Disclaimer: Hogwarts etc. belong to JKR.
"Fogive me Father, for I have sinned."
The building is cool, all dark stone and velvet tapestries. It smells faintly of warm wood and sweet wine.
"It has been two weeks since my last confession."
He feels cold.
He feels alone as he sits in the small wooden compartment.
"Continue." Says an old voice, soft and kind. Everything you'd expect from a man of the Church.
In his childhood his grandmother would take him here every week. To this small Catholic parish in the south of Ireland. She was a muggle, so shocked when she found her daughter-in-law was a witch. She'd said it was a miracle the holy water had not burned a hole straight through her grandson's head, they'd told her the day of his Christening.
His mother liked telling him the story, how the old woman had spluttered and choked on her tomato juice, how his father had to take the old widow outside and explain carefully that magic was not a gift from the devil, but one from God, that his wife would remain a devout Catholic till the day she died and that their son was a blessing not a curse.
It had taken her weeks to accept it, but she told no one and on the day of his second birthday she bought her grandson a tiny gold crucifix. Though she never spoke it out loud, that gesture stood as a promise that all was forgiven and understood. All the same she would insist she was the one to take him to mass twice a week.
It had been this church, in the small town near Cork where he'd taken his first Holy Communion and had later been Confirmed. It was the small muggle convent to the left where he had had his first years of education at the hands of a number of nuns. This place meant a lot to him and it was for that reason he came back.
"Two nights ago… two nights ago I killed a man."
The priest, the one behind the old fashioned gauze that linked their two booths, he had been a favourite of his grandmother's, he'd lead her funeral service when old age finally wore her away. The man had known him since he'd first entered into this church, and somehow he still feels it his duty to tell him.
"I… It was dark and the fight was so confused…"He'd come here when he'd received his Hogwarts letter. ("I'm a wizard. Does that mean God won't have me?") ("God loves everyone, my son. You've done nothing wrong. Just make sure you enjoy your first term." The old man had smiled.) He'd knelt before the very same altar to take his final mass before he left for the beginnings of the rest of his life.
"We'd been there all night. Someone had tipped Harry off. That there was going to be an attack. We went there and waited… It felt like forever, just sitting and not knowing when it was going to happen."
His mother had been so proud, her little son, off and ready to start casting spells. He'd been to visit her brother and parents and they'd taken him to buy his schoolbooks in Diagon Alley. It had been so much fun.
"It went dark. We'd been waiting for ages, scattered about the place, disguised and stuff, and then the lights just cut out. People started screaming like mad. Muggles, normal people, all shouting and crying, hysterical."
Before he left for school he had his mother tell him everything she could remember, from wild memories of colourful pranks to the rise and fall of You-Know-Who. He had been in awe.
She was delighted when he told her he was a Gryffindor and so excited when he made new friends. Dean came over that summer and met his family, relishing the chance to meet a wizarding household and enjoying the company of Seamus's eccentric father. It had been a wonderful holiday.
"Harry lit his wand first and the rest of us followed. But it just made the muggles scream more."
Over his Hogwarts years him and Dean became close friends, Dean took him to muggle football matches and Seamus's Mum took them both to the Quidditch World Cup before their fourth year of school. That was the year they first encountered the Dark Mark.
He remembers their screams now still. Remembers running and watching in horror. He remembers how the Death Eaters scattered at the casting their old emblem and how he thought of his grandmother's mistrust of magic.
"There were so many of them. Prowling almost. They looked feral and I was as scared as I'd been the first time I'd seen them."
Perhaps she had been right, that magic was a curse. It gave people powers human were not necessarily supposed to have and, as medieval as the view sounded, it was far too easily used for evil. Magic corrupts.
He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named found a cause to fight in the very existence of people below himself. Magic allowed superiority of a certain race and that in itself set you up for war. But as much as he now understood muggle mistrust he could not give it up, nor even share his thoughts with his friends.
"They're evil, Father, they worship a demon as though he were a god. They kill and kill and think they're cleansing the world. They say they're doing it for the well-being of wizardkind but all they do is destroy lives."
When they announced the Dark Lord had risen again he had been in utter shock. He hadn't believed what Harry Potter had said the year before. He couldn't believe it. But two years later, when he came home to a quiet house with both parents lying cold in a morgue he understood he could do nothing if not fight.
"They started firing curses at the light of our wands so we were forced to turn them out, working where to fire by the light of spells and the fires that sprang up. We only use stunners and hexes, it's part of the Order's code. No Unforgivables. No killing."
He'd prepared for his parents funeral with the help of Dean and Lavender. They'd kept him going and he would never be more grateful. It was then that he thought back to the days when Albus Dumbledore headed Hogwarts, the days when quidditch and girls were the only things he had to worry about. When he'd fallen out with Dean for a full week over a place on the quidditch team. When he'd spent whole lessons glaring at the back of Ron Weasley's head as he watched Lavender drape herself over him.
What he wouldn't give to go back. Back to when life was simple and childish. Where Leprechaun gold and shamrocks surrounded happy children and the only fanatics were those concerning quidditch. Back when blood made no difference and his mother would not be murdered in her sleep for her choice in husband.
"I'm not sure how long it had gone on for, but suddenly Dean got hit. We always stick together in battles, same way Ron and Harry always do. It's because we spent so much time practicing dueling together at Hogwarts… We get used to each other's style. We work well together. But he got caught by a 'crucio' from one of the Death Eaters. It's a torture curse. Unimaginable pain, the kind that makes you scream for the mercy of death. And he was crying. And screaming. I was so scared, Father. I didn't know what to do."
How long has it been now? How long since the beginning, since those days when he would laugh in the dorms or brood when Dean got the quidditch placement over him?
Times change. People grow. People die.
"He was my best friend. I sent hexes and stunners and every jink I could think of at the guy holding the curse but they kept firing them back at me. I transfigured one of them into a rabbit by accident and almost got hit by an 'Imperio'. I was so scared."
He thinks sometimes, about what he'd do if he were given the chance to meet the killer of his parents. He wonders whether he'd have the control to kill for vengeance.
It's different for Harry. Harry who never knew the parents he seeks to avenge, Harry who's assigned not only to fight for his own peace of mind, but that of the entire wizarding world, Harry who has the power to destroy the one he hunts. He wonders sometimes whether he'd have the power to do that, if he came across his parents' killers, would he have the strength to do what he'd wanted since the day he'd been summoned to the sight of his parents asleep in their bed? (The only indication of something being wrong had been the ghostly green glow on their still faces, they were not breathing and the Dark Mark hung high.)
He'd smashed his mother's favourite vase that day. He'd smashed it and then spent the entire night trying to piece it back together (tears for glue).
"He was still screaming and there was no one else around to help. Hermione had just been hit and was bleeding so Ron and Harry were focussed on her. I couldn't see anyone else… And he was still screaming so much."
He'd visited his grandmother's grave before the funeral. He'd laid pink roses on her headstone and told her he was sorry. And then he'd come back to this church for mass and confession.
That had been two weeks ago.
"I fired the first spell that came into my head. It was a severing charm. It hit the man's neck, slit his throat. He died, Father. Bled to death right before my eyes. I killed him."
Maybe it happened because he was so scared, so subconsciously terrified to lose anyone else, that he did the one thing he thought would make it end.
He hadn't meant to kill. He'd just wanted the screaming to stop.
"I didn't mean it. It was an accident! I don't know what to do, Father. I killed someone. I knowingly killed a person... It was murder, I didn't mean for it to happen but it was murder."
He hears nothing but silence from the other side of the gauze and feels so cold, so alone.
"Father?"Dean died that night. The Death Eater blocking his curses missed when he tried to shoot Seamus down.
Avada Kedavra hit him full in the chest. His eyes were wide.
The funeral was to be held the next weekend, Hermione Granger was helping Ginny Potter make the arrangements and he was so grateful. He wasn't sure he could cope with picking flowers for his best friend.
Harry told him he shouldn't blame himself, that he knew from experience what that could do to a person. He told him the only thing they could do was to keep fighting. To keep avenging the losses they'd suffered and hope that in the end they could watch the Dark Lord fall.
He'd looked his old schoolmate in the eye and stared at him. Disbelief mingled with resigned understanding. He knew he was right. That fighting and resistance were the only things they had against You-Know-Who... but without their attempts to bring down the enemy he would never have bought about the death of his friend. And he would not be sitting here in silence after telling his childhood priest that he'd committed murder.
"Forgive me."
AN: Hmmm. Ignore the fact that I (quite obviously) have never been to confession and only attended mass once… Yeah… Sorry. And I know the whole Irish Catholic thing is overdone but- You know, I don't actually know. Never mind. But if you've read it please review it.