Chapter 10
In that moment, Aster was more scared of his uncle than he'd ever been before. He ran his fingers through his hair, rocking back and forth in his cupboard. Vernon was full of rage, and Aster felt himself slide back into his mind, like he did far too often than was probably healthy.
He found himself back at that awful night, the one he wasn't quite sure how he could remember but he could. The grainy memory built itself around him, and he was being rocked by his mother, and his father had gone to get the front door, and his mother was saying that "I should take them to bed now, don't you think?"
And then there was a terrible flash of light, and his father fell down to the ground with the crunch of his glasses, and all of a sudden his mother was screaming, and hot wet tears were falling onto his face, and his mother tore around the corner but there was too much rubble, so she fell into the nursery.
Harry and him were deposited into their crib, and their mother had begun to pile up chairs against the door in what he later realized was probably her remembering those old safety drills that they had at school. Aster clutched his teddy bear who he called Moons, after his uncle, and then their mum backed up, and sat against the crib.
She must have been crying, her shoulders shaking. She turned to them, her green eyes that were so similar to Harry's wide and scared.
"Harry, Aster, if I die-and I probably will now, matters of fact-I love you, dada loves you, uncles padfoot and moony love you. Okay? Okay. Okay. Oh my god, what am I doing...you won't even remember this! I'm crazy. God." She was crying again, and Aster clutched moons even tighter as the door burst off of its hinges, and this strange man thingy slithered into the room. Harry shook the bars of the crib, peering at the man, and Aster knew that he thought it was their father.
"Stand aside, silly girl!" Their mother refused.
And she was gone.