I had to go back to where my father was killed. I had to go there and actually admit to what I had done, it was tearing me up inside, I felt like I had disrespected his memory and all that he believed in. I had gone and taken a mark that I detested and wanted to remove from my shoulder and couldn’t. Believe me I had tried, and my mother had as well. It was not removable, there forever. Entering the home I had known from when I was 12 to 13 years old I walked in almost afraid to greet the ghosts of my past. I hadn’t been in this house very long, but it had memories of things I wanted to forget, but I couldn’t. I had to confront the ghost of my father. To explain not only to him but also to myself how I could be desperate enough to go and take on the mark that was on my shoulder. We never remained in any house very long whether it be in London, the cabin, Ural Mountains or even the Alps. No more than a year or two at most since we left the Netherlands.

Closing my eyes as I stood just inside the door I took a deep breath and tried to steady my beating heart. I wasn’t the same boy I was 5 years ago when I first moved in, and never would want to be that little boy again. The only thing I’d change now would be having my father and my brother here as well. But that wasn’t ever going to happen again. Pushing away from the door, I walked through the house, there was a few inches of dust over everything, with no one having lived there in 4 years, but the signs that we’d been there were still evident. A doll of my sister’s lay on the floor as if dropped from a box and forgotten, a piece of a letter torn in half on the worktop in the kitchen and the other half on the floor. We’d had to leave quickly, and hadn’t time to cry over things we’d forgotten, though I am sure my mother and my sister did often. I hadn’t. I was too numb.

It felt as if they were there. I looked into the living room and could see my mother in the rocking chair, and my sister playing with her dolls on the floor. Corin at the desk writing to one of his friends off in England and my father brewing a potion in the cauldron in the dining room. The ghosts of my past haunting my thoughts and even my vision as I sat down in the chair I normally had sat in. I asked myself, why was I here. What was it I hoped to accomplish? He wasn’t a ghost, he hadn’t stayed or he would have found my mum, Ava and I, he’d gone on. He wasn’t about to talk to me, let alone tell me that he hated the fact of what I had chosen to do. I could have joined him and been killed. But I hadn’t because I wanted to be able to be there with my family and protect them if I could. I stared at the place my brother sat in my mind asking him in my mind why had he done what he had. Finally I just yelled at his ghost that sat there, stupid as it was I didn’t give a damn. ‘Why the hell did you switch sides? What the hell was wrong with you? Do you have any idea, how badly you hurt mum?’ I had tears in my eyes but I didn’t give a damn. He’d hurt mum, dad, Ava and I. And now he had pinned me with the news the next time we met he was going to kill me. It hurt to know that he didn’t give a damn about any of us, and that he’d chosen to follow Voldemort. Was he in Voldemort’s inner circle or was he just a follower that was fighting for the good of what Voldemort’s aims were? It didn’t matter. He didn’t believe in what we were fighting for and believed that Voldemort was in the right. I was angry, not sad that he’d turned sides, but angry. How could he do that to his family? How could he be as selfish as that? How could he think that Voldemort’s nonsense killing was perfectly normal? Did he truly believe that purebloods were the only ones who should be witches and wizards. No Muggle borns? What would we be without muggleborns? We wouldn’t even exist! We would have died out long ago. Only mating and breeding with our own kind? It was like we were animals, don’t breed with those that aren’t purebloods. It was disgusting and that’s exactly what it appeared my brother believed. I didn’t leave that room for a long time that night and I still couldn’t bring myself to go to the kitchen. Late that night, or maybe really early the next morning I finally climbed into my old bed and fell asleep. It was a restless night sleep and I didn’t sleep well at all. I kept waking up and firstly wondering if I would be found by one of Voldemort’s followers and be killed. Or maybe Corin would find me and we’d fight finally. That was going to happen, when I had no idea, where no idea, but it would happen and I knew that day was coming sooner than I would care to admit. I also couldn’t sleep because the ghosts of my past kept haunting me more and more. I knew I had to confront those ghosts and I couldn’t leave until I had. The next morning came and I stared at the ceiling, I was determined not to even leave the house until I had done what I had come to do.

So what did I do? I started cleaning the house from top to bottom. I wasn’t ready to confront my father. And the house was a complete mess, covered in dust, doxies in the curtains, garbage everywhere and it just needed to be well cleaned. Moving through the house I found odds and ends that had been left there, including a picture of the five of us sitting on the steps of the house. Finding a box I started putting anything that I found that we might like to keep, into that box so I could bring it home for mum and Ava.

I avoided the kitchen as much as I possibly could, wasn’t too easy, considering I did need to eat, but I’d grab what I needed and leave the room as quickly as I could. I hadn’t figured out how I was going to be able to even tell my father what I had done. Though he already knew and it was for myself to tell him more than anything, I still couldn’t do it quite yet. I got the house pretty well emptied and cleaned up, leaving no trace from my family’s existence there. Finally towards the end of that week I got to the point I could no longer avoid. I stood in the doorway to the kitchen staring at the spot my mother said she had found my father dead.

‘I never wanted to take it’ I said allowed, my voice catching in my throat. I swallowed unable to continue. Closing my eyes I took a few breaths trying to steady my breathing but the longer I stood there the more I found myself gasping for breath and had to leave the house. Outside I leaned against a tree, tears falling down my cheeks, trying to get a grip on life again. I had to do this, for my own sake if not for my father’s memory. I looked up in time to see an owl fly over the tops of the trees. Owls were who we were, a part of our lives as wizards. Many Muggles say they’re death omens, but not us. My father always told me he’d become an owl in afterlife, and it always made me laugh, because that was the only time he ever mentioned afterlife. We didn’t ever believe in that, but seeing that owl flying over brought a small smile to my lips. I hadn’t expected one to just appear the moment I opened my eyes, especially after what I’d just the house because of. It took me nearly 2 hours before I was able to go back inside the house, finally going back in the house I went to the kitchen again and leant against the frame again looking at the spot. I realized at the point, it wasn’t so much that I wanted his forgiveness, but really what was wrong right then, was that I was angry with him. It hadn’t been his fault that he had died, he hadn’t told them to kill him, they had found him and killed him at least leaving his family and us to get on without him. Which was more than they did for many other people and their families. But I was angry, he had left us alone and we were on the run ever since. With me having to take care of the family, and alone doing so.

When I realized it I shouted, I sank to my knees and just screamed at him, tears running down my face as I let out my anger, fear, rejection, the pain and how much I’d been through the last 3 years. I told him everything, including the mark I had taken. I blamed him for it all. I knew it was unfair but I did and when I was done I just sat there on my knees with my face buried in my hands. I don’t know how long I sat like that but eventually I laid down on the floor on my side, and not long after that fell asleep until the really early the next morning. When I woke I just lay there gazing into the darkness not really seeing and not really fully awake.

I don’t believe in ghosts, never have. I mean there are the spirits and ghosts at Hogwarts yes, but I mean ghost apparitions that just appear and walk around trying to scare people. I believe the ones here are there for a reason. They don’t just appear and disappear at will. But that morning in the darkness I could see the outline of my father sitting there on the chair at the table watching me. He never spoke, was just there as if to be a comfort to me. I lay there just staring at him, not speaking, really not comprehending what it was I was actually seeing. I won’t ever admit that to anyone, that I saw my father there that night, because even I for one are not sure if I did or not. But I like to think that for the first time since his death he understood and wanted me to know it was okay, and that everything was going to turn out alright.

I went back to London that night, making my way back across Europe, via apparition and had banished the box of items to our home, so I wouldn’t have anything to carry with me. My thoughts were still on that early morning encounter, but that basically told me either I believed in ghosts or I didn’t. Dad didn’t remain here, so did I believe that he could come back from the dead? I didn’t, but yet that question remained. What was it I had seen, or better yet…who was it? Arriving back in London, I was there just in time for Ava to be picked up from King’s Cross after her 4th year. That was the second reunion that I had been waiting for that I had looked forward to for months. I hadn’t seen Ava since back in Austria and had really missed her a lot. I stood on the platform 9 ¾ that day, and my mum didn’t even know that I was going to be there, I had told her I would try to meet her train but didn’t know if I’d be back in time. The train pulled to a stop and students flooded the platform, with their luggage running to meet their families. My mum appeared at my shoulder, and squeezed it as we waited for Ava to depart the train. Seeing her stepping off the train brought a smile to my face and when she saw me she ran into my arms and I held her close, letting her cry. My mum hadn’t told her she had found me is what I had found out later.

The three of us were completely together again, and with the rumours of what was happening it was even more reason for me to train. I got into ju-jitsu full time with training, and met with my sensei I had for the next 2 years. We didn’t venture out much, but each time was worse than the last. I feared to send Ava to Hogwarts the following year, it would be my last year at Hogwarts, but I wasn’t going to go, it was too dangerous for me, and not worth my time, when there were worse things out there, and I was determined to fight against it. Shops were closing left and right in Diagon Alley and even Ollivanders closed down when Ollivander disappeared. I hadn’t as yet seen Corin but I knew it was going to happen, I watched my back every day, wondering if that one might be my last. My mother and I both knew that I might go out one day and not return, it was something we both lived with.

The day finally arrived in late October 1996, I was near our home when Corin appeared, in a flash I had my wand out and he stared me down. He spoke these words ‘I give you one last chance’ and when I said no, the duel began. Right in the heart of London, hexes and curses flew back and forth between us, barely missing the Avada Kedavra curse many times, I gave up with the spells and flipped my wand into a sword, which took him by surprise. Deflecting much of the curses and hexes that he sent my way, I was impressed to the extent that this creation that Ollivanders had made me could do. I hadn’t expected deflection but it definitely worked to my advantage. The one thing that I really hate fighting people with are whips. Corin’s weapon of choice was a whip, he used his wand up until the point I took out my sword, it just got worse. Never would I ever use a whip on anyone. It’s painful beyond any pain anyone should ever have put on them. I didn’t deflect all the lashes, and have some pretty nasty scars to prove it, but when I had him pinned to the ground he waited for me to kill him, and when I hesitated he threw me off and apparated. I didn’t expect that to be the way things ended, I had expected him to kill me with his bare hands, after I had snapped his wand in two. But he disappeared once again. I never saw him again alive. I made it back to my home where mum stood at the door watching for me. I was covered in blood, both my own as well as Corins, and she knew what had happened, tears streaked her face as I came closer my sword at my side, not even having put it away. A brief shake of my head told her that Corin had survived and disappeared. She brought me in the house and fixed me up best she could, the worst scar I have from that duel is covered by a dragon tattoo I got just before the accident years later, that wraps around my side. I never speak of that tattoo nor what it represents. Corin’s patronus was a dragon, and though I hated my brother and still did until only recently, that dragon symbolizes Corin and the duel between us. It’s the only thing I have to remember him by now, there is no grave, no body that we got back when he died. He was gone, killed by the hands of Goyle.

Two months after the duel, we got word from the ministry of magic that a body had been found, and it was the body of Corin. We didn’t know who it was who killed him until much later. My mother and I both went to the ministry to claim the body, but when we arrived, the body was not able to be found, it had vanished. No one could explain the disappearance of Corin’s body and it wasn’t exactly the at the top of the list to be found either. He was a traitor in the ministry’s eyes, and had deserved to die. There was no closure for my mother, nor for me, though the closure had happened 2 months before when I realized that Corin truly was gone. He’d died years back, when he’d switched sides after our father was killed.

My studies didn’t end just because I didn’t attend Hogwarts. I suppose I could have returned to the school, but it wasn’t to me the in my best interest, I’d been out of the school for a year and a half, and was still technically in hiding. I could have contacted Maree I suppose but I didn’t. I figured she would have long moved on by now, and that thought still tore at my heart but all I did was push it away. What was the point on dwelling on something that would never be? She’d be finishing at Beauxbatons as well this year, it being her last. My birthday came and went as if it were just another day. My mother and I had made the home in London back to the way it had been years ago when I was 11 years old, but we couldn’t bring ourselves to live upstairs. There were too many memories up there, and we moved all of our belongings to the downstairs, each of us taking a bedroom and sealing off the upstairs. We basically started a new life there the best we could. It wasn’t easy, with so many memories coming flooding back, just from looking out the window at the garden in the back or seeing a candlestick when we were digging through boxes in the storage. Memories we really wanted to forget, push aside and never remember again. How could the fates have put us in this mess? It didn’t seem fair that so many things could happen to one family. So many deaths, both Muggle and wizard, the Bones…Mckinnons, cruciatus curses, so many pointless deaths, and it was only growing worse. A breakout of Azkaban had happened the year before with 10 death eaters had broken out, that had been about the time when the mark came into play in Appleby, and it appeared more more had also appeared that were supposedly in the cells of Azkaban. Scrimgeour attempted to try and help the frightened wizarding world but no one seemed confident that he was even capable of such a thing. I know I didn’t think he was.

I decided maybe a job in the ministry was of my best interest, but what a laugh that was, a boy who should still be at Hogwarts trying to apply for a job? I hadn’t even taken my NEWTs! So after getting laughed out of the office and told to go back to school I stormed from there after giving him a piece of my mind, I went straight to the books, and started studying everything I could to learn more about the Law Enforcement squad, and doing what I could to ensure that one day I would fight side-by-side with them against Voldemort. I wasn’t going to let some stupid Ministry tell me I couldn’t fight because I should be in Hogwarts. The world was crashing down on every one of us and they were worried about how my test scores would be for my NEWTs. I didn’t give a damn what the scores were going to be, I worried about what kind of world we were going to live in when Voldemort took over.

As with everyone around me, Dumbledore’s death hit me hard. It was a devastating blow for all of us. He was the strong one, the one everyone looked up to, whether they were a citizen, a student, or just someone who knew the name. He was well respected, and to get the blow of him being killed by none other than Severus Snape, hit me even harder. Snape had been my head of house, and I had respected him! I had trusted him and gone to him when I feared for my life, when I worried that my family might be found, and he helped me to get through that fear! He hadn’t looked at me like some stupid Slytherin who had been placed in the wrong house, he said we each had a place in Hogwarts, and if the Sorting Hat decided I was a Slytherin, then I was in the right house. Many people scoff at that and probably don’t believe a word of that but it’s true. I respected that man and my heart literally broke when I heard that he was the one who had killed Albus Dumbledore. I went to the funeral despite my mother’s begging me not to go. She feared that Death Eaters might appear at the funeral and everyone’s lives would be in danger. I had to go. I wanted to pay respects to that great man.

I spoke with Hagrid for the first time in a year and a half, huge tears rolled down that big oaf’s face. I still call him a big oaf, but I say it out of endearment now, rather than as a disgraceful comment about him. I can’t be sure that he was crying because he was happy to see me or if it were because of who’s funeral it was. But it was great to see him again, I’d missed our talks and he was relieved to see that I hadn’t been killed over the years. That funeral was the hardest I’d been to, and that included my own father’s. Though my fathers had only been a small ceremony on the mountainside. We had vanished the body after he’d been killed and hadn’t brought it with us. But Dumbledore’s hit me hard and I sat there once again numb, knowing a great man had been killed. Numb with not knowing what was going to come of the world that we had once lived in feeling so safe and secure. Voldemort had returned, his followers had joined him and a war was coming, faster than any of us knew to be true. Who would survive it? No one knew for sure, but the one thing we knew is it was coming sooner than any of us wanted.

I took my NEWTs at the ministry that year, not long after Dumbledore’s funeral. At least I managed that before things really went bad. I went from the exams to set up another interview with the head of Law Enforcement. The man still scoffed but said I had guts to continue coming back. He said to wait on the scores and then we’d see if I could join the YATI program to become an auror. Two weeks later I received my NEWT scores. I had done somewhat better than I had for my OWLs: I got an O in Care of Magical Creatures, Charms, Defense Against the Dark Arts, History of Magic, Potions, Transfiguration and Muggle Studies. And an E in Herbology= O. The scores had me able to join level 2 very easily and they found that I was a fantastic asset with the training I had in both the ju-jitsu as well as the sword fighting. It was sad to see that it was so short lived though.

Scrimgeour was killed in August of 1997, and that’s when all hell broke loose in the ministry. Death Eaters took over and Voldemort was basically Minister of Magic, though it was ‘Pius Thicknesse’ that was ruling and making decisions on behalf of Voldemort. Not a single employee at the ministry felt safe. Each one of us knew that any moment we could be killed or our family killed without a moment’s hesitation, and they’d just write it off as disloyalty to the current minister. I was tossed out of level 2 almost immediately, after they discovered who it was I was, and they sent me down to Accidents & Catastrophes to a lowly desk job. Figuring I was safer there and wouldn’t be risked placing me against the Death Eaters. I didn’t know who it was safer for! Me or the Death Eaters. Were they trying to protect me? Or did they fear that I’d knock off the Death Eaters one by one? I had no idea, I found it funny on both counts! That they were afraid of an 18 year old boy just out of Hogwarts? Or the fact that they felt I needed protecting from the Death Eaters or Voldemort himself. Did they think one day I’d be an asset to the ministry? Obviously not since they’d stuck me behind a desk. I was just biding my time though, I knew that there was a plot to reoverthrow the ministry, I had no idea when or who all was involved, being as I was ‘just’ a student out of Hogwarts. But I knew there was a plot to overthrow Voldemort’s new government, and I was going to be ready when that happened. Harry Potter seemed to have disappeared with his friend Hermione Granger, but students were back at Hogwarts, and Severus Snape was the new headmaster. God they were pathetic weren’t they? The man who turned out to be a traitor to Albus Dumbledore who killed him in the end? He was now appointed the headmaster of Hogwarts? Were they that desperate?

I ignored people for the most part, and just bided my time. Trained continuously for the battle that was coming. I was going to be ready, and I’d be damned if those ministry people and Death Eaters would continue to think of me as some kid just out of Hogwarts. I was going to prove myself and if I died trying, so be it. I was going to make my father proud of me, he wasn’t going to have died in vain, nor were those Muggles or those witches and wizards who’d been killed since Voldemort’s return. Even if Harry Potter had given up, I certainly as hell hadn’t!

I still hadn’t contacted Maree, and each time I thought about it, my heart tightened a little more and a little more til it hurt. I didn’t want to waste the paper, was my excuse every time I thought about writing her. One day mid December 1997, I was walking all bundled up into the Leaky Cauldron and passed through to the courtyard. I was just entering it when I nearly ran into someone who was leaving it going back into the Leaky Cauldron. I heard her say pardon me, and moved to step aside when I stopped and turned towards her when I recognized the voice. It couldn’t be, she hadn’t…she’d been in France! Was I really that stupid, to think that all these years she’d stayed put in France and hadn’t moved away? Was I really that naïve?