Of Myth and Magic

Chapter Twenty-Four: Grimmauld Place Again

Chapter Twenty-Four

Grimmauld Place Again

What if I'm wrong?

It was like a prayer, an emotional tic. Every spare moment. Every time she brushed her over-large teeth (two times per day; three, if she remembered), watching herself in the mirror, she thought it: What if I'm wrong? Every meal time as her parents looked over with grey faces, asking no questions: What if I'm wrong? The morning she put on her only black dress and climbed into the backseat of her parents' car....

And finally, the look on Dean's sister's face as she made her timid hellos.

"I'm so sorry," everyone was saying. She could hear those words fly around her, like the lines of a play she hadn't been told to rehearse.

Of course they were sorry.

Not nearly as sorry as she was.

"Hi, Anita," Hermione said, misjudging a hug, reaching for a hand instead.

Anita shook it forlornly. "Hi, Hermione."

Hermione said the line because she was expected to. Her sorry came out all wrong.

Anita's expression darkened.

"I know," she said.

#

The storm had lifted but the fog gathered, following Snape from Scotland to Cokeworth, cloaking the train, misting the windows as they travelled through white countryside.

"Can't wait for spring," the old man across from him muttered, shaking open a newspaper.

Snape muttered a response. His bag was in his lap, its zipper split open, and on top of its contents lay the bald velvet box, one of its cardboard sides coming unglued, catching in the zip.

He lifted off the lid and plucked the wand from the fabric, held it in his hand. It was unbalanced, unnatural. He flicked it, earning a worried glance over a copy of The Telegraph. Pressed it against the broken zipper of his bag. Nothing.

"Nonsense," he hissed, and threw the wand back into the box. He forced the lid on too hard, blowing out the corners, and cursed himself, suddenly inexplicably angry.

Bloody Hermione Granger.

That last note. So impertinent, so plain, so conceitedly knowing. He couldn't stop thinking about it now, what it said. No, not Harry's. Lily's. As if he couldn't remember, himself.

Oh yes, he remembered. Hemorrhaging the sweetest moments of his life onto the ground — and that's all he knew about them now: the impressions of those moments, but not the memories themselves. He knew he had known Lily in that other life, that he had loved her. But those images were usurped, shoved aside by arguments in this life, by her shouting at him, by their disagreements and hurt and anger.

And yet, still the feelings lingered: kindness, charity, love.

There were so many gaps left in Hermione's note. So much left unsaid.

This is your chance, Hermione might as well have said. Take the time I've given you.

Use it.

#

They'd had him cremated. Hermione couldn't decide if this made it better or worse.

The chapel was cold, the chairs terribly uncomfortable. Her parents sat each side of her like prison guards, one with an arm around her shoulders, one holding her hand. She couldn't see the front, only knew what was up there: the West Ham jersey draped across the table, the urn sat on top of it, the photograph of Dean taken before she'd met him, his face spotty but handsome and smiling.