Not Quite Paradise

"Death is that state in which one exists only in the mind of others, which is why it is not an end. No goodbyes. Just good memories." --Unknown

Chapter Two

Keeping the Faith

In most families, when a single member falls ill, the rest of the unit makes occasional visits and ask what they can do to help. Not the Weasleys. I knew that for a fact. When I Apparated into the Burrow after my visit to the hospital, it was overflowing with Weasleys of all shapes and sizes.

I had no sooner popped in front of the door than seven-year-old Mary Weasley came running at me. With a squealed "Annieeeeeeeeeeeeee!" (Poor child could never get my name right.) she launched herself into my arms. I staggered back a few paces but, thankfully, not down the stairs. Penelope, her mother, came out the door a few moments later and took her daughter back from me.

"Oh, I'm so sorry about that," Penelope said, her voice apologetic. "Mary's just been a little excited about everything that's going on." She turned her attention on her daughter. "Why don't you go see what Daddy's doing?" Mary squirmed in her mother's arms until she was put down, then scrambled to her feet and raced back into the house. Penelope straightened and brushed her scarlet robes off with her delicate hands.

"How's she doing?" she asked brightly, her large blue eyes shining innocently at me. Her golden curls framed her face delicately and I felt as though I was looking at a child. Don't get me wrong; I love Penelope dearly, like she was my own sister, but her naiveté astounded me sometimes. At the same time, she was a lot like Percy: ambitious and determined. On the other hand, I think she had some sort of denial complex in place that wouldn't let her accept bad news.

"Er… maybe we ought to go inside and I can tell everyone together." She nodded in agreement and we went inside the house. Inside, Molly and Arthur sat across from their son, Charlie. Lizeth, Charlie's wife, was walking slowly back and forth across the room and holding their three-year-old daughter Elizabeth. The young child was sleeping with her thumb in her mouth and her head on her mother's shoulder.

Lizeth noticed my presence first and smiled at me. She used her free elbow to nudge Charlie and he stood politely upon noticing me. Molly, of course, pushed back out of her chair and rushed up to me quickly, asking me how Angelina was doing and what happened and oh, was her little boy okay? If the situation had not been what it was and Molly had referred to her twenty-five year old son as a "little boy," Fred would never hear the end of it from me.

I relayed the latest information: Angelina was becoming more and more coherent, but her fever had spiked again. The baby's heartbeat had strengthened somewhat, which the mediwizards said was a good sign. Fred had fallen asleep in her room and when I had followed behind George to enter, he was slouched down in his seat with his hand in Angelina's. She was half-awake and lying on her side, watching him sleep with a tired smile on her face.

"Maybe you were right about things getting better," George had whispered to me, not wanting to wake up his brother.

"Yes, I do tend to make correct statements on occasion," I said, patting his arm. "I'll open the shop. It's not too late  customers might still come."

"Forget it," George had said with a firm hake of his head. "Go to the Burrow and tell my mum the latest. I'm sure she's already argued with the receptionist and tried to get the entire family in. Please, Anya?"

I had wanted to go home; I really did. I'd go open the shop and take care of it if I could. Anything was better than seeing Molly Weasley in a state of distress. I had witnessed her just after the Third Task in my sixth year's Triwizard Tournament. When Harry had reappeared, unconscious at the edge of the hedge maze, Molly had been nearly hysterical. It took Bill Weasley, Professor Vector and Professor Sinistra to keep her from rushing to Harry's side. A Weasley in distress is one with which you do not want to mess. But with George giving me the lost puppy look, how could I say no? I agreed and started down the hallway (Security wards were cast in the hallways and rooms, so I had to wait until I got outside to pop over to the Burrow.).

As I turned to go down a staircase, I nearly ran into a stricken-looking black woman who was nervously wringing her hands.

"Sorry," I said and was already a few more steps down when I realized who it was. I paused a turned around to see the woman "Mrs. Johnson?" I questioned, returning to the top of the stairs. The woman spun quickly.

"Do you know where my daughter is?" she asked quickly. Her face was streaked with tears and her large brown eyes were filled with even more. "Where's my daughter? Is she all right? What happened?"

"She's at the end of the hallway… 317. She's awake, but I'm not sure… " The panicked look on the woman's face had made me stop mid-sentence. "End of the hallway. Right side." She had nodded quickly and began hurrying down the hallway.

I told Molly all of this, save my encounter with Mrs. Johnson. I most certainly did not need to have her nervous about Angelina and her mother.

"Oh, my goodness, the poor girl!" Molly said dramatically, one hand over her heart. Before she could go on, an owl swooped in the window and landed on Arthur's shoulder. She cast half a glance over her shoulder, but turned back to me when Arthur pulled the parchment off the bird's foot. She continued to bombard me with questions, which I answered as best as I could. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Arthur skim it quickly and wait patiently for his wife to finish speaking.

"Molly, dear," Arthur said quietly, stopping his wife's mission to see how much she could say before completely passing out from lack of breathing.

"What is it?" Molly asked, turning her eyes upon her husband with mild annoyance.

"It's the note you sent to Harry… the owl came back with it." His eyebrows were furrowed in confusion as his middle son, Percy, entered the room with his wife. Apparently, their five children were off amusing themselves in some other room of the Burrow. From the giggling and bangs, I could gather they were upstairs and with several other cousins.

"That's odd," Molly mused, looking, if possible, even more worried than she had seconds earlier. "Where could he be?"

"Who, Mum?" Percy asked, eager to jump in the conversation.

"Harry," Lizeth answered, passing her sleeping daughter off to Charlie. He smiled slightly as Elizabeth laid her head on his shoulder, yawning.

"Mum owled him about two hours ago with the news about Angelina and the owl just got back without giving the note to Harry," Charlie picked up, keeping his voice quiet so that he wouldn't wake his daughter.

"I thought Harry said he had some business to take care of at Hogwarts this week," Penelope put in. Her husband shook his head.

"He was there on Monday and he told me he finished everything before he left," Percy said.

I had an inkling of an idea where he was. I couldn't be positive, but if the owl hadn't found him in his usual places, I was rather confident I knew of his whereabouts.

"I could go look for him, Molly," I offered. "I think I might know where he is. Owls aren't allowed there." Her eyes held confusion, but she seemed too distressed to inquire.

"Well, if you see him, you tell him to come here, all right? Poor boy is always off on his own… " I smiled politely and nodded.

"I'll see if I can get some more information from the hospital, too." Molly's eyes filled with grateful tears. The woman didn't seem too easily pleased most of the time, but this seemed to satisfy her. After receiving a sleepy wave from an awakened Elizabeth, I Apparated away.

I entered the small graveyard quietly, mindful to respect the silence. It wasn't a spectacularly lavish place by any definition but it was quiet and peaceful. Less than a thousand were laid to rest there, wizards and Muggles alike.

I made my way down the dirt path, hands tucked into the pockets of my robes. My eyes slid over the various tombstones that I had always been impressed with. They ranged from large monuments of angels that seemed to stretch to the sky to tiny bricks imbedded in the soft earth, surrounded by carefully tended grass.

At the far west side of the graveyard lay a pair of gravestones separated from the main group. A man sat between them, his head leaning back against the fence with his eyes shut tightly. A man with messy black hair and round glasses.

I stayed a modest five meters away, behind a tree, not wanting to intrude on Harry's privacy. As though he noticed my presence, he sat forward and opened his eyes. For a moment, it seemed as though he didn't know where he was or why he was there. After removing his glasses and rubbing his eyes a few times, he seemed to become oriented again. Using the fence to support himself, he stood and finally spotted me.

I felt self-conscious as he walked over to me. I had just been spying on the Boy Who Lived! Actually, he was now the Man Who Lived Quietly And Ran A Charity. I always thought he would go into some sort of spy espionage or high profile job, but I suppose he shocked everyone when he disappeared for three years and then resurfaced at Fred and Angelina's wedding to start the Black and Potter Foundation with his godfather.

"Hello, Anya," he said quietly. I turned red under his gaze and looked down at my feet. "Don't be ashamed. I had the feeling someone was watching me anyway."

"It wasn't intentional," I said sheepishly, meeting his bright green eyes. "I… erm… sometimes when I'm here, I see you sitting by those graves. Are those your parents?" He nodded, glancing back at the tombstones. He looked a little sheepish himself and I smiled in a way I hoped was reassuring. "I come talk to my parents sometimes, too."

He got an odd look on his face at these words. I (along with every other educated witch or wizard in the world) knew he'd never met his parents; at least, he didn't have any memories of them. He'd had so much weight to shoulder for so long on his own… without anyone to help him carry the load. Sirius was there for him, I'm sure, but I knew from personal experience that nothing could replace a parent's guiding.

"Could I meet your parents?" he asked abruptly. "You know… could you tell me about them?" I'd never seen Harry ever look quite like he did then. It was a yearning… but with an intense, disguised sadness. "I I like to hear about parents."

"Sure," I said slowly. I led him quietly through a row of graves and showed him one large gravestone bearing the names of both of my parents:

In Loving Memory

Benjamin and Amelia Parker

"As loving as they were together in life, they remain so in death."

There were no dates of any kind. My mum had died before my dad, but I couldn't bear the two of them being apart after death, so when my father died, I had a new gravestone made and made it large enough so it stretched the width of both of their graves.

"Here they are. My mum's friend Genevieve used to joke that the two of them were always so close to each other that they were attached at the hip." I paused to chuckle. "I… um… I guess I didn't want them to be apart after they died." I looked up at him and was surprised to see that there was a smile tugging at the corner of his lips.

"Tell me about them?" he asked. I nodded and began.

"Well, my mum was a witch; she went to Hogwarts  with your parents, maybe. My dad was a Muggle, but he knew about the wizarding world. He worked with Cornelius Fudge and Arthur Weasley to help with wizard-Muggle relations. Fudge had my mum work with my dad and… well… it was quite funny really, as they would hardly get any work done because they were always goofing off. A couple of nutters, those two were. Now that I think of it, they remind me a lot of Fred and Angelina." I paused for a moment, reflecting. "My mother's family was very strict about marriages; if it had been up to my grandmother, my mum would have settled down and married a wealthy wizard handpicked by my grandmother before the age of twenty-five! So they eloped. I think it's rather romantic." I looked at Harry, who nodded in response. I was pleased that see he was actually listening and seemingly enjoying the story.

"Go on," he urged, crouching low to study the writing on the grave markers. I smiled and knelt next to him, brushing the dirt off my father's name.

"When I was little, I would make Mum tell me all about Hogwarts and magic. She even told me about you. Well, what happened at any rate. She softened it for me, though. Mums are like that, I guess." I shrugged and saw that he was looking down at the tombstone fondly. There was something behind his green eyes that I couldn't quite identify as he looked at the inscription beneath my parents' names.

"How about your dad? What was it like having a Muggle for a father?"

"It was… erm… entertaining, to say the least," I started, laughing a little. "Mum would send something flying across the kitchen and into the sink or cupboard and it would drive Dad positively bonkers. Then he would tickle her until she apologized." I tilted my head softly to the side, remembering the sound of their laughter. "Sometimes I wonder if they'd be proud of me for being okay on my own," I said out loud, unintentionally. In afterthought, I looked over at Harry, half-hoping he had heard.

"I'm sure they would be. Remember in seventh year when Fang got into the school? You're the only one who was brave enough to go near him!" Harry said with a smile.

"Fang wasn't dangerous! He was positively adorable," I replied with the utmost sincerity. "Really, you would think he was capable of hurting someone the way the rest of the students were going on about it." I shook my head. I had always excelled in Care of Magical Creatures and had a special affinity for them ever since.

"If you hadn't shown me this gravestone, I might have gone on thinking Hagrid was your father." He paused a moment, thinking. "Nah, you're too short." He dodged a sloppily aimed swat and gazed back towards his parents' final resting places. I swallowed hard and saw his eyes had misted over. When he saw me looking at him, he blinked quickly and I couldn't even be positive if he had had tears in his eyes to begin with. I gave myself an internal forehead smack and asked myself what I thought I was playing at, telling an orphan about how great my parents had been.

"I'm sorry," I said quietly, feeling positively horrid. The man had never met his parents and all I could talk about was my dad ticking my mum.

"No, it's quite all right," he said, standing up and brushing the off his robes. He reached a hand down to help me up and I took it gratefully, standing in front of a nearby tree. Once I was back on my feet, he continued, "I like to hear stories. When I was with the Dursleys, I would make them up myself. Very few didn't consist of their untimely deaths." He winked and I flushed red at such a personal experience being revealed to me. Before I could match a cherry, Harry went on, "Did you come here just to spy on me or to visit your parents, too?"

I gasped and a hand flew up to my mouth. I had forgotten to tell him!

"Oh, Harry, I'm sorry. I was sent here to tell you to go to the Burrow. Angelina fell ill and the whole family is gathering there." I chewed on my lower lip and beat myself up inside. What a stupid thing to do, Parker! I shouted inwardly.

Harry got a panicked look on his face for a moment, but it was immediately replaced with a mask of indifference. I suppose he needed to do that a lot, covering up his emotions like that. As an outcast, I had become quite the observer and could spot a lie or a faked emotion from a mile away.

I watched with a wince as his Disapparated with a tiny pop. He hadn't even said goodbye. Oh, yeah. He was pissed. I let my head fall back against a tree with a growl at myself How could I have been so forgetful… so stupid? I left to find someone without telling anyone where I was going, ended up spying on the person and then wasted twenty minutes of his time before passing on the message.

Furious with myself, I knew there was still one stop for me to make before going home. I pushed away from the tree and started back down to the path. The birds had stopped singing and my upset mind decided that it was to punish my stupidity.

A breeze flitted through the graveyard, stirring the leaves around my feet. I shivered involuntarily and pulled my hands into my sleeves, wishing I had brought my cloak along. I stumbled clumsily over a rock but was able to right myself before sprawling onto the gravel. Nice job, Grace, my mind taunted.

"Shut up," I said aloud. A young man near a tombstone looked up and gave me an irritated glare. I smiled apologetically and shuffled on, a sudden great interest in my feet.

Finally, I arrived at my destination, a large stone memorial. There was a heading on the top and, though I had read it loads of times, I reread it anyway:

Voldemort War II

Prisoners Of War  Missing In Action

we hold onto the strand of hope that you will return to us safely.

I swallowed hard and let my eyes roam down the lists of names. Mark Abbott… Franklin Bartlett… Gerald Hart… Carter Luther… Steven Marcus… Tucker Oxines…

I reached out my trembling hand and ran my fingertips gently over the next name. The rough engraving scratched the tips of my fingers, but I didn't pull them away.

"I miss you," I whispered very softly to the name. I leaned my forehead against the cold memorial and closed my eyes to force the stinging away from the back of my eyelids. "I'm doing okay, but it's hard. Why did you have to go?"

Two days later, I arrived at Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes at roughly six in the morning. Let it be known that I am not a morning person. There was an owl waiting for me when I arrived home the previous evening, asking me to open the store the next day and that he would try to get in by noon. George, of course, sent it. I recognized his hippogriff scrawl.

Fred and George have always been there for each other. Not in a mushy, talk-to-me-if-things-aren't-perfect type of way because that's just not the twins' style. It's more of comfort in knowing that if the dragonshit actually hit the proverbial fan, then the other would be by his side.

Therefore, it came as absolutely no surprise that George was going to keep his brother's business worries far away and try to do everything himself: take care of the shop, carry messages between the Burrow and the hospital and look into Parker Jackalope Practical Joke Enterprises and see what he could do about the copyright matter. I didn't turn him down for opening the shop at such a God-awful hour because he had so much to look over that a whiny, pesky record-keeper who was going to complain about waking up early would not do him a world of good.

So there I was, leaning sleepily against the counter at WWW in Hogsmeade. Unfortunately, it was a Hogsmeade weekend for the Hogwarts students and I had a gigantic crowd of young witches and wizards pushing and shoving, giggling and shouting and generally running amok in the store.

A blonde haired boy bought a red Squirting Flower and I watched with mild amusement through the front window as he presented it to a brown-haired girl. To his surprise, and mine, she leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek just after he handed it to her. He turned crimson and looked away. She leaned forward to smell the flower when a stream of water shot out at her.

Another swarm of students entered at this time, giggling about what had just taken place outside the window. One of them seemed just a tad too tall for her peers. I recognized her and waved.

"Shelly!" I shouted and waved her over. Shelly Walters, a tall, slim blonde witch who had been in Hufflepuff but in my year, waved back enthusiastically. Her large red lips curved into a wide grin and her blue eyes sparkled. A few of the elder customers gave appreciative glances her way and I saw it as no surprise. She was always the one to get the whistles at school from the boys and I was the one to get the mere title of as "the pretty girl's mousy little friend." Such is the life.

"Hey there, love!" she greeted brightly, stepping behind the counter without invitation. I was going to say something, but she wrapped me in a tight hug before I could get the words out. "It's been ages since I saw you last!" she said dramatically. Shelly had always been the one to play things up. "We simply must get together more often." I laughed at how American her last comment sounded and asked how she'd been doing.

"Just famously," she said, clapping her ring-studded hands together. I did a quick visual check and made sure she hadn't gone off and gotten married without telling me; she could get spontaneous at times. "And you?" I shrugged.

"My life's not nearly as exciting as yours," I said with a chuckle as I rang up a Flirting Flounder for a giggling teenager ("Real fish leer and bubble suggestive remarks to anyone who passes their tank!").

"You need to get married, girl," Shelly said, seating herself at a stool next to mine. I had a feeling that things would not be good if George came in to see one of my friends behind the counter, but couldn't bring myself to say anything at that moment. "At least tell me you've got a date this weekend. It's a Saturday night." I shook my head. "Things didn't work out with David then?"

"No, he decided we needed space." I rolled my eyes. "That means he decided to hook up with Marcia Flint. And things didn't work with Simon, John or Parker DeMilo either." I heaved a sigh as her eyes got big.

"Going for quantity over quality, huh?" Shelly said, arching a heavily penciled eyebrow as she fiddled with a business card for 3W (It turned into a sponge when dipped into cold water and it turned into a washrag when dipped in warm water. My idea.). At my scowl, she relented a bit. "Ah, well. Mrs. Parker Parker would sound a bit redundant, wouldn't it?" she said, tilting her head to one side. Her large blue eyes studied me, glinting just a bit too mischievously for me to be comfortable.

"What?" I asked slowly, half-fearing to know what was going on in her mind. I spotted a pair of boys roughhousing near a teetering bookcase of 365 Ways To Annoy Your Siblings calendars and shouted, "Hey, be careful!" in their direction. They scowled, looked at me like I was a horrid person for interrupting the destruction of the store and sent me glares before they stalked out. I looked back at Shelly who was positively beside herself with excitement.

"I've got a friend, Sean Ludlam, who's supposed to meet me for lunch next week. If you're involved with anyone… " She let the sentence hang, grinning from ear to ear with perfectly straight white teeth.

"No," I said flatly. "Absolutely not. The last time you fixed me up with someone… well, you know what happened." The poor man (I think his name was Daniel) had a terrible memory and kept calling me "Gina" the entire evening. We had to cut the date short because his sister got into a broomstick accident and caused a sixteen-broom pile-up on the Aerial Broomstick Flyway Network. Everyone was okay, but I found that Daniel had a bit of a short fuse when he got angry with his sister. It was our first and last date. Suffice to say that I wasn't too interested in being set up on a blind date by Shelly again.

"No, really, he's a nice guy. He's got a part-time job somewhere… oh, I can't remember, but he's studying Quidditch under Viktor Krum. THE Viktor Krum! Quidditch Today says that he's one of the most promising rookies out there. He's rather nice-looking, too." She made a clicking noise with her tongue and raised her eyebrows up and down in a suggestion fashion.

"Who don't you nab him yourself, then?" I asked, idly rearranging some merchandise on the shelf behind me as most of the students began to wander out.

"He's not my type," she sighed, leaning back against the counter. "Besides, I showed him a picture of you. He likes you." She winked and I groaned.

"You did what?" I moaned, plopping hard onto a wooden stool, which muttered a curse in protest. She threw her head back and laughed loudly, unashamedly and then looked back to me.

"You're gullible, love. You really are. So you'll meet us at the Leaky Cauldron at noon next Friday, then?" I put on a pout.

"I don't know. Fred's wife got really sick the other day and George and I have a lot to do around here. Besides, I don't want to leave him alone with all this work. I don't even know if he'll give me time off."

"Why wouldn't he give you time off?" a new voice asked. I looked up sharply and saw George standing in the doorway, the day's owl post in one hand. "Whoever he is, he must be a smarmy git to give such a great worker a hard time." He winked at me as he sidled behind the counter with a polite nod at a near-drooling Shelly, who was checking him out shamelessly.

"Shelly, this is George. George, Shelly." Shelly held her hand out and giggled as he shook it.

"Pleasure to meet you," she said in a sultry tone. He smiled courteously, looking a bit overwhelmed. I suppressed a giggle. "So what do you say, Georgie? Will you let my friend here come to lunch with me and a dear friend of mine next Friday?" She batted her eyelashes slightly, not enough to look ridiculous, but enough to spark George's interest.

"And what do I get out of the deal?" he asked coyly, leaning on the counter. Ugh, it was like they were a couple of animals. I took the parchment envelopes out of George's hand and rifled through them. Nothing too exciting. I cleared my throat loudly and they stopped their flirting long enough to pay me attention.

"Are you going to need me next Friday then?" I asked George. He thought a moment and shook his head as he took the letters from my hands and began to go through them himself. His eye caught one and he opened it.

"Suppliers need inventory," he muttered vaguely. He looked up at me. "You can have that afternoon off if you do inventory for me today." I shook my head instantly.

"George, do you know how boring doing inventory is?" I made a whining noise and slumped back on my stool. "Oh, fine."

"Thanks," he said with a grin. I scowled and snatched the form out of his hand. Dragging my feet to the backroom, I could hear Shelly's tinkling laughter. Maybe a girlfriend was what George needed to take his mind off of 3W and his sister-in-law. As a matter of fact, I was warming up more and more to the idea of meeting the mysterious Sean Ludlam.

List in one hand, I stepped between the shelves and started my count. First on the list was Amazing Flying Squirrels. Don't ask. Thirteen still left in stock. They weren't a quick-selling item so we could wait until next month to order more. I made a small X on the bottom corner of the box with my quill and pulled my arm down, banging my elbow hard on the metal shelf. Three months earlier, I had done the same thing. Three months earlier, the action had had different consequences…

"Can you not be so loud?" Fred spat irritably. I rubbed my elbow and looked back at the inventory sheet.

"Sorry," I said quietly. I looked at the next item on the list. "How many Flirting Flounders do we have left?" Fred shot me an impatient look and I tried not to get upset. I knew he and Angelina weren't on the best of terms, to put it mildly, and he was getting more and more easily annoyed as time went on.

"Can't… reach… the… box… " Fred said, rising to his tiptoes. He strained his fingers, but they only brushed the bottom of the box. I pulled my wand out of my pocket and pointed it at the offending box.

"Wingardium Leviosa," I said quietly, so I wouldn't get yelled at for being loud again. The box began to slide off the shelf and, unfortunately, Fred was doing it manually at the same time. Both of us, startled, stopped. I watched in horror as the box teetered dangerously on the edge of the shelf and fell. It seemed to fall in slow motion at first, but after it cleared the edge, it was as though time was sped up ridiculously fast as the water and fish went everywhere. Fred stood silently, red-faced with fury, water dripping down his nose.

"Are you STUPID or something?!" he shouted, coming towards me. "Didn't you SEE that I was pulling that box DOWN?" I took a step back, terrified. His hands were clenched into fists at his side and he narrowed his eyes dangerously. "What the hell is WRONG with you? How could you POSSIBLY be so DUMB?"

"FRED!" Fred spun quickly as George strode quickly into the room, looking caught between fury and horror. "What the hell is wrong with you?" Fred looked from his twin to me, as though he had no idea where I came from.

I nearly passed out in relief. The world around me tilted crazily as I stepped back against the wall for support. With a furious glare at Fred, George stepped up beside me. My mind was spinning, still terrified. Adrenaline pumped through my veins and my heart seemed to have no intention of slowing down. I felt hands touch my upper arms carefully.

"No… no, Fred… I'm sorry… didn't mean it… please… please don't hurt me… so sorry," I slurred out. My body was still catching up with my mind. I tried feebly to get away, but the hands held me securely in place.

"Not Fred," I heard in the back of my mind. "It's George… he's gone now… he won't hurt you."

"Oh, good," I whispered softly, falling forward against George. I was so drained from the rush of adrenaline, from my body responding to stressor with the fight-or-flight response. I trembled slightly as George's arms surrounded me.

"He won't hurt you. I promise. I won't let anyone hurt you."

To be continued…