Coral

Author's Note--Thanks you for the review, MAzey. I do apologize for the overabundance of original characters, but this is just Part One, the backstory to the Harry Potter years. After he shows up, there will be more canon characters and tie-ins. Thanks for your patience!









I'll have a blue Christmas without you

I'll be so blue just thinkin' about you

Decorations of red on a green Christmas tree

Won't be the same dear if you're not here with me

And when the blue snowflakes start fallin'

That's when the blue memories start callin'

You'll be doin' alright with your Christmas of white

And I'll have a blue, blue Christmas---

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For Christmas, Amanda had received two main gifts from Edward. The second being a journal, bound in lavender-dyed, kid leather, and filled with cream colored vellum. It had a satin ribbon to mark the page, and the stationer had tooled her name into the spine in elaborately scrolled old English script. It was delicious.





The first 'gift' was the her very first experience with a true hangover. She realized groggily that she must have only been tipsy at her wedding. This was completely different, waking to a throbbing headache, the uncomfortable roiling stomach. She had never realized before how strongly leather furniture could smell. It was nauseating beyond belief, and she shot Edward an accusatory glance when he tried to help her to her feet.





" Did I fall asleep here last night?" she asked, confused.



" Yes. After four glasses of bourbon."



" Oh god, is that what I drank?" she shuddered.



He thoughtfully brought her something to ease the headache, before they commenced with opening their gifts. He didn't want to admit it, but he had indulged slightly as well, and felt very un-natural. Amanda noted that it was nearly noon when she staggered out of the bath, her hair still damp because she had no way, magical, or Muggle to dry it completely. She tucked it back with a tortoiseshell band.



The tree was not quite so festive by morning, and the candies and fruits certainly didn't seem so appetizing, but they actually did enjoy unwrapping the gifts. Edward liked the chess set very much, and began set it up immediately on the floor. It was amusing...as the new pieces were a little panicked at their new surroundings and began running about the parlor seeking placed to hide.



Eventually they could be coaxed out and onto the board, but they stood trembling and fidgeting, arguing amongst themselves.



Among the other gifts, including a mother of pearl pen, earrings, new umbrellas ( Eloise had noticed Edward's old one was beginning to leak), cufflinks, and items of luxury for the house, Amanda uncovered a small, soft object, wrapped in brown paper, with bits of holiday paper stuck onto it with heavy amounts of glue.



Perplexed she showed it to Edward, who turned it this way and that, but could find no markings.



" I don't think it's dangerous, but the wrapping is horrible."



Amanda opened it carefully, the glue was still tacky. A pink plush bear, a child's toy rolled into her lap and grinned up at her with an embroidered smile. A note had been pinned to the bear's ruffly little dress, and she had to pull the material straight to to read the letters.



" This was for your little girl." it read.



Amanda swept it across the room with a horrified look.



" What is it?" he asked, looking up from his close examination of the Muggle chess pieces.



" It's..." she shook head in disgust. " It's a toy. Just a toy."



He summoned it, and she watched it morbidly as it flew into his outstretched hand. It wore lace petticoats, she saw, and had bows on it's ears.



" This was for your little girl. May it bring you luck next time." another line was written below that , but the glue had smudged it beyond reading, except for a few letters. T-L...F. He could make nothing of the writing and grimaced at the garish pink thing, before thrusting it quickly behind the nearest cushion.



" You just forget about that! Here...this is from Amele." he said, discovering, mercifully, one more package to divert her attention.



She didn't forget the bear, but she didn't mention it again either. Edward however, seemed very agitated about it, and throughout the rest of the day, was very quiet. The had been invited to Rookwood house for a late Christmas dinner, and since Polly had a full week off for the holiday, they accepted. Throughout the dinner, Edward remained withdrawn. And after they returned home that night, he settled her in the library, with a fire and a copy of A Christmas Carol, but he closed himself into his study.



She rummaged behind the cushion as soon as he was gone, but discovered the toy had already been hidden somewhere else. He must have used magic to vanish it before she could notice. It was just as well, she decided. She didn't need to see it and get all upset again. She just wondered who in the world would have given her such a thing? It was obvious that the the toy had been purchased after the accident..no one, not even herself had known the baby was a girl until afterwards.



A cheap, deliberately cruel trick, she supposed, but that only served to make her feel worse, and she had to



blink back tears that suddenly pooled in her eyes, blurring her vision, and tried to read the book in front of her. It was no use, the entire mood of the day had been spoiled, and she suddenly wanted nothing more than to just go to sleep and forget everything.



Remembering suddenly her new journal she retrieved it form the bookcase and cracked the spine, making her first entry. She had, up till that night, been keeping erratic notes on loose-leaf paper, and organizing them by merely stacking them in a drawer. The entries were mostly composed of single sentences, dates, times, and brief descriptions.



" I thought if you were to write, and having such beautiful penmanship, you should have a suitable volume to collect it all." he had told her when she fist opened the box. His unspoken feelings were that he was sure she had much on her mind that needed releasing.



The journal was not one of those miniature things, with only a few sheets of paper widely ruled. It was as large as an average size book, and as thick as the width of her palm. The rule was very fine. There is nothing so satisfying in the world as a book of blank pages, just waiting for the first seduction of the pen.



On the other hand, there was nothing so daunting as the fear of destroying one of those creamy sheets with just one ink blot, one lazily scrawled 'r', one wrong word or thought. She caressed the paper for quite sometime in admiration, before opening the cap to her pen.



What to start with? She didn't want to begin with despair and sadness. It would ruing the entire tone. What if the rest of the book were filled with happiness and miracles? Another person might read it one day and never want to progress past the relentless melancholy at the beginning. No, it had to begin with something more...human.





"December 25, 1990

Kiss. I had no real reason for writing that word, but I wanted the first word of my beautiful journal to be a pleasant word, and whereas there are many pleasant words in the English language, I think none can say so much by saying so little. Kiss can be as delicate as Klimt, or as passionate as Lawrence. It is a bittersweet word too, and I think that is appropriate. Journal's are bittersweet, as well, because a life can never be all sweet. Nor can it, I believe, be all bitter, though some people find it easier to find tragedy in their lives when their are none, than to embrace blessings when times are sad.







***



The new year came and went, and at last Healer Thoroughgood deemed her strong enough to resume her normal lifestyle. In February, she won a match of chess, but not against Edward. Edward's friend Colonel Barkwater had invited himself over for the better part of a day, and had having lost three matches to Edward he challenged Amanda instead.



" It won't do you any good." Edward informed him. " She plays very well."



She suspected that the Colonel had either allowed her to win out of amiability, or had, during his discourse on war, lost his concentration.



He informed her that he had served in India during the time of the Raj, from 1877 until 1901, when it became obvious to the Muggles around him that he was not aging quite as fast as they.



Amanda had listened skeptically to Barkwater's account, turning to Edward for verification. He only shrugged, and only gave a slight nod. Later he confessed that Giles Barkwater had been telling the same story for years, but the names of the regiments had changed from time to time.



" Of course, I had to initiate my own wound. It takes guts I tell you, to hex your own leg off. But I did it. Oh, I was more than ready to retire, you know...the excitement is good for the young, but after you get to a certain age you start thinking of marrying and settling down, eh?" He elbowed Edward.



" Are you married then?" Amanda asked, easily capturing his bishop.



" No, no...I just haven't found the right person, I'm afraid. But there is always time, I've only been looking for seventy seven years. "



" You mean, eighty seven years." Edward corrected.



" Well, technically. But for the first ten years, I wasn't really serious!"



Amanda took his knight. He was left with only two pawns and his king, yet he insisted on considering his next move for several minutes, and from all angles. He even lay his large head on the table and looked at the chess board from an upside down position. The pieces on the board made faces, and stepped from foot to foot in boredom.



At last he ,moved one of the pawns forward, and she took mercy and checkmated him.



" Huh! She beat me."



" I told you she would."



" I think you cheated a bit there at the end." Barkwater began counting the moves back. " It must have been when you moved your queen side castle to the--no, it was the bishop that you moved here."



" Give it up, Giles." Edward said, folding the newspaper." You lost for the fourth time in a row. And you call yourself a strategist."



Colonel Barkwater might have been slightly rusty on his game of chess, but in every other aspect, he was still sharp eyed, and authoritative. It did not take a person of extreme perceptiveness to notice that he was appearing more and more frequently, and that he and Edward held long serious conversations in low voices when they thought she was preoccupied.



She was no eavesdropper by nature, and always tried to slip away if she thought their discussion might be of a more private nature. She could not however, help but catch a few names; Albus Dumbledore, Adelfried Umbridge, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, and most importantly, Cornelius Fudge, who was predicted to be the next Minister of Magic.



They seemed to think that he would only make current matters worse; he was on the side of the Purebloods, easily aroused by large sums of money, and quite possibly one of the many people behind the writing of the marriage law. She heard whispers too, of the fate of the many other women and men who had married due to the law.



That was a subject that she could not help but listen too, despite her conscience.

She heard she was not the only woman to suffer, nor lose a child due to mysterious circumstances. Many of the women, they discovered really had done intentionally to themselves what she had been accused of falsely, a wickedness if which she herself could not conceive.



In January, just before Giles had begun to make his weekly visits, she had begun begging Edward to take her to the grave of the baby. He had been most reticent to do this, but she had persisted. Healer Thoroughgood had at last convinced him, saying that it was the final step in the healing process.



Edward could only hope that Thoroughgood knew what was best, for to him, it did not look to be very healing. The visit was awkward and emotional, and having to watch her kneel on the damp, cold ground, sobbing into her handkerchief was painful to behold. He himself was not sure what to feel. He was confused.



On one hand, he felt sorry that Amanda was sad, but he was not certain that he felt sad in the same way. He regretted daily the fact that the child had died, and wished above anything that he could have saved her. But then, still, there persisted in his heart a heavy doubt. Why had the baby died? Who had been responsible? Was it this woman kneeling, sobbing? Some stranger? A person they knew? A true accident? he could not be certain, and that uncertainty ate at him, no matter how he tried to reason with himself that Amanda simply was not that sort of person.





That day, while she was embracing her grief fully for the first time, he was fighting down the temptation to do an unspeakable thing. Absorbed and preoccupied, she was mentally naked, and it would have been all too easy to invade her mind. The last time he had used Legilimency on another person, was the night Eloise had come to him with her broken wand, and quite unexpectedly he had discovered her greatest secret along with the truth about the wand. He had vowed then to never use that particular magic without permission, or without justification.





Was this justified? He warred with himself, until Amanda's spasms had ended, and she rose unsteadily to her feet. She was cold, her teeth chattered loudly, and her face was red, even though she had shed only a tear or two. he felt that to be the oddest thing, that she could no longer cry. She hadn't truly cried since her father's funeral, only these harsh, dry sobs that seemed more hysterical than mournful, mixed as they were with aching gulps of air that were almost laughter.



She hated them, was ashamed of them, and ducked her head so that he couldn't see her dry cheek.



Edward was preoccupied. He had taken a small package from his pocket. The child's grave had only a temporary grave marker; a small slab hastily transfigured from a stone. Eloise had placed an order for a more decent monument, and it had only just arrived, a day or two before their visit.





That is what Edward took from his pocket, and carefully positioned at the head if the grave, displacing the first stone. Carefully returning it to it's original size,he was pleased with the workmanship that had gone into it. The wizard mason responsible for it had taken a great deal of time to engrave an elaborate wreath of roses, lilies ivy, and baby's breath, across the top, and to carve raised letters into the perfectly veined blue marble.





They stood for a moment admiring the stone with morbid respect, then without speaking, turned in unison to leave. It was all that Amanda had needed. She felt a great weight lift from her, even though she felt an even heavier degree of grief settle into her. Death was permanent, but life was fleeting...and she still had life before her. Walking away, she resolved to live it as best she could.





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Blue Christmas-Lyrics, Billy Hayes and Jay W. Johnson.