He slept restlessly that night, lost in a nightmare...a nightmare that forced him to relive the horrifying events of the past few evenings.  His eyes moved frantically underneath the clenched lids.  His eyelashes fluttered as though in a delirious fever, matching the pounding pace of his heart.  His breathing came into his lungs as desperately as a drowning man vainly attempting to filter air from the water that surrounded him.  His skin was bathed in a cold, glistening sweat.  His restless body twisted and tangled the bed sheets tightly around his drenched form.  It was his mind, though, that fared the worst as it was lost in the horrors of his memories...of his nightmares. 

The curses of a duel were not near them yet, though they were still clearly heard in the tiny hidden room of the house.  He paid them no mind as she grabbed his hand, his attention focused completely on her. 

"Take it!  Take it!" she choked, her voice raw with emotion.  Desperately, she opened his pale hand and into it pressed a glass bottle filled with a milky silvery substance.  She closed his hand around the bottle, but kept her hands gently, but firmly, around his own.  She entreated him with her glassy gaze, which he met, knowing it may be the last time he could look into her beautiful eyes.  Her eyes glistened with tears, and it was then that he realized that his own eyes were beginning to sting with the saltwater. 

He could only nod before reaching into his robes and producing a thin vial, no taller than the length of his index finger.  With his eyes still locked onto hers, trying to memorize them in these moments, he held it between them and spoke in a trembling voice, betraying his fear, "Take this.  This will protect you from everything.  Even Avada Kedavra.  Swear to me you will drink it!" 

She hesitated.  Her eyes darted to the door for an instant, before he reached to cup her cheek drawing her attention back to him.  "Swear it!"

"It will be taken," she replied, taking the vial from him.  He tucked her glass bottle into the heavy folds of his robes.   

From the front room, the shouted curses grew louder.  It only meant that the fight was coming closer to them.  She ran from the room, tearing her hands from the other man, reaching the doorway to their hiding place.  He followed her closely, directly behind her as she sprinted up the stairs, and into the second bedroom.  She immediately dashed to the cradle, where her son stood, holding onto the bars and grinning toothily at his mother.  She desperately reached for the child, lifted him from the crib, and clutched the boy to her bosom.

 He placed his hand on her shoulder and she looked up into his dark eyes.  Then, a murderous shrill voice screamed the Killing Curse, followed by the dull sound of a lifeless body falling to the floor.  Her eyes looked into his, now filled with terror.  The tears began streaming down her face, her arms around her son tightened.

 "Take it," he urged her as gently as he could.  He forced down his tears.  He drew his wand, and took a deep breath as he prepared himself to duel.  His features hardened, his muscles tensed, his lips set in a firm line.  He began to turn towards the open door as the menacing, heavy steps of death began to approach them.  With a harsh flick of his wand, the door slammed closed, and the lock was drawn.  He heard the steps growing closer, his every thought on defeating the approaching monster. 

He heard his name whispered by her voice, constricted in obvious fear.  He turned to look upon her again, and he noticed the empty vial on the floor, carelessly dropped in favor of more important things.  Her eyes had cleared with determination, her grip on her son loosening.  Through the connection of the longing in her eyes, and the pain in his own they drifted closer together until their lips met, expressing everything that defined them.  Their heartbreak, their adoration, their regrets.  Everything. 

They separated and the steps were drawing ever closer.  "I'm sorry," she whispered, her voice breaking.

"I know," he said, his heart breaking.  He framed her face with his hands, one of which still clutched his wand.  His dark eyes found hers.   "I love you," he reaffirmed, before he took her lips again, their tears combining into a single torrent of emotion.  As their kiss ended, he moved his lips against hers, breathing his eternal promise into her body, as though giving her his soul.  "Always." 

The footsteps were deafening now, and the shadowy distinction of someone on the other side of the door was visible.  Her eyes closed, as she held out her right hand and barely spoke the spell she must.  "Expello..." Suddenly, his feet were wrenched from beside hers, and in the back of his mind he heard the crash of glass shattering, as the door burst from its hinges and the darkest wizard of the age stood in the now destroyed doorway, laughing shrilly.  He saw her clenching her eyes, clutching her now crying son in her arms as she spun to face this monster.  He realized, in an instant of horror, that she had forced him through the window to protect him and there was nothing more he could do as he fell to the ground landing on his back still gazing up at the shattered window, paralyzed in helplessness and terror.  He could do nothing but listen.

"Not Harry, not Harry, please, not Harry!"

"Stand aside, you silly girl...stand aside, now."

"Not Harry, please no, take me, kill me instead-"

"Stand aside - stand aside, girl-"

"Not Harry! Not Harry! Please, I'll do anything-"

"This is my last warning-"

"Please...have mercy...have mercy-"

He could not hear her voice anymore, for it was drowned by the sound of shrill, cruel laughter.  His vision clouded as his tears intensified, and poured from his dark eyes.  His mouth was open in a silent scream of despair as the room above suddenly exploded in green light and the chilling sound of a woman's scream and a monster's laugh.  His world turned dark as his eyes closed in desperate denial of the feminine voice abruptly cut off by Death.  

His eyes snapped open as his body jerked uncontrollably on the bed.  His trapped hands frantically struggled free of the sheets in which his entire body was tangled.  His long black locks dripped with sweat from his restless nightmares.  His breathing was as harsh as in sleep, though he put much effort into regaining a normal rhythm.  He found himself sitting up in his cold bed, the deep maroon hangings no longer offering the comfort they once had.  His eyes drifted to look out the window.  It was still raining.  Once again, the sky matched his inner turmoil. 

How often must he watch the events of that night?  Was not experiencing it once enough?  Why must it repeat endlessly every time he closed his eyes in an attempt to sleep peacefully?  When he would usually have the answers to every question he deemed worth contemplation, he found himself unknowing and without anyone or anything to turn to for the answers to his questions. 

He untangled his legs and swung them around so that his bare feet could rest on the frigid floorboards of his room.  Once more looking outside at the gloomy weather, his throat released a tortured sob before his body deflated, his hands only managing to catch his head and hold it as he gasped and drew quick, short breaths.  He could not focus on anything, but his pain.  He closed his eyes and saw hers, a painful reminder of something that he will never see in life again. 

Suddenly, as though remembering the delicate situation he now found himself in, he got to his feet abruptly.  He went straight to the window, opened it, and reached outside to the shutter latches.  Efficiently and quickly, he firmly closed them, bolted them, and closed the window itself.  He then went through every room in his home and repeated the sequence with every single window.  Soon, the entire house was cloaked in darkness.  All that was heard was his harsh breathing. 

He stopped breathing for a moment when he realized a careless mistake in his urgency to close all of the windows.  He did not have his wand with him!  Nearing panic, he raced through the darkened house until he came back to his bed where he thrust his hand underneath his thinning pillow and recovered his wand.  He brought the tip to eyelevel and softly spoke a single word.  "Lumos."  The tip of the wand began to gently pulse in a soft pale blue-white glow.  He looked around his room, noticing the things thrown haphazardly about in his hysteria of the last several days.  His eyes took everything in, every piece of clothing, every smashed picture frame, every picture that still moved, even with the broken glass on top of it, everything.  The shattered remains of everything his life was.

Then, he began to walk as though in a daze throughout his house, as silent as a practiced ghost, but as carefully as a predator approaching his first meal in days.  He walked down the hallway slowly, guided by the soft light of his wand towards a room he had not used in many years - his childhood room.  He had left the door ajar, in order to know of any disturbances.  As he neared the door he heard the quiet sounds of sniffling.  He slowly urged the door open enough to admit him.  In a whisper he spoke, "Nox."  Immediately, his wand's gentle light was extinguished.  But the room was not dark.  Another glow was present.  It came from the dark ledge of the bolted window. It was a stone streaked in different shades of green, a malachite stone, enchanted to give off a soft, comforting glow.  It was an improvement to the Muggle nightlight.  It bathed the area around the stone in its soft light, through which was transmitted the energies of the stone.  He remembered his mother had placed this in his room long ago, and it was never removed from the windowsill.  And there it remained, always soothing, always guarding dreams. 

He glided softly closer to the old, battered cradle in the sparsely furnished room.  His dark eyes focused intently on it, seeing the restless shuffling of the tiny body inside.  A soft whimper began, startling the man into stillness.  He listened as the child's movement grew more agitated and his whimpers evolved into quiet cries.  In only a few moments, the quiet cries became heartbreaking sobs, with an occasional coughing sound in between them.  It was the coughing that spurred the young man into action.  He crossed the distance to the cradle and peered inside, seeing the child tossing on the bedding, the small red, blue, and tan woolen blanket tangled around his tiny legs.  The miniature face, features rounded in youth, contorted in restless sleep.  The eyes pinched tightly together, the nose scrunched in distaste, and the plump little lips grimaced only to open to release the choked coughs or the saddening sobs. 

The young man hesitated, unsure of how to proceed.  He looked at his wand in thought as the child's fussing increased in intensity.  Should he use a spell?  He angled his dark wand towards the child and his eyes caught what he noticed previously - the gruesome lightning bolt scar.  A reminder of a curse on the forehead of this child.  Would he be feared by this child if he were to aim a spell directly at him?  He did not want to know that answer.  He lowered his wand, then, trying to think as the child's sounds finally erupted into bloodcurdling screams. 

Instantly, the young man reacted, placing his wand on the window ledge beside the glowing malachite stone.  He reached down into the cradle and lifted the squirming, screaming child from it and into his arms.  He had only ever held a young child less than the number counted on his fingers.  And it was in his apprenticeship when he was required to learn healing before being granted the title of his profession.  He felt awkward, ignorant to the needs of this child.  He pressed the boy close to his chest, with one arm supporting the lower body and the other wrapped across the child's back, his long hands raked into the black hair on the tiny head.  The boy continued to scream, though it was slightly muffled by his shirt and chest.  His mind at a loss, he rested his cheek against the boy's hair next to his own hand.  His eyes grew troubled as he was unable to think of anything to do that would soothe this boy.  Desperately, he searched his own memories for anything that would remind him of the things his mother had done when he would come to her weeping.  But he could not recollect.  His mind was still consumed with his most recent horror, and could not think back to his childhood horrors. 

Without awareness, he began walking.  He did not know to where.  He wandered into the hallway carrying the screaming boy he continued to press against him.  He walked as though in a trance, unaware of his destination only knowing he would reach it.  He came to a doorway at the other end of the hall.  Using his shoulder to push it open he admitted himself and his charge.  He found himself gazing upon a white stone basin that glowed pure.  His eyes fastened on it, and his feet drew him closer as though hypnotized, subconsciously wondering if he could find the answers there.  He looked down into the swirling depths of the basin, seeing the streams of the milky, silvery substance flash images at him.  All of them were her.  A swirl of vibrant hair, the gentle breeze as her veil danced, her arguing with a dark-haired man, crumbled on a bed furiously wiping away tears, holding a piece of parchment as she spoke an incantation causing it to turn blood red in her hands, clutching a child to her body, her smile, her eyes.  The images continued and when he saw one in which she approached a crying child, he thrust his face into the basin's contents and felt himself pulled into the image, the boy he held against him accompanying him. 

She walked quickly to the crying child, who sat miserably in his restrictive high chair.  He pounded his little hands upon the tray in front of him as he wailed for his mother.  She picked him up and began to gently rub the child's back.  She caught sight of the other person in room.  He was a young man with untamed hair that stuck up in all directions, and glasses perched on his nose.  He had several pieces of parchment scattered about the table at which he sat, with a quill in one hand, and a grip on his cup of tea with the other.  His wand lay on the table in easy reach for him, but farthest away from the child's high chair.  She glared at him as she reprimanded in a sweet voice, "You were right here.  Couldn't you handle it?"

"You're doing fine, now, darling."

"Don't ‘darling' me!"  Whatever else she was about to say was cut off by a particularly loud scream from the boy in her arms. 

The young man looked at her now.  "Maybe he's still screaming because you aren't acting much better."

With a hard glare, she angrily turned around and left the room.  She walked to the stairs and walked up to the nursery that she and her husband chose even before they had planned on children.  She opened the door roughly, causing the child in her arms to begin weeping even louder than a moment ago.  Her eyes searched the room, realizing that the item she needed was not there.  With a roll of her eyes, she left the nursery and walked angrily across the hallway and into her bedroom.  Immediately, she saw what she needed.  With her semi-free hand she picked up her wand.  Without hesitation, she left the bedroom and went back across the hallway into the nursery. 

She slowly lowered herself onto the floor.  As she went to settle her son into her lap, she realized that his little hand was firmly grasping a large chunk of her fiery hair.  "Let go," she urged.  The boy's tears continued, but his screams had somewhat lessened to mild cries.  She soon coaxed him to release her hair and then she arranged him to sit in her lap comfortably. 

Her eyes scanned the room again.  She found this item much quicker.  "Wingardium leviosa," she whispered, simultaneously pointing her wand at the stuffed animal across the room.  Slowly, the stuffed white swan rose from its place on the mounted wall shelf.  With jerking movements of her wand she made it seem like it was flying rather than merely drifting towards them.  She made it rise and fall as if it were flapping its wings to get higher. 

Her son was still crying, but he did not notice the swan yet.  She continued the motions of her wand as she lowered her head to her son's ear and whispered, "Honey, look.  Look at the swan.  She's coming to you. See?"

He shook his head furiously.  "No, i's not," he miserably mumbled. 

"Yes, it is, honey.  See?  Look up."  By now, she had managed to drift the swan within her arm length away from them. 

The boy looked up finally, hoping to find his mother was telling the truth.  What he saw silenced his cries at once.  He saw the swan coming closer.  It bounced gracefully in the air as it continued its journey to them.  Even though his face was still streaked with tears, and his nose still sniffled, a smile began to spread across his face.  "Swan!" he cried.  His eyes began to dry and his smile grew.

"Yes, a swan.  Here she comes," his mother said, encouragingly. 

He threw his arms out towards the swan.  He could almost get it.  If it came just a bit closer...With a teasing jerk of her wand, the woman made the swan go too high for the boy to reach.  Just as her son looked up at her with an irritated scowl, he felt the fluffiness of his swan nuzzling against his neck.  His head whipped around and he smiled again, throwing his arms around the small stuffed animal and squeezing it tight.  It tried to wiggle free but the softness tickled his nose, causing the innocent laughter to pour happily from his mouth. 

"You're good with him," said a voice from the doorway. 

She turned her gaze from her happily giggling son to the young man in the doorway, who was leaning on the doorjamb, grinning with a veiled expression.  She urged her son from her lap before standing to face the man.  "I guess it's come with practice handling his father all these years."  He offered a crooked smile, the left side of his mouth curling upwards.  He looked in the boy's direction.  She followed his gaze to watch as the boy crawled throughout the room taking the swan for a walk.  "You should play with him sometimes." 

"I know," he replied, as though he wanted to say more but restrained himself. 

They continued to watch the child as he managed to cross the room to his other favorite toy - a ragged teddy bear.  It was not nearly as glamorous as the swan in his hand.  The boy struggled before managing to seat himself in order to grab onto the bear.  He had learned from previously experience that trying to grab something while having your other hand occupied and raised while crawling would only end with one's face embedded in the floor.  The boy held the two animals in either hand and studied them for a moment.  He turned his head to look at the two adults in the doorway.  He held up the swan and exclaimed proudly, "Mommy swan!"  He held up the ragged bear and happily shouted, "Daddy bear!"  He smiled at the adults as he hugged the two animals to his chest. 

"That's right, little man.  Daddy's bear," said the man, still with his lopsided grin. 

The little boy looked at them both and giggled happily, a beautiful sound to any parent. 

The young man emerged from the contents of the basin, still with the screaming child in his arms.  He now knew what he had to do.  He left the room and walked into the room he had designated for the child's use.  He walked directly over to the windowsill and took hold of his wand.  He gently waved it as it spoke the phrase, "Accio bear."  He heard a soft rustling from the boxes he had deposited near the bed against the far wall.  Suddenly, he saw the torn ear of a teddy bear struggling free of everything else in the box.  It burst from the box and sailed in a direct line to the waiting hand, already holding his wand.  The bear was small and settled easily into his hand.  He walked to the window and put his wand again on the window ledge.  The boy in his arms continued screaming, even when he tried the woman's method of snuggling the animal to his neck.  He began to get frustrated, and he felt a headache arriving.  Why did the child not respond to this? 

"Look," he said to the child.  "It's Daddy's bear."  The child looked at the bear for a moment, before hiding his tear streaked face in the man's shoulder, still crying.  "For the love of Merlin," the young man swore under his breath.  "What will make you happy?"  Whether the boy understood him or it were coincidence, the child furiously shook his head against him.  He sighed.  He did not know what else to do.  He saw her give him the stuffed animal...but not that stuffed animal.  Suddenly, things began to make sense to him.  Who did he turn to when he cried?  His mother.  Who did he go to for advice in his youth?  His mother.  With that thought as a guide he was motivated to action again. 

He coaxed the screaming child to let go of his clothes and he put him back in the cradle.  He threw the old teddy bear to the floorboards in the direction of the bed.  He knew now that the child would ask for it when he wanted it.  But right now, he needed something else, he needed the comfort of his mother, even if it were only in associating it with the stuffed animal with which she gave to him to play.  He picked up his wand again, and it was when one particularly piercing scream reached his tired ears did he finally shout.  "Be silent, boy!"  The boy instantly silenced, shocked from the raised voice of the man.  The young man also froze where he stood, his wand in his hand half raised.  Their eyes met for the second time in their acquaintance.  The boy reached his arm through the bars of the cradle towards him.  The dark eyes of the adult shifted to the pleading arm. 

"S-s-s...wan?" the child whispered, softly, his voice raw from screaming. 

The man shifted his eyes again towards the box, the thrown teddy bear rested near it as though crumbled from despair.  Hanging over the lip of the box was the stuffed swan, as though looking down upon the crumbled form of the ragged bear.  He looked upon it and thought of how fitting it was.  His lips curled in a bittersweet expression and his eyes began to moisten.  He raised his wand towards the swan and brokenly whispered, "Wingardium leviosa."  The swan rose, still staring upon the crumbled bear, ascending away from the other animal.  She left him behind on the floorboards as she gracefully flew across the room. 

The young man shifted and turned as he directed the flight of the swan to the boy who stood waiting for it in his cradle.  His green eyes watched it as it met his eyelevel on the other side of the bars.  The man angled the tip of his wand up, causing the swan to rise above and over the cradle bars, hovering it a moment above the boy's head.  The child whispered to it in a voice so soft it was nearly indiscernible.  "Mommy swan?"  The swan drifted peacefully down into the arms of the boy who held them high in a promise to catch her.  The child hugged her to him, his grip tight, refusing to release her.  He sat back down in the cradle, nuzzling the swan tenderly. 

"Yes," the young man whispered, more to himself than the child.  "Mommy's swan."  He looked upon the abandoned teddy bear by the box, then back at the boy.  He walked to the cradle and peered down into it, seeing clearly that the child still held the swan to him and had managed to lie down again.  He was trying to use his free hand to get his blanket to cover him again.  The man reached down and took hold of the blanket just as the boy got a grip on it.  Their hands met, and an instant later so did their eyes.  The drooping eyes of the boy looked up at the man before the green eyes closed and the little hand went lax in sleep.  The man drew the blanket up to the boy's neck, tucking it around his little body carefully.  He breathed a sigh of relief when the child did not stir with his motions. 

He stood up straight again and gazed upon the sleeping child for a long while, before the glow of the malachite stone caught the corner of his eyes.  With a flick of his wand and a murmured incantation, he levitated the soothing stone and its glow directly over the cradle, leaving it to hover as a guardian star, hoping it would accomplish what it was meant to accomplish.  He recalled now his own mother doing the same with him as a young child.

He was about to leave the room and return to his own bed when he caught sight of the crumbled bear alone in the room.  He walked to it and crouched beside it, his long fingers stroking it reverently.  His eyes wandered to the cradle.  He stood again and walked to the sleeping boy.  He reached his hand to the boy, and placed the bear against the boy's arm that held the swan.  The green eyes fluttered open and saw the bear.  His other hand took hold of it and kept a firm grip on the bear's hand.  The child's gaze flitted to meet the adult's and sleepily he mumbled, "Daddy..." before he fell back to sleep. 

With a small smile, the young man whispered a reply, "That's right, little man.  Daddy's bear."