Photographs – What We're Fighting For
It's his idea, the photographs. Simple he thinks as he sends away the owls in the dead of night, Aberforth lets him do it from the pub grunting about stupid ideas, stupid people – but he hands over a photograph none the less, old, faded and worn, portraying two boys- unmistakably a young Albus and Aberforth- and a little girl younger than her brothers with thick wavy blonde hair and those same grey eyes studying him from a time long past.
Ginny's reply come first, filled with envelopes containing more photographs from the other order members, meanings and dates inscribed along the back,
Hers though, is beautiful, taken by her dad Neville thinks, as he's not in the picture; neither's she come to think of it, nor's Ron but scanning the photo he realises they probably aren't born yet- Fred and George no more than babies sit on a picnic blanket outside of the burrow, Bill waves cheekily in the corner, Charlie rides on a little toy broomstick arms out stretched, playing dragons Neville imagines, remembering back to the games of his own childhood and Percy looking less out of place with his family than he has ever seen him, perched the shoulders of a tall, also red headed man who's eyes are alight, seemingly making a joke with the other man beside him –the two men are scarily alike in features and expression, with grins worthy of the Weasley twins. Turning the photograph over he sees the names Fabian and Gideon Prewett scrawled in Ginny's looping writing followed by dates of birth and death 14th January 1957- 10th April 1979 and 14th January 1957- 10th April 1979
With it comes a photo of Kingsley Shacklebolt's two sisters grinning for the camera, a picture of Andromeda Tonks and her late husband with a scowling pink haired girl, two of Dedulus Diggles hat collection, a single black and white image of Hestia Jones waving her son off at platform nine and three quarters, three from Remus Lupin, the first of five teenagers, four boys and a girl all about seventeen, arms flung around each other laughing. As he watches the girl leans in and kisses the boy with messy black hair. Starting he realises it's harry… wait…no it's not, just someone who looks very like him. Quickly he flips the photo over left to right it says Sirius Black, James Potter– Ah!…Harry's dad- Lily Evans, Remus Lupin, Peter Pettigrew. The next picture shows Lupin and the same pink haired girl from Andromeda Tonks' photograph, only now she's years older wearing a simple white dress, it's their wedding, he realises, remembering Ginny telling him about her "Nymphadora Tonks who prefers be known by her surname only". The third and final picture shows a tiny baby, taken from above its eyes screwed up against the flash, hair flickering between brown, purple and turquoise, labelled simply on the back as Teddy Lupin
The next owls to return are Fred and George's, two separate images that are virtually identical Fred's marked George and George's marked Fred, both twins are grinning, wearing smart dress robes outside of their shop. The last time Neville saw the Wizard Weasley's wheezes it was ransacked, the bright banners torn down and the windows filled with wanted posters for the entire Weasley family.
Oliver wood sends a picture of the 1993 Gryffindor Quiditch team – holding up the cup, eyes sparkling with happiness, holding their broomsticks high in victory! Where are they now though? Oliver's himself's in hiding, so are Fred, George and Angelina; Harry's away doing god knows what. He has no idea about Alicia…but he knows for a fact that Katy's dead.
Colin and Dennis Creevy have their arms around each other, in their photograph standing in the Hogwarts grounds. Sticking their tongues out, cross eyed.
Seamus slips one in to Neville's pocket the next day at breakfast – Him and Dean playing exploding snap years ago in the common room, their eyebrows singed- He finds three more in his charms textbook, Susan Bones and her Aunty Amelia at a café, plates in front of them piled high with food. Terry Boot dancing at the Yule ball with his muggleborn girlfriend Sara, Michael corner flying high, high above the snowy school grounds.
The next letters from his grandmother, I looked through your parent's old things- here you go. There's no explanations for these ones, its painfully obvious who and what they show. His parents young and happy looking, his mother in her wedding dress is almost unrecognisable, a far cry from the woman locked up in St Mungo's day and night, arm in arm with his father, strong and tall and with a silly grin on his face. The second, is of two women with babies on their knees, one unmistakably his mother - taken maybe a year or two after the first- and the other a red-head and a couple of years younger than his mother. He remembers her from an earlier photo – professor Lupin's – Lily Evans, kissing Harry's dad. They're Harry and him, he realizes – the babies not old enough to really know each other, but smiling all the same. Grief hits him like a punch in the gut, an overwhelming urge just to give up and move on, not to waste any more lives, and surprisingly it's not seeing him with his mum, it's seeing harry without a scar that does it, he's not the chosen one, not the boy that lived, just another kid.
Luna's are the last to arrive she send two, one of her and her father on holiday hunting nargles or crumple horned Snorzak's or whatever it is they think is real. It's a special moment he realizes, seeing Luna with her father and after looking at it he understands her a little bit more. The next is of him, Ginny and her at Hogsmeade, he remembers the day, earlier in the year before the visits had been banned, walking down in the late autumn sunshine, drinking Butterbeer in the three broomsticks, talking about normal teenagers stuff and just for a moment forgetting that they were fighting a war, forgetting that at any moment any one of them could be killed like countless others already had. He adds their portraits to the wall too, he's building up quite a collage, Cedric Diggory, overlapping Hannah Abbotts mum overlapping Madeye Moody, overlapping Dobby the house elf; all with permanent sticking charms applied to the back . He glances back down at Luna's letter and notices a scrap of parchment lying on top, her curly looping script dark against the beige paper – remind them what we're fighting for. That's the idea he thinks, that's the idea
After the battle the wall's in ruins , only a few photographs remain whole, the rest in tatters on the ground, but slowly, ever so slowly, new additions pop up, strange pieces of happiness from a world full of chaos, despair and horror. Neville knows then, with a sense of pride, that it did what he intended.
Please read and review. I may turn this into a three shot about other Photographs (e.g. The order photograph from the fifth book and the photo album Hagrid gives harry in the Philosophers Stone) so tell me what you think of that idea too and if you have the time, check out my other story living up to the Legacy! Addicted-To-Sugar-Quills xxx