Thanks to Arnel for beta'ing!
I know I'm slow, but I'm steady...
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The Space Between | ||||||
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Category: Post-Hogwarts, Post-DH/AB, Post-DH/PM Characters:All Genres: Action/Adventure, Drama, Fluff, General, Humor, Tragedy Warnings: Dark Fiction, Death, Disturbing Imagery, Extreme Language, Intimate Sexual Situations, Mental Abuse, Mild Language, Mild Sexual Situations, Negative Alcohol Use, Rape, Sexual Situations, Spouse/Adult/Child Abuse, Violence, Violence/Physical Abuse Rating: R Reviews: 584 Summary: Harry and Ginny's lives have finally evened out. They've faced trauma, and loss, more than most have, but they've fought hard to find a normal. If only things could stay that way... Old enemies find new ways to seek revenge. This story is the sequel to Bound. It would be extremely helpful if you read that first. Warnings are to be safe. It's probably overkill. Please message me if you have any questions or concerns. Hitcount: Story Total: 353442; Chapter Total: 3964 Awards: View Trophy Room Author's Notes: |
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It was not an easy thing to admit he didn’t have a clue what he was doing, but if he was honest with himself, it was a situation Harry was used to in his life. He’d spent the better part of a year running with Ron and Hermione, trying to chase down Horcruxes when he’d been trying to stop Voldemort from killing everyone. He’d felt like a fraud, and time, age, and experience didn’t mean a thing when facing down his wife or his mother-in-law as they asked him how a senile Muggle man had made it onto their property. The honest truth was they didn’t know, and the poor man was so out of it, he didn’t have a clue, either, not even with help from the Healers to try to clear up his memories. The old man had been returned to his family and they were still unsure as to how he’d made it through. Their only lead was a Muggle-Repelling Charm hadn’t worked because he didn’t have enough of his brain left to remember he had an errand to run. It was a sad, depressing thought. Nat informed him, later, that the new charms they put up around the house shimmered like a rainbow, but all he saw when he squinted at it was something like a heat haze. He was not sorry the children were heading back to Hogwarts, although in some ways the school wasn’t any safer than their home. Still, it was a place where a lot of adults would be able to look after them. Ginny was unhappy with him, but she wasn’t saying it. She didn’t blame him, exactly, but he understood full well that the invasion of their home had been a major blow to her confidence in their safety. When it had been just the two of them, she’d been more lenient and understanding about the danger following Harry around like a cloud, but after James’ birth she’d tightened up on what she tolerated. Now with the threat to Lily, a very real threat, she was truly a mama bear. He couldn’t blame her. He was extremely unnerved and took well the message Crabbe was sending to them. She’d pinned a note to the man’s shirt, after all. “Nothing is unbreakable. I know all your secrets.” Crabbe was still out of the country, of course. They weren’t going to be lucky enough to catch her easily. He was horribly certain she’d strike when she was good and ready, and he wouldn’t have any warning. If she was targeting Lily, though, they had some time. Lily was still too young… at least, that’s what he hoped. But none of that was going to help with the current situation at hand. “They’re not going,” Ginny said flatly as she stared Harry down over their bed the morning they were all supposed to go to Diagon Alley. He wanted to argue with her about their safety, but truthfully all he could think about was losing Lily, and he didn’t have the heart to fight with her over it. She wasn’t leaving them alone in the house and she wouldn’t let them out of the house, except in the immediate backyard. “Luv,” he sighed as he flipped back the quilt on the bed so it looked made. “You can’t wrap them in cotton. Imagine if your mother had done that to you.” It was, quite possibly, the only argument which might work on her. It didn’t. “It’s not like they need to go,” she pointed out. “You can get all their books and I’ve already sent a note around to Madam Malkin’s with the sizes for clothes for the boys. She assured me they’d be ready for them today.” “Have you told the kids about this yet?” he asked and felt a little jolt as he realized in only a few short weeks James would be seventeen, and thus a man. He’d legally be able to do whatever he wanted to. “I told them,” she said confirmed without meeting his eyes. “They agreed.” “They agreed,” he said slowly as he wondered how she’d managed that. “What did you have to promise them?” “Not much,” she deflected and then forced a tight smile. “A small party tonight. You’ll go through Diagon Alley on your way home, then.” It was not a question and he didn’t have it in him to argue. He felt guilty for not having stopped Crabbe, for being the reason Crabbe was going after them in the first place, and for all the other million reasons she should have been caught. It wasn’t his fault and Ginny didn’t blame him, but she wasn’t entirely rational on the subject either and he knew enough not to argue with a mother. So he picked up the books and robes needed from Diagon Alley and came home to a party with the entire family present. This year only his children, Louis, and Ron and Hermione’s were going back to school. Everyone else was through at Hogwarts. It was an odd thing to know they were getting on up there. Fred was thinking of proposing to his girlfriend, and Molly was sure a proposal was just around the corner for her, as well. Dom, who had a girlfriend, was cagey about how serious her relationship was. All the new people in their family would mean more people to let into their home and while Harry would welcome it, it would also be a stretching of trust to someone new. That was always a difficult thing and work wasn’t making him feel any better. He had to leave Ginny to get the kids to the train because their Muggle terrorist cell had chosen that particular morning to plant a bomb in one of the London underground stations and they’d been called in to try to locate it. “What do we know?” Harry asked as he rushed through the offices at the Ministry of Magic towards the Auror offices, Teddy on his heels. “Not much yet,” Teddy admitted. “We have the information about a bomb but just as they were going to say where it was the listening devices all went silent. I spoke to George already and he says it wasn’t possible for them to be silenced using Muggle technology, but we know for certain this is a Muggle terrorist cell so I’m betting there is a fault with the Extendable Ears. It’s not the first time, but it’s a damn nuisance that it happened now.” It was true they’d had problems before, but Harry had to admit he couldn’t remember the last time it had happened. It had been a couple of years. “Are we sure there isn’t a magical interference with them?” “We’ve had no one new in the buildings that we’ve observed,” Teddy said as they entered the Auror offices and headed for the conference room to meet with the rest of the team. They had the bomb scheduled to go off at two which didn’t leave them a lot of time to track the thing down. “Okay,” he said to the room at large as heads turned from the maps spread over the large table. “Fill me in.” ~*~ “When James said the dog was huge,” Al said as he sat hard into the seat next to Nat, “he really wasn’t kidding.” “He’s such a sweet dog, too!” Rose mused as she handed Andrew an apple from her bag. “Why were you lot so late this morning anyway? We ended up at the end of the train.” They had arrived with only a few minutes to spare before the train had departed the station to find Rose, Hugo, Andrew, Caroline, and Honor waiting for them. “You could have gone on without us, you know,” Al reminded her. “Anyway, Scorpius was running later than we were.” “We had to pick up Louis,” Nat told them. “Your Aunt Fleur was babysitting Emma this morning and couldn’t get him to the train.” “Why were you late, anyway?” Al asked Scorpius who was ignoring all of them in favor of staring out the window. When his mate didn’t answer, he kicked him in the shin. “What?” Scorpius asked, startled back to the present. “Why were you late this morning?” Al repeated. Scorpius’ face clouded over. “My aunt said she’d take me this morning but she didn’t show up. Mum had to bring me.” “Oh, wow,” Rose patted his arm sympathetically. “I’m sorry.” He shrugged like it didn’t bother him but Al could see it did. Scorpius adored his Aunt Daphne, but she was a flake when it came to spending time with him. He would have written her off a long time ago, but in Scorpius’ world he really only had one family member he liked and who he knew loved him unconditionally. But that unconditional love was not attached to someone free to give it. Daphne was a complicated mess, from what Al understood. “Why didn’t you reserve us seats?” Nat asked as Andrew bit into his apple. “That was my doing,” Andrew admitted. “I didn’t want to haul all the trunks by myself.” Nat laughed and shook her head. “You didn’t feel like being a pack mule?” “Why do all that work when I could wait for Al, Louis, and James to help me?” They hadn’t said anything about Andrew’s parents or his brothers yet. Al didn’t have a clue as to what he should say to his friend over their death. He hadn’t seen him since, although he knew Rose had gone to see him a couple of times. Aunt Hermione and Uncle Ron had even picked Andrew up that morning to take him to the train, just so that he would feel supported. “His Grace is too delicate,” Rose assured them all. “His what?!” Scorpius blurted out. Al knew what it meant and thought for a second Andrew might cry, but then a rueful, but a genuine smile crossed his mouth. “A duke is called ‘Your Grace’ by the people around him.” “So you’re Grace now?” Al questioned before he could stop himself. They were all laughing before they could stop themselves and a small bubble of tension burst between them. Andrew started to haltingly tell them of the progress he was making towards taking over his father’s title. “At least the press have left me alone. When I gave them nothing new to talk about they stopped showing up.” “I heard Rose was in the papers,” Nat commented as the train swayed gently and they heard Caroline’s dog, Rufus, bark in the next compartment. “Goodness, it sounds like a bomb going off when he does that.” “It wasn’t anything big in the papers, just speculation,” Rose reminded her with a pointed look. Rose had not appreciated the attention she’d received from visiting him. “They made it out to be something it isn’t.” Her face turned a very interesting shade of pink, one that Al knew all too well. When he glanced over to Andrew, he saw his face was also a little red. Andrew cleared his throat. “Anyway, I think I have everything in order for me to be gone for the school year. My sister was really upset I was leaving, but she’s starting at a nursery school down the road so she can have other kids to play with. Hopefully, that will help.” “What about her magic?” Nat wondered. “So far she’s not done anything around anyone but the family,” Andrew informed them, “apart from getting herself out of the blast,” he added sadly. Al shifted uncomfortably and wished he knew what to say to his friend. Al’s father had lost his parents, but it was when he couldn’t remember them so it wasn’t the same thing. Most of Andrew’s family had died and his life had radically altered because of it. “So,” Rose interjected smoothly. “It’s probably time we do our Prefects rounds. Save us stuff off the trolley if we miss her.” She, Scorpius, and Andrew rose and left. “I feel like I’m going to say the wrong thing every second,” Al admitted to Nat as she slouched back into her seat and rested her head against his shoulder. “You okay?” “It was a stressful morning,” Nat yawned. “Your mum was on edge the whole time we were trying to leave.” “Why didn’t they go sit with the prefects?” “I talked with Rose about it and she agreed it would be best for Andrew not to be with the other Prefects for a while. He didn’t want the badge, and I’m not sure he’s not going to pass it on to someone else, but I rather think he wanted to be able to spend time with Rose,” she told him. “If the Head Boy and Girl don’t like it, then they can say something about it, but I doubt they will. Andrew has been through enough and he needs some normal for a bit.” He was going to say more but he could feel Nat nodding off so he lifted his arm up so her head could rest against his chest and she could nod off. She would, too. She was like baby Emma when she was tired. Within a minute he could tell her breathing had evened out into sleep and she was out. His mother had been in a state that morning. His dad had been called into the office early on an emergency, which he’s assured Ginny was Muggle-related, but that meant she had to get everyone to school on time. Louis had arrived early enough and they had the car loaded, but for whatever reason, his mother had done everything she could not arrive early to the station. He shook his head and fished a novel from his bag using his free arm. He propped it open on his knee and began to read. ~*~ “It has to be somewhere,” Harry growled in frustration as he gripped at his hair, unaware he was making it stand up even more than it normally did. His senses were on high alert as they were underground at one of London’s normally bustling train stations. The silence was eerie. “We’ve searched everywhere,” Raeburns assured him. Harry could see the man was just as frustrated as he was. They were all frustrated. Their intelligence from the terrorist cell hadn’t even been wrong before and because of that, they’d been able to get the Muggle government to shut down the trains in and out of London while they searched for the bomb. If they came up empty-handed, as it was appearing they would, the Muggle authorities weren’t going to be able to cooperate with them anymore. As it was the Muggle news media was having a field day with the press that the trains were down. Harry sighed heavily and said, “Call them all together and let’s go over the message again. We have to have missed something or the bomb was simply a hoax.” They reconvened with their Muggle liaison twenty minutes later at just before one o’clock. They had just over an hour to find the bomb and stop it, although thankfully they had the trains stopped so even if they couldn’t find it, the casualties should be minimal. “Let’s go over the message again,” Harry said as he took the paper from Teddy. It was odd using paper, but they kept some on hand for when they were dealing with the Muggles. He skimmed it again, for about the hundredth time, before reading it out loud. “Bomb placed on rails for a train leaving London at two o’clock on the–.” He studied it again as something niggled at the back of his brain. “This is a translation from Farsi, right?” “Yes,” Raeburns agreed immediately. “We had our translators work on it and it’s accurate. The words cut out right as they were about to say where.” Something simply did not feel right. His Muggle counterpart, a man named Ables, apparently agreed with him. He was a Squib, thank Merlin. The man was tall and built like a Beater. He had short brown hair and dark brown eyes with olive skin. His suit was probably off the rack and barely covered his wide chest. He was not a man who would go to seed in his old age, Harry knew. “Why would they schedule it for two? That’s missed the morning and afternoon commutes completely. If they’re going for maximum damage, I’d have scheduled it for the morning or for five o’clock. Also, we’ve completely tipped our hand with halting the trains and now they know we have them bugged.” It had been a huge risk but worth it to stop a massive train accident. They’d given the Muggles the locations for a bunch of the terrorist cells and all of those men had been arrested, but Harry wasn’t naïve enough to think they had them all or they’d stopped the bombs being placed. They left the old man Teddy had been spying on alone, primarily because he had been a conduit of information, but if the old man was compromised and they’d used him to plant false information, it was going to be a major headache for them. “We have to continue on until we have searched every inch of the train line,” Harry decided as he rubbed his temple. Most of the Ministry had been pulled for this task, along with much of the London Muggle police force. “The message said it was for a train leaving London, so that doesn’t mean it has to be in London–” his voice abruptly stopped as his words registered and he knew exactly what he’d missed. His heart thudded into overdrive as his vision flashed to his kids on the train heading out of London. “The Hogwarts Express.” Everyone paled instantly. “No,” Raeburns shook his head. “It can’t be a magical train! The tracks are warded against such things.” But all of this felt too horribly familiar and Harry knew in his gut he was right. “It’s the school train. Crabbe is behind this, which is why we had the interference! We have to stop that train right now!” ~*~ James furrowed his brow as the dog, Rufus, shot to his feet and growled menacingly towards the window. Thus far the dog had taken the train ride in good stride, sitting on their feet between the bench seats while Louis rubbed at his back with his foot, having first discarded his shoe. Caroline had sat next to him on the train as soon as he’d stored their luggage and she’d taken his hand, not looking at him as she’d done so. He didn’t know for sure since he didn’t have a mirror, but from the bemused look on his cousin’s face, he rather thought his grin was bordering on goofy. Now, he rather expected Louis’ face was mimicking his. The dog, who easily outweighed them, was on his feet and growling so loudly they could feel the rumble through their feet. It was his last thought before the world around him flashed, boomed, tipped and rolled and everything went black. Screaming filled his brain as something bit down into his arm, jolting him enough to yell out from the pain of it. He tried to open his eyes but all he could see was black! Panic flashed through him as he realized something had happened to the train, only he had no idea what could have possibly happened. “Caroline?” he croaked out as smoke filled his lungs and burned at his nasal passages. He heard a low grumble and felt the pain again, but this time he could tell it was teeth. It was dog teeth. Rufus was tugging on him. Instinctively, James turned and saw a small glimmer of light and he began to move towards the tugging until he reached a pocket of twisted debris which was larger than the one he’d been in. It wasn’t as dark, and now he could see the fires all around him spreading like… well, like fire. He felt in his pocket for his wand and prayed it wasn’t snapped as he pulled it out and shouted, “Aguamenti!” shooting water towards the fire which was moving towards him. He kept it up until it was forced back and he could see it was the wall of the compartment which had been on fire. Or maybe it was the wall of the compartment next to his, he wasn’t sure. Fear and panic had him turning around, searching for anyone else around him. His brother and sister were on the train. His cousins were on the train. Caroline… he turned back to the dog and asked, “Where are they?” The dog was singed around the edges but otherwise appeared unhurt and he snuffled his nose back under the thing which had pinned him. He could just make out the outline of another carriage wall. He tried to lift it with magic, but the whole thing shifted ominously when he tried, so he set it down and shone his wand into the small space. He could see them, then. They were further in than he had been and both Louis and Caroline were unconscious. He couldn’t think dead. The dog nosed him on the chin and he turned and looked into Rufus’ somber brown eyes. Something inside him calmed. If Caroline was dead, the dog would be freaking out. The dog was calm, so he nodded, more for himself, and crawled back under to see if he could wake them up. He reached Caroline first and she startled awake the second he shook her. Her expression was blank as he pointed her towards her dog to crawl out and he went for his cousin, who was most definitely breathing, but wouldn’t rouse. He had to drag him out. By the time he had Louis free, Caroline was working with Rufus to climb out what used to be the window of the train. “Fight the fires,” he told her as he hauled his cousin up and over to the window. He nearly dropped him twice as he fought his way clear of the wreckage and deposited Louis away from the train in a patch of grass. All around him kids were starting to crawl free from the twisted train, which appeared to be completely off the track. James’ heart sank straight out of his body as he looked at the mangled, burning train. Kids were going to be dead. There was absolutely no getting around it. He turned back to their end of the train, which didn’t look as bad as a lot of the rest and went for the window next to theirs. It was where Lily had been sitting with Hugo and Honor and a few other of their friends, but breathed a sigh of relief when he saw all the kids already at the window, trying to swing down. “Here,” he said as he reached up for Honor and hoisted her out. It took him only two minutes to get them all free, along with Ducky, Lily’s ridiculous cat. He had no idea where any of the owls were. Hopefully, they had flown away, but only time would tell. They’d all been stuck in cages. The second they were clear, he ran to the back of the train and had to scale the train to get up into the compartment where Al had been. Theirs, at least, wasn’t on fire. He heard the shouts all around him of the older students fighting the fire, but he ignored it as he dropped down next to Al and Nat. His hands shook as he felt at the pulses in their necks and only breathed freely when he felt the steady beats there. “Al!” he shook his brother and after a minute Al came back to himself. “Al! We have to go help everyone else! Wake up!” “What happened?” Al asked him groggily as he slowly sat up. His gaze fell on Nat and his brother had the same panic James had had just ten minutes before. “Leah!” “Mmkay,” she mumbled as he helped her to sit up. She had a deep cut on her head and it was bleeding heavily. “What?” “We’re on what’s left of the train,” James explained. “It seems like it’s been blown up or something. We need to get you off the train and find everyone else. Where’s Rose?” “She…” Nat shook her head as if something was rattling around in there. “My ear is ringing. She was… what?” “She went to do Prefects rounds,” Al whispered and his brother’s terrified green eyes met his full on. “We have to find her.” “We have to find her,” James agreed as he stood up and hauled Nat up into his arms. He didn’t even feel her weight as he began to climb. “Come on!” ~*~ The train was no more by the time they arrived on the scene. Harry had barely found his footing from the Apparation when he was running towards the kids who were shooting water onto the burning sections. More Aurors, MLE, Healers, and other Ministry officials were appearing all around him, all of them taking over for the kids, shooting water on the flames to stop the train from burning. “Dad!” Harry turned and almost screamed in relief as he saw James sprinting towards him, Al short on his heels. “James! Al!” he caught his boys up in a hug, but James pushed him off almost immediately. “They’re still trapped on the train!” he told his father over the cacophony all around him. “The last three compartments are empty, but beyond that, we don’t know. Lily’s safe,” he said as almost an afterthought as he and Al ran towards the fourth compartment from the back and climbed in. All around him, without orders to do so, the adults were doing the same. Everyone picked a compartment and climbed in to check for survivors. Harry didn’t let himself think as he worked with his sons to pull out the injured kids from the compartment. The first one they searched all the kids were fine but pinned under debris. They were all first years and too young to know how to use magic to get themselves out. By the time he had them out, he spotted Lily and Caroline triaging the kids who had superficial wounds, while Hugo directed the Healers to the kids who needed their help. Louis was being examined by Audrey and Harry was sickened to see he wasn’t awake. “He’s breathing,” James assured him as they went for the next train. “We can’t worry about that now. We have to find Rose.” Rose… Hermione was there, of course. He’d seen her arrive just a second before. They had to find Rose. “We didn’t check the corridors,” Al said, causing both Harry and James to turn back to see him pointing towards the back of the train. “I’m going to go look.” “I’ll go with you,” James told him. “You keep going, Dad, and we’ll catch you up.” But Harry shook his head. “I’m going where you go.” They couldn’t find the corridor at first. The train had tipped onto its side and it took them a moment to realize that all of the weight was sitting on the corridor, with the compartments on top of that. “I’ll lift it,” Harry told them as they climbed back down. He called out to another a witch he knew was from the Ministry and a wizard he knew worked for Hermione. “We need to lift the train,” he explained quickly as the three of them set to lift the train up. They were there. Harry’s wand arm trembled as he heard his son screaming for Audrey and his sister-in-law sprinting for the train to pull the three mangled kids out of the wreckage. Before he could even blink, they were gone, transported to St. Mungo’s. He didn’t cry. James and Al were both crying as they searched the rest of the wreckage. He held it together as he heard Hermione screaming, even though he couldn’t believe Rose would be dead. He moved as if in a daze as they continued to clear the cars. He ignored the bodies which were already draped in sheets. There are too many of them, at least a dozen, by the time they were certain they had everyone out of the destroyed train. He ran meetings, spoke to the press, fielded parents’ questions as they showed up on the scene, and talked to Headmaster Goldstein about what had happened. Fifty kids were taken to St. Mungo’s and the rest were sent on to school as soon as the Portkeys could be arranged. Why hadn’t he thought of the Hogwarts Express when he’d heard a train was going to be bombed? At least eleven children and the conductor of the train were dead because of his oversight. He had been warned of a train being bombed. He’d known it was going to happen, but he’d arrogantly assumed the Hogwarts Express was immune to the attack because it should have been impervious to Muggle interference. Why? Why? “Auror Potter.” Harry turned to find the Minister of Magic herself coming towards him. “Yes, ma’am?” “Do we know yet how she was able to bomb the train?” There was no question of who. They all knew who was behind it. “No,” Harry admitted as he watched another group of children disappear, heading for the school. “As soon as I figure that out, I will let you know.” He’d normally have asked Hermione for her insight, but Hermione was with her daughter at the hospital. “Have you any word on your niece yet?” He glanced up at his boss and shook his head. “Nothing yet, no.” He was hoping feverishly that that was a good sign. ~*~ “Have you heard anything yet?” Al demanded for the seventh time as soon as Neville walked into the Gryffindor common room to check on them. They hadn’t had a feast. The first years had been sorted by themselves and then sent up to the appropriate common room where food had been waiting for them. It did not feel like a return to Hogwarts. The head girl had died. They’d lost a second year and a sixth year. James was still in shock, having lost one of his friends. They still hadn’t heard about Rose, Scorpius, or Andrew. Al didn’t want to shake his parent’s old friend, his professor, but he was about out of patience. “I heard from your mother,” Neville said quietly, his face serious. “They’re alive.” “All of them?” Nat blurted out in shock. “No one else has died,” Neville confirmed. He cleared his throat to get the room’s attention and confirmed what he’d just told Al and Nat. There were sobs of relief, even though Neville said that several of them were badly hurt and would have to stay at St. Mungo’s for at least a few days. “This is not what Andrew needed,” Nat muttered darkly as soon as the professor left. “He just got over being injured.” “But he’s alive,” Al reminded her as he pulled her in for a hug he needed more than she did. ~*~ Harry stared at the tracks in reluctant amazement. It was three days since the bombing, three days since he’d nearly lost his children, and they’d finally moved the rest of the train off of the tracks to see how it was she’d managed to bomb the tracks. “We don’t know,” he said to the Minister. “That’s really not good enough.” “I know that,” he assured her with as much calm as he could manage. “I don’t find it acceptable, but I don’t know what she did to the tracks. Our best efforts have failed to detect it.” She turned to him and appraised him, the lines in her brows more pronounced. “Then you need to bring in someone who can see what happened.” Harry nodded reluctantly. He would have to fetch Nat and bring her back to the field when no one else was on the scene. “We do have all the Muggle terrorists. We took over the investigation for the Muggles and rounded all of them up, turning them over to the Muggle authorities. We’re working to track and destroy the rest of the terrorist cell, but we’re confident we have most of them.” “Not one of them can stay free.” He fully agreed with that. It had been easy to go around the Muggles after the train was bombed. The Muggles had wanted some of the terrorists left to go free, just so long as they could lead them to others. It was the work of only a few hours to arrest all of them, including sending people to France, Syria, and Saudi Arabia to snag the rest. There were still a few in another couple of countries, and the permits to catch them were in the works. The magical ministries of those countries had no trouble signing off on Muggles being arrested for bombing a school train. It was an easy yes. It was an easy answer for Nat, too. It was dusk when he brought her back to the place where she’d nearly died and she looked at the mangled tracks for a full minute before she’d said, “There’s no light in them.” She confirmed what he’d suspected, of course. Crabbe had had the magic removed from the tracks, which was something he’d have sworn was impossible to do. Harry swore under his breath and shook his head. They were back at the beginning. ~*~ “Are you okay?” Al asked Rose the next day, after giving her a huge hug and welcoming her back to school. Classes had been put off until all the students were back, which meant they weren’t starting until the following day. Rose was pale but otherwise appeared to be as she always was. Her smile was tight as she moved to sit on one of the sofas by the fire in the common room. “I’m fine.” He didn’t believe it for a moment. Scorpius had arrived back the day before saying she was fine, but something was definitely not fine. Al sat on one side of his cousin while Nat sat on the other, with Scorpius in the armchair. Thankfully, everyone was leaving them alone. Al took Rose’s hand and felt her fingers trembling. “Rose?” “I was awake through all of it,” she said finally. The horror of that fully hit Al as he realized just what she’d have gone through. “You felt the train flipping?” “I felt it flip, and I felt the fire,” she said very quietly. “I thought for certain we were going to burn alive, but then water started raining down and I could hear James moving.” “Did you try to call out for him?” Nat asked quietly. Rose shook her head. “My lungs were really constricted and the smoke was bad. I thought… I thought Scorpius was dead for sure. He was so pale, covered in so much blood. I couldn’t see Andrew at all, even though I knew he was right next to me when the train crashed.” “James put the fire out,” Al explained when she lulled into silence. She nodded and twisted her hand up into the extra folds of her pants. “It was so bad. I felt like we were going to die at any second. It felt like it took forever for us to be found, and then Aunt Audrey was really scared when she saw us. I’d ruptured a couple of internal organs and I really felt like I was going to die.” She fell silent again and then took in a deep breath, letting it out slowly. “But I didn’t die.” Only those at the front of the train had died. They’d talked about it, just a bit. If they hadn’t been late, if they hadn’t all sat at the back of the train, they might not have made it. The only ones really hurt were those in the corridor and those at the front of the train when it had exploded. “She removed the magic from the tracks,” Nat told Rose. “I checked it out with Mr. Potter last night.” “Of course she did,” Rose sighed as she sank back into the couch. “That woman is unfortunately resourceful.” Al wanted to say something comforting like that his dad would catch her, but he just didn’t feel like that was the truth. He had enjoyed working with his dad to help save people. It had felt good, right, to help everyone. He’d been pretty sure he’d want to be an Auror, and he was now surer than ever it was what he wanted to do. James had been brave, as well, but James was still set on being a Quidditch player. They’d talked about it, just briefly, but it was enough to know his brother hadn’t changed his mind. Rufus let out a snuffling woof and plopped himself in front of the fire a second before James, Caroline, and Louis sat in one of the other sofas with them. They all studied each other for a long moment before Rose said, “I don’t want to talk about it.” “Okay,” James agreed evenly. “Who wants a game of chess?” |
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