A Dementor's Kiss - Phan

The Pureblood

Dan was adopted. It had taken his mother but one concise sentence to explain. They found out they couldn't have children and had searched long and hard to find a child young enough to truly raise as their own. Dan had been two years old and they had fallen in love immediately.

Dan's mum cradled him to her chest. She was shaking. He couldn't see from this angle if the trembles were tears, but she wasn't sobbing.

He was motionless. He felt as if he had frozen. There was one question rocketing around the inside of his head and bouncing deafeningly off the walls of his skull: what does this mean? What did it mean for his future? Would it change the way he felt about his parents, if only subtly? Who really was he?

"My real- my biological parents?" He finally asked. His voice sounded like it was coming from the other side of the room.

Dan's dad, who had been pacing, finally sat down on his other side. "Social services told us that they had died in a car crash. It was a head on collision. You were in the back without a scratch. We often wondered if your magic might have helped you. Protected you from the debris and stuff. You know how we got all those books for muggle parents when we first went to Diagon Alley?"

Dan nodded.

"There was all sorts of stuff about dangerous situations being the first indicators of magic," Dan's dad carried on. "I assume you're going to ask if your parents were wizards. We don't know. I'm sorry. They had no information about them at all and none of the people we spoke to knew why, which would maybe suggest they were, but the books we read did mention that your ministry had a form of child services if we ever needed it. We thought it unlikely that they would dump a magical baby in an orphanage and not give any kind of warning to the parents who adopted it. But you know them better than us."

Dan found his words again. "I had a friend who was adopted. He was looked after by the ministry department until some witches wanted to adopt him. But I guess we don't keep track of everyone, if they died in a muggle place the ministry wouldn't have known. But, there was no other family?"

Dan's dad exchanged a look with his mum.

"No relatives that could take you in. At least, none that they could find."

"And?"

"What?"

"There's something else. Don't treat me like a child. Just spit it out, ok? It's ok. I'm ok." Dan's skin felt impossibly tight across his ribcage. There was a silence he wanted to tear through with his fingers.

"What is it?" He asked again, his voice high pitched.

"You have a brother." His mum whispered, her voice faint.

The penny dropping like a boulder in the ocean.

"I have a brother and you didn't tell me?!" Dan exploded. "No way. That's not fair. That's not fair." His chest was being crushed like a ton of marble had been dropped on it, while at the same time everything inside was swelling exponentially trying to burst out. "I've had a brother my whole life and you didn't tell me because you didn't want me to know I was adopted?! How? Why? That's not fair!" He was shaking now too, whether it was rage or distress he wasn't sure.

"The couple who adopted him made us swear we wouldn't!" Now, Dan's mum was crying. "He was a lot older. They didn't think he'd accept them as his parents if you two were hanging around and backing each other up. And they convinced us, we were so worried, you have to understand." Her whole body was convulsing with choking, hiccupping sobs and Dan clung to her instinctively. "We were weak and selfish and so scared that you wouldn't love us. Because he remembered your parents, he could tell you about them. To him they will always be his real parents, but with you we had a chance. I'm so sorry. You don't have to forgive us."