Chapter 18: Dulce et Decorum Est

DISCLAIMER: Does Harry's alleged isolation from the Wizarding World not extend to random wizards not recognising him before he gets his Hogwarts letter? If so, I don't own Harry Potter.

With apologies for missing last week's update: as you may gather from reading this chapter it was rather a hard one to write and the weeks of buffer time I had built up to compensate for the difficulty got eaten up by matters that came rather ahead of hobbies in my personal priority queue. Good news: Chapter 19 is already half written.

CHAPTER 18

"I solemnly swear I am up to no good."

With that, I have my man. Oh, he's rough around the edges. Not just from Azkaban, either. Raised by racists in an abusive home? That leaves marks, as I can personally attest. He's impulsive, troubled, has a deal of growing up to do in some ways and is aged beyond his years in others. But, above all, wants to see the world that hurt him change and for Harry to have a long and happy life. Yeah, we're going to get on just fine, and spend the next couple of hours making plans. I'll tell Harry and Dudley he's coming, and we'll have a big introduction with party food and fun activities at the coming weekend. And - best part - he agrees to be my spotter for getting my wand-work and apparation squared away.

Mischief Managed.

-oOo-

It's the day before New Year's Eve, 1986.

It was a thing that had to come: Harry said he wanted to see where his mum and dad were buried. I brought Petunia and the boys - Vernon drew the short straw at work and has to be in the office today, about which I suspect he's a bit relieved, not being a man of his emotions - in the car. With Sirius' help, there are now back seats in what used to be a two-seater and they are considerably roomier than they look from the outside. Sirius himself rode his shiny new motorcycle - his old one needs some serious work, Hagrid having kept it in one of Hogwarts' barns - which from the looks of it is a Z1000 under all the customisation the previous owner did.

(Vernon was decidedly grumpy about our refusal to juice up his company BMW the way my car and Sirius's bike have been. "Get your own car, owned free and clear," I told him, "and we'll do everything magical law allows to it, within the limits of what you can work without magic." He started saving that day.)

It's a three-and-a-bit hour drive from Little Whinging to Godric's Hollow, even with the magical assists. Reliability, extra power, better roadholding and invisibility to the police take us down the M4 and M5 at 95 for most of the way, the seasonal lack of traffic being a big help. We're a way off reverse-engineering the high-speed enchantments on the Knight Bus just yet, which is a pity as they would turn this into a very short trip indeed. And, unlike the Knight Bus, my car has seatbelts.

We park up outside St. Jerome's church; we're in the time before double yellow lines and pay-and-display machines absolutely everywhere, so it's gratifyingly easy to find a space. Godric's Hollow is a tiny place, the sort that consists of a village green, two pubs, a teashop, a Spar, the church, and a few dozen houses, maybe as many as a hundred. It probably has to take in a handful of surrounding hamlets to amount to a thousand inhabitants if there's even that many.

Of course, there'll be some dwellings we can't readily see, wizarding homes being what they are. It's a tidy little place, the sort that makes what it can off tourists for Exmoor. The sort that doesn't need to put 'Walkers and Dogs Welcome' signs outside the pub because it's taken as read.

Sirius and I between us decided that Harry didn't need to see the house at his age, not with what the Ministry did, and we don't mention it to him as even a possibility to see. The war memorial, however, is the first image of his parents Harry can remember seeing and he's enraptured by it. For my own part I sort of feel I ought to take umbrage over wizards co-opting the memorial to the dozen or so Godric's Hollow lads who gave all for King and Country, but it's not like James and Lily didn't do the same in their own way.

"It's a good likeness," Petunia remarks, while Sirius is applying a charm to let Dudley see the statue of his aunt and uncle. And foster-brother, which is probably weirding him out a little.

And, just as Petunia says, it is a good likeness measured against memories of the couple I've seen in Petunia and Vernon's heads. Regrettably, they've been posed with that hopeful-gaze-into-the-future attitude that you get on old Soviet monuments. I understand the reason for it, memorials are for the living, but showing them at bay and defiant would have been truer to the actual events of the night.

Harry's bearing up well. He is, I think, a bit young to really drag every last scrap of meaning out of a piece of art so there's a limit to how much it can affect him. "Did I really look like that then?" he asks after Sirius lifts him up to get a close look at how the sculptor represented him in his mother's arms.

"Probably," I tell him, "although pretty much all babies look like that. People don't really start looking like themselves until they're a couple of years old."

"And my mum and dad?" He's trying to drink in every last detail the sculptor captured, storing it.

"It's quite close," Sirius tells him, "I'll see if I can find photographs of them for you. If I can't find where all the stuff in my old flat went, I'll write to people who knew them and ask for copies of the pictures they had."

That earns Sirius a hug, while I speculate on how I'd track down their wedding photo album, if it still exists. There can't be that many magical photographers, maybe the one they hired still has the negatives?

The churchyard of St. Jerome's looks like an unexceptional country churchyard, until you get in and with magical eyes see that it's bigger on the inside. I'm not here for my usual nosy at the headstones, nor to acquaint myself with the local grim. I think they're called either yeth-hounds or wisht-hounds hereabouts, either way she's barely distinct in the winter sunlight, nosing around the churchyard wall. We're looking for a grave a few years old in one of the magical parts. Which we can find by asking Dudley which bits he can see and which he can't: I have to pick him up and carry him over the boundary of the magic.

In the magical section - by far the largest part of the churchyard, the gravestones sing softly with the magic that preserves them - the headstones read like a Who's Who of the last eight centuries of magical Britain. If I wanted a factually correct Nature's Nobility it'd be places like this I'd start with. Choking down the history buff in me, I help with the search for the Potter plot.

It's Petunia and Sirius who find it first. Harry, for his part, stops dead some twenty feet short of the grave, along the row of headstones from where his mum and dad lie. Sirius and Petunia are right in front of it, fallen silent after calling out their discovery. Harry and Dudley had stayed with me. In the charged atmosphere, Petunia and Sirius are visibly upset and I've got a lot more practise than either in holding it together for the sake of the kids' nerves.

I take a knee between the two boys. "Now, lads, I've explained what this place is for, right?" Petunia - who remembered her Sunday School - had been surprisingly helpful. "It's all about giving the living a place to remember the dead, and to say the things we wish we could say to them."

"Can they hear?" Harry asks.

"Like you're leaving a message for them," I tell him, "you're not having a conversation like on the phone. And even if they never get the message, it will make you feel better to say the words, or even just to have come here to know you could say something even if you just spend some time here in silence."

"Can you hear from your children?" Harry asks, knocking the emotional wind right out of me.

I have to stop and swallow hard to make sure my voice is under control. Think fast, "Mal". "Not right now, Harry. Remember, I came back from what's on the other side of being dead, so it's different for me. I reckon when I go back, when it's my time all over again, I'll be able to pick up all those messages." I fuckin' better. Because if I can't, I want a word with whoever designed this multiverse.

Harry and Dudley alike squeeze the hands they're holding. I gather that they've been talking about how me being dead and not able to see my kids any more is Really Sad.

"I -" Harry has something he can't say. I squeeze his hand back in encouragement. "I -" he stammers out again.

"Take your time, Harry," I say, "some things are hard to say."

"I'm scared," he gets out after a few moments of quiet.

"It's scary, so no wonder," I tell him. "Take your time, you'll find your bravery." It won't do to tell him that if he doesn't find it today it'll be harder next time. The last thing we want to do is make him feel like this is some sort of obligation.

Dudley's less affected. Some of that's him just being overall less sensitive like his father, but mostly it's because to him Aunt Lily and Uncle James are much more abstract than they are for Harry, who had several years of very, very good cause to miss them. Dudley has, however, come to care about his foster brother, and he steps in for a big, drowning hug. No words, because Dudley doesn't much do words. Dudley understands hugs, though, on approximately the same level that he understands punching, goal-keeping and basic mathematics: things that he gets without having to think about them too hard.

"Thanks, Dud," Harry whispers. He's looking at me over his foster-brother's shoulder.

"Well done, Dudley," I murmur. Louder, "Harry, take your time. This is your first time here, and it's hard to face up to. Which is why we all came to help, yes?"

Harry nods, wide eyed. There's a shimmer of tears, and a crease between his brows as he musters all of his little-kid resolve. That's the lad. He squares up his shoulders, disengages from Dudley's hug and grabs his foster-brother's hand to drag him along the row of graves.

Not, I notice, bringing me along. If I wanted a sign that I was doing the right thing by intervening in the Dursley family, I just got it. Harry's looking to Dudley for immediate support, and getting it. No questions asked. Even if I go under the proverbial bus tomorrow, Harry's in much better shape for the future he has. Sirius, who's standing by his best mate's grave with a - presumably - conjured wreath takes Harry's hand as the little fella reaches him. I recognise laurel, willow and palm fronds in Sirius's wreath, and the whole is picked out in lilies. Victorian floriography, funereal subtext: I sort of know a bit of it, but not enough to say anything with it. Fortunately, there's a modern version, and while Harry is stopped, silent at his parents' graveside, I take a moment to conjure. The spell for conjuring flowers isn't terribly tightly defined, as they're highly variable things. It requires a four-beat incantation with a stressed third syllable, preferably related to the flowers you want to conjure, a lot of visualisation, and some firm and forthright wand-movement if you want anything other than a simple spray bouquet. "Papaverae," I incant, rolling my wrist in a wand-swirl to shape the magic into the circle of a wreath as I picture the wreath I want with near migraine-inducing intensity. My first few tries at this - because of course I anticipated needing this spell and practised beforehand - I got Remembrance Day paper poppies due to losing focus. There are charms that will basically handle all of the detail work in routine conjurations and require much less visualisation, but you get what the charm gives you rather than what you specifically want. And, frankly, I've been learning that I might as well resign myself to sucking at charms. To Sirius's massive amusement.

I lean down to hand Harry the wreath of poppies that I have conjured out of everything and nothing. "Lay this, while you think about what to say," I tell him, "and Sirius has something to leave, too. When you're ready, you can either say something or talk to us, just as you prefer."

Harry puts down the wreath, while Sirius bends down to lay his, put a hand on his shoulder and murmur something in the little lad's ear.

He steps away to where I'm waiting, next to Petunia, who's dabbing at her eyes with an embroidered hanky.

"Poppies?" he asks me, "is that a non-magical thing?"

I nod. "For the fallen of war. Been that way since the First World War."

"In Flanders fields the poppies grow," Petunia quotes, and falls silent again, choking a little on the last word. I get why, I'm kind of not sure of my own voice right now.

Sirius has tears running down his face, but his voice is steady. "I used to wonder what that was about, when I went out in the non-magic world. Everyone wearing a poppy buttonhole. In the autumn, yes?"

"Every November, yes. They're sold to support old and serving soldiers, there's a charity that has been managing it since about 1920 or so, after the hundreds of thousands of deaths in the war that had just finished." I shake my head. The history of the Royal British Legion just plain doesn't matter right now. Although one of the old standards from Poppy Appeal adverts comes strongly to mind. "They do not grow old, as we who are left grow old. Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. I'm probably mis-quoting that, but it's from the same poem Petunia quoted. I think."

"It isn't," Petunia says, and recites the whole of In Flanders Fields. And then the whole of For The Fallen - not just the often-quoted verse I happen to know - for good measure.

"Thank you," I tell her, meaning it. "It seems apt that we should remember to 'take up their quarrel with the foe'." I'm not about to quote from the considerably more cynical poetry of that era that is my own personal preference. While the lions-led-by-donkeys motif is as apt for James and Lily as it was for the likes of the Pals' Battalions, now is not the time.

All unnoticed, Harry and Dudley have come over. While I'm thanking Petunia for her little recital, Harry gives her a little kid's round-the-legs hug. He's crying, and mirabile dictu! Petunia takes a knee to hug him back. She's never quite been appropriately warm to him - guilt, maybe? - and I'd been expecting that any comfort Harry needed today he was going to have to get from Sirius and me.

Sirius and I exchange a look. I've filled him in, in full, on how things were and what I've learned of the reason why. I had to persuade him at considerable length that my way of doing things was both better for the boys and a far crueller revenge in the long run than any amount of magical nastiness. The woman Petunia is being now is going to look back on how she once treated the child currently soaking her blouse with tears and snot and cringe. And wouldn't you know it, congratulating her on her improvement is going to be just the reminder she needs. I make a mental note.

I can tell Harry and Petunia are going to be a while: there's probably at least ten minutes of hugging and crying it out to be done if I'm any judge. I step away to where Sirius is demonstrating his youthful-male Discomfort With Emotions. As I do, I notice that we have company in the churchyard.

"Over your right shoulder, Sirius. About sixty, seventy yards and closing. Cove in a top hat and a purple frock coat. Anyone you recognise?"

I nonchalantly turn away while Sirius uses the corner of his eye to take in the newcomer. That it's a wizard isn't in doubt: a top hat on a Tuesday, before noon, in Devon? That said, I rather like the frock coat. I'm tempted to ask who his tailor is if he comes over.

"Daedalus Diggle," Sirius says. He's high-society raised so he isn't gauche enough to make eye contact that might invite the newcomer to join us. "Part of our old crowd during the war, basically decent but a bit of a prat."

"Know the sort well, not unique to magicals," as indeed they're not. "Had one for a brother-in-law, once upon a time."

Sirius snorts his amusement. "Is he coming this way?"

"He surely is," I say, having used the corner of my own eye to get an update. "General curiosity, spotted us in particular, or just here to pay his respects, do you think?"

"Can't really say, although paying respects I have my doubts about. We were all of us in Dumbledore's mob, but very different social circles. James and Lily's passing wasn't, I suspect, personal for him the way it was for some of us. And he's rather the sort to be a gawker, sorry to say. The social graces of an excitable puppy, as I remember."

I hmm at that, and wait for Diggle to get closer. He's definitely coming this way, and my social-awkwardness-inbound warning light is flashing most urgently. The wizarding public really can't be trusted around the boy-who-lived, and this has all the hallmarks of the kind of jackass who's going to treat Harry as public property. With an emotionally wrought little boy in the picture I really don't want a scene. Or, at least, not that scene, I suspect I'm going to make at least something of a show of myself whatever happens because I can feel my blood pressure coming up to steam. "Going to head this off," I tell Sirius, and take a few smart strides toward the wizard as he approaches.

"Can we help you?" I ask, hands clasped behind me and my tone of voice pitched firmly in my best I'd-really-rather-you-fucked-off register.

"Ah! Daedalus Diggle, at your service," he says, extending a hand.

I don't take said hand. Don't want him thinking he's welcome, not when he's quite blatantly intruding. "Rather not what I was asking," I tell him, "I'm more concerned with maintaining family privacy in a moment of grief."

His eyes widen a moment. I'm grateful for the moment of self-awareness that seems to have punctured his urge to celebrity-worship. "Oh! I do apologise. Can that really be the boy who lived?"

"No such person," I snap back. "He's a little boy who lost his mummy and daddy, visiting their grave for the first time."

Diggle goes pale. I hope it's because he realises just what an arse he was about to make of himself. "I'm sorry - I -" he trails off. Yeah, he realised what I meant. It could have been that he took me to mean that it wasn't Harry crying by that grave, which I realised as I was saying it. Fortunately he looks like he's grasped that all of the hero-worship bullshit is actually about a real flesh-and-blood person who he'd been on the verge of upsetting.

Sirius steps up next to me. "What my irritable friend means to say, Diggle old chap, is that we want no part of the nonsense that's being spouted. Calling Harry the boy-who-lived and crediting him with the defeat of the pretender Lord robs James and Lily of the meaning of their sacrifice." Sirius' tone is laying the upper-class scorn on thick.

"Indeed," I add, "and if I seem irritable it's because in all the hullaballoo everyone seems to forget that he's a little boy who those vermin robbed of his parents. Please don't let me learn that you've put it about that Harry is visiting his parents' grave. If you make it impossible for him to come here because of crowds of gawkers I am exactly the kind of person who can afford to owl every household in magical Britain with a strongly worded note about what you inflicted on the boy-who-lived." I realise as I'm saying it that my temper is not quite as under control as it ought to be.

"I - I - I assure you, I didn't mean - " Diggle gulps nervously, and I can feel Sirius wincing next to me. The kind of people who'd turn out and drive Harry away from this place are exactly the same people who'd drown Diggle in howlers and curse-mail without being at all aware of the hypocrisy. What I've threatened Diggle with is a course of action that could readily get him seriously injured or even killed. Stochastic terrorism, got to love it.

I make a chopping motion with my hand to cut him off. I reach for my courtroom voice, which is a measure of self-control I'm in dire need of right now. "I shan't take any account of what you mean, sir. I will govern my actions according to what you do."

Diggle is wringing his hands. "Of course, of course. I ought to have thought, I do apologise."

"Accepted," I snap out. It's not hard to imply to someone, using only posture and expression, that you'd dearly like the thump them insensible.

Sirius puts a hand on my arm, which is more calming than perhaps he intended because I realise that if Mr. Hare-off-after-vengeance thinks I'm being hot-headed I need to dial it back more than I thought. "Daedalus," he says, "you must understand that we're all a little highly strung here. It's a very emotional moment, and my friend saw what he thought was some heartless, thoughtless gawker coming to intrude."

There are actual tears brimming in Diggle's eyes. I start to feel a little sorry for him, tempered by the fact that it was his own brash thoughtlessness that put him in this pickle. "I promise, most sincerely, that I shan't speak a word of Harry's presence here today. You're quite right, it wouldn't do to drive the poor little mite away from his own mother's graveside. I am so, so, sorry for my thoughtlessness today, is there anything I can do to make it up?"

Sirius sighs, "Not much, for the time being, Harry is living in a secret location and we're keeping his contact with the magical world to an absolute minimum. For his safety, you understand." Dumbledore's owl-repelling spells are still returning anything addressed to Harry directly to sender. I spot one maybe every month or so.

It occurs to me that there is, however, something that Diggle can help with. "Tell me, Mr. Diggle, do you have a wide social circle? People you share news and, perhaps, gossip with?"

He nods, looking pathetically eager to redeem himself in our eyes.

There's no warmth of humour in the smile I give him. "Then perhaps you can help Harry by spreading a few useful and interesting facts that fill in some of the gaps in the story about the night his parents died? You see, the whole boy-who-lived version of the story is the one his enemies tell. Because they're scum who let themselves be slave-marked by the fraud who led them, and they don't want to admit that the leader of their criminal gang was brought low by one of the very muggleborn they consider so beneath them. When you're talking over the story of that night with your friends, remind them that Harry was all of fifteen months old, a babe in arms. And his last line of defence, the woman who struck down the criminal who sought her child's murder, was Lily Potter. Remember her, before you torment the child she sacrificed for with reminders of how he came to be an orphan. Every time you do, you remind the vermin of how utterly wrong they were, and frustrate their efforts to diminish her sacrifice."

Diggle's frantic nodding shakes his hat loose and he has to catch it. I'm hoping that him not uncovering here beside all these graves is just a wizarding custom I'm not au fait with rather than thoughtless disrespect. He stammers out "O-o-o-of course" over and over again.

After a round of reassurances from Diggle and his hasty retreat, I'm about to return to where Harry, Petunia and Dudley are still by the Potters' grave. Sirius stops me with a hand on my elbow. "You might want to watch that temper," he says. Which, coming from him does rather mean something.

"I know, I know. I did actually catch myself on when I realised how heated I was getting. After that I was rather putting on a show. Dumbledore will be getting a full report of this, I shouldn't wonder, and he needs to know we're both willing to go full Papa Wolf for Harry's sake."

Sirius frowns briefly at the reference he doesn't get, although it's clear what I mean from context. He says, "It's more than that, though. You know that trick you do, transfiguring the air to electricity? Conjuring sparks and St. Elmo's Fire?"

"Yes?" While Sirius has been reading through the basic science I've been revising to pass O-levels, he's not quite alongside electrons and charges yet, still less terms like 'coronal discharge'. To his credit, he can pronounce the word 'electricity', putting him ahead of a lot of pureblood wizards.

"Well, I don't know if you noticed, but you were doing it while you were cutting Diggle down."

"Ooops." I can't imagine that looked anything other than intimidating. And, come to think of it, there is a bit of a smell of ozone on the air. I've never done it unconsciously before, but I have been practising that particular trick a lot. Charges and ions are easy things to transfigure into existence - it happens purely naturally a lot so there's almost no ontological resistance to the change and not much more to outright conjuration - and being able to gin up electrical charges at need is the sort of thing that is just plain handy.

"Thing is, it looks almost exactly like the aura of the most powerful wizards. You know and I know that most corposant is just electricity in the air, but to most wizards? It's the sign of an old and terrifying sorceror, probably a warlock, and definitely a scary bastard for good or ill." Sirius has a mischievous smirk on my face as he tells me this.

"Oh dear," I say, "so I've accidentally stumbled on a way of bluffing the absolute living daylights out of any mage I meet?" It's amusing me, too.

"Long as you don't meet anyone mad enough to call that bluff."

I snort out my amused agreement. Going to have to work on that one. That problem with charms also works out to being a problem with quite a lot of the combat spells in the standard repertoire. Most curses, hexes and jinxes are of the nature of charms, after all. Fighting with Transfiguration is a lot harder, so I'm going to have to work harder than other mages to be any use in a fight. If I can get through that particular skill gate, though, I have the potential to be pretty dangerous. It's a big piece of why Dumbledore is so scary in a fight.

Back at the grave-side, Harry is a lot calmer although he's still got a death-grip on Petunia's hand. I think he might have been still clinging to the orphan's hope that his parents are still alive somewhere, and the grave broke that illusion. When we get back he's talking to the headstone. "... and Mal says I should learn all I can, because being the best wizard I can be is the right thing to do. I hope you can watch me doing it, but I'm going to be brave, and clever, and work hard. I've got Mal, and Sirius, and Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon and Dudley and Nana Perenelle helping me. Love you, Mum, Dad."

Now my temper has blown out, I'm touched by the bit Harry's little speech I actually heard. I'll ask Petunia to put the memory in my shiny new pensieve when we get home so I can hear the whole thing. I take a knee and hold the hand that Petunia isn't holding. "With you all the way, Harry. We all are."

He turns to me. "They're really dead, aren't they? Do you think they might come back like you did?"

"Probably not, Harry. I was only dead, not dead and gone. I don't know why it's a rule, but once you're gone you can't come back. Ghosts aren't gone, spirits like me aren't gone, and baddies like Tom aren't gone, but normal people and good people like your mum and dad, when they're gone they're gone. It's sad, but we believe that they still exist on the far side."

Harry nods. He asks for help reading the gravestone, which he needs gratifyingly little of. "Mal? What does that mean? The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death?"

"It's from the bible," Petunia observes.

"But what does it mean?"

I've given this a lot of thought, starting from when I first read that line back when Deathly Hallows came out. Having theology as a minor hobby interest leads you down some odd paths. How to frame it for a kid Harry's age? "It's a comforting thing to say, Harry, but isn't really true in the way I think you're thinking. It's from a bit of the Bible about how the world will end, and how when everything is over, everything will be put in order and there'll be no more sad things like people dying. It's really not about people being brave like your mum and dad were. I think whoever wrote that there just wanted to have a go at Tom the Baddy, to mock him because he wasn't brave enough to die properly. You see, death isn't the enemy of life, any more than the full stop is the enemy of the sentence. Your mum and dad, they chose to end their sentences to make yours better. It's horrible that that was the only choice they had, but they loved you enough to choose it even though it was horrible for them. Sometimes the only choice we have is a rotten one, and those are the times when being brave matters most."

There's a long silence while Harry thinks about that one. As do the grownups. It is, after all, one of those questions on which there is no final answer, not that anyone who actually knows it can communicate with the living. I miss living in a universe where death was a true end, I really do. You could just dismiss questions like this and not worry about them.

"Why, though? Why did they have to?" Harry's tone is plaintive, "Why did that man come to kill them?" His voice turns angry at the end there. As well it should.

"It's a big long story, Harry. Sirius knows the details better than I do, but the gist of it is that while most wizards don't like people who don't have magic, some wizards really hate them. And hate wizards and witches like your mum who have non-magical parents. It's actually pretty stupid, because we're all people at the end of the day, but there are reasons buried in history for it. Of course, they still had to choose to believe stupid stuff from history, but sometimes people don't know better than to choose to be stupid."

Harry's nodding along. "And that man wanted to kill mum for having parents who weren't magical?"

"That was part of it. I reckon he didn't care all that much himself, but he wanted to be powerful and that meant getting people to follow him. So he went for the biggest group of people who were already choosing to be stupid. So that meant sometimes killing people he didn't really care about one way or another just to make his followers think he was as stupid as them."

Sirius snorts his amusement at that line. "It was a choice, too. All of my family believed that rot, but I chose not to."

Harry already likes Sirius - as does Dudley, Sirius is the kind of fun that little boys are naturally drawn to - but there's a new light of admiration in his eyes for his godfather. "And that was why he came to my mum and dad's house? So the stupid people would think he was as stupid as them about people like my mum?"

"Pretty much," Sirius says, "there's more to the story, but it's for when you're older." Sirius agrees with me that the prophecy is pretty much a red herring. Whatever his family's faults, they made sure he got a classical education along with all its warnings about putting stock in oracles. That, in fact, they're the means whereby powers not of this world provoke humans to working their own ruin. Harry is better off not knowing. So am I, come right to it, but it's not practical for me to un-know the prophecy wording. If I'm lucky, Dumbledore in the book gave Harry an edited version and I'm still ignorant of what Sybil Trelawney actually channelled from wherever oracular tommyrot originates. I'm carefully only using my knowledge to wind Dumbledore up about letting it get out where it could hurt people, and to misdirect him away from any confidence in schemes that take Trelawney's wretched babbling into account.

"And all these people that followed him, did they go to prison?" Harry's got a kid's sense of what's fair and right, and getting done when you've been naughty is a big part of it. Going to prison is how that happens to grownups, as he understands it.

"Some of them, yes," I tell him. "It doesn't work as well as it should in the magical world. There are some of them still out and about and pretending to be good people." Now is not the time to break it to him that it ain't exactly perfect in the nonmagical world either. The Birmingham Six, the Maguire Seven and the Guildford Four are all still in prison here in 1986, after all, and all the real murderers are at liberty unless they're inside for other crimes.

Harry's face is a picture of indignation. "That's not fair."

"No, it isn't," I tell him. "Sirius and I, we're going to try and start things toward being better. Which is complicated grownup stuff, you're going to have to work hard at school to be able to understand it but we'll teach you as much as we can as we go along. For the moment, it's that a lot of the rich wizards are also the ones choosing to be stupid, and because they've got lots of money they can afford to pay not to go to prison."

Harry and Dudley alike have looks of horror on their faces at that bit of news, and they're both outraged. Granted, it's not a lot better in the non magical justice system, but there's a real difference between 'getting away with it because you're able to afford expensive lawyers' and 'getting away with it because you're able to bribe the entire system hard enough to accept a paper-thin defence without asking difficult questions or even holding an actual trial'.

I'm quite pleased that Dudley is as upset as Harry that the people who wanted Aunt Lily dead just for being who she is have mostly got away with it. Especially when I frame it in those terms. He doesn't need to know that it's a kind of privilege he probably could have exercised himself, what with his dad's Old School Tie. Sorry not sorry, Vernon, but I think your son's on the way to growing up with a social conscience. He's been concentrating hard, scowling his way through his thoughts on the matter. "Is that what it means on Knight Rider about criminals bein' above the law?" he asks.

"Yes, Dudley, it is. There are people who are so rich the police and the courts and the prisons can't deal with them properly, I'm sorry to say, and when they go to the bad they often get away with it."

"Well, that's wrong." Sir Dudley's dander is very much up. Don't lose that, sunshine. They'll try and knock it out of you and make you cynical.

"It is, and it's why Sirius and I want to change things. We're hoping we won't need a talking car, though," I say, which earns me grins from the boys. Sirius has a baffled look on his face and I flash him a roll with it look. He's got a long way to go before he can reach the cultural heights of Knight Rider, Airwolf and The A-Team. All of which are on the telly right now, to my massive delight. "We're going to have to persuade a lot of powerful people to use their power to do the right thing rather than just letting the baddies off. Persuade them that justice according to law ought to mean something. It's going to take a lot of work, just as it did in olden times when people without magic had to be persuaded that you couldn't do as you pleased just because you were the big baron or the king."

Harry's still not happy, though. "So my mum and dad are dead and it's going to take all that hard work to get everyone who helped the man that did it put in prison?"

"I'm sorry, Harry, but that's how it is. I'm going to do that work, though. So's Sirius." Sirius and I have been talking about it a lot and the state of the magical world has brought me to realise why cultural imperialism is, on occasion, so bloody tempting. Wading in and civilising the brutes with a Maxim-gun has a deep-down appeal - especially here, where it isn't a moral figleaf to cover the outright robbery that history's colonial empires actually were at their heart.

"And what if they won't go along with what you're doing?" Harry's a smart kid, and he's spotted the obvious fly in this particular pot of ointment.

"I don't know about Sirius," I say, "But I'm ready to make them go along with it. If they want to be a lot of savages who don't care for laws, well, there's a long history of methods for what they used to call 'pacifying savages'. It used to be just to make it easier to steal their countries and take their stuff, but sometimes - not often, but sometimes - it was to stop something horrible that people said was just the way things were. Sometimes, and I really think that this time is one of those times, it will be to make them stop being savages." And it's as I say it that I realise that at this point, having come to James and Lily's grave, that I'm entirely happy with this particular instance of cultural imperialism.

Any commitment I may have to trying the reformist route first is a purely intellectual one. I think, deep down, I want to go full Punisher on these fuckers once Tom's dealt with. Probably wouldn't hurt to thin the herd a bit before he makes his comeback tour, actually. It's one thing to accept, in the abstract, that the rule of law is the only real way and that vigilantism is an aberration that ought not be tolerated. When you're holding the hand of a little orphan boy by the side of his parents' grave? High-minded principle is a long way from being satisfying.

Sirius's tone is somewhat mournful. "It'll probably come to that, too. My family have been part of the problem for a very long time, and their sort won't go without a fight."

"When you say pacifying, what do you mean?" Petunia more than anyone here is aware that I can be a bit ethically flexible if I think I have right on my side. I did, after all, possess her shortly after I arrived, and her husband for the best part of a year. Sure, it worked out for the best in the end, but it still was a means that the end had to work hard to justify.

I sigh, and stand up. "When I say there's a history of this sort of thing, I'm thinking about the kind of thing the Empire got up to. Kipling documented some of it in one of his poems. Long was the morn of slaughter, long was the list of the slain. Five score heads were taken, five score heads and twain. And the men of the First Shikaris, went back to their grave again." Sirius has a worried look on his face. Petunia, like she vaguely recognises the quote.

I stick my hands in my pockets and look off into the distance. I take a moment to organise my thoughts, and then: "It's about an incident during the pacification of Burma in the late nineteenth century. They killed a hundred in reprisal for one officer's death, and stacked the heads on the officer's grave. The point I'm driving at is that if they won't answer to the civilised institution of the law, we'll have to resort to the much older institution of reprisal. And hope the survivors learn from that why they really ought not to undermine the institutions that keep them safe from such things. It'll be that much harder because we're talking about people who're used to having power: from their wealth, from their position in their society, and from the magic they have. And with a lot of them, they've warped their minds by practising the Dark Arts. You have to get good at summoning up hate and anger and all kinds of nasty emotions, and that marks you, changes you. So we can't make the mistake of half-measures if we go that route, either. Never do an enemy a small injury, as the man said. To adapt another line from that poem to the task in front of us, they swore that James and Lily, would go to their God in state, with fifty file of the enemy, to open heaven's gate."

There's a long, uncomfortable silence. I'm hoping that couching it in those terms has made it go over the boys' heads, but Sirius looks particularly troubled. Estranged or not, I am basically talking about his people.

Petunia breaks it. The elocution lessons forgotten for the moment, it comes out in the hard-toned voice that only north-country matriarchs can pull off, "I'm not sure about the stack of heads," she says, "but them that killed my sister? I do dearly want them to pay."

"Moody was right about you," Sirius adds, "you're not even trying to pretend you're not ruthless."

"If you want an end, you have to want the means," I say, "and we can hope all we want that the nastier means won't be needed, I think we both know that there's a hard core of the blighters who won't be moved by anything less."

AUTHOR NOTES

Traffic laws: the speed limit on motorways (roads with M prefixes to their numbers) is 70mph. (Although, amusingly, Mal's knowledge of the relevant traffic laws is anachronistic. He, as I did, learned the Road Traffic Offences Act 1988, which won't be passed for another two years after he broke that particular speed limit.) The M4 runs from London to Bristol, while the M5 goes from there southward toward Plymouth. I've situated Godric's Hollow on the eastern side of the Exmoor national park, just over the county line between Somerset and Devon. From which Hagrid could plausibly have flown over Bristol on his way to Surrey, and I'm just not getting in to the missing time if he went straight from one to the other. JKR admitted she goofed on that one, so I'm not going to find sinister explanations. Other fanfic authors have.

Double yellow lines next to the kerb indicate that no parking is permitted there at any time. (Single yellow lines are for restricted parking, with the restrictions usually posted nearby.) There was a big change in parking enforcement in the early 2000s that turned on-street parking into a revenue generator for local government, so Mal is used to finding it harder to park and almost certainly having to put coins in a machine. Or, as is becoming more common, swearing at a machine that only takes cards and does so unreliably.

Spar shops are a franchise business, running local shops for local people (shout-out to those of you who get that reference!) that started in the Netherlands and spread across the world. Looking at the demographic data that the various sites I post on give, most of you are in countries Spar hasn't reached yet. Give it time.

Red Poppies have been a particular emblem of remembrance for the war dead since WW1: they grow quickly in disturbed earth, such as is found in areas of trench warfare. Not wearing one around Remembrance Day - the nearest Sunday to 11th November - is something of a social faux pas. They're sold in aid of the Royal British Legion, which supports the forces and their veterans.

Pals Battalions: some genius in the 1914 Ministry of War thought it would help recruitment if men could be guaranteed serving alongside their friends and neighbours. When the resulting units were fed into meat-grinders like the Battle of the Somme, the tragedy was horribly focussed. The Accrington Pals - one company of which battalion was recruited from the neighbourhood where I sit and write this - famously took 585 casualties in the first hour. Out of 700 men. What that must have done to close-knit communities makes a pauper of imagination. Especially since the first rumour to reach Accrington was that there had been only seven survivors...

Am I alone, by the way, in wondering how a kid supposedly isolated from the magical world and not told about his heritage is recognisable to more than one mage during his pre-hogwarts years? No less than three in Chapter 2 of Philosopher's Stone, and then Tom the Barman in the Leaky Cauldron. Sure, it's just a throwaway scene-setting detail for Harry's suspicions that he's Not Like The Dursleys, but it takes a more sinister cast when you think through the implications. And thinking through the implications is what fanfic is for….

The poem Mal quotes unattributed in the Graveyard is Kipling's Grave Of The Hundred Head. Whether it's based on a real incident or not, I have no idea. It's certainly plausible for that period of the Empire. He wrote later poems about the same campaign that were considerably toned down which were a lot less sanguinary, so it may be that it was a soldiers' story that shrank considerably under the scrutiny of official investigation and actual history.

Fanfic Recommendation: The Sum of Their Parts by holdmybeer. On FFN only as far as I know, and it seemed apropos to have a story about magical revolution after Mal got his dander up about the state of wizarding justice.