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Today is a hectic day, but quiet. Severina stands at her worktable, cutting mandrakes into tiny little nodes. One of them screams, its mouth a black void with tiny, white, pearly teeth.
She wants to dissolve into that void until nothing remains, until her heart stops being heavy.
She twists a vial of Dragon’s blood; the crimson red follows linearly into the phial. Some of it seeps into her black gloves, staining her hands an ugly red.
Immediately, she rushes to the sink, rubbing and clawing at her palms, her nails digging between pale fingers—anything to get this hideous colour off her.
It never does. Harry will always haunt her—the exact shade of vermilion he spilled, his body curled up. Dead. Twelve years of her and Sirius loving that child, twelve years of family, ruined by a spell, by a war that should have had no place for a child.
It is late at night when she finds the broom. Gold and sleek, its model number gleams. The initials H.P. are scratched into it. Sirius had bought it for him; she had called it frivolity, another way to make him like his father. But her foolish heart could not dare to prevent the happiness that bloomed in Harry, to ride it.
She takes the broom out of its holder and hides it within a box. She does not want to see it.
Sirius, however, sniffs it out in the morning. His face darkens and his voice thins. “What’s the meaning of this?” he demands—as if he doesn’t know the explanation, the same one that has locked Harry’s door and his belongings in the cupboard.
“I just placed it away,” she says, away from her eyes, from her heart, where she cannot see it, cannot see the child she could not save.
It causes Sirius to snap. “You—you didn’t place it away—no, you fucking hid it,” he shouts. “You just want to pretend he doesn’t exist.” He slams the broom on the floor; it cracks. “As if I didn’t spend my life caring for the child and the rest of it now mourning him.”
She does not speak for a while. Sirius doesn’t push her, either. He pours a glass of water for himself.
“He was my child too,” she replies, her body still. Twelve long years during which Harry had graced them with his presence, changed their lives for the better, made her love him and Sirius too.
“Exactly,” Sirius takes the glass, gulping it down in one fast breath. “He was our child, a fact you try to erase.” He grips the broom tightly and moves away, his head turned.
“I am sorry,” he whispers in her ear, cold and hurt.
It’s almost a routine by now—them hurting each other, then coming to heal.
He wraps her in his arms, holds her tight as if she might leave as Harry did.
How are they going to live without Harry, she wonders. Perhaps they both died the day Harry did, leaving only broken husks.
They cry themselves to sleep.
There is a door at the end of the hall.
There was no door at the end of the hall.
It’s colourful, almost mocking, amidst their sorrow.
“What the fuck is that?” Sirius fumbles with the doorknob, putting an ear to the frame. “Laughing,” he murmurs. “I hear laughing.”
“Perhaps we both have gone mad with pain,” she states, turning back toward the bedroom.
Later, she finds Sirius huddled, his eyes red and his face pale.
“I can hear him,” he comes to shake her. “Severina, I can hear him—Harry. He’s in there.”
“Stop it.”
“No—you have to believe me.” He points at the door, the door that was not there in the morning.
“Sirius,” she places her hands on his chest. “Harry’s dead.” It has no effect. “He has been for a year.”
“But I hear him.”
Tired, she twists the brass doorknob.
The door opens.
It’s a hallway, bright and green, with narrow walls decorated by pictures and shabby old children's drawings.
The glossy, happy faces of the Potters stare back—Lily and James,
Older, streaked with grey and lines—and between them, a living Harry.
Sirius looks at her, one hand pressed over his mouth, another tracing Harry’s smile from the frame.
They walk on the balls of their feet over the carpeted floor, past the sleeping forms of Lily and James curled in their bed, enveloped in each other’s embrace, unaware and unsuspecting.
They slither like ghosts until they reach his room.
Her breath hitches. Sirius pushes back a choked sob he didn’t know he was holding.
Lying on the divan, hand resting over his stomach, rosy lips slightly parted. Around him, placed carefully, is his beloved Nimbus.
Alive. The word repeats in her mind. Their Harry, not dead, not with blood pooling around, blood she could never clean off. Skin fair and healthy, unlike the awful waxy pallor he had at his funeral, lips bruised and purple.
Before she can act, Sirius holds her hand tightly, leaving crescent prints. He does not stop until they stand a mere inch away from him.
His tired blue eyes meet hers. How many times had he cried over these past years?
What they do next is both cunning and brave.
A crime, really.
She cups Harry’s face while Sirius takes out his wand.
“Obliviate.”
Today is a hectic day; she slices the onions thinly. She opens the bottle of sauce with a pop and pours it into the stew, satisfied watching the aroma fill the hall and the steam curl in the air.
“Harry, come on, be fast!” Sirius laughs, high in the air, his black hair shining in the sun.
“Don’t get cocky, Harry!” He swats past to catch the bright Golden Snitch.
Their happy family.
She walks past the halls toward the fridge.
The door—locked and tight after six months of silence.
A scream, raw and violent. A woman’s.
For a moment, silence. Then a cry, muffled and broken. A man’s.
They mix together—the rustle of fabrics, the breaking of glass.
“We should get the door at the end walled up,” she would mention to Sirius during dinner. “It serves no purpose now.”
He kissed her on the cheek, then poured Harry a glass of water.
“Tomorrow,” he says.