Hope Dangling on a String

Chapter Two – "Hope Dangling on a String"

19/01/2013

I loathed teaching. Snot-nosed brats were still brats when they learned to wipe their noses. Longbottom was not the first insolent student to melt a cauldron, not even the worst. I have no doubt another Longbottom will come along in a few years to make another Potion master's life a living hell for a few hours a week. I could have handled the little devils for years more.

Politics. I loathed teaching. The House system only bred discontent. The staff, for the majority, hated one another.

The closest person I had to a friend knew very little about me. For the most part, it had been by my choice. And when it would have mattered, when I needed the companionship of a friend who knew the whole of me more than I ever had before, she was gone.

She fled the day she learned my Dark Mark was returning to mar the surface of my skin.

I could have told the world about the child torn away from her. I could have told Albus I knew what he did to her when she was bound to keep it secret. I have not a doubt in my mind that she expected me to.

I could not. Whatever foolish sliver of affection borne of our handful of talks and myriad of silent nights in front of a fire stopped me. I did not love her, do not love her. She reminded me, in ways, of my mother before I was accepted into Hogwarts. Stern, yet affection shone quietly in her actions.

I might have hurt her more by keeping the secret of her daughter to myself in the long run.

Lily had been a half of me for so many long years. And yet, years before Minerva had tried to cut ties, she had done the same. The reason she had given me was borne of a threat.

Like Minerva, there was a man at the root of it all.

Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore-meddling old fool, patriarchal puppet-master.

He had never been a father, never been an uncle. Why was it so easy to see him for what he pretended to be? I hated the man and yet followed his rules and orders exactly as he asked. Loyalty brought on by a twisted combination of fear and the belief that one would be taken care of.

"It takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to your enemies, but a great deal more to stand up to your friends." Dumbledore was not a friend. Not exactly an enemy. Either way, I had not the bravery needed to stand up to him.

What reason had he to tear my grounding away? Was he trying to mold me into his perfect spy? Had it always been his dark intention?

I was but a child.

But now? Now, I am a man with a broken soul.

23/1/2013

Two weeks ago, my fifty-third birthday came and went like all others since I was a sixth year—quietly and without mention. I did not receive anything special. I opened no cards or gifts.

The village elder waved at me when I went to procure a bottle of whiskey from the young man at the other end of the village. It is the one and only acknowledgement of the anniversary of my birth that I have received since I began my residence here. Like the brief wave, the bottle of whiskey is my recognition of aging.

This year, I have not drunk myself into a stupor as I usually do. The young man looked much like a student I had once upon a time, and I found myself unable to drink it for thoughts of the world I abandoned when it had first abandoned me.

Has the green-eyed child of Lily Evans married? Have he and the Weasley chit produced a vat of the children he always wanted? Did Granger apprentice and become something of herself? Did Draco Malfoy survive past the trials?

It has not been much of a thought in more than eleven years, what happened after the war was truly over. It did not matter to me. All that mattered was surviving long enough to create my final potion. Now that I have begun to write, to put wayward thoughts together, my mind has wandered to the place I lived before.

And to the little girl separated from her mother.

06/04/2013

I find that I can help in the planting. The village has put me up for long enough with no payment other than a few menial tasks. I cannot do much these days. Sometimes, they will come to talk. They will not look at me, do not expect an answer.

They talk for the sake of someone to only listen. For the first time, more than one person needed only my ear.

13/06/2013

I have been unable to write much for a while. The digging and planting eased my hands at first, but left them aching and painful for a long time after. Therapy, I believe some books called it. I need physical therapy to regain the full use of my hands.

Today I received a visit from the young man. He brought whiskey in an unmarked and half-empty bottle and walked with a limp I'd never noticed before. His hair was a violent slash, likely the result of the first half of the whiskey or a bottle before. His eyes, a dark brown, were bloodshot and more than a little cloudy. Perhaps I cannot write it as well as it happened, but it remains so vivid I feel I must attempt, if only to remember this moment.

Despite the agony I must write.

"Tobias... You know what?" he had asked me. It seems so insignificant now, I surmise, but then it seemed so important.

"In a couple days is the anniversary of the day my family disappeared." I could not, would not focus on his words. Why would he tell such a broken man, one who would not, even if he'd the ability to, comfort his sorrowing heart? A bitter tinge hit me in the one spot that children for decades said had dried up.

"I went to visit them. They were gone. Neighbors said the house had been empty for a decade. Couldn't be true, I lived there four years before. Why weren't they remembered? If they moved, why was I not told? It's been almost sixteen bloody years, and I still don't know."

Sixteen years. Sixteen years ago.

Sixteen years ago on this day, I killed Albus Dumbledore.

Why is it now that I recall this? It seems like the day one of the puppet-masters pulling harshly at your fraying strings dies should be a momentous one in memory, not a wishfully forgotten one.

All I recall is a dark bitterness. All I recall is harrowing sadness. Empty. Death would have been accepted then, a fitting albeit unwelcome end to an even more unwelcome life.

"Tobias. You know you're the closest person I have anymore? Ha. What a sad way to end a life." To end a life? I remember being pulled from my errant musings at his words. The way my hands clenched.

No one as young as he should be at death. It is my life that should be at its end.

"I have two days. Heh. Joining my family seems fitting. I only wish I could see them once more.

My little baby sister Hermione would be turning thirty-four this year. We'd finally be closer. Thirty-four and forty-nine are rather close."

Hermione.

Thirty four.

Sixteen years.

Hermione.

Thirty four.

Sixteen years.

Oh how fate has seen to make my life turn again.

In a rather dark twisting indeed.

06/15/2013

Today is the day that Hermione Granger's brother said he would die. He has not been back in my hovel since the day he told me. The elder has asked me what the boy told me, but I refuse to write the words, even for the man who has shown me such kindness as to shelter me.

Nathan is his name. I lived near him for more than a decade without knowing that it ended in Granger.

Forty-nine. Still a child. How much difference between the way we are. I am only four years his senior. He still feels as a child to me.

Is it the War? Does that truly age us? Fighting and living in fear, every day battle to survive. While men such as he lived their lives the same that they always had. How I wished for that mundane life, to just be and not spy and lie and pretend that my life truly mattered.

I must stop idly waiting for the moment that my hands stop shaking violently. I need to end this.

I leave in the morning to procure belladonna ash for the potion I always wanted to brew, to create, to bring to life. Sano a animus. To heal a soul.