Finding James
by hogwartsduchess
completed 10-15-06
For many years he’d wanted to see this place, the place of
his birth. Ivy had grown full and lush, covering the crumpled stone walls of
the house and weeds choked what had once been the sitting room. That room,
Harry Potter thought, tightly clutching his wife’s hand. It was in that room
that his father had taken his final stand, his final breath. He glanced at the
woman he’d made his wife.
Her long hair was a hue between blonde and brown, her blue eyes large and
slightly protuberant — she was a diamond in the rough, this woman he called
wife, and he blessed her for making him so happy. She was calmly staring at the
wreckage of his first home, or perhaps staring dreamily into the distance — he
couldn’t always tell the difference. He pulled his eyes away from Luna and
focused, instead, on the stones that had once created a barrier between the
house and the world outside.
Pulling Luna along behind him, he carefully picked his way across the lawn,
avoiding the scattered stones and broken, mouldy boards littering the ground.
Thunder rumbled in the distance and he cast a fearful look overhead. Though he
could just make out a line of clouds on the horizon, the blue directly above
him gave him hope. Perhaps he could finish looking through the house before it
rained.
With a little more confidence, he passed between the wooden uprights of what
had clearly been the frame of the front door. Through the dirt and weeds that
had blown in over the years, he could faintly make out a pattern — carpet, long
decayed. The wallpaper was filthy; brown and dank, growing mould and water
stained. The ceiling was bowed towards him, and furniture was demolished,
scattered across the floor. A piece of wood caught his attention among so many
others.
He bent and retrieved it, realising instantly that this piece, this small
fragment of wood, was a sliver of his father’s wand. He dropped to his knees,
finding all the pieces, the slivers, the fragments, and gathering them up; his
father’s wand. A drop of water hit the topmost one and he looked up. The rain
must have come; the roof must leak; but no — nothing like that. A tear. A
memory, dim and dusty with age, brought to the forefront by the wood his hands,
strangely warm, that wood.
The shouting — the green flash — the silence. A photo? The movement from the
frame pushed the vision to the bottom of the well in his mind — the place where
we all store such things. He tucked the wand into his pocket and looked up at
his wife. She was not there. He sighed, reached for the photograph. A smiling picture
of his father waving at him assaulted his already battered senses and he broke,
tears freely flowing down his face. His father was holding a baby: him. The
corners of the photo were cracked, torn, barely sitting in the frame; it was
clearly very old. His mother must have taken it.
Though she was the one who’d sacrificed herself, saving him for future battles,
he’d known more about her than he’d ever thought possible, through a journal
found in trunk in Professor Dumbledore’s office upon his death. His father was
still a mystery. He had only the one true vision of his father — the memory of
a murderer. Perhaps here, among the dirt and growth of decades, he would at
last find his father. As he left the room on his trek through time, the
photograph’s eyes followed him hungrily.
He found a kitchen, amazingly intact, in the back of the house. It seemed that
the passing of years hadn’t touched this room. Two plates were still set upon
the table, an empty cauldron on the stove. The fire was still laid, though the
wood had rotted over the years, and the room seemed expectant. Out of habit, he
whispered a spell at the fireplace. Immediately, the room came to life,
flickering light dancing off the walls of the kitchen. The liveliness of the
dancing flames was far too much for him, and he ran from the room, slowly only
when he reached the staircase.
As he wandered through what had been the halls of his family home, an
overwhelming sadness grew throughout him. Surely, it would soon pass, but it
felt unbearably as though he were trapped in an hourglass, with sands of sorrow
slipping down over him, suffocating him until he thought he might need to step
outside for a moment and catch his breath.
Time ceased to have meaning. He searched, in vain, for his wife, desperately
needing her soothing caress, but she was no where to be found. He stumbled,
vaguely realising he was banging off the walls, but he was in too much pain to
care. There was so much hurt here, so much pain. The death of his parents
weighed down upon him and he staggered.
He stopped in front of a gilt-edged mirror, amazed at how calm he looked. The
sweat he could feel dripping down his face was not present in the mirror. His
glasses were firmly in place, instead of halfway down his nose, and the hazel eyes
behind them dancing, not darting about the room in terror.
Hazel eyes? he thought suddenly.
As he inspected the mirror more closely, his nose an inch from his
reflection’s, he realised it was no mirror. It was a portrait — a portrait of
his father. And stretching down the hall were many more. There were ten
altogether, and as Harry walked, he looked into the hazel eyes of each of them,
taking in the glasses and untidy hair. The shape of the face never changed, but
the hair colour was different in some. The clothing was more dated the further
down the line he walked, and when he reached the end, he stopped, and stared at
the portrait of his ancestor…the first Potter. The gold plaque under the name
read: Alexander Potter.
Harry ran back down the line and stared into the eyes of his father.
I found him.
