Different Paths

Different Paths

She rarely visits the Hogwarts library these days.

There is little call for her to do so, after all. Her own private collection contains the accumulated wisdom of a thousand years of medical magic. There are few potions that it cannot tell her how to brew, barely a healing charm known without it records the correct incantation, hardly a curse recorded for which it fails to specify the appropriate remedy if one is known.

But sometimes even this considerable store of knowledge lets her down, and she has to leave her office to consult the old and rare volumes in the Restricted Section. It is intimately familiar to her, however seldom she finds herself here. If she can trust the recollection of the Headmaster, it has changed little in a century and a half.

It has certainly changed little since she was a girl.

The table in the corner at which she sat many years ago, reading material far beyond what she would ever need for her NEWTs, is still there. She remembers the scorch mark near the far right corner, already there the first time she sat here, its cause and origin unknown to her. She smiles at the recent stain in the centre, where a leaking quill has dripped ink, and which will probably not survive the librarian's next tidying sweep. And when she looks carefully, she can still see, faintly scored into the wood, the marks made by an Engraving Charm when she herself was a student.

Four letters. Covered over by many layers of varnish now, barely visible to anyone not specifically looking for them. Four letters, close together. A small act of vandalism at which she had hastily stifled her giggles, lest they bring down the wrath of the librarian upon their sixteen-year-old heads. Four letters, close together, linked by a heart drawn with more feeling than skill. W, M, P and P.

She smiles as she remembers an occasion some twenty years ago, when she had observed the surprise on the faces of four boys as they discovered those initials carved there. She loses the smile as she remembers that they are the initials of two names, two hearts, that had once been linked with more feeling than foreknowledge.

For the bearers of those names have taken different paths.

She runs her fingers gently over the spines of rows of books devoted to the art of Healing. The titles, the bindings, even the positions on the shelves bring back floods of memories for her. She remembers sitting at this table, reading them for the first time when she was a girl of only sixteen. She remembers sitting at this table, in quiet, studious companionship with the boy who had cut their initials into it. She remembers sitting at this table, dreaming that maybe one day she could live both a life devoted to Healing and a life devoted to that boy.

She remembers that they have taken different paths.

Her life has led her down the path of healing. She has learnt to cure, to mend, to make whole again, to save.

His life has led him down the path of harming. He has learnt to hurt, to rend, to tear to pieces, to kill.

He has learnt how to enjoy these things.

She has never understood how it has come to be that the boy she had once known and loved has hardened his heart. How the streak of boyish cruelty he was once ashamed to show in her presence has become his defining feature. How the occasional boyish aggression that he would sometimes show when crossed has been honed into a weapon. How the boyish affection that he was always willing to show to her has been burned out of him.

She has never understood how, or why, he turned from the path she offered him and took the path offered by his Dark Lord.

The path that led straight to Hell.

She has never forgotten the harshness of his voice on the day that he told her he had no further interest in her, and the heartbreak that it caused her.

She still recalls the coldness of his gaze on the day that he visited the school to practice his killing skills, and the hurt that it caused her.

She can not forgive the cruelty of his actions on the day that he fought against six of her charges in the Ministry of Magic, and the fear that it caused her.

She cannot fail to remember that they have taken different paths.

And in this place, she cannot fail to remember when their paths had seemed to lead in the same direction, and when their two names, their two hearts, had seemed to be linked by more than just cuts in a piece of wood.

In her mind's eye, Madam Pomfrey studies with Walden MacNair.