Jannat al-ma’wa (H.J. Potter, R.J. Lupin) ~ Part II
Location / Time / Rating: See Part I.
Moderatorly order to read still applies.
IC:
Silence again, and this time it was dull to Harry’s senses. Everything was, even the rawness of his angry pain. He had become a master of hiding it, or never letting it out or touching anything. So skilled had he become that he forgotten that his bandaged wound had never healed, and now it was a festering sore. Fortunately, it felt numb and had a loss of feeling to it.
Harry stepped back, and looked off into the distance. His expression was blank, though a little tense and pained. This was the pregnant pause that expected to produce a returned story, a returned sentiment for sentimentality that the young man could not process right now.
After removing his glasses, neatly folding them, he placed them off on a neat shelf-like ledge of the rock. Then, he lifted his arms slowly, he reached for the clasp under his chin and undid his heavy wool cloak; it fell to the ground, sliding off the rock. The wind was chilly, and Harry could feel it even with his jumper. Without meeting the other man’s eyes he numbly turned around, like a child in the doctor’s office. Then, he crossed his arms in front of him, hooked his thumbs under the hem of his jumper and yanked the dark grey sweater off. The wind greeted his back, instantly making him shiver briefly, more so at the temperature than the display of his collection of scars.
Harry’s back marred, heavier than the rest of his body. Long lashes had been drawn out over the tender flesh, turning Harry’s back into a myriad of tormented scars. It looked like a whip, among many other things, had been let lose on his flesh. Right behind his kidneys, large designs had been carved into his flesh; one looked like a crude drawing for the Rune symbols for Death. However, at the centre of all the scarring, right between the boy’s shoulder blades, was the burn emblem of the Dark Mark. So deep was it into Harry’s flesh that a wax mould wouldn’t be too difficult to make.
Not even shivering against the cold, he stared out across the dim Hogwarts lawn, processing nothing and thinking of nothing; he did, however, note that sometimes the world was comforting when it was all fuzzy and made no sense.
A rustle of leaves and shuffle of cloth heralded the approach. Then, without attempting to make Harry turn or to impose restraint: Lupin’s right hand, steady, on Harry’s shoulder and the fingers of the left, also impossibly untrembling, tracing the scars, barely touching the skin yet as if endeavouring to smooth out the knotted flesh with warmth.
“Why?” said Lupin quietly, his voice tight with the horror and rage he would not permit his hands to show. “Killing or conversion, I’d understand, but this... to you...”
Harry would have winced the moment he felt someone’s hands touching such a privately kept area. But, alas, he was still slight numb to the world. “Why? Because I am, who I am, and I was stupid, I fell into her trap like a moth,” to gather air, Harry paused, during that time tear, unprovoked and unattended to, trailed down one side of his cheek.
“I worked so hard bring my grades up. I worked long into the night, past Hermione. After the January incident, I barely remember sleeping. When I wasn’t studying, I was flying and practicing by myself. That’s how I got in the habit of using the snitch,” his breath slowly got more and more laboured. Until, he gulped it down and made it sound calm. “I was told by Professor McGonagall and Madame Pomfrey that I had to sleep that night. They even got all my professors to sign that I would be exempt from the next homework assignment. But, I couldn’t stop moving. They even took away my book bag, banned me from the library,” there was a short, and sharp choking sound, “And Professor McGonagall confiscated my wand, tell me that I couldn’t have it back until Madame Pomfrey said I was rested,” he pressed his lips together with clear anger.
“I was so furious, everyone had told me that my grades were horrible, and that I was the only one that could bring it back. So they punished me from working hard by forbidding me to continue. It was only two nights, not even the full weekend. I stayed up late, grabbed my Firebolt, jumped out of the window in the tower, and mounted my broom.” Intermissions abound, Harry took a moment to let out a low, but mirthless and cruel laughter.
With a short sniffle, “I flew and flew. It was at an hour that even Filch didn’t watch that high in sky,” he paused and let out another one of those tiny choking sounds. “I was mad because they forbade me to continue studying, because they wanted me to sleep. While I was flying, I passed out, and I fell to the ground. When I woke up---“ Each word brought a new level of hysterics.
“When I woke up, it was all black. I could hear all sorts of animals and creatures, things that I had only heard once. I tried to speak, I tried to move, but I couldn’t. And then, I could never forget this, just as I heard a werewolf call out near by, Bellatrix Lestrange walked the bit of light I had, and pretended to howl at the moon,” his body was shivering now, but not from the cold; this was all from the memory.
The pressure of Lupin’s hand did not change. It was debatably a mercy that neither could see the other’s expression.
Sharply and potently Harry continued. “Then I promptly got kicked in the head. When I came to, I was in a cave, and I could move around. Bellatrix, was all cleaned up, and told me that it was good the potion worked,” Harry’s dry lips were slowly licked before he could go on. “See, apparently I had broken my back in my fall. She had been waiting for two and a half weeks, trying to get a chance to capture me. She had great fun in lavishly telling me how she never expected for it,” Harry seemed to be having a hard trying to keep on going. “For it to be easy,” a sob escaped him and he dropped down the stone floor. His scarred back arching forward, Harry sobbed into his hands and pretended for that he could scream and scream and scream and feel all better. How was this supposed to help? Talking about it only made things worse.
Lupin went down on his knees beside Harry, one hand smoothing Harry's hair and mutilated back, the other again reaching into his pocket for his wand. He called Harry's discarded cloak to him but did not try to wrap him in it yet. Too early for such confinement. But he folded himself better onto the ground and didn't let Harry go without the contact of his hand for a moment.
Thoughts of all sorts of self-malice and internal justice stirred in Harry’s now-pounding head. His skull felt ready to cave in as a strong head ache began to brew almost on command. Harry buried his fingers into the messy mop of his hair, now damp from cold sweat and the air around. His fingers began to grip at locks they would twist into, yanking at them hard enough to cause pain; Harry didn’t even realise he was doing it, not with the static in his ears and the overriding pain the memories caused.
“Isn’t it ironic that I went through that because of my own stupidity? I let my anger take control of my actions and like Snape reminds me, my recklessness causes people to get hurt. It’s my fault that any of happened, that I was made a pawn to Voldemort’s whimsical tortures,” Harry said.
Lupin stared at the matted hair at the back of Harry's head, the white-clenched knuckles, for a speechless moment. Then he let his wand fall from his hand and wrapped Harry's trembling body in the cloak, gathering him up off the cold, unforgiving ground.
The cold was dimly in the back of Harry’s mind, only made apparent when he was suddenly wrapped in a warm cloak. Both of his hands fell from his hair, limply falling into his lap. The heat off Professor Lupin’s body radiated like old grandmother quilt, one of the quilts Hermione had with her for extra warmth. It was comforting, and smelled of simple devotion. No wonder his parents adored this man so much, noted Harry. For a werewolf, he truly was one of the gentlest people Harry had ever known, and with a kindness unsurpassed.
Sadly, Harry didn’t reach out and ask for that kindness as much as he should. Though he took refugee in leaning against the sturdy older wizard, Harry did not cling for warmth or ask for any particular affection like a hug.
Lupin did not rock him but felt still more acutely that he was holding a small child; the part of Harry that had never really grown up as the rest of him grew prematurely old.
“Even if that were true, then you brought down only yourself,” said Lupin in a voice like the wind among leaves. “I’d rather have my misjudgment only harm myself than bring down others with me. And it means you stand taller when you find the way to pick yourself back up.”
Another moment passed before Lupin could say what neither of them wanted him to say. But he had to. “What happened then, Harry?”
There was a stage when all the effort spent to keep the pain in as a dirty and dark secret drained even the pores from bones, making a body a lifeless sag of relief and surrender; Harry’s eyes closed slowly, only it wasn’t in slumber, it was the relenting to the memory and the pain. “You know all those horrible things in nightmares they whisper You-Know-Who?” The wind continued to kick up, only it wrapped around the two men, trying to cut them off from the world; cruel winter now playing the guardian angel with unseen wings.
"I know."
Far off in the distant, Hagrid whistled for Fang, the squid teased the theastrals as they came for a drink, and Harry opened his eyes a crack. “None of them happened,” he said just as gently. “No one could say one cruel comment to me, least they fall victim to the wrong end of his hex happy wand. I was treated like his royale guest, given a room better than even the Lestrange woman received. My food was more than editable, it was delicious, and so warm it made you want to eat it until you were fat and lazy,” Harry’s voice sounded distant and tired.
“I was treated like his charming little boy, Death Eaters bowed at my feet and called me all sorts of pompous names that Lucius Malfoy would really approve of. Most of all, Voldemort didn’t curse me, not that I had a chance to escape or obtain a wand. If I behaved, I was treated like... as he put it, I was to be treated like his son. We held conversations, I discovered that of all people, Voldemort keeps track of Quidditch,” there was a weird gurgling sound. “I should never tell Ron that Voldemort cheers on the Cannons...”
Lupin's back and arms stiffened so sharply that, from Harry's position, it was as if a tree he had been sitting in had just cracked in half. "But your scars."
Much like a limp bundle, Harry’s body did little to counteract Lupin’s sharp change of position other than to curl his body almost into an upright foetal position, but he slowly uncurled and looked back at Remus. Did the other man really want to hear what happen?
Lupin met Harry's eyes and tried to sound amused, and possibly would have if he hadn't been frowning. "If you think what you just told me could be less terrifying than the truth..."
“That is the truth, until the fourth day,” Harry said dully.
Lupin felt himself slowly shaking his head but didn't know what at. He tightened his hold on Harry and waited.
“Voldemort wanted a heir,” began Harry. He gave until the hold with a limp quality. “It is only natural, isn’t it? But, he didn’t want any old heir. No, he wanted to teach his heir, pass down all of his knowledge, mould them in his image. His new body won’t last long, not like he’d like it to be,” there was a pause as the squid make a particular vibrant display, and the rare treat of a mermaid being thrown out of the surface of the lake only to land with a splash.
“He wanted someone that had great potential, someone with intelligence, and, a penchant for the Dark,” Harry said with a cruel vice. “He said that I was such a pure white that I could be shaded to a black pitch like no one had ever seen, he toyed with the idea of my legacy surpassing him,” a shiver ran through Harry’s bones.
“He wanted me to take the mark, but the mark is something you have to take willing. Of course I refused, and that was when the cycle began. See, when he asked me, I would refuse, and then he would punish me. On the first night of punishment, Bellatrix and McNair took great joy in taking whips to my back and to the backs of my legs. But, that was just the first night, I got off pretty easy on that night,” falsely said a whimsical Harry.
“From then on, a cycle was started. In the day I was pampered and spoiled, sometimes Voldemort would even try and get my advice on what he should do next. After we had whatever sweet for the day come dinnertime, he would ask me again to take the mark, I would refuse. Then I would be taken away and punished long into the darkness,” Harry sounded like he might be a storyteller weaving a tale that was not his own, and not apart of his autobiography.
A leaf literally fell from the branches above their heads and landed on Harry’s head; it seemed to have easily fallen in a nest of black hair. Then, “By the fourth day of this, he came to observe the punishments. After Lestrange and McNair were done with me, Voldemort would walk up to me and place his hands in my head. Most nights I couldn’t even move to get away. Then, it started. It felt like he sank his hand into my head, ripping through paper-thin layers of my mind, sinking deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper,” Harry began to softly sob as he was lost in a chance. His eyes began to leak as he remembered the unforgiving pain that mirrored no other, or the feeling of being violated in a way he could never imagine.
He knew the touch might reopen the wound as easily as soothe it, but Lupin drew Harry closer in his right arm and lifted his left hand. With it, just as he had traced the more visible scars on Harry’s back, Lupin ran his fingers slowly through the dark hair, combing out the fallen leaf as they passed. It fluttered down and landed on Harry’s knee.
Wide green eyes stared a head dully as his mind began to crawl into a tight knot. When he felt Remus stir his hair, he flinched, but only a tad, and took on the expression of a cat frightened even more.
Lupin moved his hand and let it rest lightly at the back of Harry's neck.
"Yet he couldn't take you," said Lupin quietly. "He did what no one should ever have done to you and if I could have died to prevent it, I would have. But you outlasted him. You're still yourself. Do you know how many would have-and have-lost their minds after such treatment? You kept yours, however hurt."
“I have lost my mind,” Harry said in that eerily dead tone.
"You were able to tell me all of that," answered Lupin. "It's not gone very far."
The eyes of Lily Evans turned and stared at Remus without looking at him fully. “He left a reflection of him in my head. A shard of a copy, I guess. Sometimes when I am about to fall asleep I hear him whispering in my sleep. He scares away my old nightmares, whispering promises that if I come to him they’ll never come back,” Harry said; he was rubbing at the scar on his left wrist, a reminder of what bound him. "I've gotten used to him, and he's like a talking mirror that you always ignore. Something that irritates you... but he doesn't belong there. See, I have lost it."
"The truly insane do not believe there is anything wrong with them. And even if-" Though Lupin's voice trailed off only as if he had become lost in thought, his heart-still plainly audible to Harry-suddenly pounded twice as fast.
"I know madness, Harry," said Lupin at last, the quietness now different in his voice. "If you were mad, you would not use the words 'reflection,' 'copy,' 'mirror...' and you would certainly not differentiate 'I' from 'him.' You would not think that 'he doesn't belong there.' Because that is exactly the language I use when I have my own mind, and the language that becomes meaningless when I do not."
Harry refused to go through a tale by tale of how each scar was made, or even the prominent Dark Mark burn that he had on his back. “It’s harder to fight him. Think of him as a monster when you know that under it all, he isn’t. He’s human. And the Death Eaters? They are also human, just like our side. Draco Malfoy proves that Death Eaters have families, they are warm blooded, worry about their children. It’s harder to want them dead when you think of that...”
"Why do you think I found the story of your first three days so alarming?" said Lupin with quiet heaviness. "But any warm-blooded human with a family who would still do what they have done under Voldemort must be held accountable. Even if they believe themselves to have no choice."
At the sound of his own words, Lupin almost had to let Harry go to keep himself from doubling over. But he remembered-this time-that it was only by holding on that he would not break. "Dear Merlyn, Harry... I know. Believe me, I know. Every night for a year I saw myself killing Bellatrix Lestrange with my bare hands and I still don't know if I could do it in real life. And I don't-" But even with everything else he and Harry had shared with each other, all the unspeakable secrets they had finally spoken, Remus still could not bring himself to mention Peter's name.
He let the silence fall about them with the cold, with its lulling promise of numbness but its more healing slap of awareness, then glanced down once more to meet Harry's eyes. "Listen to what you just said. If your heart is still that good, your mind that open and fair, Voldemort has taken neither from you."
Finally shivering fully to the cold, Harry began to slip on clothes; to do so he had to stand up, but didn’t seem to be bothered by the break in the moment. His lips remained sealed, almost pressed together in a thin line. By the time he was clasping on his robes, his hands were shaking from a difference source; anger.
“I don’t want to kill anyone, Lupin. But, no one gave me a choice did they? My lack of choices in my fate as everyone’s hero dates back far too long, back to when I was eleven and when my biggest worry shouldn’t have been my fear of going back to the Dursleys but if I’ll do good in potions,” Harry shoved his hands in his pocket. He appeared to no longer be as distraught as he was moments ago. “I should have had a family, even if Voldemort killed my parents I should have been given to a family that treated me right. I should not have to bare the burden and mistreatment of one greasy git’s unfair childhood at the hands of my father, who I never even spoke to. I should never be looked to by anyone, child or adult, to come to the rescue. I do not have all the answer to end a war, and I do not all the will to save everyone,” his voice was firm, strong, and clear in his resentment for everything... absolutely everything.
“There is going to come a point when people will die and I will not care.”
Lupin did not move from where he sat. He looked up at Harry with the same weariness that had gone forgotten for the last ten minutes. "Should I get angry back, now? Point out that I didn't choose my fate, either? Tell you that I'm most interested in teaching you only how to save yourself and let the rest fall into place as it will?"
Harry leaned forward, his hands on his straight knees and his eyes looking sharply into Remus’. “I start learning the Dark Arts and the wizarding world may just have another monstrous Dark Lord, another Dark Lord should know. Give me a muggle gun, or even a toothpick. I am not, I will not, and I never will learn the Dark Arts. If this is my lot in life, I will manage like I have before. If I die... it’s about time.”
"You're not managing, Harry. You're the one said you weren't even living. And if the only way I have to prove to you that you are not the Dark Lord, and don't have to become one if you don't want to, is to bring you face to face voluntarily with what has been forced upon and show you how to control it so that it can never again control you, by God and Merlyn I'll do it."
Usually gentle and kind and expressive of youth, Harry’s eyes hardened and narrowed at the other man.
Lupin searched those eyes for a long minute, then succumbed to the ache behind his own and covered them with his hand.
"Whether you accept my offer or not," said Lupin, pressing his temples with his fingers, "just make sure it's your own choice. I heard what you said... what Voldemort said to you. I'd beg you to keep in mind that Voldemort is probably terrified of what you could do with a working knowledge of the Dark Arts, either in attack or in defense, and it seems perfectly logical to me he would try to make you equally afraid of your learning more as he is."
Who knew how long it was that Harry mere stared at his favourite professor, though the man held no current position in Hogwarts. He was the final standing Marauder that had any decency to him, and that was enough to make Harry respect Remus Lupin almost as equally as Professor Dumbledore was respected in those maturing Potter eyes.
“Give me time, I have to think,” Harry said as a last resort. He turned on his heel and landed fully on the ground. Without glancing back, the young Gryffindor followed back up the path.
~*~
Jannat al-ma'wa ~ "garden of sanctuary," as named in the Qu'ran.
Moderatorly order to read still applies.
IC:
Silence again, and this time it was dull to Harry’s senses. Everything was, even the rawness of his angry pain. He had become a master of hiding it, or never letting it out or touching anything. So skilled had he become that he forgotten that his bandaged wound had never healed, and now it was a festering sore. Fortunately, it felt numb and had a loss of feeling to it.
Harry stepped back, and looked off into the distance. His expression was blank, though a little tense and pained. This was the pregnant pause that expected to produce a returned story, a returned sentiment for sentimentality that the young man could not process right now.
After removing his glasses, neatly folding them, he placed them off on a neat shelf-like ledge of the rock. Then, he lifted his arms slowly, he reached for the clasp under his chin and undid his heavy wool cloak; it fell to the ground, sliding off the rock. The wind was chilly, and Harry could feel it even with his jumper. Without meeting the other man’s eyes he numbly turned around, like a child in the doctor’s office. Then, he crossed his arms in front of him, hooked his thumbs under the hem of his jumper and yanked the dark grey sweater off. The wind greeted his back, instantly making him shiver briefly, more so at the temperature than the display of his collection of scars.
Harry’s back marred, heavier than the rest of his body. Long lashes had been drawn out over the tender flesh, turning Harry’s back into a myriad of tormented scars. It looked like a whip, among many other things, had been let lose on his flesh. Right behind his kidneys, large designs had been carved into his flesh; one looked like a crude drawing for the Rune symbols for Death. However, at the centre of all the scarring, right between the boy’s shoulder blades, was the burn emblem of the Dark Mark. So deep was it into Harry’s flesh that a wax mould wouldn’t be too difficult to make.
Not even shivering against the cold, he stared out across the dim Hogwarts lawn, processing nothing and thinking of nothing; he did, however, note that sometimes the world was comforting when it was all fuzzy and made no sense.
A rustle of leaves and shuffle of cloth heralded the approach. Then, without attempting to make Harry turn or to impose restraint: Lupin’s right hand, steady, on Harry’s shoulder and the fingers of the left, also impossibly untrembling, tracing the scars, barely touching the skin yet as if endeavouring to smooth out the knotted flesh with warmth.
“Why?” said Lupin quietly, his voice tight with the horror and rage he would not permit his hands to show. “Killing or conversion, I’d understand, but this... to you...”
Harry would have winced the moment he felt someone’s hands touching such a privately kept area. But, alas, he was still slight numb to the world. “Why? Because I am, who I am, and I was stupid, I fell into her trap like a moth,” to gather air, Harry paused, during that time tear, unprovoked and unattended to, trailed down one side of his cheek.
“I worked so hard bring my grades up. I worked long into the night, past Hermione. After the January incident, I barely remember sleeping. When I wasn’t studying, I was flying and practicing by myself. That’s how I got in the habit of using the snitch,” his breath slowly got more and more laboured. Until, he gulped it down and made it sound calm. “I was told by Professor McGonagall and Madame Pomfrey that I had to sleep that night. They even got all my professors to sign that I would be exempt from the next homework assignment. But, I couldn’t stop moving. They even took away my book bag, banned me from the library,” there was a short, and sharp choking sound, “And Professor McGonagall confiscated my wand, tell me that I couldn’t have it back until Madame Pomfrey said I was rested,” he pressed his lips together with clear anger.
“I was so furious, everyone had told me that my grades were horrible, and that I was the only one that could bring it back. So they punished me from working hard by forbidding me to continue. It was only two nights, not even the full weekend. I stayed up late, grabbed my Firebolt, jumped out of the window in the tower, and mounted my broom.” Intermissions abound, Harry took a moment to let out a low, but mirthless and cruel laughter.
With a short sniffle, “I flew and flew. It was at an hour that even Filch didn’t watch that high in sky,” he paused and let out another one of those tiny choking sounds. “I was mad because they forbade me to continue studying, because they wanted me to sleep. While I was flying, I passed out, and I fell to the ground. When I woke up---“ Each word brought a new level of hysterics.
“When I woke up, it was all black. I could hear all sorts of animals and creatures, things that I had only heard once. I tried to speak, I tried to move, but I couldn’t. And then, I could never forget this, just as I heard a werewolf call out near by, Bellatrix Lestrange walked the bit of light I had, and pretended to howl at the moon,” his body was shivering now, but not from the cold; this was all from the memory.
The pressure of Lupin’s hand did not change. It was debatably a mercy that neither could see the other’s expression.
Sharply and potently Harry continued. “Then I promptly got kicked in the head. When I came to, I was in a cave, and I could move around. Bellatrix, was all cleaned up, and told me that it was good the potion worked,” Harry’s dry lips were slowly licked before he could go on. “See, apparently I had broken my back in my fall. She had been waiting for two and a half weeks, trying to get a chance to capture me. She had great fun in lavishly telling me how she never expected for it,” Harry seemed to be having a hard trying to keep on going. “For it to be easy,” a sob escaped him and he dropped down the stone floor. His scarred back arching forward, Harry sobbed into his hands and pretended for that he could scream and scream and scream and feel all better. How was this supposed to help? Talking about it only made things worse.
Lupin went down on his knees beside Harry, one hand smoothing Harry's hair and mutilated back, the other again reaching into his pocket for his wand. He called Harry's discarded cloak to him but did not try to wrap him in it yet. Too early for such confinement. But he folded himself better onto the ground and didn't let Harry go without the contact of his hand for a moment.
Thoughts of all sorts of self-malice and internal justice stirred in Harry’s now-pounding head. His skull felt ready to cave in as a strong head ache began to brew almost on command. Harry buried his fingers into the messy mop of his hair, now damp from cold sweat and the air around. His fingers began to grip at locks they would twist into, yanking at them hard enough to cause pain; Harry didn’t even realise he was doing it, not with the static in his ears and the overriding pain the memories caused.
“Isn’t it ironic that I went through that because of my own stupidity? I let my anger take control of my actions and like Snape reminds me, my recklessness causes people to get hurt. It’s my fault that any of happened, that I was made a pawn to Voldemort’s whimsical tortures,” Harry said.
Lupin stared at the matted hair at the back of Harry's head, the white-clenched knuckles, for a speechless moment. Then he let his wand fall from his hand and wrapped Harry's trembling body in the cloak, gathering him up off the cold, unforgiving ground.
The cold was dimly in the back of Harry’s mind, only made apparent when he was suddenly wrapped in a warm cloak. Both of his hands fell from his hair, limply falling into his lap. The heat off Professor Lupin’s body radiated like old grandmother quilt, one of the quilts Hermione had with her for extra warmth. It was comforting, and smelled of simple devotion. No wonder his parents adored this man so much, noted Harry. For a werewolf, he truly was one of the gentlest people Harry had ever known, and with a kindness unsurpassed.
Sadly, Harry didn’t reach out and ask for that kindness as much as he should. Though he took refugee in leaning against the sturdy older wizard, Harry did not cling for warmth or ask for any particular affection like a hug.
Lupin did not rock him but felt still more acutely that he was holding a small child; the part of Harry that had never really grown up as the rest of him grew prematurely old.
“Even if that were true, then you brought down only yourself,” said Lupin in a voice like the wind among leaves. “I’d rather have my misjudgment only harm myself than bring down others with me. And it means you stand taller when you find the way to pick yourself back up.”
Another moment passed before Lupin could say what neither of them wanted him to say. But he had to. “What happened then, Harry?”
There was a stage when all the effort spent to keep the pain in as a dirty and dark secret drained even the pores from bones, making a body a lifeless sag of relief and surrender; Harry’s eyes closed slowly, only it wasn’t in slumber, it was the relenting to the memory and the pain. “You know all those horrible things in nightmares they whisper You-Know-Who?” The wind continued to kick up, only it wrapped around the two men, trying to cut them off from the world; cruel winter now playing the guardian angel with unseen wings.
"I know."
Far off in the distant, Hagrid whistled for Fang, the squid teased the theastrals as they came for a drink, and Harry opened his eyes a crack. “None of them happened,” he said just as gently. “No one could say one cruel comment to me, least they fall victim to the wrong end of his hex happy wand. I was treated like his royale guest, given a room better than even the Lestrange woman received. My food was more than editable, it was delicious, and so warm it made you want to eat it until you were fat and lazy,” Harry’s voice sounded distant and tired.
“I was treated like his charming little boy, Death Eaters bowed at my feet and called me all sorts of pompous names that Lucius Malfoy would really approve of. Most of all, Voldemort didn’t curse me, not that I had a chance to escape or obtain a wand. If I behaved, I was treated like... as he put it, I was to be treated like his son. We held conversations, I discovered that of all people, Voldemort keeps track of Quidditch,” there was a weird gurgling sound. “I should never tell Ron that Voldemort cheers on the Cannons...”
Lupin's back and arms stiffened so sharply that, from Harry's position, it was as if a tree he had been sitting in had just cracked in half. "But your scars."
Much like a limp bundle, Harry’s body did little to counteract Lupin’s sharp change of position other than to curl his body almost into an upright foetal position, but he slowly uncurled and looked back at Remus. Did the other man really want to hear what happen?
Lupin met Harry's eyes and tried to sound amused, and possibly would have if he hadn't been frowning. "If you think what you just told me could be less terrifying than the truth..."
“That is the truth, until the fourth day,” Harry said dully.
Lupin felt himself slowly shaking his head but didn't know what at. He tightened his hold on Harry and waited.
“Voldemort wanted a heir,” began Harry. He gave until the hold with a limp quality. “It is only natural, isn’t it? But, he didn’t want any old heir. No, he wanted to teach his heir, pass down all of his knowledge, mould them in his image. His new body won’t last long, not like he’d like it to be,” there was a pause as the squid make a particular vibrant display, and the rare treat of a mermaid being thrown out of the surface of the lake only to land with a splash.
“He wanted someone that had great potential, someone with intelligence, and, a penchant for the Dark,” Harry said with a cruel vice. “He said that I was such a pure white that I could be shaded to a black pitch like no one had ever seen, he toyed with the idea of my legacy surpassing him,” a shiver ran through Harry’s bones.
“He wanted me to take the mark, but the mark is something you have to take willing. Of course I refused, and that was when the cycle began. See, when he asked me, I would refuse, and then he would punish me. On the first night of punishment, Bellatrix and McNair took great joy in taking whips to my back and to the backs of my legs. But, that was just the first night, I got off pretty easy on that night,” falsely said a whimsical Harry.
“From then on, a cycle was started. In the day I was pampered and spoiled, sometimes Voldemort would even try and get my advice on what he should do next. After we had whatever sweet for the day come dinnertime, he would ask me again to take the mark, I would refuse. Then I would be taken away and punished long into the darkness,” Harry sounded like he might be a storyteller weaving a tale that was not his own, and not apart of his autobiography.
A leaf literally fell from the branches above their heads and landed on Harry’s head; it seemed to have easily fallen in a nest of black hair. Then, “By the fourth day of this, he came to observe the punishments. After Lestrange and McNair were done with me, Voldemort would walk up to me and place his hands in my head. Most nights I couldn’t even move to get away. Then, it started. It felt like he sank his hand into my head, ripping through paper-thin layers of my mind, sinking deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper,” Harry began to softly sob as he was lost in a chance. His eyes began to leak as he remembered the unforgiving pain that mirrored no other, or the feeling of being violated in a way he could never imagine.
He knew the touch might reopen the wound as easily as soothe it, but Lupin drew Harry closer in his right arm and lifted his left hand. With it, just as he had traced the more visible scars on Harry’s back, Lupin ran his fingers slowly through the dark hair, combing out the fallen leaf as they passed. It fluttered down and landed on Harry’s knee.
Wide green eyes stared a head dully as his mind began to crawl into a tight knot. When he felt Remus stir his hair, he flinched, but only a tad, and took on the expression of a cat frightened even more.
Lupin moved his hand and let it rest lightly at the back of Harry's neck.
"Yet he couldn't take you," said Lupin quietly. "He did what no one should ever have done to you and if I could have died to prevent it, I would have. But you outlasted him. You're still yourself. Do you know how many would have-and have-lost their minds after such treatment? You kept yours, however hurt."
“I have lost my mind,” Harry said in that eerily dead tone.
"You were able to tell me all of that," answered Lupin. "It's not gone very far."
The eyes of Lily Evans turned and stared at Remus without looking at him fully. “He left a reflection of him in my head. A shard of a copy, I guess. Sometimes when I am about to fall asleep I hear him whispering in my sleep. He scares away my old nightmares, whispering promises that if I come to him they’ll never come back,” Harry said; he was rubbing at the scar on his left wrist, a reminder of what bound him. "I've gotten used to him, and he's like a talking mirror that you always ignore. Something that irritates you... but he doesn't belong there. See, I have lost it."
"The truly insane do not believe there is anything wrong with them. And even if-" Though Lupin's voice trailed off only as if he had become lost in thought, his heart-still plainly audible to Harry-suddenly pounded twice as fast.
"I know madness, Harry," said Lupin at last, the quietness now different in his voice. "If you were mad, you would not use the words 'reflection,' 'copy,' 'mirror...' and you would certainly not differentiate 'I' from 'him.' You would not think that 'he doesn't belong there.' Because that is exactly the language I use when I have my own mind, and the language that becomes meaningless when I do not."
Harry refused to go through a tale by tale of how each scar was made, or even the prominent Dark Mark burn that he had on his back. “It’s harder to fight him. Think of him as a monster when you know that under it all, he isn’t. He’s human. And the Death Eaters? They are also human, just like our side. Draco Malfoy proves that Death Eaters have families, they are warm blooded, worry about their children. It’s harder to want them dead when you think of that...”
"Why do you think I found the story of your first three days so alarming?" said Lupin with quiet heaviness. "But any warm-blooded human with a family who would still do what they have done under Voldemort must be held accountable. Even if they believe themselves to have no choice."
At the sound of his own words, Lupin almost had to let Harry go to keep himself from doubling over. But he remembered-this time-that it was only by holding on that he would not break. "Dear Merlyn, Harry... I know. Believe me, I know. Every night for a year I saw myself killing Bellatrix Lestrange with my bare hands and I still don't know if I could do it in real life. And I don't-" But even with everything else he and Harry had shared with each other, all the unspeakable secrets they had finally spoken, Remus still could not bring himself to mention Peter's name.
He let the silence fall about them with the cold, with its lulling promise of numbness but its more healing slap of awareness, then glanced down once more to meet Harry's eyes. "Listen to what you just said. If your heart is still that good, your mind that open and fair, Voldemort has taken neither from you."
Finally shivering fully to the cold, Harry began to slip on clothes; to do so he had to stand up, but didn’t seem to be bothered by the break in the moment. His lips remained sealed, almost pressed together in a thin line. By the time he was clasping on his robes, his hands were shaking from a difference source; anger.
“I don’t want to kill anyone, Lupin. But, no one gave me a choice did they? My lack of choices in my fate as everyone’s hero dates back far too long, back to when I was eleven and when my biggest worry shouldn’t have been my fear of going back to the Dursleys but if I’ll do good in potions,” Harry shoved his hands in his pocket. He appeared to no longer be as distraught as he was moments ago. “I should have had a family, even if Voldemort killed my parents I should have been given to a family that treated me right. I should not have to bare the burden and mistreatment of one greasy git’s unfair childhood at the hands of my father, who I never even spoke to. I should never be looked to by anyone, child or adult, to come to the rescue. I do not have all the answer to end a war, and I do not all the will to save everyone,” his voice was firm, strong, and clear in his resentment for everything... absolutely everything.
“There is going to come a point when people will die and I will not care.”
Lupin did not move from where he sat. He looked up at Harry with the same weariness that had gone forgotten for the last ten minutes. "Should I get angry back, now? Point out that I didn't choose my fate, either? Tell you that I'm most interested in teaching you only how to save yourself and let the rest fall into place as it will?"
Harry leaned forward, his hands on his straight knees and his eyes looking sharply into Remus’. “I start learning the Dark Arts and the wizarding world may just have another monstrous Dark Lord, another Dark Lord should know. Give me a muggle gun, or even a toothpick. I am not, I will not, and I never will learn the Dark Arts. If this is my lot in life, I will manage like I have before. If I die... it’s about time.”
"You're not managing, Harry. You're the one said you weren't even living. And if the only way I have to prove to you that you are not the Dark Lord, and don't have to become one if you don't want to, is to bring you face to face voluntarily with what has been forced upon and show you how to control it so that it can never again control you, by God and Merlyn I'll do it."
Usually gentle and kind and expressive of youth, Harry’s eyes hardened and narrowed at the other man.
Lupin searched those eyes for a long minute, then succumbed to the ache behind his own and covered them with his hand.
"Whether you accept my offer or not," said Lupin, pressing his temples with his fingers, "just make sure it's your own choice. I heard what you said... what Voldemort said to you. I'd beg you to keep in mind that Voldemort is probably terrified of what you could do with a working knowledge of the Dark Arts, either in attack or in defense, and it seems perfectly logical to me he would try to make you equally afraid of your learning more as he is."
Who knew how long it was that Harry mere stared at his favourite professor, though the man held no current position in Hogwarts. He was the final standing Marauder that had any decency to him, and that was enough to make Harry respect Remus Lupin almost as equally as Professor Dumbledore was respected in those maturing Potter eyes.
“Give me time, I have to think,” Harry said as a last resort. He turned on his heel and landed fully on the ground. Without glancing back, the young Gryffindor followed back up the path.
~*~
Jannat al-ma'wa ~ "garden of sanctuary," as named in the Qu'ran.