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It’s 1998 and the War is done. Or at least on the surface it seems like the War is done because for Harry Potter, it is not. Yes, Voldemort is dead. Yes, Good has presided over Evil. But they have lost so much. He has lost so much. And even though Madam Pomfrey, being the angel that she is, has stitched him back together, has tended to his wounds, there are wounds inside of him that will not close for a long time. Maybe never.
They are sitting in the Great Hall, or the remains of what once was the Great Hall to be more precise. The enchanted ceiling has come down in two places, but the enchantment itself still works, so now there is the swirling cloudy sky next to the real clouds up above their heads. It’s the early morning of the 3rd of May and they’re sitting around with blankets that came from Merlin knows where – maybe the Hog’s Head? – and hot tea and chocolate that some house elves brought up from the kitchens. Hermione has eyed them with care, has told them they may go, but they are staying, keeping them warm and fed, and, at least that is what Harry thinks, they are keeping themselves busy.
Not only humans have died, and all creatures mourn differently.
Ginny’s head is resting on his shoulder; she’s breathing low and deep, has fallen asleep. He has not. It seems like he has forgotten to sleep, can not remember the last time he has slept properly. Ron looks like Harry feels himself, pale and tired, bags under his now murky blue eyes, scars on his forearms and his face, dust in his red hair. His arm is around Hermione who has finally sat down after running around, not stopping, not sitting down, not standing still because the moment she did, and Harry knew it, they both knew it, she would falter. Her head is resting in Ron’s lap, but her eyes are open, no sleep for her, for all three of them. Her right hand is stroking absently over her left forearm, the word engraved in her skin, and Harry knows she’s back there in her mind.
If he thinks about it, it’s a wonder they’re all still alive when their minds have been shattered so many times.
His eyes scatter around the hall. They are not the only ones who have stayed. At the remains of what used to be the teacher’s desk he spies McGonagall who looks old now – he figures she actually is kind of old, but she has never looked like it until now – together with Professor Sprout and Madam Pomfrey, the three witches huddled together, accepting bowls of hot oatmeal from one of the house elves. Harry vows to himself to learn their names, all of them, including those who died. Seamus and Dean are sleeping on makeshift mattresses in a corner, Seamus burying his face in Dean’s sweater, Dean’s arm thrown over him. He spies Luna and Neville together with a group of various Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws, and also a few Slytherins, the ones who refused to leave their home and fought. Percy is sitting together with Bill and Fleur at what used to be the Gryffindor table, and even though they’re somewhat away from him and his friends, Harry can see the agony on their faces. He does not feel their agony. To be perfectly honest, he thinks he doesn’t feel anything.
He shoots around when he hears a shuffling near the grand portal, which somehow still stands, and before he knows it, he’s on his feet, wand drawn, eyes trying to find the enemy, the intruder. Without looking he knows that his friends are by his side, are standing by him in the same fighting stance, teacups in shards on the floor. But it is only Mrs Weasley, Molly, as she has told him to call her, and Arthur. As soon as they seem them, their faces change, mourning replaced by something else. They have been helping to collect the rest of the bodies, he knows that, collecting them like trinkets because there are so many to be collected.
They sit back down, waiting for Molly and Arthur to join them, all sitting upright now. Ginny looks so tired, he thinks, and he wraps his arm and his blanket around her, drawing her in, holding her close, lest she, too, might be taken from him. Ron leans his head against his mum’s shoulder whilst Arthur makes his way up to the teacher’s table. They don’t speak because there is nothing to say. Harry has no words to linder their agony. He doesn’t even have words for his own weird queerness inside of him, the emptiness.
It doesn’t take long for Arthur and McGonagall to make their way back to them. ,Them’ now includes everyone who is still here; the shuffling at the door has woken them all; and they’ve scrambled around to join them in one big group, Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Ginny at its center, all of them adults or seventh, sixth years. The one’s who stayed and the one’s who returned. They all look tired, worn out, and he wishes it were different.
„Did you find anyone else?“ He hears the hope in McGonagall’s voice, and she sighs, relieved, when the Weasleys shake their heads. „No more“, says Arthur. Harry thinks his voice sounds different, the same way Ron’s eyes look different, murky and dusty. There is silence, but only for a few moments. „How many?“ That’s Madam Pomfrey. He knows she is not asking about the Death Eaters. „Twenty“, says Molly, and her voice breaks. Ron grabs her hand. There is the silence again.
Harry turns his head away, staring against the wall. Twenty. Twenty students who fought and lost and were killed, and there is this voice, this horrible, tiny voice inside his head, that tells him, over and over again, it’s your fault. He knows that, he thinks, he doesn’t need a reminder for that.
„It’s not your fault, Harry.“ Ginny’s voice is quiet but fierce enough. „It’s not. It really isn’t.“ She says it as though she knows it for certain, knows it all, and he wants to believe her. She, too, grabs for his hand, holds it tight, and it’s the only thing that is keeping him in the moment.
•••
They’re burning the Death Eaters’ bodies that evening, the evening of the 3rd of May 1998, without ceremony, without words, just bodies being ignited by fire and watched as they turn to ash. In the end, Harry is the only one who ends up at the fire, even though they all didn’t want to go. The Weasleys have been staying together, working to clean this up, Hermione with them, and the others deal with this the way they need to.
He stands aside, hands in the pockets of his jacket, dusty and dirty because he hasn’t changed in what feels like weeks and hasn’t had the energy to cast a spell. He watches someone putting the bodies to the fire which is held alive by Flitwick who has lost one of his eyes. Against the shine of the flames he recognises some of them, recognises Greyback, still in his atrocious half-wolf-man form, then Macnair, body broken from when Hagrid threw him against the wall, then Bellatrix, dark curls around her head, and finally, Tom Riddle himself.
They’re all ash in the end, when the fire burns down in the early morning hours, and Harry catches himself wishing that he were, too.
•••
The funeral is a few days later, on the 7th of May 1998, and it’s weird, because everyone is there. It feels like the entire British Wizarding Society has assembled on the Hogwarts’ grounds. No ministry, obviously, since the ministry is in total disarray, as Kingsley has told them, because there’s still Death Eaters on the run, people pretending to have been influenced by the Imperius-curse and people who have, in fact, been influenced by the Imperius-curse. There’s a small brigade of ex-ministry-officials surrounding Kingsley who are said to somewhat represent a new ministry, trying to handle politics, but the fact still stands that Britain’s politics are non-existent. After all, there has been no international exchange for months.
But there are other people there. Parents and siblings, known figures, teachers, students, and many more, gathered here to say goodbye. The families of the dead have been seated in front rows, and even though some old, former press representative has asked – or more precisely: furiously screamed at Kingsley – to put Harry, Ron, and Hermione on front row seats, they have taken seats with the rest of the Weasleys. Harry sits next to Charlie who seems to have lost some of that spark in his eyes. Apparently, he and his friends have been occupied with fighting Death Eaters to invade larger dragon colonies in Romania who tried to use them for their own benefits, and the news of his younger brother dying hasn’t been easy either.
McGonagall, then Kingsley, have been asked to prepare speeches, but Harry doesn’t listen. He stares at the coffins instead, twenty beautifully carved coffins made from their respective wand’s wood by Ollivander himself, all of them open. He hasn’t looked at the bodies since he first learned of Fred’s death. He doesn’t want to see them, the people who died for him. The words fling themselves up into the sky, words without meaning, at least for him.
After the speeches, the families are supposed to take their loved one’s with them. They are to be buried where the family wants. The one’s who don’t have any family are to be buried next to Dumbledore’s grave which has been repaired, but you can still see where the marble was split. Harry doesn’t know how he feels about that. He doesn’t know how he feels about a lot of things, people even, first and foremost the old headmaster.
„Harry?“
He snaps out of his thoughts, raises his head to see that they’re all standing, Hermione holding her hand out to him, and he takes it, a warm reassuring hand against his own. They’re all going down to the coffins now, the calm May broken through by birds and the wind and sobs and tears. He sees Mrs Creevey, who looks like a ghost; parents of students he didn’t know by name; the actual Hogwarts ghosts. Somewhere in the back of his mind he realises there is no one there to claim Lupin, and energy seeps through him. He doesn’t want him to be buried here, so he takes his hand back from Hermione, who looks at him and then understands and nods, and walks over.
Somehow he looks younger, Harry thinks, when he looks down and sees Lupin’s face, eyes closed, skin pale. Then he realises that Lupin is, in fact, young. It feels weird. This whole situation feels weird, because he feels nothing at all.
„He looks younger, doesn’t he?“
He looks up to find a woman standing next to him, brown hair in a tight bun at the back of her head. She looks familiar, but it takes him some time to recognise her. He recognises her because she is holding an infant in her arms, only a few weeks old at best, and that is the first time that he can feel something, a sharp pain, clawing its way up into his throat. He doesn’t say anything. Andromeda Tonks smiles at him, but it’s a sad smile. „They would be so proud of you, Harry.“ He doesn’t say anything. „It’s not your fault they died“, she continues, as if she can read his thoughts, his everlasting thoughts, the thoughts that keep him up at night.
He looks her in the eyes, and she smiles again, softly rocking the infant on her arm. „I believe you are his godfather?“ Harry nods and takes Edward Remus Lupin from her. He feels wrong in his arms, as if he could break. „They died for their son to have a better life than they did“, she says, but his mind has drifted off again whilst holding his godson, looking at him, finding Remus and Tonks in his small face and the few hairs on his head, which keep changing colour.
•••
They decide to bury Remus and Tonks together. It feels weird, Harry thinks, strolling through Godric’s Hollow again when the last time they did, they were alone, lost. He knows Hermione thinks so, too, because she has the same stillness around her, different than Ron’s or Molly’s. It’s only the three of them, plus Bill and Andromeda with Teddy, as she calls him. They have thought about other places, but Harry insisted. It’s only right. It’s the 10th of May 1998.
His parents’ gravestone is not alone on the old graveyard anymore. To their left, it’s flanked by Remus, followed by Tonks right next to him; to their left, a stone without a body. Seeing Sirius’ name on it stirs something up in him, something he has tried to bury inside of him. He shoves it back down, swallows, thinks of something to say and can’t seem to find the right words.
They leave in silence, Ron and Hermione hand in hand, Bill talking to Andromeda, leaving Harry at the graves, fresh earth next to old one, staring at the stones which are the only things left of those he loved. And there it is again, the stirring, the clawing, and suddenly there is a tear, just one, and he whispers, „I’m sorry, I’m sorry“, all over again and again and again, even when he turns around and follows those that are left.
•••
When he apparates back to the Burrow, he is crying, finally crying, finally something inside of him, and when he arrives on the threshold, Molly is there, and he cries and cries into her neck, and she just holds him, because that is what mothers do, stroking his hair and telling him, it’s not his fault, and he finally can believe it at least a bit, even though he still thinks it is. „I never asked for them to die“, he sobs, and she nods, hand in his hair, motioning with her other hand for the other Weasleys, faces upset, to go away, give him space. „I know“, she says. „I know you didn’t.“
It takes a long time for the tears to stop, and she holds him all the way through it. But when they do, the emptiness is a little smaller, and even though the grief is hot and burning through his chest, he is relieved, so relieved, because he can finally feel something again.