The Witching Hour

It is midnight when I Apparate to my home, enveloped in a darkness that consists of more than just my robes, my cloak, and the mask that covers my face. I have always had an affinity with darkness, and it is a ponderous irony that I happen to be as light as the sun, as fair as any of Botticelli's most pristine angels. The Night has always been a fast friend to me. She offers protection and cover, aids in escape and deceit. She masks what I do not want to see with the clarity that light provides. Daytime is full of jarring, sharp angles and vulgar detail. Lines are more easily crossed, boundaries more easily passed, in the pockets of quiet shadow that the Night brings with her.

I am her favoured consort, wreaking the nightmarish, macabre and sinister deeds that she has promises to deliver.

It is a mutually beneficial symbiosis, I think.

There door at the end of the corridor is ajar, a sliver of warm, golden candlelight cleaves out into the thick darkness. It is an irresistible beacon, promising to smother the chill and that I carry with me like a cloak. It is late, and there are a multitude of tasks to be completed before I give in to the illusory escape of sleep, but I have always been one to indulge myself. It is a lamentable trait, but one I fear I am helpless to eradicate.

I tuck my mask under my cloak as I walk down the corridor. My wand is removed from my robes and a Scouring Charms is cast with practiced ease. At once, the metallic scent of blood lifts from my skin and clothing, along with remnants of freshly turned earth, crushed grass and gravel dust. By the time my hand pushes against the door, I am cleansed. Or rather, as cleansed as one such as I can ever hope to be. Some stains are impossible to remove, save with a powerful Obliviate.

But that would not suit my needs at all.

The weather outside heralds the coming winter, and the room is heavily doused with Warming Charms. An ancient house elf is crouched in a chair beside the small, canopied bed, half asleep with her mottled head resting precariously on the edge of the mattress.

She awakens as I approach and hurries to her feet as quickly as her old joints will allow. She greets me with a low curtsy, and a fond glance towards the small bundle that is just visible in the quantity of bedclothes.

I dismiss her, and the bedroom door clicks softly behind her as she leaves.

There is far more than a watchful, sentimental, old, house elf guarding the very precious occupant of the room. The wards surrounding the room constitute the most magically potent spells I have ever created, and over the years, I have cast a great many, powerful spells. The wards are my own design, and they are, for lack of a better word, unbreakable. Should the entire house collapse, should it be razed and reduced to a scattering of ash and stone, this room and everyone within it would remain untouched.

In troubled times, one can never be too prepared. There is no fine line between caution and paranoia. For me, they are one and the same. Others have taken similar steps to safeguard their treasures.

I have a much simpler task, given that my most priceless possession numbers exactly one.

Said 'possession' is presently stirring from his sleep, in his small, child's bed.

My son is four years old. He has curly, dark hair and large, liquid brown eyes that are quick to fill with tears and quicker still to shine with the impossible optimism that only children can possess.

His skin carries the scent of buttermilk and tea rose. He is my every delight.

We are alike in many respects, but we are also very different. My son's favourite time of the day is when he awakens in the morning; when he is full of exuberant enthusiasm and the unstoppable energy that makes me, his father, watch in amused wonder as he charges through our home on sturdy little legs. He finds the mundane interesting, and the interesting fascinating. 'Inquisitive' is an understatement, for my son has run many a guest ragged with his supply of never-ending queries. I was ever a quiet, watchful child, albeit with a gift for timely, cutting rebuttal. My son watches all and questions everything. He has my talent for insight and reflection, and his mother's mind for detail.

A frightening combination, when wielded correctly.

He sits up against the pillows now, rubbing his eyes and looking at me with resigned annoyance. It is a look one does not see too often on the face of a four year old.

"You are late, Papa."

I am often scolded thus.

I sit on the bed, touching a curl of his mahogany hair with a gloved hand. "My apologies. I was unavoidably detained. I thought you'd be sleeping by now."

"I wanted to wait for you. You said you would walk with me this evening." He looks with exasperation at the windows of his bedroom, where a late, waxing moon illuminates the stained glass panes with a soft, luminous sheen.

"It is still evening, and we may still take our walk, if you like."

"Really?" He looks delighted at my complete disregard of the fact that his prescribed bedtime passed five hours ago.

"Just this once," I allow. "I shall try not to be tardy in future."

My promise is met with a skeptical look, but this is soon replaced with an endearingly gleeful expression. He clambers off the bed, and I help him into a set of warm clothes. I have to stand aside and wait, however, as he works at the ties of his shoes. From previous experience, I know that any offer of assistance in this matter will usually result in a stormy glare. He is a prodigiously quick learner, my son, and fiercely independent.

But even as I think this, he stands before me with raised arms and an unspoken command in his coffee-coloured eyes.

Up.

'No' is not a word that my son hears very often, and I admit, I do indulge him. Pushing my cloak over one shoulder, I lift him into my arms, settling his small frame against my chest.

We take a well-worn route through the gardens, past the hothouses, through an archway of intoxicatingly fragrant Ever-Blooming Blood Roses and Night Hyacinths.

Our destination is the Ancestral Grove, my son's favourite place.

I carry him as we walk among the enchanted statues. He points a chubby finger at each long-departed family member, requesting a name and a brief history from them. The statues have little to do as is, and they take to my son like ants to spilt honey. I suspect he can recite their predictable dialogue in his sleep by now, but there is comfort in ritual, and this is one we have engaged in since before he could speak.

We finally come to a stop at the reclining statue of Great Aunt Elspeth, who clucks her tongue when she sees that I am carrying my son. Again.

"The boy is quite grown. Surely he can make his own way now," she chides, furrowing her marble brow at us.

My son is not one to be cowed. He meets her stare with an upturned chin. "Papa does not mind, do you, Papa?"

"Of course not," I reply, with a haughtier that my son has come to imitate with eerie accuracy. "The loss of feeling in my right arm is a small price to pay for your comfort."

I am often accused of being decidedly unamusing. He tells me this as he wriggles in my grasp and asks to be let down. I set him on the edge of Great Aunt Elspeth's moss covered, marble divan.

In an authoritative tone that never failed to irk his mother, I inform him that soon, he will be too big for me to carry.

He purses his lips for a moment, pondering over what this inevitable change will mean for our nightly jaunts. He demands to know the exact point in time when this predicted growth spurt will take place.

"A year, or so. Depending on how fast you grow, of course," I tell him, in a serious tone.

"I will grow very fast, then. And I shall walk beside you, Papa."

I have no doubt that he will. But his path will be different to mine. He will not be waylaid and constrained by the burdens of familial expectations and the narrow, stagnant view of the people who would call themselves his brethren. My gift to him will be more valuable than any material possession, more powerful than wealth, influence or the name that he and I carry.

He shall have what my own father was unable to provide me. My son shall have a choice.

We continue walking through the Grove, weaving in among the fruit and nut trees, stopping every now and then at a relative's delighted greeting.

The mood is decidedly more subdued, however, when we approach the tall, imposing statue waiting for us at the end of the long pathway.

My father's eyes pass over me, taking in my black cloak, pausing at the slightly visible bulge of my mask beneath my robes, finally settling on his grandson, to whom he bestows a barely perceptible nod of greeting. We never stay long to visit with my parents. The reasons for this are long, complex and too tedious to ponder over without copious amounts of liquor.

"Good evening, Father. Where is Mother?" I ask, observing familial niceties for the sake of my boy. Were I alone, I would not have stopped at all.

"Seeing to her orchids. Short of strapping her to my leg, it's next to impossible to have that woman remain in one place for a day. Really, she makes for a terrible statue. "

My son giggles at the image this conjures up, but soon ceases when his grandfather turns the full force of his granite stare onto him. In life, my father was possessed of a sharp, arctic glare that could discern friend from foe, truth from falsehood in the time it takes to shake a hand an utter a greeting. Preserved in stone, his powerful countenance is no less unnerving.

"Run along to the lake," I tell my boy, giving him an encouraging push between his shoulder blades. He does not need to be told twice. The lake, after all, is our intended destination.

"He is very much like you," my father says, in a speculating tone.

"He is more," is my cool response.

"Yes," my father agrees, watching with hard, stone eyes, as his grandchild makes sharp splashes in the shallows. "He is all he should be, despite-"

"Give Mother my regards," I interrupt curtly, turning on my heel.

I have little patience for pointless banter. Statues are notoriously droll, tending to engage in the same conversations over and over. My son may take delight in this predictable wordplay, but I am not so easily amused.

We have left the Grove now, and have stopped at the edge of the lake where an arrangement of wide, stone benches is laid into the ground. There, a gnarled, weeping willow holds court, offering melancholy shade to the most recent addition to the family of be-spelled statues. The ducks and geese that frequent the lake have long since migrated to warmer climates, but the seasonal enchantment over the place ensures that the air still carries the scent of spring.

Time makes a slower trek here, the trees do not shed their leaves, and the grass is always green.

"Mother," says my son, always in awe, always in a hushed, respectful voice. He releases my hand and goes to sit beside her under the willow. His small, heart shaped face becomes serious. He is old enough to understand death, to know that his mother is not merely absent or away, but departed from our realm. I would choose to shield him from such thoughts, but the gift of choice requires understanding. And so he must know about death.

Magical statues are quite special. One can imbue a statue with spells, passing a complex incantation that permeates the stone with the character traits of the intended subject. In essence, magical statues are a minor facsimile of a living or deceased person. With the benefit of three dimensions, they may walk, talk, touch and feel. But like magical photographs, the movement of a statue cannot be predicted with any accuracy.

The mother of my child has not chosen to move or speak since she was crafted with painstaking care by a master sculptor shortly after her death. My son often asks me why this is so.

I regret that I have no answers to give him.

Her stillness does not disturb him. He tells her, with an impressive recollection, about his day. She listens, seated as she is on a marble bench, her small chin propped on her curled palm, an open book in her lap. There is a perpetually bemused smile on her face. Giving in to a rare bout of fancy, I imagine that the contents of her book are not nearly as appealing as our son's recital of the torment he inflicts upon the staff in my home.

Eventually, he starts on his complaints for the day- and the list is potentially infinite- beginning with how Cook ordered him out of the kitchens for dropping a sack of flour, to how his French teacher rapped him over the knuckles for daydreaming during lessons.

Contrary to popular belief, I do realise that I've raised something of a hellion. Not that I would tolerate another person telling me this.

The residual sensation of my recently Summoned Dark Mark burns under the sleeve of my robes. Absently, I rub at it, only to find my boy watching me. He knows the Mark, but he does not yet know about its significance. I am not so cruel as to deny him a measure of true childhood. The realities of our world can corrupt and tarnish with frightening speed.

"Is it hurting again?" he asks me, equal parts concerned and curious. He is beside me now, bravely taking my arm and drawing up my sleeve. The exposed Mark has an instantaneous effect on our charmed surroundings. Such is the power that the symbol has come to wield, more so today than a decade ago. The air around us crackles faintly, the distant, phantom sounds of birds and woodland falling conspicuously silent.

My son is still awaiting my reply. He isn't interested in my answer, as such; rather his curiosity lies in my perception of the issue. He watches my face like a hawk scanning a meadow for prey.

I realise suddenly, that I am looking at myself.

"Sometimes," I offer.

"Can you take it off?"

"No. Never."

The curious look leaves his face. Now, he is merely thoughtful. The moment has been filed away carefully, and I know that he will dissect it later when he is on his own.

"You see with your mother's eyes," I tell him, smiling, as I pass a splayed hand before his face.

He ponders this for a moment, muddling over whether it is a good thing. He is cataloguing his traits, one by one. His thoughts play across his face like a Pensive. I recall that his mother was much the same.

"Was she clever then, Papa?"

"Most assuredly she was clever. Like you."

This is true. Much to my smug, fatherly pleasure, my son had cast his first unintended spell while he was still in nappies.

He smiles then, coming to some silent, inner conclusion. "And brave."

"Yes, brave too."

"And beautiful..." He says, as he turns to his mother once more.

Tentatively, he touches a hand to her face, and for a brief, delirious moment, I imagine that this will be the night where his touch will call her to life. Where all else has failed, it would be poetic and unquestionably right that my son should be the one to animate her.

But his mother continues her still, silent vigil over her book, and our solemn reunion progresses as usual.

We make a twisted threesome, I think. The Death Eater, the stone angel and their child.

It seems that my son, too, has been hoping for a similar outcome this evening. With a disappointed slump of his shoulders, he withdraws his hand from her cold cheek and returns to the warmth of my lap.

It seems blasphemous that the clothing that had aided in my heinous tasks earlier in the evening now provides warmth and protection to something so pure and un-sullied. But then, my life has always been a curious mixture of ironies.

"When I am bigger, I can come here on my own to sit with Mama."

The insinuation is cleverly delivered. What my son means to say is, 'perhaps she doesn't move because you are here.'

I suspect he may be correct in his assumption.

"Are we finished for the evening?" I ask him, gently. Already his eyelids are drooping, his grip around my neck becoming slack.

He tucks his curly head under my chin, and nods.

I look over him, at his mother, thinking that hope is a sickeningly addictive human tendency. I think this because my departing message to her remains unchanged, as always.

"Perhaps tomorrow."

The resignation in my voice is so palpable that my sleepy son places a comforting hand on my shoulder and pats.

Gathering my cloak more firmly about us, I take the path through the Grove.

**

Father and son make their way towards the faint light of the manor home. The sound of the boy's delighted laughter rings through the quiet surroundings as his father hoists him over a shoulder.

It does not occur to them to do so, but had they chanced to look back at the willow tree by the lake, they might have observed that the statue is no longer still.

Her head is raised, and her eyes greedily watch her living family with a look of profound sadness. She touches her cheek with slender, stone fingers, seeking the vestiges of warmth left there by her son's flesh and blood hand.

When man and child are no longer within sight, she looks once more to her book, and slowly turns a page.