Work Text:
after.
when the dust settles and rays of weak may sun rouse them from where they are curled up in armchairs and sprawled on each other’s laps and the backs of couches, sore and aching from injuries that won’t kill them (not like lavender and colin and fred and lisa and terry and and and), when they’ve slept the edge off of the last year, when the memories no longer threaten to drown them (they’ve become very good at keeping their heads above water, these children).
after harry appears, eyes wild, fingers trembling, reaching for something (someone), and drops right where he’s standing at the sight of them there, tired, bruised, bleeding but alive (not whole, not really, not when they are missing fingers and ears and friends).
after they have slept in the wreckage of hogwarts, in shifts because it has always been dangerous for them here, because voldemort certainly didn’t let the dementors on the grounds four years ago, and it is not hard for even a human to hurt children (umbridge was nothing special, not exceptional, but there are scars on shaking hands anyway), after they have guarded each other from the dark, and held each other through nightmares (harry wakes up screaming, but you don’t share a room with that boy for six years without knowing how to soothe him back to sleep. dean and neville have him calm within a minute), when it is day again (it has really only been a few hours, but war does not lend itself to good sleeping habits, and they have been at war for far too long) they file down to the great hall, silent with exhaustion.
some of them have family here (dead and alive) but they cannot bear to part ways just yet. they will have to, soon. soon there will be funerals and memorials and families to comfort and tears to shed, because the world is desperate to move on. padma will take her sister by the hand (the one with all of the fingers) and lead her to the brown family, because parvati may not be strong enough to face the parents of the girl she loved, but padma will be for her, and that is alright.
dennis is here, because where colin went, dennis always followed, until he couldn’t follow him any longer. dennis is here, and he is fourteen and tiny, and he is alone and he is the only creevey left (being on the run did not mean they were safe. mr. creevey was a good man.) he is alone, and so luna will go to him, because she is alone too, now, and being alone is not quite so hard when you are alone with someone else.
they will scatter, to their own corners of the great hall, where they ate and were safe (and then fought and almost died). they will throw themselves back into the world they fought to save and try to move on with the holes in their ranks, in the missing brothers and sisters and lovers they will never see again. but not yet. for now, they will sit here and breathe together (breathe for the ones who cannot anymore) in this tiny corner, all ten of them. ten of all that is left of dumbledore’s army.
the hall is hushed when they walk in (because children should not look that pale and weary, and they are children, all of them, no matter if they have fought and died and come back and fought again). the hall is hushed and there is a breeze coming through the holes in the walls, but the ceiling still works, that wonder of wonders, and the pale sunlight coming from it is making the floor sparkle. there is a line of white shrouds on the raised platform where the head table was (the table that was barricading the main door before it exploded) and they do not look at it, at their friends.
they crowd into the end of one of the long tables, closest to the door (is it the gryffindor table? ravenclaw? sometime in the last year it has ceased to matter). ten bodies fit into a space where six would sit before. they are pressed up against each other; dean’s cheek on seamus’ shoulder, with an ankle pressed against ginny’s under the table. she has not let go of luna since they woke up, fingers looped around her wrist, even where she is now, perched almost on neville’s lap across the table. padma leans her back on his steady shoulder, careful eyes on her sister. parvati sits straight up, shoulders tense even now, until a warm brown hand reaches to rub the fear away, because hermione has shared a room with parvati for the majority of six years, and padma may be her sister, but hermione has soothed her fear over tests and boys and girls and war. she relaxes, leans a little further into hermione’s hand, and pulls padma’s feet over her lap, fingers spread lightly over the line of her shin. on the other side of hermione sits harry, penned in by her on one side and ron on the other, one hand buried in the loose fabric of her shirt, thin shoulders warm under the weight of ron’s arm. since the beginning it has been the three of them, eleven years old and fighting a fledgling war. and now it is the ten of them, still children, sitting in the ashes of the war of their lives.