James Potter (brocket) wrote in triumphic, @ 2014-04-15 19:02:00 |
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Entry tags: | !scene, 1991 : 04, diggle dedalus, potter james |
WHO. DEDALUS DIGGLE, JAMES POTTER
WHERE. GODRIC'S HOLLOW
WHEN. BASICALLY NOWISH
WHAT. DEDALUS COMES TO PAY HIS RESPECTS, & GETS MORE THAN HE BARGAINED FOR
***
It was a simple thing - circumscribing oneself to the baser natures of the stag - to run, to eat and to stay far away from any road and any man. A creature of pure instinct, driven by hunger and need, would not replay terrors witnessed in agonizing detail. A creature of pure instinct, driven by survival, would not intend to go back to his own world and exact revenge upon each and every mother’s child that betrayed him.
But a hunter’s bullet crease was an interesting thing. A hunter’s bullet crease which made the change flicker over him with enough unnatural force to scatter the small pack which followed him. And when he was finally flesh, bleeding lightly from a wound upon his waist with nothing but the slate sky scattered with a diaphanous gathering of unfeeling stars, his memories came rushing up to him. Waking in the ruin of his home, searching the rubble for wife and child. Giving up. Running. Agony.
When James Potter sat up, he realized he didn’t even have a wand. It had been left that night; left, perhaps, on the bedside table when he had gone downstairs to fetch the bottle as Lily asked. Wandless magic left him enough to clothe himself. And staggering through the copse of windblown trees (his heightened senses telling him the pair of hunters had gone up into the hillside to finish the job) he could not help but be somehow appalled and thankful in turn.
Godric’s Hollow blinked gently before him but for one darkened pit. One that he limped directly toward.
He’d been lead home.
Dedalus Diggle had been coming here for years now -- this, his genuflection before the wreckage that had been a home, to plant a couple of flowers, an annual ritual that felt right, like something he should do (because no one else was doing it), even if it did little to quell the waves of guilt that threatened to overcome him whenever he let himself think over-much on the significance of the ruins. Of what had, supposedly, lain beneath all those years ago: bodies, one, two and three, two brave heroes and their infant son.
Although the buildup to the 31st had become progressively harder with each passing year, the dullness of his eyes and the inability to rouse himself from bed, from beyond the confines of a house that was well warded and forgotten by the outside world, more difficult to shake, Dedalus still made the pilgrimage, potted plants clutched to his chest as he walked down the old cobblestones of Godric's Hollow. Finding the house was no difficult thing, nor was digging up the earth, soft and rich now after so many years, and rife with the flowers he had placed into the soil ever since… ever since then.
And so knelt in the dirt is where this undead creature would find him.
How did one speak, when one had not spoken? How did one think - construct, syllable by syllable - all those human clicks and cadences that meant to be greeting? How did one acknowledge recognition? With a shake of the antlers, a pull of the snout along a shoulder. But James Potter could not recognise Dedalus Diggle until he was right upon him. James Potter could do nothing but stare at his old friend kneeling in the ashes of the home - temporary, he always swore to Lily - they built.
So without thinking he reached out toward Diggle’s shoulder with a bloody palm, as much to recognize humanity in this place of death, as to otherwise steady himself. “You.”
There were so few people remaining in this place that any interruption would have drawn a startled shudder from the long, thin spine of a man who spent most of his days indoors, poring over his silly little projects that, once, had won him a coveted place within the dreamy halls of the Department of Mysteries. Anyone's hand pressed to his shoulder in this place, at this moment, would result in a small jump, hands dropping the little shovel in surprise as he turned with an involuntary "Oh!"
Except this hand didn't belong to just anyone. It belonged to someone who was meant to be dead, meant to be ashes, meant to be part of the rubble that remained here. It belonged to James Potter, dead for a decade, and his appearance now -- alive and drawn with pain and alive -- coincided with the sickly blanching of Dedalus' face as all thought and reason briefly left him.
He sagged beneath the weight on his shoulder, falling from his crouch onto his backside. "W-what --"
Falling to a knee beside him (James, following the clarity of sight and getting all too close for comfort under the circumstances) let a beat pass between them. Where are the graves. Where are the graves. Then, a breath. Here.
“Did they find her? Did they find him? Did …”
Dedalus was perilously close to tears, his widened eyes sheened with shock and fear. Reaching for his wand in self-defence was a habit he'd never taken to with ease, and after all these years of suppression, he didn't reach for it now. Instead, with a visible wobble in his arm, he snatched at his little spade, brandishing it ineffectually at this man come to haunt him.
"Are you-- Inferi? Polyjuice? Oh, Merlin..."
All the animal and human signals were getting mixed up. Everything that was James - that was the stag - was caught up in divining instinct from this fearful creature. And he was afraid. The fear was rank with ash and char and his own stench.
He found another knee. Then, sat back on his haunches. Speech was difficult. But he plucked up, he squared his shoulders. He took a breath and let his tongue trip over the roof of his mouth.
“Ask me something only James Potter would know.”
"Ask..." Dedalus' voice faded away, but so too did his attempt at aggressive posturing, the mud-caked spade now clutched to his chest as though it were some item conferring both safety and comfort. With a sniffle -- then another -- he forced himself to think, to not stare at the familiar features, to stop his panicked mind from trying to solve this little mystery here and now (for he would only work himself into inconclusive knots).
"H-how many fedoras did I present you with on the occasion of Harry's birth?"
A smile, then, as memory set in: “None. You got us top hats.” After so long he could sense the slide of a tear upon his cheek. He could feel humanity breaking over him in the loss of his body, his wife, his son.
“I’m an unregistered animagus. When I woke in the rubble - I don’t know how I woke, I haven’t any answers - they were gone. I don’t have any …”
“ … where are they, Dedalus?”
They. James' lost little family. Convinced now -- if still disbelieving -- Dedalus finally brought himself to straighten, inch by hesitant inch. Top hats and animagi: yes, this could only be James.
"We put up tombstones in the little graveyard, but..." He swallowed hard. "Oh, James Potter, I'm so sorry, but... They were never found."
It would be a sadness he would plumb to the depths - but later, later when he could not still detect the stag in his limbs. Later when (without Dedalus) he could visit them alone. “Then they are dead,” he said quietly, waiting a beat before he reached out and took the trowel from Dedalus’ grip.
Rising to his feet he oriented himself spatially with the house, spun in a ninety-degree angle and took ten pacing steps toward the treeline from whence he came. When he fell to his knees, he began to dig.
“Would had I died with them.”
Still shaken, still shaking, Dedalus could only gape at the other’s figure. When he could bring himself to move, it was with a certain unsteadiness -- that, perhaps, of a curious creature still ready to bolt at the slightest sound. However, move he did, inching close, fingers worrying at themselves for lack of a trowel to clutch.
Then: “James Potter, you’re bleeding!”
The exclamation brought James briefly out of his intense focus to glance at his side - “Yes, a gun.” The reason I am here. It wasn’t said dismissively, but the response had a distance that only this hallowed ground could create between him and his body. When the trowel finally hit something with a hollow thunk, he set it aside to reach in with both hands.
“Yes. Dedalus, you know of the Deathly Hallows. Don’t you. I can trust you.”
If it had been -- oh Godric, how tall were the trees? -- if it had been years and Diggle still visited, still paid his respects to him (believed dead) and his family (known to be dead) there was trust to be had. There would always be trust amongst the Order of the Phoenix, wouldn’t there?
“Tell me I can trust you.”
Though his typical response would have been you should not trust anyone, no matter what history you may share, mention of guns and Hallows stilled his embittered thoughts.
“Hallows, yes,” was a distracted murmur as he drew closer, trying to get a closer look at the bloodstain even as he tried to make out just what James-who-wasn’t-dead was struggling to unearth. “Everyone knows about the Deathly Hallows, Mum read me the stories…” And now it was his turn to place a hand on the other’s shoulder. “What is that?”
“They aren’t stories.”
A smear of drying crimson etched itself across the top of the box. Within the space of half a heartbeat, the latches popped and couched within its velvet lining there laid a shimmering length of fabric. He turned to Dedalus for a moment: “That’s one of them.”
This announcement was followed by a very, very long expanse of silence, wherein Dedalus transferred his stare from James to box, a look of combined terror and wonder on his face. It did not occur to him to question (though the questions would surely flow from him in due course), for here, despite everything, was James Potter, breathing and so alive to be bleeding; why, then, was a Hallow impossible?
It wasn’t.
“James Potter.” He cleared his throat, cast a suddenly wary look around. “Come.” And he leaned forward to smartly snap the box shut. “Come with me now.”
“Why?” was his first question, quickly followed by a frown. Dedalus’ quick about-face illustrated more fear. A fear of a different variety; one that he knew well, one that was similar to the herd when hunted. The box was couched beneath his arm, safely ensconced from any unnamed assailants yet unnamed.
“Dedalus.”
“Because I can keep a secret. You can trust me, remember?” His words were stronger than his smile and voice put together, but Dedalus’ grip remained -- bizarrely, for him -- firm on James’ shoulder. His other hand fluttered to his chest, twisting the tails of his scarf over his shoulder to reveal a little hat-shaped pin. “D-- There are spies everywhere, but you’ll be safe with me. Yes or no, James Potter?”
It only took a moment to trust his instinct, a moment in which he narrowed his eyes to take in the shape of the pin. And: “Yes. All right.”
At the sound of James’ acceptance, Dedalus promptly relinquished his grip on him and took a single step back, only to extend his free hand. “It’s a portkey,” he explained, breathless now, as though he’d been running a marathon and his lungs were struggling to catch up with the demands of his body. “Illegal, unregistered! But you don’t have a wand, do you? And I am not certified to Apparate with another person, hence -- needs must, James! Come, come, we need to hurry. Come and hold onto me, then touch my pin on my mark! And please don’t forget my trowel.”
“But wait --” And James stepped back, retrieving Dedalus’ trowel to cast his eyes to the flowers still half-planted. “I’ve been dead ten years. Ten years, Dedalus. We can finish planting their flowers, surely.”
And as surely (attempting the old personality, and finding it fit him more ill than ever before) came out strained, he took another step back.
“Please.”
“No.” And once again, Dedalus’ gaze swung out, wary and bordering on panicked for all that he was determined to stand his ground. “It has to be now. People -- people might see, James. I will come back later to finish planting the flowers. I promise.”
He swallowed hard, fingertips digging into the soft wood as the fibrous decay embedded beneath his nails: “Dedalus. My family is gone. Please.”
Without quite thinking how cruel the next words out of his mouth were -- “Yes, they are gone, and you are here. Here, in Godric’s Hollow, where Dumbledore has those loyal to him still.” The sight of blood had always made him queasy, but urgency prevailed, so Dedalus reached out to lightly poke James over the bloody stain which spread across his shirt. “You will get no answers as a dead man, James Potter. My pin. Now, please!”