Fear

I know what we stood to lose. I've known for a long time. It is a lesson born of pain, a lesson I learned too well. It was a lesson taught so ruthlessly that it nearly cost me my soul. If I let myself examine it too closely, the pain would tear me apart. Until yesterday, I kept the pain locked away, in the secret corner of my heart that belongs only to me. Until yesterday, I was sure I could keep that corner separate from my day to day life.

The lock has been ripped away.

The door has been shattered.

The pain has escaped.

Twenty-one years of being contained has made it stronger than ever.

I have to find a way to bear it.

Voldemort is back. Even if Harry's word wasn't enough to convince me, Dumbledore has called together the old Order. There can be no doubt. The members are gathering. We've left the Burrow.

Strange that leaving the house that has been my home for the past thirty-one years is the only thing about Voldemort's return that I don't mind.

Or perhaps it isn't so strange. The memories I thought I'd buried forever have come back into life, blooming more fully with every passing hour. All it took was hearing Dumbledore confirm that He had returned. The pain burst out of that secret corner of my heart, and as though it were a downpour in the desert, the memories sprung up with it. And every corner of my home bloomed with them. Every moment I spent there was agony.

I wonder if I'm going insane.

Or if I'm already there.

If only I could get hold of the memories and push them back, perhaps I could bear the pain.

But the memories escape my attempts to contain them.

Two faces, as innocent as the day they were born, with beautiful bright blue eyes and the barest sprinkling of freckles across their noses. Katie, vivacious and always smiling, her little button of a nose wrinkled with laughter, her eyes sparkling. I can still see her, riding high on Bill's 9-year old shoulders, shrieking merrily as he trotted her around the garden, his skinny little body straining willingly under her weight. Meg, so shy and delicate, trailing Charlie around like a shadow until he scooped her up and piggy-backed her around after Bill and Katie. Meg's shy giggles had been as enchanting as Katie's vivacious belly laughs.

So much to have lost.

Is it any wonder I learned the lesson so well?

Their faces follow me around the grim, dark hallways of the house at Grimmauld Place. I can hear their laughter as easily as I can imagine their frightened screams. I've spent twenty-one years fighting back the knowledge that they existed, that they were mine. That they are lost to me forever. The knowledge eats at me now, because I can't ignore it any longer.

It could happen again so easily.

There is so much more to lose now.

I'm not sure I can face it.

I go from room to room, working steadily through the cascade of memories. Fixing up beds, airing out rooms as best I can manage. It's hard work. This house has been empty so long that it's hard to believe it will ever be livable again. I have lost track of the hours. I don't want to know how much time I've been reliving the memories.

Whoever said keeping busy keeps you from thinking was a fool.

Every sheet and blanket I smooth reminds me of other sheets, at other times. The sweet, innocent smiles on their faces as I tucked them in at night, the scent of baby's skin and gentle soap. The first sight of them, Katie two years after Charlie and Meg two years after her sister, wrapped in blankets, their faces impossibly small and perfect and unlined, their eyes so incredibly blue. The way Katie slept sprawled across her bed, sheets kicked away, exhausted from her hectic days. The way Meg slept so quietly, on her back, that I used to walk in to check on her a dozen times a night to make sure she was still breathing.

The kitchen is worse. The memories swell up and crest like a breaking wave, sweeping me along. They were only five and three when they were murdered, and that year their favorite thing was to sit at the kitchen table, wide-eyed with excitement, faces dusted with flour as they helped to stir cookie dough or cake batter. I can still see them sitting on piles of cushions in their chairs, pulling stems off cherries for the pie I was making to bring over to the Clearys' house.

I can still hear the plop! of cherries into my largest glass bowl.

Will I ever stop hearing it?

Will I ever?

He is back. And we are all at risk again. He's calling his followers back to him, just as Dumbledore is calling his supporters together to fight. I wish we could just go away, all of us, to somewhere safe and concealed. But hiding won't matter, not this time. If we don't fight, the best we can hope for is to die together, quickly. He won't stop until He's found every last bit of resistance and stamped it out ruthlessly. There is no doubt, not in my mind and not in my heart, that this is true.

But their faces...

There is so much more to lose this time around.

Bill and Charlie, old enough and brave enough to be on the front lines of the fighting. Daring enough to set aside the risks involved and courageous enough, true enough, to believe that the goal is worth the struggle. Strong enough to be dangerous to Him. Strong enough to be targeted.

Percy, who is already growing so distant. Will he side with us, or with Fudge, who refuses to believe the truth? I never thought I would have to ask myself whether a child of mine would break faith with us. We raised them to be so close, to trust each other and to believe in each other. But Percy, born two years after Katie and Meg died, has always been different. We were unfair to him. I can admit it now. We never expected him to replace his sisters--of course we didn't--but we treated him differently, because he was our first joint act of bravery.

Did we have the courage to go on and keep living?

Percy was proof that we did.

Did he pick up on that, unconsciously? Did our hopes for him, begun long before he was born, start him on the path to be the best and the brightest? We never wanted that for him. We only wanted him to live, to be healthy and laugh and to survive. But we treated him differently, and he has been pulling away from us steadily for years. I fear for him.

I fear for all of us.

The twins, Fred so outrageous and outgoing, George quieter and more sensitive. In a way, very like the sisters they know nothing about. We've had our differences. I have never understood them. I won't claim to now. They have never seemed to truly need anyone but themselves. They go their own way, but it's different with them. Percy goes his own way, and his own way is apart. The twins have always seemed to sense this essential difference between themselves and Percy, and have rarely done more than tolerate their next-oldest brother. For all their youth and all our differences of opinion, they are fiercely loyal to Arthur and to me.

The twins go their own way, together and within the family. They're still young, still immature, still tied up in dreams and goals I don't understand. They're determined to make their own way in the world, seemingly without a decent set of school marks to lean on. I won't be surprised when they do make their own way. They have a dedication and an enthusiasm that is so much like Bill's and Charlie's. I wonder if they are aware of this.

Do they know, despite the fact that I don't understand them at all, how much I admire their strength?

I'm so afraid that their love of trouble will put them in danger.

I'm so afraid.

Ron, a bundle of contradictions and dreams. He's an uneasy combination of them all. I look at him and see Bill's strength of purpose, Charlie's love of strategy, Percy's stubbornness, Fred's love of attention, George's understanding. Arthur's sense of fairness. My temper. His character hasn't gelled yet. It isn't clear which, if any, of these traits will win out in the end.

Merlin, please let him survive to find himself.

Is that so much to ask?

Ginny. The first sight of her bright red hair and baby-blue eyes set me to crying. It was the closest I've ever been to the state I'm in now. All the pain and all of the memories were so close to breaking out. Looking at her was like looking at both of her sisters at once. It still is. She is shy and outgoing, quiet and vibrant, by turns. Her brothers all adore her. Her father and I do as well. I remember the night she turned eight, long after her birthday party had been cleared away, I wept like a child in Arthur's arms. This daughter, at least, had survived to live longer than the sisters she never knew. She's our center, the one that all of us are drawn to, like moths to a flame. So beautiful, so clearly coming into her own with each passing year.

She is so dear to me.

We've protected her so carefully since she was born.

Please don't let it be in vain.

I move into the parlor, and ignore the shudder that goes through me at the state of it--all dirt and grime, filled with objects whose uses I'd rather not even consider. I see the family tree, dotted with scorch marks where names have been eradicated, and sigh. So many people listed. Like our family, there are so many interrelated lives symbolized by the names on that tapestry.

We have our own connections.

I'm terrified for them as well.

Harry. He's gone through so much already, and come through so well. I doubt he's spent a day since starting school that hasn't held some vague shimmer of fear. He is the Boy Who Lived. And, so many times in his young life, he has been the Boy Who Nearly Died. I wish I could take it all away from him. I wish he could live a normal life. I wish he had a real family instead of those Muggles and his godfather.

Sirius terrifies me. He takes too many chances.

He so obviously misses James, his best friend and partner in crime.

What will that mean for Harry, who is so much like James was then?

Sirius is so very reckless. So brave, and so strong, and so uncontrolled. I know Harry isn't mine to worry about. But try telling that to your heart. It never works. Mine will never let me stop worrying, not with Sirius being such a major influence on Harry. Sirius doesn't understand the need for caution. He's constantly risking discovery by the Dementors. His intentions are the best, that is true. Still, some part of him seems never to have grown up. Some part of him is still as he was when he and James were twenty--brave, reckless, fearless.

Now he's coming here, to Grimmauld Place. To a house he never loved, and swore never to come back to. I remember the look of concern on Dumbledore's face when he agreed to use this place as headquarters for the Order. And it chills me to the bone. Sirius--reckless, still beautiful in his bravery and his loyalty--will be trapped here, unable to actively protect Harry.

I fear it will drive him mad.

I fear what that will mean for Harry.

I fear what he will do to Harry.

I fear.

And I see their faces, bright and innocent, never suspecting what was to come.

Fear is like a dagger in my heart.

Memory is like a tidal wave, swamping me, threatening to crush me as it rolls on toward shore.

He is back.

There is so much more to lose now.

Their faces...