Leaving Home

Leaving Home (2/6)

Author's note: First of all: not mine (whether Rowling or Shakespeare), so please don't sue! I don't own anything anyway. Secondly, thanks to all for the reviews. Some of you loved it, some of you hated it. Yes, it is going to be H/Hr, and suitable for Portkey. I did have a request, though: Tank03 asked if I would warn people how upsetting things would be - for example, with the tag “character death” if a character actually, you know, died. Just so you could all psych yourselves up for more misery, or press the back button before I go depressing you again. Tank also asked that I give some indication that this wouldn't want to make people cut their wrists at the end of it. Hopefully not. This is a sad and angst-ridden story, but I want it to end with hope - a bittersweet ending, but one that is ultimately positive. I might fail utterly. Just warning you.

So (and you have Tank to thank for this), character death ahead in this chapter. Don't say you haven't been warned! But before you stop reading: it isn't who you think. To be honest, I'm not sure this chapter even rates as needing a character death tag, as it happens off-screen and is only there to keep as much canon as possible for an AU. Basically, if you've read HBP, the death won't be a surprise. Yes, now it's who you think. So…

Part Two.

A sad tale's best for winter: I have one of sprites and goblins.

My mother's voice measures out the words, refuses to falter over them. She is strong, stronger than I. I remember when she used to read these words to me when I was a little girl - a strange little girl that preferred Shakespeare to Peter Rabbit. Despite the fact that I was named after a woman in The Winter's Tale, I preferred A Midsummer Night's Dream. I loved hearing stories about the fairies in the woods. I knew that there were more things in heaven and earth than were dreamt of in our philosophy. I knew that there were goblins.

My parents still stuck with the old standby, though. They had met at a performance of A Winter's Tale, and in this dark car, near the end of our flight from Britain, the sundering of our lives from friends and school and career and home, it is a comfort to them as much as to me to hear it aloud once more.

We've been travelling for close to two months now. Under normal circumstances, we could have gotten to the safe house McGonagall arranged for us in under 24 hours, but the circumstances are far from normal. If anyone was trying to follow us (and really, would Voldemort waste effort on a family of fleeing Muggles? It would be beneath him, surely) we would have lost them long ago, in endless misdirections involving all kinds of transport. I've tried to avoid using magic when at all possible, as we don't want to draw attention to ourselves. Apparition doesn't help much - I can't Apparate to somewhere I don't know, and going back and forth to side-along my parents and our luggage is exhausting. The one time I tried it, on a short stretch along the French coast, I nearly splinched myself, and Crookshanks was sick.

Despite the constant dirt and noise, I've been almost grateful for the movement. There is always something to do and to watch for. It keeps me from remembering, although the long stretches waiting for buses and trains and hired cars - not to mention all the time spent actually in them - are becoming harder and harder to fill.

It will end very soon - we're on the last stretch now - and I almost don't want to stop. I'm so tired, and I wonder if I will ever sleep again without awakening, whimpering, with guilt. I dream about Harry every night - about him dying, him being tortured. It's not true of course; it's only my guilty conscience, but one day it will be real. I wonder if I will wake up knowing the difference, or if the day it finally happens will see me dream it, not knowing that my dreams have at last come true. Despite the weariness, I dread the end of our travels, because then I will have time to think again, while building for myself the new life that Harry will never have - the papered over version of my old self, for as long as it holds.

When the memories get too bad, I bury myself in books. I know that my parents worry when they see me reading one of Snape's gifts (I've wrapped it in the cover of some piece of inoffensive traveller's rubbish, the kind that they always sell in bargain bins outside the bus stations). I worry myself. These are not nice books, and there is a kind of laceration in reading them - the life that I have given up, the spells I could have used, the protection I could have helped to give.

Inconsistently, part of me wishes that I could burn them, but even if my parents would countenance me burning a book (even these books), I cannot help but think that Snape gave them to me for a reason. Perhaps there is something in here that I will be able to use, something to buy me redemption. Something that will allow us to live for a little longer, when the end comes. Perhaps it is something that will help the end come quicker, at the last - perhaps that is the only redemption that I will be allowed.

I will not let my parents suffer for teaching me about goblins and winter, for the sadness of their tale.

What's gone and what's past help should be past grief.

It should be, but it isn't. And even my mother cannot hold her voice steady over these words, although the catch in her throat is nearly undetectable, and I feel it most in the constriction of her chest, the silent breath under my cheek. She tucks me closer, and continues, stable once more, but I see my father, in the front seat, gaze at her intently through the car mirror, his face tired, eyes bloodshot.

They know each other too well, as I once knew Harry, and they know that there's no going back.

There's nothing to go back to. Our house is gone. I don't know whether it was out of spite, or whether it was an attempt to twist the knife, or even an outbreak of black humour, but seven days after we left Britain, Death Eaters destroyed our house. It was completely unnecessary - it was no secret we had gone.

After we had been travelling for some weeks, and against the advice of my parents, I wrapped a cloak around myself and strode purposefully into the wizarding quarter of the big city we were travelling through at the time. It was a risk, and not one that I can justify taking often, if at all, but I couldn't stay away. Thankfully, the gloom of Britain has spread through the circles of the wizarding world, and cloaked and shielded witches and wizards were not unusual. It felt odd holding my wand again - I had taken to keeping it on me, but not using it - and my fingers felt clumsy around it. I was able to make a few small purchases, things that would be hard to get hold of where we were going, and liable to attract attention if I tried to get them there.

More importantly, I was able to get newspapers. It's no secret that I've left - Rita Skeeter has had a field day with that one. It's a good thing McGonagall taught me how to avoid the charm that addresses wizarding letters, or I would be getting Howlers by the bucketful.

I couldn't bring myself to care. There is nothing that woman can do to hurt me more than I have hurt myself. Everything pales in comparison to Harry's face, forcing himself to stay silent and let me go without a word of blame.

I would have cried at Dumbledore's death if I had any tears left to shed, but by this time they had dried up long ago. For all his shortcomings, he did what he thought was best, and I wish I had been able to let him know that before the end. It seems that being so guilty myself makes it easier for me to forgive guilt in others. I would have wept for him if I could, and for Snape - and for Harry, who is now more alone than ever.

I nearly went home then. I wanted to - perhaps I still could have made a difference? But the knowledge of my home's destruction left me in a cold chill. Voldemort had known that we had gone when our house had been destroyed, but he had also known where we lived. I can't go back there. I can't take my parents back there. They would never let me go alone.

The thought that Voldemort may have spared us, believing that I would run, weakening Harry further, keeps me awake at night.

What if saving my parents was his plan for me all along?

If so, it makes no difference. I cannot go back now. But Shakespeare was wrong: the past is not past grief. What is done can never be undone, and will be a grief forever.

For you there's rosemary and rue; these keep
Seeming and savour all the winter long.

My mother has taken over the driving, and it is my father's turn to come and sit with me in the back of the old car, to take me in his arms and comfort me as if I was a small child again, who had scraped her knee in an adventure of no importance. He has the play in his hand, open at the pages as he reads to me, but I know that he is not really looking.

They must have read this play to me a dozen times. I expect between them it is closer to a hundred. He no longer needs the volume, anyway, and it's not the dim light of dawn that makes his voice falter over the words.

I've cut my hair.

I borrowed my father's old razor one evening, early in our trip, over the cold, damp waters of the English Channel. It seemed more appropriate than scissors, or the kindness of a hairdresser, even though one was available on the ferry. I could sit in the handicapped toilets, on the seat in front of the mirror, and I held my wand in one hand, and the razor in the other. It would have been easier to magic my hair into something different. I knew that I should at least try to change my appearance, but the cold steel in my right hand seemed more appropriate than the warm wood in my left. There are times when magic is not the answer. It can suffice, but as I squeezed my hand around the razor, and watched it bite into my palm, watched the warm blood flow down onto my wrist and the slow, steady drip on the floor that was almost a comfort, I knew that for now, and perhaps forever, magic had lost the emotional resonance for me that once it had.

It's true. You can never go home again. It was that that finally decided me on the razor. I'd always been able to go home before - home to the warmth of my parents' house, or home to Hogwarts - but no longer. Without a home, I didn't know who I was anymore. I was not a Muggle, but I was no longer truly a witch.

It had felt like a little death.

It was strange to see myself in the mirror, putting aside my wand, and raising the steel, streaks of red running down my reflection. The sting was almost a consolation, and the sharp tug as I lifted a handful of curls and sawed through them with the old razor seemed suitable somehow, like a penance.

This handful of hair was the troll of first year, and the surprise I felt when I found I didn't have to deal with it alone. This was the Common Room, scolding as cards exploded onto my homework. This was checking their homework. These were the early morning breakfasts, the going to Quidditch games that I never really liked in the first place, the snow in Hogsmeade, the sunny days by the lake. This was Harry catching the snitch. This was Harry in the hospital wing.

This was Harry on the day that I left him.

I ran out of hair before I ran out of memories. It fell alongside my blood and my tears, and that was the last time I ever cried. There was no point in it anymore. It didn't seem to help.

My mother's face froze for a moment when she saw me, then determinedly forced itself into a smile, and a clucking concern over my hand. She dabbed at it with a wet handkerchief, wrapped it in plasters from her purse, and managed to compliment my new hairstyle without flinching.

My father just sobbed once, convulsively, and he wrapped me in his arms and kissed me. Before we left the boat, he bought me a soft woollen hat.

I let my hair drop over the side of the ferry, watched it as it disappeared into the dark.

My father misses it more than I do, I think, but reading to me soothes him, as if I were still a little girl that could be soothed with a story before bed. It doesn't hurt, so I let him do it. Our house was always filled with books. That's what I missed most about being at Hogwarts, about the wizarding world. About being away from our home. Shakespeare. Austen, Dickens, Spenser, Milton. The black prince and the fallen angel. Hogwarts library doesn't have them, and there are no wizarding equivalents. Literature seems to be a dead subject for them. The closest thing to fiction, heaven help me, was Gilderoy Lockhart and his adventures with the mysterious and the horrible.

In odd moments, I've wondered why that is. Perhaps the creative side, the consciousness of effort, is lacking. When one can magic something into place, or get a house elf to magic it into place for you, it seems wasteful and demeaning to do without. You can't magic creativity. It's something that has to be worked at, sweated over. I'm not saying that it doesn't exist in the magical world, but it's something that has transmuted into creativity of a different kind - the creativity of spell work, of the perfect potion, the perfect transformation. Not the creativity of literature, or art, or great music. There is no Beethoven in the wizarding world, no Mozart.

There's a reason why no wizarding school teaches the Arts. There aren't any. No Winter's Tale to savour throughout the darkness, to sweeten the long nights. I've never understood why before. Now I do. People don't want to forget, to be soothed. They know that darkness is around them, waiting for them to forget. The stories no longer comfort me, for I can no longer be comforted. I do not want to be soothed. I want to remember, to drown, to regret. I want my rosemary and rue, and to know them each time that I look into a mirror and see the ragged remains of my hair.

Damn it, I don't want Harry to be the only one who is marked. At least in this small thing, I know that I have not left him alone.

Do as the heavens have done, forget your evil;
With them forgive yourself.

I have my head in my father's lap as he finishes, and he is stroking what is left of my hair. His voice is so quiet, and I wonder if he is talking more to himself or to me. It must be me - my father has nothing to forgive himself for. He and my mother have told me how much they love me so often these last, horrible weeks, but it was never something that needed to be said. They gave up their only daughter to a life they could never be a part of, and now they've given up their whole lives to be able to shelter hers for a little while longer.

And they haven't complained. That's the worst part - not only knowing that haven't, but that they won't. They won't even consider it. For I know how long they tried to have me, and the winter's tale that was the lack of children in their marriage. I know that for them, I am their world, and there is nothing that they wouldn't do for me, nothing that they wouldn't be glad to do for me.

Perhaps that is what my father needs to forgive himself for - that no matter how glad he was for me when I finally made friends, that he would sacrifice those friends without a second thought for my sake. With no hesitation and no regret. Perhaps he feels the lack in himself, and wishes he could forget.

But perhaps this verse was really meant for me, and I cannot help but die a little at the thought. How can I forgive myself for this? How could anyone forgive me for it? Perhaps, in the end, betrayal is the true Unforgiveable. But as my father's fingers twine through the short strands of my hair, I know that for him, and for my mother, I am the only person who can never be betrayed. Anything else is preferable. Everything else is Forgiveable.

And on the strength of that love, as we pull into the quiet morning of an empty street that after two months is to be our final resting place, I realise that no matter what I feel, I have to find a way to make peace with myself. It's hard to know just how to do this, especially when I haven't felt anything but numb for a long time, for nearly the entire length of this journey that seems nothing but endless travelling in the cold dark bleakness of silence. I have to find a way to live again. I've betrayed Harry, and betrayed myself, but the covenant with my parents has been kept. They are alive, and for the moment, that is nearly everything.

That knowledge is a dry and dusty thing, even for the heavens. For when we finally arrive at what is to be, for the foreseeable future, our home, I still feel nothing, still feel numb. I feel nothing when I drop the cases in the small room that will be my own, feel nothing as I release Crookshanks from his cage, nothing when I look out of the window into the street below, nothing when I see the dark wallpaper and faded carpet.

But when I go into the kitchen, blindly walking throughout the house in an attempt to avoid crumpling into a corner and rocking myself back and forward like the child I no longer am, I see something that, at last, makes me feel again. It is a strange awakening. Through the kitchen window there is a small garden, and in the garden there is a lemon tree. Its fruit scrapes against the window, and the sun is shining on it. In this dark, chilly room the lemons glow, so brightly that they seem to swell even as I look at them. They fill the window with the warmth and brightness of the sun, and I suddenly feel as if, one day, life might be bearable again.

They're so bright and alive with colour that it almost hurts to look at them.

Perhaps there might be hope, after all. Perhaps the heavens will forget.

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