Work Text:
Do you want to hear about the things after the war? The things we were never told about, the gaps our minds were left to fill?
Because nineteen years later, maybe the wizarding world was okay. Harry Potter will have three children named after the people he'll never forget and his scar would not have hurt him in all those years. Ginny will fulfil her lifelong dream of playing Quidditch professionally, before switching to journalism without telling a single soul that there's something soothing about being able to control the words that appear on the page. Ron will joke about his fame, Hermione will fret about her two children. Bill Weasley will stare down Teddy Lupin when he hears about him spending too much time with his eldest daughter in the shadows, and Percy will kiss his Muggle wife when he comes home from work. George will name his son after his twin brother and he will smile instead of cry when he calls his name. Neville Longbottom will become a professor and shield students from loneliness. Luna will have twins with a man who never once makes fun of her. Daphne's little sister will gently sweep Draco Malfoy off his feet and it's a coincidence, really, when their son ends up in the same year as one of Potter's.
But nineteen years is a lot and no one talks about what happens before that.
This is what happens:
The first thing Harry Potter does when the Battle is over and he has seen everything he has needed to is to sleep. He wants to help, he wants to help clean up the wreckage and heal all these people and look for more bodies, but it is McGonagall, who has watched this boy grow up since he was eleven and even before that too, that demands he rests. The Gryffindor tower is not much of a tower anymore, but he still trails his feet up to the half-broken Common Room and closes his eyes.
When he wakes, it's to a blur of ginger hair leaping over him and a sickening crunch.
By the time his wand is pointed at the disturbance, Ginny Weasley has bleeding knuckles and there's a man in dark robes lying unconscious on the floor with his wand beside him.
Hermione, who has awoken from underneath Ron's arm in the commotion, volunteers to levitate him to the Great Hall. When the temporary Minister of Magic Kingsley Shacklebolt tells them that the man is not a Death Eater, but merely another one put under the Imperius curse to kill him, Harry wipes the blood off of Ginny's hands and thanks her.
The Weasley family return to their childhood home, sans a member. Arthur's glasses are askew as always, but he does not care as he rubs a hand to his face in exhaustion. His wife can barely make it to the door and she cries when she stands in the hallway, staring at the marks her fourth son had once made when he blew something up on a wall. Fleur Delacour, only she's a Weasley too now, will hold her mother-in-law and guide her to bed, and they will continue crying together. Percy has ghost-filled eyes as he steps into a house he has not called home for years, and he stops breathing for a moment because it all looks the same as it had once been when he received his Hogwarts letter for the very first time. Ginny has hard lines on her face and fists constantly ready to fight, her eyes refusing to ever let the tears fall. Her hands shake as they hold onto the bannister for support. They sit around a table made for four, really, and Arthur put an Extension charm on it years ago, but there's always been elbowing for space. This time, there are three empty seats. Fred is gone and, in essence, so is George, at the moment. They were never allowed to sit next to Percy, who they (had) found most fun to wind up, so there's an empty seat next to Arthur and Bill, too. Charlie goes to talk to Percy when he is standing in the middle of the living room looking at nothing, and he tries so hard. He sits at the beginning of a dinner that Molly has bled all her mourning into, but his fingers waver so bad that he cannot pick up his fork and he excuses himself.
This Weasley table isn't just for Weasleys anymore, though. There's Fleur dolling out mash potatoes dutifully, and Harry in a seat that has always been his from the moment Ron wrote a letter to his parents mentioning a boy that doesn't really have a place to call home. Hermione Granger pushes her vegetables around back and forth on her plate, and she does not say a word about the parents she has yet to retrieve.
In a few years, Andromeda Tonks will visit, alone except for a baby clutching at her wrist so often that there's an honoury place for her too. Percy will bring back a Muggle girl called Audrey, who will blink in surprise when a gnome bites her ankle in the garden. Before long, she'll be a regular as well, but she's a bright girl and, honestly, the Weasleys aren't exactly subtle about magic, not in the slightest. Arthur will get excited and she will be another amused person to answer his eager questions on electricity. Angelina Johnson will sit where Fred once would've, except for holidays and special occasions, when she'd move and conjure a different chair up to leave that one empty without even needing to be asked. She knew a degree of pain in losing him as well. Less than two decades later, there will be a whole army of grandchildren for Arthur and Molly to love, crowding around the same table, and there'll always be a hole in Molly's heart for her lost son, but there will never be a shortage of family offering to patch it up for her.
But, right now, there's subdued silence, because is there anything really worth celebrating when they've lost so much?
There are trials for all Death Eaters and those who followed Voldemort. Not many are going to get off, of course, but, well. It's Kingsley Shacklebolt who enforces this. And there's a deceased man who used to have red on his tie and loyalty embedded in his fur on his mind, Kingsley doesn't think he'll ever forget. It's supposed to be a better world, is it not? The innocent, the wrongly convicted Muggleborns and traitors, are cleared out of Azkaban, with only broken minds and coldness in their bones left.
The three Malfoys have separate trials. Narcissa is not a Death Eater, but she was in Voldemort's inner circle, had her family and home overrun by darkness. She was cleared of all charges when Harry claimed she saved his life, saved the wizarding world in doing so. She does not tell him that she did not do it for him, nor for anyone else but her son. She thinks he knows and vouched for her anyway.
Draco Malfoy is a shadow of a boy, not quite a man either. His cheekbones are hollow, dark circles under his eyes, and there's a tattoo of a skull on his forearm. His wand trembled over a year ago, holding it up against the headmaster of his school, but is it enough? Is that vulnerable moment of doubt enough?
'Just a boy, just a boy,' echoes in Harry's head, because he was (is) one too. Here's the difference: Draco has a family to protect, whereas Harry has none (except he does; he has the Weasleys and Hermione, and that's his own special family).
Outside the courtroom, Draco sticks out his hand again like he did when he was eleven, unable to meet Harry's eye, and says thank you. This time, Harry takes it. He turns next to Hermione, who has her hand clasped in Ron's, and in a single word of 'sorry', the Golden Trio sees the true force of it. They do not question why he apologises only to Hermione because they know that, by apologising to her, the girl that has had to take the brute of it all, the girl that lay on the floor of a house that was no longer his and had his aunt torture her over and over again, the Mudblood he has always claimed to so violently hate, means that this is a new world and Draco Malfoy is sorry.
Once his son and wife are dropped of all charges, it is Lucius Malfoy's trial that causes the most controversy. He is not Narcissa, who has a forearm that is clear and bare. He is not his son, forced by the hand of his childhood torn away from him and his family threatened. He is himself, who had prejudices of his own and followed a leader he thought who would rid the world of those he hated.
Harry does something he never thought he'd do. He vouches for all three of the Malfoys. And when you're the Boy Who Lived and stopped this war, the influence this one boy (man) has is startling. Hermione helps him. Because she has been fighting for justice and fairness and, well. They did defect in the last moments of the war. She holds an understanding for Narcissa and she grew up with Draco. Lucius, she has no pity for, but she trusts Harry's judgement, she supposes she always will. She thinks that Harry is a better person than she can ever dream to be. Ron sits in between Harry and Hermione in the courtroom, but he does not volunteer his view. He is merely there for the support of his best friends and nothing else. He does not apologise for this. He does not need to.
The day the Daily Prophet announces this news, Katie Bell is sitting in a bar with Angelina and Alicia. Her hand clenches so painfully that her nails dig into her skin, and she demands a shot, throwing it back as quickly as she can. When Angelina gets worried because Katie has a sudden headache that they all know has nothing to do with alcohol, Katie laughs, bitterly, and blames a Death Eater who once passed her a cursed necklace.
After Angelina returns home, with a drunk Katie and Alicia in tow, and they all settle into her bed, like they once did in their Gryffindor days, she dreams of ginger hair and dancing and laughing until she feels sick, and she wakes up in the middle of the night with tear-stained cheeks. Alicia grips her hand, anchor-like, because Alicia didn't even get to sleep, she spends nights gazing at the ceiling with nothing but her own haunting thoughts.
There are too many funerals. There are heroes who had fallen in the Battle (that is how Rita Skeeter puts it in her writing, everyone is too angry to correct how glamorous she made it sound), but there are also those lost during the reign of Voldemort and never had the chance to bury their loved ones. Some are closed caskets, some are empty.
Remus and Tonks are buried together, next to a grave made for Ted Tonks. Andromeda attends with a baby who is too young to realise what is going on. She is forced to bury her husband (a body never found), her daughter and her son-in-law in one go. She does not crumble, not in front of all these people, because she might not be a Black anymore, but she knows how to hide emotions from the world. Her whole family is dead, all except her grandson, all by herself, and it is this. It is this that she had feared in the first war when she first eloped with Ted.
-- Is it still family when she is standing alone, having passed Teddy to his godfather, in front of the three graves and turns to see a sister she has not spoken to in years? Narcissa has sharp lines, whereas Andromeda has softer ones (Bellatrix is nothing but rot six feet below, the one to have killed her not-sister's only daughter), but the woman is the same, the same as the girl Andromeda once knew.
''Narcissa," Andromeda says haltingly. "What are you doing here?"
"That's my brother-in-law, my niece and her husband," she replies, nodding towards the graves.
Something stirs in the older woman, anger perhaps, but it's replaced by that flat feeling again. "You did not answer my question."
"I'm here to apologise, Andy," Narcissa says softly. "I'm here to make up for what I lost."
Andromeda does not know what to say. She had been cast out, all those years ago, for falling in love. Andy and Cissy (and Bella, too, they cannot forget that either) had all played tea parties and talked and held hands once, but they had chosen to ignore that when they disowned their sister. Narcissa did not get to see Andromeda get married, or get pregnant, or visit her baby niece. She was not there when Nymphadora Tonks got married or got pregnant, either. She was not there when her sister lost her husband. They had missed years, decades of each other's lives. Is this still family?
There's a long silence, and Andromeda realises Narcissa's hands are shaking. She takes a deep breath, swallowing years of resentment. Not abandonment, though; she was not abandoned, she had left with her own free will. This is important to her. "Would you like to see my grandson?"
When Narcissa visits Andromeda and Teddy regularly, occasionally with Draco, they do not talk about their remaining sister who took almost everything away from the darker-haired witch. But they do talk about Ted and Nymphadora and even Remus. They talk about the future, not the past.
(Yes. Yes, it's still family.)
Harry attends as many of these funerals as he can. He does not admit it, but his best friends know that it is because he feels responsible for every single one of the deaths. No one can convince him otherwise, not when he's on his knees in front of Colin Creevey's grave and muttering apologies until his throat is raw. Ginny's by his side, unshed tears along the edges of her eyes because he was a housemate, he was in her year, he was a friend somewhat. Because the little boy had annoyed them all once upon a time, but he was brave and he was sunlight and he was one of the ones that represented what they were all fighting for.
Dennis lets out a scream as they lower his brother into the ground. The sound bursts a new hole into everyone's heart. Harry Potter is not his hero, Colin is (was), because they were the two Muggleborn brothers; magic couldn't even separate them, against all odds, and the Gryffindor boy with the camera is gone.
It's hard. Everything is hard. Lavender Brown has always been pretty, she knows it and she embraces it. Makeup was hardly permitted at Hogwarts, but there has always been streaks of colour on her eyelids and lips daubed with shades of pink. Her dark hair crowned her like a halo. Parvati told her once, when they sat on her bed in their dorm, that she wished her hair was like that. Lavender had smiled, perfect teeth showing as she reached to plait her best friend's own long hair. All those years ago, Hermione Granger had complained as the other girl took too long in the bathroom, too long in front of the mirror.
These days, this pretty girl cannot look in a mirror. The first time, she screamed so loud, the sound rang in her head for hours on end. The second time, she broke the glass on sight with her fist and perfectly manicured nails. Her eyes effortlessly avert when she passes shop windows, because she cannot stand it. She cannot stand that she is no longer beautiful. Hermione may have stopped Greyback from killing the girl, but, God, it's almost so much worse. Greyback did not attack her on a full moon and it is this reason that makes her so much similar to Bill Weasley. Her face is not as torn up as it was when the Healers got to her. There are only scars and streaks of lines on her face. There is only the feel of the werewolf's disgusting breath and teeth grazing on her cheeks, her neck.
The Healers tell her that she will be fine. They tell her that she can live an almost normal life. Parvati visits everyday at St. Mungo's; small pleasures like this seize at Lavender's heart. When Harry, Ron and Hermione come to see her a few months after the Battle, Ron tells her that she should talk to his oldest brother.
She does not. She lives in in denial for the first year. After that, talking to Bill, to someone who understands, makes things easier. Lavender sits at the table of Shell Cottage for dinner, her legs expertly crossed in a skirt with little baby Victoire on her lap, as Fleur serves them meat that doesn't look quite cooked. At fourteen, Lavender idolised Fleur Delacour because she was beautiful. Now, Lavender idolises her because Fleur Delacour, she finds out, left France for a life here, because the older woman fought in a Battle that never had to be hers, because she was so much more than beautiful. Lavender thinks looking at Fleur should have hurt, to look at what she has lost. One day, Fleur holds a mirror in front of the former Gryffindor girl and Lavender does not cry.
Hermione Granger does. Hermione cries in the way Ginny never allowed herself to, after a diary took half her soul when she was in first year. Hermione cries and no one will laugh at her for being weak. They might have, years ago when they were only fifteen and stupid. They would have scoffed at the tears on Cho Chang's cheeks, of the girl who lost a boyfriend too young, and they would have called her emotional. They would have seen the Ravenclaw girl crying during mealtimes, with a tissue pressed against her eyes in the bathrooms. They would see all of this and laugh -- not cruelly. But because they did not understand. Less than five years later, when they're sitting around a dinner table and someone mentions Australia, Hermione will drop her fork like Cho once did and no one will fault her for the tears that run down her face. Because this is a different world now, they are not as naive, and they will think about Cho Chang and the hole left in her heart at an age no older than fifteen herself, and they will all be sorry.
(Hermione seeks Marietta Edgecombe out afterwards. Apologises for scarring the older girl in a temper tantrum of a fifteen year old girl, herself, angry because the world was not in black and white. Picks up her wand and tries not to throw up at the flinch Marietta does her best to conceal. Tries so very hard to use all the spells and knowledge she can to clear up the word SNEAK scratched across the other girl's nose.)
Hermione never had the word 'Mudblood' carved into her skin, but she did have her mind tortured. She wakes up from nightmares with her heart pounding and her head aching. Hermione pretends that she does not have panic attacks late at night and does not sleep unless she had a potion. She thinks about her own screaming, ringing in her ears. These nights, she is startled awake with Ron's arms around her and her back pressed against his chest, and she breathes.
Only the dead sleep, didn't you know?
And some days, there are lingering parts of Ginny Weasley's mind that reminds her that her head hadn't always contained only her. There are thoughts that paint themselves black, that she wouldn't tell anyone, not even Harry. These days, she wakes up from nightmares with a scream ripping from her throat. These days, she has a hand tucked under her pillow clenching a wand and she mutters, "You can't have me, Tom, I won't let you." And, really, that's another form of bravery, being able to stand up your demons.
And one day, Ginny gets tired. She's tired of ghosts and demons and dragons to slay. The war is over, but she's still fighting; is that fair? One day, she picks up a pair of scissors and she cuts her hair. The ginger locks fall to the floor, one by one, and there's a triumphant feeling in her chest. Molly cries when she sees it, and Ginny thinks she's going to force her to regrow it when she picks up her wand, but she only tidies it up, letting the wisps curl around her ears. When she looks in the mirror again, she is reminded of Tonks' spiky, purple hair, and her heart aches. Ron blinks at her when he sees it, and George ruffles her hair, and Harry grins.
Hermione smiles when Ginny shows her, boldly and proudly. In the bathroom that night, she also raises a pair of scissors to her own hair. Big, bushy hair has always been a part of Hermione Granger, and it's for this reason exactly that she wants to cut it off. She doesn't, though. Her hand lowers and she only trims the ends. Ginny hugs her fiercely when she walks out of the bathroom, because they can deal with their monsters in different ways and that's okay.
Tom Riddle will never completely leave Ginny. She knows this. She knows this, but she has gotten used to ignoring the darkness threatening to consume her from the inside. Harry has darkness in him too, the Horcrux in him gone, but he will forever be linked with Lord Voldemort; killing him did not change that. They are both terrified and worried and angry, but they will live. They will live.
In the future, Harry will accept an offer to the Aurors program, as will Ron. Hermione will politely decline, think about how her bones already carry too much war, and she will take her seventh year in Hogwarts a year later than she should have. After that, she will climb her way to Head of Magical Law Enforcement. Ginny will stand side-by-side with Luna and Hermione to finish her school years too, and she will do her best to enjoy it. She will become one of the Holyhead Harpies' best Chasers in history, switching career paths when she's had enough to rival Rita Skeeter's articles in the news. Luna will flit around for a while and continue her father's ambition of finding creatures that haven't yet been found. There's a new confidence in Neville now, but he is tired and will pursue a career in plants, the one thing that he is ever known to always been good at --- he doesn't think he'll like teaching, and yet, there's something brilliant about making kids smile instead of cry the way Snape once made him. Hannah Abbott will serve drinks at the Leaky Cauldron and greet new comers into this world with a smile, Dean will paint the world whilst Seamus watches, Pansy Parkinson will move to France for a brief amount of time. Padma will fly in the ranks of the Ministry, her twin starting her own business.
But this is not about the future. This is about now.
This is about older Aurors, who fancy themselves better, laughing in the face of Fay Dunbar and other trainee Aurors who had fought in the war. When a hand clamps down on Fay's shoulder from behind during a practise and she screams, her wand flying out in front of her, they laugh and do not know any better. They call them children and belittle what they went through the Carrows' reign during that dreaded year at Hogwarts. Fay is not sorry when she grits her teeth and punches them in the face; she is only sorry when she is suspended from the Aurors program.
This is about how Hermione hates everything being handed to her in a gift-wrapped box. The Ministry offers her position after position and she declines them all. She does not want a place because she is Harry Potter's best friend. She does not want a place because she is the Brightest Witch of her Age. She wants a place by earning it. She wants a place where she worked, skin and bone, to get herself there. When she's finally Head of Magical Law Enforcement, it takes her three times as long as it could have. She does not care.
This is about Hannah's bitter smile when first year Muggleborns wander into Diagon Alley with eyes bright, clutching onto their mother's hand. Her mother had taken her shopping for Hogwarts too, once upon a time. Now, she only lies six feet below. She sees other Muggleborns as well, eyes weary as they re-enter a world they were thrown out of for the last year. She thinks about Justin Finch-Fletchley, and she wipes the glasses on the counter instead of her eyes.
This is about, when these retired soldiers (children, these children) return to Hogwarts, every single student can see that the carriages pulling them up to school are no longer horseless. Hermione and Ginny, who have never been able to see it until now, gasp when they see them for the first time. Luna holds each of their hands as she pulls them along. They should have expected it. It still hits them as hard.
Hogwarts is not the same. It will take decades for it to hold the same magic as it once did. All the students in the school now have been raised during wartime, witnessed it with their own two eyes. Walking to lessons had been a war march, every spoken word had been a war cry. They spent the last months living with the Devil's servants, and they cannot forget this now. How many generations until this changes too?
Minerva McGonagall is an old woman. She does not deny this, she will lift her chin and say so with unwavering pride. Minerva thinks there are many other ways to being old. She is old because she has lived longer than most people she knows, and she feels it in the wrinkles on her face and the stiffness of her body. She knows she is also old because she has lived through two wars, and she is still here, she is still teaching generations of children with parents she also once taught, and she feels this in the dull aches of her heart and chaos of memories she has collected in her mind over the years.
She looks at Harry Potter, sees not only James' young face and Lily's startling eyes, but a bravery in himself that he has earned, sees a boy with the weight of the world thrust upon him until he is battered and bruised, sees a boy, sees a boy, sees a boy.
They tell her he is not a boy. He is a man. She tells them to call them all men. She tells them, call twenty-one-year-old James Potter a man, who stood straight-backed to face the Dark Lord by himself without a wand. She tells them, call the fallen soldiers all men and call the survivors all men, and watch them rewrite tales of these children. These children. These are children thrown into an adult war, and they dare to glorify their experiences by calling them men.
'Don't forget they're children,' she tells them, and classes silence with Minerva McGonagall merely standing there, but no one listens to this.
Minerva watches the students that she tries so hard for Hogwarts to welcome them back to school. She watches repeating seventh years with hardened lines on their faces, and there's Hermione Granger, who is studying in the library by herself and only three tables away from her are a group of gossipy students barely a year younger than her; and there's Dean Thomas, who turns away at the sight of blood now and jumps at loud screams; and there's Terry Boot, who pretends to not hear his housemates constantly telling him how clever he is for faking a family tree last year for himself and why why why did he choose to come back; and there's -- and there's --- and there's --
Sitting in her office that once seated previous headmasters, Minerva watches and thinks about how Ginny Weasley's Captaincy of the Gryffindor Quidditch Team could have rivalled James Potter if they both weren't occupied thinking about war. History repeats itself, she knows this because it has happened in her lifetime. She hopes with all of her heart that her children, the hundreds of new students that will be sure to come, never have to go through this anymore.
She remembers already hoping for that, once upon a time.
If she closes her eyes, Minerva thinks she can see Lily with her charm turned onto the max, can picture her telling the professors that she knows no one is going to hire a Mudblood for a while, can hear the angry tremble in the younger girl's voice as she says that the world will burn if it thinks it's going to stop Lily Evans from doing something for something as petty as blood. James' laugh echoes in her mind as his footsteps patter against the cold floor of the castle, the sound so wonderfully loud and bright and real that it makes her heart bleed all over again. Sirius Black is flirting with her again, trying to wiggle his way out of a detention that he knows he's not really going to get out of, not really. Remus is going over Transfiguration with the Pettigrew boy; Dorcas Meadowes and Marlene McKinnon are giggling in the back of an Order meeting over something that's not really that funny, but they needed to laugh or else they'd cry. Faces and sounds run by in Minerva's mind, and she's so tired.
She'll be okay, though. This isn't about the past, is it? It's not about the future either, but new Potters will be out to make her life difficult in these castle walls, and the Malfoy kid will look like the spitting image of the men before him in his family and he will be nothing alike any of them, and there'll be so many Weasleys that she'll lose count trying to remember them all. The noble House of Black died when their remaining son (or was he really, when he was disowned before he was barely a man) fell in the Department of Mysteries. Look at all their mighty Pureblood lines now.
It will take a long time for Slytherin to lose its bad name. It isn't fair, but the only words that float around about Slytherin are about Death Eaters and traitors and a whole lot of unpleasant words that have been passed down for years.
This is one of the reasons Pansy Parkinson does not return to repeat her seventh year. She is not the worst to be spoken about, but she's pretty high up on the list. When she left the Battle for others to fight, she does not go home to a house she knows will be empty, but spend the night waiting up with the Greengrass sisters. The Daily Prophet is mailed to her the next day with headlines that show that Harry Potter has won, and Pansy trembles.
Her father does not die in the Battle. He's discovered in Death Eaters robes in the middle of the courtyard (the same courtyard that he used to walk on as a student, the same one his daughter used to gossip on as she passed with her friends, the same one that has bodies littering everywhere), helpless when the Dark Lord fell to a seventeen year old boy's Disarming spell. He is carted off to Azkaban and Pansy does not visit him once.
She thinks she should feel relief that her mother is not a Death Eater; only the wife of one, a world-class gossip and the same knack her daughter has on keeping them alive. Her mother is not as clever, nor quick thinking, as Narcissa Malfoy, but is enough to not let them give up. So they lose a husband and father. So they fall from social graces. So they lose their dignity, their pride, their name.
The first time since the Battle that Pansy steps out onto Diagon Alley, she is spat on. She does not cry, does not yell, does not react in any way. She raises the sleeve of her robe to her face to wipe it and turns away from Parvati Patil's angry face, walking back from where she came from. In a few months, years, when Parvati is wiser and has seen her best friend smile in the mirror she has avoided for so long, she will apologise for being so ignorant and irrational. Right now, she stands shaking next to her twin sister as they stare at the retreating back of a girl they had grown up with; because that's what they had done. Even before Hogwarts. Purebloods were raised together and they had sat there with their china teacups and teddy bears, playing dress up, before they were separated into Houses, and it all happened so fast.
Pansy Parkinson returns home, sits on her bed as she does absolutely nothing. She thinks she should maybe cry, but she doesn't do crying. Not for things like this. She cries when Draco says that his mother was asking about her the other day, because at least someone still remembers her. She cries when Daphne tells her that Astoria is returning to Hogwarts, because she thinks of how badly the younger girl will be treated and it won't be fair, and they won't even be there to help her. She cries when she chips her nail trying to open a stupid bottle of ink, because it creates a hangnail and, goddamn, it hurts. She does not cry when she thinks about being spat on, because she has grown accustomed to things like this and it sucks, sure, but this is how it is.
The years have flown by too briefly, too vividly, for her to expect any redemption. Yes, she's the one who told someone to grab Potter. Yes, she doesn't apologise for this. She will always be The Bitch. She supposes she can deal with that. She's going to have to. Living with past actions are a way of life, and no amount of whispers about her is going to make her feel apologetic fro trying to save her own life --- trying to save lives.
And the bullying? Yeah, she supposes she's sorry for that. But story tellers always forget to tell you that girls grow up too; boys always become men, in the end, and girls remain girls.
This is the reason why she goes back into Diagon Alley the next day with her pug-like nose sticking in the air. There are rumours when she passes. She smiles a smirk that she has already perfected, rivalling Draco Malfoy's all those years ago, and she decides, to hell with it all.
When she passes Harry, she does not say sorry. She does not say sorry to Weasley either. It's on the tip of her tongue to say it when Granger steely avoids her gaze or Longbottom startles at the sight of her. But she doesn't. She doesn't doesn't doesn't. Looney Lovegood stops her on the street and tells her it's okay. There's a wrinkle on Pansy's nose at that, she knows it's unflattering and she does it anyway. She does not say a single thing back, but goes home and wonders what a fucked up world they are all living if Pansy Parkinson can feel so affected by something Looney Lovegood has said.
Luna tells anyone who wants to hear it that it's okay. She tells herself this. She is not lying when she does so. Because everyone's crumbling just a little bit, just a lot, and tragedies pass, they always do. Her mother died when she was nine, and it's okay. Her friends died when she's sixteen, and it's okay. She just needs to continue breathing, so does everyone else, it's okay.
She never talked to many people in school, but she didn't think it would be so much lonelier after the war. She supposes she should have expected; they're all lost, after all, and they had the time in the world now. And so, no one really knows that this girl with eyes as wide as the moon itself cannot stand the darkness. She'd never been afraid before, but Malfoy Manor had ignited some terrible fear in her, and she finds herself unable to breathe. Her house was destroyed when they took her father (they're still looking for him and all she is able to do is to keep hoping) so she decorates her room in the Leaky Cauldron with lamps and candles until the entire room is almost blinding.
There's something eerily beautiful about the way she does this, trying to fight the darkness with light --- and it's a metaphor, really, because that's all they've ever been doing their whole lives.
She visits Dean and Seamus in their little flat, and leaves Nargle charms scattered around the place. Seamus points them out incredulously every time, but Dean shushes him, smiles and leaves them there. Sometimes, friendship roots in the smallest of places, in the darkest of times, and Dean won't forget the spark of hope she had left in his chest when they were locked up in Malfoy Manor. Harry, Ron and Hermione (and Dobby, of course, and Dobby) saved the day, but Luna lessened a weight on the older boy's shoulders without really trying, so he's really not going to begrudge some of her make-beliefs, even if he doesn't believe them himself.
When Seamus lies in bed with him, facing each other, Dean tries to explain it. Seamus smiles back, a firecracker of a boy with a firecracker of a smile in the golden glow of the morning light, and knits their fingers together. They had spent their six school years together without really parting, and then there was that tragic year where Seamus could physically feel the emptiness in his bones when Dean went on the run, and now they're not going to let each other go again. It's like an invisible thread that has latched onto the both of them, tying them together, and something bigger than even Voldemort would not be able to cut it.
That's one, two, three, four; four out of five of the Gryffindor boys who started Hogwarts in 1991. Four out of five boys that occupied beds in the same dorm room --- except, not really, because the year Severus Snape became headmaster, there were only two. What about Neville Longbottom? Because poor, chubby Neville faced his biggest fear every day in the form of a teacher, and look now, he was Headmaster. Look now, Neville had to stare at the face of childhood hell over and over again for an entire school year, under the pretence that this man was in charge. And this young boy, man, cried all those years ago when Severus Snape sneered at him in the classroom, but the young man, boy, lifts his chin defiantly in the Great Hall now. And the stakes are so much higher than ten lost points for Gryffindor.
There's bravery tucked under Neville's bones, maybe it's always been there and no one ever knew. But there's no denying it these days. When the battle's over, when he's checked who's left of his army, when he's tired, he collapses into his grandmother's arms and cries. Cruelty in the faces of the likes of Malfoy and Parkinson laughed at him in his first year for letting salt water splash over his cheeks so shamelessly, but it's six years later and he's seen too much of life to be able to agree with that.
Neville tries the Auror training. No one can argue he is not up for it. He is a good soldier, a good man, but he thinks he understands Hermione: war has been flowing through his blood since his parents decided to fight, he thinks he'd like to make things grow instead of break them from now on. He likes burying his hands in the soil, likes the way plants can speak to him in a way that is easier than with people. He likes watching them grow. He, out of all people, knows the importance of growing.
It's the same reason he does not hold grudges. Draco Malfoy targeted on poor eleven-year-old Neville. Draco Malfoy cannot meet eighteen-year-old Neville in the eye. But Neville had kindness living in his breastbone and smiles at him anyway. This is not a weakness. This is not forgiveness. This is just life, and he is tired of conflict.
And they're all tired of conflict, these hundred year old souls living in eighteen year old bodies. This is an entire generation of kids who had more offensive spells on their tongues than anyone else. Magic was so beautiful, but they've seen the real damage it's caused. Padma Patil spends a good month and a half trying to convince Kevin Entwhistle not to retreat to the Muggle world, after he'd been wrongly persecuted for what should have been his seventh year, and she was entirely unsuccessful. A terrifying stigma around the wizarding world is built around for scarred Muggleborns, and so many would much rather walk away now than risk it ever again. But this is the aftermath of a war, and they're all trying, and they suppose it has to be enough --- just because the sun is not up now, does not mean it'll ever stop rising. It's a new day. They will try again.