Touch the Sky

Chapter 6. Cooing

Late Friday afternoon, the family gathered nervously in the sitting room to await the Zabinis.

The floo flared, but instead of the expected three, four people exited two by two: first Helena and Teresa, then Blaise holding the arm of a snowy-haired man clad in white robes with a black cape-collared cloak. Ginny took a minute to remember where she'd seen clothing like this before--the man was a friar or a monk, or some sort of priest, anyway. And Muggle, at that, judging by the way Blaise is guiding him through the floo.

"Harry, Ginny, Severus," Blaise said, shaking hands with them in turn. "This is Father McKay, a Domincan friar. He was the priest who served Hogwarts in our day, as you may remember. We met by chance as I came out of Blackwell's in Oxford just now, and he kindly agreed to come along to facilitate the beginnings of our conversation here. I hope you don't mind."

"I recall seeing Professor Snape about the corridors in those days," the elderly priest said in a soft Irish-inflected voice. "Mr. and Mrs. Potter, I've not had the pleasure."

"It's Ms. Weasley, in fact," Harry said a little stiffly. "Won't you have a seat, sir?"

"I hope you can stay to dinner," Ginny said, mentally Transfiguring the table larger and wondering whether she'd have to conceal the process from this Muggle stranger.

"Ah, I'll not impose, I thank you, ma'am," he said. "I'd only a few words with Blaise, that gave me the thought I might be of assistance perhaps. I only wanted to meet you all, then I'll be off."

Once introductions were done and the adults seated, Albus and Lily brought out the cream tea they'd all prepared earlier. Leaning to serve Severus, Al accidentally slopped a little tea onto his saucer. "Sorry, Father," he said. "Let me get you a clean one."

As Severus instead performed Tergeo on the spill, Father McKay looked up interestedly from spreading his scone with jam. "Professor, I never knew you for a man of the cloth."

"Nor am I," Severus said. "It is a family title."

"But Mr. Potter is in fact the children's father, isn't it so?"

"Severus is our bond-father," James said firmly.

"Now there's a word that's new to me, though I've been priest to magical folk these thirty years and more."

Beside Ginny, Harry gently pressed aside Lily's proffered plate of cucumber sandwiches and rose smoothly to his feet, green eyes snapping. It didn't take the tremor on the surface of her clotted cream to remind Ginny that her husband was one of the most powerful wizards alive, though his generally mild, unassuming manner cloaked his strength most of the time.

Now he stood in the midst of their genteel gathering in his modest brown house robes with magic pouring from his very pores, invisible but tangible as heat off a stove. "Mr. McKay," he said evenly, "there is only one man in this house who is called Father, and it is his house, and his family, as much as anyone's in this room. His position is not to be challenged, however you may disapprove of our relationship."

The priest's half smile never wavered, though he did set down his plate and cup. "Sure, it's not for me to approve or disapprove, Mr. Potter," he said. "Forgive me if I came at this wrong-footed. 'Twas only curious I was, but it has no bearing on our business today. And you may call me 'Brother Michael,' if it suits, for I'm friar as well as priest, or simply 'Michael'; my title is no matter at all. The matter is these young people, and the love between them. 'God is love,' the Scripture tells us, and I'm not the man to gainsay love, given all I've seen in my life."

The vibrations of Harry's magic calmed a little, though he remained standing. "Yet I often heard my uncle say, when I was growing up, that men who loved men were freaks, condemned by the Christian God to eternal damnation."

Father McKay tilted his head to one side. "A wizard, your uncle was, then?"

Harry snorted and relaxed his shoulders a notch. "Hardly. We were hell-bound, unnatural freaks, as well, according to him."

"And yet here you all are, two families as wholesome and loving as the good Lord ever smiled upon. Who am I to speak against you?"

"With respect," Severus put in, "you cannot deny that your church, like my own unlamented father's, has condemned people to torment and death, and their souls to perdition, for practising magic. Or homosexuality, for that matter."

"I don't deny it. Would you deny that there have been those among you willing to torture and murder Muggles, as you call us, for what we are? Or to allow those devil creatures you call Dementors to suck the souls from folk, sometimes without even a trial?"

Harry breathed sharply in through his nose and sat down again.

Father McKay turned toward him. "Any culture, any faith, can beget a Hitler, a Pol Pot, a Voldemort," he said. "My own Dominican order produced the Grand Inquisitor Torquemada, who sent so many poor souls to the stake. We are judged not by who we are, but by the choices we make, as my dear late friend Albus Dumbledore used to say."

Teresa spoke up. "But Father Michael, wasn't witchcraft condemned by the Church for most of its history, not just under a few bigots?"

Father McKay looked at her fondly. "The witchcraft the Church condemned was thought to be the fruit of an unholy alliance between the practitioner and the forces of darkness rather than an inborn trait. That power, we now know, springs from a nature bestowed by God, and can be used for evil or for good, as I need not remind you fine people. And it seems to me that the same can be said of the varieties of love, whether those involved are of the same sex--or of different faiths."

Everyone in the room had been listening and nodding. At the last phrase, Blaise started and Helena dropped her biscuit into her tea. "Father!" she exclaimed disbelievingly.

He gave her the same mild smile he'd earlier bestowed on Harry. "Surely you don't still think only Catholics go to heaven, child, do you? Of course not. We've grown beyond such narrowness. And we've grown to know that marrying out of the faith need not mean spiritual exile and disaster.

"Not that it's an easy road, mind you," he cautioned, turning to the old settle by the fireplace where Jamie and Teresa leaned against each other. "You'll have much learning to do, both of you, and thought and work and compromise. And don't be afraid to have a bit of a laugh now and then, will you? I'll help as I can, and both your parents, but the labour of love will be yours. Good preparation for a marriage, so I'm told."

He pressed a fingertip into the crumbs on his plate, then to his mouth with childlike relish. Wiping his fingers on a linen napkin monogrammed "P" (for Severus's mother, Eileen Prince, rather than for Potter), the old priest stiffly levered himself out of his armchair.

"Now, Blaise, if you'd be so kind as to see me back to Blackfriars, I've Vespers in ten minutes. Ms. Weasley, Mr. Potter, Professor Snape, thank you for your hospitality and your patience with an old man's dithering. Blaise and Helena, children, I hope to see you again soon--perhaps at Mass on Sunday? Now the Lord bless this house and all in it." He made the sign of the cross in the air, stepped into the floo with Blaise, and disappeared in a gout of green flame.

"I almost expected him to go up the chimney like Father Christmas," Lily said.

"He's left a sack of ideas for us to unwrap, in any case," Teresa said, looking up at Jamie.

"Yes, we have a lot to talk about," Helena agreed.

"Perhaps we can talk while we prepare the next meal, and clear the remains of this one," Severus suggested. "Since we're to be family rather than guests and hosts?"

"We'll work together, certainly," Helena said, getting to her feet and gathering teacups. "But we still haven't settled this business."

"No," Ginny agreed as she picked up the plate of chocolate biscuits and Levitated the tea tray, "I still don't understand exactly what you and Blaise are so worried about."

They all moved into the kitchen and began putting leftovers into the cold cupboard and stacking crockery into the sink, where Ginny set off the washing-up charms.

They heard the floo in the sitting room, then Blaise came into the kitchen. But once again he was not alone. Beside him stepped a large, formidable mahogany-skinned lady dressed in multicoloured robes, hair cropped close to a regal head.

"I stopped at home to fetch the wine I forgot to bring earlier," Blaise said, "and look who I found: Mamma."