Chapter 3
2003 - Harry
The door to Neville’s shop closed behind him and Harry paused for a moment to wipe away the sweat that had collected on his brow. His fingers quivered as he pulled his hand down. Pushing his hands into his armpits, Harry started moving again, doing his best to ignore the way his knees quivered under his weight or the way his eyes blurred and burned as he squinted down the road. It took five minutes of walking, agonising walking, to get to an alleyway that was suitable for apparating - five minutes too long, five minutes of wishing that he was home already. Home where the fire was always warm and inviting, home where the oven was always full of some glorious new treat. Home where his family was. But his family-
The moment Harry twisted on his heel, sending his body elsewhere, he immediately wished he was back in the alleyway. The cold hearth was barren, laden with used, blackened wood. The only smell permeating the small house was dust. Dust and the faint scent of mildew, lingering from the latest bout of heavy rain.
“Is it done?”
Harry whipped around. Hand jumping to his pocket. Adrenaline spreading like magic through his bloodstream.
“Merlin, Andromeda. Don’t do that.”
His fingers curled around the empty air that had taken up residence in his pocket before he pulled it out again, crossing his arms across his chest.
“But yes, it’s done.”
“Good.”
She turned, the door shutting behind her with a definitive click. With heavy footsteps, Harry lowered himself into one of the dining room chairs, the belt that had been slowly tightening around his chest ever since he set foot in that bloody flower shop reaching its tightest point. The dark wood of the table, a Black heirloom taken from Grimmauld, was firm under his elbows as he slumped, head in his hands. A sound not unlike a sob burned its way up his throat, brutally extinguished before it could push itself into the cold, unforgiving air of the outside world.
His watch buzzed, beeping faintly against his wrist. Harry took a deep breath, tapping it before standing and making his way to the kitchen. As he set the kettle to boil and pulled the pasta from the pantry, the memory of a young boy lingered by his side. The boy’s hair cycled through the rainbow, face alight with excitement as Harry made the simplest, blandest pasta dish he could. As though even that minute act of creation was magic to the child. If he really tried, Harry could almost feel the cold touch of the boy’s ghostly fingers against his leg as the child peered over the counter. Harry sighed, picking up the warm bowl, shaking his head to dispel the illusion.
All the work that Harry had done to make the house as warm and inviting as he could seemed to seep away as he approached the door. Simplistic with its simple white paint, it loomed in front of him. The belt stretched in his chest, creaking as it tightened impossibly further. Harry opened his mouth but closed it again, words running away from him. Instead, he raised a hand, knocking once before dropping the bowl on the ground and making a hasty retreat.
The lounge room was out of sight of the door and once he made it, Harry collapsed, boneless, on the couch. His head lolled back against the cool leather. Deep breaths. That’s what he had to focus on. It didn’t matter that Andromeda was hiding from her grief, it didn’t matter that the funeral was coming faster than Harry could prepare. None of it mattered. Harry didn’t care. He would not care.
The door creaked as it opened and again as it closed. Harry sighed, shifting so he was lying on the couch, head buried in a cushion. One hour of sleep and he would get up. One hour, just to alleviate some of the aches that were seeping through his muscles. Just a little bit so he didn’t feel like an Inferius, the walking dead. Just a short nap.
—
Harry woke up, an undetermined amount of time later, to the eerie paleness of the street lights streaming through the window. His neck protested as he heaved himself into a sitting position. The emptied bowl was sitting outside Andromeda’s door and Harry breathed a sigh of relief. At least she was eating. That was something.
He loaded it into the dishwasher and turned it on. His feet moved to take him out of the kitchen but he stopped. What else was there to do? It was times like that he missed he hand washing his aunt and uncle used to make him do. At least then he was doing something, a least then a little part of brain was distracted from the echoing emptiness of this house that used to be home.
His gaze wandered back to the shut door. No noise emitted from it but that meant nothing. Finding Andromeda sobbing surrounded by a silencing charm was happening more and more often the closer the funeral came. It was a weight sitting on both of their chests that Harry didn’t know would ever go away, even after the nightmarish event that would make it all real. He just wished that they could deal with it together, like the family they had pretended to be ever since Teddy came into their lives. The realisation that the boy they had both come to love as their own was the only thing joining the two of them had been just another boulder crashing down on him. Emotions had escaped him, as they often had since Harry had found out, the opposite of how he had felt after Sirius’ death, but he couldn’t help but miss what once was.
The nights sitting at the kitchen bench with a couple glasses of wine, the only light that of a candle because Teddy needed complete darkness to sleep. The way they would take turns taking Teddy out each day and the way they would fill the other in on any important milestones they had missed. The first time Andromeda had made such an effort to broaden her horizons when Harry had shared with her his muggle upbringing, even going so far as to suggest a muggle daycare. She has said that Remus and Tonks would have wanted Teddy to have that exposure, for him to treat muggles as just other humans, but the thought behind the idea made Harry’s eyes go glassy. Harry had never been to daycare as a child but the fact that Teddy was attending, and attending happily, made his heart lighten.
The small moments that had meant so much at the time, but now the house was empty, the silence a gaping hole and Harry was left to wonder whether Teddy was the only thing tying the two together.