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.