Titanic Days

I never knew there might be days like this.
"Dream on" he says, "Dream on" he always says.
Will I be saved from these titanic days?

 

I've never been out of Great Britain. But on a bright morning three days back, I walked up a Southampton gangplank into a new world.

I couldn't've been younger than eight when I first really realized that there were other countries, that the whole world was somehow more than the moors that the Manor rested among.

Rested isn't the right word for it. Battled the landscape, battled the flora and fauna and didn't even let animals that weren't properly tagged onto the property without the say-so of the groundskeeper. Good for keeping vermin out, bad for birdwatching. During my third year at Hogwarts, I filched a Muggle novel out of someone's satchel - I don't even remember whose anymore, given that I was prone to picking up books, newspapers, anything I could read, with the completely confident expectation that nobody would catch me, and if they did, it wouldn't matter anyway. The book described a city in a bubble - nothing coming in, and nothing going out.

That's what the manor was like. Not that it matters anymore. I'm never going back there.

Even if I wanted to.

It's not the Manor now. Moody tells me that some aurors want it destroyed, stone by stone, in hopes of finding the secrets.

They could've asked, instead of sending me away. I might've told.

Might.

They don't really want to know. They don't want to examine why countless murders and distructions and annihilations of memory and magic took place, or why they culminated in the one I participated in just a week ago. I killed my father, in a very roundabout way, being one of those who sent his killers through Ayr's gate. I gave my blood, and for a time, I gave up the stealth that I had spent years developing, deliberately and inadvertently.

Which should serve me well now. I used to have to hide from him, if I wanted to shirk my studies, or fly for no purpose whatsoever or flirt with one of the girls from school whose name wasn't on his Approved list. And I had to hide from the teachers, so they wouldn't know what he'd asked me - told me - to study after hours, and to make sure that nothing I learned from him seeped into my reports or classroom answers. And for the last two years of school, I had to hide the mark on my arm from my classmates.

Granger says I'll be able to get rid of it, when I get to America. Whenever this boat docks, which my steward says will be two days from now.

It's been four days since she left me at the dock, a tonne of Potter's money, changed into weird green pieces of paper tucked into a billfold in my jeans, next to the falsified identification papers. I'm now David Manchester. I’m 22, a freelance writer with nothing but a laptop computer from Granger that I can’t figure out how to turn on. The instructions aren’t in English, at least not any I can understand. That’s to be expected, as none of the Muggles here speak much English either. They speak American, I think.

A letter from Potter is in my pocket too, a dozen inches of information a young Muggle man should know, which Hermione wouldn't've known to tell me. Amazes me how he's learned half this, but then again, I know what that Muggle cousin of his has been doing since he left school two years back. Reports always flew to the Manor, especially when they had nasty truths inside.

None of them are as nasty as the ones that are still inside me.

You're not supposed to make a toddler into a Secret Keeper. And you're not supposed to Obliviate him so he forgets that inside his soul are all the terrible secrets you don't want to reveal. And you're not supposed to do it again and again and again. Quite apart from the problems this causes for said toddler's memory - or said teenager's, for that matter - it darkens the soul. The last time I saw him was the first time I was aware of the charm. Did I hit a saturation point, like a sponge that can't hold anything more? Or should I just not use that word in this context?

I have a charm. I cannot be Sponged. I was coddled and protected from illness and injury as much as he could do, because if anything happened to me - if I lost magic or if I died, his secrets could pour back into the world. And I would drown.

Now, Granger is my Secret Keeper. A horrendous change in expectations for everyone. It wasn't something everyone wanted. Weasley would've handed me right to the Ministry - his whole family would've done the same in a wandflick. But I know too many of Potter's secrets, and Black's as well, and in the hands of the Ministry, nobody wanted to see what I would spill. Not blood, I'm sure they all think, even though they've seen that it's as red as anything. It's not green, whatever that rumor about those who've been marked by the Dark One says. Those who wanted their blood to spill in green had to take a potion first, and it would only last ten minutes or so. It was enough to make a point.

I've been dining at a table for two by the window in the Princess Grill for most meals, eating everything I don't expect to have for a while after we disembark. You can have caviar at every meal, but the chocolate is worthless. The cost of the ticket ran through the last of the money Severus had entrusted to me that May morning; Hogwarts professors aren't well paid, but he knew that with what I was about to do, and what he knew to expect, he wouldn't need it, and I would.

The ship isn't quite full, so I've eaten by myself most of the time. Of course, on the second day, a Happy Family asked me to join them, asking if I was heading back to the States from school. Their daughter was, twenty years old and on her way back from St. Andrews, and I could see what she was thinking, and that she'd asked her father to invite me to their table.

I'm nineteen, not stupid. I may not be using magic now, as I try to break myself of the habit, but I do have a few potions in my traveling case, and she's been just seasick enough to not want to leave her cabin ever since she left mine. Some things are the same in the Muggle and Wizarding worlds.

If I was on holiday...

But I'm not. I have too much to learn. Stealth isn't a natural state, not even for me, and to blend in, to make sure the Ministry doesn't find me, even with Granger watching my back, even if I'm thousands of miles from where they'd be looking from me. We can't prevent all authorities of everyone from seeing me - the secret keeping just doesn't work that way. And how could we define authorities anyway?

So I've been reading. Granger gave me a thick, bright orange book called Let's Go 1996 USA!, which her parents gave her back when we were silly sixth years, and they thought there would be no battles and they'd be able to send her for a summer in the States. She scribbled on most of the pages and tucked a quill in on the Distances page, which was the first thing I looked at when it was decided that I would be leaving England.

When I wanted to get as far away from the Manor, and from Ayr, for that matter, as I could.

I've never lived in a city. I've rarely been in a city - not a Muggle one at least. Going through London to get to King's Cross doesn't count; I never took more than a step from my parents, or whoever they sent me with.

Now, now that I'm finally determining what I do, I am going to. I'm going west as soon as I get back on dry land. We dock in New York City on Saturday. I am going to the top of the World Trade Center; Let's Go says that when you stand on the Observation Deck, it feels like flying. I would go to the front of the boat, but every time I look, couples are out there, or parents with their adolescent daughters, arms outstretched. I’ve heard the phrase “King of the World” more times here than I ever did from Lucius, and that’s saying something.

I don't know when I'll have the chance to fly again, as my Firebolt is at the Weasleys, of all places, and I quite expect the trickster himself to do something nefarious to it before I even have the chance to get it back again.

It's only a bloody broom, and I miss it. I hate jeans and shirts with buttons that have to be fitted through holes and paper that nicks my fingers and the feel of a plastic pen. I'm perfectly uncomfortable in a narrow bed in a room by myself only a foot up from the floor, or being served by waiters who tower over me as I sit; it's almost condescending. I refuse to play Muggle Scrabble, because the tiles don't rearrange themselves, because they never change to rude words in the middle of the game, and because the expression that old biddy gave me when I played Quaffle for a triple word score was enough to make me want to curse that sneer off her purple lips. But I'm not carrying my wand at my hip anymore, even though the reflexes of years of battle are still there, and I gather she thought I was a twitchy brat.

Well, I am, but this time it wasn't deliberate.

I've had snatches of time over the past month, since I took Severus's seat at the Ayr Table, to learn eighteen years of Muggle culture, but we've been busy saving the world. It's cut into my revision time. Since I got onboard, though, there have been no distractions, other than Miss Co-ed. Solitude has its benefits. I think I did know that, from books or from eavesdropping. Certainly not from personal experience.

I finally figured out how to work the glass-fronted box in my room. I never thought that was what a television looked like; somehow, I thought it would be bigger, to fit all those people inside. Of course, I know they're not really, just like I know that when I turn the dial to number one and see the waves off the bow, they're really a few hundred feet behind the television, not right inside it. It's a nasty illusion, nonetheless, as are the films they show each night.

The first night, I expected to see a performance - actors on stage. I had heard about the cruise's stage shows as other passengers discussed them, but the large white curtain never went up. Instead, it changed color and the room filled with sound. I imagined it to be some sort of trick of the light, but it's more than that. The Muggles who created these films that I've seen, and the programmes I watched on the television starting the very next day, clearly have wizards amongst them. They've merged Muggle technology and the magical arts, just as Finch-Fletchley was always ranting about at prefects' meetings.

 

Of course the films made me change my plans. Granger had said that I should act, I should go to Los Angeles, I should stay in New York and go on the stage and hide in plain sight. Nobody has more experience playing false roles than I do. But if there are already wizards there, they might recognize me. Not a worthy risk.

 

I'm going to Seattle instead. It's a city, it's as far from Britain as I can get without landing in the ocean, or leaving the United States, which I am not to do. There's too much electricity in the air for many wizards to feel comfortable there.

 

But me? I can get used to it.

 

 

Do you ever get that sinking feeling?