The Winter Glass

Chapter Nine: Breaking the Ice

In the morning, there was a thin layer of ice in the pitcher near my bed. I cracked it with the blunt end of my knife and sloshed icy water over my face. My throat felt raw and scratchy, and I took a drink to soothe it. The relief was temporary. I pulled on a second pair of socks and trudged into the main room to stir the fire and put on tea.

Harry was already up. He came in through the window, dirt under his fingernails. "I forgot to cover the roses. I don't know if they'll make it. "

He'd had an extraordinary green thumb thus far. I shrugged it off. "I thought I told you to stay in."

"I was warm enough. I used those old rags we had for washing the windows around the roots. What's for breakfast?"

"I don't know." I rubbed my eyes. I honestly didn't care. "Toast. Tea. Put the kettle on," I said, and collapsed into a chair. "And put more on the fire. It's freezing in here."

Harry looked at me strangely, but complied.

"Are--are you well?"

"I'll be fine," I replied grumpily. "I might have got a chill last night."

He found a toasting fork and turned his back to me. "Ron and Hermione are coming around this morning. Dumbledore left us a great deal to cover before he returned...."

"Fine," I repeated. I lugged my chair closer to the fire, then gave up. I trudged back to my room and returned with the covers from my bed. Wrapped in a cocoon, I swallowed the square, rough edges of toast and sipped tea with disinterest. With my head against the back of the chair, I watched the flames flicker as though at the end of a dark tunnel.

I was vaguely aware of visitors, of Hermione reading out of history books and travelogues.

"To the south, where it be warmer and of a more pleasant clime, the various peoples are hot-blooded and swarthy. A slight against one is a slight against all, and the prevailing justice is an eye for an eye."

Rustling. Swallow. Pain.

"The insular society...two thoughts...those who would close the borders and deny all contact, and those who would allow all to mix freely."

Clink of porcelain.

"...ascended to the throne...known far and wide for...bravery..."

Bones shaking from the inside, throat closed.

"Valor."

A knock at the door. Low voices, worried and quick. The edge of the blanket coarse against my cheek. I would have to turn my head to look, but it was so heavy... Ron uttered something, his voice cracking, and the door slammed.

The fire burned darker, lower. Behind my eyelids. Each time I blinked, it got smaller by half, until only red coals remained. Time passed. I don't know how much. Finally I saw Harry silhouetted against the fire, which he must have stirred again. He was dressed for the cold. "You're not to go out," I mumbled.

"Too late for that. I've already been out," he said. His voice was flat.

"What's possessed you?"

Harry stood and braced his arms against the mantel. "Three more children frozen. All of them went back to look for that sleigh. I...I found one of them. He was my age. Fourteen. Took lessons with him."

A cough tickled my chest but it would not come. "All the more reason why you should stay in until this weather passes."

"And what of their families?" Harry turned to face me, a dark shadow whose expression could not be seen. "Don't worry, they'll be just as dead tomorrow?"

"Yes. I'd rather you didn't join them." I was sick but I have no excuse for the next card I played. It didn't win me the trick anyway. "Your mother and father--"

"Are already dead," he finished in a low voice that was worse than shouting. "Maybe I wish I was with them instead of with you." He brushed past me and I heard the door to his room slam.

I untangled myself from the blankets to go after him. When I reached the doors to our separate bedrooms, I thought that I might rest in bed for a few minutes before trying to make my appeal.

The next time I opened my eyes, it was morning. Pip licked my hand, whining. "Good boy," I whispered. My voice was gone. "Get Harry. He'll take you out."

Pip ran for the door and scratched at it. "No, Pip," I said, more to myself than to the dog in the other room. Marshalling my weakness, I stumbled across the floor. There was no one in the main room and Harry's room was empty. I swore. "Listen, Pip. You'll just have to take yourself outside." I shooed him out onto the stairs and left the door open.

It was in my mind to go back to bed. I didn't make it. Some time later wiry arms slipped under my elbows and around my chest, and I was dragged back to my room. I heard someone saying my name over and over but it was too difficult to respond. The blackness was welcoming and there was no heat or pain there.

My anger with Harry drifted away. Eventually, consciousness did return and the pain began. For a few moments right after I woke up, though, there was peace. Harry had fallen asleep sitting on the floor next to the bed. I raised a hand to his head, careful not to wake him. The savior always gets less time for rest than the saved.

He blinked sleepy eyes at me. I hadn't been careful enough. "You're awake." Relief tinged his voice.

I managed a nod and a cough.

"I'm sorry," he said, not meeting my eyes. "I don't know what I would have done if I had lost you also."

The last confused me, but I feared that the burning in my throat would worsen if I inquired. Harry took this as a command to carry on.

"After everything else, I belong here first. I shouldn't have gone after her. It--it seemed like the right thing to do. The sort of thing you'd be proud of me for. And I almost killed you too."

Thoroughly confused from fever and his words, I tried to speak, barking out rough coughs instead. Harry lifted me, propping a pillow behind my back so that I would not drown. My handkerchief came away covered in blood.

He stared, his mouth half-open. "I'll find a doctor," he said at last, the shock passing.

A strange man with cool hands and an unfamiliar, herbal scent spent very little time looking me over. I didn't pay any attention to what he said as he spoke to Harry in a low murmur. Listening was exhausting. When money had changed hands and the intruder was gone at last, Harry disappeared as well, returning with broth that he fed me himself. I was too weak to tell him off for that.

I don't know if it was hours or days later that I awoke to find Harry reading at my bedside by candlelight. He had a haunted look about him and the brittle look of someone whose face has long been set with tension. "How are you feeling?"

"No better," was the answer I wished to give, but shaking my head had to suffice. The very movement triggered a wave of nausea.

Harry was ready with a basin and he took the mess in stride. When I was still again, he wiped my mouth and face. "I did this."

"No," I managed to whisper from between cracking lips. "Not you."

"Yes." He held a cup of weak tea to my lips. "My fault."

"Nothing you could have done." I tried a smile. It must have been horrible. "Is anyone else ill? Perhaps you shouldn't be here, Harry. It might be catching."

He looked away. "No one is ill."

Even as self-absorbed as I was I caught the lie in his truth. "What's wrong?"

"Ginny," he mumbled.

I blacked out then. When I saw Harry again, he was looking out the window at gray skies. Not caring to speak, I watched him. He stood in his stocking feet and a pair of trousers that were not long enough. He'd been growing. His shoulders were wider than I remembered, his arms longer and more muscled. As always, his hair needed cutting and a comb. He was on the center of the scale, neither a man nor a boy.

His breath clouded the glass and he drew shapes in it absently with one finger. I'd lectured him on that before, tired of washing smudged panes, but now it seemed exceedingly unimportant.

He looked exactly like James at that age, until he turned and the green of his eyes forced me to remember Lily.

"Join us for dinner tonight," Lily asked me. "Please. James speaks so highly of you."

She was not to be refused. I could find nothing cruel or heartless about her. Lily met me at his chamber door, pleased to have spread their table with my favorite dishes. "Of course, we are troubled," she said, "and we want this turmoil to cease."

James nodded. "My lady claims a flair for diplomacy," he said, taking her hand. "She also says that if all summits were held over chocolate instead of the ceremonial wine, treaties would be made more easily."

I laughed at this. Lily was one after my own heart. "Will you settle the lands with chocolate?" I asked her as she served me the evening's confection.

"If I must," she replied, her laughter gone. "But I cannot go this summer. I'll be nursing the heir to the throne."

"I am supposed to give you medicine," he said. He looked bone-tired from nursing me.

I struggled to sit up and finally required Harry's assistance. "I don't think you should bother."

"Of course I should, why shouldn't I..." He realized it all at once and his face crumpled. "No, I won't let you. You have to try."

I managed a hoarse laugh. "I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but you can't put a stopper in it. Some things are inevitable." I wiped away a cord of blood. "I wouldn't mind some tea, though, if you wouldn't mind."

He'd never made tea so fast. I couldn't taste it or feel the warmth through the cup; it was more that I wanted some familiar routine to cling to.

Harry's hands shook as he twisted them in his lap. "Won't you try the medicine? The doctor thought it would help."

"No," I said, complacent. "No sense in delaying things." There was, of course. I wanted nothing more than to down all of the tonic at once. This might have scared him more, though. A last charade, for him.

"If you have questions, this would be the time to ask them."

Harry nodded and reached for the pile of books that had collected on the floor. He thumbed through the pages until he found what he was looking for, and carefully put the book on my lap.

It was utter garbage. Not worth reading. Quite possibly the worst thing I'd ever copied, and when I'd had to do so the year before it had taken all of my willpower to be exact. I looked at Harry and said, "You don't think this is true."

"It's in a book. Hermione uses books for everything. Someone wrote this--how can it not be true?" He put his face in his hands.

"I was there."

Harry's look held the tiniest bit of hope. "Tell me the truth. Only the truth."

"You parents were not perfect," I began. "Contort their flaws to the fullest and you have this." With a burst of energy I threw the book across the room. "You have my permission to throw that on the fire."

My attempt at humor didn't cheer him. "So it is true, in a way."

"They were human, Harry. They were good friends. They were childish when they were children, true, but forthright when they were adults, which was exactly what was needed. Under their rule, no one dared cheat another man because your parents valued fairness and justice. They devoted their lives to ending the wars in the south. The only reason that there is peace there now is because the people live in fear. That won't last forever."

"My parents died so that a traitor could bully peasants." His voice dripped venom and vengeance.

"The throne could be yours, Harry. It is yours, if you want it. There would be no question of your birthright if you were to go home today--you are the image of James--and those who remembered would support you."

"The rest would have me killed," he said, fingering the old scar on his forehead. "Killed for saving the commoners."

"Perhaps. And, perhaps, the time will come later for you to return."

Harry was silent for several minutes. As if he came to a sudden decision, he thrust another book into my hands. "Where is this?"

Wearily, I opened it. I saw nothing inside. "What?"

"The places in the north that she's writing about. Where are they?"

"Harry, this book is blank." I held it up for him to see.

His brows furrowed. "You don't...don't you see anything? It's Ginny's diary."

"What are you doing with Ginny's diary?" I turned the pages again. Still nothing. It appeared that she had never made a single entry.

"When I look in it," he said slowly, "she talks about other lands, strange dreams...there's a drawing of a castle, and..."

I remembered the first night I saw her. "It's only a tale. Why don't you ask her about it?"

"She's gone." Harry took the diary from me and sat down again. "We were looking for lost children, that day when you first were sick. I asked her about that boy, the one in the sleigh, and she got angry. Said some things...anyway, we were separated and I found this later in the snow. That's how I know she's not dead. No one has found her and she never leaves her diary anywhere."

This frightened me. "Harry, she has brothers. If something happened to her, they can go or send the guard to find her. It's not your task to save her."

He looked me square in the eye, hot color staining his cheeks. "The opposite of saving her is killing her."

It occurred to me that he loved her and that I'd deliberately ignored the fact to suit myself. I closed my eyes then, feigning sleep. Sooner or later I must have slept, because I woke to see him staring out the window again as if he would melt the ice and snow with his will. I let out a groan as I shifted on the bed.

"Drink this."

The brew he poured into my mouth was awful enough that I could taste it. It didn't help the odd rattle I heard with each breath. "James. I promised you."

"What?"

"I promise," I said.

James pinched my shoulder where his hand held it too tightly. "If something should happen, promise me that you will take care of her."

The door opened at last and the midwife carried in a bundle of blankets. "A boy, my lord."

"And him? What about your son?" I asked, as James surveyed his son with a look of awe.

"You will be named his godfather."

"No. It's not right. It should be someone of higher rank. I have not come into my inheritance, and it's too much--"

"You promised me." James would not let me back down. "Keep my commandments."

"Come back to me," Harry said, shaking my arm. "I need you here."

The rattling grew louder. I could not stay. I knew, too, that in spite of all my promises, I could not bind his child to me. Without ties, he would grow into his birthright; if I held him close he would not walk the path he was intended for. Of course, I say this now, having no choice in the matter.

There was time for one last breath. "You may go now, and so must I."

He cried, then, as he had not since he was small; angry, frustrated tears of shame and self-loathing ran down his face. "I shouldn't have let you go. My fault."

It wasn't, not really, but there was no more time to tell him so.

I tell you the rest as if viewed through a heavy veil. My mother's bed was hung about with curtains of lace, and while she was occupied I would sneak into her room and hide there from the servants, safe and cocooned. The world could not see me clearly--but, in return, I could not see it. That sums up my life very well: late to understand, willfully ignorant. Now, though, I could watch to my heart's content.

Not long after, Harry packed his things to walk into the northern lands.