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the deepest secret nobody knows
Tonks had always thought she’d be able to say she fought to the very end. That, if she could not live a long and full life, she would be cut down in battle, wand flashing, fighting to the last.
The truth is nothing so noble.
She’d seen Remus fall. She’d watched him as if in slow motion as Dolohov’s wand flashed green, as Remus crumpled as if under a crushing weight. He’d looked slightly confused, like someone just asked a question he couldn’t answer. It wasn’t at all a face suited to a man who was dying. Who was dead.
It seems like a betrayal, really, how she stops as if petrified. How her wand wavers and falls in the midst of battle. A betrayal of Teddy, of her mother, of everyone who fights on still around her. Of everything they’ve lost. Bellatrix is too surprised to take advantage at first. Her face shows her confusion as she presses closer, wand raised warily as if expecting Tonks’ sudden stillness to be some sort of tactic.
“You drop your wand, girl?” Bellatrix’s voice is a howl of demented glee. “Come on, come on then, surely my dear sister didn’t raise you to be both a blood traitor and a coward!” The words bring no fury. Indeed, Tonks barely hears them. Bellatrix’s mouth twists and distorts and Tonks can only stare at her, wondering how it is she can be alive and dead all at once.
Bellatrix is close enough that Tonks can see her discolored teeth, can see the throb of her blood in the veins of her neck. “Your time grows short,” she growls. Our time, Tonks thinks, casting her eyes towards Remus, towards her husband. Our time was so short.
“Raise your wand,” Bellatrix commands. “Defend yourself!” But Tonks finds she can’t; her arm is frozen at her side. She thinks of Teddy, her hard-won boy, whose whole life she will miss. She would give up her own life for him. So why can’t she save it for him too?
Her aunt’s face is grotesque with hatred. Tonks can see her mouth forming the words and she has to turn away. She cannot meet her death head-on. So instead she turns to face Remus. She turns her back on Bellatrix, knowing that when she falls, she will land closer to him.
men are often bad; babies never are
The gurgling baby bounces in Fleur’s arms, laughing and clapping his chubby hands together, blissfully unaware of the lingering pall of death hanging in the air. His fingers seek out her hair, tugging almost painfully until Bill frees her with deft movements. Teddy screeches indignantly.
“Zis baby,” Fleur sniffs, hoping to amuse Bill. “’E ‘as no sense of decorum.” Bill smiles and offers Teddy his fingers as a replacement for her hair. They’re seized immediately, then yanked, bent, and tested experimentally with toothless gums in short order. Bill laughs out loud then, a sound she wasn’t sure she’d ever hear from him again after they saw Fred laid out on the floor of the Great Hall. He pulls his hand away to wag an admonishing finger at the boy.
“You were supposed to get the instant-hair-dye genes, not the biting-people genes,” he informs Teddy as he reaches over and hoists him out of Fleur’s arms. It’s a relief, actually. When she’d offered to hold him for Andromeda, she hadn’t realized he’d grow heavy after only a few minutes. She’s never been around babies very much.
Bill, on the other hand, balances Teddy casually in his arms, the motion as practiced as if he’s done it a thousand times. He probably has, she realizes. The size of the Weasley clan never fails to be foreign and fascinating to her. Bill gestures towards the doors and she trails after him as he walks outside into the dying afternoon sunshine. He seems to know just how to handle Teddy. Bill always seems to know just how to do almost anything, really.
“Bill,” she says suddenly. He doesn’t look away from the boy, but makes a thrumming sound in his throat to indicate he’s listening. “Bill, we should try for a baby.”
“Okay,” he says.
“We should try immediately.” He looks up at her in surprise, before glancing around uncertainly. A small group of tired-looking students titters, obviously having overheard. Bill clears his throat, offers her an amused smile.
“Right now, in front of everyone? I didn’t know you were into that sort of thing.” Fleur flushes as she realizes his meaning, but she ignores him and carries on. She hadn’t even thought of it an hour ago, but suddenly this seems to be a matter of the utmost importance.
“It will help,” she tells him.
“It’ll help us or help my mother?” he asks quietly, searching her face. Teddy attempts an escape and Bill hitches him up, tucks him under his arm. Jostles him absent-mindedly.
“Both of us,” Fleur answers. “All of us. What can be gained from waiting?”
“Are you sure? You’re not much of a baby person.” His tone is casual, conversational, but she can see him studying her intently.
“I wasn’t,” she agrees. “Who knows what I am now? What any of us are now?” He shifts Teddy, steps closer to her and lifts his free hand to tilt her chin up with his knuckles. His eyes search her face until Teddy fidgets and makes impatient noises, wishing to be put down.
“Okay,” Bill says finally. “I’m ready when you are.” Fleur beams at him and he smiles back, pulling her forward to kiss her forehead.
“We will make a beautiful daughter,” she tells him. She can feel him smile as his arm encircles her shoulders.
“You don’t think we’d have a son? Weasleys are pretty famous for sons.” She wraps her arms around his waist and tucks her head beneath his chin. It brings her hair within reach of Teddy’s grasping fingers again, but she doesn’t mind.
“Oh no,” she says. “A daughter. A daughter with my hair.”
“You realize that if you give my mother a granddaughter, she’ll probably start liking you more than she likes me,” he points out. Fleur heaves a mock sigh.
“Alas, you have seen through my clever plan!” He chuckles as he pulls away, bouncing Teddy over his head. They head back to the castle as he squeals and giggles in delight. Bill laughs again, like the child has unlocked something within him, and Fleur cannot help but laugh along with them. If she closes her eyes, she can almost imagine them as a real little family already.
a house divided
She’s putting it off. She has been since Arthur Weasley’s Patronus streaked through her kitchen window and spoke the words she’d dreaded: Tonks and Remus have fallen. The battle continues. Stay where you are. The words had lodged behind her ribs and festered even as she pushed them out of her head, focusing on her grandson instead of realizing, accepting.
Now her footsteps echo back to her ears as she crosses the threshold at Hogwarts. She has not set foot in these halls for years. To be back now, for this purpose… For a fleeting moment she considers turning tail and running, down the steps and into the forest and away, just away.
Movement catches her eye, the glint of blonde hair and pale faces. Andromeda turns to look at her sister. One last distraction, she thinks. One last thing to do before she forces herself to accept the fact that her daughter is dead.
“Narcissa,” she says, her voice impassive.
“Andromeda.” Narcissa nods stiffly. “You remember Draco.” The boy stands too close at her side; he has the air of a barely-whelped child clinging to his mother’s skirts. He snarls at her, his lip jerking up to show even, white teeth.
“You don’t scare me, boy,” she tells him flatly, and he deflates a bit. She turns her attention back to her sister. “Was it Bella?”
“I think so, yes,” Narcissa says hesitantly. “She’d…she’d been obsessed with killing her. Ever since she married the…the-”
“Since she married Remus.” Her son-in-law’s name is a challenge on Andromeda’s lips. Narcissa grimaces but nods.
“The funerals will begin tomorrow,” she says. “You are here to..?”
“To say goodbye, yes.”
“’Dromeda,” she starts, faltering when Andromeda looks at her with hard eyes. “Lucius has gone back to the house to put things in order but it is…” she trails off and glances at Draco. “It is no place for a child.”
“A child?” Andromeda asks, coldly. How many deaths has this child hastened? she wants to ask. Narcissa flushes, she ducks her head as if in embarrassment and submission, but Andromeda can see anger flash in her eyes. Then she raises her chin defiantly.
“I will not go back there,” she states. “And neither will my son.” Andromeda looks at them long and hard, until the boy fidgets under her gaze.
“Mother,” he starts. “Surely we could find a more suit-” Narcissa clamps a steely hand on his shoulder and he blanches, squirming in discomfort at her grip.
“Draco,” she says in warning, and there’s a world of meaning in the single word.
“But one of our friends-” he tries again rashly, but she cuts him short.
“We have no more friends. Only family.” She turns to address Andromeda again. “I am prevailing upon your better nature,” she says. “For my son.” Her face manages to be proud, defiant, and pleading all at once. It’s probably the one thing the two sisters have in common, Andromeda has to admit to herself: they’re fiercely protective of their children.
“You have a place at my home if you need it,” she says finally. Narcissa looks grateful, nods tightly.
“We’ll wait while you…” she trails off, gestures vaguely at the makeshift morgue just visible through the doors of the Great Hall.
“Yes,” Andromeda says, the pang in her gut – sickeningly familiar now after Ted’s been gone these many months – reminding her of the task at hand. She has to force herself to walk through the doors, convincing herself to keep going after each step: she must look ridiculous, lurching towards the door like a stroke patient just relearning to walk.
On her way in she passes the Weasley boy, the leftover twin, looking lost and shell-shocked. She wants to go to him, to touch his shoulder and blast him with the brutal truth, to say, it’s not getting any better. To say, I still spent my nights half-hoping to die before I wake. But she only gives him a sympathetic nod, and sad smile full of understanding.
Two boys are standing over her daughter and Remus when she finally moves through the doors. She watches as the taller of the two summons a Gryffindor hanging from the walls and directs it over Remus’ body. It hangs suspended in midair for a moment as the boys stand, their heads bowed respectfully, before it flutters down gently over his torso. The smaller boy moves to pull the covering over his head, but she wants to see his face. Her approach startles them before they finish and they retreat out of earshot as she nears. Prolonging the inevitable, she focuses on her son-in-law. Strange, how infrequently she called him that. She cannot pretend she approved of Dora’s choice of husband. Not for her little girl, her only child. A penniless werewolf with no prospects, no stability? Not exactly what she’d imagined when she held her infant daughter in her arms and pictured her future. Hatred bubbles up in her chest before she can stop it, but it only lasts a moment before the bubble pops. It was no more he who stole Dora from her than it was Ted who stole Andromeda herself away from the Blacks. She and Dora had been so very different. How had they ended up having so much in common? She leans down to pull the fabric over his face.
“Ma’am,” a voice startles her out of her thoughts. Realizing that she’d been crying, she dashes the tears from her cheeks with one hand before turning. The boys who covered Remus are standing nearby. They are so very young, their lives are so full of potential. It is a moment before she trusts herself enough to speak. She girds herself in formality, straightening her spine, inclining her head politely, coolly.
“I’m sorry…” she begins.
“Dean,” he supplies. “Dean Thomas.” The name gives her a shock of recognition. Ted had told her of meeting Dean in one of his infrequent muggle-post letters while he was on the run, before he… She presses a shaking hand to her stomach. “And this is Seamus Finnegan.” The small, sandy-haired boy behind him raises a hand in greeting.
“Dean,” she says. “I’m sorry, I was a million miles away.”
“We wanted to ask…well, Professor Lupin was our favorite professor so we wanted to do something.” He gestures at the banner covering Remus. “But I’m afraid we didn’t know her house.” She looks down, focuses on her daughter’s face for the first time.
“Hufflepuff,” she says finally, staring at the familiar face, so unfamiliarly still. “My daughter was a Hufflepuff.”
The boy nods, stepping to Dora’s feet. He swishes his wand and a Hufflepuff banner sails from the walls to hover above her daughter’s body. She expects it to drift downward, as it had with Remus before, but instead the boy reaches out and catches the edge before it falls, gathering it carefully into his arms.
“I thought you might like to do it,” he says, holding the yellow and black cloth towards her. It drapes across his forearms, a last offering to the dead on their way. Hands unsteady, she takes it from him. His footsteps fade away and she hesitates, her fingers clutching the banner like it could protect her, like it could hold reality away. With a deep breath she shakes it out and holds it before her like a shield.
“Goodbye my Dora,” she whispers. “True to the last.” She watches as her daughter’s face disappears under the Hufflepuff banner.
to die would be an awfully big adventure
They didn't share everything. Most things, but not everything. Toothbrushes, for one. George always liked softer bristles. Their sock drawer was a communal affair, but the underwear drawers were strictly separated and off limits.
They weren’t always together, either. Fred wasn't there the first time George snogged a girl (Alicia Spinnet, in the hallway leading to the changing rooms after a narrow Quidditch victory). He wasn't there the time George had a batch of Wildfire Whiz-bangs inexplicably explode and singe his eyebrows off. George wasn’t there the night during their last year when Fred ended up having sex with Angelina Johnson in the Room of Requirement, sort of a last hurrah before the twins set off for a lucrative non-academic future. Fred bragged to Lee and Terry that he’d sweet-talked her into it. Only George knew that the whole thing had been Angelina’s idea and Fred had basically embarrassed himself – ruining a perfectly good pair of trousers in the process – before Angelina took the lead and they finally managed it properly. And Fred had been nowhere near the night George got his ear cursed off, finally making the two of them distinguishable.
Fred always enjoyed it, being so like his brother that no one could tell them apart, splitting most of his memories with someone else. George was the one who sometimes chafed and rebelled. There was the attempt at dying his hair black in the dormitory sink during their first year at Hogwarts, so people would be able to tell them apart. There was the occasional, frustrated claim that he would get a tattoo that said I am not Fred as soon as he turned 17. And then there was the fleeting thought he’d had – as he watched the Sorting Hat roar “Gryffindor!” the second it touched his twin brother’s head – that maybe hearing Hufflepuff wouldn’t be all that unwelcome.
Those moments come back to him like clockwork now and they seem uncomfortably like betrayal. They’re what he thinks about as he watches over his brother while everyone sleeps. He should really be sleeping too; it feels like he hasn’t slept for a hundred years. But the funeral is tomorrow and Fred’s still here. When Fred is in the ground, that’s when George will sleep.
The sound of someone stirring jerks his attention away from Fred’s body. He looks over to where his family sleeps nearby. His mother and father had transfigured two benches from the dining tables into cots and fallen into them, exhausted, just after sundown. Fleur had conjured her own bed, a silvery cloud of material that hovers now over the ground making a soothing, humming noise. She’d offered to conjure one for Ginny, but Ginny had refused, making up a pallet on the floor with Percy instead. Bill and Charlie told George to wake them when he wanted to sleep but he leaves them snoring in their armchairs by the fire. He’s keeping watch tonight.
The noise comes again and he sees Ginny quietly getting to her feet. She edges around Fleur’s bed and begins picking her way towards the door. He thinks about just letting her go without saying anything. Two days ago he would have.
“Hullo, Gin.”
She freezes at his voice. At first he thinks he just surprised her, that she had thought him asleep. But her eyes dart to Fred, wild with hope, before she realizes that it was George who’d spoken. It’d be enough to destroy him if someone hadn’t already beat her to it.
“You should be sleeping,” she says, her voice wobbly as she turns away from Fred to face him. He doesn’t answer, just inclines his head noncommittally.
“Heading off for an assignation?” he asks, hoping for a familiar, bolstering shot of little sister indignation in return. She doesn’t disappoint; Ginny rarely does, after all. His reward is an annoyed moue, an impatient flick of her fingers as if shooing a fly.
“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” he tells her, a ghost of his old grin playing on his face. Her answering smile is sad and affectionate and entirely too adult to be coming from his baby sister. She moves past him – heading, he thinks, for the stairs – but her footsteps hesitate behind him and he feels her arms encircle his shoulders, her chin coming to rest on his head. His hand comes up automatically to grasp her wrist. Her pulse beats against his fingertips, fast and strong. That steady throb of life is more reassuring than the platitudes he’s been hearing today.
“So this is what the top of your head looks like,” she remarks conversationally. “Haven’t seen it since you and Fred hit your growth spurts.” He laughs a little, a soft exhalation of breath.
“I can’t help it if you’re tiny and I’m a great, manly giant.” He fancies he can feel her smiling. They stay like that for several minutes, silently watching the dying embers from the fire flickering across the still forms of their family.
“You know,” he says, breaking the silence. “When I found out, I wondered for half a second if he’d stick around like Peeves and torment Filch for all eternity.” She laughs softly.
“Fred couldn’t have let an adventure like death pass him by while he stuck around here,” she decides. George nods; he’d come to the same conclusion after another half a second. Then he takes a deep breath, says out loud the thought that’s been nagging at his brain.
“If I’d been the one to die, he would have made sure I didn’t do it alone.” His words are a whisper and still they feel too loud. Ginny stiffens, her arms tightening uncomfortably for a moment before she relaxes. She’d deny it if she could, he knows, but she and Fred were always close and she’d have to wonder if it was true. Another thought strikes George now: would she have preferred Fred to be the survivor? Would all of them? They were often interchangeable in life; are they interchangeable now in death? It’s a thought he doesn’t dare voice. He doesn’t know if he could handle either answer.
“I’d hate to be out two brothers,” she says, almost as if in response to his unspoken question. He squeezes her forearm, maybe a little too hard but she doesn’t complain.
“Go on then,” he says, giving her arm a pat. “Try to be back before they wake up.”
“Will you sleep?” she asks. He shakes his head.
“Probably not.” He should have said yes, if only to reassure her, to keep her from worrying. She’d see through him, though. Ginny’s always been tough to pacify.
“All right,” she says. Then she drops a kiss on the crown of his head and she’s gone, her footsteps sounding on the great staircase. George adjusts his position in his chair and settles in for a long night.
i’ll lean on you and you lean on me and we’ll be okay
“Couldn’t sleep?”
Neville looks up, blinking from the fire he hadn’t realized he’d been staring into. Seamus shuffles down the last few steps into the common room.
“Hullo, Seamus,” he says, scrubbing his face with his hand. “Too tired to sleep just yet, I guess.” He doesn’t mention that when he’d tried, the mattress had been lumpy in just the same places it used to be and that he’d gotten too used to the gentle sway of his hammock in the Room of Requirement and that the dorm had smelled too much like the past for him to handle just yet.
“Yeah,” Seamus agrees. He leans against the armchair opposite Neville’s and rubs wearily at the back of his neck. “Didn’t stop Harry, though. He’s snoring like a giant up there.” Neville smiles. He’d heard Harry’s snores before he even got all the way up the stairs. He got into the room to find Ron’s bed pushed up against Harry’s. Ron and Hermione were tangled together, Hermione’s outstretched hand wrapped around Harry’s wrist. He’d felt like an intruder in his own dorm room. But then it doesn’t really seem like his any more.
“Some year, eh?” he says now to Seamus.
“No kidding.” Seamus winces as he touches a tentative finger to his still-bruised face. “Right glad it’s over.” Neville nods.
“You know what the crazy part is, though?” he says. “This may have been my best year at Hogwarts.”
“You’re barmy,” Seamus laughs.
“No, I mean it!” Neville insists. “I know it was horrible with the Carrows and the torture and everything, but I feel like…we accomplished something. We made a difference, y’know?” I finally made my Gran proud of me, he thinks but doesn’t say.
“Vive la resistance,” Seamus chuckles, standing and aiming a gentle punch at Neville’s shoulder that, in his sleep-deprived state, rocks him against the arm of his chair. “Try to get some sleep, eh? I’m going to find Dean.”
“Sure,” Neville says. The portrait swings open and he can hear Seamus clambering out. The fire is almost out now; the logs hiss and pop as they collapse into embers. He should go upstairs and try to get to sleep. He’s been awake for years, it seems. But the lumpy mattress, the smell of a childhood that’s gone… He gets to his feet, intending to head up the stairs to the dormitory anyway, but before he really realizes what he’s doing, he’s climbing down from the portrait hole and his feet are carrying him steadily to the seventh floor.
It’s a smaller version of the Room of Requirement than he’s used to. It’s more like it was when he first started hiding out from the Carrows. But the familiars are still there: a single, squashy couch angled before the blazing fireplace; Gryffindor and Ravenclaw hangings on the walls; three hammocks clustered on the far side of the room. Neville gives the wall a fond pat. It’s strange to feel affection for a room, probably, but this particular room seems to have a bit of a personality. Or maybe it’s just reflecting the personality Neville’s finally grown into. Still, there were so many times it seemed like it was on their side. So many times it helped them fight, helped them hope and survive.
He doesn’t know how long he’s been standing inside the door, listing slightly from exhaustion and staring at nothing, when a sound from behind makes him tense and spin, his wand at the ready. Luna emerges from the cupboard at the bottom of the stairs and he lets out the breath he’d been holding. The battle’s been won, but it seems old habits die hard.
“Hello, Neville!” she says, smiling happily as she moves past him and heads directly for the couch. “Ooh, it’s lovely and warm in here, isn’t it?”
“Luna,” he says, his tongue feeling thick and useless. “When did…I…you-” He has no idea what to say. He feels almost like a hermit, so stunned is he at having unexpected company. She pats the couch cushion next to her. He lurches away from the wall and falls heavily on to the couch. For a while they don’t speak; they just sit in companionable silence, gazing into the fire. Her weight is settled comfortably against his side, warm and solid, and he finds himself pathetically grateful that she’s here.
“Won’t your father be expecting you back?” he asks finally. She inclines her head, makes a soothing noise in the back of her throat.
“He’ll understand.” Her hand settles over Neville’s where it rests on his knee and she squeezes comfortingly. “I expect Ginny will be along soon,” she adds, gesturing to the third hammock.
“Hm?” He looks over at the hammocks. It hadn’t occurred to him to wonder why there were three. Did the room plan ahead, he wonders, or is this what I had in mind when I was trying to get in?
“She’s with her family, though,” he points out. “Fred…” His voice falters when he thinks of Fred. Luna squeezes his hand again and nods.
“Yes,” she says. “But she’ll be here when she’s ready.” Neville decides not to argue. Rather, he slouches low and lets his head loll back against the cushions. It rolls against Luna’s shoulder. A hundred years ago he might have stammered and blushed and apologized, but now he leaves it there and is rewarded by the pressure of her cheek against his hair. He closes his eyes, hoping to finally fall asleep. But he finds he can’t keep them closed and he’s been staring at Luna’s hand on his for the past few minutes without even realizing his eyes were open. Luna hums softly and plays with his fingers.
A scrabbling sound at the cupboard has Neville bolting upright and reaching for his wand again, but Luna merely stands with a pleased expression on her face. By the time Ginny steps in to the room, Luna is already in front of her, arms outstretched. Neville watches them embrace, feeling like an intruder for the second time in one evening.
“Shouldn’t…shouldn’t you be with your family, Ginny?” he asks hesitantly when they break apart. She looks so small and hunched, so unlike the fierce Ginny he knows. She opens her mouth as if to answer but only a sad squeak comes out. Luna links her arm through Ginny’s.
“She is with family,” she tells Neville serenely, smiling at Ginny who smiles gratefully back. Luna leads Ginny into the room. When they reach Neville, he puts an awkward arm around Ginny’s shoulders, squeezes her to his side. He is surprised when she turns and wraps both arms around his waist, her face against his collarbone. His answering hug is probably too hard but she doesn’t move away. Over the top of Ginny’s head he sees Luna beam at them before she dims the fire with her wand.
It hits him now, how much he'd like to sleep, how tempting the hammocks look. They’re strung up in a cluster, close enough together that they all sway when Luna toes off her shoes and climbs happily into the center hammock. Neville helps Ginny into the hammock on Luna’s right. He fusses over the fat crimson pillow, adjusting it carefully under her head until she grabs his wrist and smiles at him.
“Thanks, Neville,” she says quietly.
“Sure,” he whispers. Then, “I don’t know why I’m whispering.” She laughs, her fingers tightening on his. On his way around to the last hammock, he sees Luna reach out and clasp Ginny’s hand in hers. The fire is banked low, the room is dark with shadows. The hammock sways as he settles in and it’s instantly familiar, instantly comforting. They haven’t been together, the three of them, since the Christmas holidays, he realizes. Now, with them all together in this room that’s come to feel so much like home, Neville feels like he’s just found something he hadn’t realized he’d lost.
“I think I’m going to come back next year,” he blurts out into the half-light. “I’d like a real seventh year.”
“We'll all be in the same year,” Luna notes, sounding pleased.
“You’re coming back, then?” he asks her. He hadn’t been sure. A lot of the younger students seemed ready to leave.
“Oh yes,” she assures him solemnly. “N.E.W.T.s come quite in handy when you're hunting Snorkacks. It's a prestige thing.” Ginny giggles and tries to cover it up with a cough. Her hammock bumps against Luna’s and the ripples translate to Neville on the end. “Ginny will be coming back too,” she states, as if there’s no question. Ginny doesn’t contradict her, though.
A simple sort of happiness floods him. He wants to say something, something meaningful and profound that can do justice to everything in his head and in his chest. Something as good as they both deserve. But the swaying is hypnotic and he can't seem to make his mouth work. Almost as if she can tell, Luna reaches out, her hand tangling in the side of his hammock, her fingers twining with his through the netting.
“Goodnight Neville, Ginny,” she says. “Don’t let the Nargles bite.” His laugh is even sleepier than Ginny’s.
“Goodnight,” he manages to murmur as sleep catches up to him at all once.
promises to keep
“Hey, Dean.”
Seamus’ hushed voice breaks Dean’s concentration. The cloth he’d been holding suspended in the air falls gracelessly, landing askew over someone he recognizes only vaguely from seeing him around Hogsmeade.
“I thought you’d gone to bed,” Dean says.
“I tried,” Seamus answers. “I forgot how bad Harry’s snoring is. And Granger’s there too, in Weasley’s bed, of all things.”
“Really?” Dean asks. “In his bed? Were they…you know?” Unconsciously, he makes a jabbing gesture with his wand and Seamus snorts. Dean has to stifle a laugh when he realizes what he did. He glances around to make sure they haven’t woken any of the people sleeping in the Great Hall.
“Nah,” Seamus waves his hand dismissively. “At the rate he’s going, that won’t be for another seven years.” Then he nods towards the banner at their feet. “Decided to keep going?” Dean shrugs. He’s not sure how to explain why it suddenly seemed important.
“I know it’s ridiculous, but…it’s cold in here and they…they’re…”
Without a word, Seamus moves to the other side of the body at their feet and twitches the covering straight. He gestures to the next and Dean gratefully follows along after him, summoning a hanging as they go. It sails past his hands and thwaps into the back of Seamus’ head.
“Sorry, mate,” Dean mutters sheepishly as he retrieves the banner. “It’s this wand. I don’t even know who I nicked it from. It’s terrible.” Seamus immediately thrusts his own wand into Dean’s hands.
“Here,” he says. “Use mine.” The gesture is automatic, reminiscent of the thousands of times that Seamus pressed a book or a quill or a broomstick into Dean’s hands without a thought. It’s just a wand; Dean’s throat shouldn’t feel so tight over the simple loan of a wand.
They move slowly through the gathered bodies, Seamus respectfully pulling a cloak in order or arranging hands just so as Dean summons hangings down to cover the dead. It should be grim work, but there’s something peaceful about it, some strange sense of satisfaction in looking behind them to see yards of Hogwarts colors instead of blood and ash and death. Dean does not know most of the faces. Some are familiar: a patron of the Three Broomsticks here, a student who had been a Ravenclaw prefect his first year there. They leave the Death Eaters, collected at the far side of the room.
They’ve been working for an hour when Dean looks down on the body at his feet and feels a shock of recognition. "It's Millicent Bulstrode," he says, his voice too loud in the hush. Seamus comes immediately to peer down at her. She’d always cut an imposing figure in life; death does little to diminish the effect.
"Cor, it really is,” Seamus breathes. “I thought all the Slytherins turned tail."
"Guess not."
"D'you think she was fighting with them or with us?" Seamus asks in a hushed voice. Dean's about to shake his head, say he doesn't know, when a flash of memory surfaces.
"I saw her fighting Mulciber," he realizes. "Near the end, after Neville chopped the snake. She's so tall, I thought she was one of the Hogsmeade shopkeeps."
"Blimey." They stand over her, watching her face as if she might come to life and accuse them of being all wrong about her. Dean shakes his head to clear it. He flicks his wand and a banner in Slytherin colors zooms down from the wall and flutters over her.
"She wasn't all bad for a Slytherin," Seamus says from her feet. "There were a couple of times she could have tripped me or punched me in the face and she completely ignored my existence instead." It sets both of them off and they giggle, a hysterical tint to the sound, before sobering at the task before them. Impulsively Dean waves his wand again and stripes of red and gold emblazon themselves onto the banner.
"You had a bit of Gryffindor in you yet, didn't you Millicent?" Dean asks her quietly, before crouching and gently pulling the end up to cover her face. He straightens and turns to Seamus.
"C'mon, mate, we've got more to go," Seamus says, clapping a reassuring hand on his shoulder.
"'Miles to go before I sleep'," Dean muses, smiling at Seamus' look of confusion. “Muggle poet," he explains. "My mum loved him. She used to say that line when she was doing our laundry."
"Your laundry?"
"Six kids," Dean reminds him. "And no magic." Seamus makes a face and Dean laughs. They move on to the next body and are brought up short by the sight of Colin Creevey, so unfamiliar without a camera pressed to his eye. Any thought of laughter is forgotten as Dean summons a Gryffindor hanging and Seamus kneels to adjust Colin’s shirt collar. He pats Colin’s shoulder clumsily just before the Gryffindor colors drift down to cover him. They share a moment of silence, staring down at the red and gold topography of Colin’s tiny form, before continuing on.
Finally they’re down to just one. They stand together and look towards the Weasley twins across the room. George has been awake all night. Each time they think he might be asleep, he shifts in his chair, the firelight catching his open eyes and making him look almost possessed. Fred lies at his feet. The two of them always seemed to function as one unit. It’s somehow inconceivable that one can continue to exist without the other. Dean thinks of the months previous, the days and weeks spent hiding and running, scavenging food; the minutes spent dreaming of other places, other days. And now he’s here, alive among the dead, talking about laundry and Muggle poets with his best friend, while George sits not fifty feet from him, missing a part of himself. He is ashamed at how grateful he can feel, under the circumstances.
“Dean.” Seamus’ voice startles him out of his thoughts. Dean looks at him. It takes a second for his eyes to focus on the familiar face.
“Sorry,” he says. Seamus nods, a look on his face like he understands exactly what Dean is feeling.
“Come on, then,” he says softly. “Just one more.”
“Yes,” Dean whispers. “Promises to keep.” He raises his wand to summon one last Gryffindor banner.
section titles
tonks : “the deepest secret nobody knows” : i carry your heart with me (i carry it in my heart) : ee cummings
fleur : “men are often bad; babies never are” : louisa may alcott
andromeda : “a house divided” : abraham lincoln
george : “to die would be an awfully big adventure” : peter pan : j.m. barrie
neville : “i'll lean on you and you lean on me and we'll be okay” : #34 : dave matthews band
dean : “promises to keep” : stopping by woods on a snowy evening : robert frost