Harry Potter fic: Commemoration
Once again I missed sign-ups for the hp_holidaygen exchange and once again I had the opportunity to pinch-hit instead.
hp_holidaygen was excellent this year as well, with many and varied stories. I really have to sign up in time next year, so I can have a great fic for Christmas present, too!
Anyway, this was my contribution this year: for lyras and inspired by the prompt "exploring minor characters and how they deal with their part in the war".
Title: Commemoration
Characters: Dean Thomas, Mr Ollivander, Luna Lovegood, Ginny Weasley, Padma Patil, Neville Longbottom
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 3500
Summary: They all have different days they remember and honour, different turning points and different memories.
A/N: This fic also found here at hp_holidaygen.
MARCH 18
Every year, Dean Thomas drinks to the dead.
He was self-conscious the first time he did it, awkward and embarrassed, but when he raised his glass in a silent toast to those who had been his companions, he found release of a sort in the act. All at once he felt close to his fellow fugitives again, imagined he could almost see them sitting across from him at the table-and at the same time he fully realised at last that they were gone, and would always be gone. Grief, a year in waiting, finally arrived in earnest. They had been thrown together by mere chance and a shared heritage, but they had become friends of sorts.
The first three years he paid his respects in solitude. He still sends Griphook a note each year before the date, though, asking whether he'd like to join Dean for a drink. He's never received a reply, but it doesn't bother him. He knows Griphook. The lack of an angry note ordering him to stop writing is a reply in itself, and Dean is sure that on some level his effort is appreciated.
When the anniversary of that terrible March day came around for the fourth time, Seamus was visiting from Ireland. Dean felt guilty about leaving him for a visit to the Leaky Cauldron-it's always the Cauldron; when someone asks to be left alone in there, the other patrons know better than to ask why-but Seamus asked instead if he could be allowed to come along.
He has his own ghosts, after all.
So every year on the seventeenth of March, Seamus takes three days off from his Weather Charm shop. He flies to Dublin and from there takes a long-distance Floo to London, and when Dean meets him at the Portal he is invariably muttering about fireplace queues.
"Slow old biddy in front of me today," he'll grumble. "Held up the queue for five minutes looking for her Floo Powder, only to eventually realise she was on the South England gate. Why do they let them out? And what are you going to do about it?"
"Dublin's still in Ireland-" Dean will respond.
"And the Powder prices! Insane!"
"-and I'm still working in the Portkey Office."
"Aren't all you Ministry people sort of the same anyway?"
"Prat."
They have lunch in some restaurant close to Dean's one-room flat, and they have dinner with maybe Neville or Luna. They talk about memories of lessons and professors and Quidditch, and almost nothing about the war. Part of these days, their personal holiday, is just that-remembering everything that is good. And part is what comes later-remembering the bad. They do all of it in each other's company, and even though the support isn't spoken out loud, it is always there.
Seamus never asks Dean who he toasts when they visit the Cauldron, the second night of the stay, just as Dean never asks Seamus what actually happened to his left hand, the fingers of which would never bend properly after the war. Some things are not meant to be relived, and if Dean were to tell Seamus about the ones he remembers this night, he would have to share the story of what happened to them, seven years ago. The green light, the screams, the bodies.
They share the silence instead, comfortable enough with each other that the lack of words doesn't bother them, and Dean raises his glass to the three people occupying the end of the table.
Gornuk. Dirk Cresswell. Ted Tonks.
MARCH 20
My dear Luna, Ollivander writes, congratulations on the anniversary of your birth. When you get to my age and the day for felicitations such as this roll around, you no longer want to reflect on which one in the line it is-but I would think that you as of yet have no such reservations. I will repeat therefore my congratulations with the object of them better defined: Congratulations on your twenty-fourth birthday.
He pauses. Twenty-four. Seven years since this day marked her coming of age, and becoming a witch grown with power over her own life. It's the most important day of a young wizard or witch's life, and is usually an occasion for a great Feast, but they didn't celebrate Luna's as they should at all. In fact, they missed it.
They marked the days in the basement of Malfoy Manor, but only to keep track of when one was over and the next began, and this only because they knew that to lose sense of time was to lose their grip on the world. That way lay despair, and madness.
So tell the days they did, by simple means. They never counted them, however, and so neither Ollivander nor Luna knew that she turned seventeen sitting in a dank and windowless prison, dining on dry bread and a few tomatoes so overly ripe that the musty taste stuck to the roof of their mouths for hours.
Ollivander sucks on his quill for a moment, composing in his head.
Twenty-four, of course, is a magical number in itself. In my day, it was customary to drink twenty-four ounces of Firewhiskey (Ol' Hebredian for preference) for the celebrations of this birthday, but your generation seems to be cleverer than mine...
I hope your birthday has surpassed all your expectations so far and will continue to do so-and I also hope Pallas brings this to you in time to make this wish pertinent. I believe he will make it before teatime, but he is after all getting on in years.
Ollivander smiles, rolling his aching wrist. The "As am I" is there between the lines.
For this reason, he continues, you will not find your birthday gift enclosed. I will not charge Pallas with heavy items these days, since that makes him sulk for days. Rest assured, a package will be arriving by a brawnier Owl later on. I hope you will enjoy it. I will not spoil the surprise, since I know you love them dearly, but I will say that it was procured by a mutual friend of ours. There, I believe that will be tantalising enough, without giving away too much.
It’s an eighth century account of Heliopaths, translated into English from Latin. A rare find, Ollivander couldn’t believe his luck when he found it. Since he stumbled over it in a bookshop both he and Luna frequent-Ollivander less frequently, however, since both back and legs are giving him trouble these days-he’s hardly been able to wait for the moment to give it to her. The gleeful anticipation makes him feel almost young again.
He leans back in his chair, looking out of the window, then takes up his writing again.
On another note, I hope your wand is still holding up. In your last letter you expressed a concern about instability during certain Charms-has this resolved itself or is it degenerating? I suspect a chip in the wood which can be easily remedied, should that be the case. We can sort this out when you next come to visit.
I am looking forward to seeing you again, I must say. The garden is growing more beautiful by the day, and I’d love for you to see it. I believe the daffodils have never been so resplendent before.
Well, I mustn’t keep you any longer. Birthdays are always busy days, and I reiterate my wish that yours is both busy and very happy. Enjoy your day and remember that I remain, as always,
Your Mr Ollivander.
Ollivander lays his quill down, letting the paper soak up the last of the ink. Then he rises with some difficulty and passes to his desk for the sealing wax. He pauses and brushes his fingers against the photo of Luna, taken after her finished NEWTS, that stands on top of the desk-his fingers lingering against the glass as if the mere photographic paper has some healing magic of its own.
MARCH 23
It's the twenty-second, and Luna has been baking cookies. It's part of the routine. Tomorrow, she will Apparate to Shell Cottage, where she will have lunch with Bill and Fleur and little Victoire. She will give Victoire a pair of knitted socks-must remember to wrap those in colours to match, turquoise paper and purple string-and Bill and Fleur will receive a box of chocolate-and-ginger cookies. And after lunch, she will ask leave to sit in their garden for a little while, and she will walk to a corner where the grass grows long and talk to Dobby.
Tomorrow is the twenty-third of March, and on this day seven years ago Dobby fell with Bellatrix's knife in his breast.
Luna always remembers him blurrily. Everything happened so quickly, with people shouting and arguing, and there was sudden light in their dank room after all those gloomy, black months and everything was very confusing. One thing stands out, however.
Dobby saved her. He took her fingers and took her away, and then he went back to that place to do it all again. That is what this day is about. It isn't about Harry, who in his desperation to save Hermione grasped a shard of mirror; it isn't about Aberforth Dumbledore, who heard the cry for help-it is about Dobby, who came to them and saved them, a final selfless act at the end of a life spent serving other people's wishes.
Luna never really knew Dobby. She thought he had kind ears, and a funny voice, and she thought immediately that she would like to know him better. She never got the chance.
But she tries, now, to make up for it. She tries to be his friend, even if she never had time to be in his life. She thinks he probably likes new friends. He seemed like that sort of person.
She sits in front of his stone every year on this date, weeding out crabgrass and picking away dead leaves, and she tells him about work and The Quibbler and knitting and anything else that comes into her head. She doesn't bring flowers, but she brings seeds to plant in the soft earth, and when summer comes, Dobby's resting place blooms with lobelia, French marigold and garden cosmos-blue and orange and purple.
It’s difficult. She doesn’t know if he likes lobelias-so many people don’t, lobelia for ill intent and malice-or if he would have wanted to hear about her knitting, and it worries her sometimes. There are so many questions she never got to ask him.
Still, despite it all it’s a special little holiday, soft and bright, and if she thinks hard enough about the light Dobby brought her to, she can almost forget the darkness that was before.
APRIL 1
Teddy has been entering into the spirit of April's Fools Day with all the enthusiasm a soon-to-be seven-year-old can muster (quite a lot), and they've been swamped in fake wands and farting charms all day. Ginny has had a bit better time of it than Harry, at least, since Teddy by strict orders spared her all the noisier or more startling pranks, but she is still exhausted by the time their godson leaves. She leans back in her chair with a sigh, one hand resting on the curve of her belly. They expect him a little after Midsummer, but it's hard to say for certain. There are magical aspects even to the birth of a witch or wizard, and the date of their birth can sometimes shift to reflect their destiny.
(Like the twins, born on this day of jokes.)
Like Luna, who was born on the day of the full moon-a night traditionally associated with madness-and who’s now redefining the borders of sanity, proving the existence of creatures earlier considered to be the dreamed up creations of, hem hem, lunatics. Like Harry, who was born as one month shifted into another, a moment of changing eras, and who was the harbinger of change.
(Like the twins, born into laughter.)
He'll be called James, of course, their son. Harry tentatively suggested Fred as a second name once, when they were discussing the baby's birth, but she shook her head at the idea. She isn't comfortable naming her children after the dead. She can accept James, because neither she nor Harry ever knew his father, and they won't see him in their child. Besides, she knows it's important to Harry.
She doesn’t want to reinvent her brother in her child, however. She sees him often enough in her dreams.
April first is always hardest. It’s impossible to read the Prophet, looking for the fake April Fools story, or watch the children surprise each other with ludicrous pranks, without being reminded of Fred and George and their endless enthusiasm for anything with a startling noise or disagreeable smell.
At the same time, however, there’s something almost restful about being surrounded by laughter for this difficult day.
Soon, it will be time to call George with her congratulations. Ginny rubs the heels of her palms in her eyes and smiles. Fred will never be completely gone, she knows that, and seeing George’s face will always remind her of that.
"Harry?" she calls. "Could you bring the Floo powder?"
APRIL 23
Padma still gets the Prophet. And every year on this day, she still experiences that same jolt she did, seven years ago, when the Prophet landed in front of her at breakfast, and she looked at the date.
The twenty-third of April. 23/4. Two-three-four.
Padma likes patterns, and sequences-loves seeing numbers in series stretch away before her like beads on necklace. When someone gives her their Floo number, she breaks it down into series of equations. When walking on tiled floors, she constructs elaborate patterns for how she ought to step on the different colours.
It was this automatic recognition of a sequence that brought her up short and gave her a pause, and she awoke from the dull horror of everyday life in Hogwarts to see, properly, with eyes and mind open. She remembers how she sat staring at the paper and all its manufactured stories for a long while, taking in the full-scale lie the paper had become, and then finally looked up.
It was probably luck that she managed to catch Parvati’s eye across the crowded hall, just in that moment. In any case, it made up her mind.
When breakfast ended, Padma joined the throng of students and mixed in with the Gryffindors, pushing her way past annoyed students until she could reach Parvati and take her hand. Together they managed to avoid both Carrows and Filch and make it to the seventh floor unobserved, where they paced in front of the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy until the Room of Requirement opened before them.
It hadn’t taken a genius to figure out where Neville and the others had gone, after all (which was lucky, since Terry Boot was in the hospital wing again after another detention).
Things became a little better after that. She dared speak up, for the first time in weeks. She dared cry, too. And best of all, she could laugh again. The mood in the Room of Requirement was one of constant, almost anxious cheer, those last dangerous weeks leading up to the Final Battle-and even if the jokes were brittle and sometimes just short of tearful, they all helped, in their own way.
Just like that day seven years ago, when the date made her stop and reflect, she now pauses on the same date each year. She wonders what would have happened if she hadn’t made the decision that day, to step out of the sham their school had become and into a new world where Neville talked about defiance, his eyes shining. Would she have been one of the students who silently left before the battle had begun? Would she have been one of those who only stayed because the rest did, hiding out in cupboards for the entirety of the battle, screaming to drown out the sounds of hexes and curses reverberating through the air?
Or would she still have stayed, making that tiny bit of difference? She likes to think so, but she can’t gloss over the previous months when she sat, silent and frightened, in classrooms where Alecto Carrow lectured about dirty-blooded Muggles and half-breed scum.
There had been rebellion brewing in her, even then, but the step she took on the twenty-third of April was a hard one, and she can’t help but wonder if she’d had the strength to take it, alone, if she’d been asked to do it when the threat of battle was already in the air.
She voiced these thoughts to Parvati only once, and was rewarded with a smile that seemed brighter than the question merited.
"You would never have been alone," was all she would say, and the hand gripping Padma’s was a reminder of the hand that gripped hers back then-trembling and frightened but warm with the promise of support, always.
MAY 2
They all have different days they remember and honour, different turning points and different memories. And then there is this day. When they never have to mourn alone, and when the smell of rosemary is in the air all around them. Neville keeps a pot of it in his own window and several in the mundane half of Greenhouse One, all enchanted to bloom by May.
On this day, he gets up early. He places one pot with white flowers-Albus-in the faculty room, and he opens the doors to Greenhouse One, laying out small silver scissors for the students to use. And finally he breaks off a twig for himself, pinning it to his robes just above his heart.
He always feels a bit ridiculous doing it. He doesn't need rosemary to remember that day, or the ones that fell-the days he doesn't recall the weight of Colin Creevey, limp in his arms, are rare indeed. But he knows why they do it, and he understands the need. The sprig of rosemary unites them. Together we fought, and together we remember.
Of the students that face him in the Great Hall as he sits down for breakfast on this most memorable of days-all of them with little bundles of green pinned to their breast or tucked into their hair-the oldest were only first-years when the Battle of Hogwarts was fought. But they have all grown up on the stories of the Second Coming of Voldemort, the way Neville did with the First, and they bear their rosemary proudly.
They see him as a hero. He doesn’t exactly know what to do with that (although Luna has been urging him to use it to get essays handed in on time, otherwise a notoriously difficult task).
He steps out into the morning air for a moment before the start of lessons. He breathes in deep, looking out over the grounds. The sun is glimmering on the lake and he finds his eye drawn in the direction of Hogsmeade. He’ll be meeting Ginny and Luna for a drink there later tonight-non-alcoholic in Ginny’s case, something she’s been continually bitter about for the last half year. They try to remind themselves, on this day, of all the victories and all the defeats, too. They’re all painted with bright and shining colours in the press and the commemorative books that have been published since the end of the war, and it’s important to remember that it wasn’t easy, and that in the name of survival, they all did things they can't find it in themselves to be proud of. They weren't plucky rebels or young heroes-they were just children trying to be adults, trying to defend the world they thought was right.
Neville looks back across the lake, then up into the sky. There are a few wispy clouds in the far distance, but right overhead the heavens stretch blue and endless.
It’s going to be a beautiful day, he thinks.
hp_holidaygen was excellent this year as well, with many and varied stories. I really have to sign up in time next year, so I can have a great fic for Christmas present, too!
Anyway, this was my contribution this year: for lyras and inspired by the prompt "exploring minor characters and how they deal with their part in the war".
Title: Commemoration
Characters: Dean Thomas, Mr Ollivander, Luna Lovegood, Ginny Weasley, Padma Patil, Neville Longbottom
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 3500
Summary: They all have different days they remember and honour, different turning points and different memories.
A/N: This fic also found here at hp_holidaygen.
MARCH 18
Every year, Dean Thomas drinks to the dead.
He was self-conscious the first time he did it, awkward and embarrassed, but when he raised his glass in a silent toast to those who had been his companions, he found release of a sort in the act. All at once he felt close to his fellow fugitives again, imagined he could almost see them sitting across from him at the table-and at the same time he fully realised at last that they were gone, and would always be gone. Grief, a year in waiting, finally arrived in earnest. They had been thrown together by mere chance and a shared heritage, but they had become friends of sorts.
The first three years he paid his respects in solitude. He still sends Griphook a note each year before the date, though, asking whether he'd like to join Dean for a drink. He's never received a reply, but it doesn't bother him. He knows Griphook. The lack of an angry note ordering him to stop writing is a reply in itself, and Dean is sure that on some level his effort is appreciated.
When the anniversary of that terrible March day came around for the fourth time, Seamus was visiting from Ireland. Dean felt guilty about leaving him for a visit to the Leaky Cauldron-it's always the Cauldron; when someone asks to be left alone in there, the other patrons know better than to ask why-but Seamus asked instead if he could be allowed to come along.
He has his own ghosts, after all.
So every year on the seventeenth of March, Seamus takes three days off from his Weather Charm shop. He flies to Dublin and from there takes a long-distance Floo to London, and when Dean meets him at the Portal he is invariably muttering about fireplace queues.
"Slow old biddy in front of me today," he'll grumble. "Held up the queue for five minutes looking for her Floo Powder, only to eventually realise she was on the South England gate. Why do they let them out? And what are you going to do about it?"
"Dublin's still in Ireland-" Dean will respond.
"And the Powder prices! Insane!"
"-and I'm still working in the Portkey Office."
"Aren't all you Ministry people sort of the same anyway?"
"Prat."
They have lunch in some restaurant close to Dean's one-room flat, and they have dinner with maybe Neville or Luna. They talk about memories of lessons and professors and Quidditch, and almost nothing about the war. Part of these days, their personal holiday, is just that-remembering everything that is good. And part is what comes later-remembering the bad. They do all of it in each other's company, and even though the support isn't spoken out loud, it is always there.
Seamus never asks Dean who he toasts when they visit the Cauldron, the second night of the stay, just as Dean never asks Seamus what actually happened to his left hand, the fingers of which would never bend properly after the war. Some things are not meant to be relived, and if Dean were to tell Seamus about the ones he remembers this night, he would have to share the story of what happened to them, seven years ago. The green light, the screams, the bodies.
They share the silence instead, comfortable enough with each other that the lack of words doesn't bother them, and Dean raises his glass to the three people occupying the end of the table.
Gornuk. Dirk Cresswell. Ted Tonks.
MARCH 20
My dear Luna, Ollivander writes, congratulations on the anniversary of your birth. When you get to my age and the day for felicitations such as this roll around, you no longer want to reflect on which one in the line it is-but I would think that you as of yet have no such reservations. I will repeat therefore my congratulations with the object of them better defined: Congratulations on your twenty-fourth birthday.
He pauses. Twenty-four. Seven years since this day marked her coming of age, and becoming a witch grown with power over her own life. It's the most important day of a young wizard or witch's life, and is usually an occasion for a great Feast, but they didn't celebrate Luna's as they should at all. In fact, they missed it.
They marked the days in the basement of Malfoy Manor, but only to keep track of when one was over and the next began, and this only because they knew that to lose sense of time was to lose their grip on the world. That way lay despair, and madness.
So tell the days they did, by simple means. They never counted them, however, and so neither Ollivander nor Luna knew that she turned seventeen sitting in a dank and windowless prison, dining on dry bread and a few tomatoes so overly ripe that the musty taste stuck to the roof of their mouths for hours.
Ollivander sucks on his quill for a moment, composing in his head.
Twenty-four, of course, is a magical number in itself. In my day, it was customary to drink twenty-four ounces of Firewhiskey (Ol' Hebredian for preference) for the celebrations of this birthday, but your generation seems to be cleverer than mine...
I hope your birthday has surpassed all your expectations so far and will continue to do so-and I also hope Pallas brings this to you in time to make this wish pertinent. I believe he will make it before teatime, but he is after all getting on in years.
Ollivander smiles, rolling his aching wrist. The "As am I" is there between the lines.
For this reason, he continues, you will not find your birthday gift enclosed. I will not charge Pallas with heavy items these days, since that makes him sulk for days. Rest assured, a package will be arriving by a brawnier Owl later on. I hope you will enjoy it. I will not spoil the surprise, since I know you love them dearly, but I will say that it was procured by a mutual friend of ours. There, I believe that will be tantalising enough, without giving away too much.
It’s an eighth century account of Heliopaths, translated into English from Latin. A rare find, Ollivander couldn’t believe his luck when he found it. Since he stumbled over it in a bookshop both he and Luna frequent-Ollivander less frequently, however, since both back and legs are giving him trouble these days-he’s hardly been able to wait for the moment to give it to her. The gleeful anticipation makes him feel almost young again.
He leans back in his chair, looking out of the window, then takes up his writing again.
On another note, I hope your wand is still holding up. In your last letter you expressed a concern about instability during certain Charms-has this resolved itself or is it degenerating? I suspect a chip in the wood which can be easily remedied, should that be the case. We can sort this out when you next come to visit.
I am looking forward to seeing you again, I must say. The garden is growing more beautiful by the day, and I’d love for you to see it. I believe the daffodils have never been so resplendent before.
Well, I mustn’t keep you any longer. Birthdays are always busy days, and I reiterate my wish that yours is both busy and very happy. Enjoy your day and remember that I remain, as always,
Your Mr Ollivander.
Ollivander lays his quill down, letting the paper soak up the last of the ink. Then he rises with some difficulty and passes to his desk for the sealing wax. He pauses and brushes his fingers against the photo of Luna, taken after her finished NEWTS, that stands on top of the desk-his fingers lingering against the glass as if the mere photographic paper has some healing magic of its own.
MARCH 23
It's the twenty-second, and Luna has been baking cookies. It's part of the routine. Tomorrow, she will Apparate to Shell Cottage, where she will have lunch with Bill and Fleur and little Victoire. She will give Victoire a pair of knitted socks-must remember to wrap those in colours to match, turquoise paper and purple string-and Bill and Fleur will receive a box of chocolate-and-ginger cookies. And after lunch, she will ask leave to sit in their garden for a little while, and she will walk to a corner where the grass grows long and talk to Dobby.
Tomorrow is the twenty-third of March, and on this day seven years ago Dobby fell with Bellatrix's knife in his breast.
Luna always remembers him blurrily. Everything happened so quickly, with people shouting and arguing, and there was sudden light in their dank room after all those gloomy, black months and everything was very confusing. One thing stands out, however.
Dobby saved her. He took her fingers and took her away, and then he went back to that place to do it all again. That is what this day is about. It isn't about Harry, who in his desperation to save Hermione grasped a shard of mirror; it isn't about Aberforth Dumbledore, who heard the cry for help-it is about Dobby, who came to them and saved them, a final selfless act at the end of a life spent serving other people's wishes.
Luna never really knew Dobby. She thought he had kind ears, and a funny voice, and she thought immediately that she would like to know him better. She never got the chance.
But she tries, now, to make up for it. She tries to be his friend, even if she never had time to be in his life. She thinks he probably likes new friends. He seemed like that sort of person.
She sits in front of his stone every year on this date, weeding out crabgrass and picking away dead leaves, and she tells him about work and The Quibbler and knitting and anything else that comes into her head. She doesn't bring flowers, but she brings seeds to plant in the soft earth, and when summer comes, Dobby's resting place blooms with lobelia, French marigold and garden cosmos-blue and orange and purple.
It’s difficult. She doesn’t know if he likes lobelias-so many people don’t, lobelia for ill intent and malice-or if he would have wanted to hear about her knitting, and it worries her sometimes. There are so many questions she never got to ask him.
Still, despite it all it’s a special little holiday, soft and bright, and if she thinks hard enough about the light Dobby brought her to, she can almost forget the darkness that was before.
APRIL 1
Teddy has been entering into the spirit of April's Fools Day with all the enthusiasm a soon-to-be seven-year-old can muster (quite a lot), and they've been swamped in fake wands and farting charms all day. Ginny has had a bit better time of it than Harry, at least, since Teddy by strict orders spared her all the noisier or more startling pranks, but she is still exhausted by the time their godson leaves. She leans back in her chair with a sigh, one hand resting on the curve of her belly. They expect him a little after Midsummer, but it's hard to say for certain. There are magical aspects even to the birth of a witch or wizard, and the date of their birth can sometimes shift to reflect their destiny.
(Like the twins, born on this day of jokes.)
Like Luna, who was born on the day of the full moon-a night traditionally associated with madness-and who’s now redefining the borders of sanity, proving the existence of creatures earlier considered to be the dreamed up creations of, hem hem, lunatics. Like Harry, who was born as one month shifted into another, a moment of changing eras, and who was the harbinger of change.
(Like the twins, born into laughter.)
He'll be called James, of course, their son. Harry tentatively suggested Fred as a second name once, when they were discussing the baby's birth, but she shook her head at the idea. She isn't comfortable naming her children after the dead. She can accept James, because neither she nor Harry ever knew his father, and they won't see him in their child. Besides, she knows it's important to Harry.
She doesn’t want to reinvent her brother in her child, however. She sees him often enough in her dreams.
April first is always hardest. It’s impossible to read the Prophet, looking for the fake April Fools story, or watch the children surprise each other with ludicrous pranks, without being reminded of Fred and George and their endless enthusiasm for anything with a startling noise or disagreeable smell.
At the same time, however, there’s something almost restful about being surrounded by laughter for this difficult day.
Soon, it will be time to call George with her congratulations. Ginny rubs the heels of her palms in her eyes and smiles. Fred will never be completely gone, she knows that, and seeing George’s face will always remind her of that.
"Harry?" she calls. "Could you bring the Floo powder?"
APRIL 23
Padma still gets the Prophet. And every year on this day, she still experiences that same jolt she did, seven years ago, when the Prophet landed in front of her at breakfast, and she looked at the date.
The twenty-third of April. 23/4. Two-three-four.
Padma likes patterns, and sequences-loves seeing numbers in series stretch away before her like beads on necklace. When someone gives her their Floo number, she breaks it down into series of equations. When walking on tiled floors, she constructs elaborate patterns for how she ought to step on the different colours.
It was this automatic recognition of a sequence that brought her up short and gave her a pause, and she awoke from the dull horror of everyday life in Hogwarts to see, properly, with eyes and mind open. She remembers how she sat staring at the paper and all its manufactured stories for a long while, taking in the full-scale lie the paper had become, and then finally looked up.
It was probably luck that she managed to catch Parvati’s eye across the crowded hall, just in that moment. In any case, it made up her mind.
When breakfast ended, Padma joined the throng of students and mixed in with the Gryffindors, pushing her way past annoyed students until she could reach Parvati and take her hand. Together they managed to avoid both Carrows and Filch and make it to the seventh floor unobserved, where they paced in front of the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy until the Room of Requirement opened before them.
It hadn’t taken a genius to figure out where Neville and the others had gone, after all (which was lucky, since Terry Boot was in the hospital wing again after another detention).
Things became a little better after that. She dared speak up, for the first time in weeks. She dared cry, too. And best of all, she could laugh again. The mood in the Room of Requirement was one of constant, almost anxious cheer, those last dangerous weeks leading up to the Final Battle-and even if the jokes were brittle and sometimes just short of tearful, they all helped, in their own way.
Just like that day seven years ago, when the date made her stop and reflect, she now pauses on the same date each year. She wonders what would have happened if she hadn’t made the decision that day, to step out of the sham their school had become and into a new world where Neville talked about defiance, his eyes shining. Would she have been one of the students who silently left before the battle had begun? Would she have been one of those who only stayed because the rest did, hiding out in cupboards for the entirety of the battle, screaming to drown out the sounds of hexes and curses reverberating through the air?
Or would she still have stayed, making that tiny bit of difference? She likes to think so, but she can’t gloss over the previous months when she sat, silent and frightened, in classrooms where Alecto Carrow lectured about dirty-blooded Muggles and half-breed scum.
There had been rebellion brewing in her, even then, but the step she took on the twenty-third of April was a hard one, and she can’t help but wonder if she’d had the strength to take it, alone, if she’d been asked to do it when the threat of battle was already in the air.
She voiced these thoughts to Parvati only once, and was rewarded with a smile that seemed brighter than the question merited.
"You would never have been alone," was all she would say, and the hand gripping Padma’s was a reminder of the hand that gripped hers back then-trembling and frightened but warm with the promise of support, always.
MAY 2
They all have different days they remember and honour, different turning points and different memories. And then there is this day. When they never have to mourn alone, and when the smell of rosemary is in the air all around them. Neville keeps a pot of it in his own window and several in the mundane half of Greenhouse One, all enchanted to bloom by May.
On this day, he gets up early. He places one pot with white flowers-Albus-in the faculty room, and he opens the doors to Greenhouse One, laying out small silver scissors for the students to use. And finally he breaks off a twig for himself, pinning it to his robes just above his heart.
He always feels a bit ridiculous doing it. He doesn't need rosemary to remember that day, or the ones that fell-the days he doesn't recall the weight of Colin Creevey, limp in his arms, are rare indeed. But he knows why they do it, and he understands the need. The sprig of rosemary unites them. Together we fought, and together we remember.
Of the students that face him in the Great Hall as he sits down for breakfast on this most memorable of days-all of them with little bundles of green pinned to their breast or tucked into their hair-the oldest were only first-years when the Battle of Hogwarts was fought. But they have all grown up on the stories of the Second Coming of Voldemort, the way Neville did with the First, and they bear their rosemary proudly.
They see him as a hero. He doesn’t exactly know what to do with that (although Luna has been urging him to use it to get essays handed in on time, otherwise a notoriously difficult task).
He steps out into the morning air for a moment before the start of lessons. He breathes in deep, looking out over the grounds. The sun is glimmering on the lake and he finds his eye drawn in the direction of Hogsmeade. He’ll be meeting Ginny and Luna for a drink there later tonight-non-alcoholic in Ginny’s case, something she’s been continually bitter about for the last half year. They try to remind themselves, on this day, of all the victories and all the defeats, too. They’re all painted with bright and shining colours in the press and the commemorative books that have been published since the end of the war, and it’s important to remember that it wasn’t easy, and that in the name of survival, they all did things they can't find it in themselves to be proud of. They weren't plucky rebels or young heroes-they were just children trying to be adults, trying to defend the world they thought was right.
Neville looks back across the lake, then up into the sky. There are a few wispy clouds in the far distance, but right overhead the heavens stretch blue and endless.
It’s going to be a beautiful day, he thinks.