Windows of Opportunity

I am sitting in the kitchen looking out the window. Through it, I can see them playing some form of sport that vaguely resembles Quidditch. Even Hermione is playing; her bushy hair is flying around her face and her brown eyes are sparkling with mirth. As I watch I can smell the sweet scent of honeysuckle and can hear the delighted yells and laughs of the assembled players. If I didn’t know any better, if I wasn’t who I am; if I were just an outsider looking in, this scene would be picture perfect.

I am not an outsider though. I am an insider watching from the outside, so I can see things others may not. Hermione’s eyes are wearied, despite them sparkling in the sun. Charlie’s smile is strained, Ron has permanent frown lines, and if you look closely you can see Harry’s face is haggard and drawn.

This is what happens in a war. People are forced to be things they aren’t, become the person they should be even if they don’t want to. It has its toll, on everyone and everything. Even Crookshanks wouldn’t have been unaffected had he still been alive. What I am watching is a window, a window of opportunity to forget the outside world for a little while. These little windows are becoming less common as the war goes on and they never seem to last long.

Soon someone will come with news of new attacks on a Wizarding family or a Muggle town. Someone will come with news that we all dread, that someone else has been killed. The deaths pile up; merge into one another, but the horror never fades. Thinking about all who have died and all who may be dead by tomorrow scares me. What if the next person killed is him? No, I will not think of it. I will try to enjoy their little window of opportunity as if it is mine.

It is too late though, the blinds have been pulled across the window and I see nothing. I find myself stuck, once again, with my thoughts, anger and grief. Most of all, my guilt. The gnawing, biting, twisting agony we all face in our lives.

They came to me before, asking if I wanted to play as well, but Ron overruled them. What if I fell? What if I hurt myself? What if I tire myself out? What if I got sunburn? What if? What if? What if? They all treat me like I am wrapped in cotton wool; like I am a breakable object that is already cracked and may smash at any moment. For my part I try not to blame them, but they know nothing. Nothing at all.

It has been five weeks since they found me. Three years since they ‘lost’ me. Five weeks since they found me asleep in the house, after they had stormed the place. Five weeks since I was 'rescued'. They believe I was the victim of indescribable abuse. They think I was holed up in the smallest room in the lowest level of the darkest dungeon. The sort of room that no matter what kind of day it is, the dark is always present. That is why I am treated with a delicacy only awarded to the severely beaten and traumatised.

They become worried if I do not speak to them. They become anxious if I sit in the garden looking up at the sky. They are trying to get me to tell them what happened. Trying to get me to open up and bond with them. Trying to get me to become the person I was before it all happened.

What do they expect me to tell? All the secrets I will no doubt have uncovered whilst being shackled to the wall of my ‘cell’? Ha, I do not tell them because they would not believe me. Oh, of course I have tried, but they whisper among themselves about the subconscious making up for what the conscious does not want to remember. I stop because when they start talking like that, I begin to doubt it myself.

I begin to the doubt the fact that, indeed, I was his prisoner and yet was never one. That sentence isn't very illuminating, but it explains my predicament adequately. I was a prisoner in the conventional sense, but how many prisoners are treated like the Lady of the house?

Of course it was not always that way. Naturally, at first I was in the dungeon and found myself shackled to a rather mouldy looking wall. That soon changed when he came down and began to talk to me. He was not interested in what I knew about the Resistance, he was only interested in me. Or so it seemed, but I was not so easily won over and thought I could hold out. After all, had I not trained extensively in eluding the enemy's advances in every turn?

It was a foolish thought. He soon wore me down, not by violence or suffering, but by persuasion and wit. He gave me a gift, a gift I would pay anything for now. The gift of being able to turn a blind eye to reality. I lived like royalty and wanted for nothing. For a while I lived perfectly happy and did what he willed me to do. Forget.

It is never that easy, to just forget and live with your back to the world. Paradise is not meant for Earth and the past never fully goes away, despite how far and fast you run. I ran hard and fast, but it still caught up with me. The catching came in the form of my 'rescuers', that rainy day when I had fallen asleep on our bed.

The came and whisked me away, removed my little place of peace. That is how it was. They think I was held against my will, and perhaps on that count they could be slightly right. For sure, if I had wanted to leave, I know I wouldn't have been allowed. Then again, I do not tell them that I never really wanted to leave. I did entertain fanciful ideas of escaping and saving the Wizarding world, but as anyone could see, that did not happen. He can be very persuasive and could charm the coat of a poor man’s back if he wished. Those thoughts only existed in the beginning, the stage where you are still chained to the wall.

It is hard, I know they do not think I should carry out any proper missions again and it irks me. Not that I would want to, but to even be considered for something useful would be nice. I told that to Hermione last night, she responded gently that I help enormously by being alive and if I could tell her all that I know about when I was with them ...

No. I don’t know ANYTHING! How can she not see that? She does not see the only reason I appear fragile is because I am so miserable. She does not see I weary of this war. She does not see that I know they talk about me when they think I am not listening. That Harry wants me to move in with him where he can watch me now Mum and Dad are gone.

That was a shock. To come home and find myself among strangers that are family in one thing, but to find my parents dead is the real shock. Imagine walking in to see you family for the first time in three years and not have my Mother and Father amoung the assembled. It was like the heart of the family was missing, and considering the number of people in my family, that is saying something. They told me I fainted when I was told. All I remember is seeing red, bright burning red, dancing across my eyelids. The loss rattles me again, I reach for the chair arm to steady myself and touch the chain around my neck to assure myself that it all happened. That the guilt has not could driven me delusional yet.

I did not plan for any of it to happen at all. Who would plan for something like that? An absurd question in the first place I suppose. Yet even in my wildest dreams or darkest fantasies I would never have imagined the outcome of all that has happened to me. In the darkest fibre of my being, perhaps I once fantasized about him, but that was it. Nothing like what I experienced, nothing like we all had to go through.

I was far from being innocent in when my world went black. I had already participated in two of the battles and had been dealt several curses from them. I recovered though. Unlike so many others ... Bill ... Professor Snape ... Professor Moody ... so many lives wasted. Ruined. For what? A watchful peace that is shattered each day by new reports of bloodshed and mayhem.

Why couldn’t it have been different? Why couldn’t I have killed him when I got that wand? Why? Things might have been different ... I might have moved in with Harry by now. But things weren’t. Again, why? This is why- I couldn’t do it. I’ve spoken those fateful words and played God so many times, but I couldn’t say Avada Kedavra to him. The two words that might have saved hundreds of lives in the long run.

He looked up at me through those thick lashes and said, "Do it then."

With those three words, he invited me to kill him. If I had seen ahead maybe I would have. Oh, who am I kidding? I couldn’t then and I couldn't now. Still, it is nice to sometimes think I could have done something heroic, sometimes it is nice to play the hero and do something good for a change. So I stood over him, trembling slightly, and as he watched me, my shaking increased until I dropped the wand. I sank to the ground next to him, wondering whether today I was going to die.

It was not my day to pass on. He moved with a grace I wish I possessed, and kissed me. It began soft and comforting, to calm me down, then it deepened as he pulled me into his lap. He nibbled my bottom lip till I opened my mouth and let the kiss deepen further. Slowly it changed and heat began coursing through my body as his hands moved to hold my lower back, my hips, then moved to gently cup my breasts. His mouth moved from mine to trail tiny kisses that sent the skin on my neck into flames.

If I hadn’t come to my senses then ... well ... my senses returned ... briefly. Until he looked at me again with those eyes of his, full of something I couldn’t understand. Something that had to be given into.

It wasn’t always like that. Often I would be screaming at him to let me go, let me go back to my own family where I wouldn’t be part of this. I wasn’t, I suppose, really part of it as such. But I knew. Of course I knew, when he returned each night with that triumphant smirk on his face and his hood pulled back to reveal his hair mussed and wild. I knew, he never gave me details and I never asked. I don’t think any of the women who weren’t involved did. For acknowledging that I knew perfectly well what was going on and didn’t act, will get me the Kiss. Let alone the fact that before I knew it, he had subtlety got me to tell him little amounts of information about the Resistance. Information I would also get the Kiss for revealing.

That is something that tears me up daily. The guilt, as I've mentioned before, eats at me mercilessly. Mainly asking if perhaps I could have stopped some of the deaths. If perhaps I could have done something, anything, to find some information out for the Resistance. How though? I barely knew how to get out of my chambers to the dining hall, let alone escaping and trying to stop him.

Yet other things come to me amid my musings. Images from my own memory that make me blush.

I am pivoted around gently and feel the coolness of the wall against my thin shirt. His hands are cupping my bottom and his lips are fused on mine. Our mouths meld together in a passion that only comes from denying something too long. His body is pressing mine against the wall and I am not complaining. My hand is wound through his fine hair and I shudder as he sucks and bites at my neck. The other hand is around his neck and soon moves to join it's partner in his hair.

One of his hands move up to the fastenings of my shirt, all the while kissing me like there's no tomorrow. His hand slips into my shirt and splays itself over my ribs. The heat from his hand on my chest is nearly too much for me to bear, I want more. With a quick movement my shirt is discarded on the floor, soon to be joined by his as well. Merlin, he has had too much experience at this, is the only coherent thought that passes through my mind as I am lifted and deposited on a soft bed I didn't know was nearby.

I was lost, all barriers of control I like to think I have disapparated. Leaving me with my desire to loose myself completely in him. It is a lost cause.

I snap out of my reverie. Oh God, while I was doing that with him, how many people were being killed? How many people were being murdered by his followers? My friends? People I knew from Hogwarts? I am still looking out the window but do not see anything but rows of dead bodies. While I was sleeping with the enemy innocent lives could have been taken.

I shake my head and turn away from the window. I can’t bear to see their faces turned on me. The guilt sometimes overrides me. I sit still for a time and it recedes. A little. It’s not just the guilt from what I did with him. It’s the guilt that I know how to raise my wand and kill another human being. Making a decision that God should make alone. It’s war though. Sometimes sacrifices must be taken. Like the sacrifices that I will live with the rest of my life.

The guilt is not leaving. It is eating at me. I cannot eat. I cannot sleep. I am dying inside.

Should I tell? Should I throw away what I have managed to scavenge of my life? If I tell what will happen to me? Perhaps what I get I will deserve, yes, anything I get I will deserve and more. I am a blood traitor. An abomination to my friends and family. What am I to do?

Should I wait and let it kill me from the inside out? Or should I do what I should have done in the first place, tell them exactly what happened to me while I was imprisoned at Malfoy Manor?

I am not religious, I never thought is was plausible but if there is anyone … anything out there … a higher power or a spirit guide … anything … please help a sorry person in a twisted world.

~~~~~~~~~~

In the gathering darkness, a figure stands on a turret watching the stars slowly emerge. The hood is pulled up and the figure appears to be one with the darkness about it. A screech pierces the silence that is dusk. The figure turns sharply and looks to the direction the sound is coming from. It holds out it's arm and a snowy owl lands on the gloved hand. Though it has not seen the handwriting in years, the figure immediately recognises the scrawl on the letter the owl holds.

What could this mean?

The figure muses to itself as it watches the snowy owl fly off from the top of the lonely castle in the mountains. It opens the letter carefully after attempting several spells to detect trickery. There is only one paragraph hurriedly scrawled onto the thin parchment, it has evidently been written in great hurry and urgency. Had not the figure seen this, it probably would have spent a good amount of time being amused at the culprit's writing style. Old grievances die hard, especially in the times it was in.

A few seconds later the figure disappears with a pop. Anyone who might have seen the face it bore at that moment would have been terrified. The face was a mask of absolute hatred and anger. Whatever it had read did not bode well for the sender.