Half of a Heart's Desire: Entre Deux Guerres

Chapter 5: Nowhere Man

Harry painstakingly rolled the last bit of his plasticine into a final colorful ball, and arranged it on the ground with all the others. He tugged hopefully on James's trouser legs, and pointed at the balls when James looked down.

"Fly them," he said, waving his arms as if to demonstrate what he wanted.

James sighed. Whipping his wand out to oblige Harry simply wasn't an option here in the public park. Harry probably was old enough to understand the difference between home and public spaces, but he certainly had no notion yet that there were certain things wizards simply couldn't do in plain sight of Muggles, even if they weren't hiding to protect the Boy Who Lived. He wondered whether this might be one of the reasons so many Muggleborns seemed to leave the Muggle world behind and get almost entirely absorbed into wizarding culture. Remus had been going on for weeks about how Harry's games were much too magic dependent, but James hadn't really thought much of it until he had started bringing Harry out here in the mornings to make a few friends. Thankfully, Harry was young enough that his demands simply struck the other parents as fanciful, but James knew that this was only confusing his son, who knew very well that his father could easily fulfill his simple requests. He also knew that if this kept up Harry would eventually realize that he could levitate these balls himself, and that might easily bring out the Accidental Magic Reversal Squad, which would mean destroying their incognito existence. He really would have to think of some other toys for his son.

"I can't, Harry."

"Can, Daddy. Show me wand."

"No, Harry. Not here."

"Fly, please!"

"No, Harry."

Harry stared up mournfully with those eyes of Lily's that James found nearly impossible to resist, then turned away abruptly, and tried to find another amusement. He abandoned his plasticine and toddled over to the sandbox where he started digging with his little plastic spade, with no apparent intention of making anything with all the sand he sent flying. Several other children were playing in there - one little girl was smoothing out the moat around a surprisingly elaborate castle, and a dark boy who looked to be just a few months older than Harry was drawing figures in the sand with a tree branch. James, who had come closer to keep an eye on his son, saw that the drawing, of a lion, was surprisingly good for a child of his age.

"Look, lion."

Harry looked up at that, and pointed at the drawing. "Gryff-dor," he said, knowledgeably.

"Lion!" protested his companion.

"Gryff-dor is lion!" Harry insisted.

"Gryff-dor his name?"

Harry nodded.

"Funny name."

Harry shrugged. "Lions Gryff-dor. Gryff-dor brave. Gryff-dor special."

James chuckled. Sirius would be delighted to learn that his brainwashing had been so successful, but perhaps Remus would be a little concerned that Harry was trying to win converts here in a Muggle park. James didn't think there was anything to worry about; Harry hadn't said anything particularly hard to explain away so far, and in any case, his audience was hardly likely to interrogate him.

"There you are, Dean. Have you made a new friend?"

A handsome woman had come up beside James, clearly the boy's mother. Her hair was done up in an elaborate pattern of braids, and she spoke with a hint of a Jamaican accent. Something about her seemed faintly familiar to James.

Young Dean nodded uncertainly at his mother, then looked at Harry.

"My friend?"

Harry nodded vigorously. He pointed at himself and said, "Me Harry."

"Dean," said his new friend.

This was satisfactory for the two boys. They traded implements, and Dean used Harry's spade to give the lion's mane more definition, while Harry scratched on the sand with Dean's stick. James realized that it was probably his turn to speak, and turned to introduce himself to Dean's mother.

"Hello, I'm James Potter, Harry's dad."

"I'm Althea." She hesitated for a moment. "Althea Thomas. I haven't seen you and Harry around the park here before."

"No, Harry and I just moved here about a month ago."

"Dean and I have been coming here since I first put him in a pram."

"He must have a lot of friends here."

"A few, but not as many as I'd like. Most of the children who come out to play are older than he is, and the little ones play with their brothers and sisters."

"So Dean's an only child, then?"

"Yes. What about Harry? Do you and your wife have any other children?"

"No. Harry was our first. Our only. I lost my wife a few months ago."

"I'm dreadfully sorry. I shouldn't have..."

"No, of course not. You couldn't have known. And I don't mind talking about Lily."

"No, I should have been quite a bit more sensitive, in my situation. I know exactly how awkward it is to be asked a question like that."

"Are you...?" James trailed off, awkwardly.

"Widowed? Not exactly."

Althea hesitated again, then turned to James with an air of resolution.

"I suppose I'd better tell you about me, before you hear anything from someone else. If the boys become good friends, you'll undoubtedly hear something. And I have nothing to hide. You see, my husband left me, barely two weeks after we were married. Long before we knew anything about Dean. It was a bit of a whirlwind romance, I suppose. We married in a registry office; it was all very quiet - he told me that he hadn't even told his parents about us yet. And then he up and vanished. The police never found anything, except that he had no papers, no records, not even a birth certificate. He was a complete imposter, apparently. You can imagine how my family and neighbors reacted. And he doesn't even know about Dean; that feels like the worst part, somehow. I always thought he loved children."

"I'm so very sorry. I can't imagine how hard it must have been for you."

"Well, my family was here for me, even if they didn't exactly approve, and I suppose social services helped out a little. The hardest part was accepting that he would never come back. It just seemed like the sort of thing that happens in movies, not in real life. It was just so completely absurd to believe that a person could just vanish off the face of the earth like that, with no record of his existence."

"You never found anything about him?"

"The police said that he must have skipped out of the country under another name. He could be anywhere in the world. It's pretty clear by now that he's never coming back. He'd better not, for his own sake, at this point. I can't think what I'd do."

James was feeling terribly awkward. Despite the great strides he had made in growing up, he didn't consider tact to be a particular strength of his, and such revelations from a relative stranger made him a little uncomfortable. He knew that in moments like this there was a compassionate soothing thing to say, but he had not the slightest idea of what it was. He knew what he actually did want to say, and somewhere in the back of his mind he knew that it was terribly inappropriate. Yet as much as he might wish for Lily's empathy or even Remus's quiet consideration, he knew that his reaction was different, and he decided to give in to his curiosity.

"I know this might seem like a terribly impertinent question, but would you mind telling me what his name was?"

Althea gave him a strange look, but answered his question in an even tone.

"Lester Thomas. At least that was the only name he ever gave me."

"Thank you."

Althea nodded. She glanced back at Dean, who was now playing catch with Harry and his plasticine balls.

"I'd better get going, or I'll be late for work. I really only came by to pick Dean up."

"Goodbye, Althea. I look forward to seeing you soon."

"Goodbye, James."

She extricated her son from Harry and his toys expertly, and shushed the boy's protests as she strapped him into his pram. Looking back, she waved at Harry, nodded briefly at his father, and left at a rapid clip.

James looked on after her, wondering just how strange she really thought him to be. He knew he really had no business probing a painful subject that Althea was evidently doing her best to put behind her. Yet as much he respected Althea's quiet strength, and understood her resignation, James's perspective was necessarily a little different. He was a veteran, after all, of a major wizarding war. Such disappearances had been commonplace occurrences in his world for the last eleven years. Some the details of Death Eater activities were only just beginning to emerge; there were many more atrocities, he knew, that would probably forever go unacknowledged. And while the insularity of the wizarding world in general had fostered a common perception that it was only their community who had borne these losses, James knew better. Having married a Muggleborn witch, James was well aware the risks were in fact much greater for them and for their entirely defenseless Muggle relatives. Lily had lived in constant fear of her parents and sister becoming targets. Yet James had never properly considered the matter from the other perspective, of the Muggle survivors of a totally inexplicable tragedy. He wondered what the Ministry procedures were in such cases, and had a sinking feeling that they did not adequately support such survivors.

James did not know what exactly he meant by asking for Althea's husband's name. He had no particular reason to believe that this incident really had anything to do with the magic world. Neither did he have particularly strong contacts within the current ministry, and given his personal situation and his need to remain in hiding, there was little influence he could bring to bear. Yet James had never been one to let open questions remain open, and even if his own interest was nothing more than idle curiosity he intended to try and find something.

He wandered idly over to where Harry was sitting in sand, now combining all his plasticine balls into one. He picked up his son, who uttered an inarticulate protest.

"Oh, come on, Harry. You know it's time to go home. Besides, don't you want to play with Padfoot and Moony?"

The prospect of his favorite playmates seemed to mollify the restless boy, and he didn't give James any more trouble on the way home. James, however, was quite preoccupied. He didn't know how Dumbledore, or even his own friends, would respond to his latest resolution. Yet there was faint sense of familiarity nagging at him, little more than a sensation that there was a piece of a puzzle he had seen before and couldn't quite place now. His other motivation was a rather strange variation on empathy. Though James had carefully steered around the abyss of self-pity in trying to piece his life back together he did take a sort of warped pride in being the last casualty of the war. Looking at Althea, he realized that there were people whose tragedies were far more ragged and indefinite than his. James could not imagine living with that kind of uncertainty. But whether or not Althea's life had been touched by the same war as his, James had a sneaking feeling that there were hundreds of families out there, whose lives had been decimated by circumstances they simply had no comprehension of. Suddenly, the little world he had been living in, his happy little family of Harry, and Sirius, and Remus, began to feel a little too small. Perhaps Sirius had been right; perhaps he did need another reason in his life. The trouble was simply that he didn't have the slightest idea how to act this germ of a notion.

No one was in the house when James returned with Harry, but it wasn't long after James had fed Harry and sent him off reluctantly for a nap that he heard the latches turning. He went downstairs to find Remus entering, a shadow of a grin on his face.

"There you are. Just the man I wanted to talk to."

Remus smiled fully, and raised his eyebrows, inquisitively.

"Oh, come off it. It's not like I always go running off to Sirius."

No, you don't always. For instance, you invariably come running to me when you want to complain about Sirius, or, alternatively, when you need something."

"Are we feeling a little left out, Moony?"

"I'm not Harry, James. The baby talk stopped working a long time ago. I was just curious what you wanted."

"First things first. Why were you smiling?"

"I'm easily amused."

"Now you're just being difficult."

"Fair enough. I was going to tell all of you together, but I suppose Sirius can wait until this evening. I've just accepted a job offer."

"A job? You'll go off to work everyday like all the Muggles do? What about us?"

"I won't, actually, but I should point out that most wizards do the same. It's only Potters and Blacks and their unemployable friends who are any different."

"What kind of a job?"

"Freelance copy-editing." Remus laughed at James's blank look. "Basically, I go over manuscripts before they are published to edit them, and to catch any mistakes and such. I get to work from home, and I'm paid per book, so I have quite a bit of flexibility over how much I want to work."

"So basically you get to read books that haven't even come out yet and get paid for it? Congratulations, Moony! I can't imagine a job that would suit you better."

"Thanks. I'm looking forward to it."

"So what book have they given you to work on?"

"They started me off with a university textbook, actually. Rather ironic, given that I had to forge myself a degree. 'A Comprehensive Guide to Estates and Trusts.' I'm rather looking forward to learning something about that subject."

"Only you would, Remus."

"So why were you looking for me, anyway?"

"I don't know. Come, sit down here. I just wanted to talk something through. You're better at that than anybody I know."

"This sounds serious."

"Nothing to do with him, actually."

"James!"

"Sorry. It's just... you're a lot better at things like this than I am, but somehow I've got this stuck in my head, and I can't quite see where to go from here."

"I think you'd better just tell me what the matter is."

"Don't worry, Remus. It's nothing to do with me or Harry. I was just wondering, if there's an accident in the wizarding world, what do they do about notifying Muggles?"

"Well, they don't, James. You know that. If it was something that a lot of Muggles saw, they cover it up with some kind of a story, like a gas explosion or a freak storm or something."

"No, I know that. I mean, if there are Muggle relatives, what do they tell them?"

"In a family like mine, nothing. They usually leave it up to surviving wizarding relatives to come up with something. If the only survivors are Muggles, they have some kind of provision over at the Muggle Liaison Office. But I believe that only happens if the relatives are recorded in the Magical Registry. I'm not really very sure. You'd have to check with a solicitor. Why are you asking these kinds of questions, anyhow? Does this have something to do with Lily's sister?"

"No. I wrote to Petunia myself. She knows everything. No, I just met someone at the park, and I was wondering..."

"James, you didn't say anything, did you?"

"No, of course not. But she told me what happened to her, and it just sounded like it had to do with our war. Her husband disappeared about two weeks after they were married, and there was no sign of him after that. The Muggle police didn't find anything - even the normal sorts of things, birth certificate and all that. Told her he was probably some kind of imposter."

"And she just said all this to a stranger in the park?"

"It was a little odd, but she said there was a lot of gossip about it, and that if I was in the neighborhood I was bound to hear about it somehow."

"James, these kinds of things do happen to Muggles, you know. Not everything inexplicable has to do with us. That's why it's so easy for us to hide."

"I guess so. But there was just something very familiar about her. I felt like I should know about this, somehow. And I felt just awful for the kid, Remus. The father never even knew he existed."

"If there's a magical child, that makes it quite different, James. The Hogwarts Quill will put down the true name and the current address. Of course the Ministry doesn't keep tabs on it except to deal with accidental magic, but it should be fairly easy to find out."

"I didn't even think of that. This is why we need to have you around, Moony."

"I know. You only need me for my critical thinking."

"That's right, and don't you forget it."

Remus smirked.

"So, was Harry good in the park today?"

James groaned.

"Apart from wanting me to levitate his balls, and telling his new friend that Gryffindor lions are brave and special, he was absolutely perfect."

"Well, I suppose there's no harm done."

"No, but, you're right. I'll have to come up with some Muggle toys with him, especially if he's going to be making friends in the neighborhood."

"It's good for him to have friends in the neighborhood, James."

"I know. I'll think of something."

James smiled fondly, thinking of his son, then blinked, suddenly. Remus sighed, knowing from long experience that once an idea took hold of James, there was no telling how long it would take for the obsession to wear off.

"But Remus, there must be thousands of Muggles out there like this. Kids, friends, girlfriends, disappearing into thin air. Are you sure the Ministry doesn't tell them anything? There must be some way for them to know what's going on; they deserve better than a pack of lies or speculations."

"I don't know for sure, James. You'd have to check with the Ministry, or talk to your solicitors, or something."

James nodded, his lips pursed. Remus watched his friend. He wasn't sure where this particular interest would take James, but for the moment he decided it was probably healthy. Of course, it probably wasn't a very good idea for James to brood too much on the war, but then, it was a sign of healing that he was thinking of other peoples' problems instead of his own. And as much as Harry occupied and enlivened all of them, Remus shared Sirius's view that the little boy could not be the only thing in James's life, if for no other reason than that he would be smothered with attention.

It had crossed Remus's mind that James's interest here might be the woman herself, rather than her unfortunate plight, but he did not consider that to be particularly likely. James was very far from being over Lily, and it was entirely possible that he would never reach that point. In fact, as much as Remus liked Lily and enjoyed having her portrait roaming the house, he did wonder whether her constant presence wouldn't eventually make it difficult for James to rebuild his life. Surely it would be difficult for him to move on if Lily's facsimile was always there to remind him of what he had loved and lost. For now, Remus was content to file that thought away in the back of his head. He was perfectly willing to concede that so far, Lily had helped rather than hindered James's healing. James interacted naturally with Lily's portrait; he did not moon over her, nor was it likely that Lily would permit such behavior from him. Even in death, Remus reflected, Lily was around to make sure James remained sensible. Perhaps things were not so very different after all.

James sat up, interrupting Remus's reverie. That infectious smile was creeping on to his face, and Remus felt a familiar, pleasant sort of foreboding.

"So, Moony, what's this I hear about forging university degrees?"

Remus laughed. Not so very different indeed.