A New Definition of Family
Chapter 4: Retrospection
Disclaimer: Well, I still don’t own any of JK Rowling’s characters. Not for lack of desire, mind you. It’s just that she got to them first! Any characters, spells, or places you see here that you don’t find in her books, well, they are products of my fertile imagination.
Harry didn’t know how long he had sat at the kitchen table, turning pages, eyes devouring pictures of his mother. He ignored the people she was posed with, ignored the elegant writing under or near the photos providing details of the events the photos portrayed. All he wanted to see was his mum. And, of course, his dad, because later on in the album James was featured too. Harry was too tired to do more than look tonight; he promised himself that tomorrow he’d read the stories about his parents that Rinna had captured in her refined handwriting.
He was coming to the last few pages when his eyes were arrested by a large picture of a red-headed woman holding a baby whose dark hair stuck out in all directions. The woman was clearly entranced by the infant in her arms, cooing and laughing and reverently touching the little hands and feet. The woman turned as if answering a remark from the invisible photographer and looked Harry in the face. She was not his mother.
A sudden realization swept over Harry, his spine prickling with the implications: could she be… and he wished that he had allowed Ron and Hermione talk him into going upstairs instead of insisting he sit at the table and look through the album tonight, because he knew, knew without a doubt, that he would not be sleeping now.
His eyes were drawn to a letter on the facing page written in Rinna’s hand on a scrappy piece of parchment. Whereas he had ignored all of the other captions and notes, he felt compelled to read this one.
Sweet Baby Harry,
You are less than 15 minutes old and I finally get to hold you in my arms! I am immediately smitten, and I start talking to you and you look at me so intently, I am sure you understand completely all that I am saying. Your mum insists that I write down everything I have said to you, and she eventually wrenches you away from me and your dad hands me a scrap of parchment…so I’ve decided to write you this letter:
Hello, precious one! You are the most amazing little creature I’ve ever seen. You are very loved; do you realize that? I will always love you, and I promise you that anytime you need your Auntie Rinna, for whatever reason, I will be there for you. I will love you like you are my own little boy, and some day you will be the “big brother” to my children. No matter what, you will always have a special place in my heart.
May you grow to be a man of integrity and wisdom and grace”like your dear mum and dad. My fervent wish for you is that you have as dear friends as your parents are to me. Precious things are very few in this world, and deep friendship is a priceless gift.
You are so tiny, so precious. No one else has ever put my heart in motion this way…like it was missing a beat until you were put in my arms. How can I fall head over heels over someone I just met? I never believed in love at first sight, until this moment. Harry James Potter, I wonder if you’ll ever realize how much you already have me wrapped around your tiny little finger.
I will always be
your loving godmother,
Arinna Dunlevy
Harry sucked in his breath sharply and fell back against the chair, stunned. It wasn’t the fact that Rinna was his godmother that surprised him; that actually made sense, now that he thought about it. She had been his mum’s best friend just as Sirius had been his dad’s. (He was momentarily puzzled by her lack of declaring herself to him, but the thought was quickly pushed aside.)
What did leave him astounded was the sheer mushiness of the letter. Harry had never read a note like that directed at him before. The words swam before his eyes…precious one…place in my heart…love at first sight…you are very loved…No one had ever told him he was loved like this.
Sure, he knew that Hermione loved him, and Ron. He knew the Weasleys were very fond of him. Yet none of that kind of love felt like the love he read on this page. He’d be hard pressed to describe just what kind of love it was, but he knew it was different, and it was lacking in his life. It was like… a mother’s love that had been poured into that parchment. He had difficulty wrapping his head around it.
Harry realized just how inadequate the word “love” really was; it was used to describe so many different feelings. (He vaguely remembered Hermione telling him that there were five different words for love in Greek.) He sat, somewhat astonished, for quite some time.
Eventually he realized he also had difficulty with the incongruence of the Rinna in the picture and letter and the Rinna he had met today. Not that he expected that she should have fallen all over him gushing and whatnot, but she was just so, well, detached…aloof…off-putting. He could not imagine this woman writing the letter he just read…
The lateness of the hour (well after midnight) and the excitement of the day (yesterday, actually) started to overtake the conundrum that was niggling at his mind. He laid his head on the table for a moment to collect his thoughts and was stealthily overtaken by the black depths of sleep.
Molly yawned her way down to the kitchen to start on breakfast and pack the picnic lunch for the culmination of this morning’s outing. She was startled to find Harry face down on the table; the album Rinna had left was open by his head. Did she place an Enticement on that scrapbook? Molly shook her head at the thought. No, Rinna wouldn’t have done that. I hope. Harry was probably feeling peckish in the night and found it on his midnight raid of the pantry.
Molly moved closer to Harry and the page he had been looking at commanded her attention. The picture of Rinna and Harry was a poignant memento of a relationship that should have happened. She glanced to the letter on the facing page, and read it, tears springing to her eyes. Rinna had been all atwitter at the prospect of being Harry’s godmother, often joking about making all her mothering mistakes on him, so her children would turn out perfect. She had had a knack with children; the boys had all adored her. It was such a shame…Molly paused to mourn for the surrogate grandchildren she had dreamed would come from Rinna, but were not meant to be.
Wiping her eyes on the sleeve of her dressing gown, she reached down and gently shook Harry’s shoulder. “All right, Harry?” He jerked awake and looked around, disoriented. “You have an odd taste in pillows, Dearie.” Molly teased.
Harry rubbed the red spot on the bridge of his nose where his glasses had pressed. “Sorry,” he muttered, “must’ve fallen asleep…”
“No doubt you’ll have a crick in your neck from sleeping like that. Why don’t you go up and take first crack at a nice hot shower? After you’re dressed, you might even have a chance at forty winks before breakfast.” She ruffled his hair and shooed him with her hands. Harry reached for the album, then hesitated. “Go on and take it up with you,” Molly suggested, “She brought it for you to look at.”
Harry nodded and took the album, and, stifling a yawn, groggily staggered out of the kitchen.
Breakfast was mayhem, as usual. George and Fred had charmed the griddle to rather forcefully hurl the finished flapjacks onto each person’s plate. It would have been a useful spell, to be sure, had the flapjacks been charmed to dodge obstacles, but, as it was, most everyone ended up momentarily wearing his or her breakfast. Hermione leaned forward conspiratorially to Harry, using Molly’s tirade against the twins for cover, and whispered, “Did you find out anything useful?”
Ron pricked up his ears. “Yeah, mate, you didn’t even make it to bed. Must have been pretty interesting.”
“You didn’t go to bed last night at all?” Hermione hissed reprovingly. “Harry, that was very foolish. Now you will be grumpy and no fun at all.”
Ron protested, “Mione, that’s not fair! If we were at Hogwarts and Harry had pulled an all-nighter studying, you’d be fawning all over him right now and cooing about his dedication to his academic pursuits.”
“First of all, you prat, I do not coo. And secondly…”
“Actually I did fall asleep on the table,” Harry interrupted their squabble with a grin. Then he dropped his voice lower, “but I did find out something…”
“What are you three up to?” came the sharp voice of Molly Weasley.
“Er, nothing, Mum,” Ron said hastily. “I was telling them about the wing at the Museum that’s devoted entirely to Quidditch.” Harry looked at Ron with interest and raised his eyebrows inquiringly. Ron nodded. Hermione let out a sigh that indicated she was suffering under the boys’ obsession for the game.
Charlie jumped into the conversation with enthusiasm. “It really is a brilliant exhibit, Harry. I could spend hours in that section.”
“As you have proven many times in the past,” Molly said tartly. “Now hop to, everyone! The morning is wasting!”
Despite being bone-tired, Harry enjoyed the outing to the Wizarding Museum of National History, particularly when they found the section that was dedicated to the history of Quidditch. Harry, Ron, Ginny, Fred, George and Charlie grinned like hippogriffs in a meat locker, and never even realized they had been abandoned until the rest of the group came back to round them up for lunch.
In the shade of a tree in the plaza next to the Museum, the trio munched on their picnic lunches. “What did you find out, Harry? The suspense was killing me all morning,” asked Ron around bites from his sandwich.
“Oh please,” Hermione rolled her eyes. “I’ll wager you forgot all about it while you were in the Quidditch section, both of you.” The boys looked at each other sheepishly. Hermione was on the mark as usual.
“I found out that…” Harry was not unappreciative of the effect a good dramatic pause could have. A brown head and a red head moved closer to the brunet. “She’s my godmother,” he finished simply.
“Of course,” Ron snapped his fingers, “that makes sense. Sirius was your dad’s best mate and he is your godfather…”
Hermione finished the thought. “And Arinna was your mum’s best friend, so she’s your godmother!” The kids were silent for a moment.
“But what doesn’t make sense,” said Ron with a frown, “is why she didn’t take you after…you know.”
Hermione lips made a little moue of frustration. Harry grimaced and ran his hands through his dark hair. “That’s what I’d like to know,” he grumbled.
The afternoon proved to be another warm one, and the teens sought refuge on the porch playing various wizarding card games. George and Fred taught them the latest craze in Wizards Poker called Transylvania Hold ‘Em. The combination of heat and lack of sleep caught up with Harry, and he opted to nap on the hammock, seeing as he was momentarily safe from the twins’ pranks; they were busy raking in their winnings. Finally the game was called as Fred and George had taken every last piece of Honeydukes candy that Ron and Hermione owned. Harry woke up, declined a game of Exploding Snap with Hermione and Ron, and fetched the photo album instead.
Harry sat under a tree in the back yard, back against the thick trunk, album on his lap. He was reading the captions and bits of journaling that accompanied the pictures. Rinna apparently possessed a sly wit, even as a youngster, and many funny or embarrassing anecdotes were documented. Harry especially enjoyed the bits of information he got about his parents…Curious…I see Mum, Dad, Rinna, Professor Lupin and even Pettigrew, but where are pictures of…
“Hullo, Harry.” A glass of lemonade appeared before Harry’s eyes as Rinna handed it to him, then sat down next to him with her glass and a bowl of pretzels. “Found the album, then?” She offered the bowl to him. “It was a bit cowardly of me, I know.” Harry turned a quizzical look to her. “To just leave it, not look through it with you,” she explained.
Actually, Harry was glad to have been able to look through it alone; he’d liked having those private moments with his parents. But, he was irritated that she had not been forthright with him yesterday. Why didn’t she just tell me she was my godmother? So he decided to take a little dig.
“That was very un-Gryffindor-like of you,” he admonished.
A memory came to Rinna suddenly and clearly as the day it happened; a memory of turning to four teenaged boys, pausing and saying, “How very Gryffindor-like of you.” She shook her head to clear the vision. Where had that come from, after all these years?
She smiled regretfully at him. “Yes, I suppose you could say that.” She sighed and leaned against the tree trunk, closing her eyes and gathering her courage around her like a cloak. All right, Harry m’lad, bring it on. I’m ready for this…I think.
Harry heaved a frustrated sigh when, once again, explanations did not come tumbling from her lips. Not that he was surprised. However, he was shrewd enough to realize that he would likely lose in a game of silent waiting to see who would crack first. After all, she was reluctant to give up any information, and he was eager to extract it, so he cast her a sideways glance and said rather petulantly, “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“That I’m your godmother?” She huffed out a long breath, blowing the hair off her forehead. I certainly don’t deserve that title now, do I? She lifted her head, opened her eyes and looked at Harry, her face impassive. “I suppose that I didn’t want to disappoint you, having to tell you that you had yet another godparent who had failed to come through for you…”
She pulled the album out of Harry’s grasp and flipped to the page with the letter to the infant Harry. She handed it back to him and pointed to the second paragraph of her letter. Harry re-read it.
Harry looked up at her when she whispered, “I promise you that anytime you need your Auntie Rinna, for whatever reason, I will be there for you.” Her voice was choked with regret, bitterness and pain. “I wasn’t there when you needed me, Harry.” She was unaware of crushing a pretzel to powder in her hands. “It tears me apart to look at you and have to admit that I was unable to keep my promise to you.”
“Why?” he whispered, “What happened?”
Now her voice rose a little in agitation. “That night happened,” she said bitterly. “Your parents were killed, you somehow survived and Voldemort’s power was somehow negated. Hagrid took you away on Dumbledore’s orders…”
“But where were you? Why didn’t you take me in?” His voice was threaded with anger and despair.
Rinna threw her head back against the tree, connecting with a little thump and squeezing her eyes shut against the memories. “I never made it to Godric’s Hollow, Harry. At the time the Dark Lord’s curse was recoiling off of you, I was…uh, his reluctant guest in some dungeon of his, bound by curses and spells…”
“Oh.” What more could he say? He digested this startling information. He jerked up his head in surprise when she continued, her voice once again stoic.
“You apparently saved my life. All of the magical bonds and compulsions I was under disappeared in that moment of defeat. I was found in the gardens of the manor where I was being held; I was crawling in an attempt to get to all of you, under some delusion that I could somehow stop what had happened.”
Harry was horrified by the pictures her words conjured in his mind.
There was a long pause. “By the time I had sufficiently recovered and learned that you were still alive, you had already been placed with your aunt’s family.”
Something in Harry snapped. All my life I have been abandoned by every adult who was supposed to have cared for me. No one was there for me. My parents died, my godfather gets sent to prison, my mum’s own family treat me like scum, and my godmother…He turned to face her, eyes flashing and jaw set.
“And that’s it?” Harry spat furiously, “you just gave up and left me with them? What happened to that special place in your heart that I had?” Rinna looked at him, dumbstruck, eyes wide. “Why didn’t you fight for me?”
And just as suddenly, the storm was over. Harry slumped his head into his hands and said quietly, “Of course, I know why…Sirius was my legal guardian, not you.”
Rinna blinked and took a deep breath. She had been prepared for something such as this. Or so she thought. Preparation did not stop his words from tearing at her heart, and worse…clawing at memories…
It would be so easy to just let it end here, let him think a simple legality prevented me from taking him in. Unfortunately, Harry’s outburst had awoken in Rinna one of her gifts that had become a casualty of her ruthless campaign to keep memories and pain away: her keen sense of empathy. She knew what it felt like to have a parent die. She knew the pain of abuse by ones you were supposed to trust for protection. She understood the sense of abandonment that Harry must be feeling.
I can’t leave it like this; it would be a lie. Harry needed to understand why she hadn’t fought for him. There is no getting around it, then, Rinna. You need to belt up and tell him about St. Mungo’s.
A/N: Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed it. I really would like to hear your thoughts about this chapter, or the story in general, so…go to the “review” button and leave a review. I’d be thrilled to hear from you!
A note about the album: I am a scrapbooker. It is one of my hobbies. Unfortunately I don’t get much time to do it these days, especially since I am writing. So…if I can’t do my hobby, I will just write about it and live vicariously through Rinna’s album right now. If you are a scrapbooker you can probably imagine what her album might look like, with journaling and ephemera and embellishments. If you are not a scrapbooker, whatever you do, DO NOT get started doing it! It is addictive, expensive and leads to obsessive behavior. You have been warned.