5. The Legend

A week of mundanity followed, of meetings with Hermione and various departmental leaders, of avoiding questions but carefully choosing answers. It was only when alone with Hermione, but in the company of Esias Pugh, whom, Draco and Harry believed, had a right to know the full extent of the truth, that they revealed what had happened, moment to moment, when they stepped through the glass into their daughter's world. To her credit, Hermione believed them, able to, after much study in sparse personal time, to compose theories on the matter, sharing them, at first, with no one but Tempest's parents and Esias.

But when others began to ask what had become of her, when the months went by, then a year went by, Harry and Draco informed Hermione that she could publish her essays on Tempest's Window. It explained, to the wizarding world, what one young woman had accomplished. She continued to be the legendary Tempest Potter first formed at Hogwarts, for spells of such imagination and awe and talent that all professors had, at some point, been too curious to prepare discipline. Her legend grew through her career as an Unspeakable, undeniable now that the Minister for Magic had admitted Tempest Potter to be so, the only one ever named among the unmentionable ranks.

She became a myth as curses and spells, both beautiful and hideous, were named for her. No portrait of her ever hung anywhere, and no picture of her had ever been taken. She remained uniquely anonymous in looks, but for the descriptions Esias Pugh wrote of her in his journals, so that the real Tempest Potter, if he had ever really known her, if he had only caught glimpses of her, would not be forgotten.

He was with Draco and Harry on the last visit to the old abandoned building in Diagon Alley. The twin Window had vanished long ago, nothing of it remaining but a memory ever waning. He was with them, too, on a summer's day ten years after the battle. The day when the Window began to speak back.

'She'll call for you someday,' Harry told Esias, the two of them fixed on the prospect shaped by the Window. 'The way she called for Draco and me that night—she'll call for you.'

Esias did not really believe this to be true, and yet his hope singed his pessimism. He watched the tall grasses of the craggy landscape tip and sway at the slightest intent of wind. She could be lying in that grass, somewhere, hidden in its russet tops, its soft yellow-green blades, her black hair captured and whipped by the breeze.

It was surprising, not alarming, that he opened his eyes and found himself there, in just the very instant he wished for her the most. He was as he'd been in his imagination: lying upon the ground, the sun warm upon him, the grasses in their frolicking sarabande—and her small being, of light and loveliness, next to him. She touched his smile with her fingers, letting the tips trail across the wrinkles below his eyes, between his brows, the laugh lines beside his lips.

'Esias… you've grown old.'

He found a white strand upon her hair, above her ear, and caressed it. 'So did you.'

'I don't know how—and I don't know how long it has been.'

'Fourteen years.'

'Is that all? I expected lifetimes… I expected to live lifetimes…'

'You did. A lifetime in twenty years. It was all the time you ever needed. Have I come to bring you home?' But he knew it was no providence of his. She had commanded him another way. 'I am to stay, then.'

'Stay…' she repeated, losing her breath in the raucous wind. A slender leg slung around him, her knees squeezing his hips, and her hair falling, curled ribbons of black against a bright sky of deep azure, against the lids of his eyes. Tempest left a blanket of kisses from forehead to chin, from neck to jaw, and back again. 'Stay, stay, stay…'

He laughed, saying he would, that he had always wanted to. 'You don't have to be a hero here, in this world of yours?'

'My world is my own. I am its everything. But now you've come, you're its everything, too. My everything and my all—and you. We don't have to be heroes any more.'

*

Harry returned to the sitting room, sun tipping in afternoon apathy across golden floorboards and rust-coloured rugs, to find the place empty. Last he looked, Esias had stood before the Window, a wish in his gaze. In the Window, from the deep wheat-red of the grass, Harry saw them—Tempest and Esias—wading through, their steps in time, their hands entwined.

'Draco!' Harry wailed, flinging his voice as far as it would go. 'Draco! She's all right! She's there!'

Draco dashed in, clipping his toe on a sofa foot, an end table that went crashing. He stumbled and had Harry catch him, straighten him, and turn him again to the Window. He saw her, too, the figure unmistakably Tempest. He touched the pane, trying to touch her, but feeling only the smoothness of glass.

'When will she step out of that world and return to ours?'

Harry squeezed his hand, remembering Tempest's road of destiny, the beginning of it, and now this change to an ending he thought he knew. 'She will… It is her Window, her Glass World, and her choice. One day, she will come back, the one day she's meant to.'

*

The end.