a lot of things right now, and some of them may be… pleasant, if even a bit overwhelming…"
"What about you? You've been on hold for fourteen years, and looking very good for a man of your advanced age in a dress made for a much smaller woman. As if time never passed for you, really."
"But it did, my lad, it did. Ah, but that was a deft change of subject, wasn't it?" he said, and his face grew still. "You haven't answered my question, young man. Do you… fancy… my only daughter?"
"I, uh," I said. "Okay. She's beautiful, and smart, which isn't surprising, given her mother, and yes, I want to get to know her more, that could go on for a while, maybe a really long time, I mean there's a lot to her, and yes, I like her, if that's what this roaring, bubbling happy thing I'm bathing in is. And even if you had another daughter, it would still be her." But I have no idea what any of this entails, and that feels ridiculous to me, though I'm not sure why. "And I don't know how any of this is supposed to work, but I have a feeling that there is a large group of red-headed men who have some ideas about how this is all supposed to go. Slowly, at a great distance, with me in shackles and her in unbreakable long overalls. Baggy unbreakable overalls. With a large padlock on them, that only they have the keys to. At least that's what I was getting from Charlie. And constant surveillance. Though I think she'd pound anyone for trying to tell her what to do with her life, and I'd have to be on her side there, even though I understand the male, uh, protective thing, but she wouldn't take that very well, because I think her brothers want for her to be okay so much that they think it's their right to intervene without her agreement, or anyway, that's what Charlie thinks, and I know, because he looked at me earlier and I heard him grumbling about it, even though Percy had shown them how wrong that was - so, uh…what were we talking about?"
"You were right," he said again, shifting a bit, and it seemed he was a little uncomfortable.
"About what?"
"The shaving. It does itch a bit."
•
It was rare that I had time to myself. Usually one of the matches was with me, making sure I stayed out of trouble or explaining what things did when you touched them and why it wasn't always a good idea, but I was a bit inquisitive, and my mind was hungry for input, and I lacked common sense, which is a hell of a mixture. I was wandering through the halls of the hospital and wondering if I'd seen any of this part of the building before and if I were in fact completely lost, when I opened a door to what looked like a lounge and realized I'd made a huge circle.
Ginny was pacing. Big steps, every other tile, very methodical. I watched three circuits before I thought of saying anything, because she was wonderful to watch, and I wanted to see her without anyone else making her be anything else.
Five circuits later, she saw me and shrieked. I remained still, but the couch and lamp were very alarmed.
"Knock, whistle, call, clear your throat, throw up a flare, anything, just don't bloody sneak up on me," she said, and it got me, I mean I was seriously going to sneak up on her now at every opportunity. Yes, it was wrong. Irresistibly, beautifully wrong.
"Sorry," I said, trying for contriteness, " I didn't know this cell was occupied." Not trying that hard, obviously.
"May as well put me in one," she said. "I'm more beside myself than Mum and Dad."
I had to laugh a little at that. "What's up your mind?" I said.
She gave me a very special look that said, I'm not going to find you in any way charming now, even though I do.
"You seem…" I searched for a term. "Preoccupied."
"What gave it away? Was it my dashing out of the room when Mum woke up? That never seems to come across the way I want it to. So open to misinterpretation. Someone might think I was a bit thrown by the situation, couldn't handle it and turned tail and ran like a little – coward." She slowed down as I took her hand in mine and squeezed it gently.
"You're not a coward."
"No," she said, "you're not a coward. All of the things you've had thrown at you and you're still there. I've only –"
"You've only just seen your mother awake for the first time in seventeen years."
"Put it like that, why don't you."
"How do you feel?"
She took her hand back, slowly. Like she didn't want to, but whatever she had, she didn't want to get any on me.
"I want to feel happy," she said, looking at her hands. "I wanted her to just hug me and – fix everything. But now that this thing I've dreamed of my whole life is here, all my stupid brain can do is think of how mad I am she's been gone all this time. This was supposed to make everything okay, and now I know it won't, that it's still up to me, and I … well, I just hate it. I hate the whole thing."
"Wait a minute," I said. "What's broken? What needs to be fixed? You grew up, you've survived lots of things, you're here. You're complete. I know you aren't happy about everything that got you here, but that's all any of us gets – you know, we're born, things happen, we are who we are, right? And she did her best, as you know. She did what she could."
She put her hand to her forehead, her hair a red curtain over her features. "I know, I know. She did what she could, and it was to save you, and that helps, I mean lately when I'm thinking that I wish I had known her at all when I was growing up and I get mad at her for leaving me … leaving us," she said, chiding herself, "I also think that you lived because of her, that she protected you, and that makes it easier." She glanced at me before walking towards the window and fiddling with a curtain that, though it didn't really need adjustment, appeared to appreciate the attention. She stopped before it got serious. "And she made sure I was safe somehow, I mean she beat the killing curse for me, so I want to, you know, thank her or something. I keep imagining saying to her, 'so, good job about the saving me from death bit, it's just that I'm furious with you because I didn't get to grow up with you, other than all of the talking to you I did, but that was a little one-sided, wasn't it, so it didn't count – though it did mean a lot to me at the time, I mean for a soulless shell of a woman she was quite the good listener." She closed her eyes. "Yes, she's a bit conflicted, isn't she."
"Remember something, Ginny – you've been thinking about this for a lot longer than she has. You might have a bit of a pileup there, and all she'll want is to see her daughter. Maybe slow it to a trickle to start out with, you know?"
She sighed, and I thought she was going to accept it. Silly me. When her face came around to mine it was angry. "You were…listening to me, weren't you."
Say no. "Yes, but –"
"I know, I know – I'm bloody shouting it from the rooftops to you. No matter what I do, you hear everything that's in my head –"
"Not everything, only what –"
"Yeah, only what I tell you, right? Only maybe I don't bloody want to tell you everything all the time, I mean how am I supposed to have any – " She stopped, then looked horrified, then covered her face.
Not a word, Deasil. "Mystery?" Oh, well.
"You heard that. Brilliant."
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to, I can try to stop, wait - why mystery?"
"I can't have any pride around you," she said, and her voice had as much pleading as anger in it.
"I told you, I can just not listen, I won't hear any –"
"You already know everything important, though, don't you?" she said, her eyes bright with tears. "I don't have to say anything, I don't get to decide what I tell you, I don't get to keep any secrets from you, any! Nothing at all!"
"Ginny, what do you want from me? I'll tell you anything, show you anything, and we'll be even. How bad would it be, to not have to say a word, to not worry about what to tell me, to not have to keep secrets for once? Would I be so bad to be the keeper of your secrets?"
She was breathing heavily, and her hair surrounded her downturned face. "And what … what secrets do you have that no one knows? You can remember only a week at most – what have you got to hide?"
I thought about it. There was really only one thing I hadn't said to anyone, anyone being her, and it was because it was big and sudden and very close to my core if not filling it entirely, and because I didn't know how she would take it, but I hadn't been here very long and in retrospect now I look back on that moment and think that I had everything to lose, but the way I was thinking then it seemed wrong to not be truthful, world-breakingly wrong, because at the start of anything truth makes it solid and anything else makes it weak, and it wasn't so much bravery at facing something but the relief of not avoiding it that drove me, stumbling and gasping, into the place I was.
"I don't have a thing to hide from you," I said, deciding it. "Look – I'm new here, to being alive and in a family and around other people and myself and you and – and there is nothing like being around you, I mean there's words and fire and broomsticks and eyes and flowers that you smell like that I've never even seen and shouting and absolutely the best hug imaginable, better than anything, better than that tart we had for dessert the other night or flying or anything, though flying with you is pretty spectacular too, and the drapes dance for you and the rugs beg from you and things kind of explode every once in a while and I, I think it's the best thing ever, all of it, and it's my doing, the drapes and the rugs, I couldn't stop it if I tried to because when you're in front of me it's just all I can do to keep from bursting or something, and you know I've now met a few women, not including my mother, and they're all great people except one or two of them but it's just … not … the same, at all, I mean there was fire, things caught on fire," – she was laughing, and it filled me and fueled me " – and I heard you and it wasn't that I tried to, it was that it hurt not to, and I know I haven't been here long but I know I'm supposed to hear you and you're supposed to hear me, even if it comes out like this, all … crazy and spilling over, because this feels so big and I don't know, there must be a word, or something to describe this, but I don't know it, and I don't know what to say but I just want to say it so badly…"
Oh, chocolate, dark wood, fire mane, cheeks of cream, every detail vivid and exquisite, like it was when I saw her for the first time, only couched now in knowing and great affinity. The shine on her face stirred me, my hands wanted hers, and I felt my entire body awakening and announcing itself to me, and when she came close it was almost painful, the closer she was, until she closed the distance and put her arms around my neck, dizzyingly near to me, and all I could see were those eyes.
"I'll never tell," she said breathlessly. "We're even."
At that moment Hermione entered the room, saw us, dropped an armload of scrolls and made a sound like a balloon being violated.
We sprang apart, and a waiting-room chair and a privacy screen separated as well. It must have appeared to be quite the pas-de-quatre. If there is such a thing. Anyway, I defy anyone to describe a clinch involving said people and furniture in a few short graceful words, except perhaps for the French who probably already have another beautiful phrase for it.
"Ginny," Hermione said steadily, "I need a word."
"Glarfia," I said.
"N – what?" Ten points.
"How's that for a word?"
"Lovely," she said, getting her steam back. "Ginny, if you wouldn't mind." She turned and left the room.
Ginny looked after her, then she looked at me, regretfully.
I said, "If it's a little wrong, that makes it sweeter."
A grin that seemed unbreakable appeared on her face. "That's pretty wise."
"You go and see what she wants. I'm just going to go pour myself into a cup or something."
Another giggle, priceless and eternally sweet. She followed after Hermione.
I sat down somewhere, not sure where, aware I'd broken a sweat, and feeling like I'd just run a hundred miles in galoshes.
"She's a willful young woman," my mother said from the doorway behind me, incidentally startling me from my boneless state, so startling I thought my hair was going to pop out of my skin. I smacked my hand over my eyes and took a deep breath before turning to look at her.
"She's very strong," she went on, observing me, "stronger than she knows mostly, and also not as strong as she thinks she is. Do you know what I mean?"
"I think so. She got really strong protecting herself, but she's vulnerable inside."
Her lips pursed into a faint smile. "Well done, darling, and what does this mean for you?"
"That I take great care to respect her strength and … and … mum, you're watching me like a hawk. I know she's vulnerable. You spent far more time raising her than me, and I know you want to protect her, and I do too, but maybe in a different way."
She looked so wounded that I had to remember what I said, and then I smacked my head again. "That came out completely wrong," I said quickly.
She sighed, and for the first time I saw a tear roll down her cheek. "You didn't say anything wrong. I'm only – I'm so sorry you weren't here with us all this time. Here I am giving my own son a talking to as if you were a stranger, when nothing could be further from the truth."
"Well, it's funny, though," I said, moving over to her. "I know I'm made of you, and I come from you, and I think we understand each other, we just have virtually no history to back it up." I placed an arm around her shoulders.
"You're right, you know," she said, putting her head on my shoulder. "You're as familiar as daylight to me, but it's the strangest thing. I know you're mine, and you came from me, but I missed so much of what made you into who you are and it's strange to find you so familiar in spite of that."
"Well…I'm glad it's you."
She squeezed me with one arm. "I'm glad it's you…finally."
"As if I was taking my time or something."
"Well, you did, didn't you? And you come back with that accent…"
"I don't have an … it's all of you people!"
We shared a laugh, finally. I needed it. So much turnover in this world. I was trying to remind myself that this was a strange time, and their world was changing in some ways as much as mine was. And for a moment there, I had the first glimpse of a curious feeling. Mr. Accident, Mr. Unconscious, Mr. Awakening Sleeper. This seemed like it was my time – what better time could I have come into?
The feeling was the beginning of belonging.
•
A/N: My apologies for this chapter taking so long. And a note of gratitude to Phil and NotACat for checking in on me. I'm still alive. I think about the story all of the time but of late I'd had little time to do anything about it. If it's any comfort, it is the longest chapter yet. Thanks to Jules for the phrase "What's up your mind?" When she gets mad she's even more gorgeous. Also thanks to my faithful readers and kind reviewers. It makes it all worthwhile. Please review!