Only Ash Remains

Chapter 1

Wind whips the branches of the massive oak tree that shadows the garden at Number 12, Grimmauld Place. Lightning sparks through the sky, cutting through the heat of a stifling August night. Thunder grumbles in the distance. The street lamps send a weak yellow glow into the shadowed sitting room; the light glints off the lenses of the man who sits there wreathed in shadow.

Harry Potter slumps on the sitting room couch, ignoring the way the velvet bristles scratch the skin of his arms and the back of his neck. He shifts to relieve the pressure from the lumps in the cushions. The room is lit only by the faint glow of the street lamps outside and the occasional flash of lightning.

He sits in the dark, motionless, as he has been for the past hour or so; he hasn't yet found the energy to get up and turn on the light. He's been sitting on the couch all evening, staring at the same crack in the plaster — a task made more difficult as the light fades — waiting for a letter from Ron and Hermione.

They promised to check in today. The clock is in the other room, and it seems like too much bother to pull out his wand to cast a Tempus, but it feels late. They're supposed to let him know how much progress they've made in restoring Hermione's parents' memories. They've already extended their stay in Australia twice, and Harry is beginning to get desperate. He doesn't know how many more days he can handle the solitude.

They could have firecalled, of course, and then he wouldn't have to wait on the flaky International Owl Post, but Grimmauld place had been disconnected from the Floo Network not long after they'd left. He'd received a stern letter on official Ministry letterhead warning that he'd been operating the Floo on permits that had expired several years before.

He'd snorted at that. The Order of the Phoenix had apparently not thought renewing the permits vital to the war effort.

It's just bureaucracy. He'll have to fill out a few forms, talk to someone at the Ministry permitting department, get something signed... maybe have a bored Floo repair technician have a look at it— but it sounds like far too much effort. He feels a pang of regret, as he sits in the dark, waiting, but not enough to force him to walk across the room and start filling out the forms he left sitting on the corner of his desk, buried beneath a stack of letters and invitations he hasn't responded to.

The owl is late. He knows that he shouldn't be worried. He knows that International Owl Post can be slow, and that post from Australia seems especially bad. Hermione has been nagging at him, in her recent letters, to get the Floo reopened. He knows that were she here, she'd have had it taken care of within a day, and would probably have had it cleaned and dropped off a dozen other piles of paperwork at the Ministry while she was at it. Even an imaginary Hermione is exhausting.

He tilts his head to one side and then the other, until his neck gives a satisfying crack, comforted by the hope that she'll be home soon, and then she can take care of it and he won't have to worry about it at all.

He finally tires of staring at the crack in the wall and flops his head onto the back of the couch to stare at the ceiling instead. His eyes find another crack, trace it to where it intersects with a spider web that stretches all the way to the corner. He and the spider consider one another for a long moment, and then the spider turns its attention back to its dinner, unconcerned. Even the spiders know that Harry isn't likely to be chasing them with a broom anytime soon.

He's missing yet another pub night to be here, waiting on the owl that still hasn't come. Ginny hadn't understood, of course, when she'd dropped by to collect him as usual and he'd told her he couldn't go out. He couldn't explain the rush of terror he'd felt when she'd reminded him that the owl would find him anywhere — even at the pub. But the thought of missing the owl, of chancing delivery in a crowded pub instead of his home, of being skewered by prying eyes as he reads the letter — his brain skitters away from the thought. But he knows better than to try to explain it. There's no way to make her understand.