Thicker than Water (Marauders Era) PART II

10 August, 1995 - Questions

Harry didn't know where to start. There were a million questions he wanted to ask all at once. A million answers. A million things he was sure he needed to know. Some, he wanted to know in general, things about the war and that mysterious weapon Sirius had mentioned at dinner and what they were doing and what Dumbledore was doing and what the hell had happened last time. And some questions... some questions he wanted to ask her in particular because... because she had known them. Had known them all. His mother and father and Sirius. And Pettigrew. And because she... she was his godmother.

It still didn't feel entirely real, though he supposed that by now he should be used to it. He had accepted Sirius quickly enough, he supposed, but something about her felt different. Not just because she was undeniably different from Sirius, but because her reasons for having never spoken to him before were less... concrete. She hadn't been locked up. She had had a choice. And she had chosen his safety. Which was... strange to him. It felt like the kind of thing Dumbledore would do, actually. His safety. Always his safety. Never anything else.

And yet, Lavinia Selwyn had done the one thing Dumbledore never had. She had apologized. Profusely. And with enough of a strain in her voice that even Harry couldn't miss it. Couldn't miss that it had... hurt her to make that choice. Something he didn't think it had done for Dumbledore. Which made it better, he supposed, even if the outcome had remained the same. And she did seem to be trying to fix it. To... help him. Get to know him even. And that Dumbledore had certainly never done.

Not, he supposed, that comparing her to Dumbledore was entirely fair because the two were very clearly very different. And as if her apologies hadn't been enough... well. Harry also hadn't missed the scars. Not that he'd had any idea what they meant beyond very vague guesses until Hermione had explained and then... and then nothing, really. He simply hadn't known what to think about that.

Truth be told, he didn't really know what to think of her at all. She wasn't like many of the other adults Harry had had in his life. She wasn't like Mrs. Weasley, who was warm and motherly and whose temper, though plenty present, always came out of love. She wasn't like Sirius, who was brash and straightforward and brave. She was, he supposed, a bit like Lupin, who was calmer and gentler. But she was also careful. Hesitant even. Like every word she spoke was one she had thought about. Like she was used to guarding herself. Her heart. And those scars rather suggested that her heart was - or perhaps had been - a bit fragile.

This was, in Harry's mind, perhaps the strangest thing about her. He had never had much chance to associate with anyone whose heart wasn't a fierce, raging thing. Except Neville, maybe, but Harry still wouldn't have called him fragile. He wasn't even sure it was a good descriptor of Lavinia Selwyn, really, but... she seemed somehow more breakable. Less prone to jumping into fights and wars. Less... well less brave, in a way. But Harry also didn't think cowardly really described her either.

All of which was to say, he didn't know what to think about her. And those were some of the questions he wanted to ask. Because he wanted to know her. He wasn't sure he would have except for Hermione's urging because she had pointed out, fairly, that Harry could probably use an adult in his life who was perhaps a bit more responsible and a bit less dangerous to contact than Sirius. This point had rankled Harry to no end, but he also knew that Hermione was right. And of course, at the very least, it couldn't hurt. Especially since Lavinia had offered to give him information as well which was, as far as Harry was concerned, of the utmost importance right now. Especially given all the frustratingly incomplete answers he'd gotten just a few days ago.

Which was why the first question he asked was: "What's the weapon?"

If he was honest, he half expected her not to answer. To say Dumbledore had made her promise not to tell and that this had all been a terrible idea anyway because he'd been told more than enough over dinner. But to his surprise, she just rolled her eyes. He was momentarily offended by this, thinking that it was directed at him for asking what she perhaps thought was a stupid question, but then she sighed.