My Blood Approves: 2 - Small and Alone

First chapter from Harry's perspective. Just a reminder, it's 12 years later, a serious Alternative Universe where some things go terribly wrong, so don't expect the same ending from the Deathly Hallows epilogue. Read the story updated here: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/9404717/1/My-Blood-Approves. Comments and reviews are welcome! Enjoy!

~Laz

_________________________________________________________________________________

II. “as small as a world and as large as alone”

"may came home with a smooth round stone

as small as a world and as large as alone

For whatever we lose(like a you or a me)

it's always ourselves we find in the sea"

--e.e. cummings

*

Everything I touch dies.

It’s been twelve years, and I look back and see only pain. Pain I caused, mistakes I made.

It doesn’t feel like we won, not at all. It feels like we lost. There is none of the triumphant exhilaration, none of the glorious hope you would expect.For a time, I could bring myself to see a brighter future, but now I understand how mistaken I was.How naively hopeful.

It wasn’t always like that. At first it was better.It’s only become this painful with time, which is odd.Isn’t time supposed to heal?Where is my healing? Why can’t I forget?

This is what happened after:

The days after the Battle, we were all ecstatic, high on triumph and relief. Voldemort was dead, his followers were disbanded and fleeing, and we had finally come out of the dark. I remember Ron and Hermione and I during those days; we’d sit under the tree at the edge of the lake, occasionally looking at each other but saying nothing.We didn’t have to speak, we knew what the others were thinking.

It’s over.

But it wasn’t. There were funerals, lots of them. Remus and Tonks. Dennis Creevy. Ted Tonks. Lavender Brown. Fred. It’s a physical ache in my chest these days, to think of them; back then it was electric agony. There were so many funerals, and I was expected to attend them all. I wore black robes for weeks, I cried more tears than could be counted. Ron and Hermione, I think, could see it was damaging me slowly, attending these services for people I felt personally responsible for. My “saving people thing,” my “guilt complex” I once heard Hermione call it. It was cancer, mold, disease eating me from inside.

There were highlights, bright beams of light illuminating the darkness: the celebration at the school, and all magical people were invited—there were lots of tears and hugs, there was food and fireworks, and there was no talk of mudbloods and purebloods, or halfbreeds; walking in (again) on Ron and Hermione kissing, and the embarrassed but blissfully happy looks on their faces; the day Kingsley Shacklebolt was named acting Minister of Magic; waking up to Ginny, her freckles flecks of gold and her eyes wickedly bright, and I knew then in that moment I would gladly go to my ruin following that woman.

It was all so much, the sadness and the jubilation together, that Ron and Hermione and I had to get away.With our Undesirable statuses lifted, we raided my Gringotts vault and traveled to Australia, to find Hermione’s parents and try to explain to them something of what happened. Luckily, Hermione wasn’t as thorough in her memory charm as she thought, because the Grangers had not been able to forget her face—they couldn’t place her identity, but neither truly forgot her, and they were more than happy to try to remember. The healers at the magical hospital in Sydney called this a “memory window” and because of it were able to restore their memories.

After Australia, we traveled the world for a few weeks. New York, Hong Kong, Istanbul, Madrid. Hermione took us to France where we met up with Fleur’s family, and Ron gave us a tour of Egypt. There were lots of photos taken, most of them silly, and we luxuriated in beds and hot baths and prepared meals. But we were all sick for home, and so back to the Burrow we went.

Because of the year spent under the rule of Voldemort, Hogwarts—completely repaired and renovated during the summer following the battle—was requiring all students to recomplete that year.We took the opportunity to finish school; they let us back without a problem. We completed our N.E.W.T.s, and while it was hard noticing some people were absent, the rest of us bonded together as never before. With the exception of (some but not all of) the Slytherins, the seventh years didn’t seem to have separate houses.Slytherin won the house cup that year, but no one cared. It didn’t seem to matter anymore.

I’ll say one thing for publicity: there’s no need for a CV. Hermione, Ron and I were pelted with job offers after graduation from Hogwarts. It had been our intention once to all be Aurors, but things change. Ron was offered a position as an assistant to the new Head of the Department of Magical Games and Sports; he got free tickets to any Quidditch match and often got some for me. Hermione was swept off her feet by a five-year internship to Madame Griselda Marshbanks, who was reinstated to the Wizengamot (the internship later led to a career as a Representative for the Defense; I often tease her for becoming a lawyer, but she is fantastic at it). Her side project for years now has been legislation about workforce and public discrimination against magical creatures.

And me? Kingsley asked me to enter the Auror program. I trained under Gawain Robards; it was everything I’d hoped it would be and more. After two years of basic training I became a junior partner, and then a senior a year after that. I still think of Mad-Eye and Tonks when I wear my badge.

Ron and Hermione didn’t wait much to marry; they were wed in August after we graduated, at the Burrow, naturally.It’s become a sort of tradition; George and Angelia married there, too.I was worried at first that I’d lost my best friends to each other, because it was as if they had put a permanent sticking charm on each other after the wedding.There was a time, between their honeymoon and their two month anniversary that I was concerned about my social life, but they promptly got back to arguing and things were just about as normal as they could be with us.

Ginny and I waited longer.Four years, in fact.I wanted to have a solid job before marrying, she of course had to finish school, and then she went into business with Luna, who took over Olivander’s shop when he retired. Ginny handled the paperwork and such, letting Luna cluck over wand lengths and mutter about nargles.She also helped George with Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes occasionally.We quarreled often, about dates and guests, and sometimes if there should be a wedding at all, but in the end we eloped to the Burrow. It was a private affair, strictly family, and the happiest day of my life to date.

We moved to a small house in Wells and flooed constantly to work and the Burrow on weekends and Ron and Hermione’s to babysit when they needed us to.Those days we were so busy I nearly forgot everything bad in my life.Ginny was amazing at understanding my sadness when it took over some days. She was an amazing comfort, a balm to a wound I felt would never heal. Those days I believed the worst was behind me.

I can’t remember when she told me she was pregnant, only the intense anxiety and excitement that hit me at the same time. I remember setting the crib up by hand because it got botched if set up by magic. I remember watching her belly grow with each week, and feeling the first kicks of the baby I was certain was a boy, but she was certain it was a girl. I remember talking names: James Sirius Frederick, or Lily Luna Nymphadora.It was as if we wanted to attach the names of everyone we’d ever loved or lost to the baby in the hopes that they’d live through our child.

We didn’t know Ginny was carrying twins. If we had, something might have been done. We’d’ve gone to St. Mungo’s for check ups sooner, or prepared a midwife sooner. Instead, Ginny started having contractions two months early, while I was on assignment. Something went horribly wrong—there was a puddle of blood on the kitchen floor—and she said she fainted before she could contact her mother or me, and when I got home that evening, she was in great pain.

The midwife explained it to me, but I wasn’t really listening. And who would blame me. They were too early, the umbilical cords tangled around them both in a fatal net. When they were finally out, they weren’t breathing, and they never started, my son and daughter.And Ginny—I’ve never heard such a sound. They think it was partly what the traumatic labor did to her insides, partly the difficult afterbirth, and partly heartbreak. But I held her hand and cried silently because I thought she’d fallen asleep—she was so tired. I didn’t realize something was wrong until I moved to take my hand from hers to speak to Molly and Arthur and her fingers stayed curved.

She died quietly, and I did nothing to stop it.

After that I was ready to let my life crumble, but Hermione and Ron wouldn’t allow it. They nearly lived at my house during the weeks following, Hermione cooking meals and Ron helping organizing the funeral. We were all distraught, but I maintain that it was different for me.

Ginny’s death was proof—if I hadn’t seen the proof before—that I was poisonous.So many of the people I loved were dead, and I began to think if I’d been cursed. It was no longer a matter of what I could have done to stop it; it was a matter of stopping future deaths. It was about keeping Ron and Hermione and the Weasleys safe, giving them some matter of years without a funeral.

My solution came to me in the form of work. It was Kingsley’s idea: because of so many magical events attracting the attention of Muggles, he was concerned about magical secrecy. More and more crimes investigated by the Muggle police were connected to the magical world, and before long, someone might discover us.

I went to Robards as soon as I heard. He was confident I’d be a good choice for the assignment, but he was somewhat concerned.

“You understand, Harry,” he said, “this isn’t just an undercover assignment, this is deep cover. You’ll have a new name, a new address, new parents and history. You’ll have know Muggle technology, Muggle phrases, bands, television programs, politics. You’ll have to train to be one of them, work your way up their ranks. This is long term.And you can’t tell your…family or friends. You may not be home for holidays, and you might not see many of them for a long time. Do you understand?”

“I understand, sir,” I said immediately in the hollow tone I’d adopted for general conversation. “And I would like to request that you consider me for this assignment.”

He surveyed me for a moment and then said, “I don’t need much consideration.You’re the best we have and maybe the best we’ll ever get. I was going to ask you anyway. Here,” he tossed a badge onto his desk between us, a challenge. I took it, gazing at the name: Harry James, Detective Inspector. “Welcome to New Scotland Yard.”