The festivities of the new year hung about the family home in Hannover like the celebrations had stopped mid evening, every guest vanishing. The air was warm, and a little stale, hinting at how many had gathered here during the evening past, and the smell of food hung over a base note of woodsmoke, from the low fire in the grate. Everything was quiet, apart from Ignan's own breath and the grandfather clock by the door, ticking incessantly, until his father shifted.

Ignan didn't have the heart to wake his elderly father, who would reach his centenary imminently, and left him snoring peacefully in his favourite armchair in the corner of the sitting room. The guests had long since left, or retired upstairs to sleep the rest of the night off before making their way home in the cold light of the January day.

However much he hated these family celebrations, tinged with arrogance, bloated with boastful claims of achievements over the twelve months, he felt glad to have such an extensive, if irritating, family. The lack of his own, through wife or children had rarely bothered him until he returned to Germany over a decade ago, but since teaching the young magicians, he'd experienced regret for the first time. He was clearly becoming an old man – his youth had kept thoughts of being tied down by woman or family. Youth that had continued both in step and thought all through his travels. Perhaps he had missed out on things? Now, he had several hundred children to look after instead, none of those his own. None of those he could ever reach out and embrace.

Merik Storm gave a snort in his sleep and his breath rearranged the long, white whiskers beneath which was buried his mouth, hidden within his beard. A wizard's beard was a status symbol of age, wisdom and intelligence. Ignan felt his own chin subconsciously, cleanly shaven. No point these days. Always that irritating part in between where one sported some shadow. Besides, a beard would, like family, always remind him of his age. That wouldn't do.

Hearing the gentle pad of footsteps, Ignan caught sight of his father's equally elderly house elf. He'd had two, a pair, but the other one had passed away earlier that month. The remainder, the male one had aged dramatically since the loss of its companion. Ignan would not be surprised if it too did not last the winter. The elf was hunched over, a tartan blanket clasped in it long fingers, which it wrapped around its master. Tucking in Merik, it turned and looked reproachfully at Ignan, and started towards the long table to begin clearing the mess.
“Leave it.” Ignan told him in a low whisper. “You've worked hard enough this evening.” The elf bowed so low his nose scraped across the floor as he retreated in reverse from the room. Ignan didn't doubt that the elf would sleep lightly, waiting to hear its younger master go to bed before creeping back in to carry out its duties.

Closing the door behind the elf, Ignan approached the familiar cabinet, which had always stood in the same place against the sitting room wall in all the time he could remember. The dark varnished wood cabinet held all sorts of unusual items, curiousities and finger trapping perils. Ignan recalled such from his childhood rummage, come misadventure. His father had beaten him severely for it, but as an adult, he appreciated how lethal some of the items were on display. No wonder his mother had hated the whole incident, and cried so bitterly over the beating. Needless to say, neither Ignan nor Imelda had ventured into the cabinet again until they had been some years at school.

Behind the glass, was a recess into the foot of the cupboard. Ignan unlatched the two glass doors, watching the reflection of his father still sleeping behind him, overlaid on his own reflection. Then, with great care, he slid his fingers into two tiny nooks, and lifted the false bottom of the shelf away, revealing a circular hole, beneath which the family's pensieve was hidden. The light swirled up, illuminating the shadowed room, and he paused, looking back over his shoulder worriedly, but his father slept on.

Eyes closed, Ignan placed his wand tip by his temple, and drew a long, silvery cobweb like strand from between the two, before dropping it into the pensieve, where it swirled like a maelstrom, settling. He exhaled, considering his reasons again, and gave a last glance over his shoulder to his slumbering father. Then, he leaned forwards, and dropped into the memory.

At first he stepped into an earlier memory. A warm, muggy day, where the heat and light bounced with such ferocity it felt as if the sun had moved closer to the earth. Ignan inhaled the memory of the scent of the water, and the air around them, and his eyes fell upon himself, a few years into his fifties, with more hair, and far more expression in his dialogue. He was smiling, gazing into the eyes of the woman he had fallen in love with. Her long, black hair cascaded down her back, and her laugh was melodic. Despite himself, he felt a sway of jealousy to his former self in memory form. Especially when they embraced, and shared what was to be the start of a beautiful but terrifying relationship – ending the very last time he would ever visit Italy.

The memory was shortlived, shattering like glass away from his eyes, the scene crumbling to black. Another memory swam in like water around his feet, inducing a nausea in his belly, which twisted with hatred. Why couldn't they have left his memories intact? The frustration filled his senses, as he fell into place behind himself eighteen months later, crouched in hiding in a shadowed street, waiting for three figures to pass, heavy laden. He turned his own head away, knowing what came next all too well, not keen to see himself kill so easily, and with such righteous joy. Covering his ears and eyes a moment, he waited until it was over. He turned back to see himself stood over the three bodies, their heavy load scattered around them. It was obvious to see their heads had been decapitated, amongst other things, their blood was pooling around his feet on the cobbles. His younger form turned with such a look of triumph on his face it was a wonder they let him go at all.

Running through his observing form (as he was less than a ghost to the memory), she came, distraught. Her feet moved swiftly over the road, and her voice cried a warning, telling him the news he had not ever wanted to hear, and still made his stomach desert him now.

“Ignan, they are innocent – you have murdered the Ministry! You must flee!” Even all these years later, he still could not decide if her tone was genuine.

She flung her weight at him to make him react, the two of them slipping in the blood of the three wizards, Ignan taken quite by surprise at the force. Every sense highly stimulated, her presence was suffocating as she clasped him, the heat of her body against his intensifying the sweat of his brow.

“Go, you must go!” She insisted, seizing his wrist and wrenching his wand from him, before thrusting her own into his hand.
“Ignan, please, il mio amore run!” She begged of him, his wand looking ungainly in her hand, and hers so fragile in his. He was covered in blood, yet she held the murder weapon in her hand, and pushed him away with staggering force and persistence.

Despite knowing that his older self could do nothing but watch in this memory, he cried out in anger as his younger self took two steps, stumbled over one of the bodies and fled. A rush of feet flooded the backstreet from behind, and then ahead. Italian aurors, who had found out of his assignment at the last minute. They took her down in a combined assault, her body falling like a tree, his wand flying from her hand and clattering in the dark street. Her face was caught in a surprised, but resigned expression as she hit the floor on her side, her blank eyes staring back at him. He was unable to disapparate, the aurors seizing the whole scene, and Ignan within it.

At once, he pulled himself from the memory, back into the present, to the silence of the house. His sides heaved as he steadied his breathing from the commotion he had just revisited. His whole body was tense, and his face cold and clammy. His stomach churned and he gasped a breath of air, gripping the edges of the pensieve. He would betray her, and the others, in exchange for his own life in the days that followed. Yet she had sacrificed herself for him – taken his wand to frame herself as the killer, knowing he had been compromised. Her attempt to share the blame had not held up for his memories had been forcefully taken. He ran his tongue over his dry lips without realising consciously until he tasted the salt of his tears that ran down his cheeks.

Once again, he would remember what he could be, what he had done, and what he could have done to change his whole life in that moment. A macabre, self inflicted reality reminder – minor punishment for what he had done, he believed. For what he could never take back – for all the glee and power and horrific satisfaction he had felt in tearing those men apart. They were no means the first, and he very much doubted the last before he passed from this world until the next.