Fic: "Release", for simons_flower
Title: Release
Author: antonia_east
Recipient: simons_flower
Rating: PG
Character(s): Harry, Ron, Hermione, Draco, Ginny
Word Count: 8,752
Summary: Release implies freedom and being somewhere better than you were before. Harry doesn’t see how it can be better because Ron and Hermione need him, and he needs them.
Author's Notes: Thanks to P for all the help with ideas and the quick beta. simons_flower, I hope you enjoy the story!
Release
Release: To relieve of debt or obligation.
The war goes on for seven years.
Harry remembers being seventeen and thinking that in a year it would all be over. That he would be murdered or a murderer. He expected to fight, didn’t really expect to live, but expected something to end. He expected, at some point, to be released.
The ending doesn’t come; the Horcruxes are too well-hidden. It takes Harry years to recognise that devoting himself to the hunt isn’t working; the futility of it is breaking all three of them. He feels as though he’s staggering under the weight of people’s hope, and Ron and Hermione share that burden because they’re the only others who know what must be done. School is left far behind. They’ve already grown up with the war, but now they have to be grown ups with the war. They can’t spend year upon year searching for Horcruxes that won’t be found. They have to find jobs, carry on, live.
"After all," Ron says, three years after leaving Hogwarts, "chasing down bits of Voldemort’s soul isn’t exactly a career path."
“No,” Harry replies. "It’s more of a lifestyle choice." They all smile at that, but all three follow the smiles with a frown. Harry knows that he chose his lifestyle because to not choose it would have made him Voldemort’s victim rather than his hunter, and that would be unacceptable. Ron and Hermione chose because of him, and he’s had to accept that.
He’s glad, in a way, when they start to move on; it makes him feel less guilty for stalling their lives. Hermione takes her NEWTs. No one is surprised that she gets an ‘Outstanding’ in every subject, but nearly everyone is surprised when she takes an Apprentice position in the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. She flits between the House-Elf Relocation Office, the Centaur Liaison Office, the Goblin Liaison Office, the Werewolf Support Services and the Ghoul Task Force, officious and content in her quest to unite the beings of the magical world.
Ron trains under Bill as a Curse Breaker, but refuses the big Galleon glory jobs abroad. Instead he often works for his father in the Office for the Detection and Confiscation of Counterfeit Defensive Spells and Protective Objects, where Mr Weasley provides him with scores of dangerous magical objects to neutralise. Harry enjoys spending time in Ron’s cluttered office, sifting through the piles of harmless and not-so-harmless items that Ron has been working on. It also means that Ron knows what he’s doing when it comes to destroying Horcruxes.
Harry, despite his lack of NEWTs and the letters from Oliver Wood begging him to play for Puddlemere United, trains and qualifies with the Auror squad. They make it clear that he is not an ordinary recruit. He is not sent out on the hated reconnaissance missions, and he does not have to spend his evening and weekends wading through the paperwork that is palmed off on the youngest members of each team. Instead, his task is heavier. He is expected to hunt the Death Eaters, to hunt Voldemort - which is of course what all the Aurors are doing these days - but the difference is that Harry is meant to succeed. Or die trying. It’s not that different to playing Quidditch with Oliver, really.
Three years after leaving school - three years after the night of the fake Horcrux and Dumbledore’s death - Draco Malfoy clutches weakly at the doorframe of number twelve, Grimmauld Place, and holds out to Harry a weighty gold locket adorned with a serpentine ‘S’. It smells sweetly, foully, of Dark Magic, and Harry nearly gags as he takes it, slippery with blood, from Malfoy’s fist. Harry’s about to question Malfoy, but Malfoy collapses instead. Hermione spends frantic hours flicking through Healing manuals, Ron starts to work out how to dismantle the Horcrux, and Harry sits by the bed and watches Malfoy’s breathing become more and more shallow. He feels regret and relief and fear and excitement and pity and vengeance and sorrow and joy and so many feelings that he pretends to himself that he looks at his dying boyhood enemy with no emotion at all.
Malfoy - with typical bloody-mindedness, in Harry’s opinion - does not die. The next morning he groans loudly and sits bolt upright in bed.
"That necklace I gave you, Potter, it’s a Horcrux," he gasps, pale hair flopping onto his paler face.
"You don’t say," says Harry.
"It’s the Dark Lord’s," Malfoy carries on, as if he hasn’t heard. "It’s got a part of his soul in it. You can’t kill him until you’ve destroyed it."
"Tell us something we don’t know," mutters Ron, who is working his way through a hefty spell book with a level of dedication usually only displayed by Hermione.
Malfoy looks at Harry and then at Ron. He blinks. "Oh," he says, and sinks back onto the bed.
After that Harry can’t hate Malfoy any more. It takes Harry two years, the destruction of the rest of the Horcruxes and the realisation that nothing annoys Malfoy more than Harry calling him ‘Draco’ to decide that he actually quite likes him. By this time it’s five years after Hogwarts, and all that is left is to face Voldemort and to kill him. Harry can’t fathom how he’ll be ready to do it. He feels much older, and feels also that little has been gained for the loss of his youth. He knows more now, it is true, but it is a weary, weighty kind of knowledge. Harry wonders sometimes how Dumbledore could have borne living so long, and how on earth he managed to have that lightness in his look - that smile, that twinkle in his eyes - when he had seen more and knew more than Harry ever could.
He is not the only one who has grown up. Even the young ones at school have left and found jobs and adult lives. He doesn’t have much to do with them. These are dark times; he’s told that it’s the same now as it was during Voldemort’s first rise. People disappear. Wary eyes watch you on the street. Trust no one, the headlines scream, as they report the maimings, murders, mass-destructions. Harry trusts Ron and Hermione, Lupin and Tonks and the Weasleys, although the last trust is misplaced; Percy spends six months under the Imperius Curse before anyone notices, and Fred and George nearly die because of it. Percy disappears soon afterwards.
Six years after leaving school, Ron and Hermione get married.
"Do you think we should?" Hermione says. Her face settles into its familiar worried expression. "It’s not exactly the ideal time."
"Yes, we should," says Ron, savagely. “Voldemort’s bloody well already won if we’re too scared to live."
Harry’s reminded again of the last war, wonders if his own parents got married like this; there’s no one but him and Ginny to witness Ron and Hermione marry. They rush through vows in the Muggle registry office, talking in whispers, caught in a fragile bubble of hope.
Seven years after leaving Hogwarts, the war ends. Harry ends it, and Dumbledore was right. It is his love that ultimately destroys Voldemort, but not before it nearly destroys Harry and two of the people he loves most in the world.
The war ends when Ron and Hermione are captured.
Or rather, the war ends just over a month after Ron and Hermione are captured. It is a hideous month full of rage and grief and bubbling, choking hatred and helpless, pleading love. Harry has spent seven years searching frantically for the ways to end this, but the years seem peaceful compared with this horrid need to end it, to try and save them, even though by the end of the first week Harry is sure that he is fighting for the right to give his best friends’ bodies a proper burial. In the second week he realises that he is glad for the war. He is glad that Voldemort is out there and that he can be killed, because Harry needs to kill him. He no longer resents the weight of public expectation, Ron and Hermione’s families’ watery looks. He needs to be needed otherwise he knows that he will falter and he will be defeated. Harry will not be defeated until the war is over.
*
Release: To set free from confinement, restraint, or bondage: release the prisoners.
He barely blinks after killing Voldemort - it is anticlimactic after so long - and lunges at the nearest Death Eater, knees pinning his arms, hands gripping his throat, as he demands to be taken to Ron and Hermione. Wormtail’s silver hand scrabbles against Harry’s back and he whimpers that he doesn’t know, he doesn’t know. Harry’s hands tighten and he glares at him, telling Peter Pettigrew without words that he’s spared him once and he will not do it again.
Suddenly the ghostly form of a wolf springs, knocking into Harry. Wormtail shrieks, and it takes Harry a moment to identify it as a Patronus - Tonks’s Patronus, Remus’s wolf-form. Tonks and Remus are making their way to them, and then there are more people - Shacklebolt, Dawlish, Arthur Weasley - business-like and quiet, binding Death Eaters and asking brisk questions. Malfoy appears soon after, his wand at Macnair’s throat.
"This one," he says, digging his wand deeper into Macnair’s flesh, "says he can take us to the prisoners."
Harry can’t concentrate on the bargains Macnair tries to drive with Dawlish and Shacklebolt as they move through dark corridors. He can only think of the mad rhythm of his heart and the dizzy excitement that he is going to find them. And when he gets to Ron and Hermione’s cell he nearly crumbles with relief because they are alive. He lurches forward towards them, something like joy in his chest and on his face, making his cheeks ache with it. It isn’t joy - he goes beyond joyful. It’s over, and they’re there, and he realises how missing he’s been feeling and the relief that his best friends are still there - that he can be put back together - makes him feel lighter than he can ever remember.
"Potter." Malfoy’s voice is sharp. It draws Harry back like the tug of an anchor. Harry looks at Malfoy, sees the horror and disgust in his face and somehow he knows not to look at Ron and Hermione. He turns instead to Lupin, whose head is bowed, his face in shadow. Tonks’s hair lengthens, snaking down her back, growing limp and mousy brown. Arthur Weasley, who, like Harry, rushed forwards towards Ron and Hermione, is motionless halfway across the cell, his hands raised, his expression frozen, like a victim facing a firing squad. Behind him, Kingsley Shacklebolt has his arms folded tightly across his chest. Dawlish has whipped out his wand and is muttering into it, his eyes fixed ahead. Harry hears him bark out the words ‘St Mungo’s’ and ‘Healers’. It is as though they are all butterflies, pinned motionless on display, with Harry the only one uncaught. He looks into the corner where Ron and Hermione are, and feels the pin drive through his heart.
Hermione is pressed as far back against the wall as she can get. She’s crying - wordless sounds that clutch at Harry. He wants to get closer, to comfort his friend. He wants to step away, to distance himself from the involuntary cries of pain.
Ron is also backed into the wall, shielding Hermione with his body, but cringing as far away as possible from his rescuers. His mouth is moving, but he makes only a low hissing sound, flecks of spittle glistening on his lips.
The room is small and contains only a ragged pile of blankets for a bed. The floor is filthy and the air smells of blood and excrement. There are shackles on the walls. Harry sucks in a putrid breath and can feel the trace scent of foul magic irritate his lungs. Ron’s robe - Harry can’t see Hermione’s - is tattered, and Ron looks thin, pinched, his face bloodless, his features twisted as he hisses so he looks half predator, half prey. Hermione’s eyes look too big for her face, her cheeks sunken, her skin dull. It’s the eyes, really, that have made them all stop. All the familiar looks and expressions - gone. Ron and Hermione aren’t there.
Harry steps forward, walks past Arthur and up to his best friends. He can feel their ragged breath on his face, can see Ron trembling as he shrinks back away from him. Hermione’s hands are moving against the wall as though she’s trying to burrow into it, to give them a little more room to get away. There’s a desperate kind of danger in their faces, now. Harry thinks of cornered creatures that are harmless until threatened, when they strike out of fear and necessity. Behind him he can hear Dawlish doing Sounding Spells on the cell, taking down notes for the records, and all Harry wants is for Ron and Hermione to see him and know that they are safe. He can’t quite comprehend that he’s making them more afraid. Then he notices the way Ron’s eyes track the movement of Dawlish’s wand, and the way Hermione moans whenever Dawlish mutters a spell.
"Stop it," he says, more forcefully than he means to. “Put your wands away. They’re frightened of the magic."
He sticks his own wand into his back pocket, and then glares until the others - even Dawlish - do the same. Hermione stops crying, and the sound of everyone’s breathing becomes louder. Torn, panting little breaths.
"Ron," he says. "Hermione." And there - he thinks he sees it. A spark of recognition, of relief, behind their eyes. For a moment he believes that everything will be all right.
Then the Healers Apparate in with a volley of cracks, and Hermione begins to scream once more.
*
Release: To relieve of care and suffering.
By the time Harry’s been at St Mungo’s for four days, he thinks that he’d rather be back at the battlefield. There’s too much pretence at normal here. Ron and Hermione lie stiff on the beds in a private room purposefully cleared of all signs of magic. Healers bustle in and out, Ginny Weasley among them. Ginny is a Trauma Healer. Her very job is to teach people who have lived through the virtually-unlivable how to live again. She is very good at her job, Harry knows, because he sees Dennis Creevey one day and Dennis nearly smiles. Ginny was always good at living. He knows that she never left the Chamber (in the same way that he never left it, nor the graveyard at Little Hangleton, nor the cave, nor Godric’s Hollow, nor many other haunted places) but that she chooses instead to carry it with her - a defining part but not the part of herself. She has always been good at understanding and brightening and carrying on, even at Hogwarts.
Harry envies Ginny her job. It gives her an excuse to leave the rest of the Weasleys. Arthur is tight-lipped and pale-faced. Molly is crying. It’s the longest Harry’s seen Fred and George go without smiling, and this includes the time the pair of them were nearly killed. Harry watches the door to the room open and close, watches the Healers talk in low voices and bend over the beds, smooth and professional - even Ginny’s grief-worn face is smoothed somewhat as she turns to work.
It’s worse when the Grangers arrive, but Harry empathises with them, the way they look at the hospital room and the corridor outside with helpless trapped expressions. They’re foreigners in a different world, and Hermione was the only one to make sense of the wizarding world for them, and it has destroyed her.
Mrs Weasley and Mrs Granger hug and wipe their eyes furiously at each other. Mr Weasley and Mr Granger exchange pained handshakes, and Harry decides that the families aren’t that different. He cannot meet their eyes. Cannot let them see that he has failed their children - his own family - by being too slow, being too weak and, in the end, not being enough for them to cling to.
"Our opinion is that any magical interaction would be severely detrimental to the mental Healing which Mr and Mrs Weasley must undergo after their sustained trauma," the Healer says, his tone so calm and clinical that he sounds bored. "We recommend that the patients be removed from all contact with the wizarding world for an indefinite period."
The Weasleys all look at Ginny, who turns and buries her head in her mother’s shoulder briefly before facing them.
"It’s true," she says, sniffing. "They can’t cope with the magic. It terrifies them so much that they can’t cope, and they shut down. The only chance they’ve got of living a normal life is if they think they’re Muggles."
"You mean wipe all their memories?" asks George.
The Healer begins to reply, but Ginny just nods.
"You can’t," Harry says. "You can’t just erase their memories. This is their home."
A shadow crosses the Healer’s face. "It is a home in which they cannot live, Mr Potter," he says. Harry knows, on some level, that this is true. He has heard the panic whenever a Healer uses a spell in the room with Ron and Hermione. "No," he says, because it can’t be true. Can’t be happening. It can’t be that Ron and Hermione can only be Ron and Hermione again when they’re robbed of most of the things they most love and know best. Harry hates the fact that they need help that he can’t give them; that he could only make them worse, not better.
"Do you mean they’ll forget everything?" Mr Weasley asks.
"We think it best that a Secret Keeper is nominated from our Healing team, who can keep an assessment of the case. His or her function would be to monitor the patients and to shield them from the wizarding world."
"It means," Ginny says, her voice thick, "that no one with magic would be able to find them except the Healer."
"No one?" Mrs Weasley says. "Not f-family?"
"It is important to sever all ties to magic," says the Healer. He flicks through the wedge of papers on his clipboard and pulls out a piece of parchment, which he hands to Mr Weasley. Harry looks over Fred and George’s shoulders to read it with the rest of the Weasleys. It is a next of kin release form.
*
Release: To free from something that binds, fastens, or holds back; let go.
"We’ll take care of them," Mr Granger says to Harry and the Weasleys, for what must be the twentieth time. It does not become any more reassuring, and Harry feels a surge of hatred towards Hermione’s parents - that they can be a part of their lives when he cannot. That they lost their daughter to the wizarding world and now are claiming her back, and Ron as well, leaving him, Harry, alone. They’re being released, he tries to think, and it’s almost funny, as though Ron and Hermione are being let loose in the wild, but it’s wrong, because release implies freedom and being somewhere better than you were before, and Harry doesn’t see how it can be better because Ron and Hermione need him, and he needs them.
He remembers them cornered in the cell, and thinks that at least they will be released from the memory of that. Better a life where they’re not scared, even though the life is a lie.
The Healer’s still talking. "We will modify Mr and Mrs Weasley’s memories so that they believe they have suffered disorientation after a car crash."
A car crash. The same thing Harry had believed killed his parents. He turns and leaves, ignoring the voices calling after him, and Apparates out of the hospital.
"They’re gone," Ginny tells him, a week later.
He knows. He’s said his goodbyes, as much as he could say goodbye to Ron and Hermione, even a Ron and Hermione who didn’t recognise him, earlier that day. It’s a strange feeling, though, knowing that he could walk past Ron or Hermione in the street and not know that they were there.
"You’re the Secret Keeper?"
"Yes." Ginny tugs her hair back behind her ears. "I’ll be visiting them every few months. They’ll think I’m monitoring their recovery after their car crash. Mum’s already on at me to go and check on them, and I know she’s going to want to see them, and I can’t let her."
Harry stays silent, knowing that this is exactly what he wants to ask Ginny, but he won’t let himself.
"Hermione recognised her parents," Ginny says in a small voice. "Once the memory charms were put on."
Harry bows his head, looking at his clasped hands resting on his knees, and doesn’t look up until she’s gone.
The next day he goes to stay with Remus and Tonks. When Tonks answers the door she pulls Harry into a hug that’s fiercer than anyone’s dared give him since Ron and Hermione were taken. He’s rather startled to feel something pushing at his chest while she’s pressed up against him, and realises when she draws back that she’s morphed into an alarming replica of Mrs Weasley. Tonks looks down at herself and gives a rueful smile.
"I obviously think you need mothering,” she says. "But I seem to have got a bit carried away."
Harry swallows. Mothering makes him think of Hermione; at this stage he’s managing to relate everything to either Ron or Hermione or both.
"Ah, hell," Tonks mutters, deflating rapidly. "I’m dreadful at mothering. I can’t decide whether you need hot chocolate or Firewhiskey."
Harry’s face breaks - and it feels like cracking ice - into a weak smile at that.
"How about laced hot chocolate?" Remus’s voice is followed by Remus himself, who emerges from a room off the hall and comes to stand beside Tonks, resting a hand briefly on her hip.
"Good idea," Tonks says. She touches Remus’s fingers, then squeezes Harry’s wrist before turning and heading to the kitchen. The hallway feels darker once she’s left - heavier, more sombre - because now Harry has to look Remus in the face.
Remus’s face, despite the harsh lines about his mouth and the fine ones around his eyes, looks incredibly young. Harry has seen Remus look boyish when particularly cheerful, but this is a blistering, tortured kind of youth. It’s raw - a look of broken innocence. Faintly, Harry can hear Tonks clattering in the kitchen. He and Remus have not spoken, are still standing and watching each other in the hall. Harry knows why Remus is wearing the expression that he does: Remus has been forcing himself back to his own youth, reliving the loss of the friends which were his world, remembering how it felt to face that isolation and grief while in ordinary homes and on the streets people celebrated the end of the war. Harry knows that Remus has done this deliberately, so that he may find any words or actions which are capable of consoling Harry.
Remus does not speak. There are no words.
I know, his expression says.
Harry stumbles a little as he comes forward to clutch at Remus who, thankfully, does not start to grow a large pair of breasts halfway through the hug.
*
Release: To dismiss, as from a job.
Harry works solidly for the next six months, barely ducking home to sleep for snatches of brief hours. The nightmares come. He’s used to them - they’ve been a feature of his life since childhood, but this time he dreams of waking from them, with Ron’s sleep-blurred face peering at him through the darkness muttering, “All right, mate?” around a yawn. He dreams of Hermione’s little frowns and worried looks when she sees him drawn and sleepless.
He dreams of the cell he found them in, and of killing Voldemort, and of the frantic hours after they were taken. Worst of all he dreams of being happy with his friends - all the meaningless in-between times which strengthened the friendship just as much as fighting for (and with) each other did. These innocuous moments now haunt him most because they’re gone.
He works so that he will not dream. There is plenty of work to do, as well. Many Death Eaters were captured when Harry killed Voldemort, but not all, and as usual it is the most dangerous who escape. A savage part of him enjoys the months of tracking and chasing much more than he thought he would when he was a student at Hogwarts, dreaming of becoming an Auror. He doesn’t want to fight evil anymore, he wants to destroy it, explode it, tear it apart. There’s so much anger inside him and he lets it fuel him, ruthless in his searching, as Amycus Carrow, Bellatrix Lestrange, Fenrir Greyback are caught and captured and sentenced.
Six months after finding Ron and Hermione, Harry is called into Kingsley Shacklebolt’s office.
"You’re off the Malfoy case, Harry," he says, not unkindly.
Harry knows, then, that his hunch was right - that Lucius Malfoy was the one to take Ron and Hermione, and that Kingsley’s just got proof.
"You can’t," he says. He’s horrified at the thought of not going after Lucius. He’s the only big Death Eater left. The rest are spies and minor-players. If he isn’t hunting Lucius, then there will be nothing for Harry to do.
Kingsley must have read all of this in Harry’s face. "You’ve done enough, Harry," he says. "Too much, really. If you carry on like this you’ll destroy yourself."
Harry opens his mouth to say that he doesn’t care if he destroys himself as long as he takes Malfoy down with him, but stops. Even when he had to face Voldemort he wanted to live through it. This is just Lucius Malfoy. He looks at Kingsley, feeling guilty.
Kingsley smiles. "Go on holiday. Take some time to do something completely different. You’re not expected to do anything more."
Time, thinks Harry, is a terrifying thing.
Perhaps he is afraid of the freedom, because he shuts himself in another type of prison. After talking to Remus, Harry follows Sirius’s path south. He takes his broom and flies most of the way, imagining Sirius riding Buckbeak as he passes over coastlines and oceans. Harry takes risks, Apparating in mid-air from his broomstick when he decides he’s too tired to fly any longer, sleeping on beaches under the stars. He takes off his clothes and swims in strange water, feels a foreign sun on his back, and tries to spot the sort of exotic birds that Sirius used to send with his letters. Half the time he’s not even sure where he is, and can imagine Hermione buying him guidebooks and telling him about the history and customs of whichever country he’s currently visiting. He wishes they were there - swimming is less fun without Ron to horse about with - but missing them there feels cleaner, as though they’re just back in England waiting for him to send them a postcard.
In the end it’s Ginny who writes.
Ron and Hermione are doing really well. They’ve moved out of the Grangers’ house and have found a place in Honiton. It’s not too far away from here, which is hard on Mum, but I think she likes knowing they’re nearby.
How are you, Harry? Please write. Mum’s already lost two sons. Don’t make her lose another.
Harry glares at the bright sky until his eyes are stinging and clogged with involuntary tears. Then he decides to go home.
*
Release: An unfastening or letting go of something caught or held fast.
England makes Harry feel uncomfortable - itchy - as though there is a layer of sand between his skin and his clothes. He spends his time searching for some place, person, thing - a smell, a touch, a taste - anything that makes him feel settled. He prowls the room at Grimmauld Place and feels the shadows walking with him. He eats wholesome, nourishing foods under Mrs Weasley’s approving eye in the kitchen of The Burrow and tries not to look at Ron’s wand displayed in a little box above the fireplace. He even watches Malfoy lounge (with elegance a little too studied to be natural) on the antique furniture at Malfoy Manor and tries not to jump every time a House-elf pops up to offer him more tea.
He finds shades of comfort in each of these places - Sirius’s books, flying with Ginny and the twins, Malfoy flinching every time Harry calls him Draco - but nowhere does he feel that he has found a place he’d like to belong. He buys himself a flat and fills it with the kind of wizarding appliances that he loved to touch at the Weasleys’ house and the Muggle ones that he was never allowed to at the Dursleys’. It is new and fresh and his, but no matter how untidy he makes it, no matter how often he wanders about naked, or what colour he paints the walls, it still doesn’t feel like he’s at home.
He spends a lot of time drifting through the town of Honiton, hoping to catch a glimpse of Ron or Hermione, even though he knows that he won’t be able to see them.
"God, Potter, you’re pathetic," says Malfoy with the same old sneer but without the rancour. "I’m sick of you looking like you’re about to wet yourself on the ottoman."
"Harry, that’s the third all-nighter you’ve pulled this week," says Kingsley nearly every Friday. "Go home. I don’t want to see you until Monday."
"I’ve thought really hard about this," says Ginny, fiddling with the hair behind her ears. "And Ron and Hermione, if they knew, of course, they would hate to see you like this." Her expression sets, decided. "Come with me," she says.
She makes him wear the Invisibility Cloak, and they Apparate to a lane with high hedges. Ginny’s wearing a blue knee-length dress with a grey blazer over the top; Muggle clothing. Harry’s willing to bet that they’re not far from Honiton, and he feels his heart thump as they approach a house. This is it.
Ginny stops. "Be warned," she murmurs, looking fixedly at a point a few feet from where he is, shrouded by the Cloak. "They’re … it’s difficult."
He nods, which is stupid as she can’t see him, but after a second she moves again, walking up the path, to the front door, knocking …
"Hello!" Ron greets her with a grin, and Harry has to force himself to stay very still and to keep very quiet. He hasn’t ever been apart from Ron for this long since he’d met him, over fifteen years ago, and he’s never before realised just how familiar Ron is. Familiar. Like family.
"It’s my long lost sister," Ron continues, and Harry almost shouts with surprise. Ginny’s smile is awkward for a moment, but then she manages a friendly grin.
"Do you say that to everyone you meet with red hair, Mr Weasley?" she asks.
"Nah," says Ron. "Only the ones with freckles. Come in."
Ginny takes off her blazer in the doorway and Harry slips in before Ron closes the door and shows Ginny into the sitting room. Harry, following, gives another start at the sight of Hermione hovering by a door which - he sees over her shoulder - leads into the kitchen, holding a tray of tea and biscuits in her hands.
"Good afternoon, Ginny," she says. "Would you like a cup of tea? It’s milk and no sugar, isn’t it?"
Ginny agrees and sits and begins to ask about black outs and dizzy spells. She asks whether the strange dreams have returned, asks how Ron’s job at the farm is going.
Harry’s interested in the answers, but finds himself forgetting to listen, distracted by looking at the changes in his friends - Ron’s arms are more muscled, Hermione’s got thinner. He looks for lines in their faces that are new to him, expressions he hasn’t seen before. He looks about the neat little room: it is full of bookshelves, has a comfortable-looking sofa that Harry can see Hermione lying on with a book, and an armchair with a chess set in front of it, which Harry can picture Ron leaning over. He wonders if Ron ever thinks it strange that his chess pieces do not talk back.
There is nothing strange about the house, or Ron and Hermione. They are comfortable, content in their quiet existence. The life they lead is a lie; they have been shielded from their real world, from parts of themselves, and yet Harry is jealous of them.
And there, there in the little Muggle room, amongst the tea things and biscuit crumbs, with Ron and Hermione squeezed thigh to thigh on the sofa, Ginny perched on the armchair like a visitor, beneath the murmur of everyday polite conversation, Harry feels something clench and release in his chest. He feels the irritating unsettled feeling dissipate into a warm sensation - a satisfaction of finding something long-missed and looked-for. It’s the closest yet he’s come to feeling at home.
*
Release: To relinquish a right or claim.
It’s like a drug. Harry’s never understood the need to drink to excess, or to take mind-altering Potions, but Harry finds that he craves that feeling of rightness. The feeling is imperfect. Sometimes being around Ron and Hermione makes him miss them more. He feels the missing parts of himself - the pieces of him that they are. He remembers how he felt when they were captured: shattered, and he longed to be put back together. Now he feels as though he has the final two pieces in his hand, but they won’t fit, no matter how he turns them. It’s like a drug because he knows it’s bad, but he can’t stop. He thinks to himself that he is doing no harm. He does no magic near them; the Invisibility Cloak doesn’t count. He doesn’t talk or touch or disturb or disrupt - they have no idea that he’s there. Which, of course, is why it’s wrong to be following them.
He watches Hermione at her job in the local library. He almost wishes that Hermione had been left in the Muggle world, had never been to Hogwarts. He could see her working at a university, trying to cure some impossible disease, or running for parliament, leading a one-woman crusade over the latest issue to come to her notice. The Hermione who had always been a Muggle - the Hermione who was a witch - is confident, passionate, determined, a little bit bossy. This Hermione stamps books at the desk and hands them gently to the person taking them out. Sometimes she smiles at the choice, and Harry knows that it is a book she has read and loved and that she wants to share this love with the borrower, but she never does. When she puts the books away she moves between the shelves with silent quick steps, sliding classic literature, children’s books, frothy romances and turgid non-fiction - all books alike - into place with deft hands. When the library is quiet she reads behind her desk. Sometimes Harry watches over her shoulder and finds the book when she’s finished with it. He touches the pages she’s touched, reads words that she has read and wants to leave a mark, a note, to show her that he has read them too. He notices the way her fingers linger over the spines of brightly-covered fantasy books, fingertips tracing dragons and warriors and wands, and sees her frown.
Harry thinks that Ron is happier than Hermione, despite barely having set foot in the Muggle world before being sent to live in it. Harry discovers he works on a nearby dairy farm, and goes with him on early mornings to watch Ron do the milking - guiding the cows into their stalls and chaining them in, testing the udders briefly by hand before attaching the strange-looking machines. Ron murmurs to some of the cows, even calling some of them by name. He shoves them affably when they barge him, greets them with friendly slaps, and herds them all back to the field when they’re done, with the help of a teenage boy and a grinning border collie. He cleans the milking parlour afterwards, too, sweeping up dung and hosing the floor down. Harry is tempted to cast a cleaning spell to help him out, but knows that he must not. He is surprised that Ron chooses to work at a place where he has to do something that resembles detention with Filch and Hagrid rolled into one, but there is a peaceful sort of contentment at the farm, even with the noise and stench of the cattle, that Ron seems to enjoy.
Harry tells himself that he follows Ron and Hermione to make sure that they’re happy, that they’re okay, but he can’t stop even when he knows that they are. He feels as though he owns them again - just as they have always owned him. He feels proprietary towards them, fumes when a borrower at the library looks too pointedly at Hermione’s chest, is saddened that the cows and the dog get greetings from Ron and he does not, is jealous when they have friends - one of the librarians and her husband - over for a meal. He hears Ron and Hermione talk together, and they talk of normal things. He does not realise he’s listening for his name until Ron mentions ‘Harry’ - but it’s not him.
One Saturday morning when Hermione is at work and Ron is not, Ron gets in the car and Harry, on impulse, hides himself in the back seat. They travel for almost an hour, and Harry has to will himself not to sneeze or cough. He doesn’t know where he’s going or what to expect, but still manages to be surprised when they end up at Paignton Zoo. Ron parks, pays, and strides away. Harry waits for more people to join the queue before taking off the cloak and joining it himself. When he gets inside he has lost Ron, and it is impossible to spot even his bright hair over the crowd. After a while he spends less time looking for Ron and more time looking at the animals - he hasn’t been to the zoo since Dudley’s eleventh birthday, and Harry grins to himself as he passes the reptile house, where two of the snakes are having a rather salacious conversation. There are quite a few people looking at the lions when Harry gets to their enclosure. One of the lions is prowling up and down, up and down behind the wire. Harry takes a few steps back to let a group of excited children through, and then he sees Ron standing on the other side of the enclosure. His eyes follow the lion, and as the lion gets closer to where Harry is, Harry thinks that Ron will see him. The lion reaches Harry, turns, and when it follows its worn path back to Ron’s side, Ron’s still looking at the lion.
*
Release: An authoritative discharge, as from an obligation or from prison.
"I’m going to see my father this afternoon," says Malfoy. His face wears the disparaging smirk he used to give to the teachers he didn’t like. "I thought you might like to come."
Harry looks at Malfoy through narrowed eyes. He didn’t even know that Malfoy visited Lucius. Malfoy’s lips twitch. "I think he’d enjoy a little visit from you," he says, as though tormenting his father is the only reason the invitation was extended.
Harry knows Malfoy well enough now to know that it’s not the whole reason, but it’s the part of the reason that Malfoy is comfortable with. He hates Azkaban, but he hasn’t seen Lucius Malfoy since his trial (and only then from afar), so he smirks back at Malfoy.
"Whatever you say, Draco," he says, and laughs at Malfoy’s exaggerated wince.
Harry really does hate Azkaban, and he never remembers quite how much he hates it until he’s there. He tries to think of Sirius surviving there day after day, year after year, but can’t imagine being there for more than the thirty minutes that visitors are allowed. It’s the Dementors he hates most, of course, and he wishes that the Ministry had stopped using them after the war. But then the post-war wizarding world isn’t as wonderful as Harry had always thought it would be. Malfoy nods once to the guard and then they are shown through the twists and turns of Azkaban, past barren cells and whispering inmates. It’s like the set of a bad horror film, Harry tells himself, trying to lessen it. In his mind, his mother screams faintly.
"Harry Potter."
Lucius Malfoy is one of the few prisoners in Azkaban to have kept their poise, if not their sanity. There is a glitter in Lucius’s eyes that makes Harry think that he is not quite sane. He certainly has no comforting thoughts of innocence with which to protect his mind.
"To what do I owe the -" Lucius’s lip curls - "pleasure?"
Malfoy’s standing beside Harry, his arms crossed. Harry glances across at him.
"Just a little outing with Draco," Harry says.
"Hello, Father," Malfoy says.
Lucius ignores him. "How charming," he says to Harry. "It’s always pleasant to stretch one’s legs."
"Such a shame you won’t be stretching yours for the next century or so," Malfoy adds.
Lucius yawns, displaying a red mouth and grey teeth. "Tell me, Potter, did you lay flowers next to Black’s old cell?"
Malfoy leans forward. "Tell me, Father, would you like me to lay flowers on Mother’s grave for you?"
"My wife was his cousin, you know," Lucius says in a conversational tone, still looking at Harry. "She was a good wife. My only regret is that she didn’t bear me a son."
Malfoy stands so still, so calmly, that he looks as though his father’s words don’t affect him at all. Harry wonders when he came to know Malfoy well enough to know they do.
"Don’t you think you’re being rather childish?" Harry snaps at Lucius.
Lucius licks his dry lips. "A child? Why yes, there was a child." For the first time he looks Malfoy full in the face, his eyes a dull, flat grey. "But it died."
Malfoy does not flinch. "The Falcons are still winning," he says, "but the Tornadoes are set to challenge them for the top of the league. The estate is fine. Talbot says that we should put Hippogriffs in the west acres." He raises an eyebrow. "I’m inclined to disagree." Then he walks away.
Harry is about to follow him, when a hiss from Lucius makes him turn back. Lucius is clinging to the bars of the cell, his face deformed by the striping shadows, and he looks completely mad. "Do you miss them, Potter?" he asks. "Don’t you want to know how we broke their minds? Would you like to hear how they screamed?"
Harry wrenches his eyes away, and runs to catch up with Malfoy.
Malfoy is calm until the guard leaves them outside the gates of Azkaban. Then he spins round and slams one fist sickeningly hard into his palm. "I’m his son," he says, his voice a low hiss that would sound like Lucius’s were Malfoy in control of it. "I’m his son and I stand there and he won’t even look at me." He punches his hand again, and draws his elbow back, so Harry grabs his wrist, jerking it up until Malfoy shrugs and shakes him off.
"Why do you come?" Harry asks.
Malfoy shrugs again. "He’s my father," he says, spitting out the words. "He enjoys it, the bastard." He takes a deep breath, then straightens his robes, brushing dust off the cuffs with deliberate concentration. Then he laughs. "Although, knowing my grandfather Abraxas, Father was the only one that wasn’t a bastard."
Harry’s happy to take the bait and to move the conversation away from Malfoy’s swift outburst. "What, you’re saying your grandfather had illegitimate children?"
Malfoy hums in agreement. "Actually, I think Pansy’s mother might be one of them," he says. "That’s why I didn’t marry her."
Harry shakes his head and laughs. "That’s sick," he says. He glances over. "You all right, Malfoy?"
"Fine," Malfoy says curtly. "It’s just-" and for once there is nothing guarded in his eyes, and Harry knows that it is deliberate, but doesn’t know why, "it’s just that it gets me every time I come. That I’m right there and he won’t even see me."
Harry looks at his feet, then knocks Malfoy’s shoulder with his own. "I know how you feel," he says.
When Harry gets home, Ginny’s waiting for him, hopping from one leg to another in obvious excitement. She’s wearing a smart skirt with a light blue shirt, and from this Harry guesses that she’s been with Ron and Hermione.
"Harry," she says, and then frowns at him. "What’s happened?"
Harry knows how dreadful he looks after a trip to Azkaban. "Nothing that a bit of chocolate won’t sort out," he says, Summoning a bar from the cupboard, snapping it into pieces and offering one to Ginny. She takes it but does not eat.
"Harry, Hermione and Ron are going to have a baby! They told me this afternoon."
Harry stops chewing the chocolate and grins around his mouthful. "That’s great for them," he says.
Ginny beams back. "Yes, and Harry - think. Any child of theirs is going to be magical. So whatever happens …"
Harry swallows, feels the sweet taste trickle down his throat. "Whatever happens … in eleven years or so … they’ll know."
Next Saturday, Harry leaves the Invisibility Cloak at home and goes to the library in Honiton. Hermione is working behind the desk, so he grabs a book and goes over.
"I’d like to take this out, but I need to get myself a library card first," he says.
She nods and taps out his details onto the computer. He hands her the identification that he faked the night before, she adds it in, then writes him out a card. Her hands caress the book slightly as she scans it, swipes the spine, and hands it over to Harry.
"It’s due back in three weeks," she says, with a last touch.
He looks down at its plain cover. "You’ve read it? Is it good?" he asks.
She smiles. "Yes. It’s good."
Harry feels the urge to whistle as he leaves the library. He tucks the book under his arm, concentrates for a moment and then Apparates to a secluded spot near the car park at Paignton Zoo. He pays, then heads straight to the forest habitat area, where the lion enclosure is. Ron’s there already, in his usual spot, and the lion is pacing its worn out path before him. Harry settles himself on the nearest bench and opens his book. Next to him an elderly lady is sitting very still and looking straight ahead. A small child points to the lions’ cage from its mother’s hip. Two other children are daring each other to get closer to the walking lion, giggling together in high-pitched voices.
Harry reads a few pages, then watches Ron watching the lion. He feels very visible, very exposed. When at last Ron walks past, he raises his hand in greeting. Ron frowns slightly, looking over his shoulder, checking if the wave was meant for him. It was, of course, but he doesn’t know that yet. But he will, and it’s almost enough. Harry grins.
*
Release: A deliverance or liberation, as from confinement, restraint, or suffering.
Nearly twelve years later, Harry walks into King’s Cross station, looking around him as though for the first time. He remembers coming here armed with his wand, his trunk, Hedwig and his ticket. He’d had no idea then of the world he was about to join. He’s glad he can recall how it feels.
Nearby, Molly Weasley gives a little sniff. "Simply packed with Muggles," she says. She sounds slightly disapproving, but Harry knows that it’s nerves. He, too, is cursing the crowds, because he can’t see them coming. It’s only ten past ten, but Harry knows that Hermione will want to be early, this first time. He shifts Julian so that he’s holding his son more securely. Julian’s head lolls on Harry’s shoulder, sleepy even with the bustle and excitement; getting to London meant an early start. Five year old Daisy is swinging on Ginny’s hand.
"I want to see the train," she whines.
"You will soon," Ginny says.
"You will very soon," Harry says, craning his neck. "They’re coming." He’s caught sight of Weasley hair, and since all the other Weasleys currently in England are standing behind him, he knows that it’s Ron. Soon he spots Hermione too, and there, between them, is their son.
Molly clutches Arthur. The twins pretend to cry on each other’s shoulders.
Ron, Hermione and their son come closer. Ron’s pushing the boy’s trunk on a trolley, and there’s an owl in a cage perched on top. All three of them look nervous and excited, which is how Harry feels as he steps forward just as Hermione says, "I don’t see how it’s possible."
Now they’re only feet apart. "Hello," Harry says. His voice sounds hoarse. "I’m Harry. I can show you how to get on to the platform, if you like."
Both Hermione and Ron are staring at him, looking puzzled. Harry knows they recognize him; he’s nodded and smiled and exchanged pleasantries often enough over the years, and for a moment he relishes being looked at by them as someone more than a passer-by in day to day life.
The boy has curly light brown hair and Ron’s blue eyes. He looks curiously up at him. "I think I’ve seen you before," he says. "I’m Henry. Are you a you know what, like me?"
"Yeah," says Harry. "Although I didn’t know I was until I was eleven, like you."
"How do you know …" the boy begins, but Hermione nudges him.
"That’s very kind of you," she says. She’s on eye level with Julian, who turns his face towards her and stares back at her, his brown eyes large and his mouth slightly open.
"What a beautiful boy," Hermione says to Harry.
"And I’m five," calls Daisy from the group of Weasleys.
Ron’s gazing at his family - or rather, he stares from one of his families to the other, and Harry sees his eyes widen as he spots Ginny amongst them.
"What’s going on?" he asks, turning to Harry with a bewildered expression.
Harry feels something slide in his chest, slotting back into place, and at once he’s grinning so hard his cheeks ache. In the thirteen years since they were captured, Harry has had to learn - slowly and painfully - how to be whole without Ron and Hermione. He’s made do with glimpses of them - coming back to the library and the zoo time and time again for peace and reassurance and his early feeling of home. His first family. He’s lucky: his family did not - does not - end with Ron and Hermione. He has more now than he dreamed of having: his wife, his children; he has new friends, and new relationships with old ones. For most of the time he hasn’t been unhappy, and for much of the time he’s been the happiest he’s ever been.
Yet now he feels like he’s letting something go and letting something in at the same time. Tension that he’d forgotten was even there leaves him, and in its place comes - what? Hope. Gladness. Cleansing. It is the final washing away of an old ache. The opening of book for a new story.
"I’ll explain,” he says to them. "This way."
And with Henry walking next to him, Ron and Hermione at his side, and Ginny, Daisy and the Weasleys following behind, Harry leads the group through the barrier and onto platform nine and three-quarters, back to where it all began.
Author: antonia_east
Recipient: simons_flower
Rating: PG
Character(s): Harry, Ron, Hermione, Draco, Ginny
Word Count: 8,752
Summary: Release implies freedom and being somewhere better than you were before. Harry doesn’t see how it can be better because Ron and Hermione need him, and he needs them.
Author's Notes: Thanks to P for all the help with ideas and the quick beta. simons_flower, I hope you enjoy the story!
Release
Release: To relieve of debt or obligation.
The war goes on for seven years.
Harry remembers being seventeen and thinking that in a year it would all be over. That he would be murdered or a murderer. He expected to fight, didn’t really expect to live, but expected something to end. He expected, at some point, to be released.
The ending doesn’t come; the Horcruxes are too well-hidden. It takes Harry years to recognise that devoting himself to the hunt isn’t working; the futility of it is breaking all three of them. He feels as though he’s staggering under the weight of people’s hope, and Ron and Hermione share that burden because they’re the only others who know what must be done. School is left far behind. They’ve already grown up with the war, but now they have to be grown ups with the war. They can’t spend year upon year searching for Horcruxes that won’t be found. They have to find jobs, carry on, live.
"After all," Ron says, three years after leaving Hogwarts, "chasing down bits of Voldemort’s soul isn’t exactly a career path."
“No,” Harry replies. "It’s more of a lifestyle choice." They all smile at that, but all three follow the smiles with a frown. Harry knows that he chose his lifestyle because to not choose it would have made him Voldemort’s victim rather than his hunter, and that would be unacceptable. Ron and Hermione chose because of him, and he’s had to accept that.
He’s glad, in a way, when they start to move on; it makes him feel less guilty for stalling their lives. Hermione takes her NEWTs. No one is surprised that she gets an ‘Outstanding’ in every subject, but nearly everyone is surprised when she takes an Apprentice position in the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. She flits between the House-Elf Relocation Office, the Centaur Liaison Office, the Goblin Liaison Office, the Werewolf Support Services and the Ghoul Task Force, officious and content in her quest to unite the beings of the magical world.
Ron trains under Bill as a Curse Breaker, but refuses the big Galleon glory jobs abroad. Instead he often works for his father in the Office for the Detection and Confiscation of Counterfeit Defensive Spells and Protective Objects, where Mr Weasley provides him with scores of dangerous magical objects to neutralise. Harry enjoys spending time in Ron’s cluttered office, sifting through the piles of harmless and not-so-harmless items that Ron has been working on. It also means that Ron knows what he’s doing when it comes to destroying Horcruxes.
Harry, despite his lack of NEWTs and the letters from Oliver Wood begging him to play for Puddlemere United, trains and qualifies with the Auror squad. They make it clear that he is not an ordinary recruit. He is not sent out on the hated reconnaissance missions, and he does not have to spend his evening and weekends wading through the paperwork that is palmed off on the youngest members of each team. Instead, his task is heavier. He is expected to hunt the Death Eaters, to hunt Voldemort - which is of course what all the Aurors are doing these days - but the difference is that Harry is meant to succeed. Or die trying. It’s not that different to playing Quidditch with Oliver, really.
Three years after leaving school - three years after the night of the fake Horcrux and Dumbledore’s death - Draco Malfoy clutches weakly at the doorframe of number twelve, Grimmauld Place, and holds out to Harry a weighty gold locket adorned with a serpentine ‘S’. It smells sweetly, foully, of Dark Magic, and Harry nearly gags as he takes it, slippery with blood, from Malfoy’s fist. Harry’s about to question Malfoy, but Malfoy collapses instead. Hermione spends frantic hours flicking through Healing manuals, Ron starts to work out how to dismantle the Horcrux, and Harry sits by the bed and watches Malfoy’s breathing become more and more shallow. He feels regret and relief and fear and excitement and pity and vengeance and sorrow and joy and so many feelings that he pretends to himself that he looks at his dying boyhood enemy with no emotion at all.
Malfoy - with typical bloody-mindedness, in Harry’s opinion - does not die. The next morning he groans loudly and sits bolt upright in bed.
"That necklace I gave you, Potter, it’s a Horcrux," he gasps, pale hair flopping onto his paler face.
"You don’t say," says Harry.
"It’s the Dark Lord’s," Malfoy carries on, as if he hasn’t heard. "It’s got a part of his soul in it. You can’t kill him until you’ve destroyed it."
"Tell us something we don’t know," mutters Ron, who is working his way through a hefty spell book with a level of dedication usually only displayed by Hermione.
Malfoy looks at Harry and then at Ron. He blinks. "Oh," he says, and sinks back onto the bed.
After that Harry can’t hate Malfoy any more. It takes Harry two years, the destruction of the rest of the Horcruxes and the realisation that nothing annoys Malfoy more than Harry calling him ‘Draco’ to decide that he actually quite likes him. By this time it’s five years after Hogwarts, and all that is left is to face Voldemort and to kill him. Harry can’t fathom how he’ll be ready to do it. He feels much older, and feels also that little has been gained for the loss of his youth. He knows more now, it is true, but it is a weary, weighty kind of knowledge. Harry wonders sometimes how Dumbledore could have borne living so long, and how on earth he managed to have that lightness in his look - that smile, that twinkle in his eyes - when he had seen more and knew more than Harry ever could.
He is not the only one who has grown up. Even the young ones at school have left and found jobs and adult lives. He doesn’t have much to do with them. These are dark times; he’s told that it’s the same now as it was during Voldemort’s first rise. People disappear. Wary eyes watch you on the street. Trust no one, the headlines scream, as they report the maimings, murders, mass-destructions. Harry trusts Ron and Hermione, Lupin and Tonks and the Weasleys, although the last trust is misplaced; Percy spends six months under the Imperius Curse before anyone notices, and Fred and George nearly die because of it. Percy disappears soon afterwards.
Six years after leaving school, Ron and Hermione get married.
"Do you think we should?" Hermione says. Her face settles into its familiar worried expression. "It’s not exactly the ideal time."
"Yes, we should," says Ron, savagely. “Voldemort’s bloody well already won if we’re too scared to live."
Harry’s reminded again of the last war, wonders if his own parents got married like this; there’s no one but him and Ginny to witness Ron and Hermione marry. They rush through vows in the Muggle registry office, talking in whispers, caught in a fragile bubble of hope.
Seven years after leaving Hogwarts, the war ends. Harry ends it, and Dumbledore was right. It is his love that ultimately destroys Voldemort, but not before it nearly destroys Harry and two of the people he loves most in the world.
The war ends when Ron and Hermione are captured.
Or rather, the war ends just over a month after Ron and Hermione are captured. It is a hideous month full of rage and grief and bubbling, choking hatred and helpless, pleading love. Harry has spent seven years searching frantically for the ways to end this, but the years seem peaceful compared with this horrid need to end it, to try and save them, even though by the end of the first week Harry is sure that he is fighting for the right to give his best friends’ bodies a proper burial. In the second week he realises that he is glad for the war. He is glad that Voldemort is out there and that he can be killed, because Harry needs to kill him. He no longer resents the weight of public expectation, Ron and Hermione’s families’ watery looks. He needs to be needed otherwise he knows that he will falter and he will be defeated. Harry will not be defeated until the war is over.
*
Release: To set free from confinement, restraint, or bondage: release the prisoners.
He barely blinks after killing Voldemort - it is anticlimactic after so long - and lunges at the nearest Death Eater, knees pinning his arms, hands gripping his throat, as he demands to be taken to Ron and Hermione. Wormtail’s silver hand scrabbles against Harry’s back and he whimpers that he doesn’t know, he doesn’t know. Harry’s hands tighten and he glares at him, telling Peter Pettigrew without words that he’s spared him once and he will not do it again.
Suddenly the ghostly form of a wolf springs, knocking into Harry. Wormtail shrieks, and it takes Harry a moment to identify it as a Patronus - Tonks’s Patronus, Remus’s wolf-form. Tonks and Remus are making their way to them, and then there are more people - Shacklebolt, Dawlish, Arthur Weasley - business-like and quiet, binding Death Eaters and asking brisk questions. Malfoy appears soon after, his wand at Macnair’s throat.
"This one," he says, digging his wand deeper into Macnair’s flesh, "says he can take us to the prisoners."
Harry can’t concentrate on the bargains Macnair tries to drive with Dawlish and Shacklebolt as they move through dark corridors. He can only think of the mad rhythm of his heart and the dizzy excitement that he is going to find them. And when he gets to Ron and Hermione’s cell he nearly crumbles with relief because they are alive. He lurches forward towards them, something like joy in his chest and on his face, making his cheeks ache with it. It isn’t joy - he goes beyond joyful. It’s over, and they’re there, and he realises how missing he’s been feeling and the relief that his best friends are still there - that he can be put back together - makes him feel lighter than he can ever remember.
"Potter." Malfoy’s voice is sharp. It draws Harry back like the tug of an anchor. Harry looks at Malfoy, sees the horror and disgust in his face and somehow he knows not to look at Ron and Hermione. He turns instead to Lupin, whose head is bowed, his face in shadow. Tonks’s hair lengthens, snaking down her back, growing limp and mousy brown. Arthur Weasley, who, like Harry, rushed forwards towards Ron and Hermione, is motionless halfway across the cell, his hands raised, his expression frozen, like a victim facing a firing squad. Behind him, Kingsley Shacklebolt has his arms folded tightly across his chest. Dawlish has whipped out his wand and is muttering into it, his eyes fixed ahead. Harry hears him bark out the words ‘St Mungo’s’ and ‘Healers’. It is as though they are all butterflies, pinned motionless on display, with Harry the only one uncaught. He looks into the corner where Ron and Hermione are, and feels the pin drive through his heart.
Hermione is pressed as far back against the wall as she can get. She’s crying - wordless sounds that clutch at Harry. He wants to get closer, to comfort his friend. He wants to step away, to distance himself from the involuntary cries of pain.
Ron is also backed into the wall, shielding Hermione with his body, but cringing as far away as possible from his rescuers. His mouth is moving, but he makes only a low hissing sound, flecks of spittle glistening on his lips.
The room is small and contains only a ragged pile of blankets for a bed. The floor is filthy and the air smells of blood and excrement. There are shackles on the walls. Harry sucks in a putrid breath and can feel the trace scent of foul magic irritate his lungs. Ron’s robe - Harry can’t see Hermione’s - is tattered, and Ron looks thin, pinched, his face bloodless, his features twisted as he hisses so he looks half predator, half prey. Hermione’s eyes look too big for her face, her cheeks sunken, her skin dull. It’s the eyes, really, that have made them all stop. All the familiar looks and expressions - gone. Ron and Hermione aren’t there.
Harry steps forward, walks past Arthur and up to his best friends. He can feel their ragged breath on his face, can see Ron trembling as he shrinks back away from him. Hermione’s hands are moving against the wall as though she’s trying to burrow into it, to give them a little more room to get away. There’s a desperate kind of danger in their faces, now. Harry thinks of cornered creatures that are harmless until threatened, when they strike out of fear and necessity. Behind him he can hear Dawlish doing Sounding Spells on the cell, taking down notes for the records, and all Harry wants is for Ron and Hermione to see him and know that they are safe. He can’t quite comprehend that he’s making them more afraid. Then he notices the way Ron’s eyes track the movement of Dawlish’s wand, and the way Hermione moans whenever Dawlish mutters a spell.
"Stop it," he says, more forcefully than he means to. “Put your wands away. They’re frightened of the magic."
He sticks his own wand into his back pocket, and then glares until the others - even Dawlish - do the same. Hermione stops crying, and the sound of everyone’s breathing becomes louder. Torn, panting little breaths.
"Ron," he says. "Hermione." And there - he thinks he sees it. A spark of recognition, of relief, behind their eyes. For a moment he believes that everything will be all right.
Then the Healers Apparate in with a volley of cracks, and Hermione begins to scream once more.
*
Release: To relieve of care and suffering.
By the time Harry’s been at St Mungo’s for four days, he thinks that he’d rather be back at the battlefield. There’s too much pretence at normal here. Ron and Hermione lie stiff on the beds in a private room purposefully cleared of all signs of magic. Healers bustle in and out, Ginny Weasley among them. Ginny is a Trauma Healer. Her very job is to teach people who have lived through the virtually-unlivable how to live again. She is very good at her job, Harry knows, because he sees Dennis Creevey one day and Dennis nearly smiles. Ginny was always good at living. He knows that she never left the Chamber (in the same way that he never left it, nor the graveyard at Little Hangleton, nor the cave, nor Godric’s Hollow, nor many other haunted places) but that she chooses instead to carry it with her - a defining part but not the part of herself. She has always been good at understanding and brightening and carrying on, even at Hogwarts.
Harry envies Ginny her job. It gives her an excuse to leave the rest of the Weasleys. Arthur is tight-lipped and pale-faced. Molly is crying. It’s the longest Harry’s seen Fred and George go without smiling, and this includes the time the pair of them were nearly killed. Harry watches the door to the room open and close, watches the Healers talk in low voices and bend over the beds, smooth and professional - even Ginny’s grief-worn face is smoothed somewhat as she turns to work.
It’s worse when the Grangers arrive, but Harry empathises with them, the way they look at the hospital room and the corridor outside with helpless trapped expressions. They’re foreigners in a different world, and Hermione was the only one to make sense of the wizarding world for them, and it has destroyed her.
Mrs Weasley and Mrs Granger hug and wipe their eyes furiously at each other. Mr Weasley and Mr Granger exchange pained handshakes, and Harry decides that the families aren’t that different. He cannot meet their eyes. Cannot let them see that he has failed their children - his own family - by being too slow, being too weak and, in the end, not being enough for them to cling to.
"Our opinion is that any magical interaction would be severely detrimental to the mental Healing which Mr and Mrs Weasley must undergo after their sustained trauma," the Healer says, his tone so calm and clinical that he sounds bored. "We recommend that the patients be removed from all contact with the wizarding world for an indefinite period."
The Weasleys all look at Ginny, who turns and buries her head in her mother’s shoulder briefly before facing them.
"It’s true," she says, sniffing. "They can’t cope with the magic. It terrifies them so much that they can’t cope, and they shut down. The only chance they’ve got of living a normal life is if they think they’re Muggles."
"You mean wipe all their memories?" asks George.
The Healer begins to reply, but Ginny just nods.
"You can’t," Harry says. "You can’t just erase their memories. This is their home."
A shadow crosses the Healer’s face. "It is a home in which they cannot live, Mr Potter," he says. Harry knows, on some level, that this is true. He has heard the panic whenever a Healer uses a spell in the room with Ron and Hermione. "No," he says, because it can’t be true. Can’t be happening. It can’t be that Ron and Hermione can only be Ron and Hermione again when they’re robbed of most of the things they most love and know best. Harry hates the fact that they need help that he can’t give them; that he could only make them worse, not better.
"Do you mean they’ll forget everything?" Mr Weasley asks.
"We think it best that a Secret Keeper is nominated from our Healing team, who can keep an assessment of the case. His or her function would be to monitor the patients and to shield them from the wizarding world."
"It means," Ginny says, her voice thick, "that no one with magic would be able to find them except the Healer."
"No one?" Mrs Weasley says. "Not f-family?"
"It is important to sever all ties to magic," says the Healer. He flicks through the wedge of papers on his clipboard and pulls out a piece of parchment, which he hands to Mr Weasley. Harry looks over Fred and George’s shoulders to read it with the rest of the Weasleys. It is a next of kin release form.
*
Release: To free from something that binds, fastens, or holds back; let go.
"We’ll take care of them," Mr Granger says to Harry and the Weasleys, for what must be the twentieth time. It does not become any more reassuring, and Harry feels a surge of hatred towards Hermione’s parents - that they can be a part of their lives when he cannot. That they lost their daughter to the wizarding world and now are claiming her back, and Ron as well, leaving him, Harry, alone. They’re being released, he tries to think, and it’s almost funny, as though Ron and Hermione are being let loose in the wild, but it’s wrong, because release implies freedom and being somewhere better than you were before, and Harry doesn’t see how it can be better because Ron and Hermione need him, and he needs them.
He remembers them cornered in the cell, and thinks that at least they will be released from the memory of that. Better a life where they’re not scared, even though the life is a lie.
The Healer’s still talking. "We will modify Mr and Mrs Weasley’s memories so that they believe they have suffered disorientation after a car crash."
A car crash. The same thing Harry had believed killed his parents. He turns and leaves, ignoring the voices calling after him, and Apparates out of the hospital.
"They’re gone," Ginny tells him, a week later.
He knows. He’s said his goodbyes, as much as he could say goodbye to Ron and Hermione, even a Ron and Hermione who didn’t recognise him, earlier that day. It’s a strange feeling, though, knowing that he could walk past Ron or Hermione in the street and not know that they were there.
"You’re the Secret Keeper?"
"Yes." Ginny tugs her hair back behind her ears. "I’ll be visiting them every few months. They’ll think I’m monitoring their recovery after their car crash. Mum’s already on at me to go and check on them, and I know she’s going to want to see them, and I can’t let her."
Harry stays silent, knowing that this is exactly what he wants to ask Ginny, but he won’t let himself.
"Hermione recognised her parents," Ginny says in a small voice. "Once the memory charms were put on."
Harry bows his head, looking at his clasped hands resting on his knees, and doesn’t look up until she’s gone.
The next day he goes to stay with Remus and Tonks. When Tonks answers the door she pulls Harry into a hug that’s fiercer than anyone’s dared give him since Ron and Hermione were taken. He’s rather startled to feel something pushing at his chest while she’s pressed up against him, and realises when she draws back that she’s morphed into an alarming replica of Mrs Weasley. Tonks looks down at herself and gives a rueful smile.
"I obviously think you need mothering,” she says. "But I seem to have got a bit carried away."
Harry swallows. Mothering makes him think of Hermione; at this stage he’s managing to relate everything to either Ron or Hermione or both.
"Ah, hell," Tonks mutters, deflating rapidly. "I’m dreadful at mothering. I can’t decide whether you need hot chocolate or Firewhiskey."
Harry’s face breaks - and it feels like cracking ice - into a weak smile at that.
"How about laced hot chocolate?" Remus’s voice is followed by Remus himself, who emerges from a room off the hall and comes to stand beside Tonks, resting a hand briefly on her hip.
"Good idea," Tonks says. She touches Remus’s fingers, then squeezes Harry’s wrist before turning and heading to the kitchen. The hallway feels darker once she’s left - heavier, more sombre - because now Harry has to look Remus in the face.
Remus’s face, despite the harsh lines about his mouth and the fine ones around his eyes, looks incredibly young. Harry has seen Remus look boyish when particularly cheerful, but this is a blistering, tortured kind of youth. It’s raw - a look of broken innocence. Faintly, Harry can hear Tonks clattering in the kitchen. He and Remus have not spoken, are still standing and watching each other in the hall. Harry knows why Remus is wearing the expression that he does: Remus has been forcing himself back to his own youth, reliving the loss of the friends which were his world, remembering how it felt to face that isolation and grief while in ordinary homes and on the streets people celebrated the end of the war. Harry knows that Remus has done this deliberately, so that he may find any words or actions which are capable of consoling Harry.
Remus does not speak. There are no words.
I know, his expression says.
Harry stumbles a little as he comes forward to clutch at Remus who, thankfully, does not start to grow a large pair of breasts halfway through the hug.
*
Release: To dismiss, as from a job.
Harry works solidly for the next six months, barely ducking home to sleep for snatches of brief hours. The nightmares come. He’s used to them - they’ve been a feature of his life since childhood, but this time he dreams of waking from them, with Ron’s sleep-blurred face peering at him through the darkness muttering, “All right, mate?” around a yawn. He dreams of Hermione’s little frowns and worried looks when she sees him drawn and sleepless.
He dreams of the cell he found them in, and of killing Voldemort, and of the frantic hours after they were taken. Worst of all he dreams of being happy with his friends - all the meaningless in-between times which strengthened the friendship just as much as fighting for (and with) each other did. These innocuous moments now haunt him most because they’re gone.
He works so that he will not dream. There is plenty of work to do, as well. Many Death Eaters were captured when Harry killed Voldemort, but not all, and as usual it is the most dangerous who escape. A savage part of him enjoys the months of tracking and chasing much more than he thought he would when he was a student at Hogwarts, dreaming of becoming an Auror. He doesn’t want to fight evil anymore, he wants to destroy it, explode it, tear it apart. There’s so much anger inside him and he lets it fuel him, ruthless in his searching, as Amycus Carrow, Bellatrix Lestrange, Fenrir Greyback are caught and captured and sentenced.
Six months after finding Ron and Hermione, Harry is called into Kingsley Shacklebolt’s office.
"You’re off the Malfoy case, Harry," he says, not unkindly.
Harry knows, then, that his hunch was right - that Lucius Malfoy was the one to take Ron and Hermione, and that Kingsley’s just got proof.
"You can’t," he says. He’s horrified at the thought of not going after Lucius. He’s the only big Death Eater left. The rest are spies and minor-players. If he isn’t hunting Lucius, then there will be nothing for Harry to do.
Kingsley must have read all of this in Harry’s face. "You’ve done enough, Harry," he says. "Too much, really. If you carry on like this you’ll destroy yourself."
Harry opens his mouth to say that he doesn’t care if he destroys himself as long as he takes Malfoy down with him, but stops. Even when he had to face Voldemort he wanted to live through it. This is just Lucius Malfoy. He looks at Kingsley, feeling guilty.
Kingsley smiles. "Go on holiday. Take some time to do something completely different. You’re not expected to do anything more."
Time, thinks Harry, is a terrifying thing.
Perhaps he is afraid of the freedom, because he shuts himself in another type of prison. After talking to Remus, Harry follows Sirius’s path south. He takes his broom and flies most of the way, imagining Sirius riding Buckbeak as he passes over coastlines and oceans. Harry takes risks, Apparating in mid-air from his broomstick when he decides he’s too tired to fly any longer, sleeping on beaches under the stars. He takes off his clothes and swims in strange water, feels a foreign sun on his back, and tries to spot the sort of exotic birds that Sirius used to send with his letters. Half the time he’s not even sure where he is, and can imagine Hermione buying him guidebooks and telling him about the history and customs of whichever country he’s currently visiting. He wishes they were there - swimming is less fun without Ron to horse about with - but missing them there feels cleaner, as though they’re just back in England waiting for him to send them a postcard.
In the end it’s Ginny who writes.
Ron and Hermione are doing really well. They’ve moved out of the Grangers’ house and have found a place in Honiton. It’s not too far away from here, which is hard on Mum, but I think she likes knowing they’re nearby.
How are you, Harry? Please write. Mum’s already lost two sons. Don’t make her lose another.
Harry glares at the bright sky until his eyes are stinging and clogged with involuntary tears. Then he decides to go home.
*
Release: An unfastening or letting go of something caught or held fast.
England makes Harry feel uncomfortable - itchy - as though there is a layer of sand between his skin and his clothes. He spends his time searching for some place, person, thing - a smell, a touch, a taste - anything that makes him feel settled. He prowls the room at Grimmauld Place and feels the shadows walking with him. He eats wholesome, nourishing foods under Mrs Weasley’s approving eye in the kitchen of The Burrow and tries not to look at Ron’s wand displayed in a little box above the fireplace. He even watches Malfoy lounge (with elegance a little too studied to be natural) on the antique furniture at Malfoy Manor and tries not to jump every time a House-elf pops up to offer him more tea.
He finds shades of comfort in each of these places - Sirius’s books, flying with Ginny and the twins, Malfoy flinching every time Harry calls him Draco - but nowhere does he feel that he has found a place he’d like to belong. He buys himself a flat and fills it with the kind of wizarding appliances that he loved to touch at the Weasleys’ house and the Muggle ones that he was never allowed to at the Dursleys’. It is new and fresh and his, but no matter how untidy he makes it, no matter how often he wanders about naked, or what colour he paints the walls, it still doesn’t feel like he’s at home.
He spends a lot of time drifting through the town of Honiton, hoping to catch a glimpse of Ron or Hermione, even though he knows that he won’t be able to see them.
"God, Potter, you’re pathetic," says Malfoy with the same old sneer but without the rancour. "I’m sick of you looking like you’re about to wet yourself on the ottoman."
"Harry, that’s the third all-nighter you’ve pulled this week," says Kingsley nearly every Friday. "Go home. I don’t want to see you until Monday."
"I’ve thought really hard about this," says Ginny, fiddling with the hair behind her ears. "And Ron and Hermione, if they knew, of course, they would hate to see you like this." Her expression sets, decided. "Come with me," she says.
She makes him wear the Invisibility Cloak, and they Apparate to a lane with high hedges. Ginny’s wearing a blue knee-length dress with a grey blazer over the top; Muggle clothing. Harry’s willing to bet that they’re not far from Honiton, and he feels his heart thump as they approach a house. This is it.
Ginny stops. "Be warned," she murmurs, looking fixedly at a point a few feet from where he is, shrouded by the Cloak. "They’re … it’s difficult."
He nods, which is stupid as she can’t see him, but after a second she moves again, walking up the path, to the front door, knocking …
"Hello!" Ron greets her with a grin, and Harry has to force himself to stay very still and to keep very quiet. He hasn’t ever been apart from Ron for this long since he’d met him, over fifteen years ago, and he’s never before realised just how familiar Ron is. Familiar. Like family.
"It’s my long lost sister," Ron continues, and Harry almost shouts with surprise. Ginny’s smile is awkward for a moment, but then she manages a friendly grin.
"Do you say that to everyone you meet with red hair, Mr Weasley?" she asks.
"Nah," says Ron. "Only the ones with freckles. Come in."
Ginny takes off her blazer in the doorway and Harry slips in before Ron closes the door and shows Ginny into the sitting room. Harry, following, gives another start at the sight of Hermione hovering by a door which - he sees over her shoulder - leads into the kitchen, holding a tray of tea and biscuits in her hands.
"Good afternoon, Ginny," she says. "Would you like a cup of tea? It’s milk and no sugar, isn’t it?"
Ginny agrees and sits and begins to ask about black outs and dizzy spells. She asks whether the strange dreams have returned, asks how Ron’s job at the farm is going.
Harry’s interested in the answers, but finds himself forgetting to listen, distracted by looking at the changes in his friends - Ron’s arms are more muscled, Hermione’s got thinner. He looks for lines in their faces that are new to him, expressions he hasn’t seen before. He looks about the neat little room: it is full of bookshelves, has a comfortable-looking sofa that Harry can see Hermione lying on with a book, and an armchair with a chess set in front of it, which Harry can picture Ron leaning over. He wonders if Ron ever thinks it strange that his chess pieces do not talk back.
There is nothing strange about the house, or Ron and Hermione. They are comfortable, content in their quiet existence. The life they lead is a lie; they have been shielded from their real world, from parts of themselves, and yet Harry is jealous of them.
And there, there in the little Muggle room, amongst the tea things and biscuit crumbs, with Ron and Hermione squeezed thigh to thigh on the sofa, Ginny perched on the armchair like a visitor, beneath the murmur of everyday polite conversation, Harry feels something clench and release in his chest. He feels the irritating unsettled feeling dissipate into a warm sensation - a satisfaction of finding something long-missed and looked-for. It’s the closest yet he’s come to feeling at home.
*
Release: To relinquish a right or claim.
It’s like a drug. Harry’s never understood the need to drink to excess, or to take mind-altering Potions, but Harry finds that he craves that feeling of rightness. The feeling is imperfect. Sometimes being around Ron and Hermione makes him miss them more. He feels the missing parts of himself - the pieces of him that they are. He remembers how he felt when they were captured: shattered, and he longed to be put back together. Now he feels as though he has the final two pieces in his hand, but they won’t fit, no matter how he turns them. It’s like a drug because he knows it’s bad, but he can’t stop. He thinks to himself that he is doing no harm. He does no magic near them; the Invisibility Cloak doesn’t count. He doesn’t talk or touch or disturb or disrupt - they have no idea that he’s there. Which, of course, is why it’s wrong to be following them.
He watches Hermione at her job in the local library. He almost wishes that Hermione had been left in the Muggle world, had never been to Hogwarts. He could see her working at a university, trying to cure some impossible disease, or running for parliament, leading a one-woman crusade over the latest issue to come to her notice. The Hermione who had always been a Muggle - the Hermione who was a witch - is confident, passionate, determined, a little bit bossy. This Hermione stamps books at the desk and hands them gently to the person taking them out. Sometimes she smiles at the choice, and Harry knows that it is a book she has read and loved and that she wants to share this love with the borrower, but she never does. When she puts the books away she moves between the shelves with silent quick steps, sliding classic literature, children’s books, frothy romances and turgid non-fiction - all books alike - into place with deft hands. When the library is quiet she reads behind her desk. Sometimes Harry watches over her shoulder and finds the book when she’s finished with it. He touches the pages she’s touched, reads words that she has read and wants to leave a mark, a note, to show her that he has read them too. He notices the way her fingers linger over the spines of brightly-covered fantasy books, fingertips tracing dragons and warriors and wands, and sees her frown.
Harry thinks that Ron is happier than Hermione, despite barely having set foot in the Muggle world before being sent to live in it. Harry discovers he works on a nearby dairy farm, and goes with him on early mornings to watch Ron do the milking - guiding the cows into their stalls and chaining them in, testing the udders briefly by hand before attaching the strange-looking machines. Ron murmurs to some of the cows, even calling some of them by name. He shoves them affably when they barge him, greets them with friendly slaps, and herds them all back to the field when they’re done, with the help of a teenage boy and a grinning border collie. He cleans the milking parlour afterwards, too, sweeping up dung and hosing the floor down. Harry is tempted to cast a cleaning spell to help him out, but knows that he must not. He is surprised that Ron chooses to work at a place where he has to do something that resembles detention with Filch and Hagrid rolled into one, but there is a peaceful sort of contentment at the farm, even with the noise and stench of the cattle, that Ron seems to enjoy.
Harry tells himself that he follows Ron and Hermione to make sure that they’re happy, that they’re okay, but he can’t stop even when he knows that they are. He feels as though he owns them again - just as they have always owned him. He feels proprietary towards them, fumes when a borrower at the library looks too pointedly at Hermione’s chest, is saddened that the cows and the dog get greetings from Ron and he does not, is jealous when they have friends - one of the librarians and her husband - over for a meal. He hears Ron and Hermione talk together, and they talk of normal things. He does not realise he’s listening for his name until Ron mentions ‘Harry’ - but it’s not him.
One Saturday morning when Hermione is at work and Ron is not, Ron gets in the car and Harry, on impulse, hides himself in the back seat. They travel for almost an hour, and Harry has to will himself not to sneeze or cough. He doesn’t know where he’s going or what to expect, but still manages to be surprised when they end up at Paignton Zoo. Ron parks, pays, and strides away. Harry waits for more people to join the queue before taking off the cloak and joining it himself. When he gets inside he has lost Ron, and it is impossible to spot even his bright hair over the crowd. After a while he spends less time looking for Ron and more time looking at the animals - he hasn’t been to the zoo since Dudley’s eleventh birthday, and Harry grins to himself as he passes the reptile house, where two of the snakes are having a rather salacious conversation. There are quite a few people looking at the lions when Harry gets to their enclosure. One of the lions is prowling up and down, up and down behind the wire. Harry takes a few steps back to let a group of excited children through, and then he sees Ron standing on the other side of the enclosure. His eyes follow the lion, and as the lion gets closer to where Harry is, Harry thinks that Ron will see him. The lion reaches Harry, turns, and when it follows its worn path back to Ron’s side, Ron’s still looking at the lion.
*
Release: An authoritative discharge, as from an obligation or from prison.
"I’m going to see my father this afternoon," says Malfoy. His face wears the disparaging smirk he used to give to the teachers he didn’t like. "I thought you might like to come."
Harry looks at Malfoy through narrowed eyes. He didn’t even know that Malfoy visited Lucius. Malfoy’s lips twitch. "I think he’d enjoy a little visit from you," he says, as though tormenting his father is the only reason the invitation was extended.
Harry knows Malfoy well enough now to know that it’s not the whole reason, but it’s the part of the reason that Malfoy is comfortable with. He hates Azkaban, but he hasn’t seen Lucius Malfoy since his trial (and only then from afar), so he smirks back at Malfoy.
"Whatever you say, Draco," he says, and laughs at Malfoy’s exaggerated wince.
Harry really does hate Azkaban, and he never remembers quite how much he hates it until he’s there. He tries to think of Sirius surviving there day after day, year after year, but can’t imagine being there for more than the thirty minutes that visitors are allowed. It’s the Dementors he hates most, of course, and he wishes that the Ministry had stopped using them after the war. But then the post-war wizarding world isn’t as wonderful as Harry had always thought it would be. Malfoy nods once to the guard and then they are shown through the twists and turns of Azkaban, past barren cells and whispering inmates. It’s like the set of a bad horror film, Harry tells himself, trying to lessen it. In his mind, his mother screams faintly.
"Harry Potter."
Lucius Malfoy is one of the few prisoners in Azkaban to have kept their poise, if not their sanity. There is a glitter in Lucius’s eyes that makes Harry think that he is not quite sane. He certainly has no comforting thoughts of innocence with which to protect his mind.
"To what do I owe the -" Lucius’s lip curls - "pleasure?"
Malfoy’s standing beside Harry, his arms crossed. Harry glances across at him.
"Just a little outing with Draco," Harry says.
"Hello, Father," Malfoy says.
Lucius ignores him. "How charming," he says to Harry. "It’s always pleasant to stretch one’s legs."
"Such a shame you won’t be stretching yours for the next century or so," Malfoy adds.
Lucius yawns, displaying a red mouth and grey teeth. "Tell me, Potter, did you lay flowers next to Black’s old cell?"
Malfoy leans forward. "Tell me, Father, would you like me to lay flowers on Mother’s grave for you?"
"My wife was his cousin, you know," Lucius says in a conversational tone, still looking at Harry. "She was a good wife. My only regret is that she didn’t bear me a son."
Malfoy stands so still, so calmly, that he looks as though his father’s words don’t affect him at all. Harry wonders when he came to know Malfoy well enough to know they do.
"Don’t you think you’re being rather childish?" Harry snaps at Lucius.
Lucius licks his dry lips. "A child? Why yes, there was a child." For the first time he looks Malfoy full in the face, his eyes a dull, flat grey. "But it died."
Malfoy does not flinch. "The Falcons are still winning," he says, "but the Tornadoes are set to challenge them for the top of the league. The estate is fine. Talbot says that we should put Hippogriffs in the west acres." He raises an eyebrow. "I’m inclined to disagree." Then he walks away.
Harry is about to follow him, when a hiss from Lucius makes him turn back. Lucius is clinging to the bars of the cell, his face deformed by the striping shadows, and he looks completely mad. "Do you miss them, Potter?" he asks. "Don’t you want to know how we broke their minds? Would you like to hear how they screamed?"
Harry wrenches his eyes away, and runs to catch up with Malfoy.
Malfoy is calm until the guard leaves them outside the gates of Azkaban. Then he spins round and slams one fist sickeningly hard into his palm. "I’m his son," he says, his voice a low hiss that would sound like Lucius’s were Malfoy in control of it. "I’m his son and I stand there and he won’t even look at me." He punches his hand again, and draws his elbow back, so Harry grabs his wrist, jerking it up until Malfoy shrugs and shakes him off.
"Why do you come?" Harry asks.
Malfoy shrugs again. "He’s my father," he says, spitting out the words. "He enjoys it, the bastard." He takes a deep breath, then straightens his robes, brushing dust off the cuffs with deliberate concentration. Then he laughs. "Although, knowing my grandfather Abraxas, Father was the only one that wasn’t a bastard."
Harry’s happy to take the bait and to move the conversation away from Malfoy’s swift outburst. "What, you’re saying your grandfather had illegitimate children?"
Malfoy hums in agreement. "Actually, I think Pansy’s mother might be one of them," he says. "That’s why I didn’t marry her."
Harry shakes his head and laughs. "That’s sick," he says. He glances over. "You all right, Malfoy?"
"Fine," Malfoy says curtly. "It’s just-" and for once there is nothing guarded in his eyes, and Harry knows that it is deliberate, but doesn’t know why, "it’s just that it gets me every time I come. That I’m right there and he won’t even see me."
Harry looks at his feet, then knocks Malfoy’s shoulder with his own. "I know how you feel," he says.
When Harry gets home, Ginny’s waiting for him, hopping from one leg to another in obvious excitement. She’s wearing a smart skirt with a light blue shirt, and from this Harry guesses that she’s been with Ron and Hermione.
"Harry," she says, and then frowns at him. "What’s happened?"
Harry knows how dreadful he looks after a trip to Azkaban. "Nothing that a bit of chocolate won’t sort out," he says, Summoning a bar from the cupboard, snapping it into pieces and offering one to Ginny. She takes it but does not eat.
"Harry, Hermione and Ron are going to have a baby! They told me this afternoon."
Harry stops chewing the chocolate and grins around his mouthful. "That’s great for them," he says.
Ginny beams back. "Yes, and Harry - think. Any child of theirs is going to be magical. So whatever happens …"
Harry swallows, feels the sweet taste trickle down his throat. "Whatever happens … in eleven years or so … they’ll know."
Next Saturday, Harry leaves the Invisibility Cloak at home and goes to the library in Honiton. Hermione is working behind the desk, so he grabs a book and goes over.
"I’d like to take this out, but I need to get myself a library card first," he says.
She nods and taps out his details onto the computer. He hands her the identification that he faked the night before, she adds it in, then writes him out a card. Her hands caress the book slightly as she scans it, swipes the spine, and hands it over to Harry.
"It’s due back in three weeks," she says, with a last touch.
He looks down at its plain cover. "You’ve read it? Is it good?" he asks.
She smiles. "Yes. It’s good."
Harry feels the urge to whistle as he leaves the library. He tucks the book under his arm, concentrates for a moment and then Apparates to a secluded spot near the car park at Paignton Zoo. He pays, then heads straight to the forest habitat area, where the lion enclosure is. Ron’s there already, in his usual spot, and the lion is pacing its worn out path before him. Harry settles himself on the nearest bench and opens his book. Next to him an elderly lady is sitting very still and looking straight ahead. A small child points to the lions’ cage from its mother’s hip. Two other children are daring each other to get closer to the walking lion, giggling together in high-pitched voices.
Harry reads a few pages, then watches Ron watching the lion. He feels very visible, very exposed. When at last Ron walks past, he raises his hand in greeting. Ron frowns slightly, looking over his shoulder, checking if the wave was meant for him. It was, of course, but he doesn’t know that yet. But he will, and it’s almost enough. Harry grins.
*
Release: A deliverance or liberation, as from confinement, restraint, or suffering.
Nearly twelve years later, Harry walks into King’s Cross station, looking around him as though for the first time. He remembers coming here armed with his wand, his trunk, Hedwig and his ticket. He’d had no idea then of the world he was about to join. He’s glad he can recall how it feels.
Nearby, Molly Weasley gives a little sniff. "Simply packed with Muggles," she says. She sounds slightly disapproving, but Harry knows that it’s nerves. He, too, is cursing the crowds, because he can’t see them coming. It’s only ten past ten, but Harry knows that Hermione will want to be early, this first time. He shifts Julian so that he’s holding his son more securely. Julian’s head lolls on Harry’s shoulder, sleepy even with the bustle and excitement; getting to London meant an early start. Five year old Daisy is swinging on Ginny’s hand.
"I want to see the train," she whines.
"You will soon," Ginny says.
"You will very soon," Harry says, craning his neck. "They’re coming." He’s caught sight of Weasley hair, and since all the other Weasleys currently in England are standing behind him, he knows that it’s Ron. Soon he spots Hermione too, and there, between them, is their son.
Molly clutches Arthur. The twins pretend to cry on each other’s shoulders.
Ron, Hermione and their son come closer. Ron’s pushing the boy’s trunk on a trolley, and there’s an owl in a cage perched on top. All three of them look nervous and excited, which is how Harry feels as he steps forward just as Hermione says, "I don’t see how it’s possible."
Now they’re only feet apart. "Hello," Harry says. His voice sounds hoarse. "I’m Harry. I can show you how to get on to the platform, if you like."
Both Hermione and Ron are staring at him, looking puzzled. Harry knows they recognize him; he’s nodded and smiled and exchanged pleasantries often enough over the years, and for a moment he relishes being looked at by them as someone more than a passer-by in day to day life.
The boy has curly light brown hair and Ron’s blue eyes. He looks curiously up at him. "I think I’ve seen you before," he says. "I’m Henry. Are you a you know what, like me?"
"Yeah," says Harry. "Although I didn’t know I was until I was eleven, like you."
"How do you know …" the boy begins, but Hermione nudges him.
"That’s very kind of you," she says. She’s on eye level with Julian, who turns his face towards her and stares back at her, his brown eyes large and his mouth slightly open.
"What a beautiful boy," Hermione says to Harry.
"And I’m five," calls Daisy from the group of Weasleys.
Ron’s gazing at his family - or rather, he stares from one of his families to the other, and Harry sees his eyes widen as he spots Ginny amongst them.
"What’s going on?" he asks, turning to Harry with a bewildered expression.
Harry feels something slide in his chest, slotting back into place, and at once he’s grinning so hard his cheeks ache. In the thirteen years since they were captured, Harry has had to learn - slowly and painfully - how to be whole without Ron and Hermione. He’s made do with glimpses of them - coming back to the library and the zoo time and time again for peace and reassurance and his early feeling of home. His first family. He’s lucky: his family did not - does not - end with Ron and Hermione. He has more now than he dreamed of having: his wife, his children; he has new friends, and new relationships with old ones. For most of the time he hasn’t been unhappy, and for much of the time he’s been the happiest he’s ever been.
Yet now he feels like he’s letting something go and letting something in at the same time. Tension that he’d forgotten was even there leaves him, and in its place comes - what? Hope. Gladness. Cleansing. It is the final washing away of an old ache. The opening of book for a new story.
"I’ll explain,” he says to them. "This way."
And with Henry walking next to him, Ron and Hermione at his side, and Ginny, Daisy and the Weasleys following behind, Harry leads the group through the barrier and onto platform nine and three-quarters, back to where it all began.