Disclaimer: No I don't own Harry Potter etc. J K Rowling does. Elianne is my own character though. And the poetry is definitely mine, and only mine.
Author's Note: this is the sequel to one of my other Harry Potter fanfics, 'fathers daughter', you are HIGHLY advised to read that before this, otherwise the following wont make one bit of sense.
Chapter 4
"History Repeats"
~
The clock struck
The second chime
Faintly familiar
Time's rhyme
He felt it once again
The dull anger simmering in his soul
Tears welling in the sockets
He felt it for her
Like she had for him
The clock forever ticking on it
And the past lived over
What was spilling into what is
What is that we wouldn't wish
~
#Harry#
He closed his eyes to the diary. Resting it blindly on the cabinet.
It told him everything he wanted to hear, or everything he would have wanted to hear if things hadn't taken this turn.
Bittersweet in his head, that she had done that every year.
They called the day pax omnia. Yet tom riddle wasn't dead but still they celebrated the death and his too. It was strange enough they made a holiday of his sacrifice. No matter it hadn't been as high as it should - that he had not died, merely missed 10 years of life, which was as it went better than the cost had been to Hermione when she had done what she'd thought her duty.
As he lit the candle he smothered a tear to what the diary had told him.
Hermione's diary, enchanted with a peculiar personality that thankfully lacked the power of the previous diary he'd come across, that of Tom Riddle's.
It had said Hermione had always lit a candle for him on this day, still hoping beyond hope that he would be alive.
And now it seemed all too obvious what that meant.
Hermione had brought him back not from a death that was permanent. No, the death had been physical much like Voldemorts first defeat from when Harry was a boy.
And the second time round without Harry's maternal protection it had hit at both of them. Whilst Voldemort had his faithful daughter to look after his spirit, bringing him back to a body and sort of health - Harry had Hermione, the unbeknownst part goddess.
Her hopes each year might well have been all that kept his spirit from dispersing into nothing, and gradually they'd rebuilt him to be once more. Hermione had saved him by this simple ritual and a little faith in the impossible.
Yet this time as he lit a candle for her instead, he knew that he was not helping her. He wasn't anyone powerful, a great wizard perhaps but not to the degree of a god. His hope was merely a voice in the cosmos, praying someone else might come to their rescue.
All reason told him she was gone, destroyed for the greater good of all, to not let Khaeos gain power over the world.
And now that Khaeos was gone, so was she, intrinsically linked. The leaders had left the cult, been captured, fled or abandoned it for a new belief - with their god shattered and disproved as one. God's you see aren't meant to die. A fact that hadn't been wasted on the many survivors from the former Khaeodrics.
The only few that had still believed were dead, since they'd been unwilling to leave the unfortunate place of the demise of their 'great lord'.
They'd found Adeodatus's beaten body in the ruins, preserved in a sacred tomb, lifeless by an enraged Hermione's hands. He couldn't blame her for doing it. The world was better off without the psychopathic megalomaniac and without those she'd also killed in the explosion at the end. They were the fools to pay the self-served price of trying to erect a dark god as ruler of the world and for making a demi-goddess more than a little stressed.
He lit the candle then, simply for her. Even though it did no good, could not resurrect his love. Only that it would keep him from going ape over forgetting her. As long as he did this, she'd be honoured for her sacrifice. And by someone who knew what it meant.
++++
#Elianne#
Elianne lazily got up bleary eyed from her bed. It was Saturday today.
Everyone else around her was buzzing around getting ready for a certain ball she didn't care to attend, not only for the amateur dramatics that could only inevitably rotate around her offset friend Cassandra but also for a memory that she didn't like to have to relive in the merry tradition everyone else chose.
After all she knew the truth. Whilst all the girls second year and up where fussing over dresses and makeup, shoes and hair, she could only think of the idea that they were happy over the deaths of two people who were not only not dead but also close relatives of hers.
She snatched up a satchel as she pulled on a grey cardigan roughly over her head with one hand neatening it up.
She made her way to the library, one room that was unusually devoid of the later years due the business of the females with one thing or another and the boys as usual taking their time with wizard chess or some such game or sport.
She sat at a nearly hidden table in a bleak corner where she presumed no one would be disturbing her. The first years would never venture this far into the library unless they for a disturbing and even potentially troublemaking reason wanted final year books.
She opened her bag up, snapping back the latches hastily and peaked a hand into it rummaging for the thing she wanted to look at all week. Finally she'd found private space to read it in and plenty of time too.
The enveloped was a tad more battered than when she'd first picked it up, having lived in her school bag for about a week.
She lifted it up, looking at it from every angle as if she'd find out that way what it held.
Eventually she tore at the seal, breaking the flimsy piece until it revealed its secrets.
On the paper a neat scrawl of writing sat, in a way she knew, her mothers without a doubt. She needn't compare it with the other trick letters she'd received last year - she could tell by the meticulous attention to the swirls and dots on the characters. Not one missed, every f and t slashed at across its stance and all the punctuation fast and to the point. Her mother's handwriting was like no other she knew and this was hers.
She took the letter in both hands and read.
The note explained why and how Eliza had had to do it, to betray her family and leave her daughter in the lurch.
It was to Harry though, telling things Eliza would never say to Elianne but asking Harry to explain….
Her mother talked of how she was under threat and that the night Harry had taken care of Voldemort as a baby, Eliza's mother had escaped and disappeared from the prison that they both lived in - leaving Eliza to be brought up briefly in the care of a strange deatheaters wife, hiding in France until her 'aunt' Amy had decided to evade authorities and had passed Eliza on to another sympathetic family. From then on she had gone around various odd dark families because after her aunt's quick arrest there was no one to claim her. Her last chance of redemption and love gone the night Elianne's grandmother had left. She reminisced as much as recalled the details of how that night had been Delandria's, Eliza's mother's, only opportunity to get away from Eliza's father Tom Riddle Jr. or Voldemort as he had been last Delandria had seen him. Eliza recounted how Delandria was tied to the place by Riddle's magic, the magic that had faded the night he had died. But the magic of Amanda, Eliza's keeper, had not disappeared with the deatheaters leader and along with other events Delandria had abandoned her daughter to the woman.
The curse freed, her mother had left. Eliza still tied to the deatheater, who wouldn't let her go because she was Voldemort's key - a daughter as his other chance at immortality and perfection and someone who could not overtake him by stealing away his power as heir of slytherin.
As Elianne examined the sheets a thin and smaller rectangular bit fell out.
A wizard photo showing a sad fair redheaded woman in her 30's, trapped behind bars. The wild greenery infront of the window almost obscured her portrait except for the starkness of the woman's hair against it. She held a poignant half smile on her face, saying she still had dignity despite her imprisonment. But nevertheless it was a cold smile, lacking the vitality Elianne felt the woman - obviously Delandria her grandmother - should have had in her. All else showed a strong woman made to succeed. Maybe that was why she'd been chosen or why she might of chosen Thomas Riddle. Everything everyone said of her grandfather mentioned how powerful he was, evil but powerful, as her father had told her Olivander the wandseller had said to him. All she could think was that riddle had drawn her into a battle of the wits and wills, had charmed her to him before he had been as hideous as he'd become later and that ultimately he had won. Nowhere in the letter did it say why her grandmother had had a child with him, other than his motivation for immortality. However, given her family history Elianne didn't feel it was good to presume that her grandmother had been any different from either her matching grandfather or her mother Eliza, maybe Eliza had taken after her mother - both equally power hungry and cowardly at the same time?
There was no way to know and she certainly didn't think that the letter, whilst enlightening, was anything in a way of a good excuse for how her mother had behaved. Yet her attention was drawn again to the photo of Delandria, who calmly stood behind the sealed up window front looking outwards with a proudly serene stare.
Perhaps, she thought, perhaps my grandmother was someone in my family I'd have liked to have known. With that thought in her head she stayed in the library taking in all she could from the photo, eating up every detail of it and wondering what had happened back then. Grateful to her mother, as angry as she still felt towards her, that she had been able to fill another part of the puzzle that was what made her.
~
He stood staring at the grave, the unnecessarily disturbed earth which held no body.
He'd been there for several hours, standing trance like in the pouring rain. He felt it was time to go, to emerge back in to the real world. he'd had his fill of the place, the memories had been relived enough to keep them fresh in a rather raw way that was the only way he could remember them.
He walked out along the rows of other monuments further away from Hermione's secluded spot. In the slight distance he saw a woman, with the same brown golden hair Hermione'd had right before she died, the last time he'd seen her.
It could be her he thought but it never had been. The same golden strands of what she'd become, her hair different from what he'd known all their lives but still beautiful. The hair that signified the change in her and ultimately that she'd had to die because of what she was - and that she was dead - had to die for the world, to save them.
So he walked on, dismissing it, too painful to grasp at the idea that burnt him as much as it was a cherished hope of forever that she could be alive. However much she'd wondered over him, there wasn't the same thing there. He couldn't bring her back.
And today he didn't feel like running up to meet a strangers face blankly staring at him, with his poor excuse that he'd though her another person. This time he doesn't go after the woman in the corner of his eye. He's seen her so many times he doesn't want another look-alike looking emptily into his eyes, saying 'do I know you?'
~
I keep forgetting
Not meaning to
Not really wanting to
But the picture fades never the less
Growing further away by the day
As the date I shall forever remember unwillingly
Where did she go
To that place
The one I'm yet to know
Where did she go
We don't know
For sure
Was not tied to her
Left in our world
Just the promise
We'll see her eventually
In the memorial to everybody
Yes
I will meet her again
But between then and now
Is the indeterminable wait
That breaks me to pieces
Wrecking me completely
Who will I be
When I end up
With her again
Will she know me
Except through recognised pain
The heartbreak
She'd never wish on anyone
There I go another time
Thinking of her
Wanting to see her clearly
But the mind falters
And the body fails
Desperate to know the truth
In the oceans of doubts
That linger on here
With me
Without her
~
######
She walked to the place, sure of its rightness. This was where she was tied to, somewhere marked as hers.
She wasn't sure who she is, only that she was loved. The place said as much, its sweet message to her. She knew also that she had had great power, but how to use it was missing in her as was the feeling of it flowing in her
She sees she must have died. Either body was buried there or there wasn't anyway.
Who she is now doesn't feel like it's hers, not really her body, it must be a new body. Something that seems unfathomable to her, she is not sure how it could be or what she must be.
She'd really died and all that had saved her was what she'd wanted to destroy that thing and now it was solely in her. She had the responsibility, her creator for lack of a better word, could not corrupt her. Now it was hers to do with what she wanted, what she needed if only it would return to her. She got the feeling maybe she was responsible for still being here, that her absence of the powers she knew of might be temporarily because of this feat.
It was her maker or moulder, that had been destroyed by his own toy, her.
'He' was dead but not dead, words not enough, it was a ceasing to be and never having been.
Though what was after it had been fuzzy and watery, vaguely floating and perhaps non-corporeal, she believed she had once again realised what she should be and had made herself again. From spirit to body, like it felt a familiar form, like she'd done once before to some other she cared for.
Even with the realisation her place gave her she still felt confused, doubtful over her very existence and future, memories and knowledge slipping from her new body's grasp. She knew nothing, had nowhere to go, no person to help her.
She was vulnerable and was feeling like she was not whole somehow.
She stood rather tall, sticking out on the landscape. Ready for something meaningful to happen, some proof she was there and a sign of what she should do.
~