Sacred Promises, Wasted Hope

"What do you want me to tell you?" asked Sirius almost pleadingly. "What do you want from me?" Harry pondered the question in thoughtful irritation for a few moments, rubbing his chin roughly as he paced around the room. He paused, and began to gesticulate frantically, his movements making no sense to the dark haired man who sat on the windowsill.

"I want you to tell me the truth," replied Harry, bowing his head. Then he looked up sharply.

"No, actually, I don't," he continued. Sirius looked bewildered. "I want you to tell me that you couldn't help it, that you were kidnapped, that you were tricked, that you faked your own death. Tell me that you were young, or stupid, or irresponsible, or that you didn't think, or you didn't consider the consequences of your actions. Hell, you can tell me that you spent the last fifteen years as a taxidermist, or that you got seriously drunk and woke up a decade and a half later in a wheelie bin clutching a bottle of whisky and a trophy for the best-dressed man in Bognor Regis contest of 1994. Tell me anything. Tell me that you weren't one of the men in masks who ambushed the castle and slaughtered my friends."

Sirius looked at him strangely for a moment, and began to speak in a clear and calm voice.

"I could tell you all of that. But I'd be lying. And not just about the taxidermy and the wheelie bin." Harry inhaled sharply, and looked like he was about to explode. Then, without warning, he fell to the ground, a pitiful, shuddering, heap of rags and bone. He was pale, with the pallor of a man who would have no idea where to begin to sleep or eat. For fifteen years he had been subsiding on a kind of nervous energy that had begun to take it's toll on his body and mind. At thirty, he could have been mistaken for forty-five.

Sirius leapt up and ran to Harry's side, trying to pull his godson up, but Harry flinched at his touch, and pulled himself to his feet.

"Do-not-touch-me," he panted furiously, his pale and hollowed cheeks now flushed, and brushed his straggly hair out of his eyes, cold and glimmering like chunks of frozen emerald. He slowly limped towards the door, attempting a dignified exit, but he collapsed again. This time he made no effort to get up, but just lay there, a shattered, aching, empty, fragmented heap of a man, his emaciated body convulsing with al, of the rage and grief and sense of loss and betrayal that he had locked away inside himself. All of the emotion he had accumulated burst out, flooding, washing over him all at once, an intense tsunami, and he felt as though he would drown, or burst, or possibly both. The great tidal wave he had restrained inside his cold and empty heart broke above him, crashing through the barrier he had formed between himself and the living world, penetrating the shell he had become, ridding his very core of all the numbness and forcing him to fell again. All of it. Making him feel all that he had denied himself, what he had refused to embrace and disallowed to run through him naturally.

Sirius could do nothing, and just stood in horror, seeing his godson's heart ripping the rest of him apart. After a few moments of this silence, he gave in to instinct and ran to Harry, cradling him protectively and slowly rocking him back and forth. This time, Harry did not pull away.

*

I wake up suddenly in the early hours of the morning, where time is slow and sleepy and the day has not yet really begun. It used to startle me, but no longer. I am used to waking up against cold stone now. I press my ear to the wall, but I hear nothing, so I don my slippers and creep into the narrow, ill-lit passageway, being careful to avoid the creaky floorboard at the edge of the worn old rug. Holding my breath, I silently slip into his room, my hand cushioning the handle of the door to prevent it from banging against the wall.

I see him asleep. He looks troubled; his body is wrapped and tangled in the sheets and he is moaning softly. And he is breathing. As long as he is breathing, a deep inner part of me is satisfied.

I sit in the chair by his bed for hours, just staring at his face. In sleep he looks younger, more carefree. Maybe in his dreams he does not know me, or he is in a place that, once familiar, he has ceased to be acquainted with. Maybe his mind recounts the horrors that he has seen, that he has done, like a long, endless film on a continuous loop. Maybe not. I know now that that is all I see in my own dreams, which is why I never sleep.

I think about what he said to me, what I said to him, and I regret it. What if he were to die tomorrow? What if that was my last chance to really know my godfather? You think I am morbid? No. If you had seen what I have seen, if you had heard what I have heard. If you had felt what I have felt, you would not think me morbid. I have learnt to expect the worst, to prepare myself for the most disheartening of scenarios. I have lost my faith in life itself. Almost.

And he is the link, between my world, my world of misery and horror, my world of death and destruction and hardship on every corner, and the real world, where there is still a little bloom, and hope, and happiness. For fifteen years, fifteen long, hard, lonely years, fifteen years that took more from me than just my youth and my looks, I had been praying for his return. Holding on to a tiny fragment of hope. And he is here now. Just when I had given up on him ever returning, when I had prepared myself to accept the worst, he is here. He is back. But I feel that he is still hiding something from me. I can see it in his eyes, when he looks directly at me (which is a rare occurrence in itself). I can see that it pains his very soul to hide it from me, but he has to, and I understand that. I just wish it didn't look as though it was eating away at him.

I come to him every night. He has no idea.

*

"So have you done anything really interesting that I don't know about?" asks the girl with the honey-blonde hair who sits across the table from me, as we sip coffee and nibble toast. I smile at her, but my heart is pounding.

"I've told you all there is to tell. Why?" She shrugs, and smiles simperingly.

"Because I get the feeling that there's something you aren't telling me an I want to know. I'm twelve, I can cope with it." I raise my eyebrows at her. I know she wants me to tell her, and I know she needs to know, but can she cope with it? Is twelve too young? I decide to go for it, to take the plunge.

"Well, alright, I'll tell you. Where shall I begin?" I stall for time, as I try to plan out some sort of order in which to destroy everything my daughter has ever known. I decide to start with the most important facts.

"Well, I want to talk to you about your father." She looks down in disgust.

"That creep?"

"He loved you very much," I say, and I can feel the tears welling up in my eyes.

"Yeah?" she says, more a statement than a question. "Well why didn't he stay around. Why did he abandon us?" By now I am openly crying, but I don't care.

"You've read a lot of books on the history of the Dark Arts, on the Second War?" She nods sulkily.

"You must have heard of the freedom fighters. Harry Potter, Luna Lovegood, Ron and Ginny Weasley, Hermione Granger, Draco Malfoy, Neville Longbottom, and the rest. And the Order of the Phoenix?" Again she nods, looking slightly startled and slightly angry. I can see why. How dare I, he mother, talk so openly about the figures she has idolised for years and only thinks about in hushed tones. What right have I? I continue.

"Well, as you know very well, most of them are dead. Luna is in St Mungo's, long-term, Harry is a wreck, Ron, Hermione, Neville and Draco are dead."

"I know. Ginny is dead too, mum, you forgot her." I smile through my tears.

"No I didn't. I am her. I am Ginny Weasley." She looks at me in mild amusement.

"No you're not, you're Mona Malloy, who lives in Somerset with her daughter. Anyway, Ginny had red hair and yours is black. And I've seen photographs, you look nothing like her." I smile again, and draw out my wand. I wave it over myself, and feel the strangest sensation. I can see my hair turn red again, and grow longer. I feel my features changing, rearranging themselves. I shrink somewhat, as Mona Malloy is, or was taller than I am. Rosa's eyes are wide and her mouth agape. Her scepticism has disappeared entirely.

"If - you - are - my - mother, then who the hell is my father?" she asks, somewhat incredulously. This time I do not smile. I pull a tattered photograph out of the pocket of my too-big robes. It shows our wedding day. I pass it to her silently, reaching for a tissue. She nearly falls of her chair.

"They're all there." Her voice is full of amazement. "All of the freedom fighters. All of the Order of the Phoenix, all of the people who fought, and died, to rid the world of one of the worst evils it has ever known. And the man standing next to you is my...dad?" I have to laugh. She is quoting her favourite book. I nod in reply to her question.

"You look a little like him, and you're a mix of us both. I sometimes think you are him when you're quiet or sad. Some of your mannerisms are the same."

"But he was blond and you're ginger. How is my hair so weird?"

"I suppose that is what you get when you mix a little of each. It's not so hard to believe, is it? I mean, I had to change our surnames when we started hiding, but they still sound almost the same. Malloy, Malfoy." She nods again.

She stares at the picture for at least ten minutes. All of our happy faces, shining up at her. Especially the ones in the centre of the picture. Of the seven of us who formed the core of the group, only Harry and I are left.

After a while she begins to speak.

"Do you have any more revelations for me?" she asks, and I hear mistrust in her voice. I cannot blame her. I have told her too much. But not enough. I shake my head,

"No, that's all." It isn't, but I cannot tell her any more. I cannot tell, her that I faked my own death and hers to save us both. Or that the only man who I could talk to about it all is half insane, and near death. Or that I tried to kill myself after the Death Eaters didn't even give me his body back when they were finished with him...