I started making my way across Europe again but knew I couldn’t just return to London, and found myself in Italy of all places. I didn’t care to go back to any of the places I’d been again, just because of the fact that I wanted to start a life away from it all. I hadn’t finished what I’d set out to do but I wasn’t ready to find out where Corin was or Maree. Neither one of those two was going to be good, neither one would bring good memories, nor could I see myself healing from either of those. It was many years before I finally healed with Corin, and Maree ended up being sooner than I ever planned. In Italy I found myself really wanting to start a life of my own once again. I needed to move on and start thinking about the future. I hadn’t forgotten about my family but I needed to move on and get my life back together. I started searching again because even with the knowledge of having found out about my family and Maree, I still felt incomplete as if something was missing. I hadn’t been able to have closure yet though, and I knew something was holding me back. Something was eating at me wanting me to figure out where she or he was and telling me that I needed to find them or I would never be able to move on with my life. It was a scary thought to know that something was waiting for me out there. My first thought was Corin and I was all oh hell no about that. Because I didn’t want to have any part of that, I didn’t want to go find him and possibly find his ghost somewhere that I would have to confront. I could totally see Corin still being here on earth unable to go on, having stayed here. I didn’t ever want to confront him again, I’d done that once and nearly died doing that when I was 17!

I was drawn to a place in southern France, I had no idea where it was I was heading, but something was drawing me there. I had no idea what I might find, but I knew I had to go there. It was late 2068, and somehow I was being pulled in that direction. What was it I might find there? There wasn’t anyone that I knew that was from there. I found myself in a small village with quite a few rundown buildings, there wasn’t much life there, but for some reason that’s exactly where I had been drawn to. I peered into broken windows of the shops that lined the streets. It was as if the place had been abandoned years ago and I was disturbing the ghosts that wanted to lie in peace. I didn’t know why I was there but knew somehow it was important. I could see one house in particular off to one side that his eyes were drawn to, and he started making his way out of town to the trees off in the distance. Why was he being drawn in that direction? He had no idea, but something was pulling him there.

It took him a bit of time to get there but he finally arrived. He wasn’t going to apparate because he had no idea if this was an old wizarding village or just an old village that had become run down and in shambles. Making his way up what he took to be the long drive, that was completely overgrown and full of tall grass and weeds, he picked his way through it carefully, in case there was anything he’d fall or trip over. He finally approached the house and peered inside the windows, the sense of being watched made a shivery feeling pass through him and he glanced over his shoulder but saw nothing. It was as if the place was haunted and whomever it was, was watching him. That couldn’t be though, he didn’t know anyone who had lived here previously. Not that he knew of anyway. Peering through the windows again he winced at the look of the place. He had thought his home in London was bad, that compared nothing to this. This was destroyed. As if there was a monster living in it, tearing everything to shreds. Moving around to the front porch I gingerly stepped on it, afraid it might give out under me just by standing on it. Making it to the door, I went to open it and it fell off the hinges nearly hitting me in the head. Pushing it to the side, I stepped inside the house, trying to figure out why the place was drawing me to it. There had to be a reason, I wouldn’t just randomly appear in the middle of nowhere and feel as if I was meant to be there. Again I had that shivery feeling go through me making me feel as if someone was there. But again I knew there was nobody there. I started walking around through the house searching for a sign of who used to live there. It was obvious no one lived there now, but someone must have at some point. There were children’s toys in a box as if someone had started packing them up but then thought better of it and just left them strewn around the floor inside and outside the box. I moved towards the rickety staircase going up to the second floor and stepped off into the first room at the top of the steps, and my eyes saddened realizing who’s house this must have been. It had been Maree’s when she was growing up. What the reason was for the entire house being trashed I had no idea. But her room, was almost pristine, not a speck of dust in it or even a sign that it had been over 50 years since she’d been there last. For all I knew someone had been living there honestly, but I got the impression it was magic that had kept the room so neat and tidy. I swallowed the pain that appeared on my face after the realization had hit me. I looked around the room and felt as if I was imposing on somewhere I didn’t belong, but the first thing my eyes fell on was the Christmas Ball invitation that lay on her desk, she had a picture of her and I sitting on top of it, as if she’d been looking at it the last time she’d been in that room sitting at that desk. It hurt to see that picture laying there and that card, because it was the last time that I truly felt happy, like life was just a fun bit that I lived through, like there wasn’t a care in the world. We sat under the tree near the lake, and someone had snapped a photo of us and she’d kept it all those years. I had no idea when the last time she’d been in this room was but that moment had obviously meant a lot to her just as it had to me. The last thing I ever said to her had been hurtful and likely had made her cry. It didn’t matter that she had been the one to leave, I could have stopped her and I didn’t. That was the point that hurt me most. I sank down onto her bed, looking around the room, and I asked aloud ‘is this what you wanted me to see? Where you grew up?’ Nothing responded, as I was alone in the house, but I got the impression that I wasn’t truly alone as I thought I was. There was a presence here and I hadn’t quite figured out what it was. I couldn’t stay there in the house and I damn well couldn’t stay in the town, so I needed to set up camp out in the yard. I had my tent in the bag I had brought, and it was easy enough to set up. It just gave me goose bumps knowing that something was there though I couldn’t see it, I could certainly feel it, and I didn’t know how much sleep I’d get until I found out what it was. Setting the tent up far from the house and any of the outbuildings. I went inside and tried to relax and ignore the feeling that kept running through me that I needed to find out who it was that had drawn me there. Something had brought me there and I needed to find out who and why. I had an idea that it was something to do with Maree, and maybe I might get some answers as to who she was, and how she’d lived prior to dying. Maybe I’d find out if she ever had found love, I just hoped that she hadn’t died alone because she was too hurt from what I had done to ever trust another man again.

That night being it was a full moon, he lay there staring out the tent window at it, it had lit up the entire area almost like it was daylight outside. It made him shiver, knowing that only certain creatures came out on nights like this, but he also knew he was far away from any human let alone a werewolf. Muggles always said that was just a myth, but he knew better. He didn’t believe in ghosts but he sure as hell believed in creatures of the night, and sometimes those were scarier than even dragons. He didn’t sleep much that night but that was mainly because he had the feeling yet again that someone was watching him. He got up really early the next morning and headed for the house with his wand in hand. Calling out he yelled ‘I don’t give a damn who you are, I want you to show yourself immediately’. Enough of this haunting and following him. He didn’t care if it was a human, creature, ghost, or even a poltergeist. He was so done with that chilling feeling of someone following him. He didn’t know what they were there for but whatever it was, it must have been important to be bringing him here to this place. What did it have to do with him? Seeing a dark shadow emerging from the upstairs window of the house he pulled out his wand and heard laughter, a man’s laugh sound from the form and come down to the ground stopping in front of him. ‘You won’t hurt me with that wand son’. The ghost was just changing from a ghostly werewolf into a ghostly human form before my eyes. Never had I ever encountered something that took my breath away and made me want to run before. I stared at the man ghost thingy that was standing there before me.

‘Who are you?’ I asked and regretted it almost immediately, when he said he was Maree’s father, I swallowed and wondered if I could just apparate away from there and be done with it. He told me that he hadn’t gone on, because he had unfinished business for one and two that he was afraid of what might happen or be beyond death. He led me into the house and offered me a seat on one of the sofa’s that was ripped to shreds. I considered saying thank you but refusing the seat but it was obvious that he was trying to be proper about the entire thing. So I took a seat, half expecting creepy crawlies to start climbing out of it and running up my pants legs and stuff. I followed him with my gaze.

‘Why have you been trying to get me here for the last few months?’ I asked curiosity tingeing my voice.

‘Isn’t it obvious?’ he asked turning his ghostly green eyes towards me. They were the same colour as Maree’s had been. ‘You hurt my daughter, and it nearly killed her when you disappeared almost immediately afterward.’

My eyes dropped and were filled with sadness once again after he had spoken ‘I hadn’t wanted to leave.’ I said quietly, ‘that wasn’t nothing to do with the fight we had. I didn’t want her to leave that night but I couldn’t bring myself to go after her. But I have regretted it every single day since the day of the accident.’ He’d paid the price many times over for having let her leave that night. So many what ifs had crossed his mind and made him wonder, why hadn’t he gone after her? Had he been looking for a way out of the relationship? No he had truly loved her and his heart ached knowing that there was no way of ever returning to the past and trying to undo what he had done.

‘It still nearly killed her’ he said with irritation hinting in his voice. ‘That was my daughter and that was the one thing she had was knowing that you were always going to be there for her. She loved you unconditionally. I wasn’t ever able to protect her in that way from boys, she wouldn’t let me. But you! You were supposed to protect her and be there for her. Not say such hurtful things to her and make her feel so worthless.’

It was obvious her father was angry with me and there was nothing I could do to change that. ‘I never had that opportunity to try and fix that night.’ I murmured softly. ‘I never got the chance to undo what I had said if she’d even accept any apology. Like I said I have regretted it every single day since. I can’t go back and undo it. There is no way of changing what I had said and there’s no way of changing what happened the next day.’ God he’d give anything to change what had happened the following day. He was still paying for that, 5 years later. Still searching for the escape that would let him move on and live a normal life.

Reg told me that Maree hadn’t ever been able to move on. She had always had that hope that if it was a time accident there was always the chance that I’d come looking for her. Even if I had gone back into the past, maybe one day I would find her and she didn’t want to give up hope that I would never reappear. She had regretted leaving as much as I had not going after her. She had cried all night because I hadn’t gone after her, she had expected that I wouldn’t let her leave so angry but I had been hurt so much myself that when she left I just let her go. We’d both been hurt and both been foolish for letting it happen in the first place. Reg said that I had really woke her up though, that she’d taken what I’d said to heart. Did that mean that Maree had finally understood where I was coming from and had regretted doing that so many times? I would like to think that was the case. He told me about her life after I had disappeared. It was heart wrenching to think all those years she had waited for me hoping that I was coming back and I didn’t. It hurt thinking about how much I had hurt her in that time being gone. I hadn’t had any way of undoing the accident or knowing how much pain she was in and the regret she had from leaving everything between us the way we had left it. But it still hurt knowing she’d died with the knowledge of it being her fault in her eyes. Reg told me that often she blamed herself, saying I had done it on purpose, just to get away from her. Or saying that I wasn’t really in a time accident but actually had just vanished so I would never have to confront her or get through that fight with her. I learned about how she had cancer at the age of 38 and within 2 years it metastasized and she had no chance. Just past her 40th birthday she passed away in her sleep, which was more than anyone could offer her. I bowed my head with tears in my eyes, telling him how much I would have given to have just one more moment with her, to apologize and tell her how much she meant to me. I finally broke down after so many years of hurting since we’d gone our separate ways that night, the tears finally came and I sat there on that shredded sofa with my shoulders shaking as I cried into my hands. It was the hardest thing I’d done up until that point in my life, finally given this pain away and let go of Maree. She’d been my world for that short month before the accident. We had so many plans for the future. I never had even proposed to her to show her how much I wanted to spend my life with her and it was all shattered in the small time span of 15 minutes. She was finally laid to rest in my heart now, it wasn’t so much a relief but more of a forgiveness to myself. I finally was able to forgive myself for letting her walk away and not going after her. When I finally raised my head and wiped my eyes I found myself alone in the house, with no chilling feeling of Reg still being there. He had finally gone. Had he gone on? I never found out, I just knew that the next few days I didn’t feel his presence again there. I didn’t fix the house up, I didn’t change anything in it, but I did take that photo of Maree and myself from when we were younger. It now sits in a trunk up in the attic and there it will probably always stay. It’s a part of my past, not my future, but it reminds me of who I once was and who I once loved.

From France I started my travels and doing a lot more, I had a number of places I really wanted to travel to, and wanted to spend time travelling. I didn’t know what my life would bring so I wanted to take the time now to do it. One day though I swore I never would I might want to raise a family. The world wasn’t a bad place like it once was, but I couldn’t see myself ever falling in love again like I had with Maree. I couldn’t see myself having a child and risking the fact that that child might turn into someone like Corin. What if I was killed? How could my wife move on without me, how could I leave my children without a father. Now that I was starting to want to plan my life again and actually live once again, I wanted to become something. I didn’t know if I wanted to become an auror or not, but I wanted to do something, and if that was included then so be it. I found myself in Atlantis a few years later, and really enjoyed it there. Yes underwater, a place most humans would never think they’d be able to ever survive. But I lived there for 3 ½ years, I worked in the ministry with International Cooperation. I was just a liaison between the world above and the ministry itself, not an ambassador or anything, but I truly enjoyed the work. Lots had changed in the world around me, and I wanted to learn the new laws, and find out more about the Muggles versus the wizarding world. To see if there was anything that I could do to build a bridge between the two worlds. We had good communication between the ‘beings’ such as the merpeople around Atlantis but the Muggles above the surface weren’t too helpful in working with us. They did everything they could to keep from seeing magic for what it truly was. As if there was a veil that separated the actual signs from what they were seeing. In some ways that was good, because of the statute of secrecy but it also kept their mundane minds from actually helping when it came to us needing their assistance. I enjoyed it though. It gave me something else to worry about and think on rather then, if I’d ever return to London or not. I knew I should but I wasn’t ready, it’d been almost 10 years but I still wasn’t ready to return to my old life. I wasn’t in any hurry though either. I was happy with the life I had, doing travelling whenever I wanted to, no questions ever asked, and no one was pressuring me to jump back in and forcing me to go back. No one knew my past except for me.

In 2074, I went to the Italian Ministry, and applied for a position there, I told them I didn’t care where I went as long as they didn’t stick me in the department of mysteries. Because of my experience in Accidents & Catastrophes as well as training in ju-jitsu and sword fighting they put me into level 3 but trained me with the new aurors as well. Figuring that I’d be a good candidate for working inter-departments when needed. I didn’t have any problem with that, I wanted to be out in the field working. I couldn’t just sit around and do nothing any longer, I wanted to be out there. Not even being in the department of mysteries had kept me from danger, I had had the one accident that everyone that worked in the time room ever dreaded, and I wouldn’t wish that on anyone not even my worst enemy. Which was kind of odd considering my worst enemy was myself and the fear and anger I’d lived through my entire life, and the possibility of it taking over my life. Basically that meant I’d never wish that accident on myself, and it had happened.

Working in Accidents & Catastrophes felt like a normal part of my life again. I was able to jump right in and do precisely what I had done when I’d first graduated from Hogwarts. It was a peaceful work to me, and though the training was hard and strenuous it didn’t bother me one bit and the off break I got going back to level 3 was a bit of relief each day. Working between the two departments was fantastic and again I found myself working my way up, within 6 months I was the head of the Obliviator Squad and though I refused point blank to become a full fledged auror I still trained with them and even trained them a bit in what I knew, and gave them tips with dueling. I used my sword fighting skills to hone my wand skills, and though it was a bit odd and a weird combination, it worked quite well in more instances than none. They couldn’t understand what was stopping me from wanting to become a full fledged auror, but I had seen what people went through, I had seen the affects that aurors had and the possibility that they might not go home at night, or that their families would suffer. It was a bit odd, honestly. I had no family and it didn’t matter so why would it matter to me if I became an auror or not? I didn’t know, maybe it was because of the crap I went through growing up.

It took time but I worked my way up to Department head of Accidents & Catastrophes, I was one of the youngest department heads in the Italian ministry, or if I was honest, probably one of the oldest department heads in the Italian Ministry. But they never had questioned that I had a huge gap in my past, nor had they questioned that I hadn’t ever put a year of birth on my application either. I didn’t need the questions, and they probably figured I had amnesia or something. Whatever they figured hadn’t prevented me from moving up in the ministry nor had it roused suspicion. I enjoyed working for the ministry though, I never had to go to the department of mysteries, which was quite a relief. The only time I got the jitters was when I had to go to the courtrooms, but even then it wasn’t too bad. I was finally starting to feel as if I belonged again. I continued my training on becoming an auror, and was an auror in all essence of the word, except for my title. I hadn’t taken my tests so I didn’t have the title of ‘auror’. I had no problem with that, I was quite happy with the work I was doing, and enjoyed my job fully. I had to make a decision though, I didn’t like staying in one place for so long, I wanted to do travelling, to get out into the world more. I loved working in Accidents & Catastrophes, and got plenty of calls to go out on runs and stuff. But I wanted to travel more. I missed Atlantis if I was honest enough. I finally met with the minister and explained I wanted to do more, he apologized that IMC wasn’t open, but I didn’t care. I wanted the chance to work as an ambassador if that was an option. The demotion wasn’t a big deal to me. I lost some income but to me getting out there was more important than what I was doing now. I gave up my position in Accidents & Catastrophes and moved to International Cooperation and was the ambassador to magical countries. I didn’t only go to Atlantis, and it was quite a relief to be able to just go and travel for work. I loved it! I never got bored with the travelling I did, and fully enjoyed running back and forth for meetings and helping out with the Quidditch world cup that happened even. I felt I was getting more out of IMC than I had in any other department or position I had been in. I still got called to help out here and there, but I was still able to do the work I loved.

In 2077 I finally had to admit I needed to start heading back to London, I couldn’t run from my past any longer. If I kept running I wouldn’t ever get anywhere, and needed to find where I’d left off. Packing up my things I headed back to London and moved back into my old home that I’d left almost 10 years earlier. It was time to figure out my life and where I was going to go from there. So much had happened since the accident 14 years ago. I had found my mother and was able to put her to rest without dwelling on the fact that she had died alone and not knowing what had happened to me. I had found Ava and even with the pain of having lost her so close to my return to the world, I was able to lay her to rest as well. My father I finally forgave entirely for him leaving me in the hands of taking care of my family all alone and by myself. And finally Maree I was able to understand and know that she regretted her decision just as much as I had regretted the decision not to go after her that night. I got word that the woman who owned the home that I grew up in had died, and the house was up for sale. I couldn’t buy the house, even if I had wanted to, I didn’t have the kind of money it would require to purchase it. Not to mention I didn’t plan on moving back to Amsterdam. Regretfully I decided I had to just let it go. I didn’t want to, because that house meant a lot to me, but I had been able to go there and walk through it remembering memories I had there. Remembering things that had happened there and the first time I did magic. The memory of sitting on the roof eating the cobbler mum had made. I had had the opportunity to see the place one last time. I’d cherish that, but I had to let it go. Mum would have probably told me off if I had gone and bought the place just because it was where I had grown up. It was just a house just like the cabin, tent in the Alps and the house in the Ural mountains. I could go anywhere I wanted, but the place in Amsterdam was just a house in a Muggle neighborhood, last owned by a Muggle woman, no charms on it, no magic set on it, no Fidelius charm. Just a house that we had lived in. The memories were what was important, and that’s what I needed to remember. It hurt letting it go but I finally did.

Returning to London was hard, but the flood of memories wasn’t all bad any longer. I had good memories that returned to me, as I sat there in the living room. I started collecting videos and making the house more of a home for me, decorating it in my own style and not just because it was a place I was going to live but because I wanted to live there and wanted it to look the way I wanted it to. I started taking pride in the place and what I was doing to it. I fixed it up nicer and even added some things like a hot tub in the back garden. Downstairs I even added a work out area.