Erasmus skipped lunch – why would he eat at the same time as Harry and Hermione, why would he force himself into the company of two people who don’t even want him around? (and of course they don’t want him, no one could ever want him) – so mid afternoon he creeps downstairs and lets himself silently into the kitchen to make a sandwich. He doesn’t put anything away when he’s done. Why should he? They don’t want him here, so why should he try to make them like him?
Crookshanks comes in through the catflap in the kitchen door, letting it fall closed behind him with a clatter, then sits on his haunches and watches Erasmus while licking a paw in calculated disdain. Erasmus scowls at him but doesn’t aim a kick at him even though the anger boiling in his chest wants to. There’s something inside of him, some part of him that he doesn’t remember, that screams at the idea of hurting something else. It cuts too close to home, hurts too deeply. Even when he doesn’t remember anything he still feels it.
The cat rubs his face clean on his paw then sticks his nose in the air and saunters off, pushing the door into the hall open and sliding through. Erasmus pulls a face at the unresponsive doorway, loathing the house and all its inhabitants. Through the open door, though, comes the faint sound of a voice. Curious, Erasmus swallows the last of his sandwich and nears it, leaning his hand on the wooden doorframe and closing his eyes, listening. It’s not a conversation, it’s the same voice going on and on, rising and falling in gentle waves that make tears suddenly prick at his eyes as if reminding him of some great treasure that he lost – or never even had.
He follows the sound down the hall to the living room and peers carefully around the door, holding a breath of air in his mouth and hoping no one will see him but unable to refuse the pull of that voice.
It’s Mr Granger’s voice, low and soothing. It’s Friday, so he’s come home early. He sits on the couch with a child under each arm and a book on his knee, reading aloud. It’s a kid’s book, like you would read to a five-year-old. Harry has his eyes closed as he listens, leaning against Mr Granger with a strangely old look of peace on his face. Hermione is looking at the vividly-coloured pictures with bright-eyed interest and, since Mr Granger’s hands are full, turning the pages. Crookshanks, curled up on her knee and adding the buzz of his purr to the warm sound of Mr Granger’s voice, is the only one to pay Erasmus any attention, and that is only one eye cracking half open to glare greenly at him a moment, before even the cat dismisses him, closing his eye and going to sleep.
Erasmus’s hand clenches on the door and the hurt and anger bubble up because he feels so left out, so not a part of anything. The door creaks under his fist, swishing against the carpet as it moves forward, and he flinches as if struck. Harry’s eyes don’t open, Hermione doesn’t look up from the page. But Mr Granger glances up, a swift, neutral glance, and never stops reading. Then his eyes drop back to the book. Just like that. So Erasmus goes in and sits down on the carpet and he listens.
Did anyone ever read to him?
-
“What are you doing here?”
Dumbledore looks undismayed by this reception, merely looking at Erasmus with a kindly eye while Harry looks between them, wondering just who this boy is. “I merely wished to reassure myself that you are settling in well and have everything you need.”
“Even if I didn’t, I wouldn’t ask you for it,” the boy rages. “I don’t want you here!”
“Erasmus, my boy—”
“I don’t want you here! All you do is lie! It’s all just lies! Go away!”
He runs, slamming the door behind him. Harry watches the boy storm out, watches Dumbledore’s crestfallen expression. What is it about this one boy that can make Albus Dumbledore look so hurt? Why should he look as if his grandson has just repudiated him when Erasmus is supposedly only an unknown boy removed from a Death Eater dungeon? What hold can such a boy have on this man?
He winces when Dumbledore turns to him. “How is he really, Harry?”
“He’s fine,” Harry says shortly.
“Please, Harry. I should like to know.”
So he can do what? Wave a magic wand and make it all better? Harry once thought magic could cure everything, but magic only brought him worse problems than any the Dursleys ever gave him. Magic can’t fix anything.
“How is he?” Dumbledore repeats, genuine worry in his voice. But Harry’s given up caring about Dumbledore. Too many hurts, too much broken innocence. He cares about two people: Hermione and Snape. And maybe Mr and Mrs Granger. But not Dumbledore. Not now. “How is he?”
Harry thinks of Erasmus. Of the dark nights when his cries wake Harry up, of how he despises everyone in this house, how he creeps around like a cowed dog half the time and the other half is slamming doors and throwing things. But even if he despises them, he hates Dumbledore. “He’s fine,” Harry repeats.
-
Then Dumbledore is finally gone and Harry can let go. He can allow himself to shake, he can allow himself to admit that all that magic, all that adult magic, is terrifying. He can allow fear. And there is nothing to do with that fear but live through it, so he lives through it, he suffers through the flashbacks to Voldemort’s red, laughing eyes, he sinks into the terror and the horror and the pain. He remembers.
He would have collapsed on the floor in a puddle of blood and vomit as the fear makes him sick to his stomach and the magical scars on his face react to the unleashing of his magic. Would have collapsed, but Hermione is beside him, keeping him upright, holding a bucket under his head as his body spasms, rubbing his back in mute comfort as the blood trickles down his face.
“What’s wrong with him?” The words come to him from a great distance, somewhere far beyond the blood and fear. Erasmus’s voice, belligerent but curious. Harry retches into the bucket and keens quietly at the intrusion of another magic, but his fear doesn’t increase. If he was feeling better this would make him curious, but he isn’t so it doesn’t. “What is wrong with him?”
Then Hermione’s voice, tightly restrained but cutting anyway. “He killed Voldemort. He saved you all. What more do you want from him?”
There are tears, mixing with the blood. Because everything’s going to be okay, Hermione’s here with him. Hermione looks after him, Hermione believes in him.
What more does he need than that?
-
Erasmus had been starting to forget Hermione even had a voice. She’s a mouse, sneaking around the house like Harry’s shadow, and he’s practically dismissed her as anything important. Just mute and mousey Hermione. But suddenly she yells at him. Bending over Harry, cleaning him up through the mess he’s making, she yells at Erasmus and suddenly nothing is what he thought. Hermione is not small and scared, she’s scary and powerful. Harry is not perfect, he’s bleeding and vomiting on the floor. Harry killed Voldemort. Voldemort is dead. Dead.
Erasmus hadn’t known that. He knew about Voldemort in a dim way with a spark of bright, burning fear that told him he’d once known much more, but he hadn’t known Voldemort was dead. And Harry killed him. Harry, no older than he, skinny and gangly and intense.
And he thinks, suddenly, that if Harry killed Voldemort, if Harry faced Voldemort, then maybe Harry has reason to have nightmares too. He stares at them, at the blood and mess, at the way Harry clings to Hermione and the way she cares for him. And then he flees the room because there is something too big and bright and horrible about seeing them like that.
But he starts to watch Harry now, watches how much the others like him. How they all like each other. They’re a family, he’s realising, and so it’s no wonder he doesn’t fit in here, no wonder they don’t want him. Why would they want him intruding on their family? He wishes he had somewhere to belong like that, somewhere where he was a part of a family. He wonders if anyone ever loved him that much.
He’s pretty sure, even without memory, that the answer is no.
-
Erasmus has been unnaturally subdued since Dumbledore’s visit, and Harry is half relieved and half distrustful. It doesn’t seem likely that all that anger would just vanish. So when he looks through the window and sees Erasmus out in the garden, shoulders set tensely in his usual fury, some instinct of danger takes him down the stairs and out the back door.
They gave him space, but maybe space isn’t what he needs.
Standing there on the patio he watches quietly as the other boy stomps around the garden, attacking the sleeping hydrangeas and stomping on the winter aconite, kicking up the grey, sleeping earth. “What are you doing?” he asks.
Erasmus spins, glares, and turns on him in startled, sudden anger. “What do you care? What’s it to you! You know who you are, you don’t have no memories! You have family and memories, you have everything! I don’t have anything, I don’t have anyone, I don’t even know who I am! I don’t remember! And they all tell me lies, I know it, I know it’s all lies and they don’t care, they just keep on telling them to me as if I’m stupid, as if it doesn’t matter if I can see right through them! They lie and they break promises and I hate them! I want my life back, I want my memories! I bet he’s the one who tortured me, I bet it’s all his fault it hurts! He did this!” The words spill out of him, all the aching hurts that he’s never said to anyone here, maybe not to anyone anywhere the way they pour out of him like a desperate cry for help that expects no answer.
Harry hears him out in silence. And then he speaks into the deafening silence that rings in the absence of Erasmus’s aching voice, and he says, “It’s not Mrs Granger’s fault.”
Erasmus stares at him. And then he gives a little broken, hiccoughing laugh. “I guess not,” he says, as if he’s never thought of it like that. Then he looks around at the mess he’s made.
“We can fix it,” Harry says. Erasmus glances at him sharply, questioningly. Hopefully. “The garden. Here, I’ll show you.”
-
Harry and Hermione sat side by side, bound to a gravestone. Hermione’s warmth soaked into him and Harry leaned into her, feeling her lean into him in return, knowing she felt his trembling as much as he felt hers. He wished she’d managed to escape, both so she was safe and so she could send a rescue but he was glad she was here. Her warmth gave him strength, her courage gave him courage. If Hermione was here and not screaming then he could be just as strong. Her presence was the one point of reassurance in the whole of this nightmare. Harry vowed to himself he’d get her out of this.
They flinched together when Pettigrew approached, but the man’s fear of Voldemort overrode everything else and Harry doubted he even realised who they were, only that he’d been set a task and they were a part of that task. He pulled their arms out, Harry’s right and Hermione’s left, and their elbows knocked against each other. They tried to pull back in unison but a muttered spell froze them from elbow to fingertip.
A silver knife glinted in Pettigrew’s silver hand and Harry cringed in anticipation. One quick slash across their wrists dug into their flesh, bright red blood welling up. Hermione whimpered once with startled pain but Harry was more used to pain and managed to stifle his own yelp. Pettigrew didn’t seem to notice. He watched anxiously as their red blood dripped steadily into a stone bowl, splattering against the sides and casting red droplets over Harry and Hermione’s robes to be absorbed into the black.
Harry grit his teeth and hung on as his wrist burned in counterpoint to his scar and the blood was pumped out of his veins by his faithful heart. Pettigrew abruptly stood, taking the bowl away, and Harry could move his arm again.
Hermione slipped her hand into his, lacing her fingers through his. Their wounds met and twinged, but there was comfort in her touch. He glanced at her, but her wide eyes were fixed on Pettigrew, who was helping Voldemort sip weakly at their mingled blood. Harry shuddered. Gross. But Hermione was whispering, so that even Harry right beside her could only just make out the words – for all the good it did him. “Sanguinem tuum accipio, vitam tuam participio, potentiam tuam augeo.”
He didn’t know what it meant, but a braid of magic wrapped around their wrists a moment, unnoticed by the men involved in the consumption of Voldemort’s nasty cocktail. And it didn’t matter what it meant because he trusted Hermione and so he stumbled his way through the same words. This time the braid of magic was much thicker and it was warm, wrapping warmth around him like a cocoon and warding off the cold of the gravestone at his back so that he suddenly felt sure they would survive this.
Then the sensation faded and the momentary burst of confidence went with it, leaving Harry alone in a graveyard with no wand, two dangerous adults, and only his best friend to help him. Hermione, who was looking at him wide-eyed. Before he had a chance to ask why, Voldemort stood. Without help from Pettigrew.