When Anthony Goldstein was eight years old, he fell out of an apple tree on his grandparent’s farm. He broke his arm in two places and dislocated his wrist.
His grandparents took him to the hospital, then brought him home with a cast and orders to keep him out of trees. His grandparents were fine with this, they could keep an eight year old entertained easily, they always had stories to tell.
Their stories weren’t fairytales, Anthony was never raised on fairytales. They were for children who didn’t have grandparents that saw an almost end to their young lives.
His grandparents’ stories started with a dark night, it started with angry men knocking on their doors and demanding that they come with them. They had no time to pack their bags, no time feed their cats, no time say goodbye to their neighbors.
They didn’t know one another yet, but they would meet in a matter of days.
In the dark of a moonless night, they would be forced on a train, in cattle carts with those they knew, those they had seen before, and those they would never see again. The days would pass, the clacking of the train tracks loud and unrelenting, the crying never stopping, the screaming wails of babies and children worse than anything else.
When the train stopped, they were separated, two rows, two fates.
Anthony’s grandmother loss both of her younger brothers, her baby sister, and her mother. Anthony’s grandfather loss both of his older sisters and their nursing children.
They were forced to a line where their hair was cut off, their clothes were taken, and they were showered with ice. It was a hard pass on if they got the easier way, easier than being forced off to the side and placed in the shower with no water.
His grandparents had many scars, but none were as loud as the numbers forced on their skin.
His grandmother didn’t make a noise when the needle touched her skin, his grandfather screamed.
They still hadn’t met yet, but their time was coming.
The place that they were forced to sleep was nothing better than a roof. The walls were poorly put together sheet metal and the floor was dirt. They were given threads to wear and shoes that didn’t fit, they were given nothing and told to survive.
They survived.
Anthony always fell asleep before the ending, before they met each other and lived happily ever after. He knew that the story had a happy ending, his grandparents were here to tell him the story, but his nightmares were always the same after that.
Stuck in the dark, cold and alone, no one to hear him scream as his arm burned, no one to see him with no hair, no one to hold him when he cried.
He didn’t know that he was prophetic.
~`~
When Anthony Goldstein was eleven, a women with a stern face and warm eyes and his grandmother’s high standards, came and told him that he was magic.
Magic, is a fairytale, made up and unreal, not one of his grandparent’s stories. Magic isn’t turning apples into oranges and back again; magic isn’t a women turning into a cat and then a women again; magic is wild and insane and not what he was raised to believe.
Magic, is a fairytale, and Anthony didn’t know any of them.
But he was magic, at eight he broke his arm falling out of an apple tree, at nine he fell out of the same tree and bounced instead of broke.
His parents were interested in magic, but weary, his mother especially. Witchcraft was a real thing, an unbelievable thing, but it existed just as he did.
The summer became a whirlwind, spent reading and learning and researching a new world. But on Saturdays they went to the farm, the apple orchard and the goats and the potatoes waiting for them. His parents were excited for him, he was going to a private school, a new place to learn and find a home.
He was taught to take the world in, to see what the world had to offer, and to find a place that accepted his heritage. He knew what he was, what people would say about his name, about his parents, what they would ask about his grandparents.
They survived a war as it raged around them, stuck and hidden and kept in boxes and chains. In the end, they were forced to walk for hours, days, weeks. His grandfather had lost two toes, his grandmother had scars from blisters long gone.
Anthony couldn’t tell his grandparents that he was magic, not because they wouldn’t understand, but because they knew what happened to people who were told they were different.
He wore the Star of David on a chain around his neck, just as his grandparents had once been forced to sew it into their clothes.
~`~
His parents put him on a train, the clacking was loud and persistent for hours, but there were others like him, magic and Muggleborn. None of the others in his compartment asked about his smoked fish sandwich or the star around his neck.
His mother had kissed his forehead and told him to be safe, his father reminded him that they were proud of him no matter what.
Anthony knew that his next seven school years would be interesting, especially if he was to spend it with the other kids around him. They were loud and all-knowing and snappy and mean and quiet and kind and stupid all at once. They were all the best and worst versions of themselves at eleven.
When all the others surged forward for treats from the trolley cart, Anthony found the apple he knew his grandmother must have packed away for him. It was always her going away gift for him, a story that she had yet to share.
When the train stopped, they were ushered into boats and across a lake with the moon shining over them.
The castle was bright and beautiful and screamed danger with its high walls and all-consuming size.
Then they’re separated more than before.
When the hat was placed on his head, he felt more lost with his eyes covered than anything else. He remembered stories of dark moonless nights and heard the noise of a train, and a voice he doesn’t know ‘hmms’ and ‘ahhs’ in his head before announcing him a Ravenclaw.
Anthony’s fine with it, he’s always liked the color blue.
~`~
Anthony is declared a man the day of his thirteenth birthday.
His old friends from their Synagogue all come to his reading, his Hogwarts friends all surprise him at his party.
Michael Corner, Terry Boot, Padma Patil and her Gryffindor twin sister Parvati, Isobel MacDougal, and Lisa Turpin all hug him and shout their happiness for him. None of them know the real story of this day, but they understand that it’s important to him.
Today is more than just his birthday, it’s the day that his grandparents had married, a day of celebration and hope for his family.
He’s old enough to keep himself awake, to hear how his grandparents had finally met. His grandmother forced out of her bed to be a maid and his grandfather forced out of his bed to be a cook.
It was the only thing that saved them.
His own parents met at his father’s Bar Mitzvah, though they wouldn’t become anything more than friends until long after.
His grandparents had been sixteen and nineteen when they met, both of them finding solace together late in the night when they were forced to sleep on the kitchen floor of a grand house. They spent their days cleaning and cooking and not speaking other than to say ‘yes sir’ or ‘yes ma’am’. They spent their days being invisible and being told that they were replaceable and being treated like they should already be dead.
But then they found light.
They slept on the cold kitchen floor, not risking grabbing a blanket or turning on the oven for a small piece of warmth. Instead they turned to the other, and warm hands turned into love.
They survived when they were forced out of the house, forced to walk with the others that they had been forced to leave behind. They grew tired, but forced on, marching as if their lives depended on it, and it did.
Gunshots were worse than the train, than the open carts and moonless skies and night that consumed them. The rivers of blood were a true horror, a warzone within a war.
But Anthony was a man now, he was the youngest of his friends, but the only one considered a man among them.
~`~
When Anthony was fifteen, war came to Hogwarts.
It started with Umbridge, a cruel woman who claimed to be following orders. Anthony feels his skin crawl whenever she walks pass him, and he makes sure his Star of David is hidden under his robes. He knows what a woman like her would think of him.
Most of the others don’t see what he does, they see a woman with too much power, Anthony sees a woman who follows orders without question.
He knows from the stories his grandparents raised him on which is more dangerous.
Then Harry Potter starts a resistance. Dumbledore’s Army become a beacon of light to anyone who knows where to look, but the night is still dark and no moon is above them.
The world still moves forward, apples still grow on trees, and while Anthony doesn’t have a number in his arm, he has words caved into the back of his hand.
I must not tell lies.
That summer, he goes to the farm and listens to the stories. He tries to forget the horrors of his fifth year and only the good. He climbs up into the old apple trees and stares up at the stars, knowing that they can guide him anywhere he needs to go.
Then he’s back on the train again, the clacking louder than he remembers, and Padma and Terry tease him about his headache. He ignores their laced fingers and whispers and laughter, just like the others in their compartment do.
He can’t make himself eat the apple put into his school bag, so he also doesn’t see the carefully written card placed in there either.
Bądź bezpieczny, kochanie. Żyj dobrze mój dorastający mężczyźnie.
Be safe my love. Live well my growing man.
~`~
Dumbledore is killed and war rages inside Hogwarts.
The whole school is dark and bleak and black, mourning is worn differently on his friends than on him. He feels a weight of grief heavy on his shoulders, his father’s parents had died years ago, when he was just a little boy, he remembers the funeral but not the people.
That summer, he goes to the farm for what he’s sure is the last time, he goes to tell his grandparents everything. They tell him one last story, about a little girl who hid and was killed for being good and brave.
She died at sixteen, and he was older than she would ever get the chance to be.
He tells his parents, his grandparents, to leave and wait for him to find them. They don’t listen, they had seen a war, and they had lived long enough to tell him their stories. They were always fighters, it was the only way to survive, to be held in one place.
Anthony goes back to Hogwarts, and he fights against Snape, against the Carrows, and he doesn’t care if they see the Star of David around his neck or the words white on his skin.
If he’s not supposed to tell lies, then he can’t tell fairytales.
He’s one of the first to move into the Room of Requirement, following after Neville Longbottom and Justin Finch-Fletchley. The three of them get to work, figuring out how to make it work, how to change the room so it will work for them.
He has Luna Lovegood cut his hair shorter than he had ever kept it, and never lets it grow more than inch pass that.
On the first day of Hanukkah, he gets a basket of apples and a book, an old diary about a little girl who hid and loved the world despite what it did to her. She lived in a hidden room, an attic with small beds and no privacy and fear that kept them silent.
Anthony understood then, finally, that they had to win this war.
~`~
They’re all sleep deprived and tired and angry when Neville brings Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, and Hermione Granger out of the hidden tunnel. The Slytherins will think of this as the war finally coming to Hogwarts, the Hufflepuffs will say that this is when Lightening finally struck, the Gryffindors will call it a homecoming.
Anthony just sees three kids who know the end is close for them all.
War had lived in the castle since Harry Potter first stepped onto the grounds. It had taken years of mishaps, of unneeded pain and horror, of mistakes, but then the battle broke out.
Terry was taken from them first, and Anthony knew that in his nightmares, he would hear Padma screaming as if the sun would never shine again. Lisa follows Terry, a flash of bright green light, a curse from a masked stranger. Lucas Phillips is the last of their Ravenclaw clan to fall, standing in front of the library he loved and lived in, before being taken out with a sneer and a curse.
Anthony feels fire, and knows that this pain should kill him.
~`~
Anthony goes back to the farm earlier than any year before, in time for Shavout and his Confirmation. He’s still only seventeen, but the war changed something in him, it made him stronger, made him angrier, but it also made him braver.
At thirteen, they declared him a man, now at seventeen he could truly believe he was one.
Isobel and Padma and Sue Li all go to the Ministry, following paths that Anthony knows isn’t for any of them. Michael joins Anthony back at school, back at Hogwarts to walk haunted halls and take orders from Neville Longbottom again. It isn’t the same without Terry or Lisa or Lucas, but it’s better than the year before.
The incoming first years are all bright and hopeful and learn quickly not to ask about what happened the year before.
Then on May 2nd, they learn of what true horror is. Anthony feels like he’s going through the motions as he runs through the halls and tries not to see death and destruction and green and red lights. He tries to find a quiet place to mourn, and instead finds himself praying for the first time since he stepped onto the grounds.
Hogwarts is not a place of worship, it is a school meant for learning, for faith of a different kind.
That year and every year after, he finds a quiet spot, somewhere with a window and lights a single candle to remember those he lost. He knows prayers and well wishes won’t bring back the lives they lost, just as he knows that his nightmares are from stories with more truth than magic.
After sitting his exams, he goes home to the farm and tells his stories. Years of listening to his grandparents stories made him a good listener, years of living a life in shadows and secrets make him a good storyteller in his own right.
By the time he’s finished, the world is different, a little bigger, a little brighter, a little louder. He was born into a world that hated him for his faith, then he went to a world that hated him for his bloodline. He was eighteen, and had scars of his own, a fire in his arm and words carved into his skin.
So he went to work at St. Mungo’s, because he truly was good at listening to stories.
~`~
He knows several of the others that roam the halls below him. Friends that he fought with, friends that became close because of tight quarters and quiet whispers.
His grandparents fell in love in a house that was their prison, Anthony found friends in a school that was supposed to be a home.
Anthony spends his days listening and quietly suggesting ways out of problems. He works with Rose Zeller and together they work with those of all ages to see light and love and renewed strength.
He still goes back to the farm on Saturdays and listens to stories and climbs the apple trees. His grandparents are getting older, they’re age showing more and more with each day. Somedays, his grandfather can’t get out of bed, and somedays his grandmother can’t find the will to speak to him in English.
He was raised on more than a few different languages, English for where they lived, Hebrew for their faith, German for his grandfather’s home, and Polish for his grandmother’s home. He grew up reading and listening and knowing that this world was more than what was seen.
The day his grandparents died, within hours of one another in their sleep, was the same day as their New Year.
He knows that it should be a celebration, but the farm is quiet and neither of his parents can speak. They know what this day is, what this day means, and how they are supposed to mourn.
Apples don’t taste the same anymore.
~`~
His friends are all growing up around him, falling in love, getting married, having children.
Anthony doesn’t quite know how he’s supposed to feel. He’s happy for his friends, he’s happy that they found someone to spend their lives with, but at the same time, he can feel the envy, the jealousy eat at him.
He still prays, he still finds time to go to the Synagogue with his parents, he still spends Saturdays at the farm his grandparents left him. His parents wanted him to sell the land, to do something other than keep it.
He has his own flat, but he likes to climb the apple trees and he knows that one day he’ll come back and never leave.
Anthony’s parents try to set him up with girls the same age as him, all of them are pretty and all of them know the same stories that he does. They all had grandparents who were aging or gone, they had all heard their stories of horror and bravery and sadness.
None of them grew up on fairytales.
Michael goes to Hogwarts, he takes over Astronomy and hangs out with Cho Chang and Rodger Davis and the three of them look after the new Ravenclaws. Blue and bronze on their sleeves and on their hearts, Anthony can’t make himself feel the same.
Padma leaves the Ministry and after years of fighting and loving one another, then three children, she gets married to Theodore Nott.
Anthony had remembered when Theodore had cursed the word ‘faggot’ on Justin Finch-Fletchley’s face while they were in school. He remembered how all the Slytherins laughed while Justin had been cursed and attacked and sneered at all that day.
He also remembered how Justin had kissed him when Anthony had pulled him into a broom closet and fixed his face. The damage was already done, the whole school knew about Justin, but no one knew about Anthony.
Anthony didn’t even really know about himself either.
~`~
Isobel is the one to introduce him to Avery Cohen, he’s four years older than them, a former Hufflepuff, and he’s her officemate in the Department of International Magical Cooperation. Isobel is almost always gone, traveling the world and making peace, which is what she did back at Hogwarts too.
Avery Cohen, heard the same kind of stories that Anthony did growing up, he ate the same foods and celebrated the same holidays, he understood that magic was a fairytale. He lost both of his grandparents years ago, he also wears a Star of David around his neck, and after six months, he moves to the farm with Anthony.
They climb up into the apple trees and share stories about Hogwarts and their grandparents and moonless nights.
Anthony still keeps his hair short, but Avery’s is long and so curly and messy they don’t know how long it really is. They both know German and Polish, they both read and write and speak Hebrew, they don’t need English when it’s just the two of them.
His parents love Avery Cohen, just as they love Anthony. They accept them both and Anthony doesn’t know why he was ever scared to be himself before.
But he remembers the warnings of being different to those that are already different.
Some nights, Anthony still wakes up to his arm burning, a pain, an itch that he can’t get rid of. His arm burns and his throat feels raw, and he can’t help but feel the pain in his heart.
He knows that Avery is awake beside him, but he also knows that Anthony needs to be alone.
The stars always seem to be bright even if the moon is gone.
~`~
The same day that Padma has her two youngest, the twins Tarika and Rishi, is the same day that Isobel tells him that she doesn’t want the baby she’s carrying.
Isobel has three kids already, two boys and a daughter, all of which she is raising by herself while traveling the world for her job. She doesn’t want to settle down, she just wants to travel and learn and change the world at her choosing.
Avery doesn’t hesitate when Anthony asks, she had gone to him first anyways.
Anthony works with Rose Zeller, he knows her four kids, Carson, Maggie, William, and Emmaline, the MacMillan’s. He knows that Justin has his own children already, that he married Evander Davis and wasn’t interested on having more than him.
Anthony knows how family works, so when he’s offered a choice, he takes it.
Isobel already has three children, with three different fathers, who all pay her to keep quiet, or so she claims. If anyone was to ever know the secret of their lineage, of who they belonged to, they would both be screwed. Anthony knows that this is Isobel’s one power play, he knows how much she’s hurt and how many people hurt her and who hurt her.
He had been the one to pull Vincent Crabbe and his overreaching hands off of her, and he would do it again in a heartbeat.
Anthony had heard stories from his grandmother about dark rooms and angry men and hands that trapped her. Stories where she had to pretend nothing happened or else be forced into something worse.
Isobel had three children, two sons and a daughter, she only regretted having her daughter because she knew what could happen to women who were a little too nice and a little too trusting. She gave Anthony and Avery a son, a little boy with dark curly hair, gray eyes, and Isobel’s smile.
She gave Anthony a chance to change the future, just as Anthony once changed her future.
~`~
Asher Eliyahu Cohen-Goldstein is a bright and beautiful baby.
Anthony couldn’t believe that he was a father, even as Asher grew and changed and eventual became a man. He couldn’t believe that he got to pass on his faith, his learnings, and even his magic to someone so kind and gentle and wonderful. He couldn’t believe, that this boy, this man, could be so much like him, while not sharing any part of their lineage.
He couldn’t believe that he had a son, someone to climb the apple trees with, someone to share his stories with, someone to tell the stories that his grandparent’s once told him.
On Asher’s thirteenth birthday, they declared him a man, on his seventeenth birthday, Asher proved it to his fathers.
Anthony couldn’t have been prouder.