Irony Never Discriminates

The first thing I hear is the laughing. Apparating into the grounds is no problem, breaking the rules is no problem, betraying their secret keeper is no problem; it is the happiness I can hear that rips me up inside.

How come I, the hero, can’t have this? Why can’t I have the same, simple happiness that currently dwells within these walls?

I walk over to the window, my breath melting some of the ice on the pane, and peer in. They can’t see me, and I get the impression of someone looking into the idyllic world of a snow globe, where everything is beautiful and peaceful. Right up until the moment when someone shakes the globe.

He’s sitting on a leather sofa looking smug. He always looks smug nowadays; he’s got everything he could ever want: the girl, the love, the protection, the friends… the child. The redhead that is seated by the tree should have been mine. I should have put the ring she is wearing on her finger. The little girl that is giggling as she chases after the enchanted snowflakes should have been my daughter.

Irony does not discriminate.

I lost her to him.

Him.

Of all the people I could have lost her to, it was to him.

No one believed it when they first came out together. They thought it was a rebellion of sorts, against her family and the expectations placed upon her. They all naturally thought she would end up with me. So they indulged her, thinking it a simple fancy. Even her brother, the one who is known to have hexed boys for looking at her the wrong way, thought it would be over in a matter of weeks. It would be just a matter of weeks, until I got my head together and told her my true feelings for her. As far as he was concerned, the look on his face would have been enough when she left him for me, which is why he stayed his wand hand.

So I did. I told her, with the simple conviction she’d be feeling the same way. Apparently she wasn’t. I wheedled, I coaxed, I pleaded, but she remained firm. Never, since the end of her second year, had she considered me anything but a brother. Now that hurt.

Irony does not discriminate.

So the weeks turned into months, and eventually the months continued into a year. The family was beginning to have to admit that this was serious: their baby was in love with the enemy. Eventually they saw that she wasn’t going to leave him, and he had no intention of doing what he had done to countless other girls: breaking their hearts. Two years after the infamous rebellion began, it ended in marriage.

So here I am, reduced to watching a scene that sickens as well as it draws me in, hopelessly intoxicating, as it is stomach churning.

Irony does not discriminate.

She turns to face him, and he places a kiss on her upturned nose. Their little girl giggles and bounces in between them, her hands holding a brightly wrapped parcel nearly the size of herself. I watch as her lips move, clearly asking if she can open it. Her parents laugh indulgently and the girl sets about tearing the wrapping paper off her gift. He leans back and watches as his wife kneels in front of the girl and helps her with a particularly tough piece of sticky tape.

My fists clench.

I shake my head, and pull my wand out from inside my robes. If they saw me now, they would think I was mad. Perhaps I am, maybe the battles and wars have finally gone to my head. I can only see them through a haze of red. It’s funny how love and hatred are so similar: just two sides of the same coin, really. Both are infectious and can be equally destroying.

Irony does not discriminate.

I laugh quietly and bitterly, making my way to the door of the house. Despite the fact they are in hiding, there is no magical measures of protection, they clearly put all faith in their secret keeper. Well, even secret keepers can be… convinced to reveal the whereabouts of those they are hiding.

The snow globe is about to be shaken.

~~~~~~~~~~

“Take Lessa! Run! I’ll try to distract him!” With a hard kiss on the mouth he shoves his wife away, and she stumbles off, heading down the passageway to the back door. What has happened? Why is he doing this to us? Why? Why now? How did he find us?

There is broken glass everywhere, and she runs with a screaming two-year-old in her arms.

“EXPELI-”

“AVADA KEDAVRA!” screams a voice so contorted with rage and loathing it is unrecognisable. Yet she knows who has just killed her husband. She knows all too well.

Even as she scrambles to open the back door, she can see the flash of green light burning into the back of her eyes. It will be there forever. If forever is the matter of minutes she may have to live. Her heart races even faster than before, and tears stream down her cheeks. Merciless terror has taken it’s hold of her and she drops the key. Oh Merlin… oh Merlin… help me… god… Voldemort himself, for all I care… save my daughter, if you can’t save me. Please? Where’s the key!

She finds the key and shoves in it the door, even in her urgency hearing the silence that permeates through the house. Lessa sobs, and she quickly covers the little girl’s mouth as she yanks the door open: let it not be said that a child’s sob does not curse deeper in the silence than a strong man in his wrath.

And the strong man in his wrath is heading their way. She runs across the snow-strewn yard to the wood around the house. Oh Merlin… she tries to take a breath, but she catches the sound of crunching snow some metres behind her. She doesn’t dare look back. She stumbles onward, Lessa on her hip, the little girl with one grey eye and one brown. The little girl with tears running down her cheeks as she watches her Mamma’s pretty face contorted into one of mortal fear.

She runs on, cursing herself that she has never learned to tandem Apparate. She must reach the village, yes, that is what she must do, and seek help. Any help.

A branch snaps behind her and she realises that he is gaining on her. He’s always been fast, faster than her, especially now she is running with her child.

Then the footsteps behind her stop. She runs on, all the while straining to hear something, but the trees behind her give no sound. It is silent. Her lungs are burning and she gasps for air, and for an instant pauses, just to draw a painfully deep breath and swap Lessa to her other hip. Lessa begins to scream again and that’s all he needs. She knows this, oh Merlin, she knows. Where is her wand? Oh SHIT… left on the mantelpiece in the rush. How can she have been so utterly foolish? Now her child will have to pay for her one slip up.

He is suddenly in front of her, wand leveled at Lessa’s head. She backs away. Her chest aches with her exertion, and Lessa has squirmed out of her mother’s grasp. His wand follows the child’s decent, but she moves in front of Lessa.

“Move,” he gestures for her to move away with his wand.

“Take me instead! Not Lessa. She’s never done anything to you! We can talk… sort this out, but let her live,” she shrieks, holding her daughter’s hand behind her.

“Move aside Ginny,” his voice is flat and dull, “there’s nothing to talk about.”

She backs away again, but he is too quick for her. He raises his wand and chants the words, just as she begins to move away. She was never as fast as him.

“Avada Kedavra!”

Green light streaks towards her, and she makes one last desperate scream: “RUN!”

She crumples to the ground, emerald light searing her body, and forcing her soul to leave its mortal shell. Even the soul can weep, and as she is lifted away, snow begins to fall on the place where her husband’s body lies, and upon the hair of her child, who is standing beside her mother’s body. Lessa hasn’t moved, and the bad man advances on her.

“Mamma!” the little girl screams, shaking her mother’s cold shoulder. She looks up as another jet of emerald light streaks towards her. However, the light does not seem to reach her.

What? He is confused. An invisible circle around her seems to absorb the killing light with ease. It hasn’t touched her.

As he dies from the same thing that saved him twenty eight years ago, one thought echoes through Harry Potter’s head: irony never discriminates.