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1. Three Days Later
Three days after the battle, Harry goes to the Headmaster’s office alone. Ron and Hermione are still down at the memorial site, Fred having just been buried, but Harry had slipped away and into the castle and up the stairs. Hermione would rationalize it if Ron got mad, and Harry had his own reasons he’d explain if Ron pushed. It wasn’t that he couldn’t stand the sight of so many new graves, so many new markers, so many people looking so damned exhausted; it was that everyone who had died, he had known, and it was time that he found out about the people he hadn’t.
Snape’s portrait hangs on the wall near the doorway to the Headmaster’s private chambers. No one’s claimed the spot just yet, so Harry’s alone as he sits and looks up at the picture. Snape sneers at him in a way that is so familiar it almost gets his ire up, but he’s tired and worn and just wants a conversation, even if it is with a portrait.
“Tell me about my mother,” he says quietly.
Snape sneers again and throws back his head, gives Harry a long look down the length of his nose. “And why should I?”
“Because you loved her,” Harry says, as if it’s that easy, “and you protected me because I was her son. Seems only fair that you tell me about her.”
“There’s no such thing as fairness, Potter. You are a ridiculous boy full of foolish notions of the good in people and the decency of the world.”
“Just like my mother,” Harry gambles. He’s only seen the few memories Snape allowed him, but he’s mostly sure he’s right.
“Your mother had more logic and better sense. Which is to say she had some sense.”
“One story,” Harry bargains, “and then I’ll leave you alone to mock the other portraits.”
“And what agreement will we have in regards to your, not unlikely, returning here for another round of pleading for bed time stories?”
“No more than one story every three days.”
“Five days. I’m dead, Potter. I have a right to some quiet in this madhouse.”
“Five days, then,” Harry agrees. “Thank you, Professor.”
“Shut up, Potter, or I won’t tell you a thing.”
“You’ve already told me some.”
“I was, I’ve been told, on my deathbed. It causes foolishness.”
“To die?”
“To believe you can somehow find redemption in the last few seconds of your life.”
Harry leans his shoulders against the big desk at his back and rearranges his legs so that they don’t fall asleep on him. He’s willing to sit as long as it takes. “Would my mother have agreed with you?”
“One story every five days, Potter. That is the agreement. Certainly you have an idea of what you want to hear.”
“Anything’s fine,” and it really is, as long as it’s about her.
“You daft Gryffindor’s never could decide on anything.”
Harry considers rising to the bait, snapping out about Slytherins, seeing if he could get this almost-Snape to deduct House Points from sheer habit. “My mother decided plenty.”
“Your mother had absolutely horrific taste.”
“She was friends with you,” the glare Harry gets for that makes him grin. “Or was that your point?”
“Five points for cheek if I could, Mr. Potter.”
“Yes, sir,” Harry says as Snape settles himself into the chair in his portrait and looks around at the room.
“Stuck here whether I’d care to be or not; I suppose you’ll do for something resembling an intelligent audience for the moment.”
“Thank you, Professor.”
“Quiet, Potter, or I’ll sit here and say nothing at all.”
Harry stays quiet, and after an age, Snape begins his story.
2. Six Months Later
Percy moves home with as little fuss as he can manage. Ron greets him with a pat on the back, Ginny with a hug tighter than he expected, his mother with tears in her eyes, and George just nods once before walking back upstairs. Percy convinces himself that it is completely impossible to hear the click of the door lock from down in the living room.
“He’ll be down for dinner,” his mother says, but Percy doesn’t quite believe her. The will of his mother, strong as it is, is no match for grief. Percy knows; he’s wallowing in it himself.
He settles in as quickly as possible, Apparating to the mostly-rebuilt Ministry with his father every morning because he’s still not sure where else he could work, coming home at night to dinners that are quieter than he remembers, George at the end of the table, staring into his soup or out the window or at nothing at all. Percy’s done some reading about wars in the Muggle world, recognizes George’s expression at the million yard stare. He has no way of explaining it to his parents without having to explain what made him search for such information in the first place. Instead, he goes up to George’s room one night, knocks once, and then opens the door, slightly surprised to find it unlocked.
“George?” He says to the shadows because the lamps aren’t lit, and he remembers all the booby traps from his youth. There’s a rustle and a creak, and Percy looks to the far wall, remembering the set up of the twins’ room. Fred’s bed was ninety degrees from George’s, set up so that their heads almost touched.
“What?” George says, in a scratchy, dry voice that makes Percy realize he hasn’t heard him say a word in days.
“May I come in?”
“Sure.”
Percy hesitates, trying to see the floor, to plan his path. “Could I light a lamp? I’m nearly certain there’s something amongst the debris on your floor that will explode near me.” Percy gets no answer, but he lights the lamp anyway, almost hoping he’ll goad George into some reaction. The floor, he discovers, is covered in debris, but it’s not jokes or gags or anything explosive; it’s torn up Extendable Ears and scattered boxes of Nosebleed Nougat and Fever Fudge. There are snapped quills and destroyed copies of “Caring for your Pygmy Puff: 14 Steps to a Brighter Bit of Fluff”. Percy steps around the worst of it, doesn’t look down when he crunches something under his heel, and finally comes to stand in front of George’s bed. “May I?”
“I don’t care.”
And that’s probably more true than Percy wants to consider, but he sits down at the foot of George’s bed and waits to see if George will emerge from his blankets.
“What do you want, Percy?” There’s a hard edge to the tone, and Percy sees it as a minor triumph. He considers the best place to start and discards it, knowing now, more than ever, is a bad time to trust any logic he’s ever used over the years.
“I remember the first war,” he finally says. “I remember you and Fred running about in a ramshackle house outside of London. Mum and I had taught you two to play without yelling. You played tag in a whisper. You splashed each other in the tub without a word, and you used to sneak into my room very late and curl up on top of the covers. I’d wake up, and you’d be at the foot of the bed.” There’s a long silence, but Percy doesn’t add to his story. He watches George twist around under the blankets, watches his head come up, watches the eyes that watch him warily.
“What’s your point, Percy?” No teasing, no taunting, nothing but the question. It makes Percy ache deep in his chest.
“I thought, perhaps, that you didn’t have that memory and that, maybe, you would like it.” Percy looks down at his shoes and at the floor and anywhere but George. It is incredibly difficult to look him in the eyes when there’s no one really looking out of them.
“Where were Bill and Charlie?”
“Hogwarts, locked away. And Ron was just a baby, and Ginny wasn’t born yet, of course.”
“And Dad?”
Percy’s gut twists, and he remembers a very dark and scary night when his father came home after being gone and there was blood on his face that didn’t belong to him. The cheerfulness of the last handful of years has always struck Percy as slightly desperate. “Dad worked for the Order,” he finally said.
“And Fred and I?” There’s a crack in George’s voice that Percy ignores. It’s not the crack that’s important, it’s the emotion behind it.
“You were brave,” Percy says and stands. “Natural talent for it, I suppose.” He reaches out and pushes the hair off George’s forehead, blinks back tears when he sees them in George’s eyes. “Natural talent for lots of things.”
“Sure,” George says with no conviction but also no bitterness.
“Good night, George.”
“Night, Percy.”
It’s three more months before George finally says anything at the dinner table, before his eyes focus back into the moment. His first words are to Percy, and Percy feels like he’s won something when George looks up, halfway through dessert, and asks quietly, “How’s the cauldron bottom legislation?”
“Not quite the issue it used to be,” Percy responds, the smile at the edges of his mouth just barely echoed along George’s face. “And how are you?”
3. Three Weeks Later
The repairs on Hogwarts are going more quickly than Neville had expected. It helps, he thinks, that Hermione is running the schedules. The Hogwarts Express, by comparison, runs on a looser time frame. Neville smiles as Hermione rushes over, arms loaded with parchment, a quill between her teeth, wand hanging from the pocket of her robe and just nearly falling out thanks to her brisk walk.
“There you are!” She says as though she hasn’t seen him in days. They’d just had breakfast two hours before. “How are the greenhouses?”
“Looking fine, thank you. They weren’t a direct focus of any attack, so the repairs are mostly complete already. And I just spoke to the group on the south lawn, and they believe the back turrets will be back to standing before the end of the day.”
“Wonderful!” Hermione drops all her papers onto the table she’s had brought from the castle so that she and Neville can coordinate things without so much racket. “And the squid?”
“Doing well. Remind me to thank Charlie for the name of someone to check in on it.”
“I will. And how are you?” It is the same question she asks every morning at this meeting, and Neville has been feeding her a careful dose of the truth for days. He watches her push the hair from her face and tie it back and considers how he really feels.
“Is it wrong,” he asks carefully, “to feel good right now?”
Hermione pauses in unrolling parchments and cocks her head at the question. “What do you mean?”
“I mean…I think…I just…” Neville scratches the back of his head and watches a group of wizards levitate a piece of the west wall into its proper position. It’s a like a jigsaw puzzle, he thinks, the castle and how he feels. “I’m grateful that everything’s over, of course, and I’m sad that we lost so many friends, but I’m not angry that any of it happened.” He doesn’t miss the sidelong glance Hermione spares him as she marks something on a set of plans. “I was just an awkward boy,” he tries to better explain, “and because of all this horrible business I feel like a different person, but it’s a good feeling, like I’ve finally lived up to something.”
“Neville, what did you ever have to live up to?” Hermione asks, the affection in her tone making his heart thump a little harder than necessary.
“My parents,” Neville says, “the great Aurors of the first war.” There’s no malice in his tone, only simple fact.
“And here you sit, Neville Longbottom, having pulled the sword of Godric Gryffindor out of the Sorting Hat, having killed the final Horcrux of Lord Voldemort, having brought back from the darkness Harry Potter, whose job it was to end everything, and who couldn’t have done it unless you had been noble and brave and intelligent.” Hermione sets down her quill and pushes the papers out of her way and reaches for Neville’s hands.
“The war didn’t make you, Neville. The war just helped you refine yourself. It did the same thing to all of us. It’s something that happens when you end up fighting for the right of the world whether you meant to or not. Harry set out to do it because he believed it was destiny. Ron and I went with him because we attached ourselves to that destiny. You did everything you did because you thought it was right and that it was good and that it was just what a good person does. Those aren’t things that you get in a war; those are things you get when you’re born, and no matter the fame of your parents, no matter the expectation of your grandmother, you would have done them anyway, even if you’d been no more than plain-old Neville Longbottom, with no history at all to push you forward.”
Neville just looks into her eyes for a minute, lets her truth wrap around him tightly, and lets himself realize that she’s right. “Are those the kinds of speeches you gave Harry while you all were away?”
Hermione laughs and squeezes Neville’s hands before letting go. “Harry requires yelling.”
That makes Neville laugh as Hermione reorganizes her papers and gets them back to work.
4. The Morning After
Minerva feeds everyone on the front lawn. The dead are still in the Great Hall, and she will not move them for something so trivial as breakfast. She smiles at the house elves as they move to a fro, still surprised that they’re still here and working and not run away as soon as they’d gotten the chance. She wonders on loyalty and what it means to them and then starts considering how to ask.
“Minerva,” Pomona has come up to her left, two mugs of tea in her hands. “You have to eat, too.”
“Of course.” She takes the tea, sips, and plucks a piece of toast from the nearest tray. “We’ll have to rebuild.”
“Don’t worry on it now.” Pomona’s hand is warm on Minerva’s arm, and she smiles a little at the dirt under the fingernails. “Let’s take this one step at a time. We’ll get them fed, and then we’ll start discussing how best to handle burials, and then we’ll worry about rebuilding. The castle can stand a few days with some dings.”
Minerva snorts at the word ‘dings’, as though the castle had merely been mildly attacked and not fully invaded. “The Astronomy Tower is in pieces, Pomona.”
“Those pieces have no plans to escape, Minverva.”
She has a point, and Minerva huffs and nibbles at her toast while watching the crowd on her lawn. There are places that are quiet and places that are sad and places that are louder and places where chairs remain empty as though the person sitting next to it expects their friend to walk out the door. Minerva sees the Weasleys and looks away, doesn’t want to think about what it will mean to them to lose Fred. She spots Harry, sitting with Neville and his gran and wonders if he’ll even remember that he has time to mourn now. He can remember Remus and Tonks and Colin if he likes. He can even walk away from the crowd that’s beginning to gather and cry alone somewhere secret. But he sits there and answers questions, lets people pat his back and muss his hair, and she wonders if he’ll ever know how not to give every last inch of himself to people who need him to do the impossible.
“Do you remember,” Pomona starts in a tone meant to draw out Minerva, “the first day he arrived? Those pants of his trailing out from under his robe, they were so big?”
She does remember, and it makes her smile. “And Hermione already knowing spells, and Ron scared to death because of his brothers.”
“And Neville, and that toad of his.” Pomona laughs lightly, elbows Minerva gently in the ribs. “It’s over, you know. We can relax just a wee bit this morning.”
Minerva thinks of the dead in the Great Hall, of the injured in the rooms beyond, of the crumbling parts of the castle and the need for damage checks throughout. They’ll have to replace a handful of teachers and make sure all the armor is back at its posts, and there’s a new Headmaster or mistress to consider. Nevermind whatever’s being done at the Ministry right this instant. Pomona digs her elbow in again, and Minerva shakes herself out of her thoughts. “Fine, yes, perhaps a touch of relaxation.”
“That wasn’t so terribly difficult, was it?” Pomona walks away, a smile on her face.
“Agreeing is never difficult,” Minerva mumbles to herself as she looks for a tea tray. “It’s the follow-through that’ll be the trick.”
5. One Year Later
Ron makes it a point to be home before the others. He finds his mom in the kitchen and hugs her tight, listens to the hitch in her breathing that means she’s trying, yet again, not to cry, and he feels like the weakest man in the world, the boy who can’t take care of his mother. “I miss him,” he says, because there’s nothing else to say.
“Oh, honey, I know.” And Molly stands on her toes to kiss his forehead and swats him towards the table. “Get the plates, would you? I still don’t think I’ll have enough .”
“Hermione said her parents could bring some.”
“That’s right. I’ll have to remember to thank them.”
Ron sees, from the corner of his eye, the way his mother’s hands shake as she reaches for the kettle. “Mum?” He asks quietly, not wanting to press too hard. It’s bad enough every other day, but this day makes it especially hard.
“George went to the shop today,” she says as quietly as Ron’s question. “And Percy’s at the Ministry with your father, and Ginny is over at Diagon Alley for a team meeting, and Bill and Fleur are at work at Gringott’s and Charlie’s probably somewhere with the dragons, and you’ve been out at Auror training all day, and I’ve been here in this house.” She turns from the stovetop and shakes her head. “It’s foolishness, but the house seems so huge today. Your father and I, we used to joke about the walls crumbling from the noise and the weight of the lot of you. And once the twins started experimenting-“ She places a hand over her mouth and closes her eyes. Ron can see every moment of pain she’s been through in the past year, and it makes Ron grateful that he and Hermione called it off, that there’s no worry of children to lose anywhere in his future at this moment, when the pain of that loss is practically another person in the room.
“Mum,” Ron says as he steps up and wraps his arms around her. He’s a full head taller and then some, so he tucks his cheek against her hair and thinks of being young and foolish while she cries quietly on his shoulder. He reminds himself that he showed up early for just this reason, and he lets himself cry too. It’s not that anyone coming for dinner would be surprised, it’s that for all the grief he has, this is the one that burns the most terribly. And for all his friends and siblings and even his dad, he wanted his mum. He is, he supposes, still just a little kid with a skinned knee in a couple of ways he hadn’t considered.
“Enough,” Molly says and pushes away. She wipes at her eyes and looks up at her son and taps the end of his nose. “Go wash your face. They’ll be here soon.”
Ron smiles and runs upstairs and by the time he’s back, the house is starting to fill with people. Ginny gets there first, stumbling out of the fireplace and brushing soot off her nose. Then it’s Percy and Dad Apparating into the living room followed by Bill and Fleur arriving at the front door, then Charlie at the back, removing his boots because they’re smeared with something unpleasant. Harry arrives by broom, landing effortlessly and giving Ron the kind of full-body, best friend hug he’s been needing all day. Hermione shows up in a car with her parents, plates stacked carefully on her lap, and her parents’ eyes wide at the sight of the Burrow. George is last, arriving by Floo and shocking the Doctor’s Granger with his sudden entrance. He has a small cake, bright green with a gold ‘F’ in the center, and he places it in the middle of the table as they all sit down to eat in the bright backyard. They’re halfway through the main course when the cake suddenly whistles, spins, and explodes over the lot of them, the icing falling in decorative script on everyone’s shirts, proclaiming Percy a “prat” and Harry a “horror” and calling Molly “magnificent”. There’s quiet all around the table as everyone stares and then, softly, George explains.
“It was Fred’s idea. He had the whole kit planned out. I thought it’d be nice to have, a little piece of him, you know?”
Ron is almost certain that he is about to cry. He picks up his wand and levitates the icing off his front, considers the pure silence at the table, and flings the icing straight at George, hitting him square in the nose. “I would have expected a vomit-inducing candy.”
“Made those already,” George says with a smile, and launches into an explanation for the Doctors’ Granger, who look confused and nervous and no small amount of sympathetic. Parents, Ron guesses, understand loss even if they haven’t experienced it themselves.
They stay up late, fireflies twinkling amongst the lamps, and tell each other stories. Of Fred, of Remus and Tonks, of Sirius and Cedric and Albus Dumbledore and James Potter and Severus Snape, even. They tell the stories, presumably to the Grangers, who have only heard Hermione’s versions. They talk about Neville and Luna and Dean and Seamus. Of Lee Jordan and Kingsley Shacklebolt and Dobby the House Elf. All of it to the Grangers but really to each other, and when they reach the point where they have exhausted themselves and the time, they all say goodnight and hug goodbye and Ron stays later than the rest to kiss his mother on the forehead and tell her to sleep.