Change the Future

DH 14

"Harry, stop."

"What's wrong?" They had only just reached the grave of the unknown Abbott. "There's someone there. Someone's watching us. I can tell. There over by the bushes." They stood quite still, holding on to each other, gazing at the dense black boundary of the graveyard. Harry could not see anything.

"Are you sure?" 

"I saw something move, I could have sworn I did" She broke from him to free her wand arm.

"We look like Muggles," Harry pointed out. 

"Muggles who've just been laying flowers on your parents' grave! Harry, I'm sure there's someone over there!" Then he heard a rustle and saw a little eddy of dislodged snow in the bush to which Hermione had pointed. 

"It's a cat," Harry said, after a second or two, "or a bird. If it was a Death Eater we'd be dead by now. But let's get out of here, and we can put the Cloak back on." They glanced back repeatedly as they made their way out of the graveyard. They pulled the Invisibility Cloak back over themselves. The pub was fuller than before. Many voices inside it were now singing the carol that they had heard as they approached the church. For a moment Harry considered suggesting they take refuge inside it, but before he could say anything Hermione murmured, 

"Lets go this way," and pulled him down the dark street leading out of the village in the opposite direction from which they had entered. Harry could make out the point where the cottages ended and the lane turned into open country again. They walked as quickly as they dared, past more windows sparkling with multicoloured light, the outlines of Christmas trees dark through the curtains. "How are we going to find Bathilda's house?" asked Hermione, who was shivering a little and kept glancing back over her shoulder. "Harry? What do you think? Harry?" She tugged at his arm, but Harry was not paying attention. He was looking toward the dark mass that stood at the very end of this row of houses. Next moment he had sped up, dragging Hermione along with him; she slipped a little on the ice. "Harry"

"Look. Look at it Hermione"

"I don't oh!"  The hedge had grown wild in the sixteen years since Hagrid had taken Harry and Rory from the rubble that lay scattered amongst the waist-high grass. Most of the cottage was still standing, though entirely covered in dark ivy and snow, but the right side of the top floor had been blown apart; that, Harry was sure, was where the curse had backfired. He and Hermione stood at the gate, gazing at the wreck of what must once have been a cottage just like those that flanked it.

"That's where we died James" Lily whispered as James wrapped his arm around her.

"I wonder why nobody's ever rebuilt it?" whispered Hermione. 

"Maybe you can't rebuild it?" Harry replied, "Maybe it's like the injuries from Dark Magic and you can't repair the damage?" He placed his hand on the gate.

"You're not going to go inside? It looks unsafe, it might oh, Harry, look!" His touch on the gate seemed to have done it. A sign had risen out of the ground in front of them, up through the tangles of nettles and weeds, like some bizarre, fast-growing flower, and in
golden letters upon the wood it said: 

On this spot, on the night of 31 October 1981,
Lily and James Potter lost their lives.
Their son, Harry, remains the only wizard
ever to have survived the Killing Curse.
This house, invisible to Muggles, has been left
in its ruined state as a monument to the Potters
and as a reminder of the violence
that tore apart their family.