The Secret of Riddles

Chapter 1: Not Really Gone

Harry felt as if time had sped up. One moment he had been waving his son James off to Hogwarts and the next Lily was giving him a loving goodbye hug.

"It will be alright," Ginny told him for the millionth time that day, or possibly that decade.

Once again Harry replied, "I know."

Yet Harry had a sickening feeling in his stomach, as if something was amiss. Something very important was off in the horizon, waiting for the opportune moment to knock him off his happy pedestal.

"C'mon, mate, nothing to worry about," Ron called from a few people over. His arm was resting on Hermione's shoulders as he waved off Hugo.

Harry nodded in recognition. Lately everyone had been telling him that, yet he could hardly believe them.

As the train disappeared off into the distance Ginny put her arm around Harry and gave him a kiss on the cheek. He was always the protective father. Ginny sometimes wondered if he'd had it his way the children would never go to school at all.

Ginny gave a reassuring squeeze before leading her husband off towards the gateway. Yet Harry felt less than assured. He had never told his children anything about why they only had a single set of grandparents or why he would rather not talk of the dark wizard Voldemort at the dinner table during the summer, when James and Albus told about their learning.

That conversation with Headmistress McGonagall had been very hard to undergo. Almost every student knew that Harry Potter had defeated Voldemort when he was a baby and an adult. So keeping all that a secret from his children was bound to be hard. Especially since there was now a whole section devoted to him in most history books. Though she had seen it Harry's way and promised to not have Professor Binns teach anything about that whole matter.

"What do you think, Harry?" Ginny asked, awaking him from his trance.

"'M sorry?" he said.

"Do you want to go out to lunch with Ron and Hermione, dear? It's been awhile since we've hadn't had any children to fuss over," she replied.

Harry rubbed his scar out of habit. "Sure why not," he replied. He needed something to take his mind off of the ever-looming disaster he had been waiting for since the beginning of the school holidays.

~

The girl's dark hair flowed behind her as she left the station in London. Her babysitting seemed to never end. Even though the boy was full-grown she still felt the need to watch over him, knowing her worst fear may be far from over.

She wore black, always black. It was a habit she had from old days, when she was still just an ordinary girl living in a London orphanage, then in the Order, yet she never grew tired of wearing the blasted color. Almost as if it could haunt her as her memories did.

At seventeen she knew more than the average witch, she knew more than the average anything. She knew that danger was not gone from her or her loved ones, well the ones who had survived.

If she knew her worst fear at all then she knew that he'd be back, one way or another. Until then she would be waiting for a chance to show him what he had done.

Yet she also knew that there were more that had yet to disappear, that others were not completely gone. She knew they would be back, and that she'd have to face herself, for what she was. A monster, in her own eyes, yet an angel in others.

She had hoped to escape her past, yet it had come back to haunt her again, because it would never leave her alone, no matter how hard she tried to leave it behind.