Innocence

- Part Three -

On a shelf, in a room far from Snape's flat in Bradbury, lay a book that remembered. Its thick black cover was of carefully tooled leather that formed beautiful pictures on its worn surface. Gold-leaf letters spelled out the words "Writ Troth" on the binding. A pale hand reached out and took it from the shelf, laying it down gently on the table; it was opened to its middle. It's pages were blank.

"Always remember the truth," cooed a feminine voice to the book, "and write the same."

Slowly the page began to fill with words of a fat, loopy script, telling a story that seemed to leap off the page.

Sunday, December 5

They have all gone away now, leaving me here, my family. It is moments like this when I feel very useless to them all and to the war. I can only help by keeping house and making sure the neighbors aren't suspicious by watering the flowers and going to the store like the rest of the people here who can't do magic. I hope they come home soon. I worry about them, out there.

Deja Griffith Troth

-later-

My mother, father, and brother are not home yet, and, though I fear for them, I have heard nothing strange on the news in the last two hours and I have an appointment to be at my friend Sally's house for tea in forty-five minutes. I must be off. I hope they return while I am out.

Deja Griffith Troth

Here the writing changed to a very fast, light scrawl that tilted wildly to the right. It seemed to have been penned either in an incredible hurry, or in a state of great anxiety.

Perhaps both.

Tuesday, December 7

The book has been passed on... again. I suppose I own it now, but I don't really want it. I am the last of the Troth women, my mother told me today. I guess I knew that before, but now its really sinking in. My grandmother was a Troth.

My cousin Deja is dead. She was found in an alley, halfway between my aunt's house and where she was going for tea. She should've never left. We told her it wasn't safe. We told her not to. She's gone. She's gone!

She had no way to defend herself. They just came, and... and... killed her. Mother says they may have tortured her first, but I don't want to think about that. There was that terrible skull with the snake hanging over the alley where we found her.

The funeral is tomorrow. Family from all over Great Britain is apparating in this afternoon for it. Mother says that there will need to be a ceremony sometime soon to change my name, now that I have the book, but I'm going to try to put that off as long as possible. I don't feel like celebrations quite yet.

Aphesis Annow

"Yes, I remember that," Aphesis Annow Troth said quietly to herself. Then, more addressing the book itself than anything else, "And you do too." Carefully, she flipped to the very front of the book. There was printed, not written, an introduction.

Today I make a book to remember. Today I make a book that has no words, but which generations will fill with their own thoughts and inspirations. This book, this diary, this paper pensieve, will draw connections between the past and the present, what was and what is. Guard it well, read it often, write in it only your own thoughts and truths, and pass it down from mother to daughter, as I have written it and will pass it to my daughter and to my granddaughter. It will be our family's conscience, our history, and our memory.

Melodoth Troth, 1836