Harri Potter and the Secrets that Keep

Chapter 1

The days after the battle are a blur. She finds herself comforting the living, burying the dead, and rebuilding her ruined home. Former home. She doesn't think she'll ever be able to see the castle in the same light again. She wishes she never had to see the castle ever again.

It's hard for her to understand that she's alive. Harriet was hit by a killing curse. She spoke to Dumbledore. She stood in the train station and debated boarding a carriage. She knew she was dead. Then she wasn't. Then she was alive and breathing and feeling and hurting and still having to fight. Fight until it was over. Which it is. Now, that is. The horcruxes are destroyed and the Dark Lord Voldemort is dead. She finished the task she was set and yet...Yet she's still expected to do more.

The Weasleys and Hermione expect her to grieve and mourn their loss of Fred ( her Fred ). McGonagall expects her to stay and rebuild the castle. Kingsley, the interim minister until election can be held (though she has a feeling he will be elected anyway), expects her to give eulogies and speeches, make appearances and assure foreign leaders that the threat of dark wizards has been neutralized.

Today, it seems that Harriet can add Andromeda Tonks to the list of people holding expectations for her. Barely a week since Harriet's life ended and began again, she receives a letter asking her to come meet her godson and take him for the day. She wants to refuse. She wants to lock herself away in the Chamber of Secrets and never emerge. She doesn't want to face the little boy, not even six months old, that she's made an orphan. How can she bear to face the child whose parents laid down their lives for Harriet? How can she face the mother who lost her daughter because Harriet couldn't end the fighting quick enough? Then, she thinks of Sirius. Her godfather that she misses straight down to her bones. She thinks of how Sirius was supposed to have been the one to raise her after her parents death and how her life turned out when that didn't happen. She can't repeat the mistake her own godfather made just because she wants to be cowardly.

And so, Harriet finds herself walking through the front garden of Andromeda Tonks' cottage with the same air she walked through the Forbidden Forest, resigned to her fate but willing to sacrifice for her loved ones. Mrs. Tonks doesn't answer the door on her first knock, or her second, or her third. Finally, Harriet acknowledges the bubbling anxiety that has taken residence in her stomach from the moment she appeared at the front gate. She releases the Elder Wand from its holster, the damn wand that won't leave her no matter how hard she tries. She lets the icy power of the wand creep through her veins as she creaks the door open and steps inside. The house is eerily silent and still.

"Mrs. Tonks?" Harriet calls out, slowly edging along the wall of the front hall. She sweeps the ground floor but finds no evidence of anyone home. "Andromeda?" The anxiety in her heightens as she climbs the stairs to the next floor, where she assumes the bedrooms are located. The first one she finds holds a nursery. In the crib is the child that must be her godson. Teddy.

Teddy sleeps soundly, eyes moving beneath his lids as he dreams. Harriet can't help but reach out and stroke the baby's velvety soft cheek. The child lets out a sleepy sound, causing her to jerk her hand back. When he shows no sign of waking, she makes herself slip back into the hall and continue searching. The next room is void of people, but makes her stop anyway. She drifts her gaze over the unmade bed and haphazardly thrown clothing, as if someone had left in a hurry. The framed photo of Remus and Tonks that sits on the bedside table causes a lump to form in her throat. She leaves the room quickly, almost stumbling in her steps. The final door on the hall stands ajar, allowing her to catch a glimpse of a floral bedspread. She spies a still form on the bed.

Harriet walks quietly, hardly daring to breathe as she enters the master bedroom. Andromeda lays on the bed, seeming to be asleep. The relief she expects to fill her doesn't come. No, Harriet scans the room and the lump in her throat grows at the sight of an empty potion bottle sitting upon the side table. The bottle sends a jolt of fear down her spine and she scrambles to get to the older witch, grasping her shoulders tightly and shaking.