Shadowlit Façades

Develop every aspect

Enhance its foetal form

Distort for the purpose of another aim

For you shall know me

See why in shadows I hide

Darkness Dying

“The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches…Born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies…And the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not…And either must die at the hands of the other for neither can live while the other survives…The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies…”

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, British Edition, Page 741

An album, opened at the middle. A photograph, old enough that it's edges were slightly tattered, new enough that it was in color. Two thirteen-year-old girls making faces at the camera. One had a round, chubby face, the other sharp, glinting blue eyes. Arms wrapped around each other’s shoulders and waists, long, thick brown hair mingling with shining, white-blond curls. And on the table, a blue glass bangle and much folded and creased letter, teardrops glittering on it, signed Marlene.

It is twilight, an eerie October dusk made for sprites and swift black phantoms. The windows of the bedroom are open and cold air rushes in. The wind shrieks outside, like a cry of mourning, of sorrows without beginning or end.

There is a woman at the open window. Fifteen years ago she was one of the girls in the photograph – plump-faced, sweet, little Alice Belby. Her face is now thin, barely recognizable, it's roundness sharpened into the hollowness of cheeks and jutting chin, creased with crow’s feet. Her hair is still thick and long, but grey threads glint among the brown, while her eyes, once so full of laughter, are now bloodshot from recent tears. A cobweb of thick scars stands out stiffly and cover the right side of her face, which is mottled yellow and purple and grey.

Alice Longbottom looks far older than her twenty-eight years now. Her soft mouth – the only part of her that has not been altered almost beyond recognition in fifteen years – forms the word, Marly, Marly, Marly, over and over again, like a chant, a futile refrain. She doesn't have the strength, she thinks, to go on living, just living when every moment, every sharp breath drawn is agony.

She wishes she were dead, that she could die for the sake of the ones she loves. She wants to die for them, so that they may live, now in this cold purple twilight, with the wind weeping outside. For Marlene and Gideon who she knows cannot be alive now. For Kingsley who tried – and failed – to save Edmond. For Emmeline, raped and left to die fourteen years ago. For Frank, whose eyes are more dead than alive.

But most of all for her son. For little Neville.

000

Andromeda Tonks always sits like a lady, with her legs daintily crossed, her back straight and never, never touching the back of her chair, her slender, white hands folded gracefully on her lap, head held high, and chin neatly tucked in. She’s given up the gowns she used to be decked in, day and night, for Muggle clothes years ago – overalls, jeans, skirts that graze her middle thighs. But what she cannot give up is her bearing – the grace of a daughter of the House of Black inculcated in her, years ago, before she could even read.

Today, she stares across the kitchen table at eight-year-old Dora slouched across the sofa, emptying the contents of her Trick-or-Treat Bags. Little Nymphadora has gone out in style today as a princess. A princess of all things. With her long, white-blond hair and flowing, rosy-pink ball-gown, she looks unnaturally like eight-year-old Cissy.

It’s a beautiful night for Halloween, she thinks, eyes straying from her daughter’s golden head to the windows, over which delicate lace drapes hang. It’s bolted tightly, but she can still hear the wind howling outside. It sings an ancient melody, it seems to her. Of rage and retribution – that vicious circle without beginning or end, with no hope of redemption or justice – a warning and a prophecy at once. Ted and Dora would both laugh at her if they heard her saying that it’s a dark omen, but she can’t help thinking so.

She shivers and draws her paisley-print shawl tightly around herself, a silent prayer rushing to her lips that she and all that are hers – Ted, Dora, Mother, Cissy, Cissy's child – will be spared the wrath of the approaching storm.

It’s coming.

000

Two small beds and a crib arranged in a row. Three little children fast asleep in them, red curls tousled on white pillows. Outside, the wind screeches and within, Molly Weasley gazes at her three youngest sons. Her pale, weary face and lackluster brown eyes are illuminated by a candle, and stand out in stark contrast to the vivid red hair that falls down to her waist.

Nine-year-old Charlie and five-year-old Percy occupy the room next door. Bill is at Hogwarts – a small smile brightens her face when she remembers that he’s probably enjoying the Halloween feast at school – and two-month-old Ginny sleeps in her parents’ room.

Molly is too tired to think. She’s dimly aware that she should be frightened – When the wind howls in October and the black cat crosses your door and all that superstitious tripe – but she’s too tired to be. Let others, who are not as bogged down by pain and heartache, whom war has not touched personally, be frightened. Within the span of seven months, she has lost two brothers – bright-eyed, carefree Fabian ripped to pieces by Death Eaters in a dark alley in Newcastle months ago and now, six days ago, chivalrous, noble Gideon, whose body will never be found.

Let others seek omens in autumn storms and tea leaves that prophecy doom. Molly Prewett was once one of them.

That was another world.

Molly Weasley, scarred forever by death and war, anguish and constant strain, has seen too much to be frightened anymore. There is nothing left to fear, she thinks, staring at the bare walls of the little bedroom. Then her glance slides down to the red curls of the sleeping little boys, to their chubby faces and tiny fingers and, with a shiver, she knows there is still something left to fear. Something as incalculably terrible – if not more – as losing two brothers.

000

“Hush little baby, don’t say a word… mamma’s going to make sure you get a beautiful, new world…”

The living room is dimly lit, done up in pretty pastels, delicate watercolors, and sepia-tinted photographs framed on the walls. A heavy, ancient, silver candelabrum, placed on a tapestry-clad coffee table, is the only source of illumination. Old money, whisper the little knick-knacks scattered around the room – the intricately-embroidered tapestries that serve as tablecloths, a fat porcelain pot wreathed with china grapes and inscribed with a verse, a home-made Victorian decoupage.

With her close-cropped, tomato red hair, – too red to be natural – arms garlanded in tattoos, jangling bangles unto her elbows, tie-dyed shirt, and ripped jeans, the woman on the sofa is a living anachronism to the rest of the room. She just doesn't fit.

“And if that new world doesn’t stay new and beautiful… we’ll just have to make another one, you and me…”

There is a little boy – almost two years old – in her lap, his head nodding sleepily in time to her soft song, his small arms wrapping around her neck. His golden-blond hair glints in the candlelight, his eyelashes fluttering over his dark brown eyes, so like his mother’s.

“We’ll bring peace together, you and me, we’ll make a better world, together we will, it’s not that hard…”

Outside, in the inky-black night, the wind clamors like a ravenous beast. A storm is rising. Inside, in the warm room, the mother’s voice rings softly, sweetly, her son’s arms wrapped protectively about her neck.

“It’s not that hard, oh no, it isn’t, we’ll try and we’ll try again and we won’t give up, not ever, oh no…”

Saoirse Smith has been touched by war, but not yet by the shadow of death. Her face is still soft, her eyes still bright, unscarred physically and emotionally. The world is dark, she knows, but maybe, just maybe, it won't always be dark. Peace will come. It has to come.

“So hush little baby, don’t say a word… hush, little one and look all around you, there’s beauty still left… hush, little baby…”

She still has hope left.

000

The storm has blown over, and now Lily Potter stands, with her husband and daughter, in the garden. It’s two in the morning and a draught of air rustles the leaves of the trees, their leaves glowing softly silver in the moonlight. She’s only twenty-one, little more than a girl, really. Spontaneity is the keyword and now that she finally has a house and family of her own (yes!), she sees no problem in running downstairs, husband and daughter in tow, to view the moonlight and to enjoy the cool breeze at 2 a.m. The view is ever so much better downstairs.

They’re a small family, and both parents look far too young to have a child of their own. Too young, too innocent, too unscathed by war. There are wounds of course – Strife never leaves anyone completely unscathed, not even one-year-old Rose Potter, who's learnt how to say “Mummy scared, Daddy scared” months ago – but a look at these two bright faces will reveal no secrets.

James Potter has his arm looped casually around his wife’s shoulders. His hazel eyes glow with life and vitality behind his round glasses. Only a second glance at his right hand, resting on Lily’s left shoulder, exposes the absence of a thumb. Lily holds her one-year-old daughter tightly, her long, auburn hair falling down her shoulders. Her almond-shaped eyes are fascinatingly beautiful, exquisite and emerald-green, made for sonnets to be written to. They draw away attention from the fine lines that frame her mouth and her forehead, creased like an old woman’s.

An owl hoots in the darkness, and they hear unseen wings beating softly towards them, slicing through the stillness of the autumn night. The young man and woman change completely in that instant – Lily’s face turns as white as stone, her mouth pressing into a thin, taut line, while James’ hand dips into his pocket for his wand. But they relax – just a little, but still – when they see the silvery-white eagle owl that sweeps towards them. Lily’s face is still white, but her mouth softens and James, after a moment of hesitation, reaches out for the letter, wandless.

“It’s only Laucia,” he says, trying to reassure her though his voice is as strained as her face. “I’m sure it’s nothing, no danger at all, just old Padfoot…”

The owl swoops and a piece of parchment falls at their feet. Laucia apparently has other letters to deliver, for, without pausing to rest, she flies away into the night like a phantom. James bends down and picks up the parchment, angling it towards the moonlight, away from Lily. He reads it and turns white a second later, the parchment fluttering loosely down again from his trembling fingers.

“What is it?” Lily cries, catching the parchment. “What’s the matter…” she begins, scanning through the brief contents of the parchment, and then stopping, with a soft, “Oh.”

There is silence for a moment in the beautiful moonlit garden. Then suddenly, a shriek of jubilation bursts from James’ lips as he catches up his wife and plants a firm, solid kiss on her lips, drawing both wife and daughter into a strong embrace.

James and Lily,

Got the news from Moody two minutes ago. Frank and Alice found dead. Dark Mark overhead house. Neville still alive. Dumbledore says You-Know-Who dead. For good. Start celebrating.

Sirius

000

000

Rose Potter was bored. It didn’t take much for her to be bored, really. She’d expected that the wedding, that of her godmother Mary MacDonald to Reg Cattermole, would bore her within an hour. Forty-five minutes into the ceremony however she felt ready to stomp on the train of her ornately-beaded pink flower-girl’s dress.

That was another thing. She hated pink, it made her feel like a pig ‘cause pigs were pink (atleast when they were clean and in illustrations in storybooks).

“I am dismally bored,” she said quietly to a snail crawling on the ground. She felt proud of herself – how many five-year-olds knew the meaning of dismal? None of course, she was willing to bet. Except her wonderful self of course.

“Dismally,” she repeated with relish, getting up and stomping on the snail. Snails were beautifully stompable, just like grasshoppers and cockroaches; people in France ate them Uncle Padfoot had told her.

She was about to refill her plate – she liked fried lettuce – when a small boy caught her eye. Rose liked small boys nearly as much as she liked small girls – nearly, but not quite. There were very few small girls in Godric’s Hallow – only Hannah Abbott who was nearly six and acted as if she were sixteen and a few Muggle girls who had never heard of Bertie Botts’ Every Flavor Beans. Abandoning her plate – Mummy could always make fried lettuce at home – she wove through the crowd of adults to the little boy with a round face and brown hair.

“Hello,” she said introducing herself politely like Mummy had taught her. “I’m Rose Potter. Who’re you?”

The boy eyed her disdainfully, looking surprised that she didn’t know his name. “I’m the boy who lived,” he announced. “Neville Longbottom. Everybody’s heard of me.”