Chapter 1: Infanticide

Harry is staring, horrified, at the closed linen closet door in the dining room of his home at Twelve Grimmauld Place. He has suddenly recalled that his baby was born one week ago and that he put it into the closet, closed the door, and promptly forgot all about it. Now, seven days later, he remembers, and he stands frozen with fear, his eyes fixed on the door. No sound comes from within, no hint of motion. The baby must be dead by now, dead and decaying. How could he have done that? How could he have simply forgotten? Aghast, he wishes he could turn time backwards and rescue the baby before it dies, but he realizes with a sickening feeling that it is too late. Now he's afraid to open the closet door and see what is lying on the floor inside, but he knows he must.

Suddenly Harry found himself lying in his bed, surrounded by the deep blackness of night. The bedclothes were soft and warm over him. The vision of the dining room and the terrifying closet door had vanished. He reached sideways with his left arm and felt the rounded mass of Ginny's sleeping form a few inches away. The realization flooded him that the frightening experience of a few moments ago had been a nightmare, yet another nightmare, and his baby was still alive, curled up and warm in the water-filled haven of Ginny's womb, its tiny heart beating strongly and its little arms and legs stretching out from time to time. Harry lay without moving, but his eyes were wide open and he could sense his own heart pounding harder than usual. He considered what to do, and rejected the idea of waking Ginny up and seeking comfort from her. How could he say, "I dreamed I murdered our baby"? That would only upset her, even make her fear for his fitness as a father, not to speak of disturbing her all-too-often-broken sleep. But going back to sleep promptly was also out of the question; his relief at realizing that the baby was safe was not enough to erase the lingering feeling of misery caused by the nightmare.

Harry rolled a little to his right and checked the glowing red numbers on his bedside clock. The time was 4:23 a.m., not too early to declare that the new day had begun. Carefully, slowly, so as to not wake Ginny, Harry slid his legs out from under the covers and sat up cautiously on the edge of the bed. Feeling with his feet in the dark, he located his bedroom slippers and stood up. He rarely walked around the house in his pajamas, so he was not certain where his dressing gown was, but his hands found it hanging on the back of his bedroom door. He slipped it on and walked noiselessly out into the hall, automatically picking up his wand and glasses as he left the bedroom.

"Lumos," he whispered softly, and a dim light shone from the tip of the wand, illuminating his steps down the staircase. Once in the main hall, Harry quietly opened the door to the kitchen stairs and descended the narrow stone steps to the kitchen. It was always cool here, even in the heat of summer. The thick stone walls acted as a heat sink, absorbing heat from cooking or hot weather, and releasing it later, so that the temperature remained even and comfortable. Harry turned on a lamp on the wall to provide a low light to the room and decided to just sit at the table with a mug of tea for a while and regain his equanimity. There was a row of cups and mugs on the dresser, including two cups and saucers recently given to Ginny as a gift from Hermione. They were white with a pattern of delicate pink flowers, and not the style that Ginny usually favored, but she loved them and since receiving them she always chose them for her own tea. Harry wondered if the color and the delicacy reminded her of the baby.

But now the delicate pink cups weren't enough for him. He wanted something bigger, sturdier, more substantial, to help him ground himself in the here-and-now. He reached up and chose a dark blue, straight-sided mug with a handle large enough to easily fit a masculine hand. He had bought it the last time that he and Ginny had visited Bill and Fleur at Shell Cottage on the coast, and they had stopped in at a gift shop in town operated by the Royal National Lifeboat Institution. The shop was full of pretty little household items, aprons and shirts, books and posters, all for sale to benefit the RNLI, a volunteer organization that rescued people in peril on the sea all around the coast of the British Isles. Harry felt drawn to the brave Muggles who had been risking their own lives in open boats on heavy seas since 1824 to rescue people who would otherwise have drowned, so he had bought this mug, knowing that its purchase would support their work.

Now he turned the mug around in his hands to look at the RNLI logo on the side of the mug: a flag-shaped design in red, white, and gold. It was comforting to look at the mug and remember his visit to Shell Cottage and the RNLI shop. He placed the mug on the long wooden table, pointed his wand at the teakettle, murmured "Fervio" to cause the water to boil, and proceeded to make tea.

Settled into a chair with the tea mug in his hands, Harry reviewed the events that had brought him to this situation. Dreams, bad dreams, completely unexpected dreams. Ever since he and Ginny had married, Harry had wanted children desperately. He wanted to be, if not the best father in the whole world, at least the best father he could possibly be. And he knew that it was possible,, because he had seen the examples of Mr. Weasley and Mr. Granger. Even bad fathers, such as Vernon Dursley and Lucius Malfoy, were instructive as examples of what not to do. And when Ginny had become pregnant, they had both been overjoyed. Then the dreams began.

Harry was no stranger to bad dreams. After the death of Cedric Diggory in the graveyard of Little Hangleton and his own battle with the newly-embodied Lord Voldemort, Harry had revisited those events in dreams for months. And after the Battle of Hogwarts, the same thing had happened. But those dreams were about events that had actually happened. Then there were the dream-like occurrences when his mind and the mind of Tom Riddle had been connected and Harry had been able to see as if through Riddle's eyes or know what Riddle was thinking. But since the fragment of Riddle's soul that had facilitated these pseudo-dreams had been purged from Harry during Riddle's attempt to kill him with the Avada Kedrava curse, dreams of that sort were no longer possible. Tom Riddle was dead now, for sure, and there were no Horcruxes left. Riddle's body had been transfigured into sand and had been dumped in the ocean, far from shore. No, these new dreams came from Harry himself. Something different was going on now, dreams about something that hadn't happened yet. All unique, but all with the same theme.

Harry is walking outdoors, pushing his baby in a pram, but the pram starts going faster and faster, as if it were self-propelled, so that Harry has to run to keep up with it. He loses hold of the handle and suddenly realizes that they are next to a cliff near Bill and Fleur's Shell Cottage. The pram is about to go over the cliff and drop into the ocean far below. Harry tries to catch up with it and stop it, but he cannot.

The baby is being delivered, but there is no one in Harry's bedroom except himself and Ginny. From her body Ginny expels something that look like a clear round water balloon filled with swirling fluid. Harry realizes that it is the unbroken birth sac, and that his baby is inside, engulfed in the water. He frantically tears at the sac, scrabbling with his fingers, trying to get a grip on the slippery bag and rip it open to let the water out and extract his baby from inside the sac. But the tough membranes won't rip, the seconds tick by, and the baby is drowning in the water.

It is nighttime. Suddenly Harry realizes that there are intruders in his home, shadowy dark figures moving through the rooms. His baby is in another room, alone, tiny, helpless. Harry is afraid that if he makes a move or a sound, the intruders will snatch the baby before he can get to it.

The baby has been born, and to Harry's utter dismay, Ginny has given it away. Harry is heartbroken because his child is gone. Ginny lightheartedly says that they can have another baby if they want, but Harry wants this one. And he does not know where it has been taken nor how to find it.

Harry stared forward, not really seeing the walls or furnishings of the kitchen, lost in thought. He had known from the beginning of Ginny's pregnancy that the nine months of gestation were not all rosebuds, lace, and bird songs. The printed information which the Healers had given to Ginny, and which Harry had also read, had listed the minor discomforts to be expected during pregnancy: nausea, vomiting, heartburn, puffy feet, aches in the hips and back, intolerance of summer's heat, interrupted sleep, and so on. But "persistent dreams about harming or killing the baby" was not on the printed list, and Harry was baffled about what it meant. It was more than baffling, it was disturbing.

The image came to his mind of Professor Trelawney's Divination classes in her tower classroom at Hogwarts. In Harry's fifth year she had attempted to teach Harry and his classmates to predict the future by recording and interpreting their dreams, but Harry and Ron had scorned the whole process, especially because Professor Trelawney had invariably predicted disaster for them, and they had made up fake dream diaries as a joke. Although Harry had always considered Divination, and Professor Trelawney herself, as a harmless fraud, he could not forget that two or three times in her life Professor Trelawney had made a genuine prediction, and this memory nagged at his impulse to dismiss the whole idea. But even if these nightmares about the baby were not predictive of his future behavior, what did they say about his natural tendency as a parent?

Harry glanced down at his teacup. It was almost empty now, and some loose tea leaves were resting lightly on the bottom under a thin layer of tea. He shook the cup gently and the tea leaves swayed back and forth. Harry smiled, thinking of the tea-leaves divination that they had tried in Professor Trelawney's class in his third year. The random blobs of the tea leaves in the bottoms of their cups could have resembled anything or nothing, and they had amused themselves by suggesting what each blob looked like when viewed from various angles. He resisted the impulse to upturn his mug over a saucer and see if the leaves formed any recognizable shape. What if it turned out to be an unmistakable baby rattle, or the Grim?

Harry glanced up at the blue and white ceramic clock which he and Ginny had installed in the kitchen as part of their redecorating of the house. The time was 5:00 a.m., an hour before his usual getting-up time. Suddenly there was a creaking noise behind him. He turned his head in the direction of the noise and saw the door of the boiler cupboard opening. This was the cupboard in which Kreacher, his elderly house elf, slept, and a moment later Kreacher's wrinkled face appeared around the edge of the door, a look of surprise on his face at seeing a lamp lit and Harry sitting at the table in his dressing gown with a tea mug in his hands.

Kreacher came out of the boiler cupboard and shut the door behind him.

"Master Harry is up earlier than usual," he said. "If Master Harry had asked, Kreacher would have made the tea for him."

Harry knew that he could not say "I didn't want to bother you," because Kreacher's only purpose, in his own mind, was to serve Harry and his family, so Harry said, "I couldn't sleep, and I came down here to be alone with my thoughts. But," he added, "I have been alone with them for half an hour, and now I'm ready to go back upstairs."

"Will Master Harry be wanting breakfast earlier than usual?" asked Kreacher, holding his hands together in front of his chest as if ready to spring into action.

"No, thank you, Kreacher," answered Harry. "Although I got up early, I'll just keep to my usual morning schedule." The normal schedule on work days was breakfast at 6:45 a.m. for Harry. He arose from his chair, leaving the empty mug on the polished wood table top. "See you a little later," he said as he climbed the stone steps out of the kitchen.

Kreacher's voice followed him up the stairs. "Master's breakfast will be ready."

As Harry went up the main staircase to the second floor, he considered whether to go into the bathroom and take a shower or just go back to bed. He hoped that Ginny was still asleep and had not noticed his absence because he did not feel ready to reveal to her that her husband was either going crazy or else revealing his true unfitness as a parent. He longed to ask her if she too dreamed about the baby, but he did not dare, because he knew she would ask him if he dreamed about the baby, and then what could he say?

He thought about the promise he had given her: "no more secrets", but that rule did not necessarily negate the other maxim of "think before you speak". Maybe the dreams would stop. And wasn't it true that describing your dreams to other people was generally considered boring, not good conversation? He shook his head as he climbed the stairs and said softly to himself, "I've got to figure this out." But right now he did not know what to say because he did not know what to think. Upon reaching the landing he peeped into the bedroom. Although the room was still dark, he could see through the window that the sky was starting to lighten up just a little. Ginny appeared to be sleeping. He turned and went into the bathroom to shower and shave.

The Baby in the Closet
Chapter 2: The Sign in the Plaza

By the time Ginny awoke for the first of her frequent daily trips to the bathroom, occasioned by the pressure of her greatly expanded womb on her bladder, Harry had put his disturbing dreams out of his mind and was focusing on his upcoming tasks at work. Ginny chattered cheerfully about how much little James-or-Lily was moving, and how he-or-she would stretch out his-or-her legs, making obvious small protrusions on the upper half of Ginny's abdomen.

"I hope it won't be so hot this afternoon. There's a limit to how much clothing I can take off and still remain decent. Maybe being pregnant during the summer wasn't such a smart idea."

"No, next time we'll have to plan better, delivery on June first. But if you get too warm, it's always cooler in the kitchen."

"But I can't spend all day down in the kitchen! There are things I need to do. I was going to sort out those boxes of baby clothes from Fleur and put them on the shelves in the baby's room, and I thought I would make little paper labels and put them on the edges of the shelves, to organize the clothes by type and size."

Harry resisted the impulse to try to solve Ginny's problems by pointing out that the mornings were cooler and therefore the best time to be labeling the shelves in the baby's room. He knew that Ginny didn't want suggestions, she wanted understanding.

"I know this is not easy for you, Ginny. I'm glad there's only six more weeks to go. I don't imagine we'll ever be truly ready, but we'll muddle through somehow."

Ginny looked down at her protruding stomach and said, "It's hard to believe I can get any bigger, but I know I will. Who would have thought I could balance my teacup on the top of my stomach when I'm sitting down? That's crazy. But Mum says that we short ladies stick out more because we don't have as much place to hide it as the tall girls do, like Fleur. I guess it's true."

August was warm this year. People were on holiday, and London was full of tourists, walking slowly down the streets, tourist guidebooks in hand, looking all around them at the buildings, shops, letter boxes, telephone booths, everything that looked different to what they were accustomed to in their home country. The Quidditch season was over, and there were no more "Flying With the Harpies" columns for Ginny to write. Her attention was focused increasingly inward as the physical changes of pregnancy became harder to ignore. Harry tried to keep her diverted by suggesting activities out of the house, such as evening concerts in nearby parks and weekend art fairs, and she visited her mother more often now, as if she wanted to review the mother-child relationship, now that she herself was about to become the mother and someone else would be the child.

When Harry and Ginny had first learned that she was pregnant, and the due date was eight and a half months in the future, the baby had seemed far away and unreal. Eight and a half months was almost as long as a school year, and Harry remembered how long a year at school had seemed to be, almost endless. But now there were only six weeks left, and these final weeks were draining away as quickly as the final pints of water swirling down the bathtub drain. Ginny was alternately bubbling with excitement, withdrawn and pensive, and commenting (Harry would not characterize it as complaining) about the discomforts of the final weeks. The prenatal visits with the healer at St. Mungo's Hospital were becoming more frequent, and the baby clothes still needed to be sorted. Ginny's plate was full, Harry decided. She did not need to be plagued by a discussion about his bad dreams also.

Harry left Grimmauld Place promptly at seven fifteen a.m. for his walk to his office at the Ministry of Magic. He valued the brisk forty-five-minute walk in the morning and in the evening as good exercise on days when he might otherwise spend hours sitting indoors in meetings or doing paperwork. It would be foolish to waste the chance to be outdoors during the time of year when the weather was mild and the hours of sunlight were long. In the commercial blocks many business had flowerpots on the sidewalk in front of their doors, and flower baskets hung from some of the lampposts. At the beginning of his morning walk the streets were fairly empty, but by the end of it there were many Londoners on the sidewalks hurrying to their jobs, and seeing them reminded him that most people were kind and good. He did not want the nature of his work to cause him to fall into the belief that everyone was a criminal except his family and his fellow Aurors. Even the late, famous Auror Alastor "Mad-eye" Moody, whose unforgettable mantra had been "Constant Vigilance" and who had been ready to detect enemies around every corner, had believed that the majority of people were good.

He came to a newspaper kiosk and stopped briefly to buy a copy of the daily Muggle newspaper; this was his custom, in order to stay informed of the events of the Muggle world. A generation ago the wizarding community had been distinctly more isolated from the Muggle community, but many wizards and witches of Harry's age were now familiar with using mobile phones, driving cars, wearing Muggle clothing appropriately, and reading British newspapers. He reflected that there were times in history, tipping points, when long-established social structures reconfigured rapidly, and he suspected that he was living in one of those times.

Harry passed a small open park with brick pavers, raised planter beds full of flowering shrubs, and empty park benches. The streetlamp poles along the curb side had hanging baskets of flowers, and between the poles, large placards were supported on low upright metal stands, The placards were colorful advertising posters of art gallery showings, newly opened businesses, summer festivals.

Suddenly Harry's eye was caught by a new placard he had not seen before. Unlike the other placards with their lively colors of pink and red and yellow, this one stood out for its stark appearance. The center was a grainy, high-contrast black and white photo of an adult and a child in what looked like a domestic indoor scene. The upper and lower parts were solid dark blue, and on the upper blue area was printed "When you hear the words 'child abuse and neglect', do you think of your own childhood, or the parenting you are doing now?"

Harry stopped in his tracks and stared at the poster. His eyes moved up and down between the bleak photograph and the arresting question, the joyless faces of the adult and child, and the brutally frank words.

As he gazed, motionless, he felt his breathing getting slower and tighter, and still he could not turn away or resume his walk. Finally the paralysis in his brain began to ebb, and he thought to himself, Is this an omen? Are these things linked? The events of my childhood and the parenting I am going to be doing now? What are they suggesting? The flowers, the sunlight, the other pedestrians all faded from his attention, and his mind was totally consumed by this suddenly overwhelmingly important poster of blue, black, and white. The lower third of the poster contained a telephone number and the name of a national organization for prevention of cruelty to children. Harry took a little spiral bound notebook and a ballpoint pen from his inner coat pocket and wrote down the telephone number. He was not sure what he was going to do with the number, but he didn't want to lose it, just in case.

He began to walk again, heading toward the Ministry of Magic, but his relaxing early morning stroll had been converted into a painful recapitulation of issues he had thought had been put behind him. When he was a little boy, he had accepted his life as the way it was. He had been an orphan living with guardians, his aunt and uncle, who were harsh with him, never tender, and impossible to please. Although Harry had never gone naked or lacked a roof over his head, there had been no warmth, no love, no fun. What he had experienced was a cousin who was a constant source of torment, and a very unequal distribution of family support and resources. But he had never run away because he had no other family and no other place to go. He had not played at the homes of other children and had not had friends at school, due to his shabby appearance and his cousin's intimidation, so he had not seen examples of other families' relationships.

Now, looking back, he could see how dysfunctional that family had been. Nothing about it had been normal, at least from the point of view of the skinny little boy who had been made to sleep in a cubbyhole under the stairs. He had not known what a loving family environment could be until he had visited Ron's family.

As the years had gone by, the realization had formed and grown that no child should have had to endure what he had endured. It was far beyond the usual bickering of children or discipline by adults, beyond the typical clashes between adolescents and adults. The words "child abuse and neglect" described it completely.

The wizarding world knew him as The Boy Who Lived, The Hero of Hogwarts, the awardee of the Order of Merlin First Class, the most rapidly qualified Auror in the modern history of the Aurors' Office. They saw him as strong, clever, persistent, talented, principled, lucky. Only Hermione, the Weasleys, and a few others knew him also as the Survivor of Sixteen Years in the Dursley Household.

Now that time was behind him, but not like a distant scene, becoming dimmer as it recedes into the past. He dragged it behind him like a log tied to a rope fastened around his waist. No matter how far he walked, the log was always just behind him, slowing him down, holding him back, wearing him out.

Chapter 3: The American Visitor

Seated at his desk in the Aurors' Office at the Ministry of Magic, Harry spread out the Muggle newspaper and began perusing the morning's stories, partly for relaxation, but also to pick up on any bits of news that might be applicable to the wizarding world. His eye was caught by a story that gave him an idea.

"Hey, Susan," he called to Susan Bones, the only other Auror in the office at that moment. "What would you say was the worst thing that could happen personally to an Auror in the course of his or her professional duties? Not counting death, of course, which is obviously the worst. But, short of death, what's the worst?"

Susan lifted her head from the paperwork she was studying and asked in a slightly annoyed tone, "What are you talking about, Harry?" Susan had a no-nonsense approach to her career, and she did not spare much time in her work day for apparently pointless riddles.

"Come on," Harry bantered. "What do you think?"

Susan sighed, assuming that the fastest way to end this conversation would be to play along. "I guess that it would be to make some serious mistake that caused death or injury to another person or several people. Is that what you mean, Harry?"

"Well, that would certainly be bad for the person or people who got killed, but not so much for the Auror himself," Harry objected.

"Then I guess I don't know. What's your point, Harry? You obviously have something in mind."

"I do," Harry answered. "What do you think about being infected by a werewolf? That's pretty bad, isn't it?"

Susan was silent for a minute. Harry was right. Being bitten by a werewolf was an occupational hazard that always nagged, however subtly, at the back of an Auror's mind. To spend the rest of one's life as a werewolf would be a catastrophe, personally and for one's career and family life. "Yes, that would be pretty bad. What makes you mention it?"

"And what would be the Ministry's reaction if it happened?" Harry persisted. "And historically it has happened. Blame the Aurors. Not enough advance planning. Not enough manpower."

"What else should they be doing?"

"Look what we do now. Good intelligence, advance planning, sufficient manpower, wands and spells. But none of these addresses the basic mechanism of infection, which is the simple bite, a purely mechanical process. That's the key step in infection."

"Well, yes, that's how people get infected," Susan said impatiently. "Are we supposed to make werewolves not want to bite us?"

"I don't think we can do that," Harry laughed. "We can't make them not want to bite us. But maybe we can make them be unsuccessful."

"How?" asked Susan in tones of surprise and bewilderment.

"I'm reading something in the newspaper here about new bullet-proof fabrics being developed that would be used by the Muggle military and police. Fabrics that are fairly thin and lightweight, but if they are able to stop a bullet, maybe they could stop the force of a bite, could keep the fangs from breaking the skin."

"Muggle bullet-proof fabric?" echoed Susan incredulously. She shook her head slowly.

"It's plain that wands and spells alone aren't the complete answer. If they were, we wouldn't have this problem. But if it could be proven that the fabric was strong enough to withstand the force of a bite..."

"We could make it into long underwear, drawers and shirts," Susan interrupted, grinning, and Harry couldn't tell if it was glee in understanding what he was getting at, or if she was making fun of him.

"Something like that," Harry agreed. "It could provide an extra margin of protection. I don't know why someone hasn't thought of it before."

"Well..." Susan said, and Harry instantly knew that she was applying her famously analytical mind to his last rhetorical remark. "Maybe they haven't thought about it because adequately functional fabrics are still fairly new, or because they're stuck in the mindset of 'we've always done it this way', or because they see the problem as the weakness of the victim rather than the weakness of the system."

"What do you think about it?" Harry asked.

"Go for it, Harry," Susan replied. "But don't be too optimistic about getting a green light from the Aurors' Office."

"Why not?" Harry asked.

"Just one word, or rather, two words: Muggle technology. If Ron and George invented it, they'd be all over it. But anything invented by Muggles is automatically beneath their notice. You know that."

"And meanwhile, our Aurors remain at risk," Harry sighed.

"Maybe it wouldn't work in the long run. The werewolves would be able to tell that something was different. They can tell if they break flesh or not. They would probably just shift their focus to the face and hands, the unprotected parts."

"Maybe," said Harry absently. He was not really paying attention to Susan's last remark. He was absorbed in his own idea. "You know, I'm betting that in the future, before we die, in our own lifetimes, Muggle engineers will develop a cloak of invisibility, not by magic, but purely by their technology. Oh sure, there are things we can do, purely by magic, that they will never be able to do, but we would be fools not to take advantage of their technology."

"Looks like you've got yourself a project. Try to get Ron and George involved. That might make the bitter pill go down a little more easily," concluded Susan with a tone of finality that meant she was ready to get back to her own work. Harry folded up the newspaper and addressed himself to his.

At eleven-thirty a.m. Harry gathered his parchments into neat stacks on his desk, pushed back his chair, and stood up. "I'm going out to lunch now," he called to Susan. Because it was August, some Aurors were on holiday and the remaining personnel had to schedule their lunch times so that the office was always covered. When Harry first became an Auror, he usually ate lunch with Ron or Neville, and they always tried to get Hermione to come with them. But after the last of the Battle of Hogwarts fugitives were apprehended, both Ron and Neville had left the Auror office to follow their hearts into different careers. Ron was not a total stranger to the Ministry of Magic offices, however; he periodically visited in connection with his product contracts, but their lunches together were infrequent. And at present Ron and Hermione were on holiday in Italy. Harry was saving his holiday time to use later, when the baby came.

"Okay," Susan called back. "You'll be back in an hour?"

"You can count on it."

Harry headed for a little deli restaurant a couple of blocks away. It seemed odd that the streets were full of tourists while the Auror office was so empty and quiet because of the holidays and he was going to be eating lunch alone. As he strode along the sidewalk at a brisk pace, he reflected on his friends' choices. In the immediate aftermath of the Second War, there had been overwhelming passion on the part of many of his schoolmates to become Aurors. The number of applicants for Auror training had been much higher than normal, and Harry had wondered about their various motivations. For some it may have been a compulsion to right the many and chronic wrongs of society which they had not been aware of during their early childhood. For others it may have been a shorter-term goal, simply to clean up the mess left behind. He sincerely hoped that no one's motivation had been a desire for revenge.

Some of the new Aurors, such as Susan Bones, were obviously perfectly suited to their profession and would probably continue in it for years. But not everyone who had joined the ranks of the Aurors had been completely satisfied with their new life. Neville Longbottom was conscientious, serious, careful, thorough, a good Auror, but his heart wasn't in the work. He was drawn by the academic life, scientific inquiry, and a desire to share his love of Herbology with the next generation. He continued his self-study of herbs even as he completed his Auror training, and after two years in the Auror office Neville had resigned his position and had gone to Prague for further study of Herbology under the tutelage of a renowned Herbology master.

Ron Weasley had also been a good Auror, but he had been bored by the minutiae of paperwork and unfulfilled by the sometimes ambiguous outcomes of the Aurors' work. He liked to see quick, concrete, tangible results, and so he partnered with his brother George in their business, Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes, which had expanded from a simple joke shop to a small research and development company. George's creative gift was the invention of unique mechanisms for magical functions, while Ron was creative in a down-to-earth way. He could see the application of these functions to real-life problems, and he could market them in persuasive ways. While he was growing up, Ron had been overshadowed by Fred and George's flamboyant personalities, but now his very practical talents were becoming plain.

Hermione, on the other hand, had never been attracted to becoming an Auror, even as so many other people had flooded the offices of the Ministry of Magic with their applications. She had always had a firm grip on who she was and what she wanted.

Harry wondered if he understood himself as well as the others seemed to understand themselves. Did he know who he really was? Did he remain an Auror because he was really suited to the occupation, or out of a feeling of obligation, or simply out of inertia? If Tom Riddle had never existed, would he, Harry, have wanted to become an Auror anyway? If Tom Riddle had never existed, everything would have been different. Harry would have grown up in Godric's Hollow with his parents and would never have known the Dursleys. He would have developed in different ways, maybe would have been a better wizard, but with much less exposure to the Muggle world than he had actually had. What would I have turned out to be like? he wondered.

He quickly arrived at the little cafe where he often ate lunch. In the summer the proprietor placed small tables on the edge of the sidewalk in front of the cafe to allow for al fresco dining and to increase the seating capacity during the tourist season. By coming early Harry hoped that he could get quick service and the seat he wanted. But the cafe was already well-patronized when he arrived, and by the time he had picked up his tray of food the only empty seats were out on the sidewalk. He went out and sat down at the only unoccupied little table and began to address himself to his sandwich. He had eaten only a few bites when another diner appeared, tray in hand, looking for a seat. She was an older woman with short gray hair, and when she spotted the empty chair at Harry's table, she set down her tray and asked, smiling, "Do you mind if I sit here, or is this place already occupied?" Her face was friendly and open, with laugh lines around her eyes and mouth.

"Oh no, go right ahead," Harry answered hastily, moving his tray a little to make more space on the tiny tabletop, and the woman sat down. She took the plastic lid off her cup of lemonade and drizzled the little container of dressing over her salad. Then, her lunch ready to eat, she turned to Harry and said cheerfully "You look as if you're in the middle of a long work day, judging by your clothes." She did not sound English, Harry thought, maybe American or Canadian.

"Yes, I am," he said, trying to match her good humor, "and you look as if you're on holiday, judging by your accent."

"You're right," the woman said, smiling again. "I came here to England about three weeks ago with two other leaders and a patrol of American Girl Scouts to attend a Girl Guide jamboree in Kent. The others have gone back to the states now, but I have stayed a little longer to do some sightseeing, and tomorrow I'm going to visit my cousins in Guernsey for a few days."

A cheerful chat with a foreign tourist was not how Harry had expected to spend his lunch hour, but suddenly it seemed like more fun than mulling over his Auror work or revisiting unhappy scenes from his childhood, so he asked, in between bites of his sandwich, "What have you been seeing and how have you liked it?"

"Oh, you'll find this is funny," the woman said. "I was taking a stroll through the neighborhood around the Girl Guides office, and I noticed two things. First, what they say about English gardens is true; all the houses had lovely gardens. And second, all the buildings looked old and were made of brick, and I thought 'Oh no, they'll all fall down in the next earthquake!' and then I realized that I was in England and you don't have earthquakes here."

Harry swallowed his bite of food and asked, "Are there earthquakes where you come from?"

"Oh yes," the woman said. "I'm from California, and we have them all the time, so we have special building codes to keep our buildings safe in an earthquake." She held out her hand and said, "My name is Pamela, by the way."

Harry set down his sandwich and grasped her hand; her handshake was firm and confident. "My name is Harry."

"It's nice to meet you, Harry," Pamela said. "What kind of work do you do?"

Harry had taken another bite of his sandwich, so he took advantage of the next few seconds of chewing to consider how he was going to answer this question.

"I'm in police work, but it's mostly undercover stuff. I and my mates investigate what you might call hate crimes or organized crime." That seemed to be a good way to describe dealing with Death Eaters.

"That sounds important," Pamela observed. "I used to be a teacher, but I'm retired now, so I have time to take the Girl Scouts on foreign trips. That's so special for them. They worked for several years to earn the money so that the troop could take this trip. But it is a lot of work, riding herd on eight teenage girls, so I'm just as glad to have some time to myself." It occurred to Harry that Pamela would never be truly "by herself" as long as there were any other people around.

"I really wanted to see the Roman ruins up around Hadrian's Wall," Pamela continued, "so I took a train to York and on the train I fell into conversation with a young man from Guisborough, which is south of the Scottish border, but his speech sounded Scots. We talked about the places we had traveled, and I said that I had heard that the difference between England and America is that in England people think a hundred miles is a long distance, and his face fell because he thought I was disrespecting his country, but in America people think that a hundred years is a long time, and his face brightened up and he said 'Yes! When I was in America they showed me their ancient schoohouse, and it was built in 1839!' "

Harry continued eating, smiling and nodding at appropriate points. He was happy to let Pamela tell her stories. They were interesting, and they took his mind off his own concerns and spared him the necessity of explaining about his work.

"The young man on the train told me that if I saw buskers on the streets in York, I should give them some money. I wondered if he had done some busking during his teenage years, but I didn't ask. So when I got to York, I did see some buskers, and I put money in their guitar cases, as my young friend from Guisborough instructed me." Harry noticed that Pamela referred to the man on the train as a friend, and he reflected that she probably didn't know the meaning of the word "stranger".

Pamela stopped chatting long enough to eat a little of her lunch, so Harry felt it was time for him to hold up his end of the conversation.

"I went to school in Scotland during my teenage years," he said.

"But you're not from there," Pamela observed. "I can tell it in your speech."

"No," Harry answered, "I spent my childhood in Surrey."

There was a minute or two of silence as they both ate, and it seemed to Harry that he was not holding up his end of the conversation very well. But the discussion of Scotland had made him think of his years at Hogwarts, especially the momentous later years, and he said offhandedly, as if thinking aloud, "I did a little bit of teaching, myself, once."

"What did you teach?" asked Pamela, glancing up from her lunch with a bright look of interest.

Harry was momentarily taken aback, because he had not meant to open this line of dialogue. "Uh, self-defense," he said, knowing that those plain words could never convey the richness of the experience of creating Dumbledore's Army, the tension and the peril of the times, or the feelings of empowerment and achievement that he had known, through his success in his desperate efforts.

"But you must love children," he continued hastily, "since you spent your career as a teacher, and now you take Girl Scouts on trips. What exactly are Girl Scouts? Are they like Boy Scouts?" Harry had at least heard of Boy Scouts through occasional stories on the local television news at the Dursleys' house, although he didn't know what they did.

"Yes, they're like Boy Scouts, but in England they're called Girl Guides. You may have heard of Girl Guides if you have sisters or girl cousins."

"No, I was an only child," Harry explained.

Pamela gave a deep sigh. "I have two children myself," she said wistfully, "but they are grown and they both live pretty far away from me. I don't get to see them nearly as often as I would like." Harry felt a little pang in his heart, and he looked down at what was left of his meal. He wished he had a mother who wanted to see him more often. He felt sure that his closest blood relatives, the Dursleys, would be perfectly happy never to see him again.

But Pamela could not be wistful for long. She brightened up and said,"You look to be rather young for such important work, or do you just retain your boyish charm?"

"Just lucky, I guess," Harry replied. "When I applied, there happened to be a fair number of openings, so it was easy to be accepted and to win promotion. Just a few years earlier there were hardly any opportunities."

"Oh my, I hope that doesn't mean that a lot of your fellow policemen got killed," Pamela said.

Whoa, Harry thought. That was a pretty shrewd guess on her part. He avoided responding directly to her remark by recounting the thoughts that he had had on his way to the cafe, how some people moved on to other careers. Pamela listened closely; she seemed interested by his analysis. When he was finished she remarked, "But you plan to stay in this line of work. Do you have a family?"

"Yes, I'm married," Harry confessed. "My wife and I don't have any children yet, but we are expecting our first one in October."

"How wonderful!" Pamela exclaimed gleefully, clasping her hands together. "This will be such a happy time for you. I remember the time when my children were babies with great affection."

Her remarks about unalloyed joy struck a chord with Harry, and impetuously he asked, "Pamela, when you were pregnant with your babies, I mean, before they were born, did you ever have, well, odd dreams about them, like, strange things that happened after they were born?" His question felt awkward and disjointed to him, but Pamela seemed to understand.

"Well. let me see," she answered slowly. "That was a long time ago." She thought a moment and then said, "I remember one dream. I dreamt that after the baby was born it could talk just like an adult, and we had long conversations, but I don't remember what about. Is that what you mean?"

Harry nodded. "That sounds like a nice dream. Did you ever have bad dreams?"

Pamela looked at him keenly. "No," she said, still speaking slowly, "not that I remember. But you do, don't you." It was a statement, not a question. "Or your wife does. And you worry about what it means, or if it is normal."

Harry nodded mutely. Merlin's beard, he thought. Am I as transparent as that? Why even bother trying to be subtle or cagey? I might as well take Pamela back to the Ministry of Magic, show her around, introduce her to my mates. She sees right through me. But at the same time he felt a tiny sense of relief at not having to keep things in, not having to try to hold everything together by himself.

Pamela sighed. "I think it is normal to have those dreams, such as the baby being dead or injured or lost. It's probably a reflection of the person's fear, or trepidation you might say, about taking on the unknown tasks of parenthood, and a realization of how important this new role is. I don't suppose that anything in your police training has the remotest bearing on your new responsibilities."

Harry shook his head.

"But why are you telling me all this?" Pamela asked, looking at him narrowly. Harry hesitated. Not for any logical reason, he thought. And he had only told her a little, but she had guessed much.

"I suppose because you seem kind, and wise, and..." he said, trailing off.

"And because I am a stranger from a foreign country, whom you will never see again," Pamela finished, "so it is safe to talk to me."

"Yes," Harry said. "That's true."

Pamela put her hand over his, where it rested on the table. "Just remember, Harry, it is safe to talk to other people too."

Harry could not think of anything to say. He glanced at his wristwatch. It was time to be heading back to work so that Susan could go to lunch as planned. He stood up and picked up his tray. "I have to go now," he told Pamela. "Back to work. But it has been a pleasure talking with you."

"And for me too," Pamela replied. "Good luck, Harry."

"Thanks," he said, and he turned to carry his tray to the bussing area.

On his way back to the Ministry, Pamela's words echoed in his mind. It is safe to talk to other people too. He stopped on the edge of the sidewalk, took out his mobile phone and his little spiral notebook, and dialed the number that he had copied off the poster.

Chapter 4: The Barren Gardens

After a few rings a woman's voice answered, identifying herself as Gladys Miller and her office as a national organization to prevent cruelty to children.

"How can we help you?" Mrs. Miller asked.

Harry leaned against the brick wall of a building so as not to impede the flow of pedestrian traffic on the pavement. "My name is Harry Potter. I saw your telephone number on a poster in downtown London," he said, "and I wanted to find out more about what you do."

"Our organization is devoted to dealing with the problems of child abuse and neglect," Mrs. Miller said. "We create and provide services to help abused and neglected children. We provide advice and support for adults who work with or are concerned about vulnerable children, and we partner with other organizations, both public and private, who have the same goals. That's it, in a nutshell. Is there a particular topic you were interested in?"

"I'm not sure what I need right now," said Harry. He had initiated this telephone call on an impulse that was not well thought out, and he felt as if he were fumbling for ideas. "It's just a field that I want to explore further."

"We can send you some printed literature by post that will give you a lot of information about what we do and about how citizens can become involved. Was there a particular child that you are concerned about?"

Yes, me, Harry thought. But he could not say that. "I would like to stop by your office to look over your literature and pick out the material that would be most useful for me. And then I could ask specific questions in person if I had any." There was no way he could receive printed literature by post. The Muggle post did not deliver mail to either Twelve Grimmauld Place or the Ministry of Magic. "Where are you located?"

Mrs. Miller gave him the address. "We're in the Shoreditch area. Your nearest tube station is Old Street, if you want to come by underground."

"Thank you very much, " Harry said. "I may well do that."

"We'll be looking forward to seeing you, Mr. Potter," Gladys Miller replied. "We're always happy to be of help, and we're glad when people want to join in our work."

"Goodbye, and thanks again," said Harry, and he rang off.

Walking back to the Ministry of Magic, he thought rapidly about whether he would be able to arrive at Mrs. Miller's office by five p.m. if he left the Aurors' Office at four p.m., and he decided that he probably could, because Shoreditch was only a couple of miles away.

Promptly at four p.m. Harry stood up from his desk, thankful that there had been no All Auror Alerts, because having decided to go to the office of the child protection organization in Shoreditch, he was eager to be on his way, and he did not want to be tied up in a crisis that impeded his plans. He said goodbye to Susan, who was bent over her desk intent on her present task, and barely glanced up as she said. "G'night. See you tomorrow."

Harry walked rapidly to the tube station a couple of blocks away. The weather, which had been pleasantly warm at noon, was now undeniably hot, and it seemed more so in contrast with the evenly controlled climate of the Ministry of Magic which Harry had just left. The trip to the Old Street station was quick, even with one transfer, but then there was a brisk walk of several blocks, during which Harry glanced at his wristwatch from time to time. It was about four forty-five when he arrived.

Upon entering the office, he saw a woman sitting at a desk.

"Excuse me, are you Gladys Miller?" he asked. "I'm Harry Potter. I telephoned your office earlier today to ask about getting some information."

Even though it was almost closing time, the woman did not show any sign of irritation at the arrival of a last-minute visitor. She stood up, smiling broadly, and reached her hand across the desk to shake Harry's hand.

"Yes, I'm Gladys Miller. It's so nice to see you, Mr. Potter. What kind of information can we provide for you?"

"You mentioned on the telephone that you had printed information I could see. I'm interested in general information about child abuse and the services you provide."

"Let me show you our printed material," Mrs. Miller said, and she came around from behind the desk and led Harry to a wall rack stocked with colorful booklets, pamphlets, and single sheets with titles like "Physical Abuse," "Sexual Abuse," "Neglect," "Looked-After Children," and so on. Harry picked up some brochures and looked through them quickly, keeping some and putting others back in the rack.

"We also provide a hotline for concerned adults to report suspected cases of child abuse or neglect, a hotline for youth, outreach programs in the schools, a speakers bureau and advocacy for legislation, and opportunities for volunteers to help with fundraising. We depend heavily on our volunteers to help us further our mission. We couldn't do it without them, and almost anyone can be a volunteer. Do you think you would be interested?"

"Uh, I'm not sure I know enough to be of any use to you," Harry answered. Volunteering was not why he had come.

"We have a monthly training session for people who are considering helping our organization," Mrs. Miller offered. "It includes a lot of information about the reality and dynamics of child abuse and neglect, as well as an overview of the possibilities of volunteering. There are experts who talk at the session -- a doctor, a social worker, a solicitor, a family therapist, so I think that the people who eventually work with us feel adequately prepared. Our next session is in about a week."

"You do it in the summer too?" Harry asked.

"Yes, we do it all year long. The need never takes a holiday. Some of our outreach programs are through the schools, but when the schools are not in session during the summer, the children can be more vulnerable because they spend more time at home."

I can relate to that, thought Harry. It was harder for me in the summer when I was at home all the time.

"And many of our fundraising events are held in the summer, especially the events held outdoors because of the better weather. And people are on holiday then, so they can devote their time to them."

"People give up their holidays to work for you?" Harry remarked, surprised.

"Yes," Mrs. Miller said, "some of them do. It's that important."

Harry stood silent, contemplating all this.

"Do you think you might want to join us as a volunteer?" Mrs. Miller looked at him expectantly, hopefully.

It would be easy to say yes, Harry thought, but that would be a lie. And oddly enough, the older he became, the harder it was for him to lie. When he was a little boy, the occasional lies had been for self-protection, and during the dangerous years at Hogwarts combatting the menace of Lord Voldemort, there had been lies of desperate necessity, such as claiming that Ron was sick with spattergroit, or all those instances of using polyjuice potion to make people believe he was someone else, or the lies that lured Dolores Umbridge out into the Forbidden Forest. Odious woman! He glanced down at his right hand, where the faint scars could still be seen, faded after nine years but readable if you knew what the words had been: I must not tell lies. And after the war was over, there were the lies that he, Ron, Hermione, and Ginny had told, directly or indirectly, to Ron's parents and Hermione's parents about where they four were, and with whom, in order to facilitate their romantic interludes. It had seemed daring and exciting at the time, but now, in retrospect, it seemed childish, like something a teenager would do, and he regretted, not the romantic interludes, but the deception. It should be possible to live as an adult, even a wizard in a predominantly Muggle world, without lying.

It occurred to Harry that if he volunteered only once, one afternoon of sitting behind a table at a street fair handing out brochures, then he could say yes without lying and could attend the information session. Ginny would understand.

"Yes," he said, "maybe I will."

"How nice," Mrs. Miller exclaimed. She went over to her desk and came back with two papers. One contained information about the schedule of training sessions and the other was a volunteer registration form.

Harry glanced at the latter paper and said, "I hope this won't be a problem, but I'd rather not write down my address or telephone number. Because of the kind of work I do, I don't generally give out my personal information freely."

Mrs. Miller appeared hesitant. "I don't know," she said. "We always have contact information for our volunteers."

"If, after attending the training session, I decide to go ahead with this, then I will of course give you some contact information," Harry went on, "but my situation is unique, and it's better for me to be cautious."

Mrs. Miller seemed to relax. "I imagine that will be okay. This training schedule shows you the location of the session. It's not held in this office; it's at our other building across town. The closest tube station is Camden Town, and we recommend that you take the tube because there's hardly any parking."

Harry leaned over the desk, filling out the volunteer registration form, except for the address and telephone number. As he wrote, he spoke over his shoulder.

"I may not be able to actually do anything for a while. My wife is expecting our first baby soon, so I imagine that things will be chaotic for a while until we get this parenthood business down pat. But when things get back to normal, I'll be in touch. Meanwhile, I'll go to the information session next week."

"Let me clue you in, Mr. Potter," Mrs. Miller said. "Things will never get back to normal."

Harry straightened up. "They won't?" he echoed.

"Not if by 'normal' you mean 'back to the way they were before'. When you become a parent, the door slams shut forever on your life as you knew it, and a door opens to an entirely new life stretching out in front of you." She smiled as she said it.

Like when I was eleven years old and found out that I was a wizard, and went to Hogwarts. A whole new life all of a sudden, and no going back.

"I think I know what you mean. But I had better go now and let you close up. Thank you for the brochures. I'll enjoy reading them."

"And thank you for stopping in. We look forward to seeing you again."

Out in the street, Harry headed rapidly for the alley that he had spotted on his walk from the Old Street tube station. When he reached it, he ducked down the alley and Disapparated.

---

After the heat and bright sunlight of the London streets, the interior of Twelve Grimmauld Place seemed cool and dark until Harry's eyes adjusted to the dimness. He looked around for Ginny and found her down in the kitchen conferring with Kreacher about grocery supplies. When she saw him she ended her conversation with the house elf and accompanied Harry back upstairs to the main hallway.

In the hallway Harry put his arms around Ginny and pulled her close in a warm hug, feeling the bulge of her belly against his groin. "You are so loved," he said. "Some guys have all the luck in the world."

"All the good luck in the world, you mean," she answered merrily. "You've certainly had your share of bad luck."

"Oh no," Harry retorted. "Today was a pretty good day. Interesting, at least."

"What happened?" Ginny asked, looking up at his face but not unwrapping her arms from around his waist. "Did some master criminals turn themselves in?"

"Nothing like that," Harry laughed. "Work was pretty boring. But I had two interesting encounters. You'll never guess who I had lunch with -- an American tourist. She was the chatty type, and I enjoyed hearing her impressions of England."

"She?" said Ginny. "Was she beautiful?"

"In a grandmotherly way," Harry reassured Ginny. "She was old enough to be my mum, maybe even my grandmother, or at least my grandmother's younger sister."

"What was your second interesting encounter?" asked Ginny, who did not think that the American tourist sounded all that remarkable.

"A lady who works for an organization that combats child abuse and neglect. She asked if I wanted to be a volunteer to help their organization."

Ginny let go and stepped back a step. "You didn't say yes, did you?"

"I said maybe. But not until the baby is older, at any rate."

"Oh Harry, you don't have time to do volunteer work, especially not for a Muggle organization. I can't imagine what you were thinking," Ginny said, shaking her head.

No, I bet not, Harry thought. "Don't worry. I haven't promised anything. Now I'm going upstairs to change out of these clothes." He gave her a kiss and headed up the stairs.

After dinner Harry anounced that he was going to take a walk in the neighborhood and invited Ginny to come with him.

"Why?" she asked.

"I want to look at people's gardens," Harry replied mysteriously.

Ginny looked at him quizzically. "Whatever for?"

"Because Pamela, that American tourist I told you about, said that England was famous in America for its gardens, and now I want to try to look at them as if through the eyes of a visitor." He had a merry twinkle in his eye; he was feeling atypically light-hearted as if a weight were just beginning to lift, because of what he had done this day.

"Oh, you're on first-names basis with her now?"

"Exactly. 'Hi, my name's Pamela. Lovely country you've got here.' 'Thanks, my name's Harry. So glad you like it.' " He did voice imitations as he recited this mock conversation, and they both dissolved into giggles.

Once outside and walking along the pavement in the golden evening light, they could see that Grimmauld Place did not live up to the reputation of beautiful English gardens. Not at all. The small patches of ground in front of the houses on either side of the steps leading up to the front doors were dry, barren, weedy, decorated only with rubbish bins and sacks of garbage. The pavement along which they were walking was punctuated with cracks, out of which a variety of particularly hardy weeds thrust their rough stems and footstep-worn leaves. Harry and Ginny strolled along, turning their heads to eye each patch of ground as they passed it. Occasionally Harry stopped briefly in front of a house "to see if there is any remnant of the garden that used to be here."

"Like what?" Ginny asked.

"Like that rose bush there," Harry answered, pointing with his hand to the space in front of the next house. Ginny's eyes followed where he pointed, and she saw a ragged little bush, mostly dead branches sticking out at odd angles, but with a few living twigs with green leaves and a couple of rose hips that bore witness to a few blossoms earlier in the summer. They both walked up to the bush and stopped to stare at it.

"You're right," Ginny said. "There was a garden here once. Years ago, I guess, and all that's left is this little bush, still hanging on."

"A real survivor, like us," Harry agreed. "I wonder if you pruned off all the dead bits and watered it really well, if you could make it grow big again."

"I'd like to think you could," Ginny answered. "I hate to see anything die."

Harry moved closer to Ginny and put his arm around her shoulders. They stood together silently in the evening sunlight for a few minutes.

"This street must have been beautiful at one time," Harry speculated, turning his head left and right, imagining what it might have looked like. "Or at least a lot better than it is now."

"And the houses had fresh paint, and all the little fences were intact," Ginny added.

"You know," Harry said, "when I first saw this street, it seemed like an awfully shabby place for the home of the Most Ancient and Noble House of Black. I can hardly imagine them deigning to live here. But it must have been elegant in the beginning."

Ginny smiled mischievously. "It could be again. We could sneak out some night and transfigure all the garden areas to be clean and beautiful again, with flowers and shrubs, even little bits of grass. Wouldn't that be funny? And the next night we could sneak out and transfigure the shabby grass area in the middle of the square."

"Oh no," Harry objected. "We would have to do it all in one night because after the first night the Muggles would put out watchmen to see if they could catch whoever is doing it." He smiled and gave Ginny a hug with the arm around her shoulders. It was fun to be silly for a few minutes.

They began walking again and soon reached the end of the cul-de-sac where Grimmauld Place opened out into the cross street. Randomly they turned right and kept walking. There were other houses along this street, a few with slightly better gardens, and Harry and Ginny commented on that as they walked. After a couple of blocks they stopped at a street corner, and Harry leaned his back against the post of a street sign, facing Ginny.

"Look around us," he said, waving his hand to take in the scene. "Stone, bricks, concrete, pavement, buildings, traffic signs, cars," (although there were not actually any cars passing at that moment). "There's not a single place here for any child to play. If children do live in these houses," and he gestured with his hand again, "what do they do? Play in the streets or on the pavement?"

Ginny looked up and down the pavement. "Maybe they draw pictures on the pavement with colored chalk or draw little pretend houses, but I don't see any pictures or houses."

"What do you mean, 'draw houses'?" asked Harry.

"It's something girls do," Ginny explained. "You draw the outlines of rooms in the dirt with a stick or on the pavement with chalk and then pretend they are your little houses. Sometimes in the autumn we would make the outlines of the rooms with heaps of fallen leaves. It's an old-fashioned game. Maybe no one plays it anymore."

"Sirius and Regulus grew up in our house," Harry continued. "Where did they play?"

"I don't know," Ginny said. "In the back garden? In that patch of grass in the square in front of the house?" She paced back and forth a few steps. "Maybe they stayed indoors a lot."

"The back garden is about as big as a postage stamp. Even going in and out of the house can be an issue." Harry said, staring straight ahead. "It's no place to raise children." He stood up straight again and looked directly at Ginny. "Think about your own childhood in Devon. You had gardens, fields, orchards. You could be outdoors all day. You could see fish and frogs and rabbits and butterflies. That's how it should be. Heck, even my neighborhood in Little Whinging was better than this."

"Yes, you're right," Ginny said, turning her gaze from side to side. "What do you think we should do?"

Harry looked down at her and smiled. "Someday," he said, "I'd like to move out into the country again. I think it would be much better for the children, and I'm not wedded to the house in Grimmauld Place. Sure, there's a mild sentimental attachment because it was an inheritance from my godfather, and I'm not ready to sell it, but the house itself is not what I want in a home. And I have a feeling that after we have two or three children, we won't be spending so much time at restaurants and art fairs, so we won't miss being in the heart of the city.

"You're right," Ginny reflected. "I wouldn't have wanted to grow up in any other place that where I did. I felt so free there. It makes me feel good just thinking about it."

They started back toward Grimmauld Place with the sun at their backs and their shadows stretching long before them.

"Did you get the baby clothes sorted and the shelves labeled today?" Harry asked as they walked along the almost empty street.

"Yes," Ginny said. "It didn't take as long as I expected. I was finished before eleven a.m."

"Is there anything left you need to do?"

"Not really, not much. I set myself the goal of getting everything ready by the end of the eighth month, just in case the baby came early, and I've pretty much achieved that."

"I'm proud of you," Harry said gently.

"I was thinking, I'd like to visit my mum again one more time. My ninth month starts in two weeks, and I don't want to be gone after then. I want to be here with you, just in case..."

"In case the baby comes early. That makes a lot of sense."

"Is that okay with you?"

"How long will you be gone?"

"Not more than a week. Maybe less."

"Yes, that would be fine."

He took her hand as if they were young teenagers on their first date, and they continued back to the house.

Chapter 5: Volunteer Night

Ginny left for the Burrow on Tuesday morning, traveling by the Floo Network. The Healers had advised against trying to Apparate during pregnancy; the risk of damaging the baby was not high, the Healers, said, but it wasn't worth taking the chance. Harry waited to leave for work until after Ginny had stepped into the green flames, little valise in hand, and had disappeared.

Now I have a week to myself, he thought. Throughout his life he had been able to tolerate solitude well, even to enjoy its powers of renewal, but since his marriage he had become so accustomed to Ginny's presence that now, when she was absent, he felt uncomfortable, at sixes and sevens, "like a dry pea rattling around in a pod," as he had described it to her. He could fill up the odd hours by visiting with Ron and Hermione, except that they were still in Italy. Maybe I could work longer hours at the Ministry, he thought, but that idea seemed singularly unattractive. It occurred to him that he could pop back and forth to the Burrow in the evenings to see Ginny and her parents, and he did not doubt that he would be welcome if he did so, but it might be intrusive to the special bonding time that Ginny seemed to want with her mother and father.

No, he thought, This is my last opportunity to focus on what I need to do, before Ginny comes back and the baby comes and our lives change forever. Suddenly the days ahead seemed precious, critical, and it was crucial that he use them well. Maybe Ginny was ready for parenthood, but he was not. He glanced about him, left and right, as if an agenda for the next seven days might be spotted lying on a tabletop.

Suddenly he remembered the papers that Mrs. Miller had given him. When was that volunteer training class? Maybe he could do that. Hadn't she said a class was coming up soon? He walked rapidly, almost running, into the drawing room where he had a desk on which he customarily deposited stray papers that he didn't know what to do with but wasn't yet ready to discard. He shuffled through the little stack of papers and found the training class schedule. The next class was tomorrow evening.

"I'll do it," he said aloud. He wasn't sure what he might learn. Maybe it would be helpful, maybe not. But attending the class represented a positive step he could take, the only one he could think of right now.

The next evening, after a hasty supper at home, Harry stepped out of his front door and walked the few blocks to the tube station for the trip to Camden Town Station. The car was fairly full of commuters, and Harry stared straight ahead, not meeting eyes with anyone, a rising tide of eagerness in his mind. Upon alighting from the car at Camden Town Station, he looked again at the travel directions printed on the back of the class schedule, located his visual landmarks, and strode off to the designated building, which was down a narrow side street about two minutes walk away.

He had arrived about fifteen minutes early, but the doors were open, and a sign on a stand in the hallway pointed the direction to the meeting room down the hall The room was large and well-lit, with metal chairs with upholstered seats set in rows and tables with colorful stand-up placards along the back edges and stacks of brochures in front of them. At the back of the room was a table with refreshments - urns of what was probably coffee and hot water for tea, and metal trays with biscuits on them. A half dozen people were moving around the room, but they all appeared to be the producers of this affair, and Harry realized to his dismay that he was probably the first attendee to arrive. He stood in the doorway for a moment, scanning the scene, and one of the women separated herself from her fellows, came over to Harry, and greeted him.

"I was hoping to sneak in quietly and sit in the back row," Harry said jokingly, "but it looks like I'm the first person here."

"We're really glad you came. Please help yourself to refreshments," she indicated the table with the urns and biscuits, "and sign in on the sign-in sheet."

Harry poured himself a cup of tea and picked up a biscuit but avoided the sign-in sheet for the moment. As he looked over the selection of brochures, the room began to fill, and by seven p.m. the majority of the chairs were occupied. The panel members introduced themselves, and to Harry's relief the members of the audience were not requested to do likewise.

The program began. The medical doctor spoke about the kinds of abuse that children experience. The solicitor spoke about the legal system for removing children from abusive homes. The social worker spoke about the arrangements made for their further care. People asked questions. Harry squirmed in his seat. The information was interesting, but none of it seemed helpful to him, and no one was asking the questions that he wanted answered. Maybe this evening would be a dud.

The group took a fifteen minute break at eight-fifteen. Harry considered leaving, but he still hoped that he could salvage something from this venture, so he refreshed his supply of tea and biscuits and made light conversation with the other potential volunteers until the class reconvened.

There was a dark-haired middle-aged woman on the panel who had not spoken much up to now. Harry had noticed on the printed biography sheet of the panelists that she was listed by only her first name, Patricia, and he had wondered if her surname had been omitted by oversight. But in the second half of the program Patricia began to describe her work, and Harry realized the reason for the anonymity. Patricia facilitated a self-help group of adults who had been abused as children and were struggling with issues of parenting with their own children.

Harry sat up alertly. This was what he wanted. As Patricia described what her group did, he started raising his hand and asking questions. What was the possibility of breaking the "cycle of abuse" that the other speakers had mentioned? What determined how badly a child was harmed by abuse? How could these children learn to be successful parents when they grew up? Patricia answered his questions from the point of view of her self-help group, and the other experts chimed in with additional information. The social worker mentioned "the resilient child", and another trainee volunteer raised his hand and asked, "Exactly what do you mean by 'resilient child'?"

The social worker answered, "A child who lives through a seriously abusive environment but seems to be relatively lightly affected by it, who emerges emotionally fairly unscathed."

"Can you given us an example?" another trainee asked.

This time the doctor answered. "I knew of a family of two older adults, both women, quite daft, really, who believed that almost all food was poisoned, so they ate very little and were quite malnourished. There were three children in the family, two girls and a boy. The girls bought into the poisoned-food delusion and were also malnourished, but the boy was robust. I asked him, 'Aren't you also afraid that the food is poisoned?', and he said, "No, I tried the food and it seemed okay, so I eat what I want.' "

Harry was hugely relieved that the other trainees were asking questions now also because he had feared that he was making himself obvious.

"Why are some children more resilient than others?" was the next query.

"We don't know for sure," the doctor said. "It may have to do with how serious the abuse is, how long it lasts, how old the chid was when it began. One thing seems influential, and that is the presence in the child's life of a supportive adult, such as an aunt, grandparent, teacher, and so on."

"We need to move on with our agenda because time is running out," reminded the woman who was the representative of the child protection agency. The subject shifted to specific volunteer activity opportunities in the upcoming year. Harry sat back in his chair and streched out his legs. He was finally satisfied that the evening had not been a waste of time. Among all the technical and legal presentations there had been information that pointed in the direction of insight, and Patricia had left an information sheet on the brochure table about her self-help group. When the session broke up at nine twenty-five p.m., Harry quickly signed the sign-in sheet, the final name on the list, and wrote "will contact you later" across the fields that asked for his phone number and e-mail address. Then he took a moment to speak with Patricia and thank her for her contribution.

"I'm so glad you thought it was helpful." she answered happily. "It makes all the effort worthwhile. Are you in a line of work that brings you in contact with cases of child abuse?"

"I, uh, I'm in police work," Harry stammered. He never felt ready to respond to that question. I need to come up with a better answer, he thought.

"Well, then, I can understand your interest," Patricia replied.

"We need to get out of here," Harry said in conclusion. "The ladies of the child protection organization want to close up. Good night. Thanks again." He turned, waving his hand a final goodbye, and strode out into the night.

Chapter 6: The Institute of Psychiatry

By the next morning Harry was itching to learn more about child abuse than he could glean from the brief brochures and fact sheets that he had so far collected. At the training session the previous evening there had been time for only a relatively few questions and he still had many more.

"What I need is a good book," Harry said to himself as he stared at his reflection in the bathroom mirror while shaving. "I need to go to a library." Immediately his mind conjured an image of the Hogwarts library and he almost laughed aloud. The books in Hogwarts library were large, heavy, leatherbound, and written on parchment. Even the newest volumes looked old, and he was sure they didn't address topics of psychology or family relations.

By the time he was eating his breakfast of kippers and toast at the long wooden table in the kitchen, Harry was mulling over where he had seen any Muggle libraries in London. Just off the top of his head, he couldn't think of any in the neighborhood around Grimmauld Place. As he ate, he mentally traced his walking path between Grimmauld Place and the Ministry of Magic, but again he could not recall passing any libraries.

What do I know about London? he asked himself as he chewed his food and sipped his juice. Restaurants and bars, clothing stores, music venues, my friends' homes, the public transportation system, the train station. He envisioned these places, one by one. For having lived in London so long, there's a lot of places I haven't been to yet, he thought. I should make a point of getting out more. Then he realized how silly that thought was, considering that the baby would be arriving in a few weeks, and he grinned. The first place I knew in London was King's Cross train station, he thought to himself. I've been in and out of there so many times. Then it suddenly struck him. Right next to the King's Cross train station. Something he had seen over and over. The British Library.

Harry felt a rising sense of urgency to forge ahead with his search for understanding of what had made him the way he was. The time frame for solving this problem was short because Ginny would be back home by Monday at the latest, and he wanted to know what to tell her. Before leaving for work, he sent a hasty owl to Ginny, saying simply that he loved her, he hoped she was enjoying her time in Devon with her parents, and that he had been keeping busy.

Once at the Ministry of Magic he consulted the duty roster to see if there was an Auror with whom he could trade shifts in order to get Friday free. Trading shifts was something that Aurors occasionally did, and on those rare occasions when Harry requested it, he usually achieved success by offering an attractive bait such as a weekend day. This time he would offer a Sunday for Friday. Before long he had managed to negotiate a trade with Andrew Postlethwaite, who was delighted by the unexpected prospect of spending Sunday with his family. Harry was so pleased at how things were going that he was practically dancing at his desk. I'm on a roll, he thought. He was so eager to get to the British Library that the rest of the day seemed to drag.

Harry was out the door early on Friday morning, walking with confident, rapid strides down the pavement of Grimmauld Place in the cool, fresh air, heading toward the underground station. He was so optimistic about finding what he wanted at the British Library that he had dressed in his Auror's uniform so that he could go into his office at the Ministry of Magic in the afternoon if he felt like it. After all, the British Library was huge, at least from the outside. How many books did it contain? Hundreds of thousands? The book he needed must be there. At the station he crowded into the train car with the other commuters, and during this journey he did look around at his fellow commuters, wondering if they were as eager to reach their destinations as he was to reach his. Most of them stared straight ahead with blank expressions on their faces, while Harry could not help smiling a little. He silently counted off the stations, one by one, until the car arrived at the King's Cross/St. Pancras station, where he stepped off the car onto the platform and up into the street. A short walk west on Euston Road, and he saw the mass of the British Library looming up on his right.

There was a wide, brick-paved courtyard in front of the library's main entrance, adorned with sculptures. Harry stood for a few minutes under the morning sky, gazing at the sculptures, especially the one in the form of a giant chained book. He knew that in medieval times, before the invention of the printing press, hand-written books were considered so valuable that they were chained to their shelves. He raised his glance to take in the facade of the library building itself. He knew that the books inside were not chained, but the knowledge they contained was just as valuable.

Harry walked up to the main doors and entered the lobby. Although the library had only just opened for the morning, there was a fair number of people entering, walking briskly through the lobby as if they were quite familiar with their destinations, not moving slowly and gazing around as a tourist would do, indeed, as Harry himself was doing. The lobby was paved with squares of gray and white tiles, and boxy white pillars displayed colorful placards. Exactly where to go was not instantly obvious. Harry looked around, focusing on the details of everything in the lobby, and located the "Welcome to the British Library" stand, with brochures and maps that would doubtless make everything clear.

But the brochure and map proved to be a big disappointment. Reading them, Harry discovered that the British Library was not a lending library as he had expected. It seemed to have two components: it was like a book museum with exhibits of historic manuscripts, and it was a closed collection of books that were, for all purposes, inaccessible to him. To actually see the books, one had to apply for a Reader's Pass at the Reader Registration Office and provide information that Harry could not provide: personal ID with signature and proof of address, such as a driving license, student card, business card or professional membership card, and full details of the books or materials he wanted to see. To Harry, these books were as unavailable as if they had actually been chained to the shelves.

Harry felt crushed. He had built up this trip in his mind, so sure that he was on the right track, and now, nothing. He looked again at the library floor map in his hand and saw that there were areas on the first floor labeled "The Sir John Ritblat Gallery: Treasures of the British Library" and "Folio Society Gallery". Maybe these would be interesting to see, some other time; maybe he could bring Ginny here to see them, but now he didn't have the heart to even glance at them. His eye wandered to the spectacle of a glass bookcase, about three stories high, filled with ancient-looking leather-bound books. The placard in front of this exhibit identified it as the personal collection of Sir Hans Sloane, who in the seventeenth century had donated his entire library, a huge (for the era) number of books, to found the British Library. Harry stared through the glass at the books, trying to decipher the titles on the spines, curious as to what types of books Sir Hans had collected.

A voice at his elbow suddenly said, "That's quite a pile of books, isn't it?"

Harry turned his head and saw a middle-aged, rather stocky man standing there. Harry looked back at the glassed-in exhibit again.

"It reminds me of the books in the library of my old school."

The man turned to Harry and chuckled. "Didn't care much for your old school, did you?"

Harry had meant his remark literally, that these books looked like books at Hogwarts, but he realized that the older man assumed he was speaking metaphorically.

"My old school was ... pretty traditional," he explained, smiling.

"And you young fellows like things more modern, don't you?" the man asked heartily.

"Yes, I guess we do," Harry agreed, nodding his head.

"Are you here to do research?" the stocky man asked, and it occurred the Harry that his Auror's uniform made him look professorial.

"Not exactly," Harry said with a sigh. "This is the first time I've ever been here, if you can believe it, and I was hoping I could just walk into the stacks and look for what I wanted, but it turns out you can't do that."

"Oh, it's not that hard," countered the other man. "You just go down that corridor over there," and he pointed with his hand, "to the Reader Registration Office, and they'll issue you a pass."

'"I read about that in this brochure," Harry explained, holding out the brochure in his hand, "but it says you have to ask for specific books or materials, and the truth is, I just need to walk up and down the aisles, seeing what's there."

"Oh," said the man, and a moment later he added, "In that case, tell you what you want to do. You want to go to Foyle's Bookstore in Charing Cross Road. They've got thousands of books too, maybe as many as they've got here, but they're all out on shelves that you can see, all modern stuff, not like this lot," and he jerked his thumb toward the exhibit of antique books behind the glass, with a twinkle in his eye, "and you can browse through them until you find what you need."

"Thank you very much," Harry said gratefully. "I'll do exactly that." He took his spiral-bound notebook from his inside coat pocket. "What was the name of the bookstore again?"

"Foyle's," said the older man. "F-O-Y-L-E-S. A big place, in Charing Cross Road, down near Trafalgar Square. You can't miss it. And if you find a book you like, you can buy it and take it home. Can't do that here!", and he laughed at his own joke.

"Thanks again, " Harry said, putting his notebook and pen away. "I'll go right now."

"You won't be needing that coat much longer, son," the man called out to him as he headed toward the street. "It's gonna be a hot one."

Harry hopped aboard the next underground train heading south and rode to the Charing Cross station. The advice of the man at the British Library turned out to be sound; Foyle's bookstore was close by and easy to find. The name was displayed prominently in big block letters over the door. As Harry entered, he could tell that this was a vast bookstore, and instinctively he looked about for a stack of maps to guide his steps.

The map indicated there were four floors of bookshelves, and it labeled the various areas on each floor with the categories of books to be found there. Harry wasn't sure which category was his goal - health? crime? medical? - but the map also indicated the location of an information booth, so he negotiated his way through the areas of New Titles and Fiction, past the lifts, and found the booth, where a young man answered his query by directing him down a staircase behind the booth to the lower floor, Medical area.

There were rows of bookshelves full of hardbound and paperbound books. Harry was elated. He walked quickly along the aisles, scanning the titles, passing sections of books about purely physical topics like diabetes and chronic lung disease, and soon found an area containing titles that pertained to child abuse. He pulled one book off the shelf at random and began flipping through the pages, reading sections here and there to get a handle on what the book contained. Then he replaced it on the shelf and checked out another one, and another, and another. There were several dozen books on the general topic of child abuse, and Harry began to see the same themes repeated over and over. Discussions of the history of the recognition of the problem of child abuse, the laws concerning the handling of abuse cases, statistics about abuse, descriptions of abuse. Some books were case histories of individual families.

Harry spent more than an hour looking through these books, and he still didn't find exactly what he wanted. All the authors seemed to be writing multiple parallel versions of the same few ideas, and Harry was not finding much that would help him to understand himself. Maybe no one has written the book I want, he thought sadly. He wasn't exactly sure what that book would look like, but he felt certain he would recognize it if he saw it.

There was a cashier's desk in this room, and the middle-aged man who manned it left his desk and approached Harry. Harry looked up from the book in his hand and wondered if the cashier was going to remind him that this was a shop, not a library. But as the man came near he simply asked in a pleasant voice, "Is there something I can do to help you?"

That might have been a rhetorical question, a mere conversation-opener, but Harry chose to take it literally.

"I hope so," he replied. "I see that you have many titles on child abuse, but I'm not seeing what I want. Something in more depth, maybe, about the mindset of abusers and victims, something about the basic principles of what's going on."

"Our books are selected for a general audience," the cashier said, "but you may be needing something more professional. If you haven't seen anything here that meets your needs," and he indicated the long expanse of the shelves with a wave of his hand, " I would suggest that you try the library of the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College. Their resources are vast. If they don't have what you need, it doesn't exist."

'Another trip, Harry thought. Well, at least the day is still fairly young. It's still before noon. But no chance of getting back to the Ministry of Magic for the afternoon.

"Thank you for the suggestion. Can you tell me where that is?" asked Harry.

"Come with me," said the cashier, and he walked back to his desk, Harry following close behind. The cashier took a big metropolitan London street map from a shelf under the counter and spread it out in front of Harry. "This is where we are," he indicated, tapping a spot on the map with the tip of his pen, "and this is where the Institute of Psychiatry is," flipping the map over and tapping a spot south of the Thames, in Southwark.

Harry was dismayed to discover that the Institute of Psychiatry was not just a short tube ride away. "That's rather far," he remarked.

"Are you traveling by private car today?" the cashier inquired.

"No," Harry reluctantly admitted, "I'm traveling by public transportation." I wish I could just Apparate, he thought, but I'm totally unfamiliar with this destination.

"You can get there by bus or by railway," the cashier continued, "but the railway is simpler and easier. Take the train at the Charing Cross station," and he tapped the front side of the map, "and change at the London Bridge station." Another tap. "After you change, go all the way to the Denmark Hill station." His pen tip described a sweeping arc on the back side of the map. "The Institute of Psychiatry is fortunately very close to the train station. You just walk east on Windsor, north on Grove Lane, and west on De Crespigny Park." He traced this brief walking journey with his pen again.

Harry took out his little notebook and made a rough sketch map of this trip, jotting down the names of the streets.

"Thank you very much," he said, as the cashier refolded the map and put it away. "I appreciate your help." He reached out his hand to the cashier, who took it in a firm handshake and gave Harry a smile.

As Harry went back up the stairs and out into the street, he thought, Well, this is it. If it's not at the Institute of Psychiatry, then it doesn't exist. The cashier said so.

He walked along the Strand to the railway station. There were little food kiosks in the station, but Harry decided not to stop to eat because he suspected that the trains between London Bridge and Denmark Hill did not run extremely often, and he did not want to miss the train by five minutes because he had taken time to eat.

---

When the train stopped at Denmark Hill station, Harry stood up and stepped off the train onto the little platform. He glanced again at the hand-drawn map that he had been carrying in his pocket, then strode off along Windsor Walk to Grove Lane, turned left, and passed a junior school. The sun shone down on the bright green grass around the school building, but no children were playing there. Turning left again into De Crespigny Park, he passed a new modern building. The blue and white sign in front identified it as the Henry Welcome Building for Psychology. The next building was his destination, the Institute of Psychiatry. He stopped on the sidewalk and gazed at the building for a minute, contemplating what he might find inside. Then he took a deep breath and walked up to the entrance.

There were four glass doors and the words INSTITUTE OF PSYCHIATRY on the lintel over them in block letters. Taped to the doors were notices of upcoming events. A man and a woman who appeared to be about his age were leaving the building as he entered, and he noted that their clothing was more casual than his own Auror uniform of black trousers, white shirt, gray tie, and black topcoat. He hoped he looked professorial. A building directory on the wall of the foyer told him that the library was on the second floor. The building was busy with people going back and forth in the corridor. He climbed the staircase to the second floor, and it did not take him long to locate the library. Through its glass doors he could see a very large room with book shelves all around the periphery and reading desks centrally, with tall lamps with white shades on the desks. There were several dozen people at the desks, all reading and writing, and a few wandering by the bookshelves. But there was a hurdle to overcome, a receptionist sitting at a desk just inside the door, and a sign that Harry could read even at this distance through the glass of the door, directing library users to show official university ID.

Harry stepped backwards into the hallway and considered his possibilities. He could enter without an ID card, unseen, by using a Disillusion charm or Apparate into the room beyond the reception desk, but both those actions would present problems regarding his sudden reappearance at the far side of the room. He could Confound the receptionist and cause her to allow him to enter without ID. Or he could create an ID card for himself by Transfiguring another object. The last idea seemed like the best and simplest, so he went back downstairs to the foyer, picked up a brochure from a rack near the entrance door, and carried it a short way down the hall to the men's loo. In the privacy of a toilet stall, Harry Transfigured the brochure into an ID card of King's College, complete with a photo of himself. He inspected the card and grinned with satisfaction; the photo on the card grinned back at him. No, that won't do, he thought with amusement, imagining the receptionist's reaction if he failed to keep a straight face while presenting his card, so he assumed a solemn expression and put a Quiescence charm on the card to keep the photo motionless.

Back in the upstairs hallway, Harry confidently pushed open the library's glass doors, walked in, and showed his ID card to the receptionist. She was a young woman with short, dark hair, and in between checking IDs or answering questions she was reading a book. Harry wondered if she was a student herself, tending the reception desk as a part-time job. She glanced quickly at the card and then at Harry's face, while he tried to maintain a solemn look that matched the photo, and then she nodded wordlessly and went back to her reading.

Harry walked forward and gazed around. The bookshelves seemed to stretch out endlessly. There must be thousands of books here, he thought. It was overwhelming. Where to start? He walked to one side of the room where there was a rack with magazines displayed in ranks. When Harry got closer he could see that they were professional journals arranged in alphabetical order. His eyes swept over their titles and stopped on a journal entitled "Child Abuse and Neglect: The International Journal". Merlin's beard! he thought. They have an entire journal on that one topic. He picked it up, knowing it was not the basic explanation of child abuse that he was seeking, but curious about what kind of articles it contained. Opening the journal to its page of contents, he scanned the titles of the articles. Something about violent delinquency. Something about "poly-victimization". Something about a longitudinal analysis of risk factors (he didn't even know what that meant).

He placed the journal back on the rack and decided that he needed help. He would ask a woman, not a man, and hope that she would have sympathy for him. His eyes roamed around the room and alit on a young woman sitting alone at a reading desk. He walked up to her desk and sat down in an adjacent chair, leaned forward, and whispered, "Excuse me. My name is Harry. This is my first time at this library and I'm unfamiliar with locating materials. Could you spare a moment to help me find out what section of the bookshelves I need to go to?" He looked at her with what he hoped was an appealing, non-threatening expression so that she would not think he was trying to hit on her, and she smiled slightly and whispered back, "What topic are you looking for?"

"General material on child abuse," Harry whispered.

"The card catalog is on computer," the woman whispered. "Come with me." She pushed back her chair, stood up, and walked across the room to a group of computers. She leaned over one and tapped the keys. The computer screen flickered, and in a moment she took a scrap of paper from a little plastic basket next to the computer and jotted something down. She handed the scrap to Harry and whispered, "This is the general section of the stacks where you will find books about child abuse."

"Thank you very much," Harry whispered. "You've been very helpful."

Paper in hand, Harry started walking along the periphery of the room until he reached the section whose number was written on the scrap. He swept his eyes along the shelves, reading the titles. There were books about child and adolescent therapy, child protection, interviewing children, forensic psychology, sexual abuse, pediatric homicide, predatory pedophilic priests, child custody...the titles went on and on. He could spend all day pulling down one book after another without finding what he wanted. Foyle's bookstore had had too little material, but this library had infinitely too much. It seemed to be too specialized, too technical. Harry felt desperate. Was his search coming to a dead end? He glanced back and forth along the rows of books. How could he identify the one he needed, out of so many?

As he stood there, irresolute, an idea began to form in his mind. Would it work? Maybe...if his wand knew him well enough to make the choice. He had never before tried something exactly like this. He fingered his holly and phoenix feather wand inside his coat and whispered, "Accio the book I need, but not more than three inches." Then he gazed intently along the rows of books to his right, but saw nothing. He turned his face to the left and stared at those books, and about 5 yards to his left, he saw a book slowly edging out of the ranks of volumes until its spine protruded three inches forward of the spines of the books on either side. Then it stopped moving.

With a burst of joy in his heart, Harry strode rapidly to the book that his wand had selected, seized it, and pulled it the rest of the way off the shelf. It was a smaller book than many of the other, thicker tomes, with a faded brown cloth cover. It looked older than many of the other books. Harry observed that all the books in this library looked newer that the books in the Hogwarts library, and he wondered if Muggles placed less value on old knowledge than the magical community did. If so, he was thankful that they had not discarded this book. He looked around for an unoccupied reading desk, carried his book to it, sat down, and began to read.

The book was, in fact, old. It had been published in the 1960's in the United States of America and was a detailed description of the psychology of adults who had suffered abuse as children. Harry sat and read, fascinated, not moving, totally consumed by this book. He saw himself in every sentence. As he read, Harry had a vision of himself sitting on a stool, like an artist's model, and the author of this book sitting nearby, but instead of an easel and a paintbrush, the author had a quill and a parchment. The author would look intently at Harry, then write a sentence or two, look at Harry again, write a few more sentences, until Harry's whole soul was delineated on that parchment in revealing and undeniable words.

He turned page after page, unaware of the passing of time, continually more astonished to discover that so many characteristics of his personality, which he had assumed were just part of his nature, had been shaped by living in the Dursley household during his childhood years. He finally stopped reading and simply stared forward, gazing over the library room but not seeing anything in particular. It was almost too much to think about at one time. He smiled faintly, remembering how Professor Dumbledore had given him a mission seven years ago and had told him to keep it secret; according to this book, he would have kept it secret anyway. Reluctance to confide, a compulsion to save others, conviction that he had to do everything by himself, difficulty trusting, blaming himself when things went wrong...it was all there. He thought about the summer when he turned fifteen and had been so angry about being kept out of the loop of information; he had assumed that his anger was entirely justified by the circumstances and that other people did not care sufficiently about him. Now he wondered whether another person in the same situation might have reacted differently, might have trusted more, might have made less negative assumptions.

Harry stood up stiffly. He realized that he had been reading for over two hours, and he was hungry and a little chilly, the result of his inactivity and the air conditioning in the library. Although he had not finished the book, he felt that he had learned enough. It seemed to him that he had come out of a dark cave into the brilliant daylight, and that somehow this day would prove to be a pivotal one in his life, if only he could figure out how to take advantage of it. He took the little notebook out of the inside pocket of his coat, wrote down the title and author of the book, and then carried the book to a rolling cart parked under a sign that said "Place books here for reshelving."

It was time to leave. He walked past the desk where the dark-haired receptionist was still reading, pushed open the glass doors, and went out into the hall. There was a cafe opposite the library doors, and Harry considered going in there to get something to eat, but he was feeling emotionally drained and decided that he just wanted to go home. He went downstairs to the men's loo and Disapparated back to Grimmauld Place.

Chapter 7: St. Stephen's Church

St. Stephen's Church was a large Gothic building of light gray stone surrounded by a stone wall with wrought iron gates decorated with black modern metal sculptures. Tall, thin, leafy trees cast their shadows on the walls and shrubbery, and above the trees, in the bright blue morning sky, a few tiny white clouds hung motionless. Sunlight slanted through the small-paned windows on the east side of the church, illuminating the interior of the Fireside Room (so named because of the stone fireplace on one wall) where Patricia was setting out the final items from her box of supplies. She had moved the upholstered chairs to form a supportive circle with some small tables nearby, and there was a box of biscuits and hot water for tea. In between the framed portraits of saints hanging on the walls Patricia had placed some posters, secured by special tape that wouldn't damage the walls when they were taken down again. Some brochures and leaflets about parenting skills were on a side table, along with a box of facial tissues. Patricia taped a sign that read "Parents Together" on the Fireside Room door, and another sign reading "Parents Together Today" on the outer door of the church.

Twice a month Patricia hosted a meeting of the self-help groups she had talked about at the volunteers' training session. Once a month at St. Stephen's Church on Saturday morning, and once a month at St. Alphege's on Wednesday evening in a different part of the city. It was important to make the room seem warm, friendly, and welcoming. Coming here was a big step for these parents. Patricia wanted to make it easy.

She never knew how many people would show up. Occasionally no one did. Usually there were some familiar faces, people who were returning for continuing support and who wanted to pass along some of the help they had received. There might also be a few new faces, many of whom came only once and never again.

Between 9:55 and 10:05 a.m. three women arrived. It was almost always women. Patricia knew these three from previous months. She greeted them by name, and they made themselves comfortable in the chairs and began to chat.

Then the door opened again. This time it was a man. After a moment Patricia recognized him -- it was the young black-haired policeman from the volunteers' class. She had picked up the feeling at the class, from the questions he had asked, that this policeman had had some previous encounters with the issue of child abuse, and she had assumed that it was through his professional work. But now she realized that it was personal.

"Come in," she said warmly. "It is nice to see you again. I'm glad that you came." She deliberately used the word "again" to acknowledge the tiny, brief relationship that had been established at the volunteers' class. She wanted him to feel that he was in a safe place with friends. She knew that it was an act of courage for people to come at all. They were wounded and wary.

Harry stepped tentatively into the room, closing the door behind him while keeping his eyes fixed on the group. Instinctively he took in all the details of the room -- the four faces with welcoming expressions, the unoccupied chairs, the tray of biscuits and tea, the posters, against a background of dark wood paneling and cream-colored plaster, bookshelves, and small-paned windows. He moved over to an armchair and sat down.

---

The previous evening, in the solitude of his drawing room, Harry had taken stock of all that he had learned in the past few days. A lot of vague, confusing impressions were becoming clearer, and random observations were beginning to fall into place. Underlying concepts were beginning to take shape. Things were making sense.

There was no doubt about it -- he had not come through the years in the Dursley household unscathed. The mildest term that he could apply to his present self was "altered" or "changed". A harsher term would be "damaged". Damaged goods.

It is so easy to get damaged in life, he thought. Idly he looked at his hands and arms, turning them back and forth. So many scars. Those physical injuries had healed up with no loss of function, and only faint lines on the skin as reminders. But there were other hurts, less visible to the naked eye, injuries of the soul, still unhealed. If he waited for them to heal by themselves, like wounds of the skin, he might be waiting forever.

People get hurt, Harry thought. George had lost an ear many years ago, during their desperate mass exodus from Privet Drive to the Burrow, and that injury could never be repaired. Now George was effectively deaf on one side, and if you forgot that fact and failed to speak to his good ear, he was likely to miss what you were saying.

But what had happened to Harry in the house on Privet Drive had been human damage, not magical damage, and there ought to be some way to make it better. I'm young, Harry had thought. .I've got my whole life to get better.

Harry had walked over to his his writing desk and picked up the pile of papers that he had collected during the past few days, riffing through them, looking for something that would tell him what he should do next, but there had been no brochure entitled "How to Recover From an Abusive Childhood in Ten Easy Steps". As he had sorted through the pile, his eye had fallen on the printed sheet describing Patricia's self-help groups, with meeting schedules.

A self-help group? he had thought, and then it had struck him that that was what he and his mates had been doing for years, solving their problems and facing their challenges with self-help. What was Dumbledore's Army if not the ultimate self-help group? It didn't matter if no one in their group had been an expert; they had built on each other's strengths, and together had accomplished more than the sum of their individual capabilities. Perhaps now he did not need an expert who had all the answers, as he had childishly believed Professor Dumbledore to be, during those first few years at Hogwarts. Maybe what he needed was people like himself, people who could talk the talk because they had walked the walk, people who knew from personal experience what really worked.

---

In the Fireside Room, Patricia started the tray of biscuits going around the group and poured cups of tea. Pass the tea and biscuits early and often was the principle. Then she suggested first-name introductions.

"My name is Patricia. I've been involved with this group for over ten years. I came to this group because I knew I needed to get to a better space with my own family, and then I took special training from the Parents Together organization so that I could be more effective in helping other parents too."

Then the other three women introduced themselves, one by one. Their names were Nancy, Marjorie, and Ida. Nancy and Marjorie appeared to be in their thirties, and Ida looked older. They spoke briefly about their families, their husbands and children, and how long they had been members of this group, but they didn't tell their own stories at length, and Harry assumed that they had all done so in previous months. Today it's my turn, he thought.

The introduction cycle came around to him. He hesitated a moment and then reminded himself that these people didn't know him and that this group could not help him if he kept secrets. He took a deep breath and said, "My name is Harry. This is the first time I have come to a group like this. I'm married. My wife and I are expecting our first child soon." He fell silent, not knowing how to go on. Nancy, Marjorie, and Ida sat with expectant looks on their faces, watching him carefully, looking as if they really wanted to hear what he had to say. For a long minute they sat without speaking and gave him a chance to continue, and then Patricia encouraged him.

"What is it that brings you here to us today?"

The words tumbled out in a rush, as Harry sat with his knees apart, elbows resting on his knees and his hands clasped between them, looking down at the carpet and not meeting anyone's eyes.

"I'm not sure what's going on with me, but something isn't right. Maybe it has something to do with how I grew up. I don't know anything for sure. But I have to do something. That's why I'm here." He lifted his head and looked hopefully into their faces, and he saw kindness and caring there.

"Tell us how you grew up," Patricia continued in a soothing voice, and Harry began to speak again.

"My parents died when I was a baby and I was sent to live with my mum's sister and her husband. They already had a boy about my age, and they didn't want me. I reminded my aunt of her sister, my mum, and there was bad feeling between them. They didn't get along. When they were just girls, my mum outshone my aunt academically, and my mum was accepted at a school for specially talented children. My aunt wasn't, and she felt overlooked while my mum was getting all the praise. They were totally estranged at the end. So you can see my aunt and uncle weren't very happy when I was dumped on their doorstep." He went on, describing in detail what his life was like with the Dursleys, and he could see that Nancy, Marjorie , and Ida were reacting to it with pained looks, pursed lips, and slow shakes of the head.

"Looking back, I can see how, what can I say, how bad my home life was. I think of it as unnatural, and then I think about how many children must be in the same boat, so maybe it wasn't so uncommon." He stopped talking and waited for their reaction.

Ida, the older woman, remarked, "But for you it was your whole reality." Harry nodded and sipped his tea.

Patricia started the biscuit tray going around again and asked, "Did you feel that your aunt and uncle were afraid of what people would think about you?"

Harry nodded and said, "I'm surprised that you guessed that. They were very concerned, all the time, about what other people thought, especially what they would think about someone like me. When visitors came to the house I was supposed to stay out of sight."

"It's an easy guess," Patricia replied. "Abusive parents are often very afraid of what other people think because they feel that they are always being judged and coming up short. So they try hard to control what their children do, in order to avoid criticism, and it degenerates into abuse."

"I think my aunt must have felt that way, that she was compared to her sister, my mum, and always came up short. But my aunt and uncle had their own son also, my cousin Dudley, and they treated him very differently. They gave him everything he wanted, overindulged him, you would say. He was a bully toward me also, but now, looking back, I think he was just imitating what he saw them do. I think, in the long run, he had to learn everything the hard way."

"That's a form of abuse too," said Marjorie softly.

Ida leaned forward and interjected, "It seems that when your mum and your aunt were girls, your mum was the winner and your aunt was the loser. Then, when your aunt was an adult, her son became the winner and your mum's son became the loser. I guess that evened things out, didn't it?"

Harry was speechless for a minute. So, apparently, were the other women, because no one spoke. Finally Harry found his tongue again and said, "I never thought about it that way before."

"I don't have a university degree," Ida replied, "but I've learned a lot just by living."

"Go on with your story, Harry," Patricia urged.

"Well," Harry resumed, "when I was eleven I went away to a boarding school, and life was so much better. I had friends, played sports, accomplished important things. I left my aunt and uncle's home forever when I was seventeen and never went back. Now I have a good job, a wife who loves me, a baby on the way. Everything should be fine. But I've been having these frightening dreams. I dream about hurting the baby, like letting it starve, or letting it fall off a cliff. I wake up in the night and can't go back to sleep. It spoils my mood for hours. Sometimes I feel like I'm going crazy. The I saw this advert that said 'When you hear the words "child abuse and neglect", do you think about your own childhood or the parenting you are doing now?' and I thought Maybe this is a way out."

There. He had said it all. To a roomful of strange women. Muggles.

They all sat in silence for a minute. Harry sipped on his tea, waiting for someone to say something. Then Patricia broke the silence by asking, "What are you most afraid of?"

Harry thought a moment. "What will I do in the future? Are there things I don't have control over?"

"And what do you want most?"

"To be a good father. To give my children the happiest childhood possible."

Marjorie, who had not said much so far, now spoke up. "You have control over a lot, including the most important things. If you are determined to have a good family life and can envision what that looks like, you can make it happen. You are really smart, Harry, you are really smart to try to deal with this before your children are born, and not after. I didn't really understand I had a problem until after my first child was born, and I used to get so angry at him. It seemed like I got angry every day, and I didn't want to be that sort of a mum. He was so little and I was so big. So I started looking for help, and I learned that he really wasn't doing things to try to hurt me. He was just being a normal, runabout baby. But I was reacting as if he was trying to make me angry, because earlier in my life there really had been people who were trying to hurt me. So immediately I stopped reacting to him as if he were one of them because I could see that he wasn't. After that it was easy to be a loving mum all the time. But I feel so guilty about what I did at first, and just hope it won't make a difference for him in the long run."

Nancy had not offered any comments yet, but now she ventured to speak.

"I can give you an example from my own life. When I was maybe eight years old, I was in a play at school. I was cast in the role of the grandmother, and I told my mother that I needed a costume, something that would make me look like a grandmother. But she wouldn't help me; she told me just to wear my regular school frock. I knew that wouldn't look right. My teacher would be disappointed. I didn't know what to do, so the next day I told my mother I had a stomach ache and I stayed home from school, so that I wouldn't have to show up with no costume. I didn't think about the trouble I caused when Grandmother didn't show up for the performance. I was just a little girl. I wasn't asking for much -- a shawl and an apron. Then, when my own daughter was about eight, she told me one night around bedtime that she was in a school pageant and needed the national costume of Sweden the next morning. I remembered a book I had that had instructions for dressing dolls in costumes of different countries, so I found it and -- praise the Lord -- Sweden was one of them. So I took my scrap basket and my chest of fabrics and started sewing. I sewed from eight o'clock at night until four in the morning, but my daughter had the national costume of Sweden. I vowed that I would treat her better than I had been treated, and I did. Every day I hugged my children and told them that I loved them and that I was the luckiest mum in the world to have them."

"It doesn't always work that way," Harry observed. "I knew a family, or rather I knew of them, where the old man was a vicious, foul-mouthed drunk, violent with everyone, including his own family. And his son was no better; he ended up in prison. But the grandson was the worst of the lot. He murdered several people before he himself died violently. None of them vowed to do better."

"In order to break the cycle of abuse, it helps to have some insight into what's going on, and to have some good role models," Patricia said. "When my children were about twelve or thirteen, I asked them if they ever believed that if they did anything wrong, people would be angry at them forever, and they said no, they never believed that, and I thought Hallelujah, I've broken the chain, because I always believed that when I was a child."

Marjorie spoke up again. "Before I realized that my childhood had affected my thinking, I believed that people liked me only for what they could get from me, not for my real self. Then I started coming to this group and my friends told me to listen to my body and think about what I really wanted. One night I was up late doing housework because I thought that was how I could make my husband love me. It was about eleven o'clock at night, and I remembered what my friends said, so I asked myself what I really wanted to do, and what I really wanted to do was to go to bed because I was so tired. So I did. That was a big step for me."

"Is that all it takes, just insight?" asked Harry. That seemed too simple.

"I think that insight is an important first step. It's hard to see how you could heal without it," explained Patricia. "But changing the thinking patterns that have become ingrained takes work. It can take a long time to modify beliefs that people like you only for what they can get from you, or that no one will help you, or that you can't ask for help, or that you are always alone, or that people will judge you harshly for your weaknesses, or that you don't deserve anything good."

Harry refilled his cup from the teapot and said, "I can relate to that, thinking that I have to solve problems alone, not asking for help. My friends have tried to tell me that I don't have to do everything alone. You can tell how desperate I was, to come here and look for help." He was feeling more and more relaxed, and talking to these women, strangers no longer, was actually getting easy. To his surprise, speaking without perpetually censoring his own thoughts was beginning to feel natural, no doubt encouraged by their own willingness to share.

"Remember the words on on our poster Act as if..., said Patricia, pointing to one of the posters she had taped to the wall earlier that morning. "It means that in order to change your thinking, you have to change your behavior first. Act as if you had a certain quality, such as trust, even though it feels phony at first, and eventually your mind will start to match your actions."

"I had a friend like that," Harry reflected. "He wasn't brave at first, but circumstances forced him to act brave, and in the end he was truly courageous. He changed and grew." He looked around the room. "What does your other poster mean, It's never too late to have a happy childhood.? How can that be?" He thought briefly of time-turners and how he and Hermione had used one for a few hours when he was thirteen years old. But a whole childhood? There could be no do-over for a whole epoch of one's life.

"What it means to me is that I can relive childhood through my own children and other children I work with. When I do things with my own children, it's almost like being a child again. I can learn things I should have learned in childhood, like trusting, letting go of worry, enjoying living in the moment, doing stuff for fun And it makes me happy when I do things that make children happy. Their joy rubs off on me." Patricia smiled while saying these words, as if she were reliving happy memories of her own.

"I have to give myself permission to play with my children's toys, like weaving a belt on my daughter's inkle loom, or reading one of her storybooks, but when I do, it's fun," Marjorie chimed in.

Harry shook his head incredulously. "You know, for the first time in my life, this is making sense." He looked around the group at all the women, one by one, and continued, "I've told you a lot about me, more than I ever told anyone else before. Now tell me about yourselves, where you started from, how you are progressing, how you are making your lives be better."

He hoped they would not consider his request to be too bold or intrusive, and apparently they did not. As he sat in his armchair drinking tea, Harry heard stories of neglect, emotional abuse, favoritism, alcoholic parents, deprivation, and chaotic family environments, but he also heard stories of hope, optimism, determination, and refusal to give up. Hearing these stories, Harry felt mingled emotions of sadness and encouragement, sadness that the effects of abuse had run so deep and lasted so long, but encouragement that these narrators were still bravely struggling toward wholeness.

Patricia leaned back in her armchair, holding her teacup in both hands, and addressed Harry in a serious tone.

"Does your wife -- what is her name?"

"Ginny."

"Does Ginny know that you came here? Have you talked with her about any of this?"

"No, I haven't. I didn't want to upset her. I didn't want to burden her with gruesome images of dead babies while she's pregnant."

"Talk to her, Harry. Tell Ginny what's happening, and what you're doing and thinking. Trust that she can handle it. Let her help you. Let go of the idea that you have to solve it alone, or that she will think less of you if she knows. That's the old Harry talking. Don't keep it a secret."

"That's what Ginny and I said before we got married -- no secrets."

"That was a good idea."

"I think I know what to say now."

"Even if it doesn't seem natural, remember -- Act as if. It takes time; building a strong whole personality from a foundation of abuse takes time, and I think it will always, in a way, be part of the definition of who you are. I'm still working on it, still learning, and I'm forty-eight years old."

"My mum was twenty years old when she had me. If she were still alive, she would be forty-four today, kind of like you." He stood up and started putting on his coat. "I can't tell you how helpful this has been for me. I'm sorry that I can't stay longer."

"Will we see you again next month?" Patricia asked.

"I don't know," Harry replied. "I'm just feeling my way. It's like I'm in the dark, feeling the terrain with my hands and feet." The thought flashed into his head that he had literally been feeling his way in the dark many times, but never quite like this.

"We're glad you came today, and you'll always be welcome back."

"Do many men come to this group?" asked Harry. "I notice I'm the only one today."

"No, not many. It's not that they couldn't benefit from it, but it takes a certain courage."

Harry exchanged parting words with Ida, Marjorie, and Nancy and went out, closing the door softly behind him. He walked through the church foyer, out into the fresh air, and along the pavement. He felt more hopeful than he had been since the dreams began. He thought about what Patricia had said about having good role models. Morfin and Merope, and probably their father Marvolo, had had no such experience; they had never known love. He, on the other hand, had known fifteen months of love from his parents at the beginning of his life. He didn't remember any of it. After all, what could a baby remember? His only mental images were from photographs and other people's memories, but he must have understood something, in his baby way, during those fifteen months. He began to review his earliest memories of his godson Teddy Lupin. What could Teddy do at the age of fifteen months? He could walk very well and say a few words, and Harry had been sure, when Teddy was fifteen months old, that Teddy could understand a lot of what was being said. So maybe he himself had learned a lot about love in his first fifteen months, enough so that he too could "break the chain" and get back to where he needed to be. Professor Dumbledore had often told him that his mother's love had protected him from Lord Voldemort. Maybe it had protected him from the Dursleys too.

Chapter 8: Ginny Comes Home

That afternoon after lunch, Harry went into the drawing room, settled himself on the sofa, and, stretching out his legs, reviewed all that he had done and learned over the past few days. He felt that he understood a lot more now about how his childhood had affected him and had shaped who he was today, although the memory of the dreams still discomfited him and disrupted his peace of mind. He was ready to explain it to Ginny, but she was still at the Burrow visiting her parents until Monday. If he asked her to come home right away, she would think that something was wrong, so he compromised and sent her an owl asking her to come home on Sunday evening.

The rest of Saturday seemed to drag, and it was hard to work on Sunday because Harry could not concentrate on his Auror business. His mind kept racing ahead to the evening hours when Ginny would return, and he rehearsed endlessly in his mind what he would say to her. Finally the work day was over and he Apparated home.

Ginny arrived via the Floo at about seven p.m. Harry was waiting impatiently by the fireplace, and as soon as she appeared, he stepped forward, took her valise from her hand, and drew her close in a hug, not minding the ash residue that still dusted her clothing and rubbed off onto his own.

"I'm so glad you're home," he said. "I missed you so much."

"I missed you too." She nestled her head against his shoulder.

"Are you sorry you went?"

"No, no, it was good to see them again. I had a good time." There was a happy tone to her voice.

"I hope you don't mind that I asked you to come home a day early."

"No, that's okay."

Harry stepped back and began to brush the ash off her clothes and his own. He was bursting with the desire to tell her what he had been doing, but he did not want this reunion to be all about him, so he deliberately asked her about her visit first. Her story was sure to be shorter than his, which was going to take a long time.

Harry sat down at the table and said, "Tell me everything you did."

"Well," Ginny said, putting the final touches to the brushing off of her clothing, "I spent a lot of time talking with Mum. I asked her all about childbirth -- she's had a total of seven children on six different occasions -- and she says it gets easier every time. In fact, she said when I was born I just about fell out. Even though this baby won't be her first grandchild, I got the feeling that having your sons' wives give birth isn't the same as having your own daughter give birth. It's like she's more connected to me than to her daughters-in-law. Well, I guess that's not a surprise." Ginny sat down at the table with Harry.

"And we spent a lot of time talking about what it's like in the first few months after the baby's born, and she told me about when Bill was a baby. And we had fun cooking some special food, and looked at baby pictures, and some friends came for dinner."

"How's your dad?" asked Harry, wanting to deal thoroughly with Ginny's story before starting his own.

"He's fine. He was happy to see me and sorry that you couldn't come too."

"I've kept very busy."

"What were you doing?"

"I've been to some strange and unusual places and talked to some unusual people," Harry said, by way of introducing something Ginny was sure to find unexpected and remarkable.

"Ooh, that sounds interesting," Ginny exclaimed, her face lighting up. "Is it anything you can tell me about?"

Harry was a little surprised by her question since he intended to tell it all to her, and then he realized that she assumed he was talking about some very interesting Auror case.

"Yes, I can tell you all of it. In fact, I have to."

Now it was Ginny's turn to look perplexed, and Harry knew she was wondering what sort of Auror case it was, that she needed to know all about.

"It's not about my work at the Ministry. It's about me," he explained.

"Oh," Ginny said. She placed her elbows on the edge of the table with her forearms crossed in front of her on the polished dark wood and leaned forward toward him, watching his face intently. "What about you?"

"It's a long story," Harry replied. "I have to start at the beginning."

The beginning was the series of disturbing dreams. Harry described them in as much detail as he could remember.

"Why didn't you tell me about this before?" Ginny asked gently. She reached forward and took one of Harry's hands in her own.

"I was worried that it would bother you. I was worried about what it meant about me. So I wanted to figure it out first."

"And did you?" Ginny asked.

"I figured out a lot. Not everything. Not yet. But I'm glad that you're not angry with me for waiting to talk until I knew what to say."

He said that to forestall any angry outburst from Ginny about his keeping secrets from her, but in truth he had to admit to himself that her old proclivity to the rapid angry retort when she was displeased with something was fading away. Perhaps it had something to do with becoming a mother and no longer seeing herself as a member of the youngest generation, but rather as a part of an older generation that had to assume more responsibility.

"I'm not angry. I trust that you know what you're doing. But go on with your story. What else is there?"

Harry continued until finally it was all told -- the poster in the plaza, the trip to the office of the child protection organization, the evening at the volunteer training session, the day of traveling from the British Library to Foyle's Bookstore to the Institute of Psychiatry and the amazing book that he found there, the self-help group at the church and the wise women he met there.

"I need a cup of tea," Harry said finally, standing up. "Do you want some too?"

"Yes, that would be nice," Ginny answered. As Harry made the tea, she asked "What are you going to do now?"

Harry set the cups on the table, a pink-and-white cup for Ginny and the dark blue NRLI mug for himself. Leaning back in his chair and staring at his mug, he said, "I want to talk to people who knew me when I was little, to ask them about things, fill in some of the blanks."

"Would you want to talk with your aunt and uncle?" Ginny asked.

"Merlin's beard! No!" Harry exploded, and then he added, only slightly less vehemently, "There's nothing those two people can tell me that I don't already know!"

"Sorry I mentioned it," Ginny apologized, leaning a little back in her chair.

"No, no, that's okay," said Harry more calmly. "I shouldn't get so worked up. But I'm not ready to confront them. I'm not even going there." He stared at the table for a few moments and continued, "When I was at that self-help group that I told you about, the one at the church, one of the women, the older one, I think her name was Ida, said something that really made sense to me. I was telling them about my childhood and the relationship between my aunt and my mum when they were girls -- it's all stuff that I've told you in bits and pieces over the years, but it's different when you lay it out all organized, all together; you see things you didn't see before -- anyway, I was telling them about it, and Ida said something to the effect that when my mum and my aunt were girls, my mum was the winner and my aunt was the loser in that family, so when my parents died and I went to live with the Dursleys, my aunt had the chance for a do-over. Her son would be the winner and her sister's son would be the loser. That would even the score."

"Oh, my," said Ginny simply. "Could that be true?"

"For a long time I thought my aunt was radically opposed to anything magical. She called wizards and witches freaks, including my parents. But now I wonder if it was just that my mum had something she didn't. Did you know that Aunt Petunia once wrote to Professor Dumbledore asking to be admitted to Hogwarts too? She didn't think they were freaks then."

"So even if your mother was never a witch, if she had just been admitted to a special school for arts or drama, your aunt would have been jealous and would have said that artists or actresses were freaks and kooks?"

"Yeah, maybe so. And she still would have taken it out on me."

Harry suddenly leaned forward and grasped both of Ginny's hands in his own.

"When we have more children," he said intensely, "when we have more than one, we've got to promise each other that we will treat them both equally. No favorites. We've got to be sure that we make it plain that we value each child for whatever he or she is. So if this baby is as serious and strait-laced as your brother Percy and the next one is as goofy as Fred and George, we've got to be sure that we act as if we value them equally."

"Of course we'll do that," said Ginny, staring at him with round eyes.

"It's that important," Harry said, releasing her hands. "My grandparents, my Evans grandparents, didn't do that, and you see what happened to Lily and Petunia, and then you see what happened to Dudley and me. Well, this is where it ends!"

"Okay, I agree with you," Ginny said. "No favorites, not ever. But getting back to my earlier question, who do you want to talk to about your childhood?"

Harry twisted in his chair and rubbed the back of his neck. "I've been trying to think who that could be." He reached his right arm far down the table, hooked his fingers over the rim of a bowl of grapes, and dragged the bowl back to sit on the smooth dark wood between him and Ginny. Picking a few grapes off the bunch, he said, "Everyone who knew me when I was little is dead now. My parents, their friends, Sirius... I've seen photographs, a few letters, but I already know what's in them. I wish I could talk to Professor Dumbledore, ask him what he knew about the Dursleys before he left me with them, but he's dead now too. He never shared as much as he could have with me. I guess he always thought there would be tomorrow, and then there weren't any more tomorrows."

"Was there anyone besides Professor Dumbledore who knew about when you were a baby? Hagrid maybe?"

Harry shook his head. "I don't think Hagrid knew much. He brought me from Godric's Hollow to Little Whinging, and he picked me up from the shack on the rock when the Dursleys were trying to run away, but he didn't know about my life with them. He was surprised that I didn't know that I was a wizard. Professor Dumbledore once told me that when I arrived at Hogwarts I was scrawnier and more malnourished than he expected, which makes me think that he didn't have a clear view of my life before then, if he was surprised by my condition when I arrived."

"You would think he would have confided in someone else at Hogwarts, maybe someone who is still alive. After all, you were the Boy Who Lived, and everyone was expecting you to enroll in 1991, when you were eleven years old. You must have been the topic of discussion at least occasionally."

"Yeah, maybe so," Harry shrugged, "though it seems funny to put the words 'Dumbledore' and 'confide' together in the same sentence. But if he confided in anyone, I'm betting it would have been Professor McGonagall."

"Would you like to talk with her?" Ginny asked. "Maybe she can fill in some blanks. It wouldn't hurt to try."

"I suppose so," Harry agreed. "Nothing ventured, nothing gained. But I don't have high hopes." He pulled a few more grapes off the bunch and sat eating them, one by one.

"What about the people you knew in Little Whinging?" Ginny persisted. "Your friends at school, their parents, your teachers?"

"I didn't really have any friends. I was pretty much of a loner. And I didn't know my classmates' parents at all."

"It seems weird to think of you as a loner with no friends," Ginny remarked, plucking and eating some of the grapes also. "You always seemed to be in the thick of things at Hogwarts."

"Believe me, I was. I looked a proper freak, dressed in Dudley's old clothes. They were all baggy and worn, and the trousers were very thin in the seat and knees. And my glasses were always held together with sellotape. You know, that's crazy. My aunt was worried that the neighbors would think I was a freak, and yet she did her best to make sure I looked like one."

Ginny shook her head slowly. "I'll never understand it. So I guess you didn't really know any of the neighbors personally."

"The only one that Aunt Petunia allowed me to associate with was Mrs. Figg. She was an old lady who lived a couple of blocks away, and I used to see her walking in the streets from time to time. She was my babysitter when I was little. For the most part, if Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon and Dudley went somewhere special, they didn't take me along and they left me with Mrs. Figg. As I got older, that happened less often, of course. But I think it would be interesting to pay her a visit. She's a Squib, you know, and she knew Professor Dumbledore. I was so surprised when I found that out."

"Do you think you could learn anything by talking to her now?"

"I sure don't know. I feel like I'm just fishing, but I've got to go there."

"Then let's do it. That is, if you want me to come with you."

Harry got up from his chair and walked around the end of the table to Ginny's side where he took her in his arms and held her close.

"Ginny, there's no question I want you to come with me. I don't know how I would get to the end of this without you."

"Don't you be getting all soppy on me, Harry Potter," Ginny said cheerfully. "This is our adventure, our challenge to meet, our mystery to solve. We'll get everything figured out."

"I knew I could count on you."

"We could go next Saturday. Professor McGonagall is probably at Hogwarts because the school year is beginning soon. Do you suppose Mrs. Figg is still living in Little Whinging?"

"I hope she hasn't died. I'll send some owls right away."

---

As it turned out, Mrs. Figg was still alive in Little Whinging and Professor McGonagall was at Hogwarts preparing for the new school year. They both expressed their delight at the prospect of a visit from Harry and Ginny and their willingness to help him however they could.

On Saturday morning, after an early rising and a hearty breakfast cooked by Kreacher, Harry and Ginny reached into the glass jar over the fireplace in the stone-walled kitchen and then threw their pinches of Floo powder into the flames, which immediately flared up green and sparkling.

"Hogwarts School, Professor McGonagall's office," they said, one by one stepping into the flames. Ginny was carrying a cloth shoulder bag containing "hostess gifts" for the two ladies whom they would be visiting that day. She had decided that gifts were in order because she and Harry had essentially invited themselves to call on Professor McGonagall and Mrs. Figg, and she had pondered long on what gifts would be welcomed by older women who probably already had everything they wanted and didn't fancy more clutter. She had finally decided on some special cakes because they were consumable, could be shared with others, and were the work of her own hands, much to the displeasure of Kreacher, who considered it his duty to do all the cooking in the household.

Stepping out of the swirling flames, Harry and Ginny found themselves in the dark-paneled office of Professor McGonagall. The sunlight streamed through the tall, multi-paned windows and reflected off the glass-fronted cabinets. Professor McGonagall was sitting behind her desk, but she arose as they appeared in her office and stretched out a hand, a warm smile on her face.

"It's such a pleasure to see you again, Harry, Ginny," she said, shaking each of their hands in turn. She was dressed in green, which had always been a becoming color on her, but Harry noticed that she was older-looking than he remembered, her hair shot through with white and her face more lined. Nothing stays the same, he thought, not even the good things.

Professor McGonagall invited them to sit down and they chatted about light topics for a few minutes and Ginny presented her wrapped package of cakes. Then Harry broached the subject of why they had come.

"I'm here today because I'm trying to glean whatever information I can find about the circumstances of my early life. What happened, the reasons why things happened. You're probably wondering why I care, all of a sudden."

"Yes, I do," Professor McGonagall remarked.

"It became more important to me as I was looking forward to beginning my own family, and finally it became an overwhelming need to find answers, to put things to rest. I had doubts about my ability to create a completely healthy family life so long as old ghosts were hanging about. I think these old ghosts can twist and warp your thinking, maybe even in ways you don't recognize, so that you're not in control of your own life, and that's bad."

"I see what you mean, Harry," Professor McGonagall said. She was holding her hands together in front of her on the desk and she looked at him over the tops of her glasses. "I'll answer your questions as best I can, although I doubt that I know very much."

Harry nodded. "Maybe not. It would have been good to talk with Professor Dumbledore, but unfortunately it's too late for that."

"We were hoping that maybe he had confided in you, or that maybe you and he had discussed how Harry was doing, from time to time, before he came to Hogwarts," Ginny interposed.

"I'm sorry to disappoint you," Professor McGonagall answered. "Professor Dumbledore decided these matters without asking for suggestions from anyone. I didn't know, until Albus dropped you off, that he planned to leave you with your aunt and uncle for fostering. He left a letter for them, which he said would explain everything, but I never saw the letter and I can't say exactly what was in it. All I knew about the Dursleys was what I saw that day. They appeared to be very common Muggles, and Dudley looked like a real handful, but Albus seem confident that everything would be all right. Or maybe he was just trying to be optimistic because he didn't see any other options. I really don't know."

"Were there truly no other options?" Harry persisted. "Could I have been given to relatives of my father? I remember the first time I encountered the Mirror of Erised. I saw a whole group of people who seemed to be my relatives because there seemed to be some family resemblance. I didn't know if they were all dead -- I saw my parents in the mirror and they were dead -- but it made me wonder if some of them were still alive somewhere, maybe some cousins of my father."


Professor McGonagall gave a deep sigh. "My understanding was that it had to be your mother's relatives because your mother was the one who made the final sacrifice to save your life, the one who specifically chose death when she had a choice, in order to protect you. Only in the house of her relatives could you be safe from Voldemort."

"Obviously that protection wasn't absolute," Harry observed drily, "since the dementors attacked me and my cousin and would have done us in if I hadn't known how to drive them off with my Patronus."

"Do you think Harry could have been fostered at Hogwarts?" Ginny asked. "Would he have been safe here?"

"Oh, my, that's an odd idea," Professor McGonagall responded. "We're really not set up to care for a baby. It's hard to imagine who would do it, or how. I'm sure that a baby would be better off in an ordinary family setting."

"Better off?" Harry echoed, looking down and shaking his head. "Did anyone here have any premonition of what my life would be like on Privet Drive? Did anyone try to find out later?"

Professor McGonagall did not answer directly. Then after a few seconds she said, "Tell me everything that happened."

Harry shook his head again. "It would take a long time, too long, to tell everything that happened. Suffice it to say that from the earliest times I can remember, my aunt and uncle treated my cousin Dudley with love and indulgence. They gave him whatever he wanted. And they treated me with anger and indifference and gave me nothing but Dudley's castoffs. When I was little, I couldn't figure that out. Dudley regularly beat on me, and it was as if my aunt and uncle didn't see it, but if I struck back they did see that and punished me. So I just tried to stay out of his way." He took a deep breath and kept going.

"When I was a little boy I was playing in the back garden next to the fence. I was making little roads in the dirt and using twigs to make little structures. I would stick the twigs in the ground. I didn't have any toy cars, but I used some rocks and little chunks of wood and pretended they were cars, and I pushed them along the roads with my hand. Then Dudley saw me and he kicked my rocks and twigs with his boot and ruined my roads. Then he told his mum I was wrecking her garden, and she came out of the house all angry and shouting at me. She threw me in the cupboard under the stairs and I had to stay there in the dark for the rest of the day. I was just a little kid then and I took everything literally. I couldn't understand how I was wrecking her garden because nothing was planted back there by the fence. Now I realize it had nothing to do with the garden and everything to do with animosity towards me. Multiply that incident by a thousand, no, ten thousand, because it went on for ten years."

Harry looked around the room and finally met Professor McGonagall's gaze again. "I felt sad because they hated, not just me, but my whole family. I sensed that because they never talked about them. I think that I was about five or six when I finally realized that Aunt Petunia and my mother were sisters, but I didn't know anything about my father's relatives, and I used to fantasize that someday they would come, just appear at the house, and take me away with them."

Professor McGonagall had been sitting motionless, never taking her eyes off Harry. "Were you thrown in the cupboard very often?" she asked.

Harry was startled. "I slept in the cupboard every night. I didn't have a proper bedroom. I mean, there were plenty of bedrooms in the house, but I didn't get one. As far back as I can remember, I just had that cupboard. It had one high end, near the top of the stairs, and it tapered down to nothing at the other end. I had a narrow bed, shoved down toward the low end of the stairs, and there were some nails in the wall near the high end. When I was little I could walk in without bending my head. I hung my clothes on the nails. When they made me stay in there for punishment, they made me keep the door closed, and it was dark in there.

"But you knew that already, didn't you?" Harry leaned forward in his chair and spoke more animatedly. "You knew they made me sleep in the cupboard. That first letter that arrived from Hogwarts, about a week before my eleventh birthday, it was addressed to me in the cupboard under the stairs. If you saw that, you must have seen the other stuff. How did you know I was in the cupboard?"

Professor McGonagall sighed. "That's part of the function of the Trace. It monitors the magical activities of the children of wizarding families, making note of underage magical activities. This includes the minor magical acts of young, untrained, wandless children, such as making flower petals change color or levitating pebbles. It also monitors their whereabouts. But this monitoring occurs automatically; there is not a witch or wizard watching the mundane information continuously. The acceptance letters are addressed by automatic quills which do not make judgments about the appropriateness of what they write."

"Then you really didn't know what 'The Cupboard Under the Stairs' meant," Harry said. It was not a question. "And nobody was checking up on me."

For the first time Professor McGonagall took her eyes away from Harry's face. She looked down briefly and then turned her head to gaze out the window. "Professor Dumbledore determined that you had to stay with your mother's sister in order to preserve your life. But you have known that for a long time. He left a letter when he left you on your aunt and uncle's doorstep, but he didn't speak with them directly. I had serious reservations about leaving you with Muggles, especially those Muggles, and I feared that a single letter would not be enough to explain everything that needed to be explained, or ensure their co-operation. But Professor Dumbledore seemed confident that everything would turn out all right, and Hagrid and I trusted his judgment. I should have trusted my instincts more. You are completely right, Harry. We should have checked. We should have known more."

She hesitated for a moment and then continued, "We don't have control over how families treat their children, but your case was special because you were not born to the Dursleys. You were not their son. It was our decision to place you there, so we did have some responsibility. Even though you had to stay there for your own preservation, maybe we could have done something to make it better. And maybe not."

Harry spoke gently. "I didn't come back here to blame anyone. I realize your hands were tied. Believe me, I have tried to think what else could have been done."

Ginny reached over and placed her hand on her husband's hand, giving it a squeeze. She gave him a wan smile.

"Is there anything else you can tell me about that time?" Harry asked.

Professor McGonagall shook her head sadly. "I doubt that Professor Dumbledore really thought it would be necessary to insist that your aunt and uncle treat you kindly. He probably hoped that you and your cousin would be like brothers."

Harry laughed. "You want to hear something funny? At least it's funny now. When that first letter arrived from Hogwarts, addressed to the Cupboard Under the Stairs, Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia were very alarmed. They thought that it meant that the wizarding community was spying on them and knew what they were doing. And that very same day they moved me from the cupboard to the small bedroom upstairs. They were ashamed or embarrassed or more likely just frightened to think that someone knew how they had been treating me. But really the only person who knew was the automatic quill. They were frightened by a quill."

It seemed to Harry that no more answers were to be found at Hogwarts. He stood up and extended his hand to Professor McGonagall, saying, "Thank you so much for giving me your time and talking about these old matters. It has been helpful to me in trying to make sense of my early life."

Professor McGonagall grasped his hand firmly. "I am glad to have been of some slight help. But Harry, you are a successful man with a formidable record of accomplishment and a loving wife. Can you not simply put all these early experiences behind you?"

"They are behind me," Harry replied, "but they are also beside me and in front of me. You could say that they are part of me, for better or worse, and I am determined to make it be for the better."

Professor McGonagall smiled. "I certainly hope it will be, Harry, and I have every faith that you can do it. It has been a pleasure to see you again, and I wish you every happiness with your growing family."

Harry and Ginny walked through the familiar corridors to the main doors. Gazing around him, Harry could scarcely detect where the repairs had been made following the extensive damage in May of 1998. All the stonework had been skillfully restored to its original condition, and nothing seemed to have been changed or modernized during the reconstruction. He reflected that most of the students now in attendance had never known anything different.

They stepped out into the sunlight and paused for a few minutes on the stone steps, looking at the grass, the trees, the intensely blue sky with a few little white clouds.

"Did you find out what you wanted to know?" asked Ginny.

"I guess so," said Harry. "I learned that the quality of my early years was just a matter of luck, bad luck."

"It's hard to believe. You were the Boy Who Lived, a person that everyone was talking about, but no one paid any attention to the real you."

They started walking aimlessly down the path, and after a minute Harry said, "We don't have to be at Mrs. Figg's house until one o'clock. What do you say we walk down by the lake for a little while, and then go into Hogsmeade for lunch, if you feel like walking that far."

"Sure," answered Ginny. "It's either that, or we have to eat the cake I brought for Mrs. Figg."

"No, we mustn't do that," Harry smiled. Ginny could always lighten his mood.

They turned their steps toward the lake and walked down the lawn until they could see the marble tomb which was Professor Dumbledore's last resting place, still bright in the summer sun, unbesmirched by any trace of green moss or gray lichen. As they approached the marble structure, Ginny broke the silence by saying, "Now you can ask Dumbledore anything you want, but he won't be able to answer."

Harry stopped walking and fixed his gaze on the tomb. "I don't have to ask," he said. "It wasn't his fault. In the end, it was always Voldemort."

Chapter 9: The Bombing of Coventry

Harry and Ginny arrived at Arabella Figg's house in Little Whinging at one o'clock in the afternoon, after having eaten a light lunch at The Three Broomsticks in Hogsmeade. It was Ginny's idea to forego a big noontime meal, because she said that Mrs. Figg would probably offer them some treats. And she was right. As they emerged from Mrs. Figg's fireplace into her snug and tidy living room, they could see into the dining room where plates of goodies and teacups and saucers were already laid out on a dining table covered by a white tablecloth.

Mrs. Figg was sitting in an armchair awaiting their arrival, and she stood up with a bit of effort the moment that Harry and Ginny appeared. She was dressed in a blue flowered dress, with her hair neatly coiffed as if from a recent visit to the beauty salon, silver-colored earrings in her ears, and neat black leather shoes. It looked to Harry as if she was ready to leave the house for some special event, but the attractive refreshments set out on the table told him that the special event was their visit.

"Harry, Ginny, it's so nice to see you! And I'm so happy about your new baby. Congratulations!" She was bubbling with enthusiasm in her greeting. To his slight surprise, Harry felt really happy to see her too, more than he had expected.

"Mrs. Figg, it's so nice to see you too. After all these years, and you still look the same." It had been about six years since he had seen her last, and her hair was whiter, her face more lined, but the vigorous spirit she had shown during the last years of the war against Voldemort was still plain on her face.

"And Ginny, my dear, you're looking glowing. I always knew you were a very special girl, because Harry chose you for his bride."

"Thank you so much, Mrs. Figg, for having us," Ginny said. She was feeling more at home by the minute, and any misgivings about a self-invited visit to someone she didn't know were vanishing in the warmth of Mrs. Figg's welcome.

"Come in, my dears. Have a seat," Mrs Figg said, and she waved them toward the sofa.

"Maybe you were surprised to get my owl," Harry began, but Mrs Figg interjected, "Oh no, I suspected you would come back some day to talk to me."

"Why?" asked Harry, surprised, because coming back had never occurred to him until recently.

"Call it an old woman's intuition. There's no way you wouldn't want to know everything eventually," Mrs. Figg answered. "After all, your life has been unusual from the very beginning. That's a lot for you to try to understand."

"You're right," Harry conceded. "I don't know why I waited so long."

"What do you want me to tell you about?" Mrs. Figg asked, getting right to the point.

Harry leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and his hands upturned in front of him. "I want you to tell me about the role you played in my early life. How was it that you came to be my babysitter? What was that really all about?"

"Professor Dumbledore asked me to do it," Mrs. Figg said. "He told me he had an undercover job for which I would be perfect. I wasn't working at the time, so I had plenty of time to do it, and I could just blend into the neighborhood."

"How did you know him?" Harry asked.

"My family has known him for a long time," Mrs. Figg replied. "He was friendly with all of us, even me, although I never went to Hogwarts and I always had a foot in both worlds. He asked me to keep my eye on you, make sure you remained in Little Whinging, still living with your aunt and uncle."

"Were you living in Little Whinging at the time?" Harry asked.

"No, that would have been too much of a coincidence. I was living up in the midlands, but there were no witches or wizards living in Little Whinging, so Professor Dumbledore asked me if I would be willing to relocate. There was not a lot I could do for the wizarding community because, unlike my parents and my brother, I had no skills, but this was something I could do. A house was found for me, and I moved in about a month after you came here."

Ginny asked, in tones of wonder, "You left your town and all your friends and family to do this for Harry?"

Mrs. Figg replied, "My children were grown and gone, and I knew I could make new friends in Little Whinging. This was an important job, so I did it. And who could resist the opportunity to help a baby?"

"I'm curious," Harry said. "How did you make friends -- well, no, maybe that's not the right term -- how did you become acquainted with my aunt and uncle?"

"I had a plan," Mrs. Figg explained. "I took daily walks along Privet Drive and at first I just waved and said 'Good morning,' and after they were used to that I began to stop on the pavement and chat for a few minutes. I asked your aunt if you and your cousin were fraternal twins, although of course you weren't, but I pretended that I didn't know that."

"She must have denied that pretty vigorously," Harry observed.

"She made it very plain that only Dudley was her son," agreed Mrs. Figg with a twinkle in her eye. "Well, after a little while of just chatting every day, I decided that I could get a closer relationship by offering to babysit, because then I would have a tighter contact with your family. So I said something about how it must be hard to take care of two runabout babies at once, and if she needed someone to babysit them sometimes I would be happy to do it. She said that she would be glad to let me babysit you because you were so much trouble. Of course she never asked me to babysit your cousin, but that was fine with me. I didn't realize at first that your aunt and uncle were treating you and your cousin unequally, but it eventually became clear."

"Did you babysit me very often when I was little?" Harry asked.

"When you were little, before you started school, your aunt dropped you off here fairly often, whenever she wanted to go out for the day."

"What did Harry do when he was here?" Ginny asked. "Do you remember, Harry?"

Mrs. Figg continued her story. "He used to play in the back garden. Of course, there was no one else to play with but the cats, but your husband was a solemn baby, and he seemed to be good company for himself. I would feed him lunch, and I had some little children's books that used to belong to my daughters and I read them to him."

Ginny turned to Harry and asked, "Do you remember that, Harry?"

"No, I don't," he said, shaking his head, "but," now addressing Mrs. Figg, "I do recall you showing me scrapbook photos of your cats."

"Well, I didn't think you wanted to see pictures of my family, dead people and people you didn't know."

"Maybe if you showed Harry the books again, he would remember them," Ginny suggested.

"No, I'm afraid I don't have them anymore, my dear," said Mrs. Figg. "When my grandchildren grew up, I sent the books to my daughters to read to their grandchildren."

"What else did he do?" Ginny continued.

"Well," Mrs. Figg said with a smile, "when he was about four, I tried to take him to church."

"You did?" Harry was astonished.

"Actually, I just suggested to your aunt that I could take you and Dudley to Sunday School for an hour or two on Sunday mornings, so she and your uncle could have a little time by themselves. I figured she wouldn't accept for Dudley, but there was an outside chance she'd accept for you. But she didn't, so nothing came of it."

"No, I don't suppose so," Harry reflected. "I don't think that Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon ever went to church."

"More's the pity," Mrs. Figg remarked. "The sermons might have done them some good."

Harry wanted to get back to his main focus of questioning. "Did you communicate regularly with Professor Dumbledore?" he asked. He felt sure that there must have been some sort of reporting, now that he knew that Mrs. Figg had been deliberately placed in Little Whinging.

"He sent me an owl from time to time, not extremely often, and I would reply that you were still living in your aunt and uncle's house and that I and my cats had not seen any sign of anyone coming to your house and threatening you in any way, such as Death Eaters."

"You weren't in a position to influence how my aunt and uncle treated me, were you?" asked Harry.

"No, I'm sorry, my dear, but I was walking a fine line. I didn't want to do anything that would cause your aunt and uncle to cut off contact with me, so I couldn't give you anything that you could take home, like toys or new clothes or candy. I just sincerely hoped that you were hanging on."

With a little effort Mrs. Figg got to her feet from her armchair and said, "Would you like some tea? I made a few things to go with it."

"Yes, we would like that very much," said Harry, also standing up. "My wife made you a little something special."

"But please don't open it up now," Ginny begged hastily. "We would much rather enjoy what you made, and you can share this with your friends another day."

"Why, thank you," Mrs. Figg said as they walked into the dining room. "I'll really enjoy it. It's always a treat to eat someone else's cooking." They seated themselves at the table, and Ginny handed the wrapped package of cakes to Mrs. Figg.

"I'll just put this out in the kitchen and start making the tea," said Mrs. Figg, and she went out of the room.

While she was absent, Harry and Ginny looked around the dining room. There was a dark wooden dresser up against one wall, with china and bric-a-brac on the upper shelves. Framed photographs of people who were doubtless Mrs. Figg's relatives hung on the walls, and lace curtains decorated the window.

Mrs. Figg returned a few minutes later with a teapot, and Harry wondered if she had had the water simmering when they arrived, because she had managed to make the tea so quickly without using the Fervio charm. She poured the tea and passed the sugar bowl and milk pitcher to Harry and Ginny, and urged them to partake freely of the varied little biscuits, which all appeared to be homemade.

As he nibbled a biscuit, Harry said, "There's one thing I've always wondered about. When you came to my hearing at the Ministry of Magic after that time when the dementors attacked me and Dudley, you testified that you had seen the dementors too. Did you really see them, or did Professor Dumbledore just tell you to say that?"

Mrs. Figg smiled, apparently taking no offense at the question, but she didn't answer directly. "You want to know if Squibs can see dementors. My dear boy, a Squib is not the same thing as a Muggle, even though neither one can perform magic, just as a paralytic in a wheelchair is not the same thing as an oyster, even though neither of them can walk. But I don't fault you for asking. People have been believing that Squibs are worthless since probably the beginning of the wizarding community. When their children turned out to be Squibs, some families would give them away, or send them to orphanages. Sometimes they would pretend that they were dead."

"Really??" exclaimed Ginny in shocked tones.

"It would be an interesting study," Mrs. Figg continued, "to investigate the reported deaths of children in wizarding families over the centuries, and see if there is not an uptick of reported deaths around the age of eleven. And it would be interesting to see if some of those coffins are full of rocks."

"They pretended their children were dead, and they sent them away?" Ginny repeated, horrified.

"I can believe some purebred families might do that," Harry reflected. "What do you suppose Lucius Malfoy would have done if Draco had turned out to be a Squib?"

Ginny turned to Mrs. Figg. "Your family didn't do that to you, did they?"

"No, my dear," Mrs. Figg reassured her, patting her hand. "I was lucky. My family was very supportive. They loved me anyway. I think they suspected something when I had not shown any magical tendencies by the age of six, and they sent me to the Muggle school. There was never a Hogwarts letter for me, so I stayed in the Muggle school until I was sixteen. Then I went to work. It was during the Great Depression and I was lucky to have a job. That's how I met my husband. His name was Cyril, Cyril Figg, and he was the best and kindest man I ever knew. And he was handsome too. He worked at Morris Engines. I was so happy that he fancied me. We were married in 1935. I was twenty. Here, I'll show you our wedding picture."

She got up and went over to the dresser and pulled open the upper drawer. She lifted a photo album out of the drawer and brought it back to the table. She opened the album, turned a few pages, and said, "Here, that's Cyril and me on the day we were married."

Harry and Ginny looked at the black and white photograph of a handsome young man and a pretty young woman standing side by side in front of a plain wall, smiling happily, dressed in what looked like what they would wear to church on an ordinary Sunday. As Ginny gazed at the photo, her mind leapt to thoughts of her own wedding photos, with herself in an elaborate floor-length white gown and Harry in formal wear, surrounded by their attendants also elegantly garbed, flowers and other decorations in the background, and she suddenly felt a pang of guilt that her own wedding had been so much more expensive than Cyril and Arabella Figg's wedding. But looking at the black and white photo and the joy on the faces of the couple, Ginny could plainly see that the expensive clothes and elaborate party didn't matter much, compared to the happiness of finding one's true love.

Harry, on the other hand, was doing some rapid mental maths as he looked at the photograph. Married in 1935, at age twenty. That meant that Mrs. Figg was born in 1915, so when Harry arrived in Little Whinging she was what? Sixty-six. And today? Eighty-nine.

"What a sweet picture," Ginny said. "Did you think that your children might be magical?"

Mrs. Figg shook her head. "There wasn't much chance, a Muggle and a Squib. But it's not impossible. You know the witches and wizards they call 'Muggleborn'? There's probably a Squib somewhere among their ancestors. If you trace their family tree back and back, and you reach a dead end on one branch, a person who seems to have no discernible parents, that person may be the Squib.

"Or," she continued, "the records may simply have been lost. There was so much destruction during the war. They bombed our city, you know."

Harry and Ginny stopped eating biscuits. Harry realized that Mrs. Figg was not talking about the wizarding wars; she was talking about World War Two.

"What city was that?" he asked.

"Coventry," Mrs. Figg answered. "We were living in Coventry. Cyril joined the RAF when the war broke out."

"Was he a pilot?" Harry asked.

"No," Mrs. Figg said, "He was a bomb aimer. Here's a picture of him in his uniform."

She turned a page in the photo album and pointed to a photograph of Cyril in his RAF uniform. He's even handsomer than in his wedding picture, Ginny thought. It would be easy to love this man.

"I was in Coventry when the Germans bombed it. That was in November of 1940. That was a terrible, terrible night. The planes started coming. We could hear them. They came in waves, dropping bombs all over the city. We heard the terrible sound of their engines, and the bombs falling, and the huge explosions, and people screaming. In between the waves of planes, there were little bits of time when the bombs didn't fall and people could run for shelter. I grabbed my daughter Norah, she was only three, and a single blanket, and I ran with her through the streets to the church, and we went down into the crypt. A lot of other people were doing that too. We huddled down there in the crypt, with all the tombs with dead people in them, and I wrapped the blanket around Norah and held her so tight. It was so dark and cold, and even down there we could hear the bombs and the explosions all night. We were so frightened. We knew that if the church took a direct hit we would all be dead, just like the dead bodies in the tombs."

"Do you think Norah remembers that night?" Ginny asked.

"I know she does," Mrs. Figg said. "There was a man there with a water bottle and he gave Norah a drink from the bottle, and she remembers that he didn't pour it into a glass; he just let her drink from the bottle, which was something we never did at home. We came out of the crypt the next morning. The church was damaged, but it didn't take a direct hit. We were so thankful just to be alive, because most of the city was destroyed and almost a thousand people died. Later they dug two mass graves for them."

"Was your house destroyed?" Harry asked.

"Actually, it wasn't. We were living in council housing on the outskirts of the city. I was pregnant with our second child then. If it was a boy, I was going to name him Cyril after his father. But it was another girl. I could have named her Cyrilla -- that's a pretty name, isn't it? -- but I thought that if I did that, it would be like saying that I thought Cyril would die and that there would never be a son. So I named her Celia. That's kind of like Cyril.

"But I lost Cyril anyway. They were doing a bombing run over Nuremburg in March of 1944 and a lot of the planes were shot down. His plane was shot down. That was a terrible day too, the worst of all, when they notified me that he was dead."

Silence filled the room. Harry stared at the table, the white cloth, the plates of biscuits, the tea cups. The gulf between this cozy, peaceful dining room and the horrors of World War Two seemed unfathomable.

"I am so sorry," Ginny said. Her voice quavered and she seemed about to cry. Suddenly she could see how her own life had mirrored Mrs. Figg's life. They had both seen the man they loved go off to war, while they themselves had stayed behind, facing horrors of their own. But Mrs. Figg had lost her love while Ginny had not. Ginny turned her head slightly to glance at Harry, as if to reassure herself that he really was there.

"When I saw those dementors in the alley, those were the two things I remembered," Mrs. Figg said. "The night they bombed our city, and when I learned that my husband was dead." She was silent for a moment and then added, "They didn't ask me what I remembered, at that hearing, but I wouldn't have told them anyway. They disrespected all Muggles. They would have disrespected my Cyril, and I couldn't endure to have them do that."

"No," Harry said. "Cyril was a hero."

Mrs. Figg nodded. "So many young men died in the war. They were all heroes."

She picked up the teapot, refilled their cups, and set the teapot down again with a wan smile on her old face. It must be hard to talk about this, Harry thought.

"And you never remarried after the war?" Ginny asked.

"No, my dear. I just wanted to focus on taking care of my girls. They went through so much; their lives were so disrupted by the war. I didn't want to bring in a stepfather who might not love them because they were another man's children. And I didn't need to remarry. I got a war widow's pension, and jobs were available because so many men had been killed or disabled. Whatever men were left could have their pick of women who were younger and prettier than me and weren't burdened with children or mourning for their dead first husband. I was mourning for Cyril. After him, no one could ever measure up. I would rather have had nine years with Cyril than a lifetime with anyone else."

"You haven't told this story in a long time, have you?" said Harry gently.

"No," said Mrs. Figg, "but talking about the dementors brings it all back. Thank you for indulging an old lady in her memories of the past. I know that's not why you came to see me."

"Do you have pictures of your daughters too?" asked Ginny. "I'd love to see them."

Mrs. Figg got up out of her chair and went over to the wall of framed photographs. "This is Norah when she was a girl, and here she is a little older," she said as she pointed to some of the photographs. "She lives in South Africa now. That's where her husband was working. And this is Celia. She lives here in England. I see her more often. You remind me of Norah, Harry. She was my 'toughie nut'. You would like her."

Ginny got up and offered to take the empty tea cups out to the kitchen. Everyone seemed determined to shake off the sadness of Mrs. Figg's story and try to be cheerful again. When Ginny returned from the kitchen, Mrs. Figg asked about what she and Harry had been doing recently, and they told her about Harry's job as an Auror and Ginny's career as a professional sportswoman and sportswriter. Mrs. Figg was particularly impressed by Ginny's career and remarked more than once that in her own day, women couldn't do things like that.

"Why don't you take Ginny out and show her the neighborhood, Harry?" Mrs. Figg said. " Have you ever been here before, Ginny?"

"No, I haven't," Ginny said. Turning to Harry she added, "I'd love to see some of the places where you used to go."

"Oh, okay, I guess," Harry replied, "although there's nothing special here."

"Show me your old school, Harry," Ginny suggested.

"Yes, get out into the fresh air for a bit, you two," Mrs. Figg urged cheerfully, "and when you're ready to go home, you can come back here and use the Floo."

Taking a warm leave of Mrs. Figg, Harry and Ginny went out into the sunny street. They walked along the pavement for a few blocks, past the square houses with their flowery gardens and neatly mowed lawns, discussing their visit with Mrs. Figg. At the next intersection, Ginny took note of the street signs and saw that they were about to cross Privet Drive. She looked up at Harry's face.

"Yeah," Harry said, noticing her glance, "I used to live down that way," making a motion to the right with his hand. He didn't express any intention to take Ginny down the street to walk by the house and see it, and she didn't suggest it. She just said, "Where is your old primary school from here?"

"This way," said Harry, and they started off again.

Harry's old school sat empty and quiet in the summer sun. It was a low, single-story building with plain white walls and large square windows all along the facade. At a couple of points on the building there were concrete steps with metal railings leading up to sturdy, plain double doors. Between the building and the road was a play yard surrounded by a chain-link fence, and in the play yard were some pieces of play equipment -- some swings, a jungle gym, and a carousel, which was a flat, rotating, circular metal plate with some railings to hold on to. Part of the school grounds were grassy, but around the play equipment the ground was covered with fine gravel. Harry and Ginny walked around the edge of the fence to enter the play yard.

"Well, this is where I went to school until I was eleven," Harry announced.

"Can we look in the windows?" Ginny asked.

"I don't see why not," Harry replied, and they walked across the yard to the building and put their faces up near the glass, cupping their hands around their faces to cut out the glare. Inside they could see little tables and chairs, chalkboards on the wall, and all the accoutrements of a Muggle school.

"What did they teach in this room, Harry?" Ginny asked.

"It wasn't like Hogwarts, where you go from room to room studying different subjects," Harry explained. "You would stay in one room all year with one teacher, and she would teach all the subjects."

"Oh," Ginny said. "What subjects did they teach?"

"Reading, writing, maths, science, music, art, history, geography, stuff like that."

"Was this your room?" Ginny asked.

"It might have been. I was in different rooms in different years, and it's hard to figure out which room is which from the outside. If we could go inside and walk down the hall, I could point out my rooms to you," Harry said.

Ginny stepped away from the window, having seen all she wanted to see, and wandered back toward the play equipment.

"Here, sit on the swing and I'll push you," Harry said. Ginny sat down, holding the chains firmly in her hands, and Harry began to push. She swung back and forth for a little while, but they could not converse easily in that way, so Harry eventually stopped pushing and sat down in the swing seat next to Ginny, and they both swung back and forth in very short arcs, just moving their feet on the ground.

"Do you remember the names of your teachers?" Ginny asked.

"Oh yes," Harry answered. "There was Miss Weingartner, Mrs. Major, Mrs. Stanhope, Mrs. Spencer, Mrs. Llewellyn, and Mrs. Brennan. Miss Weingartner was young and pretty. Mrs. Spencer was tall and thin, old and gray-haired, and very grim. She scared me at first, but I got used to her."

They swung slowly for a little while longer, and Harry spoke again. "I've been thinking. When our children are young, before they go to Hogwarts, I want them to go to a Muggle school. I know that a lot of the wizarding families teach their children at home, but I want our children to know more about the Muggle community, not to be so shut off from all those people."

"My mum taught us at home," Ginny remarked.

"And there's lots of things we can teach them at home anyway, but I want them to learn all this stuff too, the stuff I learned here. They need to learn history. They need to know that people like Cyril Figg were heroes. And once you go to Hogwarts, you don't get it anymore."

Ginny did not answer yea or nay, and Harry knew he would have to give her time to mull the idea over in her mind.

"I wonder if the wizarding community contributed to the effort in World War Two," Harry continued. "I don't remember anything in the History of Magic courses we had. Of course, I missed the last year. Maybe it was in there."

"No, I don't think so," Ginny reflected. "I don't remember anything like that was mentioned."

"Then I guess the Muggles defeated Hitler all by themselves."

They continued sitting in the swings, and the warmth of the bright sunlight soaked into their skin. A slight breeze caressed their faces. A few automobiles went by on the street.

"What would you do if our baby was a Squib?" Harry asked suddenly.

"What?" exclaimed Ginny.

"What if our baby turns out to be a Squib?" Harry persisted. "What would we do?"

"Well, we certainly wouldn't send him to an orphanage!" Ginny asserted. "But I don't think he'll be a Squib. How could he be? We are wizarding on both sides of our families. We go way back."

"But Squibs can show up in any family," Harry persisted. "Everyone knows that, even if they shove it into the backs of their minds. You know how happy people are, how they celebrate when their little kid starts showing signs of magical talent? That's because they always fear, even subconsciously, that maybe the talent won't be there, and their child will be a Squib.

"I remember, at that hearing, when Mrs. Figg said she was a Squib, the members of the Ministry indicated that they didn't know she was living in Little Whinging because they didn't keep track of Squibs. They didn't even know whether Squibs could see dementors; they had to ask her. It was plain they didn't value Squibs at all."

"The only Squib I ever knew knew was Filch," Ginny said, "at least until I met Mrs. Figg. But he was such a sad character. He tried to live in the wizarding world, but he was so bitter about it. That's what I thought Squibs were like. But after meeting Mrs. Figg, I'm seeing that it doesn't have to be like that."

"I wonder if a Squib could teach at Hogwarts," Harry speculated. "What could he teach that doesn't require magic?"

They looked at each other and suddenly exclaimed simultaneously, "The History of Magic!" They started laughing because both of them had had the same idea, and Ginny added, "Anyone could do a better job than Professor Binns!"

"I'll bet there's some other things too," Harry said. "Let's see...Ancient Runes, I don't think they need magic for that, Astronomy, French..."

"Why French?" asked Ginny.

Harry stopped swinging. "Do you remember when we had the Tri-Wizard Tournament, and kids came from Beauxbatons and Durmstrang? Did you notice that they could all speak English but we couldn't speak their languages? Didn't you think that was kind of embarrassing? I wonder if they held the tournament at Hogwarts because they knew that if they held it at one of the other schools, the Hogwarts kids wouldn't be able to speak the language?"

"I never thought about that," Ginny said.

"Hogwarts ought to teach at least one foreign language. When we go on holiday in France, the shopkeepers and innkeepers can speak English, and they don't even use any magical techniques to do it. They just use their own brain power. Are they smarter than we are?"

"But Harry, if Hogwarts added French to the curriculum, they would have to subtract something else to make room for it. And you can't learn magical subjects at any other school."

"You've got a point," Harry conceded. "But our children could study French during the summer."

"That goes for you and me too," Ginny said teasingly. "We can't speak French either."

Harry gave a big sigh. "You're right," he conceded.

Ginny sat on her swing looking around at the school, the play yard, the street, and the houses and gardens up and down the street that could be seen from her vantage point.

"Are you ready to go home?" she asked.

Harry took a deep breath. "I guess so."

"Has this been a good day? Did you learn what you wanted?"

"Sort of. I didn't know exactly what I would find. I have a slightly better picture of my early years. A few gaps have been filled in. But I still don't know much about my earliest life, when I was living with my mum and dad before they died. I don't remember it at all. I've just seen a few photos of them before they died, and that letter I found in Sirius's bedroom, the one my mum wrote to him after my first birthday, thanking him for the broom he sent me..."

He suddenly stopped speaking, right in the middle of his sentence, and then leapt off the swing seat onto his feet, shouting, "That's it! That's it!"

"What's it?" exclaimed Ginny in mystification.

Harry whirled around and faced her, speaking rapidly. "Do you remember that first month when we had our first flying lesson at Hogwarts?"

"Your first flying lesson at Hogwarts? No, I wasn't there. I wasn't at Hogwarts yet."

"Oh, yeah," Harry said distractedly. "I forgot you were a year behind us. It seems like you were always there." He continued, the words spilling out as fast as he could speak. "We had our first flying lesson and Neville got hurt and Professor McGonagall took him to the hospital wing and while they were gone Draco stole his Remembrall and flew up in the air with it and wouldn't give it back and I flew my broom and caught the Remembrall after Draco threw it and everyone thought I was a flaming genius because I could fly so well without any experience. Hell, I thought I was a flaming genius. But it wasn't true!"

"You weren't a flaming genius?" asked Ginny dubiously.

"No, I mean it wasn't true that I didn't have any experience. If you'd asked me, I would have sworn that I'd never been on a broom before in my life, but when I got on that broom to chase Draco, it was like my body already knew exactly how to fly it, like everything was just obvious. It was weird. But now I realize that I did have experience. It was in those three months between my first birthday, when Sirius gave me the broom, and when my parents were killed. I didn't remember that at all, at least not consciously, never knew about it at all until I found that letter in Sirius's old bedroom. But my body remembered. It remembered how to fly, and it kept that memory for ten years, just waiting until I needed it again."

"That's really interesting," Ginny said, staring at her husband with round eyes, "but why are you so excited?"

Harry spoke more slowly now, at a normal cadence, but with emphasis. "It's something that I learned at my parents' house and carried with me through the years without knowing it. And if I remembered that, without knowing it, then there's probably a lot of other stuff I remembered too without knowing it, stuff that's more important than how to fly a broom.

"It means that there's a core of me, the real me, that I learned in my parents' house, that's clean and sound and strong. Those books I was reading -- everything they said was true, but I ended up feeling like nothing but a walking sack of Dursley Damage. But now I don't think so. I think the Dursley Damage is more like an old ragged dirty coat that I can throw off."

"Just like that?" Ginny asked.

"Well, no, probably not just like that. It's probably more a case of peeling it off, and scraping it off, and scouring it off. I don't think I can point my wand at my brain and just say Scourgify.

"You'd probably Stupefy yourself if you tried."

"That's okay. Patricia said it would take time. But the book has shown me what I have to work on, and Patricia and the women at the church have told me how."

"Come on," he said, filled with elation. "Let's ride on the carousel," and he sprinted across the gravel to the shiny gray metal carousel standing motionless in the sunshine. "Hop on. I'll give you a ride."

Ginny walked over to the carousel and climbed aboard.

"Hold on tight," he cried and started running, pushing the the carousel around until he had it going as fast as he could, and then he leapt on board too, grasping the rail, going round and round, with the wind in his hair and a wide smile on his face.

Chapter 10: The Last Funeral

That evening, as the setting sun filled the drawing room with its golden light and Ginny and Harry were relaxing in the upholstered chairs after their active day, an owl arrived at the window and rapped on the glass. Ginny got up, opened the window, took the message from the owl's leg, and unrolled the parchment.

"It's from Mum," she said. "She wants us to come for dinner tomorrow. Ron and Hermione are back from Italy now and will be there with their photographs, and they're bringing some Italian food. Is that okay with you, Harry?"

"Sure," Harry shrugged, "but is it okay with you? I've been dragging you around from pillar to post today, and you must be tired."

"A good night of sleep and I'll be fine. And it will be fun to hear about Ron and Hermione's trip. Who knows? We might want to go to Italy ourselves someday."

"You think so? Maybe we can. But how old would the baby have to be, to be not too much trouble? Maybe three years old?"

Ginny smiled. It was good to see that Harry was not taking himself so seriously right now. Maybe this would be a good moment to broach the subject that was on her mind. She took a deep breath. If she was asking Harry to be brave, then she needed to be brave too. She knew that it had not been easy for Harry to tell her about his journey of self-discovery, even as he had wanted to honor their pledge of no secrets, even as he was determined to follow the sage advice of the women at the church, and even as he knew, in his heart, that he needed her support. Now she would be asking him to do it again. She thought carefully about how to phrase her suggestion, speaking slowly and picking the words carefully.

"When Ron and Hermione are at the Burrow tomorrow, they will tell us all about what they have been doing for the last couple of weeks, where they went, what they saw, what they did. I think we should do the same. I think we should tell them, tell my mum and dad what we've been doing, what you've been doing. It would be good if they knew."

Harry sighed. "What I've been doing? Do you think anyone wants to hear? It would sure put a damper on the mood of the evening. We're supposed to be happy -- an Italian holiday, a new baby." He waited for Ginny's response, but she didn't say anything, and he sensed that she wasn't satisfied with his answer and wanted him to explain further. "It's easy to talk to you, but it's harder to talk to other people."

"You talked to all sorts of people, at the child protection agency, at the church..."

"But they were strangers, not people I'm close to," Harry protested. "It's easier to talk to strangers. I'll never see them again, if I don't want to. It doesn't matter if they judge me."

"Do you think they judged you?" Ginny asked quietly.

"No," Harry admitted reluctantly. "I guess maybe they didn't, but that's because they already knew about child abuse. They deal with it every day. With your family it's different. What will they think? Will they think that their daughter married a warped loser?"

"Why do you think they would think that?" Ginny asked.

"Your mother was afraid that Fleur wouldn't want to marry Bill after he was scarred so badly by Greyback, after he was so damaged."

"We are all scarred by our experiences," Ginny replied. "All scarred in our own way. Not just you, not just Bill or George. George lost more than an ear, he lost his twin brother, which was like losing half of himself. I'm sure he feels it every single day, and it must affect how he lives his life. Father was attacked by Death Eaters at the Ministry of Magic and nearly died. And all of us who were at Hogwarts during that terrible year when the Carrows were in charge..."

"That will haunt you forever." Harry finished her sentence thoughtfully.

Ginny nodded. "And whenever I see a blank-paged book in a bookstore, like you would use for a diary, I can't even bear to touch it. I'm not saying that these things are all equivalent; there's probably no way to compare them. But everyone has them."

Harry shook his head slowly. "You put things in perspective so well. Maybe it won't be so bad after all."

"I'll make you a sign," Ginny said, "and it will say Throw off the old dirty coat, and when you start thinking you don't want to do it, I'll hold up the sign where you can see it."

"I don't deserve you," Harry said. "You're going to make me do this thing, aren't you?"

"Act as if..., remember? You told me that."

To Ginny's relief, Harry smiled. "You're right, as usual. With you behind me, how can I fail? Do you think we should warn them ahead of time that we need to discuss something serious?"

"No," Ginny said, "they'll just worry. They'll wonder if something is wrong with the baby. We shouldn't mention anything until it's time to tell the whole story."

"In any case," Harry said, "we should let Ron and Hermione go first. After all, your mum thinks that's why we're all getting together, to hear about their holiday. I won't say anything until they've told us all about their trip."

"And Harry, thank you for being willing to share all this with my family. Our family," she corrected herself. "Since we got married, they're not just your very good friends, they're officially your relatives. I'm more comfortable knowing that there's not something important that we're keeping from them."

"I hadn't thought about it that way," Harry said reflectively, "that it would put you in a tough spot if I told you but I didn't tell them. And I had to tell you, so I have to tell them."

Ginny got up from her chair and walked around behind Harry's chair and wrapped her arms around him from behind. "Don't worry," she said. "It's going to be good. You'll see."

---

Harry and Ginny arrived in the snug kitchen of the Burrow by the Floo Network in the middle of the afternoon on Sunday. As they emerged from the fireplace, Mrs. Weasley bustled up to Harry. "Bend down and let me give you a kiss," she greeted him. "You've been a stranger here far too long. It's more than a month since we saw you last."

"Good to see you too, Molly," he replied, leaning down so that she could plant a kiss on his cheek. Then, straightening up, he saw her husband behind her, smiling broadly. Harry reached out and grasped Mr. Weasley's hand. "How are you, Arthur?"

"Couldn't be better," Mr. Weasley assured him.

"Are Ron and Hermione here yet?" Ginny asked eagerly.

"They're out in the garden picking vegetables," her mother told her. "They brought back some Italian ingredients and they want to cook something special." She pointed to a lineup of boxes, bottles, and bags on the countertop. Harry walked over and started picking up the items one at a time, looking at the labels, all written in Italian, and surmising about the contents. Oil and vinegar were easily identifiable, as well as two bottles of wine. Some of the other things he was not so sure of. Ginny headed out the kitchen door into the garden.

"Is there something I can do to help?" Harry asked.

"No, thanks," Mrs. Weasley said. "Everything's under control. You go out into the garden with the others."

The vegetable garden was colorful with red tomatoes, dark purple eggplants, green beans, and ruffled heads of lettuce in bright greens and bronzy reds. The squash and cucumber plants were still putting out bright yellow flowers, even as their fruits swelled and ripened. Ron and Hermione were busy filling large metal bowls with a variety of beautiful vegetables.

"Hi there," Ron called out when Harry appeared at the door. "Come on out and give us a hand."

"It looks like you two have turned into real Italianos," Harry laughed.

"We have to," Ron answered cheerfully. "Mum and Dad planted way too much, now that all the kids have left home, so we're trying to help them use it up."

"Your mum said that you're going to cook the vegetables," Harry continued.

"Yes," Hermione answered. "I'm going to try to recreate a dish we really enjoyed in Florence. Did you see all the ingredients we brought back?"

"Well, I'm glad you know what to do with them because I sure don't," said Harry.

Back in the kitchen Hermione directed Ron and Harry in the washing and cutting of the vegetables, while she brought a large pot of water to boil with the Fervio charm. Ginny was set to work washing the lettuces and tearing them to bits. Then Hermione began to saute the veggies in olive oil, adding various spices from the packages on the countertop, while the oddly-shaped pasta boiled in the pot and Ron grated a big lump of hard yellow cheese.

"Here, Harry, slice this bread," she directed, and Harry pointed his wand at the knife, and it cut the long thin loaf into diagonal slices.

"I notice you're not using any magic in your cooking tonight, Hermione," observed Ginny.

"Once I get a good feel for this recipe, how high to have the flame, how fast the pieces cook, how often they need to be stirred, exactly how much spice to use, then I will convert it to magic, but right now I'm still working it out."

"Oh, I don't doubt it will be delicious," Harry said. "It smells delicious right now."

"Of course it will be delicious," Ron said as he moved the lump of cheese up and down the grater by raising and lowering the tip of his wand. "Hermione's a really good cook. And she wasn't shy in Italy to ask the people in the restaurants what the ingredients were and how the dishes were made."

While the young folk were cooking, Mrs. Weasley laid the table and soon the meal was all prepared. Wine glasses were set at all the places, and Ron drew the cork from one of the bottles of Italian wine. Wine was poured for everyone except Ginny, who was drinking pumpkin juice. Hermione's Florentine vegetable pasta dish was served out on all the plates and pronounced a stunning success. All the diners praised Hermione's cooking skill, but she deflected some of the praise by pointing out that the vegetables had gone straight from garden to pan and could not have been any fresher.

"Tell us about your trip to Italy," Ginny urged. "I get the impression that you had a lot of fun."

"Oh, it was wonderful," Hermione said. "The cities and towns look so....Italian. They all have a distinctive style, and there are flowers everywhere. The weather was perfect the whole time, and the people are so friendly."

"And the food is great," Ron chimed in. "Lots of different kinds of fruit and some really unusual regional dishes. There's a lot more to Italian cooking than just spaghetti."

"I went into a bookstore and bought an Italian cookbook," Hermione went on. "I looked at a whole bunch of them and picked this big one with full color photos of all the dishes."

"Is it in English?" Ginny asked.

"No, it's in Italian," Hermione answered, "but that's not a problem. I also bought an Italian-English dictionary, and the recipes use the same words over and over, like 'chop' and 'mix' and 'bake'. You kind of know what to expect the recipes to say anyway, so it's easy to figure out, and the photos show how it's supposed to turn out. And a lot of the words are easy to translate, like 'funghi' means 'mushrooms'."

"Why did you buy the dictionary? Why not just use a Translation charm?" Mr. Weasley asked.

"I didn't just want to translate the Italian recipes into English," Hermione explained. "Sure, I could use the charm and the whole recipe would turn into English, but that would be kind of like ... like going to Italy and spending all your time in the homes of British expatriates, eating Yorkshire pudding and talking about the Queen. When I cook Italian food, I want the whole process to be Italian, starting with the words. When I look at the page, I don't want to see "mushrooms", I want to see "funghi". And I don't want to think "That's the Italian word for mushrooms," I just want to immediately envision mushrooms in my mind. Does that make any sense to you?" She looked hopefully at the people seated around the table.

"Makes perfect sense to me," Harry remarked.

"I'm not sure why it's worth the bother," Mrs. Weasley offered.

Harry nudged Ginny. "You see what I mean?"

"I want to hear about all the places you went to and what you saw," Mrs. Weasley suggested, and Ron and Hermione began a travelogue of the cities, towns, and countrysides they had visited, and the activities they had done.

Ginny sighed. "That sounds like so much fun," she said.

"Let's clear off the table," Mrs. Weasley said. "Does anyone want seconds? No?" She waved her wand and the dirty dishes levitated to the kitchen sink.

"I made some biscotti from that cookbook," Hermione said. "The cookbook calls for olive oil -- they use olive oil in all their baking, isn't that odd? -- but I wasn't sure about olive oil in biscuits, so I used plain vegetable oil. We can have some with tea, and I'll show you our photos. I've already started putting them in albums."

Over biscotti and tea, they all looked at Ron and Hermione's photos. There were a lot of photos of Hermione but not so many of Ron. "Why is that?" Harry asked.

Ron laughed. "When I had the camera, I took a lot of pictures of Hermione, but when she had the camera, she mostly took pictures of Italian architecture and Roman ruins."

"Well, I can see why she did," Ginny remarked. "I get the impression that it's impossible to take an ugly photograph in Italy. Wherever you point the camera, it's beauty."

"Here's one of Ron's favorite places," said Hermione, turning a page in the album. "These were taken in Pompeii. Ron was fascinated by the 'carbonized people', as he called them."

"Look," Ron said, pointing to a photo. "You can see the real people, just as they died. It really brings it home to me. I feel like I can identify with this man, or that one."

"I see you took a photo of the famous door mosaic," said Mr. Weasley, pointing to a photo of a rectangular mosaic of a brown dog against a white background with black dots and the words Cave Canem.

"Is it famous?" Ron asked. "I didn't know. I just took the picture because I thought it was cool."

Eventually the photographs of Italy came to an end, and there was a lull in the conversation. Harry thought to himself I've got to get started before people begin standing up, leaving the table, before Ron and Hermione announce that they're going home. He found Ginny's hand and clutched it tightly, and she squeezed his hand back, by which he knew that she realized what he was about to do. He glanced at her face; she gave him an encouraging half-smile.

Speaking to the group in general, Harry said, "Before we go home tonight, I need to talk with you about something that's important to me. I promised Ginny that I would share this with you." He looked around the table at their faces. They looked back at him intently, and the smile on some of their faces slowly faded. Harry was cognizant that he himself was not smiling, maybe even looked a little solemn.

"I've been to some interesting places recently," he began, "and have talked to some interesting people." No, that wasn't good. Too wishy-washy. He tried again. "Over the past two weeks I..." How can I say this? Mr. and Mrs. Weasley and Ron and Hermione continued staring at him. Ginny glanced up at him briefly, then leaned sideways and reached down to her purse, which was sitting on the floor next to her chair. She lifted it into her lap, opened it, and took out a small square of parchment and held it on the tabletop so that she and Harry could see what was written on it but the others could not. Act as if...

Yes, thought Harry. Act as if this is safe.

"You're probably wondering what in the world this is about, so I will start at the beginning." He told the story as he had told it to Ginny a week earlier: the dreams about harm to the baby, the sign in the plaza, his visit to the child abuse prevention organization where he had picked up some information, the volunteer training session where he had been able to ask questions, his search for a book, and the amazing book he had found at the Institute of Psychiatry, his visit to the self-help group at the church with other people who were struggling with the aftereffects of child abuse, and finally his trip with Ginny to see Professor McGonagall and Mrs. Figg.

During this recitation he watched their faces one by one, seeking to interpret their reactions to what they were hearing. Hermione looked sympathetic but not surprised. Ron, on the other hand, did look surprised, as if he were thinking This doesn't sound like anything I ever heard before. Mr. Weasley's face was inscrutable, although he was obviously paying close attention. Mrs. Weasley, however, was looking progressively more distressed as his narrative unfolded. She twisted her hands restlessly, but, like the others, she did not interrupt his story with any comments or questions until he finally came to an end. It had taken a long time because he had included as much detail as he could remember. This is my one chance to tell my story and I need to tell it as well as I can, he had thought. But it had taken an effort of will to force himself to keep going, sentence by sentence, to lay himself more open to them than he had ever done before.

He finished by saying, "So that's what I've been doing for the past couple of weeks, and Ginny and I both think that it's right to let you know about it. Our lives will be changing now, both because the baby will be here and because I am trying to make some improvements in my own life." The finality of his last statement was meant to indicate that he was done speaking and would now entertain responses.

Mrs. Weasley could contain her feelings no longer. "Why are you going to Muggles for help? You should be able to talk to wizards about this. Maybe there's someone at St. Mungo's who does this kind of work." She sounded upset and unhappy.

Harry immediately felt sad. This was not the reaction he had expected, and it didn't feel supportive. It didn't even seem to be focused on what was the main point, but rather on the cultural identity of the people who had helped him.

"Take it easy, Mum," Ron said, reaching over and patting his mother's hand. "It's okay."

"Yes, it's okay," Hermione agreed. "Child abuse is not a magical problem, it's a human problem. It's not a matter of having been injured by an errant spell or hex, or having been bitten by a toxic animal. I don't think there's a spell or potion that can reverse it, or anything you can do with a wand. And I don't think St. Mungo's treats it."

Harry spoke again. "My aunt and uncle told me my parents died in an ordinary auto accident. That turned out not to be true, but it might as well have been. The result was the same. I got caught up in an internal family conflict and had a load of rubbish dumped on me. That could happen to anyone. It happens all the time. That's why they have a huge section of books about child abuse in the Institute of Psychiatry. That's why they have organizations and self-help groups."

"Well, I don't know," Mrs. Weasley said, still obviously unhappy about what she had heard. "The Muggles don't need to know about this; they don't need to know your secrets."

"It's not a secret, Mum," Ginny said gently, "and the Muggles already know. Harry didn't identify himself to them as a wizard, just as a human being. I'm his wife; I love him more than anyone else does, but I didn't know how to help him. They do."

It occurred to Harry that perhaps Mrs. Weasley felt guilty about not having realized earlier how much his childhood experiences had affected him, or helpless about not knowing immediately how to cure it with a spell or potion, as she had been doing for her large family for so many years. If so, then he wanted to reassure her on that point, so he continued, "It's not your fault that you didn't see this earlier, any of you. I didn't understand it myself, and I'm the person it happened to. But hundreds of people have been studying this problem for scores of years, and..." He hesitated. He wanted to say I would be a fool not to take advantage of their knowledge, but he did not want to be seeming to call Mrs. Weasley a fool; he knew that she came from an old, proud, pure-blood family, and she could not have avoided absorbing some of their values during her youth, so he finished by saying "...it would be wise of me to take advantage of their knowledge."

Ron spoke up again. "I have to hand it to you, Harry. It takes a lot of guts to do what you did, but that doesn't surprise me. You were always taking chances, going where no one else would go. You've got my support all the way. But there's one thing I gotta disagree with you about."

"What's that?" Harry asked.

"You said you weren't a genius on the broom because you had a little practice at your parents' house. I think you were a genius. Look at Malfoy. Remember how he bragged about all the flying he did at the Malfoy Manor before he came to Hogwarts, and he probably did, but he was a shit flyer anyway."

"Tht's right," Ginny said, "no talent," and the brief moment of levity brought a smile to all their faces. Even Mrs. Weasley seemed mollified.

Mr. Weasley had done nothing but listen up to this point, as if he had faith that the rest of them would be able to sort it all out, but Harry longed to know what Mr. Weasley thought of his story. The issue of Muggles versus Healers had been a red herring. What do you think about me? Harry wondered. The others turned toward Mr. Weasley also, awaiting his comment.

Mr. Weasley nodded his head slowly and said, "You've done a good job, son. Do you think you are on the right road now?"

"Yes, I think I see my way clear now," Harry said. "And with the help of all of you I can stay on the road." He laughed a bit. "Did you see the note Ginny slipped me earlier?" The note was lying face down on the table, and now he picked it up and showed it to them. Act as if... "You see how she helps me?" He put his arm around her shoulder and pulled her close for a quick kiss on the cheek.

Hermione asked, "Is there anything else we can do, besides passing you notes?"

"Kick you in the shins, maybe, if you start spouting some more of that old nonsense about saving the world all by yourself?" Ron offered.

Harry shook his head. "There's one thing that still haunts me, that still seems unexplained. It doesn't fit in."

"What's that?" Hermione asked quickly, and Harry had the impression that she was eager to come up with the solution.

"The dreams," Harry said. "The dreams in which something bad happens to the baby, something that I do or am ultimately responsible for. Why do I keep dreaming about harming or killing the baby? This is completely at odds with what I really want, or at least what I believe I want."

"I don't know," said Hermione dejectedly, seemingly disappointed that she did not know the answer. "It doesn't make any sense. Maybe it means that you think that your work as an Auror will cause your children to be targets of criminals and Death Eaters."

"Or it could mean that you think you don't deserve the happiness of a normal family life and that everything will be snatched away," Mrs. Weasley suggested. "Maybe after having spent your life living with the Dursleys and battling Lord Voldemort, you find it hard to believe that your life will be trouble-free."

"Maybe you're worried that you won't be able to take care of the baby well, first-time dad and all, that you'll drop it accidently or something," Ron offered.

Harry thought for a minute and then shook his head. "All of these explanations seem plausible, but when I hear them I don't say 'Aha! That's it! That's why I dream that I dump Ginny's and my baby in a closet and let it starve to death.' "

"No," Mr. Weasley said. "None of these explanations will ring true."

"Why not?" asked Hermione.

"Because our basic premise is wrong," Mr. Weasley said. "The baby in the closet is not the baby in Ginny's womb."

Harry was startled. "It's not?" he asked. "Then whose baby is it?" Hermione and Ron stared at Mr. Weasley in surprise.

"The baby in the closet is you, Harry," Mr. Weasley said.

"How can that be?" Harry protested. "I'm on the outside looking in. In my dream, I'm the person who put the baby in the closet."

"The person in the closet is the Baby Harry, and the person outside is the Adult Harry," Mr. Weasley explained.

Ron interjected, "Harry dreamed that he murdered himself?"

Mr. Weasley ignored the last remark and continued to address himself only to Harry. "Think for a minute. Do you actually dream the act of putting the baby in the closet, or is it already in the closet when the dream begins?"

"It's already in the closet when the dream starts, but what diff..."

"And at the end do you actually open the closet and see the dead baby?"

"No, I always wake up before I get to that point."

"So what you've got is a baby being maltreated and a feeling that you're to blame for the situation."

"Yes, so..."

"You're dreaming about what happened to you as a child and your grief at not being able to prevent it or solve it. And that's true -- terrible things did happen to you and you were too little to stop them. The Adult Harry can't go back and save the Baby Harry."

Ron shook his head. "These dreams are about Harry, not about Ginny's baby," he echoed incredulously.

Hermione turned to him and said, "Look! It fits! Harry dreams that intruders are in the house, and that really happened when he was a baby."

"And he dreams that I give the baby away," Ginny added excitedly, "and that really did happen to Harry when he was a baby. He was separated from his parents and sent to live with strangers, like in the dream."

"What about the baby drowning?" Ron asked. "Did your Aunt Petunia almost drown you in the bathtub once?"

"Ron, this isn't a joke," Hermione reminded him.

"I don't ever remember being drowned," Harry answered, feeling more light-hearted by the minute, "but Dudley did once threaten to shove my head down the toilet. He didn't do it, though, and that was right before I went to Hogwarts, so I don't think it counts."

"We might not ever know what that dream refers to, or the one about the pram going over the cliff, but I think Arthur's right," Mrs. Weasley said. She seemed perfectly calm now. "It doesn't mean you're going to do these things to your own child. It means that the arrival of your own child triggers a comparison between what your childhood was and what you hope this baby's childhood will be, and suddenly you are full of grief for the childhood you lost."

"But in the dream about the closet, I don't understand why Harry thinks he put the baby in there himself," Ron said.

"No, I see it now," Harry declared. "What people have been teaching me over the last few weeks. Blaming myself when things go wrong. It's part of the warped thinking. But nothing that happened to me when I was a kid was my fault. I sure as hell didn't put myself in the closet."

"So these dreams don't mean that you're likely to treat your children badly. It means that you're likely to treat them very well," Mrs. Weasley continued.

Harry said, "Like that woman at the church who stayed up all night sewing the national costume of Sweden for her daughter because she wanted to treat her daughter better than she had been treated herself. Well, I can do that too." He spoke more vehemently. "Nobody goes in closets. Nobody goes over cliffs. Nobody drowns. Not in my house."

"Wow, Dad," Ginny whispered in tones of awe. "You figured it out."

Hermione turned to Harry. "Do you think that after the baby is born and you can begin building a happy family in reality, a family where children are treated well, the dreams will stop?"

"I sure hope so," Harry answered.

"I think they will," Mrs. Weasley spoke up. "Let me tell you what happened to me. When I was a girl, my father favored my brothers Gideon and Fabian over me. He didn't treat me badly, but I knew that I was a disappointment to him."

"Why was that, Mum?" Ron asked.

"I don't know," Mrs. Weasley answered. "I wasn't a remarkably bad child and my brothers weren't remarkably good ones. I guess he just valued the qualities they had more than the qualities I had. At any rate, before I got married, my father warned me that if I expected Arthur Weasley to make me rich, I was sadly mistaken. And I got angry and said that if I wanted more money I would earn it myself. And all through the years I used to have dreams about the house I lived in, that it was a bigger house than I really had, or a better built house, or with a larger garden. And in my dreams I would be happy that I finally had a bigger, finer house."

"You never told me about this, Molly," Mr. Weasley said.

"I didn't mention it because it didn't have anything to do with you."

"I think it did," Mr. Weasley said stiffly.

"No, it didn't. It was always just about my father and me. The house in the dream was just a symbol that I could never please him. If it hadn't been you, it would have been something else. It all started long before I ever met you. But after he died, the dreams just stopped. I never have them anymore."

"Why didn't you say anything?" Mr. Weasley asked his wife in a sympathetic tone.

"I never said anything until now," she explained, "because I didn't want to poison the relationship that you and the children had with him. There was no need for my conflict to spill over onto you."

"I don't remember Grandpa Prewett very well," Ron remarked, "but I always thought he treated us kids pretty well."

"Of course he did," his mother replied. "You were his only grandchildren. But if Gideon and Fabian had lived and had children of their own, you would have seen the difference."

"That's pretty heavy, Mum," Ron said.

"Yes," she replied simply.

Ginny suddenly leaped to her feet and said, "There's one more thing we have to do. Everybody wait here." She walked quickly out of the kitchen and down the hall, and they could hear her footsteps going up the stairs. Everyone still sitting at the table looked at one another blankly; no one could imagine what Ginny might have in mind.

In a few minutes Ginny returned to the kitchen carrying something. She picked up the platter of leftover biscotti from the center of the table, put it on the kitchen counter, and set the thing she was carrying in its place. It was a small box, about the size of a shoe box, lined with a kerchief that draped over the lip of the box and obscured its sides. In the box, lying on the kerchief, was a baby doll, doubtless one of Ginny's old toys from her early childhood. Everyone at the table stared at the box and the doll, motionless in the center of the tablecloth, and waited for Ginny to explain what she was doing.

Ginny sat down again and said, in a slightly shaky voice that became stronger as she proceeded, "There's going to be a new childhood beginning very soon. Before it does, we need to lay the old destroyed one to rest and we don't have much time to do it, just four weeks. Let's do it tonight." She took a deep breath and continued. "When Fred died, we were all so unhappy. And we had a funeral. And that didn't make us less unhappy, but it calmed the turmoil. Like something bigger than ourselves was sustaining us and giving us strength to go on."

"That's right," Hermione said. "It put borders around our grief, like the little fences or walls that you see around gravesites. So that the grief doesn't spread out and cover everything forever."

Ginny continued. "When you have the funeral, then you know its time to go on without him. Then you decide how you're going to do that, how you're going to go on without him."

"Ginny is right," Mrs. Weasley said. "The turmoil is still there in you, Harry. It stirs up these dreams. The grief of a soul that has lost something precious."

"So I brought this box to represent the childhood that Harry lost, and maybe it will help if we have a funeral for it. Then maybe it will be easier for us to start our new family without any ghosts left over from the past."

"It all happened so long ago," Ron observed.

"Yes," said Mr. Weasley, "but it's never too late. If someone died, like Fred, and we didn't find his body until twenty years later, we would have a funeral then anyway when we found it, and we would feel better because of that."

"What do you think, Harry?" Hermione asked, turning toward him.

"I -- I don't know," he stammered. "It's such a strange idea. I went to so many funerals after the end of the war. And during the war too. Big ones, little ones, fancy ones, plain ones. Dobby's funeral was so little and Dumbledore's funeral was so big. I thought they were all over with. And here's one more. But it's odd, being at your own funeral."

"You're not really at your own funeral because you're the Adult Harry, and that," -- she indicated the box with a gesture of her hand -- "that's the Baby Harry. We are saying goodbye to his childhood that ended too soon and is never coming back," Hermione said.

Mr. Weasley cleared his throat and said, "I will speak first." He paused for a moment, and then went on. "We are here tonight to remember a childhood that ended way before its time. When my son Fred died, he was twenty years old. He lost about eighty years of life. That was a tragedy. We were left with only memories of what his life had been, all the fantastic things he did in his twenty years, and how he enriched all our lives. Baby Harry's childhood ended after a little more than a year. There were about ten years lost, ten years of happy childhood that were never to be. We can only guess what would have happened in those ten years, what wonderful things Baby Harry might have done. Tonight we will remember what did happen during his real childhood, which was so short."

What is this going to be? Harry thought.

Mr. Wesley stopped speaking momentarily, and Hermione immediately picked up the thread of the eulogy. "There's not a lot that we know about Baby Harry's real childhood, but we do know some things. Baby Harry lived in a little house in Godric's Hollow, in a beautiful part of England. He had a mother, Lily, and a father, James, who loved him, and a godfather, Sirius, who doted on him. He had a friend, an old lady named Bathilda, who visited his family often, and she thought that Baby Harry was really something special. Baby Harry had a pet also, a cat, and he probably liked to play with the cat because that's what babies do, though I'm not sure the cat felt the same way about it. He had one Christmas in that little house when he was about" -- she stopped speaking for a moment to add up the months quickly on her fingers -- "five months old. He was too little to remember it, but I'm sure there was a Christmas tree covered with shiny, colorful ornaments and a Christmas stocking with little presents."

Harry squeezed his eyes shut and tried to imagine the Christmas tree, which in truth he could not remember, but the image was crowded out by the very real recollection of the blasted and decrepit cottage that he and Hermione had seen in Godric's Hollow on Christmas Eve of 1997. She stopped speaking, seeming to have run out of ideas for the moment, and Ginny took a turn at speaking.

"Baby Harry's parents loved him so much that on his first birthday they gave him a nice birthday party. There were presents, toys for Baby Harry, and probably a birthday cake. He probably ate it with his fingers and smeared some of it on his face." She looked toward Ron, wordlessly inviting him to say something. Harry looked at the speakers, one after another, feeling oddly dissociated. It was almost as if they were speaking of someone else, a stranger.

Ron searched his mind to think of something that hadn't been mentioned yet. "Baby Harry's godfather gave him a little broom. It was just a toy. It didn't go very fast or very high, but Baby Harry loved to fly it. He showed the talent that he was born with, that he inherited from his dad."

"Yes," Mrs. Weasley interrupted. "That was at an age when many babies were still only learning to walk. In my mind's eye I can see Baby Harry toddling on the grass in the sunlight with his parents. His mum kneels down on the grass and holds out her arms and calls to him, and he runs to her in that staggering run that babies have, right into her arms, chortling and laughing, and his mum grabs him in her arms, and she's laughing too."

Harry sat listening to this unscripted eulogy while a jumble of emotions swirled in his brain. He could see the laughing baby toddling into the arms of the happy, loving mother, but was that himself or some completely different little person with no connection to him? He stared at the baby doll in the box which was so strongly reminiscent of a coffin. It was almost possible to be unsure of whether that little boy was indeed actually dead. The image their words were creating, the image of a happy family so long ago and so far away, was the image of a world separated from his reality of today by an uncrossable gulf. The old reality was forever out of reach. The feeling of irretrievable loss, which he had so strongly suppressed for the past six years, was stirring again, an accumulation of a lifetime of losses, beginning with the one symbolized by the doll in the box.

"You can say something too, Harry, if you want," Mrs. Weasley was saying.

"Oh." He did not know what to say. He had not expected to speak at this funeral. What was left to say? He took a deep breath and just started talking, saying something, anything.

"Baby Harry made his parents happy for fifteen months. If Voldemort hadn't come, hadn't killed them, they would have lived for many more happy years. Baby Harry would have made them happy. Baby Harry certainly didn't make Petunia and Vernon happy. They stuck him in a cupboard under the stairs and closed the door and left him there in the dark. How could they do that? How could they do that to a baby? How could they treat him that way?"

He felt his throat tightening up, and he was afraid his voice would start shaking. He began breathing in deeper, more rapid breaths, and tried to hold his jaw rigid to keep it from quivering as the anguish was building more and more. The feelings came rushing back, how unhappy he had been in the Dursley house, how helpless he had felt, how friendless, how powerless, how trapped. He wanted to stop talking and just hold onto Ginny, but not in front of all these people.

"I wasn't bad. I was just a little boy. I just wanted to be loved!" His voice was breaking on the final words and he could no longer maintain his facade. All these people didn't matter anymore, not one whit. Harry turned and threw his arms around Ginny's shoulders and buried his face in her neck.

The seconds ticked by while Harry hung onto his wife's shoulders as though she was a tree in a storm. Then his breathing gradually became slower and his throat and face began to relax. He could feel hands on his back; he didn't know whose. He clung to her motionless for a brief while longer, until he felt certain that he could be calm and in control of himself, and then he loosened his grip and raised his head. Over Ginny's shoulder he could see Mrs. Weasley's face looking at him with great concern. He straightened up and let go of Ginny and then looked around the table through misty eyes. Everyone was watching him, silent, expecting him to speak.

He gave a little half-hearted laugh as he reached for his napkin to blot the mist in his eyes. "Sorry about that. I must look like a proper idiot."

"No," Mrs. Weasley said gently. "It's okay. It's a funeral. People cry at funerals." Indeed, everyone else looked very sad, and Ginny also looked a little alarmed.

"Maybe I shouldn't have done this," she said.

"No, no," her father reassured her. "You did exactly the right thing."

"You needed to stop pretending it didn't matter, mate," Ron said. "You needed to stop being so intellectual about it, like you were studying yourself on a laboratory table."

"Ron's right," Hermione said. "It did matter. You were just a little kid. You didn't deserve any of that. None of that should have happened. It was a crime."

"I can't imagine how I would have felt if something had happened to Arthur and me when you children were young," Mrs. Weasley said, "and you had been raised by cruel and vindictive people."

"Or how we would feel if Andromeda Tonks died and Teddy was raised by Narcissa and Lucius," Hermione added.

Harry shook his head and gave a little laugh. "My God, that would be terrible." He envisioned his little godson growing up in the care of Lucius Malfoy, the proponent of pureblood superiority. The thought was painful, and the smile faded from his face.

"Are you okay, Harry?" Ginny asked. She looked at him worriedly.

"I'm fine, sweetheart, better than I've been in a long time."

"Then you don't mind this ... this funeral thing?"

"No, it was a good idea."

Hermione reached out to the box on the table where the doll was staring blindly at the ceiling and picked up the edges of the kerchief that were draped over the rim of the box. Gently she folded them over the doll so that it was completely covered by the cloth and could be seen no more.

Harry turned to Ginny. He was smiling faintly. "You're a year younger than me. How did you get to be so wise?"

"And how did you get to be so wise, Harry?" she replied.

Hermione stood up, picked up the box containing the wrapped doll, and took it to the kitchen counter. She brought back the half-empty platter of biscotti and set it in the middle of the table again.

"The funeral's over, and now it's time for the reception," Ron announced as Hermione sat down, and he picked up the tray, extended it out to the others at the table, wordlessly offering each one a biscotti, and then took one himself.

Hermione lifted her teacup, which was almost empty but not quite, and said, "a toast."

"We're toasting in tea?" Mr. Weasley asked with a smile.

"The wine bottle's empty, and Ginny can't drink wine now anyway," Hermione answered, "so, a toast." The rest of them picked up their teacups.

"To the years ahead, and to the new family that will be living in them," she said.

"To all the people who love Harry and Ginny," Mrs. Weasley said, "and they are numberless."

"And to all the people who helped. May they be rewarded someday for their kindness," Mr. Weasley added.

"To peace and a world free from war," offered Ron.

They all raised their cups of cold tea and drank.

Chapter 11: Epilogue

London in December was cold, rainy, and dark. Sundown came very early, and by the time the workday was over, the sky was black, and the headlights of cars gleamed off the wet streets. Holiday lights adorned the facades of shops, and the flower boxes had all been put away in back rooms to await the arrival of the next spring.

Harry no longer walked to and from work. He commuted by Apparating, which meant he could leave the house later in the morning and return earlier in the evening and spend more time with Ginny and baby James. It was getting close to the time to be putting up a Christmas tree in the drawing room.

With a Crack! Harry appeared in the foyer of Twelve Grimmauld Place. As he was pulling off his coat, Ginny came running out of the drawing room, excitement on her face and a package wrapped in brown paper in her hands.

"How's my girl?" Harry asked heartily, throwing the coat over one arm and then using both arms to encircle her in a hug. "And where's my big boy?" He looked from side to side as if hoping to see James somewhere in the foyer or drawing room.

"He's down for a nap in his cot," Ginny replied. "But Harry! Look what arrived today!" she exclaimed, holding out the package. Harry took it from her and turned it over in his hands. It was about the size of one of his old Hogwarts textbooks, but not so heavy as that. It was tied all around with strong string that could be clutched in the talons of an owl, and on the face of the package was taped a white envelope addressed to "Mr. and Mrs. Harry Potter. Master James Potter."

"Who's this from?" Harry asked.

"I don't know," Ginny answered. "I don't recognize the handwriting; I don't think I've ever seen it before. It's not anybody in my family, that's for sure. It looks kind of old-fashioned, 'Master James Potter'. But I can't imagine that Auntie Muriel would send us anything."

"Why didn't you open it up? It's addressed to you too."

"Oh, I wouldn't do that. I waited 'til you got home so we could open it together."

They walked into the drawing room and Harry draped his coat over the back of a chair. Sliding his fingers under the string, he loosened the taped envelope off the package and pulled it out, unsealed it, and withdrew a Christmas card from the envelope.

There was a long note written on the inside of the card. Harry's eyes went immediately to the signature. "It's from Arabella Figg," he said in tones of surprise.

"What does she say?" Ginny asked as Harry silently scanned the opening sentences of the note.

He went back to the beginning of the note and began to read aloud.

Dear Harry and Ginny,

Words cannot express what a pleasure it was to see you again. Your visit last summer made this old lady very happy indeed. Harry, you are almost like the son I never had. After everything that you and all of us have been through, it is so heartening to know that life is good again. Congratulations on the arrival of your precious baby boy. Now your joy must be complete.

After you came to visit last summer, I wrote to Norah and Celia and asked them to send me the names, authors, and publishers of the children's books that I had sent to them. Then I engaged a book search firm to find these books in the used book market and am sending them to you as a Christmas gift for all of you. Harry, these are the stories I read to you when you were very little. Ginny, now you can see the stories your husband enjoyed so long ago. And both of you can read these books to James when he is a little older.

A Merry Christmas to you all, and many happy new years to come.

With affection,
Arabella Figg

"Oh, Harry," Ginny said. "She says you're like the son she never had, like her little Cyril she never had. That's so sweet, but it's sort of sad too."

"Maybe we should visit her more often. She's getting old. I don't know how much longer she'll live, though she still seems pretty spry."

Ginny turned her attention to the box. "Open the box, Harry. Let's see the books," she said eagerly.

Harry sat down on the chair with the package in his lap. "Give me the knife," he said, and Ginny handed him a little penknife from a cup on the desk. Harry cut the string, removed it, and laid it on the table. He unwrapped the brown paper and slit the tape that held the box flaps together.

He lifted out a bundle of little books swathed in layers of newspaper. Putting the newspaper aside on the table, he fanned out the books. There were four of them, slim books with few pages, as is typical of little children's books. The covers were slightly shopworn but still sturdy, the pictures on the covers still bright. They appeared to be about little animals.

Mrs. Figg read these books to me when I was very little, he thought to himself. Aunt Petunia had never read any stories to him during his early years before he had learned to read for himself. These books that he now held in his hands were tangible evidence that someone had felt some affection for him during that bleak time. They seemed to form a faint link between his happy days in Godric's Hollow and his life's renaissance at Hogwarts School.

Harry opened the first book and slowly turned the pages, trying to see if there were any pictures that looked familiar. Then, one by one, he looked into the other books and read some of the brief text also. He didn't specifically recognize the words and pictures, but he felt a visceral reaction spreading throughout his gut, as if his body was saying This is right. This is how it is supposed to be.

Maybe this is what they mean by 'deja vu', he thought.

Ginny continued standing over him, watching as he slowly turned the pages and moved his lips, silently reading the text. Finally she could stand the suspense no longer and she asked, "Well, do you remember these books, Harry?"

Harry raised his face to hers. "Yes," he said, and his eyes were shining. "I think I do."