Resolve
Resolve
Willow’s instincts were right. That rare and beautiful sunny English day was the last. The scatter of clouds drifting across the skies as afternoon became evening brought rain by nightfall, thunder and lightning by midnight and a sharp chill by morning. Though there were still warm, golden days, something vital had gone. Soon the leaves would change colour and the first dawn light would reveal the sparkle of frost on the grass.
And I would resume my interrupted trip in search of London and a way back to Harry.
But when, one cool, grey afternoon, I said it might be time to get on the road again, Willow’s green eyes grew round with surprise. “No, Stephen! Not yet!”
“Oh, not bored with my company, then?” I teased, looking up at her from where I knelt on the ground, learning how to dig up carrots from the kitchen garden. “Don’t want to lose my great conversation and sparkling wit, hmm?”
“Yeah, right!” She snorted laughter from behind a potato she was inspecting.
“Without all that wit of yours, what would I use to put me to sleep in the evening?”
I groaned. “Walked right into that one, didn’t I?” I set a cluster of carrots in the basket beside me. Sitting back on my heels, I studied her for a moment. “Look, Willow, I’ve taken advantage of your kindness long enough. I have a Godson I wanted to see…”
I almost said “months ago”. It was half a lie, but better than saying I wanted to see him “years from now”, so I let my words trail away into silence and waited.
Tossing several potatoes into a basket of her own, Willow scrambled to her feet and, pausing only to brush a scatter of soil from her skirt, crossed the garden to me. “Not yet.” She bent forward and squeezed my arm just above the elbow. “Not til we get more meat on your bones. Not traveling on foot with the rain and cold coming on. Stephen, you’re still far too thin and I heard you coughing off and on the night before last. Especially,” she added, raising a quick hand to silence any protest I could have come up with. “When you’ve said you’re not altogether sure how you’ll go about finding him. London’s a huge place to go wandering round in, after all.”
Had I said that? About not knowing how to find Harry? Must’ve been doing some rambling out loud during my fever.
For all the delicious joy that sang in me sometimes over knowing I was free from pursuit and the shadow of Azkaban, there was still that dangerous business of being a wandless wizard from a time outside this one. Talking of that could sound mad. What else had I said?
Before I could ask, or offer any argument about my returning health, Willow went on.
“As for taking advantage of my hospitality, don’t be silly! Dylan’s busy tending the harvest on his farm this time of year. I need all the help I can get these next weeks, getting ready for winter.”
I could see the truth in that. Tasks had filled every moment for the last several days.
But hadn’t there been something in her eyes that was more than concern?
Maybe only surprise. Whatever I’d said during my delirious wanderings, she had never treated me like a madman. And knowing I would be leaving sooner or later was not the same as hearing it announced between one potato and the next.
As for her wanting my help, it was a startling and touching request. How long had it been since anybody had asked me to do something really useful? And without all the time and effort she’d put into nursing me during my illness, I would never be setting out to find Harry at all. Giving my help- no matter how slow, clumsy or uncertain it might be, was the least I could do. And perhaps, as I worked, I’d come up with a plan…
“Okay,” I said, amazed by the look of relief that filled her eyes. “I’ll stay.”
The next days were crowded with things to do.
We harvested the roots and vegetables from the garden, then picked apples for cider and preserves. Memories of Herbology classes that I thought long since dissolved into dust, came back, clear and aromatic, as she carried in basketsful of fresh herbs.
“What are you doing?” she raised curious eyebrows as I set an armload of firewood by the hearth and reached for the basket. At last, something I could do for her without being shown how first!
“I’ll separate these for you.” Setting the basket on the kitchen table I pulled up a chair.
“You will?” Her eyebrows went higher. I could almost see her remembering the potatoes I’d laboured over, and wondering how she would occupy herself over the next several hours while I worked.
“Yeah.” I drew the basket to me and plunged confident fingers into the leaves. “If you have string, I’ll tie up whichever plants you’re planning to dry.”
The sweet lemon scent of vervain and the tangy one of mint woke beneath my hands. She stepped closer as piles of gentian, lavender, comfrey, calendula, kohosh, thyme, rosemary and burdock, emerged from the fresh cuttings she’d gathered. I’d been only a fair herbologist and no great potion maker, so I was both delighted and surprised how much I recalled about when to separate leaves and flowers from stems or roots and when to leave them joined use in various healing decoctions and infusions.
She passed me fragrant bundles as I clambered onto a chair and tied them upside down from the beams. Some, I placed above the warmth of the fire, some by the light of the sun and others by the glow of the moon.
“Do these look all right?”
She was staring up at me, an odd stillness in her face. I looked from the cluster of lemon balm leaves in her hand to the one I’d just secured in place. It was what she was concerned about, wasn’t it? That I was handling it correctly? Or…
“They’re fine.” The smile was back, but not in her green eyes.
What was wrong? I’d been so careful these last weeks! Watched what I said, how I acted. Had I done something with the plants that no Muggle would? Willow had gathered the herbs. She likely knew the mysteries of drying, infusing and decocting better than I did, so if I’d been mishandling her herbs, she’d have stopped me before any harm could come to them. Was I over-reacting to what might only be her concern that I was preparing them to her satisfaction?
No, something was troubling her. Had been for some time now. Since we’d gone on our berry gathering picnic. She’d seemed all right that morning. The slip I’d almost made about how so many people in my family were named after stars, had only occurred within the silence of my thoughts. After we’d eaten our lunch, the two of us had talked and laughed all the way home.
But she’d been quieter than usual that evening as we sorted and cleaned the berries. And what about that afternoon in the vegetable garden? The look in her eyes that had, perhaps, been more than surprise or concern?
Something was on her mind. I became more and more aware of it as Halloween came and went, ushering in cold, rainy November. We kept each other easy company as we worked on readying the house for winter , but sitting by the fire in the lengthening evenings, silences fell between us that had never been there before.
Mine, I could name. Though I still became rather easily winded, my cough had gone. My appetite was better than since before Azkaban. Already, I was certain, I was at least as fit as on the day I had dueled with Bella in the Department of Mysteries.
While I still had no workable idea for getting home, the need for one was circling round my mind like it hadn’t done since I lay it aside early in my recovery. Eager as I had been to help around the place, most of the autumn work lay behind us now. Each day I became more sure I was unlikely to figure out a plan until I was back on the road.
How often had I searched for it between the raindrops coursing down the window pane by day or amid the flames of the fire at night? I had tugged out every snippet of old conversation in my memory, along with teachers’ lectures and even phrases from school book pages for a closer look.
Anyone, anything, to do with time. There was Merlin, who could see the future. And Nicholas Flamel, who could defy time- or at least death- with the Philosopher’s Stone. Neither one of them was exactly available for consultation.
Or, the idea came one morning as I was carrying in a basket of eggs from the henhouse. What if I got myself petrified? I could leave a parchment message telling someone I trusted- Remus maybe, or Hessia- what I’d done and where I’d be waiting for them to find and release me from the spell. But by the time Willow and I sat down for supper that night, I’d figured out three major problems with that notion.
One: What if that parchment got lost in the next ninety or one hundred years?
Two: What if someone else found it? Like a Death Eater or a person from the Ministry of Magic? I could wake up dead, or worse, back in prison. Or not wake up at all if someone got it who needed parchment to kindle a fire on a cold winter’s night.
Three: Finding a Witch or Wizard to perform the spell on me in the first place.
Yeah, right, easy one, Stephen!
What about time turners? I wondered the next day as I rewarded myself for carrying in an armload of wood by sitting down to warm myself for a few minutes in the rocking chair beside the fire. There had been rumours about them when I was at school, but I had no certainty that they were more than that, even if I had the galleons to, procure one.
Oh, man! The thought that came that evening as I put dishes in the cupboard for Willow, clunked down on my guts like a dropped cauldron.
Would I have to seek a way home with the help of nothing but divination? Did I want to figure out what to do by looking into a smear of tea leaves in the bottom of my cup? Try gazing into the future to discover what it was I’d already done, so I could do it all over again and make sure I got it right? Was I desperate enough to resort to that? Yes? No? Let’s leave that at maybe, okay?… Because the real question was more like: was I a good enough diviner to risk trying it?
No. Not when, except for History of Magic where I caught up on my sleep, Divination was my rottenest subject at school. Not when I’d read in the cards that James would marry my Cousin Bellatrix.
All that thinking, and I was back where I’d begun, with that insistent tug on my mind ready and waiting to take me round again.
Oh, yeah, I could name all the reasons for my silences.
I couldn’t name what troubled Willow. What questions I saw wrestling in her eyes when she thought I wasn’t looking. Did she want go visit her son and was unsure about leaving me here on my own? Or was it about my leaving? In the last months, we’d become very close, but soon I would head off home, or at least toward adventures. What did she look ahead to? Would this isolated house grow lonely in the short cold days when she had no child to raise anymore and no husband to share the hearth with at night?
She was a beautiful, vibrant woman, clever, kind and, until not long ago, so quick to bubble over with laughter. If my heart and home weren’t a hundred years away with Harry and maybe Hessia, if I wasn’t living a lie in her company, she was the sort of lady I’d have considered sharing a life with. How could I leave her here, to live in such solitude? Unless, for some unknown reason, it was a path she followed by choice?
Before I could put my traveling plans in motion, it was something I must find out.
But how? When? Even with a wand, there was no magic spell for knowing the best words or finding a perfect time. I would have to make up my mind that anything I said, any moments I chose, would be the right ones.
Today! I told myself one late afternoon as I laid the last of the potatoes in the root cellar. Plan or no plan, I’m fit enough to travel. She won’t need to worry I’m on the road, alone and ill. It isn’t fair to wait any longer.
It wasn’t, only Willow’s feelings, or mine, I had to think about, but her very world. Each day, I was more at ease here and, as I knew from my days as a spy, more at ease meant more likely to slip up.
The things I left unsaid didn’t feel like they were for her protection now that I had strength to take myself and my secrets away and leave her Muggle reality intact.
And of course, always, always in the back of my mind was Harry. As November dwindled into dark December, his face haunted my dreams. What must he think had happened to me after all this time? That I was dead? That I’d left him on his own with Lord Snake Eyes maybe still on the loose?
I knew Harry’d survived the battle at the Ministry of Magic. That was winding down, even as Bella and I squared off. That had been almost enough when I had no fit mind to plan with and no strength to do more than miss him. It wasn’t enough anymore.
I took a long look round the cellar. The potatoes, carrots and cabbages were safely stored in here now. In her kitchen, all the herbs she’d gathered were drying rich and fragrant, along with braided bunches of onions and garlic. A fine supply of firewood was piled in the shed she’d left open for that big black dog so long ago. There was no reason, no excuse, to wait any longer.
I went back to the kitchen and paused by the window. In the last hour or so, clouds had covered the sun and the air was cooling. Was there going to be rain by nightfall?
Come on, man, I told myself, turning away with a picture of Willow’s garden tucked into my memory. No putting it off looking out the window. You’ve got to get ready to sit down and tell her what’s on your mind.
First, I would was put on some tea. I’d gotten quite expert at preparing it. Set the water to boil, sliced this morning’s bread, put the pot of strawberry jam on the table. Lay out cups, saucers, silver. Fill the teapot, mash the leaves. Not hard at all now. My old Muggle studies professor would have been so proud!
I walked to the window again, looking for her to come in from feeding the chickens. Taking rather a long time about it, wasn’t she?
How short the days were now! Another hour and it would be twilight.
“Stephen?” she said behind me.
With a start, I turned at the sound of her voice. Saw the set to her jaw, her unsmiling green eyes. “I didn’t hear you come in! Tea’s ready. Is everything all right?”
“Fine.” She waved my words away. “The tea looks wonderful! It’s only that there’s something I need to talk to you about.”
Well, this is it, I thought, pulling out a chair for her before circling the table to sit down in one of my own. They say great minds work alike. Great or not, ours had reached the same conclusion.
“Okay,” I said, pouring out tea for each of us. “What’s up then?”
She studied her teacup. “I knew when you came here,” she said. “There were things you weren’t telling me. Which isn’t to say that because I sheltered you I was entitled to your life story. I knew you were broke, half starved and nearly dead of pneumonia. Now its months later and I know you have a Godson named Harry and that you’re a town scruff who had servants growing up.” I heard the hint of a smile, quickly gone. “I told myself your life away from here didn’t matter. After all, you never acted like a dangerous criminal-”
More than three years out of prison and that casual choice of words still could make me wince. Dangerous. Criminal. I lowered my gaze. Stared at my shimmering face in the fresh poured tea. Concentrated on my cup. Grip it too loosely and she’d see that it was trembling in my hand. But too much pressure and I would shatter it.
“It weighed on my mind,” she continued. “Why you were so reluctant to talk about yourself. Even so, my instincts kept saying there was nothing to worry about. I tend to trust them. They’re usually right…”
I let my gaze rise to hers, braced myself for her next words. “What are you trying to tell me, Willow?”
“Oh, Stephen, I’m making such a botch job of explaining!” Her laugh was brief, half distracted. “There are things I could have told you before now. But so many people besides you and I could be affected by what I’m about to say, if it turns out that you’re not the sort of person I believe you to be. Up til now I could convince myself that it didn’t matter. You couldn’t have acted on my information anyway. I told myself that, considering how ill you’d been, how long it took you to gather your strength, that telling you anything would have been unkind, maybe even dangerous. But now…”
She sighed. Picked up her teacup. Stared at me through the rising steam.
I leaned toward her with my elbows on the table. Whatever this important thing was, she was about to trust me with. I almost dreaded to hear it.
Would she talk to me about staying? Or going? While she might be about to speak about any one of a hundred possibilities that I couldn’t begin to guess at, didn’t they all come down to that? Her ideas, her plans would either include me here, or would separate the threads of her life from mine and send me off in search of the future.
Without letting go her gaze, I felt for the tabletop with the bottom of my teacup. Forced my fingers to uncurl from its warmth. Waited for her to go on. What a painful thing it was, laying down the words that would separate our lives! How I’d miss this woman who had honoured me every day with the depth and generosity of her friendship.
But …
“Sirius!” I could hear Harry’s urgent shout. “Sirius!” Rising, echoing, fading away as the fabric of curtains billowed around me and the blackness came down between me and the world I’d known…
Harry! My precious Godson! Missing him was the other pain rising round my heart.
I reached for Willow’s hand. Spoke softly. “Why is it different now?”
“Because now I’ve almost left it too late,” she said. “There’s not much time for us to act. If this doesn’t happen soon, we’re going to have to-”
She froze, her words hanging, suspended, in the air between us.
“We’ll have to what?”
“Wait-”
“Wait for what?”
“No! I mean wait!” She held up a silencing hand. “Someone’s coming past the window! Oh, blast it all! Who could that be right now?”
Her chair scraped across the floorboards as she pushed away from the table and scowled at the sound of door-rattling raps that filled the room.
Rap, rap, rap. Once, twice. Louder. Three four five six times.
A brief pause and then a man’s voice shouted. “Willow! Are you home? You’ve got to come! Ellen’s in labour!”