It’s two o’clock, so Harry and Hermione go for their walk. “Don’t forget your raincoats,” Mrs Granger calls as they swap slippers for shoes by the front door. Harry snickers quietly – this is England in December, anyone going out without a raincoat is just asking to get wet – and Hermione elbows him in the side. Since he’s crouched over his shoe at the time, this sends him toppling onto Mrs Granger’s work shoes. Unapologetic but smiling, Hermione gives him a hand up and they pull on their raincoats before heading out into the grey London afternoon. Low cloud hangs heavy overhead, washing all the streets and buildings grey, and Harry digs his free hand deep into his pocket to keep it warm.
They walk every day because Mrs Granger has decreed it unhealthy for them to stay inside the whole time. Today is Monday, so they walk to the library just like they do every Monday so that Hermione can riffle through the shelves like a geologist and max out her library card at the desk. Harry isn’t a bibliophile like Hermione, but he can understand the appeal. He likes the feel of the library, the smell of paper and the warmth, the rumble of the building as the heating system works, the stacks of books. The knowledge. If he’d had enough knowledge could he have stopped it all from happening? If he’d known more, studied harder, maybe none of it would have happened. And maybe it would, but Harry understands now why Hermione is addicted to knowledge. Only by knowing everything can he make sure everyone around him is safe. He likes libraries.
When Hermione has finished her fossicking and collecting, Harry takes one pile of books and follows her up to the lending desk. The librarian smiles in a friendly fashion and prattles about the weather and comments on a familiar book: Hermione nods and smiles and says nothing while Harry lets the words wash over him. They don’t mean anything, not after... They don’t mean anything. As the librarian checks out each book, Harry takes the ones she’s finished with and shoves them one by one into his backpack, each with a little push of magic so that they all fit in.
“It’s bigger than it looks, isn’t it?” the librarian asks cheerfully, nodding to his bag as Hermione puts her card back into her wallet.
Harry shrugs. “Guess so,” he says, pushing in the last book. He swings the bag onto his shoulder and Hermione slips her fingers into his, squeezing his hand reassuringly. He smiles at her, then smiles at the librarian. “Yeah.”
-
Red light wraps around him and red eyes laugh. He screams and the eyes delight in his pain and fear. He fights and black-robed figures hold him down. He screams.
Erasmus wakes up. Not with a gasp, not with a shout, not with anything to admit to the world what he has just been through. But there is sweat pooling inside his bent knees, along with everywhere else skin touches skin, and he curls up tighter into a ball and tries not to shake. Why is it the only things he remembers from before are all about pain and fear? Why is there nothing nice in his past? Surely there were pleasant things, why is it like his past is only full of dementor-leavings?
He pulls the blankets over his head and shudders into the bed.
“Erasmus?”
He ignores Professor McGonagall’s quiet voice. He doesn’t want to know she’s there, doesn’t want anyone to know about this. That’s not his name anyway, so why should he answer to it? She’s as bad as Dumbledore, keeping everything from him. Surely she could find a way to tell him who he is. All he wants is the truth. Is that so hard to give him?
For a moment he feels the gentle pressure of a hand on his head, then it’s gone and he wonders if he only imagined it. He must have imagined it. In all the scraps of memory he has, there is no memory of anyone ever being kind to him. Never. So he buries himself deeper into the blankets and he tries so hard not to remember anything, not to think, not to feel. If he can escape all feeling then nothing will hurt him ever again.
-
Dumbledore comes back and Harry cringes. Doesn’t the man understand they want nothing to do with him? Doesn’t he realise that his presence hurts? But of course he doesn’t, none of them understand, and so Harry sighs and lifts his chin and clings to Hermione’s hand for a moment. She clings back for that moment, because she understands. And then their hands separate because they know better than to show weakness unless they have to, and they go to face Dumbledore.
Dumbledore, who watches them without a twinkle in his eyes and folds his hands in his lap as if to hide their tremble. “I would ask a favour of you, Harry.”
The flare of anger is brief but real. “Haven’t I done enough for you already?”
Before this last month Harry would never have believed that Albus Dumbledore is capable of looking so old and sad. “More than enough. But this is not for me. There is a boy, about your age – we rescued him from a Death Eater prison. You understand what that means for him.” Harry looks away. He knows. “He needs a place to stay, people who will make no demands on him. Someone to help him put himself back together.”
“I can’t even help myself.”
“But I believe you can help him. He is not reacting well to the magical world, for there is too much pain associated with it, as you will understand.” Harry stares down at the carpet. Red eyes and red lights. “Yet few Muggles can understand what it means to have been a Death Eater victim. Although he is a wizard he was raised in a Muggle environment and he will be comfortable here. Miss Granger’s parents have already agreed to take him in should you be amenable. But only, they stress, if you agree.”
He closes his eyes as Hermione slips her hand into his, grips onto her fingers. Then he lifts his heavy head and looks up at Dumbledore. “Does it ever stop?”
“What, Harry?” he asks with great gentleness.
“The need to save the world. Will I ever be able to just be me and say sod the rest of them? Tell them to fix their own problems because I have enough of my own.”
Dumbledore looks tired and Harry refuses to feel guilty that the man only ever looks tired around him these days. “If I ever find a cure I shall be sure to tell you. I am sorry, Harry. I would not ask this of you if I had any other option.”
“You would if you thought you knew what was best for me.”
“I would try not to, I promise. No longer. In this case I am only trying to do what is best for Erasmus. Had I another choice, I would take it. But—” He looks at Harry, really looks at him as if to an equal and not a little boy who needs to be cosseted and guided. “There is no one else I would trust with him.”
-
Professor McGonagall packs up his few things for him into a satchel while Erasmus sits on the end of his bed and watches her dully. This room is almost the only place he remembers and now he is leaving it. The emotion filling him, though, is not sorrow or regret. Just dull acceptance. The Professor closes the bag and glances around the room to make sure she’s left nothing. As if there was anything to leave. She pauses in handing the satchel to him, though, staring down at him as if trying to see past his eyes and into his thoughts. Erasmus glares back, unrepentant, unyielding. She nods and gives him the bag, ushering him to his feet and towards the door where Dumbledore waits.
“Come, Erasmus,” Dumbledore says, and behind his confidence lurks guilt. Whatever he thought he would get when he brought Erasmus to Hogwarts, he hasn’t got it. Erasmus scowls but nods, and the man walks toward the stairs. Erasmus follows. He doesn’t know where he’s going, but he’s not sure that he cares.
“Erasmus.”
He stops in the doorway to turn and look at Professor McGonagall, he stands in the doorway and looks back into the room that has been his sanctuary and his cell. There is concern in her face, not the guilt that lights Dumbledore’s eyes but just concern for him. “Try not to hate him too fiercely,” she says gently. “He means well.”
She turns away and adds, in a whisper he is not meant to hear: “Worse I could not say of him.”
-
Harry specified with icy precision: No magic in the house. No magic.
So he and Hermione watch from her bedroom window as Professor McGonagall levitates a bed up the path towards the front door, looking quietly irritated at being unable to use a simple shrinking spell. Dumbledore follows behind her, laden with bed linen and followed by a sulky-looking boy and two men Harry doesn’t know carrying a mattress.
Hermione tugs at his hand and Harry follows her to the door, gripping her fingers in his as he prepares to face them, sucking in a deep breath and holding it as if that will make everything well. Wary fear of the unknown future hovers over him, thick and grey, but Harry is used to fear. He ignores it.
Through the open front door down below comes a loud clanging and crashing as the bed drops unexpectedly onto the path. Maybe he should have specified just where ‘house’ begins. Dismayed voices rise up to meet them as they skip down the stairs. “No magic,” Harry mutters under his breath and Hermione giggles.
Everyone converges in the hall. Harry stands beside Mr Granger, Hermione close beside him, and stares at the intruders. “Erasmus,” Dumbledore says in his best warm, grandfatherly voice, “these are Harry, Hermione, and Mr and Mrs Granger.”
The boy is thin and pale and dressed in clothes – particularly the jumper – straight out of the seventies. Harry normally finds it quietly amusing that when wizards do manage to get Muggle clothing right they inevitably gravitate to the seventies but now he’s too busy studying this newcomer. Close up the look on his face is less sulky and more scared, though he scowls to try hide it. His dark hair is long enough to be pulled back into a ponytail and his hands are shoved deep into his pockets as if to hide their shakes.
“Hi,” Harry says quietly. Erasmus makes a small sound that could possibly be taken as a response. He’s shrunk into himself as if to keep from getting too close to the adults around him and Harry can understand that. Magical adults, more than one, are in his home. His fingers are laced through Hermione’s, her nails digging into the back of his hand just as his are digging into hers.
The boy stands silent as the adults talk, watching with dark distrust. And his eyes miss nothing, dark and soulless, watching, flickering backwards and forwards as they follow the conversation. And then they skip to Harry and Harry meets that gaze – and those eyes are not soulless. Those are the eyes of a soul that has too much pain and is trying to hide from it. The effect is too much like looking into a mirror and Harry looks away.
This is a really bad idea.
-
Whatever this new form of transport was, Harry didn’t approve. It was worse than the floo as he spun and swirled sickeningly through some unspace, spiralling across reality. He and Hermione fell over on landing in a heap of tangled limbs like frightened puppies, before scrambling to their feet. Desperately trying not to sick up his stomach, Harry grabbed his wand only to have it vanish from his hand. The shout of “Expelliarmus!” caught up Hermione’s wand too, so that it flew with Harry’s into the hand of a familiar man.
“Pettigrew!” Harry said, horrified but not yet scared. Pain flared in his scar and he slapped his hand to his forehead.
“Among others.”
That voice was too familiar. Harry froze, Hermione at his side equally frozen as she read the truth in his fear. “Voldemort,” he whispered.
“Oh no oh no oh no,” Hermione muttered almost under her breath, probably unaware she was saying it. She clutched at Harry’s sleeve, pulling him behind the nearest wall – which turned out to be not a wall but a gravestone. They were in a graveyard. With Voldemort and Pettigrew. “I don’t understand,” Hermione hissed. “Why would Moody send us here?”
“Does it matter?” Harry hissed back. No wands. No defence. They were dead, they were so very dead. Hermione’s face was chalk white and Harry was pretty sure he wasn’t looking any better.
“Split up?” Hermione offered.
He nodded. “Yeah. Make a run for it. One of us has to get to help.” Or at least survive. And since he was the one who’d done Voldemort in thirteen years ago, he was pretty sure he’d be the main target. That would let Hermione get free. It wouldn’t be so bad if she escaped.
“It’s rude to hide, children,” Voldemort said, darkly amused.
“Run!” Harry said.