Erasmus sits at the kitchen table and stares at the wood under his balled fists, burnished and battered by generations of use. No one’s said anything about the mess he made of the garden, too much of a mess for even Harry to fix completely, but he keeps waiting for someone to mention it. And then the pain begins, he remembers that much. When you make the adults angry you get pain in return. But no one here seems to have learned that rule. That or they just don’t get angry. Either is too weird for him to get his head around.
But when he sneaks a look up at Mrs Granger she doesn’t seem to be angry, she’s just looking at him. “Would it help you to talk to a counsellor?”
He doesn’t understand the term and the confusion must show on his face, because she elaborates, “A psychologist.”
“I’m not sick in the head!”
“I know,” she says patiently. “But as she’s coming to talk to Hermione and Harry, I thought she might be able to talk to you while she’s here.”
Erasmus frowns. “They’re not sick in the head.” At least he doesn’t think so. Then again, all those nightmares, maybe they are. Maybe he’s been dumped in a lunatic asylum and no one thought to tell him.
“They were kidnapped by Voldemort,” Mrs Granger says. Erasmus winces. Red lights and red eyes and pain pain pain— “They don’t talk about it, but...” She closes her eyes and her hands tighten around her tea cup and Erasmus thinks that maybe there’s a reason for the way this house feels like pain. “We can’t make it better. But the counsellor can help make it not worse.”
We can’t make it better. It’s like the death of all hope and the beginnings of all hope all at once. It can’t be made better but he’s not the only one and somehow if he’s not the only one that does make it better.
“Maybe I’ll talk to her,” Erasmus says. “Maybe.”
-
To Harry answering the door is a test of his own courage. The not knowing who’s on the other side of the door is scary because there are so many dark figures lurking in his memories, built up by his imagination, that it’s hard to believe the person on the other side can be harmless. But Harry would rather confront that fear. He’s never found fear to get better by hiding and this fear is small enough to face. Plus, if it is something dangerous on the other side he’d rather it got him than Hermione or Mr and Mrs Granger.
He rubs at the faint scar on his cheekbone, gulps, and opens the door, aware that Hermione’s hovering back at the living room door. She’ll give him the chance to face his fears if that’s what he wants but she’ll keep an eye on him too. He almost smiles.
On the other side of the door stands a familiar woman, bundled up in the bright red woollen coat that always makes Harry feel better just to look at because it’s so cheerful against the grey skies. He relaxes. “Hi, Mizz Carter. Come on in.”
Mrs Granger introduces Erasmus and Mrs Carter while Harry and Hermione watch on. The counsellor is Muggle, of course, and has no knowledge of magic. Wizards don’t have counsellors. Sometimes Harry wonders if that explains Voldemort right there.
“He was captured and tortured by the same group that held Hermione and Harry,” Mrs Granger explains carefully, while Harry slips his hand into Hermione’s and feels the reassuring squeeze of her fingers in exchange, while Erasmus pretends not to hear, “though at a different time.”
Mrs Carter’s pale eyes are wide with horror. “I hope these people have been taken off the streets!”
“Oh, they’re locked away safely,” Mrs Granger says with firm, conversation-ending conviction.
The Kissed, locked away in their own heads, alive without souls, watching and waiting with nothing else to do. With nothing else they can do.
“The wizarding world is barbaric,” Hermione whispers, and Harry thinks of Azkaban. Of prisoners being tortured daily by government-sanctioned demons, of stolen sanity and broken souls. Of no second chances, no forgiveness. Of the blank, breathing Kissed who gain no clean death. Of the lost, abandoned dregs of society on a lonely rock in the North Sea, waiting for slow death or oblivion.
“Yes,” is all he says. It is enough.
-
Erasmus stares at her, this woman who wants him to talk, and scrunches down in his chair, trying to make himself small and invisible. He doesn’t want to talk. Talking would just make it worse. He has to get angry to talk, really really angry, even more angry than usual, and he doesn’t like being that angry. He’s tired of being angry.
The light bounces off her blonde hair and teases at his memory. Did he know someone with blonde hair? Did he know someone who bounced a quill off her chin the way Mrs Carter plays with her pen? What has he forgotten? This woman, she can’t get his memory back. She doesn’t even have magic. She doesn’t have anything.
So Erasmus sits there and wraps his arms around his stomach and watches Hedwig carefully walk from one end of the couch to the other and back. Why did he think this might help? There’s no help here. No one can help him.
But at least she doesn’t have magic. He doesn’t have to be afraid of her.
Erasmus closes his lips tight against any sound and sits there.
-
Harry looks at Ron’s red hair and thinks that sometimes he could believe red is the colour of pain and fear and evil. Voldemort’s eyes, the Cruciatus curse, Hermione’s blood dripping into a stone bowl, Snape’s blood leaking out his ears and nose. Red, red, red.
Red means pain. Red means hurt.
Red means betrayal.
“I was stupid, I know I was stupid. I mean, you’re Harry Potter, what do you need more fame for? I should never have said any of it. I’m really sorry, you must hate me. I’d hate me.”
Harry fumbles his way up out of his meditations on the colour red. “I don’t hate you,” he mumbles. Which is true. It is. But ‘not-hate’ isn’t the same as ‘forgive’. He doesn’t hate Dumbledore but he can’t forgive him for the lies. He doesn’t hate Moody but he can’t forgive him for being the face who sent him to Voldemort. He doesn’t hate Sirius, but he can’t forgive him for not being there when he needed him.
Mrs Carter is a bit worried that Harry won’t be able to move on until he can figure out how to forgive people. She doesn’t mean welcome them back with open arms, she doesn’t want him to forgive them to make them feel better. It’s nothing to do with them. She thinks he needs to forgive them for his sake. To stop holding on to his anger and resentment.
Harry can kind of see her point. Voldemort never forgave his dad and look what happened to him, twisted and inhuman and destroyed. But Dumbledore forgives everyone, and Harry’s nearly died every year he’s gone to Hogwarts.
Still, it’s something he thinks about.
Ron is still babbling his apology. “I should have believed you. I should have known you wouldn’t do anything like that, not without me! I was stupid and jealous and a total git.” Harry just looks at him as the words trip over themselves in their haste to leave his mouth.
And when he winds down and there is silence, Harry looks at him some more. Then he says one thing before he turns and leaves the room: “You didn’t believe me.”
Forgiveness may come one day. But not today.
-
Erasmus doesn’t understand how Harry and Hermione can go on as if nothing happened. He knows they have nightmares like him, he knows something bad and terrible happened to them when they were kidnapped even if he doesn’t know what it is. But they don’t seem to care most of the time. They play stupid kids’ games and they watch cartoons and they read books and they act as if nothing is wrong. Everything is wrong! Can’t they see that? How can they not know it?
Cooking is another thing they do. Cooking! Like this is a normal household full of normal people! Erasmus walks into the kitchen to find them preparing dinner. Harry stands at the workbench chopping industriously and Hermione stirs a pot on the stove. There are no words here, he has only come in to the middle of a long silence, but he feels like he’s interrupted something anyway. They turn to look at him and he winces, almost taking a step back toward the door. Hermione’s cheeks are flushed from standing over the stove and Harry casually lifts a large chopping knife, light glinting off it as his hand moves. There’s an array of knives in front of him, all bright and shining, and Erasmus tears his eyes away from them with an effort.
“Do you want to help?” Harry asks, and Erasmus shakes his head emphatically even before the question is finished because something in him scents the danger and he doesn’t care if he’s rude, he just knows that he shouldn’t go near those clean, sharp knives. Harry just shrugs. Hermione turns back to her pot.
Erasmus stands there and he watches Harry work, but he isn’t wondering at a fourteen-year-old boy who chops vegetables with the deft, swift, professional skill that only comes from long long practice. He’s watching the blade of the knife slicing easily through the tomatoes, catching the faint scent of metal, watching the juices bleed out, wondering what it would be like if it was blood instead of juice. His blood. Bright red, vibrant and vivid, spilling out in glorious colour across the wooden chopping board. Taking all his pain and anger with it.
Erasmus turns carefully and stalks out of the room, trying to keep his breathing even. Then he pounds up the stairs and hides under his bed and he shakes.
The image of red, red blood hovers in front of his closed eyes.
-
At breakfast Hermione hides behind the Daily Prophet, a few wayward curls sticking up to let them know she’s still there while she devours all the information inside. Mr Granger has his own newspaper, Mrs Granger is listening to the radio mumbling to itself on the bench. Harry shares out the bacon onto everyone’s plates and smiles; he likes his morning routine. On this morning Hermione giggles when she’s on the second page and they all look at her. Or rather, at the paper.
“What’s so funny?” Mrs Granger asks.
She appears over the top, a smudge of ink on her nose where she’s wiped newsprint off from her hand, and rolls her eyes. Harry steps around the table to take a look and skims down the article. He rolls his eyes too. “It’s some new theory on Voldemort’s death.” Around the table Erasmus is the only one to react to Voldemort’s name and his is just a slight flinch that Harry doesn’t think he even realises he’s made.
“Close?” Mr Granger asks, smiling.
Something about soul-splitting devices granting Voldemort immortality and pure-hearted sacrifice by Harry. He snorts and shakes his head.
And there it ends. He likes the Grangers. They don’t care how he defeated Voldemort, they don’t question him about what he did, they just want him to recover from the backlash. They are just what Harry needs and he’s incredibly grateful, but he doesn’t know how say that, so he just takes the eggs off the stove.
As he puts a fried egg onto Erasmus’s plate, he catches the confusion in the other boy’s eyes. It occurs to him to wonder if Erasmus even knows something happened to Voldemort.
-
The new ritual had improved Voldemort’s looks in no way. In fact, it might have made them worse, if only in subtle ways: redder eyes, wider nostrils, more slitted pupils. And if his charisma had been compulsive before it was overwhelming now. This was a man who had learnt to hone and use his charm much as Dumbledore had, putting the whole force of his personality behind it and using it as a weapon so that even as Harry was appalled and repelled he was also fascinated and attracted.
Voldemort had been scary when he was weak. With his power and strength returned he was absolutely terrifying.
“You are privileged, children, to see the rebirth of Lord Voldemort. It is more than you deserve, but I am feeling generous.” His eyes sparkled with dark glee. “Shall we play a little game, Harry Potter? With the mudblood first, perhaps.”
“You leave her alone!” Harry struggled fiercely against his bonds, to no avail.
Voldemort smiled. “Fire and determination. Admirable. Your parents had those traits too, boy. Before I killed them.” Harry snarled furiously, but of course it was useless. Voldemort dismissed him easily and lifted his wand to lift Hermione’s chin so he could study her face, bending close, nostrils flaring, threatening and terrifying. “Beg for your life, girl.”
She spat at him. Harry would always remember that. Voldemort, and small, terrified Hermione spitting in his face.
Voldemort’s eyes narrowed dangerously and he slashed at Harry’s bonds and threw a wand down at his feet. “Here, Potter. Let no one say Lord Voldemort does not allow his opponents the chance to die on their feet.”
He was freed, but when he plunged to Hermione’s side he was prevented from loosening her bonds by a ward. He stared at the wand at his feet. It was his own wand, but this could only be a trick and Harry stood there, staring down Voldemort’s wand, and didn’t stoop.
“Pick it up.”
“No.” Harry knew there was no fair fight here, there was no way he’d get out of this with his wand.
“Pick it up, Harry.”
“No!”
“Crucio,” he said. Casual, as if it was only a tickling spell. But under the red light Hermione started screaming, started flailing, straining against her bonds with such force she would surely hurt herself.
He dove for his wand. “Okay! Okay! I’ve picked it up! Stop it!” Hermione shrieked in pure animal agony. “Stop it!” Harry screamed, tears in his eyes, both hands on his wand to keep it steady. “Stop it! I’ll do what you say!”
Voldemort flicked his wand and Hermione went silent. She went limp too, sagging against her bonds.
“Hermione?” Harry whispered desperately, going on one knee beside her, shaking her shoulder. She didn’t shift. “What have you done?” He turned on Voldemort. “What did you do to her!” he shouted.
“Temper, temper, Harry,” Voldemort chided, smiling cruelly. “She’s not dead. Yet.”