Basilisk Eyes

Chapter 100: Fratrem

Gemma pushed Harry's hand to the next photo on the page and he ran the digitus over it with his other hand following closely behind to capture the figures blooming from the photograph. Gemma's arm snuck around his shoulders and now she was pulling him against her. She was trembling.

"What is it, Gemma?" Harry asked. She pushed his hand back to the image, the tremor in her hand more apparent.

Three figures in this one—one in a loose nappy who kept wiggling out of the grasp of the two and running in and out of the frame. It was clear the two were trying to create a more muggle-style traditional family portrait, but the miniature figure kept gleefully bolting whenever he got a chance.

Harry laughed as the game of chasing and catching kept going in different iterations until he was feeling the figure of his mom as she was getting up from the sofa to chase after little Harry once again and noticed that she did it in a really awkward way, grasping the back of the sofa, pushing her hips up first and leading with her belly and rubbing it as if it ached. He felt her torso and it was distended and large and when he ran his fingers over it, something inside her belly moved—it jolted him and he took his hand away quickly. He tentatively touched it again as if he didn't quite believe what he had discovered.

His dad had scooped up little Harry and the three... the four of them... hugged with Harry hanging in delight between James and Lily. They sat on the couch and a clearly worn out little Harry laid across Lily's belly hugging it, his mouth moving as if he were chattering.

"I had a sister or a brother?" Harry muttered. He felt an ache blossom in his chest as though he needed to cry but the pain was so hot that all the tears had left his body in a vapor.

Gemma was rubbing a big sorry circle on his back, over and over again.

"Why hasn't anyone ever told me?" he said numbly.

Gemma tapped his clavicle for "you" then wrote "L-O-S-T" space "S-O" space "M-U-C-H" space "A-L-R-E-A-D-Y" space "D-I-D-N'T" space "W-A-N-T" space "T-O" space "M-A-K-E" space "I-T" space "W-O-R-S-E" space "O-R" space "D-I-D-N'T" space "K-N-O-W" in his palm.

"Yeah," he breathed. He felt so tired. He ended the 3-D version of the image and closed the book and stored everything back in his staff feeling strangely mechanical and organized, and scooted off the window ledge.

Gemma frantically grabbed his hand, her index finger pushed so hard into his chest that he was sure he'd have an index-finger-sized bruise. "YOU" space "G-O-I-N-G" space "D-A-R-K" space "A-G-A-I-N?"

"What?" he asked. "Oh, well, I don't know. I'm just so tired. I just want to go to bed... I don't think so, Gemma... I'm sad... I'm really sad... And mad, too... And I don't know... I'm just sick of being me... Why didn't I just die with them? Why didn't they let me die with them?" The question was ripped out of him, tearing his throat as it left his body and he dropped to the floor, curled in a ball by her bed, feeling numb. Gemma curled her body over his and cried silently—the tears he wasn't able to shed.

After a while, she stopped shaking and she was rubbing a sorry circle on his back and then began to spell out words. It took him a while to realize it. Slowly his breathing steadied and he started to focus on what she was writing. She seemed to be saying the same phrases over and over... it was starting to etch fissures in his back.

"Y-O-U" space "A-R-E" space "H-E-R-E" space "T-H-E-Y" space "B-E-Y-O-N-D" space "V-E-I-L" space "N-O-T" space "S-O" space "F-A-R." space "P-A-R-T" space "O-F" space "Y-O-U."