Chapter Text
In the United Kingdom, every third Sunday of June marks Father’s Day. A day where children are asked to celebrate their fathers and honour the beauty of fatherhood. Traditionally, it was used to give thanks to the paternal figure in a child’s life and show your appreciation of their efforts in helping them to grow.
What society didn’t seem to account for, were the children for whom the day had little significance for they didn’t have a father in their lives. The ones who seemed to be forgotten on a day where all their peers rejoiced over making their fathers a card, a gift, anything to show their appreciation.
Miss Mary Macdonald believed herself to be a kind teacher. She aimed to go above and beyond for all her students- primary school forms the very bedrock, the foundation of their development where they learn to thrive and grow. She loved the children in her care as the though they were her own. She had no children born to her and struggled to give her heart to another to even consider a future with children. Perhaps one day, she would adopt her own- she didn’t need a partner to do so especially as she could not seem to give up that part of her heart. It was as though it had already been claimed by someone else whom she no longer knew.
This year, Mary was looking after the Year 3 class- a boisterous bunch of 7-8 year olds all on the very cusp of childhood, learning about themselves, making friends and their families. She loved them all equally, but her heart held a special space for a young boy who sat in the far corner next to the window- Harry James Potter.
A boy with dark, messy hair as though it was rebelling against the laws of gravity, fighting its force with pure energy. His hair was dark as the night sky when starless and his eyes were something Mary would never forget. They called to her as though she knew them from a past long forgotten. They were the delicate green of the forest when it was thriving against all the external changes of nature. His eyes were like the ocean, deep and endless but the green only made the illusion of the forest even stronger. They were nature’s very own masterpiece.
The boy was quiet, subdued yet an overall a joy to have in her classroom. He was quietly intelligent- his intellect astounded her sometimes particularly his grasp on emotions when they spoke of the characters in their books. He understood loneliness, being upset and hope all at once that sometimes it scared her to believe a child would feel so deeply.
When she first met Harry, she immediately felt affection like a mother would to a son but also a sense of the past. Something was recognisable, something was there that she knew from a life once lived but she simply couldn’t put her finger on what.
He wasn’t accepted in his classroom for reasons she couldn’t understand- she did suspect it was his cousin who was causing most of the grief.
The insufferable boy called Dudley Dursley was a nightmare to teach. He would oppose all authority, screaming his demands rather than simply asking. He showed little intelligence and would rely on his own brute force and the alliance of his close friends to try and get his own way. Mary had spoken of this countless time to Dudley’s parents, both of whom completely ignored her concerns and instead would explain how their child was just misunderstood and struggled to control his excitement at being in school.
“You see, Miss McGrath, was it?” Vernon Dursley, a large and crude man began to speak before Mary interjected.
“It’s Macdonald, actually.”
“Yes, yes, but you must understand, my son is simply an excitable growing lad, of course as a woman I doubt you’d understand. He has done nothing but act as a child ought to act. I really don’t approve of the way you’re singling him out considering your own… appearance.”
That was the first time Mary had experienced misogyny and racism that she could recall. All her other past memories were forgotten.
She saw the way Vernon Dursley’s nose crinkled at the colour of her skin, her darkened skin a stark contrast to his own pasty, pale and reddened with exertion face. She saw how Petunia Dursley turned her nose up at her when she reached out a hand to shake hers as though she thought Mary was someone she deemed below her own status to associate with.
Mary then knew that children act as they observe. Dudley Dursley was a bully for he had seen his father acting like one too. Harry was a precious anomaly in the equation. He grew up with the same paternal figure, yet his kindness shone through his eyes and soul.
She tasked the children to start making cards for their fathers. The chatter began immediately as children argued over which colour card paper they’d use, which colour of pencils, what they’d draw and what they would write inside.
“It can be for your fathers or for anyone in your lives who you’d like to give a special thank you to.” Mary smiled as she saw the children start on their own cards. She felt a wave of regret when she looked to the far corner and saw Harry, his eyes glued to his much too large and far too tattered uniform.
Harry stayed quiet, staring at his piece of card which remained blank. Mary felt her heart go out to this child. She knew he lived under his Aunt and Uncle’s care, but she had no doubt he’d have at least one figure in his life to make a card for. Surely, if that wasn’t the case, the social services would have picked up on it by now.
But, when have they truly been successful in saving all the children who needed saving.
Mary herself had no memories of her childhood. She was told it was unexplained retrograde amnesia where she couldn’t recall memories from her past. No pathology was found after countless testing. She had very simply forgotten as though her mind was shielding her from a past pain, something that her heart would not be able to handle if it remembered.
All she knew was her name and that she was found alone on a beach surrounded by snow and cold sand, seemingly lost but with dried tears staining her skin, tracing names in the sand which washed away too soon. She would never know who she was thinking of then. The tide washed them away as if they were her own memories- simply gone with no trace or evidence to suggest they’d been there.
She was taken to a police station by a man walking his dog in December of 1981. They asked her countless questions but she had little answers. She knew her name, but that was it. No family came forward to claim her and no friends either. She was a wandering soul, given a chance to experience a new life yet the loneliness would creep into her skin and infect her every pore. It would break the keratin barrier of her epithelium and sit within her hypodermis, her every sense of being growing cold and painful.
One man did come forward, however. He had a long, white beard and eyes that held sympathy and pain. He was dressed outrageously in bright purple that made her head hurt but she felt a strange affection for the wizened man.
He’d held her hand and initially asked her what she remembered but she recalled nothing. His eyes held pain and understanding before he paid for her to have a home in Crawley which she lived in for 5 years before moving herself across to Surrey. She’d saved a large sum from her work as a teacher and had even made a few friends along the way. Life was better and she didn’t meet the elderly man again, but she would forever feel grateful to him for ensuring she had a chance to live again.
“Harry, would you like to make a card for your uncle or even your aunt?”
Harry tensed up by the suggestion, his mind racing back to last year when he’d made a card for Aunt Petunia and her reaction upon receiving it. She discarded it as though it disgusted her and didn’t treat it with the same care and devotion as she had for Dudley. Harry then promised to never make any of the Dursleys a card again. Last Father’s Day, he simply chose to not make a card for anyone and his teacher didn’t pressurise him to join in on the activity.
“No thank you, Miss Macdonald. I don’t think they’ll like it and Dudley is already making one.” Harry bit his tongue slightly and his fingers clenched inwards onto his palms, leaving red half crescent shapes across the softness of his skin. He wasn’t supposed to reveal anything about his home life.
Mary felt her eyebrows knit downwards as a frown developed across her face. Something about the boy felt familiar- from his facial features and beautifully green eyes to his kindness. Something reached out to her heart as though trying to reform the memories she’d forgotten but reaching a barrier they couldn’t break.
He made her feel a friendship long lost in the winds. He made her feel a longing for the sense of feeling free and happy as though it was many moons ago. She reminded him of a love between friends deeper than simply a friendship and more of a brotherhood, a sisterhood, something more. She felt as though she could recall the very whispers of something electric and magic at her very fingertips yet they couldn’t grasp on something unknown and her mind refused to allow them to take control.
She sometimes had incidences when strange things would happen. She’s fallen asleep whilst the oven was on, the fire burning at the pie she’d placed in the oven. She awoke hours later when the pie should have been burnt to a crisp, the fruits beyond recognisable but when she ran down the stairs to the kitchen, she was amazed to see the pie perfectly intact and beautifully cooked as though only just done. It was as though it had waited for her to awaken before it finished baking. Another time, she was lost in thought and walked too close to a bridge and should have walked straight off the barrier into the river below, but she encountered a seemingly invisible force that pushed her back before she could cause herself serious harm.
She called them her lucky spells.
She yearned for friends she didn’t even know. She longed for the past she could not recall. Harry made her wonder whether she knew someone with the same name, someone who may have looked like him or perhaps someone with the same eyes. There was something that was calling her to remember, to recall anything but her mind refused to let down its walls.
“What about your own father, Harry?” Mary asked him with a gentle kindness that had Harry relaxing slightly.
Harry looked up in confusion, his eyes downcast and his expression earnest. He shook his head before looking away again, his nose scrunched in an attempt to conceal his emotions. He wouldn’t be successful as his eyes truly were the window to his soul. They expressed more than his own words would ever be able to. They bared forward all his deepest secrets and desires openly, betraying his own privacy and security.
Harry seemed to have lost words before Mary rushed to explain.
“Your father may not be on this earth anymore, Harry, but I’m sure he loved you very much. Did you know that some people believe the ones we lost watch over us? The ones who love us never really leave us. We can always find them- in here.” She placed a hand on his chest and felt a nagging at the back of her mind that this moment was repeating itself.
She could see a bespectacled man, not a boy, with messy hair like Harry’s upset over losing his parents. She remembered comforting him, someone’s red hair surrounding the man as the unidentifiable figure held him close. The one with hair like fire anchoring him to the present and kissing him gently on his head. She could see another man whose head was also downcast, his shoulders shaking. He was being supported by another figure, scarred hands holding his shoulder, gripping him tight and shaking alongside him.
Her brain couldn’t make the fuzzy images clear so she locked it back into her mind just like she did to all the other glimpses of a life she once lived. She sometimes wished she could remember more, but forced herself to accept her new reality. Whatever happened in her past must have been so traumatic that her mind didn’t want to live through it anymore. Her hippocampus and temporal lobe had united against her own body. Her own body betrayed itself in an effort to protect itself by removing all memories of the past.
Harry’s eyes became glassy as he bit his bottom lip which was already shaking. He nodded as a single tear fell from his eye onto the paper, soaking its fibres as though trying to heal the broken wood from which it was made. It was trying to heal something that was already so broken it had gained a new shape, a new form and new purpose whilst the tree from which it was flayed from cried in anguish.
Mary put one hand on his shoulder before standing up to stop her emotions getting the better of her. It wouldn’t be appropriate to start crying in front of a student, she told herself.
“A lot of children are drawing their dad’s favourite animals or things they liked to do. If you’re not sure, I’m sure your dad would have liked the same things as you do now.”
Harry looked up at Mary as though peering through her soul. Could it be his soul too felt the familiarity she felt with him?
“What’s your favourite animal, Miss?” Harry shyly hid his face in his hands as the question slipped from his lips.
He didn’t think his dad would like the things he did as he just didn’t have many things he liked. He liked it when the Dursleys left him alone in the cupboard and didn’t bother him, but it did get lonely after a while. He liked the way dust would form patterns in the sunlight, free and away from the control of mankind before Aunt Petunia would wrench the particles apart with her feather duster. He liked the sound of the rain but was afraid of the thunder and he knew his dad would be much braver than he was.
So no, Harry’s dad wouldn’t be anything like him. His dad would be free to do all the things he wanted to do. His dad would be confident and happy. Not like Harry, never like Harry. He didn’t know his dad’s name officially but he did know that Aunt Petunia had once sneered his name in anger- James Potter. She spoke his name as though it had tainted her tongue and was the most despicable name on the planet. Harry had grasped onto that name with a passion that astounded himself.
JamesPotter.JamesPotter.JamesPotter. He repeated the words in his head and whispered them in his cupboard. That was his dad’s name. It had to be. He didn’t know any other Potters so he decided that would be who his dad was. His dad would be James Potter whilst he was quite often just Harry. He didn’t deserve to have a brave name like his dad.
Mary was taken aback by the question, but indulged the child all the same. Her warm, brown eyes disputed as she wondered what her favourite animal actually was. She liked cats and birds but she felt there was something she liked even more. She liked how brave lions were, leading the pride with an intensity she wished she could match. Her amnesia may have taken away her past memories but it didn’t stop her from creating new ones. She thought hard before an image came to her mind when she saw the woodlands in Harry’s eyes.
“Me? I l like lions, but I quite like deers, dogs and wolves even more. Something tells me that in the wild, they’d all be good friends.”