The quiet in the Black Lighthouse stretched on, comfortable now, filling the spaces between the ancient stones. Lucien was still turning the rusted washer Ira had given him over in his fingers, the rough metal grounding him against the dizzying reality of the last twenty-four hours.
"You said you didn't have happy memories for the Dementors," Lucien said softly, breaking the silence. "That they starved because you were empty."
Ira nodded, staring into the dying embers of the violet fire. "It was a survival tactic. If you don't hold onto joy, they can't twist it into despair." She looked up at him. "But you... you're not empty, Lucien. Lysander said your mother loved you. You must have memories that aren't lies."
Lucien looked away, his gaze drifting up to the patch of starlit sky. "I do," he admitted, a lump forming in his throat. "That's the worst part. If she had been cruel, like the guards you talk about, this would be easier. I could hate her. I could burn the bridges and never look back."
He took a shaky breath. "But she wasn't. She was wonderful."
Ira shifted closer, her curiosity piqued. "Tell me. What does a 'wonderful' lie look like?"
Lucien smiled, a sad, distant expression. "It looks like a rainy Tuesday in Scotland. I was eight. I'd come home from the village school with a black eye—some boys had pushed me because I was the weird kid who made streetlights flicker when I got upset."
He closed his eyes, the memory vivid. "I expected her to be angry or scared. Instead, she just made hot chocolate—real chocolate, melted on the stove, not the powder—and took me to the sunroom. She set up two easels. She was an artist, you know? Claire Wong, the painter."
"She told me we were going to paint the rain," Lucien continued. "Not the grey, gloomy part. But the way the light hits the drops. She said, 'The world looks like a mess, Luke, but if you look close enough, every drop is a prism. It holds a rainbow inside it. You just have to change your perspective.'"
Ira listened intently. "She was teaching you to see," she murmured.
"Yeah. We painted for hours. By the end of it, we were covered in blue and silver paint, laughing. I forgot about the bullies. I forgot about the flickering lights. I just felt... safe. Loved." Lucien's voice cracked slightly. "She would look at me sometimes, when she thought I wasn't looking, with this look of... absolute awe. Like I was the most precious thing in the universe."
He gripped the rusted washer tighter. "How can someone look at you with that much love, and then drug you every morning to hide who you are?"
"Fear," Ira said simply. "Love makes people do irrational things. Fear makes them do calculated things. She was doing both."
Lucien nodded slowly. "But there was always a hole. A silence."
"Your father," Ira guessed.
"Yeah. Harry Potter." Lucien said the name with a strange mix of reverence and bitterness. "I didn't know his name then, obviously. I just knew there was a space where he should be. Every time I asked about him, the temperature in the room would drop. Not magically. Just... emotionally."
He leaned back against the stone pillar. "I remember asking her once, when I was twelve. I found an old photo tucked inside a book she thought she'd hidden. It was just a snapshot of a man laughing. He had messy hair, like mine. He looked happy. There was writing on the back, just the letter 'H'."
Ira watched him. "What did she say?"
"She froze," Lucien said. "She took the photo away so fast her hands were shaking. She told me his name was Harvey. That he was a brave man, a kind man, but that he died before I was born. She said the world was too dangerous for men like him."
Lucien let out a bitter laugh. "Harvey. A Muggle name for a wizard hero. She spun this whole story about him being a traveling academic who died in a car crash. Classic Muggle tragedy."
He looked at Ira, his green eyes searching hers. "But it wasn't the lie that stuck with me. It was the silence after. Whenever I mentioned him, or asked if I looked like him, she would just... go away. She'd be in the room, but her eyes would glaze over. She'd stare out the window for hours, touching that locket she made me wear. It wasn't just grief, Ira. It was guilt. I used to think she felt guilty because he died and she lived. Now... now I think she felt guilty because she stole me from him."
Ira considered this. To her, fathers were monsters or myths. "Maybe she didn't steal you," she suggested quietly. "Maybe she was hiding you from him, too. Lysander said Harry Potter is a man of black and white. Maybe she knew a 'paradox' like you wouldn't fit in his world."
"He's a hero," Lucien argued, though the conviction was wavering. "He saved the world. Surely he would have wanted his own son?"
"Heroes sacrifice things," Ira said coldly. "That's what makes them heroes. Villains take what they want. Heroes give up what they love for the 'greater good.' Maybe your mother knew that if Harry Potter knew about you... he would have given you up, too. To the Ministry. To the rules."
The words hung in the air, heavy and plausible.
Lucien thought of Hermione Granger on the pier—her wand raised, citing laws and protocols. Release Lucien Potter immediately. She hadn't looked at him like a nephew; she had looked at him like a violation of the statute.
"She loved 'Harvey'," Lucien whispered. "I know that much. Sometimes, late at night, I'd hear her crying. She'd say his name. Not Harry. She'd whisper, 'Oh, H, I'm so sorry.' I always thought she was apologizing for moving on. Now I realize... she was apologizing for the lie."
He looked at Ira, a profound sadness settling over him. "She loved a ghost. And she turned me into a ghost to keep me safe."
Ira reached out, her hand hovering over his for a moment before she placed it gently on his arm. It was a tentative, awkward gesture, but for Ira, it was a mountain moved.
"You aren't a ghost anymore, Lucien," she said fiercely. "You're real. You broke the ward. You moved the iron. You're here."
Lucien looked down at her hand on his arm, then back to the stars. The pain of his mother's deception was still there, a jagged wound. But Ira was right. The silence was broken.
"I just wish," Lucien said, his voice barely audible, "that I knew if he loved her back. If Harry Potter ever thinks about the woman who disappeared."
Ira didn't answer. She knew that in the world of wizards, love was often the most dangerous magic of all. And looking at Lucien—the boy born of a lie, burning with stolen power—she suspected that the love story of his parents was far more tragic than a simple car crash.
"We'll ask him," Ira said, a promise in the dark. "When we're strong enough. We'll find Harry Potter, and we'll ask him."
Lucien nodded, closing his hand around the rusted washer. "Yeah. We will."
Above them, the wind howled around the shattered lantern of the lighthouse, and the first light of a grey dawn began to bleed into the sky, signaling the end of their first night of freedom.