Order Only : Private message to Raz

[alt_sinistra]

I've started a message so many times, thinking you're just somewhere else, before I remember you're not. That it will remind people you're gone. But I promised myself, if I made it this far, I'd let myself write.

How did my sky change so much, so fast? I keep doing arithmancy, the patterns. Three years ago today, you thought Barty was dead, and we ended up in your bed, and everything shifted for the best.

975 days from then to that last lazy morning, before - before. (Minus the weeks Madam Toad stole.) 53 weeks to the day that we were married. 121 days since he killed you. Four months.

I miss so much, love. How you could change the world for me in a sentence. Your laugh. That you always took me seriously, what I thought, what I cared about. Curling up to mark on the couch, just together. Watching you fly or duel, when you were most free. The stolen moments, when there was nothing but us. How you grew into teaching. Nearly all of it. (I don't miss dinners with your family one bit.)

I understand you better now. Things I didn't, before. The black despair, how it's impossible to get out of bed, impossible to sleep, so hard to think or feel anything but wild fury. Dreaming you're there and then waking and losing you all over again. Hearing you call out 'Rory' and turning round, and you're never there.

There are days I stay in my tower for supper, because there's Lana. Who has husband and lover (you were right, your brother having someone), and all the things I don't and won't and can't have again and she doesn't seem to value any of it. Savitha, how her class - your class - has no Teddy Nott in it, and how that changes everything, and how she hasn't been broken and battered by her loyalty. Seeing everyone's lives go on, and all I can do is keep from drowning in it.

I worry that you hate me for what I chose. (Are you even there? Is Tosha right, and there's something beyond this world? I'm glad you're not a ghost, I don't think I could bear)

When they asked me, Remus and Poppy and Pomona, I needed to say yes. But I didn't know why. Then they told me about Harry and Draco and Hydra, and this has to be the right choice. The only possible one. (I keep reading your letter, over and over. What you wanted. You have so much to be proud of, with Harry, and we had no idea.)

They take care of each other. Not like the Council. Not like your family.

The oddest people have been so kind. Alice, so like I remembered from school, not the monster the papers turned her into. In some entirely different world, I think you and Frank would have been good friends, your skill and your fierceness to teach and protect, both. Muggles and Muggleborns, who have all the reasons to fear me or loathe me or both. But Regina likes that I've a scientific mind, and Cecilia's glad I was kind to her daughter, and I don't know how they do that. (And they're both so clever and capable, and I feel so selfish, all they've lost.)

I guess that's why I'm doing this. So that other women don't lose other husbands and other children. So that there's a better world for our students. (And all the students we didn't get to have.) So that there's somewhere that honours loyalty, not curses it to shattered bits.

And - well. I don't have much to lose now. If I get it wrong, maybe I get to see you again sooner than later.

I don't regret loving you. Not ever. I keep holding onto all the ways you loved me. Kept me as safe as you could. Thought about what that meant. Wand holster and training and brooms and plans and all.

I just wish we'd had more time.

Love you, more than stars.

Comments

[alt_sinistra]

Raz, love. The seventh years were being so very "Will that be on the NEWT?" at me today, and I just -

So many people think my field's worthless. Oh, maybe there should be a couple of astronomers, to do calculations for potioneers and herbologists and a few people buried in Mysteries. But that the rest of it's meaningless.

And I just keep looking up this week - well, all the weeks since I was five, but especially this week - and thinking there's got to be more.

Sending books to Moddey Dhoo. Mum helped. Getting copies of things that no one would question my wanting. Charms and runes and artihmancy. The new astronomy text. (With all the annotations I could magic in the margins, which is rather a lot. I hope they make sense.) My class notes, all through to my NEWTs, and my curriculum notes, and yours, and the bits I've gotten from conversations during the years. Some history. Some fiction.

Because there's people who want to learn there. Who can't. Because other people think that learning's just about blood. Not interest or skill or putting the work in. That they can strangle teaching and learning and knowing. Being curious, in the right ways.

You never did, sweetheart, and it's one of the reasons I love you. And it's one of the reasons I can't turn away from Tosha. Because he understands the learning being about more than marks and utility. Unlike some people. (Sorry. Seventh years again.)

The rest of me feels bloody useless this week, and last week, and the week before. And probably before that, but my memory's foggy and gone. I'm struggling with some of the Octoboros notes, and my head spins when I look at them, and I'm sure Dai could sort me out, but I can't ask him.

Books. They're not near enough, but they're something.

[alt_sinistra]

Things I have not said to people in the past few days.

1) Tosha, you are sometimes the stupidest smart person I know, and part of me hates you for thinking that was a reasonable solution. (Followed by a lot of yelling that would not have done any good at all.)

2) Thank you, Poppy, I have in fact read the research on the repeated application of the Cruciatus curse. For some reason.

3) Remus, Tosha was hoping that his punishment would work. Obviously.

But you keep assuming it was a choice between Cruciatus and detention. And it wasn't. It was arbitrary harsh punishment or investigation. Investigation would find something, they always do. And then it would be investigation and death. Or maybe we would have had random death instead of Cruciatus. Do you really want that?

4) Thank you, Remus, for brutally reminding me that Raz is dead, and you see no benefit to his life. Your world must be much easier to live in than mine.

(Severus explained that one now. And that makes sense.)

5) Our choice is also not Tosha or Minerva. Our choice is that if Tosha did not punish enough, he would be dead, and then we would have Savitha as head if we were lucky, and Bellatrix if we were not. (And we would have Barty tearing the country apart, stone by stone for something he was allowed to blame, and a dozen things that are actively worse than they are now, and that's before I stopped counting.)

6) I miss you, my love. But this week, there have been times I'm actively glad you're not here. At least now you can't get hurt more. And I think you would have. I hate that that's what I'm glad about.

[alt_sinistra]

If you'd been here, you'd have known the perfect thing to say to me. The thing that would stop me spinning and tangling and hurting. Missed you more the past few days than any time since right after.

After Madam Toad, the blackmail, I swore I wouldn't doubt you like that again. But it kept rushing in, the poisonous little thoughts. The things people have said, about how no - no Death Eater can be trusted.

I couldn't get it out of my head. How maybe you'd lied to me, then, about Daphne. Or stretched things at least. Made it clear what Fletcher should find. And I hated myself for thinking it, and I felt so guilty, but I couldn't not think it. Only, you'd always been honest with me. (Never told me everything, but - honest, the bits you did. I know that when I'm rational.)

Tosha helped. Got me very drunk, Friday, and then came and talked to Fletcher with me, so I could have something solid. To rely on. And Fletcher told us he said what he thought you wanted to hear. That he was doing you a favour. You and me and maybe Daphne. I was furious with him. For lying to you. For assuming he knew what I'd be upset by. So many things.

You have a daughter, love. A bit of you, in the world. I can see you in her. (I am beginning to think your family is cursed to have difficult relationships, mind, and what that says about me, I've no idea right now.)

But the other parts, too. Your gift for finding the useful thing to say. For being the centre of a conversation, but not making it all about you. For being a good friend, and wanting the people you care about to be all right. For wanting to do something that matters.

This past six months. I know which way is up, it's the bit that has the sun in the day and the stars at night. But beyond that?

Still love you. Still hoping you'd love me, even when I doubt. Still keeping going.

[alt_sinistra]

This isn't the way it was supposed to be.

Any of it.

I keep getting flashes of what should have been. Taking the train home, because I knew - we knew - I shouldn't apparate or floo. Too soon to tell anyone else we were expecting, making excuses for a quiet Christmas at home. The Malfoy party, maybe, by train, or the St M's Gala. Decorating. Cooking. Having Tosha over for Solstice. Going out to his Rachmaninov last night.

They keep crowding in, all the things that aren't, that can't ever be.

I can't be there for Harry. I don't even know what to say to Harry, and he's trying so hard to take care of everyone and so very alone. There's Cedric, who's hurting, and Mum and Dad, and I can't manage to talk to them without blaming myself. There's knowing what Hydra did, chose.

There's Neville. Understanding why he kept dodging your boggart lessons. Why that mattered so much. How he was so brave and so loyal and so solid. And Alice and Frank and Evelyn and Terry are hurting so much.

I keep wondering what if you'd known. About the Order. If I could ever have told you.

And then I know I couldn't have (even if they'd told me, if you were alive.) All your life, you've had people telling you what to do, and I promised myself I wouldn't, and that promise I kept. That I'd let you make your own choices.

(Broken most of the others. Broken the one to Alcor about taking care of his tower, and to Alde about keeping safe, because I'm not safe, never will be again. Broken the one about not doubting you. Broken promises to Hogwarts, and to Gilly and Dai, and to Mum and Dad and my sisters and brothers.)

I just - I never expected to lose Hogwarts. For all the plans we made, just in case, I never expected to leave and never go back. I still can't quite get my head around it.

Too many changes.

Nothing left to lose, either. Just throw myself in, to - whatever I can, whatever will help. However small that is. I feel pretty useless most of the time. And you aren't here to see the best in me.

Love you. For what it's worth.

[alt_sinistra]

We should be celebrating your birthday today. I keep trying to think of that last weekend we had, on the lake last year, and it's so far away. Another lifetime, another person, another world.

It was, I suppose.

Here, I'm alone. All the people I might talk to, they're busy, with things that actually matter. Not like there's many to choose from. Never have been, never will be.

You must know by now about Daphne. About Harry. Choosing, both of them, and so young and so - so gone.

Di, at Andie's funeral, she tore into me, and she said so much that hurt, but the thing that was worst was that I had no idea what it was like to lose a child. And I don't. Only.

Everyone seems to forget that you tried, and I tried, to be a home for Harry, when we could. And we did it badly, and I should have done so much more, this year, instead of being scared it was one more thing for him to carry. (I should have asked him what he wanted, given him the choice.)

And we had that one day at Moddey Dhoo, and talking and looking at your tree. But he said good bye to other people, and not to me

It's all tangled and thorns in my head, and bright lights that blot out any chance of finding my place. All the things I'm doing wrong, the things I didn't do, the things I should be doing and can't bring myself to do, to be a decent person. All the many places I didn't understand in you before.

I keep trying to think about the things that are better.

The fighting. You taught so many things that kept our students alive, you amazing teacher, you. You taught things to me that kept me alive. I - the tower, I knew I could hold it. And it did keep people safe. Only, only

When Cedric got hurt, I could keep them from hurting him more, mostly, but I couldn't dare leave, I couldn't figure out how to get him down through the castle.

And there's your voice in my head, telling me to stick to what I know I can do, not get in over my head. It says that I'd not have helped, and that's the kind of thinking on my feet I'm the worst at, and that I had students in the tower who were screaming and crying and might have run straight into danger if I'd left, and not enough people with any sense left to stop them.

He doesn't seem to blame me. I don't know how he can do that. I can't stop seeing it in my head. Can't stop seeing lots of things in my head. Can't stop jumping and flinching and hurting. I understand you so much better.

Before all this, I knew the next fortnight was going to be horrible. Between your birthday and your dying, how could it be anything else? But I don't have time for horrible, I just have to keep going.

Alice, Septima, Cecilia, they all expect I'll be able to manage the wards theory, the bits that are the design and complicated magics in layer after layer. And sometimes I think I've got it, and then it slips out of my grasp, or I find something that I hadn't factored in. It's a kosmos, the intricate model of the world, so many things shifting and moving and connecting.

I'm so scared I'll get something wrong.

If you were here, I'd talk it out with you. If Tosha was here, I'd talk it out with him.

But you're not and if they'd told me this was how it was going to be I don't know that I could have And I didn't keep Harry safe, or Daphne. And Draco and Hydra kept themselves safe with no help from me. And maybe you wouldn't want me now. For all sorts of reasons.

I used to think family would help. But Diane needs them all, more than me, and I won't make them choose, I can't make them choose, and everything else is shattered and broken. (Even if Storm did name Basil for you.)

Evelyn is trying so hard, but she's got so much else to bear, and she's young. And it's not like I've ever had many friends. Dai keeps trying, he's being so stubborn at me by owl, and at the family funerals, but I can't find the words. And I've not even heard from Gilly more than a quick note.

I'm keeping going, love. Because you told me to. Because maybe there's something worth doing I can manage in the end. But it's so hard, and so lonely, and I'm so scared all the time.

I understand you so much better than I did.

[alt_sinistra]

Raz, love. I couldn't even write, for weeks, until I got away

Vic's dead, love. And Rosmerta. Linus's family. Families. Children. People who are innocents, or whose worst sins were not worth death, never worth death. Rookwood.

You saved me, love, you and Tosha. All your training, all your conversations. And you saved everyone, maybe, because we needed me, the 83 wards, I don't know if anyone else could have put it together fast enough, without Alde's notes, but probably they could have, because what am I worth?

I have new nightmares. The invitation lists, our wedding. And name after name, shattering away. Flashes of green. Blood. Just fading. All the people who - who aren't here. Like you. Daphne. Harry. Andie and so many students. Barty. In among the other nightmares, the endless ones of the flash of light and you falling. The formless ones about Harry. A dozen others grown up in blood and loss and pain.

It terrifies me. What I did. And it was the right thing, in that moment, the only thing, the thing that saved other people, but it And there are more dead because of it, more fighting in Ireland, and dragons and

We didn't think about after. Especially an after where you're not here, and Tosha's not here, to stop me orbitting it over and over, every time I'm not thinking hard about something else. And we couldn't have, but I miss you so much right now.

I feel so alone. Not just losing you, losing Harry, losing Tosha in all but the most epistolatory and oblique and temporary way. I never made friends easily. Not like you. (All right, not like many of them treated you like I think friends ought to, but that's another whole letter, a book of them.) Maybe my standards are too high.

I had hoped, when the Order, they asked, that they'd understand loyalty. Understand inclusion. Understood the ways in which His Noselessness was not just destroying bodies and souls, but destroying how we think, how we choose, what we teach, what matters.

I know full well that I'm only here because I'm useful. Because I could cobble enough together from half-overheard nonsense and Tosha's talking and Alde's notes enough to deal with these idiotic wards. Only I've done that now, so I'm not useful anymore. And no one ever thinks astronomy is worth a knut, even with lights in the sky and the world tilted again. A brief meteor, soon forgotten.

Maybe I will have teaching again. The occasional bright star of a student like Evelyn and Linus. And if I live out six years, if I can bear it, the classroom will be full again and I will not feel the dead so close. (Six years seems forever and long past. Six years ago, I barely knew you existed.)

The Order, they are all trying to do their best, and I know that, because I can see the patterns of the stars in the world, but they are people, and very flawed, like all people, like you and Tosha and Dominic and countless other names. Like me. And yet, they do not see how it's all the same. That they're doing the things they curse in others. Daphne understood, of course she understood, but - they did not understand her. Do not understand me.

I still have Gilly but Gilly doesn't understand, never will, though she, at least, is willing to listen a bit. I still have Dai, but he's never known how to understand me loving you, let alone the rest of it. And I'm at Mum and Dad's - Storm's - in the orchard for the afternoon and it's quiet, and they love me, but they don't understand, and showing love means Diane will throw fit after fit and get worse again, and she still needs them more, will always need them more. She's always obeyed, done what she was told. I have never been good at doing what I was supposed to, the way I was supposed to.

No inclusion big enough for sky and stars and supernovae and meteors and implosion and explosion and all the great ever-changing complicated cosmos that holds love and evil and everything between, all interwoven and tangled and not at all tidy.

No one noticed how much I mourned Harry. Thought about how I made him the first meal anyone human cooked for him. That he was part of our family, whatever it was, for as long as we could. Barty is gone, and he was mad with loss at the end, but I can't forget him at parties, explaining the gossip. That he, of all the other side but Tosha, thought you were more than a jester, kept in a closet until you were wanted. That it was him dying the first time, that gave us us.

I don't know how to go on. But I don't know how to stop, either. I'm not you, to run wild and challenge death to come find me. I'm not made for hiding away, and I've given your money to keep Albion alive and I need something to live on. I am trying not to do what you did, your lost years, when there was drinking and pain and not much else.

But it is very hard. And I am so tired and raw and everything's wrong.

I am holding to the fact I did a very clever thing. More than one very clever thing. A very stubborn clever thing. (And I keep thinking of how you'd look at me, if I tried to explain it, and tease me about whether you could follow it, and perhaps you couldn't, but I'd tell you anyway.)

It's not enough, but it's all I have. That, and trying to do my best by Evelyn, and now Linus, somehow. Since someone needs to.

[alt_sinistra]

Oh, love. I was going to write, and be so glad it's over and

Hydra.

Nothing I can say is going to do anything but make things worse, I know that.

What I want to say is that after someone killed you, it mattered to me that the man who killed you, that his son had a funeral where other people would be there. That it wouldn't just be Theo Nott and his sister. That giving him that mattered, even when I hated him. Still hate him.

And I hate him for killing you. But I also hate him for raising a child who everyone was terrified of, who only his family loved, for his part in making a world where we - where I - failed to protect every single child that we taught, and failed even more to protect all the ones we should also have been teaching, and all the ones who should have been taught by other people.

What I want to say is that Tosha is the last person who knew you as a person, thought you were competent, knew you as an adult, not a teacher, not an uncle, but as a friend and brother and all the things you deserved so much more of and never had. And that she's got friend after friend she can talk to about Justin, when she's ready, and I have shadows and people who knew you from what the papers said, or if I'm really lucky, a half-dozen suppers. (My family liked you, but it's hard to say they had time to know you much.)

He did horrible things in pursuit of stupid choices. Just like you did dreadful things in pursuit of your stupid choices. And I've done some things and Ireland got invaded because of what I did and I killed in pursuit of my own choices, some of which are already proven to be stupid and terrible. But if I hate him, I have to hate you, and I have to hate me, and I don't think that ends well.

What I want to say is that we've lived in fear, for so long, that punishment for talking to the wrong person, thinking the wrong thoughts, seems reasonable, but that's not the way it should be, that's not the way forward.

What I want to say is that some of the children coming this year, or next, or the ones after, some will be the children of people who did horrible things. Brothers and sisters of people who did horrible things. Camp administrators and Enforcers and bureaucrats who thought nothing of shuffling people off to be worked to death or worse. Who abused the muggleborns in service. All the nightmares. The thing we can't afford, can't ever give into, is making sure the people like that have nowhere to be. Hated for continuing to love who they love. I'm can hear all the voices calling it weakness and justification. But that doesn't make it less fair, and it doesn't mean they deserve less welcome.

What I want to say is that I know how it feels right now, enough, that it's been not much more than a year since you, and I feel it all the time. I still feel the hole in the charms, and

Everything.

She is your niece, and you loved her, and you wanted good things for her. And I won't hurt her more, only I don't know how not to hurt her. Not saying anything will. Saying anything will. If I had years, I probably couldn't figure it out.

And I'm really sure that any promise made right now, with so much change and so much hurting, by anyone, it's not a good idea. (I keep thinking about what Poppy and Mum and Georg and other people told me, after you died, that there was no need to make hasty decisions, no need to commit myself to something. Though, then again, six weeks later, I joined the Order, so I guess I wasn't very good at that.)

The rest of it. I guess I keep trying to teach, because what else am I good for? And I bury my head in the tower, as much as I can, because anything else - anything else is too sharp, and I just can't. And people keep blaming me for things I'm supposed to know about, and don't, and it's not like people tell me things or ask me things I do know, or ...

Right. There are things I wanted to tell you. I can do that much, before I write something and fall over and realise no one's going to miss me at Malfoy Manor.

Tosha said he saw Harry, when he was dead. Not you, but I hope that means you've gone to find somewhere to be happy, somewhere with Quidditch and clear skies and a comfortable couch by a fireplace for after. That you know Harry's all right. I don't even know what I think about the afterlife anymore, whether I want there to be one or what.

In a couple of weeks, I suspect both Cedric and Charlie will be fed up with people telling them it'll be all right, and I'm thinking I'll let them know how it was with you. The things almost no one knew, about living with the pain and the curse damage, and the fear about it getting worse, and that if they want an ear, I'm not going to pretend it's like it used to be for them or can be again, but also that there's some way through it.

Preferably without either of them taking a ten year detour to black depths and bottles and all. I like them both too much for that. If I can avoid going there myself.

I don't know if I'll keep writing. It feels like all the before and whatever's next, they're two entirely different worlds (and if you were Tosha, I'd talk about wardrobes and paintings and all here, but you're not.) Maybe I'll write you proper letters, instead. I don't know.

But I always always love you, and I still dream of you, and I wake up in the middle of the night and wonder why you're not there, and I don't think that will ever change.

I hope you don't hate me. Wherever you are.