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xvi
James awoke as the door closed. He could smell the disturbance in the air--the dust swelling around the figure that had come and gone all while he slept. Before he could decide which of his dormmates he’d missed, he was reaching for the tiny piece of parchment on the edge of his pillow, balancing tenuously, like a caught breath.
It read,
Harry Potter is dead.
xvii
Lily put a hand on James’ arm to stop him from pacing. Her lips stretched into a resolute line.
“James, stop. This is dad we’re talking about. Dad doesn’t die. He’s the Boy Who Lived.”
James fell into the cocoon of the Common Room couch. Lily joined him.
“James. Don’t you think mum would’ve come to get us? Or McGonagall? This seems like the sort of thing the Headmistress would get involved in. It’s probably just some stupid Halloween prank. Some people have sick senses of--”
“I’m going home. I have to see dad for myself.”
xiv
Nadia,
Please drop by at your earliest convenience. Healer Eames would like to discuss your daughter’s progress.
Yours in thought,
Nurse Weber
xviii
Harry was pouring himself a nightcap when he heard the shouting. He recognized the voice immediately and ran--his adrenaline as quick and hot at age 42 as at 17. His tea cup spiraled to the ground and shattered against the kitchen tiles.
He found his eldest son standing in the living room, covered in soot and sweat and fear.
“James! What are you doing home? Are you--”
James closed the distance between them in a heartbeat and threw himself into Harry’s arms. The latter felt the air expel from his lungs.
“James?”
xxiv
Even now, twenty years after the war, Ginny had nightmares. She saw cloaked men lurking in shadows, she heard their hearts like drums beating a sacrificial ritual. Sometimes, when she awoke, she felt their hot breath on her face.
Tonight, like every night before, Harry answered her waking cries. He held her. He whispered, “It’s over. It’s all over.” And he kneaded her back in gentle circles as her breath steadied. “No one’s hunting us, sweetheart. You’re safe.” And her eyes dried, though they stung with all the sleepless nights. “Go back to sleep.” And somehow, she did.
ii
She’d thought about it before. How easy it would be to kill it. No bigger than her six-year-old hand, no scarier than a buzzing fly. She knew her mum would yell, and still she reached into its cage, pinched the pink of its tail, and watched as it writhed and squeaked and kicked its little legs. She carried it into the bathroom. Held it over the stopped sink. Dipped its head into the water--just for a second. And again. She dipped and bobbed the terrified mouse in the water until its lungs were too full to squeak.
xv
“Nadia.” Healer Eames stood from his chair as she entered the office. He shook her hand firmly and beckoned her to sit. “Thank you for coming on such short notice. As you know, we’ve been--”
“Please, spare me the niceties.”
Healer Eames nodded. He removed his glasses, pinched the bridge of his nose. “She’s been agitated lately,” he said. “More so than usual. She says--well, she says they won’t leave until she kills Harry Potter.”
“Is she dangerous?”
“Mrs. Rowle--Nadia, your daughter is under constant supervision. She’s not a threat.”
“I’d like to see her now.”
xxi
James knew his father was alive and yet he couldn’t stop reading Harry Potter is dead.
He read it after sneaking back into Hogwarts after tea with his startled father. He read it before bed that night and again in the morning after a restless sleep. He read it during class, held under his desk like a secret while Professor Binns droned on.
And then it hit him.
He knew this handwriting.
It belonged to Albus.
iii
Nadia knew that Soleil would one day ask about her father. She just didn’t expect it to be so soon, when her darling girl was still red-cheeked and baby-toothed. She expected they’d have this conversation over tea in a nice cafe, Soleil dressed in a Hogwarts blazer and tie.
But she did her best to tell the tale of a monster and a boy, and a war that consumed Soleil’s father.
“Harry Potter killed daddy?” Soleil asked when her mother fell silent.
“Oh no, my sweet,” Nadia replied, brushing a strand of hair behind Soleil’s ear. “Daddy’s darkness killed him.”
xx
“Talk to me, my sweet.”
At twenty one, Soleil was beautiful. Even as she sat, hunched and haunted, on her bed at Summerbee Psychiatric Institute, Soleil Rowle was perfection with sapphire eyes and a porcelain face. Nadia couldn’t have imagined her red-cheeked baby growing into such a beautiful--and violent--woman.
“I’ll be back in two days,” Nadia said, relinquishing her efforts to inspire speech from Soleil. “Please, please talk to me then.”
iv
“The first time, I thought it was an accident. But this is the second time, Healer. I don’t know why she’s killing them.”
The Healer glanced at seven-year-old Soleil, who sat still as a statue on the examination table. She smiled at him. He looked away.
“Mrs. Rowle--”
“Nadia. Please.”
“Nadia, correct me if I’m wrong, but--your husband. He was a Death Eater, yes? He died in the war?”
“Doctor, you can’t--you’re not insinuating that murderous thoughts are genetic?”
“No. But psychopathy is.”
Nadia was silent.
“We’ll need to perform more observations...”
xxii
"I don't know what you're on about."
James pressed a finger into his temple. He loved his brother, but he knew there was a darkness in him--an unspeakable itch, a twisted sense of reality.
"Why would you write this?"
"I told you, I didn't write it." Albus held James's gaze unflinchingly. "But I would think that whoever did was trying to warn you."
James felt his stomach drop; he felt a solid, cold weight settle into its pit.
"What do you know, Albus?"
vi
Soleil's fifteenth birthday marked three and a half years since her admittance as an inpatient to Summerbee Psychiatric Institute. Psychopathy, the doctors said. The inability to feel remorse. And with schizophrenic qualities, too--the cherry on top.
Her mother had promised she'd be back at Hogwarts in a month's time, but here she was, a threat to herself and others.
Soleil chewed languidly on a piece of birthday cake, watching her inmates with vague curiosity. There was a newcomer who’d arrived last Wednesday, who cried and cried all day.
At age nine, Albus Potter was nothing like his father.
v
“Mum, please! Don’t leave me here!”
Soleil clung to Nadia’s leg, her entire body convulsing. Nadia could barely look at the girl, her own guilt so thick she knew she wouldn’t sleep tonight.
What kind of a mother left her daughter at a psych ward?
“Please! They’ll find me here. They’ll find me!”
A mother whose daughter was severely ill.
“I’ll be back every day at lunch time, my sweet. I love you.”
The nurse tore a screaming Soleil from her mother’s leg, and the latter walked out as the tears thickened her throat.
xix
“James stopped by.”
Ginny paused in hanging her jacket. She glanced over her shoulder at Harry, who stood by the kitchen sink, scrubbing at the same spot on the same teacup.
“How did he sneak out?”
“It’s James,” Harry said affectionately.
Ginny smiled, as if to say of course.
“He seemed worried, but wouldn't say why. Must be Al.”
Ginny pressed a kiss against Harry’s cheek and took over the washing.
“He’s a sweet brother to worry,” she said, “but Al’s fine. Ever since Summerbee, that is.”
“I know, Gin.” Harry settled into a kitchen chair, feeling tired. “I know.”
viii
Soleil watched the ruckus from afar. She knew this day would come, knew young Albus would be released in due time with a pat on the head and a life’s prescription of antipsychotics. She watched the nurses swarming around him, watched his brother give him a rough hug, watched his father smile. Harry Potter. The Boy Who Lived, while thousands of others… didn’t.
She’d left a note on Albus’s bedside table earlier that morning, while he ate breakfast and laughed with his little friends. Just three words. Three important, deadly words:
Keep in touch. -S
xxiii
When he spotted the letters, he knew he had to take them. He recognized the insignia stamped at the top, so he hastily shoved them into the pocket of his robes just as--
“James?”
Albus caught him.
“What are you--Why are you snooping through my things?”
James froze, wordless. Albus sneered.
“Wanted to see if ickle Al is taking his crazy pills?” Albus asked. “Don’t trust me? Is that it, brother?” He pressed his palms firmly against his brother’s chest, sending James reeling.
“No,” James protested, regaining footing. “Al, I just--”
“Get out.”
ix
(written on paper stamped with Summerbee insignia)
Albus,
It’s been a while. Are you coming to visit?
-S
xiii
Chicken hissed on the skillet. Harry labored over it, adding a pinch of tarragon, a sprinkling of salt, a spoonful of honey. He gingerly turned it over, admiring the golden brown hue of its skin. Then he wondered where his sous chef, Albus, had gone.
"Al?"
He spun around, tongs in hand, to see Albus, eyes hollow, with a knife curled in his hand.
"Albus!"
Harry's voice seemed to snap Albus out of it. He blinked, recoiled.
"Sorry, I zoned out for a second."
Harry breathed, forcing his lips into a smile.
"It's okay, son. Can I have that knife?"
x
Albus,
They’re here again. I hate them. I want them to go away.
-S
vii
“I hear voices,” Albus told her. “They tell me to hurt people. They tell me to hurt me.”
Soleil beckoned the young boy to sit on her lap and, when he did, wrapped him in her arms. He snuggled against her, looking for comfort that Soleil mechanically gave.
“I know what it’s like, Albus,” she told him. “I see people. I see all the people my dad killed. They never speak... they just stand there, watching me. They’re real. But no one believes me.”
Albus tilted his head back to look at her, his gaze too feeling.
“I believe you.”
xi
It’s his fault, Albus. It’s all his fault that so many people are dead.
-S
i
Soleil. Her baby, her bright star. A happy souvenir from her loveless marriage, from the monster who had come home smelling of death and had refused, for years, to give her life.
Soleil’s life began shortly after her father’s life ended. And now, as Nadia held her dear one in her arms, Soleil’s palm as small as a thimble, she found herself promising her child that she would never know darkness.
“For as long as you shall live, my sweet,” she cooed.
xii
You have to kill him.
-you know who
xxv
James rounded the corner, shouting the password at the gargoyle
She’d been writing him for years
Raced up the stairs, two at a time
Telling him to kill his father
Grabbed a handful of Floo Powder
But Albus wouldn’t do it
Scattered it in the flames
Not while he was on his meds
Leapt in
And that letter--Harry Potter is dead
“Potter residence!”
A warning, and a reassurance
Felt the weight of the Floo network pulling him home
Albus still had his humanity
Stumbled through the grate
He wouldn’t do it
Shouted, “Dad! Albus!”
Right?
xxvi
Visiting hours ended at 10 PM; Nadia, however, had special authorization from Healer Eames to come whenever she pleased. Now, at half past midnight, she hoped to surprise Soleil into talking.
But as she stood in Soleil’s doorway, she saw them--standing vigil around Soleil’s bed as she rocked. She saw them and they saw her and they vanished.
“Soleil!” she gasped, running to throw her arms around her daughter, holding her and rocking her. “I saw them. I saw them.”
Soleil stiffened. “I told you,” she said. “But you wouldn’t listen. And now Harry Potter is dead.”
xxvii
kill him
hurt him
kill him
KILL HIM
He felt the knife in his hand, felt the breath in his throat and the tears in his eyes and his father’s breathing shook him like an earthquake tearing through bedrock.
kill him
He’d stopped his meds last week. He wanted to be free. He thought he could be free.
hurt him
He couldn’t.
“I’m sorry,” he whimpered.