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What Should Have Been	By : SamHill Category: Harry Potter AU/AR > General Views: 1929 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: Harry Potter, his world and all the characters within it were never intended to be mine, and I shall never see the profits of their use. They are, and will always be, the sole property of JK Rowling and co.

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What Should Have Been

Title: What Should have Been

Author: Faery Queen

Disclaimer: They were never intended to be mine, and I shall never see the profits of their use. They are, and will always be, the property of JK Rowling and co.

Warning: AU-ish (though can be seen as canon if you squint); hints at het, but no actual sex.

~ * ~

He paces the length of the room in slow, measured steps, his actions unhurried despite the wailing in his ear. He had still been up when that internal alarm within the babe had gone off, and so he had abandoned his latest concoction to rescue the infant from his crib. The mother lay sleeping in their bedroom, exhaustion from so many nights spent awake with a colicky child leaving her deaf to the goings on around her.

The button-up shirt he wears beneath his teaching robes lies open and the plain shirt beneath bears the brunt of the child’s drool. The sleeves of the over shirt are rolled up past his elbows so that they do not trail in the ingredients he works with and so they lay bare the evidence of his youthful mistake; it is no more than a dark smudge now, the power of his wife’s love having driven away all the evil that had once resided within it. He ignores it now for he has no other care in the world than that of soothing his distressed son.

He isn’t a handsome man and the pale moonlight that filters in through the living room window reveals all that is testament to that. Where it is brilliant with light, he is dark; shadowed not just in looks but in his past. His hair – after so many hours spent hanging over boiling cauldrons and splattering pans of oil – lies lank and greasy upon his back, held in place by a cheap band he discovered under a book.

The large, hooked nose goes beyond “strong” and right into the realm of “hawkish” to the point where it should have been ugly. The thin lips that usually settle into a tightly pressed line are all that conceal the crooked, possibly nicotine and coffee stained teeth, evidence of a childhood, and adulthood, spent in the servitude of two seemingly benign addictions.

His features, over all, are not gentle ones. His cheekbones are sharply defined, his eyebrows thin slashes of black that bisect his face rather crudely. His face, on the whole, is long and thin and the skin stretched over it is pallid and slightly sallow, though more because of his career choice than implications of disease or illness. But his eyes, oh his eyes...

Coal black and fathomless they threaten to swallow whole any who makes the mistake of trying to search their bottomless depths. They pierce straight through their target to his or her very soul, tearing free every secret, every sin, as though he’s reading your mind. They pin you in your very footsteps and until he releases you, you are his captive. The pupils are lost in the rest of the obsidian irises and they move from cold to warm so fluidly, so suddenly, you almost stumble when the change occurs.

When he moves, he’s like a jungle cat on the prowl. He stalks you competently, knowing that it will only be a matter of time before he has you and you will be helpless in your defense. What patience he lacks while teaching he makes up for in this. Even now, as he moves around the room, one hand rubbing slow, firm but gentle circles on the child’s back, his patience is endless.

If his eyes could arrest you in your steps, his hands could have you melting within them, with only a single touch. They are slender and long, the fingers ending in the most elegant tapering that you are almost convinced they are on the wrong man. If, of course, it were not for the small scars and stains that decorate them, but those are the evidence of whom this man is and what he does.

There are nicks and cuts, long ago healed but still visible, all along his fingers and some on the back of his hands. There are burn marks from cauldrons boiling over and stains from the various ingredients he uses to concoct his potions. They are dexterous fingers that can wield a knife with dangerous accuracy or clasp a glass of scotch like it’s a lifeline at the end of the day. But they can do more than that, as the woman in the other room would attest to, were she awake.

As the cries lessen, you can see those very same fingers gently cradling the delicate body, cupping the still-soft head to protect it from any dangers. The hands move the babe from its position at his shoulder to his knees as he takes a seat in his wife’s rocking chair and they search out the gas bubble in the tight stomach, massaging gently, slowly, until it is released. They peel away the soiled diaper and cast it aside even as they free a new one, tucking it into place and securing it as he was shown.

And then they are back, smoothing down the baby’s body, cool against the ever-warm skin. They dance across the limbs, encouraging small giggles of delight from the tiny person who knows no fear of this imposing, forbidding man. They trace the tiny, pert nose – blessedly inherited from the mother – and the man smirks, glad that his son will not share in his own fate.

They pause at lips fuller than his own and blinks when the babe smiles. Love. That is what this small little body represents. Not his second chance at it; no, that came when she chose him over another. But this child, this baby, is the culmination of all the love he has been capable of creating, love he had never known until he met her, and he would treasure this. You can see it in his eyes, in the way he moves the now clean child to the crook of his arm, hiding beneath the soft skin and sweet scent of baby the mark of his ignorance and foolishness. Blurred as it is, he knows that it will never fully leave him so that he will always remember what could have been. He sees it now, momentarily, as clearly as he did not see it earlier, but he is able to look forward without getting caught up in painful memories.

What you cannot see in this moment is how these black pools of hidden thoughts once tracked a heavily pregnant woman through the house. The way they searched out any and all obstacles she might come upon so that he could clear the way for her before she even reached that point. You cannot see the way they warmed to an almost dark chocolate brown when he looked upon her face or how they would become so open and readable when she looked at him.

What you cannot see is how these hands once cupped her distended belly, holding them flat against the taut skin as he caught each bump and kick of the child within. You cannot see how that child learned that this warmth, this comfort, was his father. And as he now guides the nipple of the bottle to the cherubic mouth, pressing it to the lips until they latch on. You can only imagine those long, graceful fingers kneading swollen feet and an aching back.

The child, resting quietly against his shoulder once more, is lulled into sleep by the deep, velvety cadence of his voice as he recites the ingredients to his nearly world famous rich chocolate and whiskey cake; potions are no longer his only passion. As he dips into the detailed explanations of proper decorating etiquette and the uses of berry juice as food dye, the rough rumbling vibrations of his voice soothe the child who clings to his shirt front.

Standing at the window of the small but comfortable living room, he is swathed in the pale light filtering in, clad in his shirt, black trousers and bare feet which are, oddly enough, just as elegant as his hands. The high arches are cushioned by the plush carpet underneath them and the finely boned toes are straight and long. The spider web of veins that run beneath the pale skin are a dark blue in contrast and the sight is... just perfect.

Days, months, years from now, when this child falls ill, this man will sit beside him, a cool cloth in hand to be pressed tenderly against a too-hot forehead. The dark, rich voice will carry through the fog of fever to soothe a mind tormented by nightmares, reminding the fitfully sleeping boy that he, the father, is the anchor. His voice, his touch. Not these shadowed dreams of a frightening world that doesn’t exist. There is no madman, no hatred, only them, this small family of three, and their love.

And when he falls down while playing, this man, his father, will kiss away the pain with his thin lips and wipe clear the salty tear tracks with his graceful hands. And when his wife is settled down beside him, he will nibble gently at her ear with crooked teeth and his too-big nose will brush against her neck while it takes in her scent, memorizing it. Because when morning comes and this dream ends, when he’s once again alone in his cold, unloving house, he will remember these false memories that he’s crafted with details only he could fashion to fit his needs. These memories, which will be his only solace in a world of pain and fear and hate... and regret. Memories of a love that would never – could never – be.
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What Should Have Been