Missed

Death is not the greatest loss in life.
The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.

-Norman Cousins

It was odd, looking back on it, how the thing he grieved the most was the thing it had taken him years to even notice it was gone. He wondered, sometimes, whether he would even know it was gone now had it not been for that auspicious, if somewhat uninteresting, day. It was something he had certainly taken for granted, and also something that he now wished he had used a bit more when he had it. He had always been a bit wary of it in his youth though, and not without good reason. It hadn’t exactly been well received, and most of his experiences with it had been bad, to say the least. Besides, it was well known as a dark talent, and Harry had vague recollections of his teenage self being reluctant to use it; as if every time it manifested it used up a tiny bit of the good within him.

No one had ever claimed teenagers were the most logical of thinkers.

But now it was gone. In truth it had been gone for a good ten or so years, but the loss still felt new. It was a waste, that was what it was. It was a waste to mourn something that had never really been his and had only been granted to him, however briefly, by something so evil. No matter how many times he told himself this though, no matter how much he reminded himself that no part of the Dark Lord could ever have been worth keeping, he couldn’t deny the truth.

This he missed.

-o00o-


‘Dad, Lily found a snake in the garden and now she’s scared.’ James nearly toppled over himself and an armchair as he ran into the room, panting with the effort of staying far enough ahead of his sister. The words were gasped in one long breath that forced him to inhale deeply when it finished straggling out, a look of pride on his face at his minor victory over his sibling. Lily followed in close on his heels; her knees skimmed with mud and grass in evidence to her brothers rather underhanded methods of gaining the lead in their impromptu race. She looked close to tears as she chewed on her bottom lip, betrayal shining in her eyes before she stomped her foot, hard, on the wooden floorboards.

‘Am not!’ she declared with the righteous indignation only children who believe they have been greatly and unforgivably wronged can manage. Somehow, Harry felt, Ginny hadn’t been completely honest with him when she assured him girls were easier to cope with than boys. After the first few years of James’ life he had struggled to see how any child could possibly be more of a handful, and had therefore clung to his wife’s assurance with the desperation of a drowning man awaiting the next big wave. It had been years before his faith in her had been proven somewhat erroneous. Admittedly Lily was quieter than both her brothers, which was saying something when it came to Albus, but as she had grown so had the bloody obvious fact that she had inherited her mother’s genes towards emotional manipulation. His dear, sweet little girl sure knew when to turn on the waterworks, or when to treat him to one of the biggest smiles he had ever seen. She was, he was utterly convinced, an evil mastermind in the making, and right now she was wearing the look that blatantly dared any observer to believe the words of someone else over her own, innocent pleas.

James was having none of it as he smirked, somewhat horrifyingly, with vindictive glee. ‘Then why’d you scream when you saw it, huh?’ he taunted, jabbing his finger towards his sister as Harry regarded them with wary anticipation. This sort of thing was much more Ginny’s forte. She had, after all, grown up with brothers of her own and therefore knew exactly how this sort of rivalry was supposed to go. Having not had any real family of his own, Harry had always found the behaviour mildly disconcerting. But then again he had grown up with Dudley. If anything, he accepted, that had left him woefully ignorant on the matter

‘I didn’t scream,’ Lily was pouting now, hurrying Harry out of his wallowing and into hastily sliding his newspaper onto the small coffee table. More often than not tears followed pouting, and Harry felt even more adrift when confronted by them than he did any amount of family rows. ‘And it startled me, is all. It’s just down by the stream, and I wanted to go paddling.’ Harry sighed as she turned her big, watery (no doubt intentionally so) eyes on him, standing and smiling reassuringly before holding his hand out to his daughter. She seized it instantly with a grin, the mud that had caked on her hands scratching against his palm.

She had bare feet, he suddenly noticed, her toes damp and stained the same green colour as her knees. Although it wasn’t cold, summer having reached its peak, he wondered about sending her to at least fetch a pair of sandals. Sure, he had gone barefoot in his youth enough times, but that hadn’t been so much a matter of choice. Sometimes he wished he had had a better guide to parenting than that provided by the Dursley’s. Years into it and the small things still threw him, and he just didn’t seem to have the same feel for it that Ginny effortlessly portrayed. Still, none of them resembled the whale Dudley had always been, so he assured himself that that, at least, ranked him better than his Aunt and Uncle. He doubted a lack of shoes would send him hurtling back to their level.

He picked his daughter up nonetheless, straddling her against his hip in a motion that was almost second nature to him now, pining his son with a slightly disapproving look when he opened his mouth, most probably to continue teasing. If there had been a time in the last few years in which all three of his children had been in the same room together for more than five minutes without bickering, he certainly couldn’t remember it. Perhaps, he considered, it would be easier when James started Hogwarts. He would miss his son terribly, of course, but no amount of parental love could cover the fact that his firstborn could be a right little troublemaker when he put his mind to it, and he seemed to put his mind to it more often than not. ‘Why don’t we go see if we can get it to move on?’ he said cheerfully to brighten the mood again. ‘Then you can go paddling. Just make sure mum doesn’t catch you,’ he added quickly. The children weren’t supposed to be near the stream without her to watch over them. Not since she had discovered just how drastically Harry’s idea of watching had differed from hers.

It could have been worse, Harry had argued defensively, having spoken to a rather harassed Hermione earlier that same day. At least Ginny had never had to remind him that raising children was not comparable to a game of Quidditch; nor had she ever needed to scold him that his son was, most undeniably and emphatically, not a Quaffle.

‘I don’t want to make it leave,’ Lily looked even closer to tears now, possibly even genuine ones, as much as Harry could tell. James instantly mimicked her, his voice becoming unnaturally high as he earned himself another scolding look from his father. Even Albus had drifted downstairs, wondering what all the noise was about. ‘It wouldn’t be fair to kick it out of its home,’ she sniffed, wiping her nose and adding snot to the array of filthy things coating her hands. It was funny, in an ironic it-annoyed-the-hell-out-of-Ginny sort of way, that he had faced Dark Wizards most of his life but he still found himself cringing away from a snotty child. ‘I just don’t want it looking at me…its creepy.’

‘I’m sure it won’t hurt you,’ Harry said in a way he hoped was soothing as he pushed open the back door, his two sons now bickering between themselves as they pushed through after them, not wanting to miss a potential show. They were almost religiously late for dinner, they disappeared from the very face of the earth come bath time, but dangle an opportunity to witness potential embarrassment in front of their freckled noses and you couldn’t get rid of them.

The sun was high in the sky, warm on his face as Harry forced all thoughts of sunscreen, suitable clothing and the one hundred and one other things he knew were somehow part of being a good parent to the back of his mind, placing Lily gently back on the ground and taking a moment to spray his squabbling sons with a blast of water from the tip of his wand. They both glowered at him, animosity temporarily forgotten or, more accurately, redirected at a common source. Lily let out a squeal of delight, only to find herself doused liberally from head to foot as she shrieked and all four of them, by unspoken command, raced to the small stream at the bottom of the garden. Both James and Albus had leapt to cling round his neck and shoulders, so his clothes were as damp as theirs by the time he collapsed under their combined weight, and Lily was flicking droplets at him from her hair. All three of them were laughing too, until Lily stepped too close to the long grass that marked the waters edge and a small, green snake slithered into view, causing her to shriek again, only this time in real distress. James and Albus’ laughter shifted quickly to become mocking as Harry frowned, silently wondering if the brief respite had lasted the five minutes he so sought.

He took Lily gently by the arm, pulling her backwards as he knelt down and looked carefully at the tiny snake, which seemed to regard him with equal curiosity in its beady eyes. Well, his children would find out sooner or later of their own accord, right? There wasn’t much, if any, point in hiding it from them. Not that he had been hiding it; it wasn’t as if bedtime stories were usually told in parseltongue and he had been skirting the issue. There had simply been no need for it, not until now. He cast a sideways glance at his daughter anyway before he spoke, receiving a tremulously smile in return. ‘Could you move on, just for a little bit?’

‘Like that’ll work,’ Albus snorted, completely shattering what little of his picture perfect moment remained. Harry rolled his eyes, either ignoring or simply not noticing the sudden twist of wrongness that hit his stomach at the comment. He waited for a couple of seconds, but a response didn’t appear to be forthcoming.

‘Please,’ he added as an afterthought, ignoring his sons giggling. Snakes appreciated common decency and good manners as much as the next person, after all, and Ginny was always harping on about setting a good example. ‘It will only be for a short time.’

‘Come on dad,’ Albus had stepped up next to him and was pulling on his shirt sleeve, impatience ringing in his voice. ‘James could have done that.’

‘He could?’ Harry sat back on his legs, attempting to brush the mud from his trousers and regarding his eldest with a wary expression. When children claimed they could talk to animals, Harry had learnt it was best to establish they were exaggerating with absolute certainty before dismissing their enthusiastic ramblings.

‘It’s not like it takes a genius to tell a snake to get lost,’ Albus continued, oblivious to his fathers growing apprehension as Harry realised this was most probably not a repeat of the incident with Lily and the caterpillar. ‘Even his little brain could probably manage it.’

‘Wait,’ Harry held out a hand to stall the oncoming bickering that was about to pick up again. James had turned an angry shade of red. ‘You could understand me?’

‘What’s not to understand?’ Albus scoffed with a shrug, apparently answering not only for his brother, but also himself. ‘It’s a bit stupid, if you ask me though,’ it occasional perturbed Harry how his son managed to pick up both the innate wisdom and sneering disdain of his namesakes. ‘Lil’s isn’t three any more, you telling it to go away isn’t going to make her feel better.’

Harry glanced at his daughter, who was pulling a strand of hair round and round her fingers with every indication of having understood every single word that had been spoken. Something in him froze at that. Give him a hundred Basilisks or a thousand Horcruxes. He would sooner deal with either, or possibly even both – at the same time - than he would explain this to the row of, if not quite shining, then at least eager faces before him. ‘I don’t want to move it without its permission,’ he mumbled feebly, getting slowly to his feet, which his eyes assured him were still firmly beneath him no matter how much it felt like the ground had shifted. Now all three of them were regarding him as though he had gone truly bonkers, thusly confirming his gut instinct that this was one of those things Ginny should have to handle. ‘Just wait here for a minute, will you,’ he instructed bemusedly.

‘Why?’ James looked curious.

‘I need to get your mother. I think she should see this,’ and then sort it all out, he silently amended. Because that was what Ginny did, she made things better.

‘It’s just a snake.’

‘Still,’ Harry started walking back across the garden, his head jerking to look over his shoulder with bewilderment every few seconds until he reached the door, his offspring apparently sensing that this was not a time to misbehave. ‘Ginny,’ he shouted, pushing it open without preamble so that it banged loudly against the wall. ‘Ginny, I really think you should see something.’ He didn’t notice her approach, too busy watching through the nearest window as James snapped a twig from a low tree and took it upon himself to brandish it at, what Harry could only assume, was the snake responsible for this whole problem. Albus was making a show of quietly but inarguably ordering Lily around as Harry internally debated whether using Extendable Ears on ones children was a breach of some sort of pre-existing trust. He jumped when Ginny’s voice replied by his shoulder.

‘What?’ She didn’t look so much annoyed as expectant, although she hadn’t put down the pile of laundry she had evidently been collecting from the children’s rooms. He took it gently from her arms, placing it on the nearest sideboard.

‘The children,’ he managed to mumble, taking her now empty hand and dragging her unceremoniously through the door. She stumbled only slightly at the sudden movement, admonishing him with a mild curse before quickly matching his pace as he moved with single-minded determination back towards the stream.

‘What about them?’ Ginny questioned, irritation seeping into her tone. Harry didn’t even look round to her, his entire being focused on reaching the bottom of the garden. ‘They had better not have gotten hurt, Harry James Potter,’ she scolded despite the fact that Harry clearly wasn’t listening. ‘What did I tell you about children near open water?’ she stumbled again on a clod of mud, looking relieved as the children came into view, her relief quickly muting back into mild annoyance. ‘Are you going to tell me why you dragged me down here then, or not?’ She almost slammed into his back when he stopped without warning, pulling her hand from his and glancing round the tiny clearing, trying to spot for herself the cause of her husband’s odd behaviour.

‘The snake,’ Harry whispered when he finally spoke, answering her question and pulling her close, pointing to where the small body still lay coiled in the grass, it’s tongue occasionally flickering out to taste the air. Ginny’s eyes widened in understanding.

‘Which one?’ she said, her eyes bright with a mixture of pride and anxiety.

‘All of them,’ Harry abruptly declared with an expansive gesture. A couple of birds took flight at his unexpected outburst. ‘I mean, what are the chances?’

Ginny didn’t look thrilled, either due to his raised voice or because she was picking up on his own evident distress. ‘Are you sure?’ Ever the calm one, she was though.

‘Albus,’ Harry commanded, spinning round on his son. Albus looked nervous, and not without cause. It was a tone that was usually followed with groundings, or loss of television privileges. It had never before been followed with this: ‘Say something to the snake.’

Albus cast his older brother a vaguely bemused look, getting one back that clearly instructed him to humour his obviously touched father. ‘What d’ya want me to say?’

‘Anything,’ Harry sighed.

‘But…it’s a snake.’ Albus looked as if he had been instructed to lecture a beetle on the benefits of charms over House Elves.

‘Just say hello or something.’

Albus looked unimpressed, but sidled forwards anyway, bending down slightly and checking around him to make sure no one was watching. No one beyond his immediate family, that was. James would keep quiet out of mutual embarrassment, but if Teddy were to appear now, he would never live it down.

‘Hello,’ he offered tentatively.

‘See,’ Harry all but shouted less than a second after the word had left his mouth. Ginny leant back slightly and frowned.

‘Harry,’ she said chidingly, ‘that was English.’

To his benefit, Harry looked stunned and more than a little mortified. ‘It was?’ he rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly, his overly exuberant enthusiasm lessening slightly as he smiled. ‘Never could tell the difference myself,’ he admitted, patting his wife’s arm before kneeling in the grass next to his son. ‘You have to concentrate on the snake,’ he offered helpfully. ‘It just sounds normal to you, but you have to trust that it isn’t.’

‘Trust what?’ Albus looked confused. James looked oddly thoughtful

‘Dad’s a parselmouth,’ he finally concluded. Harry concluded he would be perusing his son’s book collection later that evening to check the source of his knowledge on the matter. Regardless of his own personal thoughts on the topic, it was still widely considered dark, and therefore primarily discussed in the darker texts. ‘And he reckons we are too. That’s why we could understand him.’ Ginny nodded in confirmation, ruffling her sons hair, much to his disgust. Harry took her continued calmness as an indication that it wasn’t the end of the world after all. Not that he minded his children being able to talk to snakes, not in the least. The bit he was dreading was when his ever curious and remarkably-adept-at-noticing-the-details-you-desperately-hoped-they-would-miss children asked him exactly where the unusual power came from. He didn’t think there was a good way to phrase ‘the late Dark Lord Voldemort, a part of whose soul once resided in your dear old dad’.

All the noise and movement was evidently getting too much for the snake, however, as it uncoiled itself lazily and slithered through the long grass, out of sight except for the slight rustling in the tips of the long stems.

‘No, wait!’ Harry shouted automatically after it. He wanted his children to realise for themselves that it wasn’t a dark or evil talent, and chatting to the tiny garden snake seemed about as far from evil as it was possible to get. His own voice muffled the soft gasp Ginny emitted at his words, her hand rising to her mouth as she chewed on her knuckle whilst Harry continued regardless. ‘We didn’t mean to disturb you.’

‘Harry,’ she said, her voice pained as she paced a hand on his shoulder. He didn’t realised he had started to move after the small creature, the action probably only helping to scare it even further away more than anything. ‘Let it go, it won’t come back.’

‘We’ll find another one then,’ Harry said grimly. He’d stand in this bloody spot calling all night if he had to.

‘No,’ Ginny was firm as Harry finally registered her tone and the sad glint in her eyes, giving her his full attention for the first time since he had called to her inside. She didn’t particularly need to tell him after that, but she did anyway. ‘I understood you.’

‘Oh,’ apparently she expected more from him. He wasn’t sure he had any more to give, not whilst he felt strangely empty at the new knowledge. He had probably been stupid not to realise it sooner though. Parseltongue had been a talent of Voldemort’s, and he had gone to pretty extreme lengths, in hindsight, to ensure absolutely none of the Dark Lord remained a part of him. Bye-bye Dark Lord, bye-bye talking to snakes; be sure to wave nicely as it leaves. He really should have seen it coming. ‘Guess I should have figured,’ he tried to sound light hearted, not only because his children were standing nearby, watching attentively, but because a small part of him was insisting this was not something he had any right to be upset over.

After all, for him to be able to talk to snakes a part of the Dark Lord, no matter how small, would have to be permitted to continue to exist. For him to be wishing for such a thing was the height of selfishness. He was upset though, regardless of the fact that he had only spoken to three snakes in his entire life, two of which had been out for his blood. ‘I mean, what were the chances of all three of them inheriting the gift. Makes more sense for me to have lost it.’ He didn’t move as Ginny leant against him, instead allowing himself to rest back against her, as James grabbed both Albus and Lily by the arms with remarkable foresight and consideration, dragging them back towards the house.

Ginny put her arms round her husband’s neck, searching his face for something. ‘Is it really that bad that it’s gone?’ Harry didn’t blame her for the fact that she obviously didn’t understand. She was trying, but her experiences had been so different to his. She had carried a shard of the Dark Lord herself, however briefly. Harry doubted there was anything from that experience she would have desired to cling on to.

‘I dunno,’ Harry sighed, leaning his chin on her shoulder as his hand rubbed circles on the small of her back. ‘It’s not like it was really ever mine to begin with anyway,’ he still remembered the small, shivering figure that barely passed for human, sitting, cowering, in the corner of the train station; the part of Voldemort that had lived with him for so many years. This was the first time he had considered it since, and it was certainly the first time he had wished he had, perhaps, taken a little longer to ponder all the possibly implications of what he had done. Just because Voldemort had been evil did not mean that every individual thing that had made him uniquely him had also been. Could he have carved out just this part?

Would it ever have been worth it?

Well, he knew the answer to that, no matter how fanciful his thoughts insisted on being. Nothing could have been worth it. Voldemort could have held the very secret to curing all ills and solving world hunger, and it still would not have been.

‘I guess I never considered anything of his worth keeping. What if I was the last?’

‘You weren’t.’

‘Well, what if I was the last good one, then.’ Harry argued, merely for the sake of arguing. Ginny just smiled at him.

‘It’s okay to miss it,’ she said softly as Harry sighed in defeat, because that was the problem. People were not supposed to miss the Dark Lord, or any part of him. What right did he have to miss this? It was an insult, quite possibly, to all the people who had died for Harry to be so desperately clinging to a part of the monster that had killed them. Ginny didn’t lie to him though, except when it came to the ease of respective children’s gender, so believing her wasn’t really an issue.

Which was just as well, because regardless of what was right, regardless of everything he knew and reasoned, regardless of the guilt that gnawed away at him…

Still it was missed.