FIC: Still We Wait, for onehundredmoons
Title: Still We Wait
Author: such_heights
Recipient: onehundredmoons
Prompt: Your own DH epilogue, set only a few hours/days/weeks after the final battle, told either from earth or from the "other side".
Notes: This is set in the "other side" and went a little esoteric, but I hope you still enjoy it, onehundredmoons! It's primarily gen, but some James/Lily and Remus/Sirius features.
The worst thing has always been the waiting. And though time and memory work differently here, I can think of no wait more agonising than after we had taken Harry on his final journey. And though Dumbledore had said Harry would be safe, how could I believe him, after all that we had seen? And so we waited - just the four of us at first, those who had helped him on his way. I have never seen James look the way he did that day. Sirius, too, and Remus - oh, Remus, who should not have been with us at all.
Though, I suppose, none of us ought to be here.
But gradually, we were joined by others - first a few, later by hundreds, perhaps even thousands, magical and Muggle alike, for in waging this war, Voldemort has caused much union here, despite all he sought to undermine. Those who had fallen before we did came, families like the Prewetts, the McKinnons, and those who have recently passed over, too, each time breaking our hearts a little more. Little Dora Tonks, who I remember as such a happy little girl, now seeming so much older, and so grieved. She sat with her father, and neither of them spoke. Severus was also silent, but he joined us, and no one denied him his right to be there.
And then, just when I thought I could not bear to wait a moment more, Dumbledore returned. The murmured conversations fell away to nothing, and James and I stood up and went to meet him. Dumbledore, who had been in that strange half-place between life and death that I have always found too difficult to enter (so many memories, so many voices), smiled a slow smile of release and nodded.
Harry was alive. And I clung on to all my hope with all my might, and then something appeared, something so ugly I could not help but shrink away, but something that Dumbledore told us was all that remained of the man who had once been Tom Riddle.
I half expected a riot, or a panic, but victory broke out all around us, at last true and joyous and final. The thing, that unholy fragment of a soul, gradually crawled away, scrabbling and repulsive. I have not seen it since.
I have not felt such pride and love and happiness as I did that day, not since the day Harry was born. For my son is a hero, and I miss him so terribly. But I will see him again one day, and now there are other things to attend to. Death has not made us saints, nor has it erased all wounds. I fear some breaches are insurmountable. Peter is here now, and I do not know what to feel. James will forgive him, I think, though it may take a millennia, and Sirius never will.
News of the world below is sporadic, for few dare to hover on the crossing, and all that death has finally slowed. For now I am content, and hope that someday soon there will be someone to tell me Harry is all right. James is faring worse than me, just at the moment. He still believes everything that happened was his fault, though Sirius seems determined to wrest that title from him; they both remain as impervious to reason as they were in life, it would seem.
Remus has not told us a great deal of what happened to him in all those years as yet - he seems happy, and I have no desire to press him. There is a gulf of years it will take me a long time to cross. Sirius has had better success, and I fear that both of them have suffered in ways I can scarcely imagine. But slowly, both of them seem to be returning to how they used to be, though neither seems able to believe it.
For in many ways that is what death has brought for all of us: a rejoining of hearts. And as peace rings out in the world we have left, so we may find it here. In life, these will be strange and uncertain times, but there are so many good people who live on to complete our work.
And sometimes someone will join us, sent here by old age or illness, to tell us of their work. I do not believe I will ever stop longing for the toil of life, and I ache to be in the world again, to take part in this grand rebuilding, and I see that same flicker in Sirius' eyes too, always. But we four have each other after all these years, and that will have to be enough.
Author: such_heights
Recipient: onehundredmoons
Prompt: Your own DH epilogue, set only a few hours/days/weeks after the final battle, told either from earth or from the "other side".
Notes: This is set in the "other side" and went a little esoteric, but I hope you still enjoy it, onehundredmoons! It's primarily gen, but some James/Lily and Remus/Sirius features.
The worst thing has always been the waiting. And though time and memory work differently here, I can think of no wait more agonising than after we had taken Harry on his final journey. And though Dumbledore had said Harry would be safe, how could I believe him, after all that we had seen? And so we waited - just the four of us at first, those who had helped him on his way. I have never seen James look the way he did that day. Sirius, too, and Remus - oh, Remus, who should not have been with us at all.
Though, I suppose, none of us ought to be here.
But gradually, we were joined by others - first a few, later by hundreds, perhaps even thousands, magical and Muggle alike, for in waging this war, Voldemort has caused much union here, despite all he sought to undermine. Those who had fallen before we did came, families like the Prewetts, the McKinnons, and those who have recently passed over, too, each time breaking our hearts a little more. Little Dora Tonks, who I remember as such a happy little girl, now seeming so much older, and so grieved. She sat with her father, and neither of them spoke. Severus was also silent, but he joined us, and no one denied him his right to be there.
And then, just when I thought I could not bear to wait a moment more, Dumbledore returned. The murmured conversations fell away to nothing, and James and I stood up and went to meet him. Dumbledore, who had been in that strange half-place between life and death that I have always found too difficult to enter (so many memories, so many voices), smiled a slow smile of release and nodded.
Harry was alive. And I clung on to all my hope with all my might, and then something appeared, something so ugly I could not help but shrink away, but something that Dumbledore told us was all that remained of the man who had once been Tom Riddle.
I half expected a riot, or a panic, but victory broke out all around us, at last true and joyous and final. The thing, that unholy fragment of a soul, gradually crawled away, scrabbling and repulsive. I have not seen it since.
I have not felt such pride and love and happiness as I did that day, not since the day Harry was born. For my son is a hero, and I miss him so terribly. But I will see him again one day, and now there are other things to attend to. Death has not made us saints, nor has it erased all wounds. I fear some breaches are insurmountable. Peter is here now, and I do not know what to feel. James will forgive him, I think, though it may take a millennia, and Sirius never will.
News of the world below is sporadic, for few dare to hover on the crossing, and all that death has finally slowed. For now I am content, and hope that someday soon there will be someone to tell me Harry is all right. James is faring worse than me, just at the moment. He still believes everything that happened was his fault, though Sirius seems determined to wrest that title from him; they both remain as impervious to reason as they were in life, it would seem.
Remus has not told us a great deal of what happened to him in all those years as yet - he seems happy, and I have no desire to press him. There is a gulf of years it will take me a long time to cross. Sirius has had better success, and I fear that both of them have suffered in ways I can scarcely imagine. But slowly, both of them seem to be returning to how they used to be, though neither seems able to believe it.
For in many ways that is what death has brought for all of us: a rejoining of hearts. And as peace rings out in the world we have left, so we may find it here. In life, these will be strange and uncertain times, but there are so many good people who live on to complete our work.
And sometimes someone will join us, sent here by old age or illness, to tell us of their work. I do not believe I will ever stop longing for the toil of life, and I ache to be in the world again, to take part in this grand rebuilding, and I see that same flicker in Sirius' eyes too, always. But we four have each other after all these years, and that will have to be enough.