| Jobberknoll
Join Date: Aug 2006 Location: A rainy, rainy place
Posts: 4,425
Hogwarts RPG Name:
Xylina Samuels
Third Year Special Ops |  Memories - Sa13+
This One-Shot is in response to the competition "Write Your Own Epilogue". It's not really any specific genre.
My Epilogue - Memories
Years had passed since their last encounter, and Harry Potter was finally feeling free of Voldemort. He no longer suffered from little trips to Voldemort’s emotions and mind; he was a free man, at long last, after nearly seventeen, hard years of not knowing, of looking over his shoulder constantly, waiting for a new threat to be sent from Voldemort. Always wondering, when would it end? When would the battle finally cease? But, after a long time, it had. And Harry couldn’t be gladder.
On one particular morning, the morning of Harry’s thirtieth birthday, he was contemplating this fact with much glee. His dark hair was as messy as ever, and it was only made messier by Harry’s youngest, Lily, jumping up behind him as he sat on his bed. Smiling, Harry turned around and picked the three year old up to see her mother standing right behind him.
‘Happy birthday, honey.’ said Ginny Potter, formerly known as Weasley. The years had treated Ginny kindly; since becoming an aunt to Victoire, Bill and Fleur’s eldest (at the age of twelve), she’d been well accustomed to looking after kids when she found out she was pregnant with James, her eldest son. She’d become a wife just months before coming a mother, and had settled into both roles very well.
‘Thank you.’ he said, kissing her gently before standing up, Lily still in his arms. Ginny smiled and followed him as he headed out of the bedroom, to the smell of delicious bacon. Raising a sceptical eyebrow at Ginny, he slipped Lily off into one of the chairs around the table. He had a faint memory of a similar occurrence, where – despite being younger – he’d had to help his cousin Dudley into a chair when he broke his leg.
Out of nowhere, he laughed; Ginny, surprised, dropped the bacon she was holding back into the pan. She cursed quietly, so Lily and Albus Severus – their youngest son, aged six, who’d just wandered in – couldn’t hear her. Harry rolled his eyes and turned to the clock Ginny had inherited from her parents.
It wasn’t you ordinary clock; the many hands showed where a person was in their day instead of the time. Harry had always found it fascinating, but often helpful. He often glanced at it at mealtimes, since many of the Weasley family members had been added; it came in very handy, especially when a member was expectant.
There were two small, but distinct pops outside the door to the small apartment and a gentle knock on the door. Harry and Ginny knew it to be Ron and Hermione with their two kids, Rose and Hugo, who were the same age as Al.
As Ginny stood up to open the door, Harry glanced around his apartment; they had little room here, so he was glad they were moving the next day. But he took in everything around them; the pictures of family members – both the Weasley and Potter side, though Harry counted the Weasleys as family anyway – and close friends; the paintings of importing wizards such as Dumbledore, who visited from time to time; the pictures of the kids; Harry and Ginny’s wedding day; then all the books piled into a corner on the shelf that was propped up by magic, next to a cabinet they had to keep a Shield Charm around at all times because the kids could crash into it and smash all the ornaments and china.
The door opened and Harry vaguely heard Ginny’s surprise as two extra visitors walked through the door. Harry turned and smiled as Luna Lovegood and Dean Thomas walked through, hand in hand, Luna’s long, blond hair tied up neatly in two plaits, and no radish earrings adorning her ears, nor Butterbeer cork necklace around her neck.
‘Hi, Harry.’ she said, in her dreamy voice, as she fiddled with her bag. Ginny closed the door behind Ron and Hermione as they followed the others in.
‘Happy birthday, mate.’ Ron said, thumping Harry on the back as he reached him. In the years since Hogwarts, he had not changed much; the main change simply being his getting older; his hair was as vivid red as always, he was still tall and lanky and sometimes, to say the least, stupid, but he was still Ron.
‘Happy birthday, Harry.’ Hermione said, as she reached him. She kissed him lightly on the cheek and then turned to Ginny, leaving Ron to put the parcel he’d been carrying down on the table. Luna had finally found what she’d been digging for and pulled it out, placing it on top of Ron’s badly wrapped parcel.
It was little more than a clenched fist in size, but very round apart from the bottom, where it was flattened and rested quite nicely. Harry’s emerald eyes sparkled with laughter, but he held it back from his throat so not to offend Luna and Dean.
‘So, who else is coming?’ Hermione asked, as Harry saw her glance at his wardrobe. Harry realised suddenly that he was still in his pyjamas. He could feel himself flushing the same deep red Ron’s ears normally went as he dashed back into his bedroom, the echoing of the laughs following him.
They made a huge difference to the one day that had deeply scarred Harry, when he had heard them all screaming and crying as he lay, apparently dead, in Rubeus Hagrid’s arms. Harry would never forget their screams … they haunted him even to this day, despite the thirteen year time gap.
As Harry quickly changed, more memories of that fatal night came back but he pushed them firmly away. Voldemort was gone now. There would be no more suffering at his hands unless some one you loved was caught in the cross fire. No one else would die and Voldemort have the blood on his hands.
Hurriedly jamming a shirt over his bare chest, Harry hurried back out of the bedroom and into the kitchen where, it aspired, most of the Weasley clan had arrived.
Harry smiled at the current youngest Weasley member, George and his wife Ivy’s two year old daughter, Mia. Mia looked at him, her big, brown eyes staring blankly at him as if she didn’t recognise him. Harry shook his head and hurried over to the cooker as Ginny took his birthday breakfast off.
‘You sit down!’ she said, sternly to him. ‘It’s your birthday. Put your feet up!’
Harry, taken aback by this, did as he was told and sat down obediently at the head of the table as all the other various Weasley members sat around him.
Harry looked around at his new family, smiling. Never in his life had he dreamed he could be a part of something so big, never mind a family.
Teddy, Lupin and Tonks’ son, sat to Harry’s left, his (today) dark blue hair the same as the shirt he was wearing for his godfather’s birthday. Harry felt a pang of remorse as he was the main reason that neither of Teddy Lupin’s parents were here anymore; if he hadn’t revealed himself to the DA all those years ago, the Order of the Phoenix would never have been called and they’d never have been killed.
The thirteen year old didn’t seem to notice Harry’s sad smile, instead looking next to him and chatting effortlessly with Ivy.
Ginny sat on Harry’s right, the three year old Fred bouncing on her knee. Harry knew what grief George and Ivy having Fred had put her through, as his namesake had died in the battle just as Tonks and Lupin had. Harry put a hand on her knee n a comforting way and the two looked at each other. A silent understand seemed to pass through their look and they both looked away as Harry helped himself to some food.
Seconds turned into minutes, minutes turned into hours, hours turned into days and days turned into weeks.
On the night of Hallowe’en, Harry sat in his bedroom at the new house, staring out at the night sky, where the stars were shining brightly. If he looked over the road, he could just make out the shape of a house through all the thick brambles. Tomorrow, Harry was going to visit there and pay a trip to his parent’s graves as well.
Harry looked away from the house and at Ginny’s sleeping body. He was so lucky to have her. She’d been his lifeline through all the bad times, and he’d been hers after the Final Battle. They’d been each other’s stone, though unknowingly at the time. They hung on just to see each other.
The hands on Harry’s clock turned to midnight and Harry looked back out at the house across the road. It had been twenty nine years since it was last lived in. Twenty nine years since Harry had had parents, proper parents, who smiled down at him.
Blinking away the heat of the tears he could feel at the back of his eyes, he stood up, grabbing his wand and cloak. He didn’t care about the time; he only cared about the date and what had happened many years previous.
Casting a final look at Ginny, he left a hurriedly scribble note near the door and proceeded over to the road. Every few steps, he’d cast a glance over his shoulder to make sure no one could see him, but as he was under his invisibility cloak he doubted anyone could anyway.
As he hurried through the streets, he pulled the Deluminator he’d borrow from Ron out of his pocket and clicked it once. Orbs of light from all the lights around him zoomed towards it and, as he shut it, the street was plunged into darkness. This suited him very well.
Under the cover of darkness, no one could see as Harry reached the house in front of him and placed his hand on the gate and gently pushed it open. He could see the house in front of him; half of it blown up, from that fatal curse many years ago.
He could feel the tears welling in his eyes again; he was determined not to succumb to them, however, and turned away from the house. He just had to see … he had to. He couldn’t stand not seeing on this day.
It was sort of a tradition of his, to come down ever Hallowe’en and see his parents old house as soon as the day began at midnight. Then, at midnight between October and November, he’d go to visit his parents graves. He found it comforting, being that close to them, as he had never known them.
Sighing, he cast a final glance over the house before heading back over to his and Ginny’s. If it had been possible, he knew that he’d have wanted to move into there with his family, but it was not, as the house was still in ruins and Harry didn’t want to disturb the one thing that would never change about his parent’s.
Almost as soon as he had slipped back into his own house and taken off the cloak, he saw Ginny waiting for him. She had never noticed he’d gone before, but when she saw him, Harry knew she understood and he crossed the room in two strides and hugged her.
‘I’d do the same if it were me.’ she whispered into his ear. Harry smiled, still hugging her. ‘I understand how difficult it is for you. You lost your family until you found us, but I don’t mind coming second to your parents. They are your parents, after all, even if they’re not here.’
Harry knew she was thinking of one of her brothers, Percy, who had turned his back on the Weasley family before for a long time. ‘Thank you.’ he whispered back, pulling away, putting his arm around her shoulders. She put hers around his waist and they walked up the stairs.
After all this time, the pain of Lord Voldemort was still felt in those losses and sadness that he had caused to everyone. All the deaths were permanent reminders of that man who was not capable of loving.
Harry raised his hand and rubbed at one of his few, permanent reminders, one of the others that would never fade, and gently rubbed it.
The only sign of his suffering through childhood, unless you counted all the scars inside him.
On his forehead still sat his lightening bolt scar.
__________________ listen and you can hear the distant sounds
of someone humming a familiar song
the sounds of raindrops echo across the horizon
and shoot your wish up to the sky |
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