No Means to Use the Stove

What Are the Pensieves for?

He hated Harry when he listened to him going through all her things, looking for anything magical. He hated him when he found her books and wizarding photographs and the letters he had written her. He hated him even more, when he watched him covering her sleeping body with a comforter. He hated Harry. Just hated him.

His hatred for Harry didn't fulfill its true purpose, though: he still hated himself more.

She slept on the sofa and one could have imagined it was a normal sleep. He couldn't. He had seen her eyes after he had uttered the spell. There had first been a flicker of understanding and fear and pure horror and pain, and then there had been - nothing. Only a vacant, distantly baffled expression with no personality whatsoever. Then Harry had thought it best if she slept a bit.

He knew Obliviate didn't wipe out one's personality, only the requested memories. He had used it often before. It was necessary at times. Still, he had never had to use it on someone he knew. He had never had to use it for removing such many memories from such a long time frame. And more importantly, he had never had to use it because of his own actions, because of his own mistakes.

And so he hated Harry.

"Ready to go, Charlie," Harry stated impassively. He held Anna's digital camera in his hands. "Don't know how it works. Better get Hermione to look at it."

He nodded without a word, moved towards the door and apparated to the Burrow. He hated Harry.

* * *

He didn't go back to his own apartment in Hogsmeade. He went to the Burrow. It wasn't because of the company, as he really didn't want to see anybody. He just wanted to stay in his room for a while. In his and Bill's room. In his and Anna's room. Except that they were both gone. Now it was just his room. His alone.

He wouldn't have to go to work the next day. Maybe he wouldn't go back at all. Maybe he would return to Romania instead. He had left his career with the dragons when it had become clear that the war would arise. He had went through a shortened Auror-training and fought with the Order. With Bill and Percy.

After the war there had been so much to do. So many wizarding homes were destroyed, almost all of Hogsmeade was in ruins, Diagon Alley had suffered greatly. He had never been brilliant at Charms, but he had an eye for building things, and in the reconstruction of the British wizarding world, all able hands and wands had been needed. He had learned on the way.

A civil war in a small, tight community is never easily forgotten. Theirs had not been an exception. It had concerned everybody and the wounds had healed painstakingly slow. Now, six years after the war had ended, the Magical society was slowly recovering. The houses were standing erect, new babies were born, people were beginning to forget. Marriages were formed....Anna was not going to come back. She couldn't come back. She didn't remember him.

"Charlie," his mother called softly from behind the door, "you haven't eaten anything. Please, dear, do eat something."

Reluctantly, he flicked his wand at the door and opened it for Molly. She came in, lowered a tray on the desk beside his bed and - didn't leave. Instead, she sat next to him on the bed.

"Charlie," she said slowly and almost timidly, "I know you are in pain, and I know this sounds cruel to you, but...maybe it was better this way." He started, but she put her hand on his shoulder to stop him from saying anything and continued: "I don't mean I would have hoped for this to happen or that I would be happy that you are so miserable. It's only that...had you really thought about it? What would it be like to live with a Muggle, to marry a Muggle, to raise children with a Muggle?"

"I thought we were Muggle-lovers, the whole lot of us," he managed to snarl through his teeth.

"We are, dear, we are. I am not saying that Muggles are somehow lesser people than us. And there's certainly nothing wrong in marrying a Muggle-born witch. I am only talking about the reality, the way it would have been, your life together."

She stopped for a moment and took a deep breath before carrying on: "A marriage should be an alliance of equals. Marrying a Muggle would be like marrying a foreigner knowing that she would never be able to learn our language. Imagine a situation were something would happen with the children and you wouldn't be at home. She couldn't alarm St. Mungos, she couldn't heal them herself, she couldn't apparate to get help. And how about when the children would begin to show their magic? You know yourself how it was with Fred and George. Had I not been quite an able witch, Arthur would have come home every day only to find total chaos and disaster. There are only so many marriages between a Muggle and a wizard for a reason, and the few functioning ones are usually those were the couple lives exclusively in the Muggle world."

"I could have done that!" he exclaimed.

"Could you, really, my dear? Could you really have left behind your whole life, your career, your magic? Could you really have lived as a Muggle, learning everything from scratch, being all the time dependent on others? If you could have done it, why did you plan buying a house in Hogsmeade, then? Why did you bring her here?" She looked him straight into his eyes and he couldn't bear her inquisition but lowered his gaze.

"For a wizard, living as a Muggle is like living a half-life, like being severely handicapped."

"Is it the same for a Muggle, to live as a wizard? Did she feel like that?" This time it was Molly that lowered her gaze. She shifted uncomfortably on the bed.

"I don't know, dear, I don't know," she whispered at last. Then there was a silence, suffocating silence. She broke it, finally, got up and stated, "Anyhow, it's over now. She doesn't remember. Please, eat something. And maybe you should use this." She dropped a light object on his lap, hugged him a little awkwardly and left the room closing the door silently behind her.

He looked at the little, round object on his lap. It was a pensieve. Not a real pensieve, but a second-rate one. They had become quite popular after the war. At first, pensieves had been used as evidence. From a pensieve, everything could be seen as it had happened, all the events and actions could be carefully examined. It worked well enough until someone realized that only the most objective person in the world could have memories without any personal interpretations clung on them. They could use the pensieves when analyzing the actual occurrences, but when it came to deciding whether an expression of total malice on someone's face in someone other's pensieve could be a standing evidence of the first person's bad will...well, let's say it just didn't work.

But the people who had placed the memories of the horrible events they had witnessed in the pensieves, felt better. Nobody wanted to remember, to really remember all the atrocious details of the war. Who would have wanted to relive watching their children screaming under Cruciatus, their parents, their husbands, their wives, their...brothers dying monstrous deaths? The memory that a pensieve left behind was only a pale shadow of the original one. The sounds, the feelings, the smells, everything that made the memory painful, was safe inside of the pensieve.

That was when the Magical government established the Public Pensieves. It was, after all, totally futile to suffer from one's memories when there was work to be done, reconstruction to be performed. People used the Public Pensieves, sure they did, but it was still a bit embarrassing, to be seen to use one. It was like visiting a psychotherapist in plain view of all your friends and co-workers. Therefore, the home-pensieves became extremely popular as soon as they were released on the market.

They weren't real pensieves. You couldn't get sucked inside the memories that were stored in the home-pensieves. The home-pensieve only showed you the memories, when you wanted to see them again. It wasn't detailed, it wasn't accurate, it didn't look real. It was exactly what people needed.

Some had even begun to use their pensieves as necklaces or bracelets. They would use them when ever a painful memory struck. Even whenever something that, in the future, could possibly cause a painful memory happened in the first place.

Charlie felt the pensieve on his palm and remembered what Anna had yelled at him. "Do it, and then you can heal your own broken heart with your pensieve. Isn't that what those things are for? To make sure you wizards don't have to feel anything? That you don't really have to remember anything?"

Slowly, he placed the pensieve on the desk beside his bed.