The Man Who Knew Almost Nothing

Chapter Twenty-seven

Epilogue

Three weeks later Harry found himself lying on the couch and watching Remus prepare an omelet and Sirius setting the table for breakfast. They had spent most of the Christmas holidays with him, nursing him back to health and generally mothering him, and at his insistence would be returning to Hogwarts the next day when classes resumed.

Harry had sent that letter to Gilderoy three days earlier. Hedwig had returned just the night before, but without so much as a note from the man he loved and who had betrayed him. But whom Harry was also all too willing to forgive. What had the letter said? It had been penned very quickly, before Remus could urge him to give it some more time and more thought.

“Dear Gilderoy, I wanted to write to you and tell you that I’m all right. You didn’t hurt me. And I still love you. And I miss you. I miss you more than anything. Can we make amends? Yours, Harry.”

Harry did not beg or plead with him to return. Gilderoy would come back or stay away of his own accord. He simply wanted him to know that there was no anger, no hard feelings, and nothing standing between them that was insurmountable. And he had half hoped that it would be enough.

He chuckled sadly and flipped through a few loose pages of his memoirs. Remus had read them, corrected a few things here and there, and challenged some of Harry’s reasoning concerning the motives of others before telling him that he thought they were amazing and insightful for the most part. He had told Harry that students would be reading his book in school before too many years passed. And Remus silently hoped that Harry would live to see the day when that happened.

Harry had taken a short sabbatical from Quidditch, which meant that he would miss the team’s games versus Armenia, Egypt, and Sweden, but they would welcome him back as soon as he was able to play again. And Harry fully intended to finish out his season with the national team. Nothing short of death and dismemberment would stop him, although he could see quite clearly that it worried Remus and his godfather that he was willing to take such risks with his health.

“It’s my life, and I want to live it while I still can,” Harry had explained that to them in far gentler terms, but they could both understand the sentiment.

Harry grew restless the next day after his guests, his family, had left to return to their lives. He admitted that the company had been nice. Losing Gilderoy would have been unbearable otherwise. Harry felt a painful twinge of loss whenever he thought of his blond lover. Former lover, he amended mentally. It was funny. When he had broken up with boys in school, it had never hurt half so much. Perhaps because the partings had been considerably more amiable. This was something entirely different.

He would be going to Luxembourg for a big Quidditch match in three days and wasn’t certain how to spend the time in between. He had logged in some time on the broom with Remus the week before. He wouldn’t be rusty when the time came. Harry chuckled as he remembered what he had overheard Remus say about his Quidditch ambitions. He didn’t want to play forever, but he wasn’t going to miss the opportunity to play with the national team, especially since they still had a chance in the World Cup.

A drive, he finally decided, was what he needed. It had been some time since he had taken the car out. Sirius, becoming almost as overprotective as Remus, had elected to fetch the groceries over the previous three weeks.

But when Harry climbed into the car, keeping the top up against the extreme cold and the threat of midday snow flurries, he sighed aloud.

“I want to see him. I want to know for sure that he’s okay and that nothing has happened to him. It’s no use. Even after everything he said and tried to do, not knowing what happened when he left will drive me mad,” he thought to himself before taking off down the drive. His destination? Lockhart Manor.

Harry slowed to a stop when he reached the private driveway to the manor. His thoughts had become a jumble as he drove. What if Gilderoy truly never wanted to see him again? What if he had meant some of the terrible things he had said? Or all of them? Perhaps Gilderoy had returned to his old life without even looking back. Or were the final words, the ones about love and devotion, were those real and everything else a mistake, an irrational outburst and nothing more? Harry longed to know what was real, even more than he longed for the companionship he missed.

He drove up the grassy lane to the gray house where Gilderoy had lived many years of his troubled life. He parked and left the car, pulling his cloak close against the cold. The manor gate was open. Harry walked toward the expansive house and glanced at the dark windows. It still seemed deserted. For a moment Harry felt a hot rush of panic. What if Gilderoy had never come here? Was it possible the he was lost somewhere in the wide world? Lost and homeless ... What ever would become of him?

Harry inhaled slowly, trying to fight the sudden fear, as his feet carried him to the doors of the manor. He could only knock and wait for an answer.

The door creaked open to reveal a miserable little figure dressed in a red tablecloth. She looked up at Harry with her huge eyes and blinked. It had been years since Harry had seen such an unhappy house elf.

“Hello, Bell,” said Harry tentatively.

“You is being master’s gentleman friend, yes?” she questioned.

“ I was ... That’s right. Is Gilderoy here?” Harry asked, leaning down to be closer to her height.

“Yes, handsome,” and here she squeaked softly and wiped her eyes on her dress, “master, is here.”

“May I see him?”

She opened the door wider and allowed him into the house. It was very dimly lit inside, shadowy and somewhat cold. The manor seemed even more devoid of life than when Gilderoy and he had first stepped inside just weeks earlier.

“Where is he?” Harry questioned.

“Master is where he always is. Hardly moves. Poor master sits in the parlor in front of the fire,” she sniffled. “He weeps. He drinks. He looks at the garden. He weeps more. Bell is thinking that master is very ill or very sad. Master does not say which.”

There was a lump in Harry’s throat as he looked toward the closed door of the parlor. He looked down at Bell.

“I’m sorry,” he said simply.

“You is come here to see my master? Is you going to help him?” Bell questioned.

“I ... don’t know. I want to see him ...”

“Then, go. Maybe you is curing him,” she said, curtsying and gesturing toward the door.

Harry felt a slight chill as he slowly opened the door to the parlor, but then he felt the soft warmth of a fire in the hearth that helped abate the coldness. The room had changed somewhat. All of the paintings, portraits of Gilderoy during the height of his popularity, were covered with shrouds. The eyes, Harry recalled, had frightened Gilderoy. He stood there for a moment, looking at the back of the chair by the hearth. Then he heard the sound of quiet sobbing, and he knew that sound well. It could be no one but Gilderoy. Harry stepped around the chair quietly and gasped softly at the sight that awaited him.

Gilderoy was holding a half empty glass of amber liquid, whiskey or perhaps fire whiskey, Harry presumed. There was an empty bottled by the chair. Gilderoy looked to be a mess.

He was still dressed in the same robes that he had been wearing when he left the Little Burrow, though they no longer looked so fine or elegant as his clothes were spotted with stains from what Harry presumed to be the alcohol and possibly his tears. Gilderoy had, of course, taken none of his things with him, just his wand, his keys, and the clothes on his back.

Harry could see just what had become of the wand. It lay snapped in twain in the fireplace, but its hard opal core refused to burn. Sirius had told Harry some days earlier that the opal was the symbol of bad luck and duplicity. Now it was somewhat charred and useless. It was destroyed for whatever that was worth.

The clothes and the muted sobs he knew, but it was the face that Harry hardly recognized. Long had been the hours of his weeping. His eyes seemed almost to bleed so severe was their redness. And his hair was both knotted and tangled as it hung about his face. Great hanks of it were missing because he had torn it out in his grief and anguish. His blotched face was a terrible sight too, but the emptiness and hopelessness in his eyes were far more horrible to look upon. Harry had never seen him like that, not in all the months he had known Gilderoy.

“Love?” Harry breathed, forgetting their quarrel, forgetting everything as he stepped close enough to lay a hand upon his arm.

Gilderoy was shaking as he looked up at Harry with those vacant, cloudy eyes. His lips moved, but no sound emerged from them. Harry brushed Gilderoy’s hair away from his face.

“Love? What has become of you?” Harry whispered as tears came to his eyes.

“Harry, you shouldn’t be here. I’m not safe. I might try to ... I might try to murder you again,” said Gilderoy, spilling his drink upon his lap as he edged away from Harry. The glass rolled to the floor and shattered quietly.

“Gilderoy, you were a lot of things, some good and some bad, but you were never a murderer,” Harry told him.

“But I ...”

“Hush. You don’t have to say anything to me about that. I can look at you and see that you didn’t mean to do it, any of it.”

“You shouldn’t forgive me, Harry. You really shouldn’t.”

“But I do.”

“Why?”

“Because ... I loved you. I still love you. And because I can.”

Gilderoy covered his face with his hands, collapsing into helpless tears. Harry smoothed his matted blond locks and shushed him quietly. He could feel the sobbing slowly lessening and leaned down to kiss his hair, which smelled of whiskey and ashes.

“Harry, I don’t deserve you ...”

“None of that!” Harry admonished softly. “Now, the question is this: do you come with me willingly or I am going to kidnap you? Because as it stands, I simply cannot leave you here like this,” he said rather sternly, gently prying Gilderoy’s hands from his face.

“You would take me back?” he questioned.

“I can’t force you to love me again, Gilderoy, if you don’t, but I also refuse to leave you here to drink yourself to death.”

“But, Harry, I do love you!”

“Then it’s settled,” said Harry with a nod, pulling Gilderoy up from the chair.

He was unsteady on his feet as he put his arms around Harry’s shoulders. But somehow he managed to walk with Harry supporting him out of the room wherein he had spent the better part of three weeks and to the door of the manor. There Harry paused and looked at him.

“I need help with him,” Harry thought, looking at the blood-shot, alcohol-fogged eyes of his companion. “I think we will both need help for sometime to come,” he thought, knowing that he would be getting in touch with a good mediwitch or wizard, perhaps Madam Pomfrey, and seeking out advice where ever he could find it. Harry knew he couldn’t do it alone. He had learned that much, though he still wasn’t certain exactly what he was going to do about Gilderoy and their situation.

But this time he wanted to get it right. Harry wanted to be able to take care of him better. No quick fixes. No glasses of wine or sleeping potions. No simple solutions.

He kissed Gilderoy on the cheek as he readjusted his grip on his very drunken beloved. Tears coursed anew down Gilderoy’s cheeks, but he managed, just barely managed, a trembling smile.

“Slowly this time. And with my eyes wide open. I will learn from my mistakes,” Harry told himself firmly as he opened the door, deciding where at least a little bit of his help could come from.

Turning back and glancing up the stairs, Harry yelled, “Bell! Come on! If you want to serve your master, meet us at the car!”

~

Three years later

“And do you, Gilderoy Diggory Lockhart, take Harry James Potter to be your wedded husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health for so long as you both shall live?”

“I do,” answered the grinning blond in the cream and gold robes.

“I now pronounce you bound together in a state of matrimony. You may now kiss your husband.”

There was quite a bit of cheering in the Great Hall of Hogwarts when Harry and Gilderoy kissed for the first time as a married couple. All of their friends and many of the professors, young and old, were gathered there to support them on that glorious day, which had been a long time in coming. Remus and Sirius, who had never formalized their own arrangement, applauded as loudly as any. They had stopped fighting Harry’s decisions regarding Gilderoy years ago and were as happy as any to see that day come to pass. Ron and Hermione were on hand too, as was their two-year-old son, Arthur Harry Weasley. Bell was present as well, standing in a chair to see her masters, and she was grinning with delight.

The wedding had been a long time coming, but at least they were certain that they had gotten it right at last. Gilderoy had been slow to heal and slow to recover, but Harry had been by his side every step of the way, through every nightmare, through the results of his weeks of binge drinking, through absolutely everything that had come their way. They had both learned, coped, and grown together through the trials and struggles.

Tears came to Gilderoy’s eyes as he thought of those years, each one more precious to him than the one before. And he hoped that the years that were left to them, that they would be just as wonderful and as just as special.

Professor Harry Potter grinned and wiped the tears from his husband’s cheeks.

“Worth the wait, love?” he asked Gilderoy.

“Worth every second, Harry,” he replied as they walked through the Great Hall arm in arm to their waiting carriage, which would whisk them back to the Little Burrow and then onward to their honeymoon. And from there, to whatever happy ending awaits them and their story.

The End

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------