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‘Harry, what are these?’
Harry dropped the jumper he had just pulled out of a box and turned to look. He and Ginny were inside Harry’s Gringotts vault, finally accounting for all of his parents’ belongings. They had visited Godric’s Hollow late last summer, a hello and goodbye as they began piecing together their lives, past and present. As he passed through the airy rooms, Harry felt numb and alive and joyful and desperately sad all at once, more accustomed to the intermixing emotions at the end of that endless summer of grief than he had ever been in his life. Most of the furniture was still intact, though covered in ghostly sheets, but the empty drawers and shelves indicated that his parents’ personal effects had been moved. Pacing in and out of the rooms, a specter of a different life was both within reach and entirely unattainable for him. He and Ginny sat in the garden for a long while after, watching the sun set over the quiet country road in the distance behind the cottage before Apparating home.
After Ginny returned to Hogwarts, Harry spent much of his free time that autumn digging through Sirius’s will and Remus’s notes, the former short and perfunctory, the latter sporadic but occasionally overwhelmingly detailed. It took him all of September and half of October to find the right diary, buried in a trunk in Andromeda’s attic, dated 1980-1983. Short sentences filled otherwise blank pages; weeks passed without comment. He finally found a note dated 5 May, 1983, that read, ‘Moved the rest of the things to the vault with Kingsley’s help.’
Harry could only assume the things were his parents’ things, knowing that Remus didn’t have a vault to speak of and likely still couldn’t pen James and Lily’s names. A thick knot rose in his chest as he read it, once again awash in grief over how short and how full of pain Remus’s life had been. Like so many times that summer, he let the well of sadness spring up for a moment or two, then gently covered it. He had gotten better at not panicking at the feeling of being drowned by his own emotions, but he hadn’t quite mastered diving into them and swimming around, knowing when to come up for air.
In early November, he dropped in on Bill unexpectedly to see the vault. Until this excursion, he had only ever thought of the vault as a Galleon kiosk, to visit once a year for textbook and Hogsmeade money and then shove into the back of his mind. Once inside, Bill actually flicked on the lamps lining the walls—which the goblins had never thought to do, or perhaps Harry had never thought to ask—and Harry saw, for the first time, that his vault extended beyond the familiar little alcove into a gigantic ballroom, reminiscent of another vault he had visited not too long ago. Though instead of sinister piles of burning gold, his vault provided a dry warmth, filled with furniture, boxes, and artwork.
‘Is all of this from my parents?’
‘And your grandparents. I can show you the account books. You also have some property under a long-term lease in Gloucestershire. Plus, when Sirius left you everything in his will, much of his vault was transferred into here. We extended the back to make space for the stuff, but I cordoned off what I imagine are cursed objects in another section where you won’t knock into them accidentally and get trapped in a claw-foot bathtub or something.’
‘Cheers, Bill.’
‘No problem, Harry.’
Still, it was too much stuff to sort through alone, and he couldn’t quite bring himself to unearth lost memories when he was still learning to shelve his own, brutally fresh ones.
November passed in a haze as he turned his attention to fixing up Grimmauld Place, having only inhabited rather than really lived in it. He and Kreacher busied themselves stripping down wallpaper, pulling up carpet, and Harry even managed to convince Kreacher to unstick the portrait in the front hall, promising that it would be happier amidst the other Black family effects in Sirius’s all-but-empty vault.
Suddenly December arrived, his time split at the Burrow and the shop with George and Ron, helping assemble Christmas gift packs that would explode if he placed the wrong items into the boxes or, inexplicably, the right items in the wrong order. The trepidation with which he treated the task made George guffaw, and that alone was worth his scorched eyebrows.
January met him with his and Ron’s first missions, then bitterly wet and cold February deterred him from relinquishing warm weekends in the Burrow and Grimmauld for a subterranean vault. Only when the weather started to turn in March did he resolve to tell Ginny about this looming project. She readily agreed, and, having just signed on with the Harpies, giving her tacit permission to skive off her NEWTs, she decided that Easter break was as good a time as any to dig into the mystery vault.
So here they were, sleeves rolled up, methodically opening boxes, pulling out the items within, and writing down the contents in Hermione’s colour-coded Mega Magical Masterlist of Harry’s Possessions, replete with section dividers for ‘Home,’ ‘Vault,’ ‘Sell,’ and ‘Dispose of carefully at the Ministry.’ The binder was the compromise struck between Hermione organizing it all herself and Harry ‘keeping a list in his head, which really, how impractical is that? You’ll never remember—’
‘—Hermione, it’s his stuff!’
And it saved the four of them from disagreeing over how to organize old jumpers anyways (which, really, would have been Hermione disagreeing with Ron while Ginny plowed ahead against the plan), so taking the binder was worth the trouble. Three days in, they had uncovered Potter family portraits (‘Those would look nice over the mantel’), a tapestry that looked like it was from around the founding of Hogwarts (‘I don’t think this has seen the light of day in 1000 years.’ ‘It probably shouldn’t, it’s hideous’), a gigantic mahogany table with 50 matching chairs (‘It’s lovely, but you don’t have enough friends to make this useful.’ ‘Funny, Gin.’ ‘You hang out with three people!’), and an actual claw-foot bathtub (‘Wow, Bill wasn’t joking.’ ‘What?’ ‘Just mark that one “Dispose”’). Finally, past the massively impersonal items, they turned to the dozens of boxes and trunks stacked in a corner.
Ginny held up a large flat square box with four ghostly faces printed on the cover and tugged out a large circular disc from within. She frowned in confusion.
‘Queen II? Like the Queen of England? Is this hers?’ she asked excitedly.
Harry laughed. ‘No, no, though that would be among the least weird things that have ever happened to me. It’s a record. May I?’ She passed him the box and leaned down to pick up another. The cover was black with a small rainbow strip refracting through a prism.
‘A record?’
‘Yeah, like a music record. That’s how Muggles listened to music a while back. You put the disc on a record player. I bet there’s one in here.’ He rummaged around in the nearby boxes. ‘Ha! Here it is.’ He pulled out another box with a tiny arm attached to it. ‘This won’t work without electricity, but we could plug it in at home. Basically, you put the record on the player, and then you put this arm on the record, and the music will play. I guess Muggles still use records but there are other things for music too. Dudley used to have a whole bunch of CDs, and eventually he got a Walkman.’
Ginny gasped. ‘A walking man? He got a person to walk with him to play the music?’
Harry smiled. ‘No, a Walkman. It allows you to walk around with the records.’ He gestured to the box of discs. ‘But they aren’t records like this, they’re on these little tapes, like these small rectangles that hold the music. And you plug it into this tiny box thing, and then you can walk around with headphones in, so you can listen on the go.’
‘Headphones?’ Realization dawned on her face. ‘Is that like the telephone?’
‘No, it’s more like these wires that you put in your ears so the music plays directly to you and not out loud.’
‘Muggles really have thought of everything,’ Ginny murmured appreciatively. ‘So, what’s Queen, then?’
‘They’re a band.’ Harry thought of the radio that played during physical education in primary school, the rare opportunity to listen to something other than Vernon’s ghastly morning talk shows. ‘I didn’t listen to a ton of music as a kid. But I think they were really popular.’
Ginny flipped through the covers in the box, pulling out a cream-coloured album with two people in flowing black outfits. ‘What about this one? Fleetwood Mac? What does that even mean?’
‘Oh, I do know that one! Aunt Petunia said that they were a bunch of good-for-nothing amoral scoundrels.’
Ginny grinned. ‘I bet their music is fantastic.’ She glanced around. ‘It looks like there are a whole bunch of boxes of these.’
‘I bet they were Sirius’s. He loved Muggle stuff to piss off his mum.’
‘Right on, Sirius. Right on. Place it in the home pile then?’
‘Yeah, I think he’d like knowing that we’re still listening to his washed-up bands.’ Harry waved his wand and the boxes of records stacked themselves neatly at the front of the vault.
~
They finally finished organizing the vault a day later, carting boxes of belongings back to Grimmauld Place, where Kreacher was as overjoyed as Kreacher could be to continue redecorating. They set up the record player on a rolling table in the den, only to realize that Kreacher had once again disconnected the electricity (‘Kreacher, it’s perfectly safe!’ ‘Kreacher doesn’t trust the crackle light, Sir. Sir would be much safer with Kreacher’s heating and lighting charms.’ ‘Kreacher, really, we’ve discussed this’). In the weakening momentum of unpacking, they turned their attention to other, more pressing activities, as Ginny was to return to Hogwarts that weekend. And in the cooling week thereafter, Harry all but forgot about the records: resetting the electricity pushed to the back of his mind as he picked up work again, the rest of April slowing to a death crawl towards the first anniversary of the battle. They spent the entire month of May recovering from the date itself.
June opened like a window, letting in a rush of fresh air with Ginny and Hermione’s graduation. July whooshed past as Ginny grew accustomed to her training regimen, returning to Grimmauld well past dinner time in a sweaty huff, Harry meeting her with a warm plate and a chest to fall asleep on. Their birthdays preoccupied that lazy stretch of mid-summer, bookending long walks in the Burrow orchard and playful dips in the pond on Ginny’s days off. Some days, Harry resurfaced to find himself hunched over the kitchen sink in Grimmauld, the undertow of grief threatening to tug him under. He and Ginny trekked along the street lit pavement, wading through the evening mist until they caught their breaths.
It wasn’t until the sharp descent of cool nights in late August, around the one-year anniversary of visiting Godric’s Hollow, that Harry thought of the records again. One harried Saturday while Ginny visited George, he reconnected the electricity, informed Kreacher that ‘the crackle light cannot be disconnected again unless I say so, alright, Kreacher?’ (which was as close to a direct order as he could bring himself to give), and set about unpacking the records (which had since found themselves shoved into dusty corner) into the empty shelves at the back of the den.
Harry didn’t know many of the artists on the covers, and for lack of any superior reasoning, placed them on the shelves in the order he pulled them from the box. That was how ABBA ended up next to Queen, and The Moody Blues next to Diana Ross, Bob Dylan next to the Rolling Stones, The Jackson Five next to Pink Floyd. The names didn’t mean much to him, and the cover art held no nostalgia, but knowing that they were Sirius’s brought him some sense of vindication: the music that might have sustained his godfather during his darkest days in this house was lovingly restored to shelves he had built with his own hands as he reclaimed this home for himself.
It wasn’t until he pulled out the last record, a Beatles album that he actually recognized, and flipped it over to look at the track listing that he noticed the writing.
I know this one is old, but that doesn’t change how I feel about it, or you. James.
Harry read it three times, then started rapidly pulling the records off the shelf, searching for scrawled handwriting on the covers:
I’ll be your man after midnight. James
I’d fly with you anywhere. James
You’re my killer queen. James
Harry slumped to the floor, leaned against the shelves, and flipped through record after record, reading the tiny inscriptions his father had penned his mother so long ago, the current pulling him farther downstream until he was out to sea with fragmented memories. Ginny found him hours later, his eyes closed, an album cover balanced on his legs, Nat King Cole’s face peering out, eyebrow quirked, nearly asking ‘You alright, man?’
She slid down next to him and turned the record over to find,
L is for my perfect Lily E
O is for the Only witch I see
V is Very hairy, I’m lucky that you tolerate me
E is Evans, you’re the one. I couldn’t ask for more.
They sat hand-in-hand in the fading afternoon light, the songs long since concluded, listening to the static of the record player crackle in the quiet room, wondering if the space of that silence needed to be filled.
~
The fireplace in the den whooshed with green light, and out stepped Hermione. ‘It smells absolutely spectacular in here!’
Ginny bustled in from the kitchen. ‘He’s been cooking all day. Will barely let me help.’
Ron emerged from a second whoosh and flash. ‘Probably for the best, or we wouldn’t have anything to eat.’
‘Oh hush, Ginny’s not such a terrible cook.’ Hermione took Ron’s coat and stepped into the hallway as Ron peered around the den. The shelves burst with books and records, letters and drawings from Teddy. A painting of the Burrow and another of Godric’s Hollow hung on the walls.
‘It’s quite a bit cozier in here than I’ve seen in a while.’
Ginny nodded, ‘Trying to make it livable, you know?’
‘When do you think you’ll move out of here?’
‘Not for a while yet. Harry wouldn’t say it, but I think he’s sort of packed away the idea that he had nowhere else to go, and then the idea that he needed to rid the whole place of the past, and now he’s sort of settling into—’
‘—into just living his life?’ Ron chuckled. ‘What a novel concept for him.’
‘A novel concept for whom?’ Harry stepped into the den, wiping his hands on his apron. ‘Nevermind. I probably don’t want to know. Would you two like to eat or just gossip about me?’
‘We’d always like to gossip about you, dearest,’ Ron replied. ‘But I really only came here to eat, then I’ve got to get back to very important things.’
‘The chess tournament commentary over the wireless hardly counts as very important, Ron.’
‘Please don’t get him started, Ginny,’ Hermione admonished from the door. ‘You have no idea how many times I’ve heard about the importance of this match.’
Ron huffed as they marched out of the room. ‘The English haven’t been at the Russian invitational in a decade! This is massive!’
They returned to the den after dinner, and despite a very full stomach that would warn against sudden movements, Harry turned up the volume on the record player before grabbing Ginny and spinning her around, her laughter cutting through the chorus.
‘What’s this one, Harry?’ She grinned into his ear.
‘Fred Astaire. He was a great dancer, apparently.’ Harry scooched his feet across the floor, pulling his all-too-willing partner after him.
‘Clearly listening to his music didn’t imbue you with any of his talent,’ Ron snorted from the couch. ‘This bloke is even stuffier than Celestina Warbeck, Harry.’
But Harry drowned him out by belting the lyrics, circling Ginny around the couch.
‘If you don’t like it, find something better!’
Ron bounded over the shelves.
‘Ha! How about this one?’ The record cut, and a pulsing guitar and citrusy falsetto voices filled the room. Ron strutted across the room in beat, bopping his head, hitting a disco move.
‘I thought this was a suitable choice for Harry!’ he cried as the chorus dropped, and the Bee Gees warbled ‘Ah-ah-ah, stayin alive!’
Hermione and Ginny guffawed as Harry yelled, ‘Oh bugger off!’ Ron pulled Hermione off the couch and they started twirling and gliding in sync.
‘Where did you learn disco anyways?’
‘Hermione and I do plenty that you don’t know about, Harry dearest.’
Harry groaned. ‘Let’s keep it that way.’
Hermione spun herself over the shelves and flicked through a few records. ‘Have you added to these, Harry?’
‘Yeah, I pick up a few every so often. There’s a shop down the way. The guy behind the till reminds me a bit of Sirius, so I stop by whenever I walk home from the Ministry. You know, he said recently that Muggles are figuring out how to put all their music on even smaller bits than CDs.’ (‘No way! Have they figured out extension charms?’ Ginny asked, and Harry shrugged.)
‘I was gonna say, some of these are quite recent.’ Hermione flicked through a few more, ‘Oh! This one just came out! One of the girls I work with in Muggle Relations said her brother and all of his friends listen to it on repeat. It’s driving her barmy.’
‘Open it. I haven’t even played that one yet.’
Hermione pulled the plastic film off the record printed with a man holding an outstretched hand, a bubble over his right eye, and placed it on the player. Tinkling notes built into a thumping clap, and the four of them turned around the room, humming along to the theme.
‘This is so good!’ Ginny swung herself around the couch. The song crescendoed with claps, the chorus repeating again and again, and Harry caught himself looking at his two best friends and the love of his life losing themselves to the music, twirling in place, nodding their heads, shaking their hips. This was exactly how his parents and their friends wiled away cold winter evenings and bright summer days for those few glorious years after Hogwarts, he thought, and a wave crashed over him. But there was no accompanying pang, no gasp for air. He burst through the surface and just floated.
The song faded, and they all stood, basking in the moment, catching their breath.
‘I can see why they’ve put that on repeat,’ Ron huffed out after a moment.
‘Okay, another one!’ Ginny dashed to the shelves and tugged out her favorite track.
‘No! What about the boys?’ Ron cried in response as yet another synth keyboard (really, what was up with the 80s?) filled the room and Cyndi Lauper’s crystal-clear voice rang out. But Ginny and Hermione were already lost in the song, and Ron had no choice to rock along with them.
The record roulette continued into night, accompanying their wild dancing around the den, finding new rhythm to each song before someone else usurped the player and slapped on a new album. Decades cut into one another and time doubled back, psychedelic covers lay atop classic portraits scattered on the coffee table, up tempo bops twisted into slow ballads as they swished and slid around the room, dancing with one another in one exhalation.
Finally, they fell onto the couches, laughter quieting as they listened to Hermione’s last pick of the evening. The fire seemed to dim under the spell cast by the grainy record, and Harry found himself stroking Ginny’s hair as she settled her head against his lap. Hermione leaned into Ron, his arm around her shoulders and his chin pressed to the crown of her head. The last note cut across the haze of the evening, leaving them in contented silence.
After Hermione and Ron finally extricated themselves from the couch and located their coats, after Hermione pecked Harry’s cheek, Ron grasped him in a one-armed hug, and they shuffled through the Floo, Harry joined Ginny, leaning against the back of the couch, staring at the shelves of records. Nat King Cole’s quirked brow, handsome as it was, faced the wall, his favorite of his father’s inscriptions hung above the record table.
Just as Harry made to pull her into a hug, she started and pulled another album down.
‘Not wrung out yet? That pre-bed nap on my leg begs to differ.’
She smiled. ‘No more wild flailing for me. One more, then we call it a night.’
Strings faded in, and Ginny took his hands, swaying into the center of the room.
‘I like this one.’
‘I know you do.’
He pulled her into a closer embrace, her head resting against his chest, the swelling strings accompanying their slow steps, until the music bottomed out and faded. The crackle of the empty record player harmonized with the fire, and Harry held her to him, the sounds of their home settling around him at last.