For Gamma
we can be heroes
You sit in the same spot every day, glaring up at the guard with an intense hatred on your face. He can't do anything to you at the moment; he can't hurt you, persecute you or punish you. You're not doing anything wrong by just sitting there. All he can do is glare right back at you and finger his wand menacingly, hoping that you'll give up hope and go away.
But you won't give up hope, not while you know that your family is on the other side of the wall where it's safe. You need to know where they are, what they're doing and how their ministry plans to get the other half of the wizarding population out of the situation that they were in. So you sit here… hoping that someone from the other side will come and sit at the wall just like you are. You don't know what the penalty is for communicating with someone from the other side, but you do know that as long as you're not trying to escape, the guards can't hurt you. At least for now you know that you can survive without much effort.
You wake to flashes of light and screams of people that you know were on your side. You feel a searing pain in your cheek and across your chest and back. You can hear a panicked voice from above you, assuring you that you'll be fine as you finally find your voice and scream out in agony. You feel her dabbing at your face and the pain starts to ebb slowly, but the pain in your heart is a new kind of awful.
"Lavender!"
You look up to see Parvati, your best friend, sitting on the ground beside you. She's bleeding above her eye and her face withholds pain that you can only just see hiding inside her eyes. You can't move your mouth to make words and everything that you want to say and ask her comes out in grunts and moans. She somehow seems to understand what you're asking.
"Lav, they've won. Harry's dead."
You feel your heart break again as you realise that the boy you've all been aiding has gone. You know that there will be nothing to stop Voldemort and the Death Eaters now. He had only avoided killing them because he was afraid that Harry would die at some other hand than his. They had fought but now, you realise, it was all in vain. You are all going to die.
You feel the earth starting to shake and Parvati wrapping her arms around your body. You shut your eyes and brace yourself for the darkness that will surely come. The pain in your cuts barely hurts and you hold your breath. You count to ten and remember what your mother always told you when you had nightmares as a child "Remember Lavender, if you are ever scared, close your eyes and count to ten and by then, the danger will have passed." So you count, you count because it gives you something to do, you count because it makes you feel safe, you count because you hope that when you open your eyes that you will be gone from all this.
You reach ten.
The shaking in the earth stops.
A child starts to wail.
But you're not dead, oh no, you're very much alive and you know in your heart that it's just the beginning of your nightmare.
They had split Scotland and England right down the middle and built a clear wall that was fifteen feet high and as smooth as marble all along it with Death Eater guards along the top. Flooing or apparating to somewhere on the other side of the wall was impossible and in time – flooing and apparating was impossible altogether. They had been imprisoned in their own home.
Death Eaters had taken over Hogwarts immediately – tearing the beautiful school apart and rebuilding it into a sort of concentration camp. They took away the wands of muggleborns and burnt them in an incinerator and proceeded to lock them all up for stealing magic. They tortured the half-bloods and blood-traitors into submission and made them into teachers and healers – people that were needed to keep the children's education going. They freed the purebloods with a pass to go wherever they pleased as long as it was on their side of the wall.
It was their idea of separating the wizarding world, making you all an easier target for them to control. And it worked flawlessly. With the ministry on the other side of the wall, there was not much that your side could do to help the prisoners and free the children who were having their minds corrupted.
You were fortunate. You were able to do as you pleased on your side of the wall, but you didn't want to do as you pleased, you wanted to fight back, you wanted to be able to go home to your parents and siblings who were stuck on the other side in London.
So you sit here for the whole day, only returning to the shack that you found near the wall at night to sleep. It's a repetitive schedule but it keeps you sane, saner than most of the people here who have either had their minds corrupted by the Death Eaters or have been tortured to insanity.
You can't remember how long it's been since the wall went up. Eight months, maybe nine? Your sister would've had her baby by now and it hurts to think that you can't be there for your niece or nephew.
You lost track of where Parvati went about three months in. You had parted ways in Wales as she had attempted to find the family that she had living there. You'd tried to escape and been caught and thrown into the barracks for a month – that was when they'd changed the penalty for trying to escape to instant execution.
"Hey," you call up to the guard. He looks down on you with distaste, "Can you see anything good up there?" he spits down at you and you dodge it expertly. You roll your eyes as you look through the transparent wall. It's cool to the touch and there are some holes in it where the ministry had tried to fight back against the spell that all of the Death Eaters had cast, but none big enough for a person to climb through. Plus, they would never get past the guards.
You wrap your arms around yourself and lean up against the wall. It's never all that warm in England and you wish that you could travel south to hotter temperatures but Apparition is impossible and you barely have any food to walk or any money to catch a train. One of the beauties of this wall is that it's invisible to muggles – they had all just passed off the splitting of their continent off as a particularly violent earthquake. They could pass from side to side as they pleased by building bridges across the new rivers and lakes that had appeared there, but now and then you would read about a family that went missing in the muggle newspapers and you just knew that they had been tortured and killed for sport. There's a tapping on the wall and you look around abruptly, thinking that it's one of the guards trying to get your attention, but when you turn around, all you see through the glass is a pretty blonde girl who is waving at you.
"Hello," she says softly.
"Hi," you say cautiously, checking to see that the guards weren't aware of her talking to you through one of the faults in the wall, "Luna, right?"
The girl nods, "You're Lavender Brown, aren't you?" you nod shortly, biting your lip. You lower your voice so that it's barely a whisper.
"What are things like over there?" you ask and Luna has to press her ear against the glass to hear you properly.
"Horrible," she whispers back, "the Ministry and the Death Eaters are still at war – nobody can leave the house without fear of being killed. Loads of people have defected to them in order to protect their families. You?"
"Complete and utter control," you murmur, "Purebloods are allowed to go free but half-bloods are basically forced into the work force and muggle borns are locked up in these barracks that are basically slaughterhouses."
A spell hits you in the shoulder and you recoil in pain, glaring up at the guard who sent it towards you as you feel your shoulder start to bleed under your fingers. He sneers at you.
"You're not the first one to start talking to her reflection."
You're half angered and half relieved as you crawl back up to the wall. Luna has pressed herself against it in the hopes that the guards won't be able to see her. Thankfully, they're too busy sniggering at you. You know what happens to the ones that lose their minds – they're turned into sport.
"Can you find out if my family is safe?" you mutter. Luna nods shortly and you smile gratefully, "Thank you. I'll draw the attention away from you," you say. Luna gives you a grateful look as you get to your feet and step back from the wall. You throw back your head and scream.
"Let me out!" you yell, running down the wall in the opposite direction that Luna was running and beating your fists on it. Before you can even blink you fall to the ground as two stunners hit you one after the other.
"They're safe," Luna says breathlessly as she sits down on the other side of the wall. You sigh with relief as she glances nervously up at the guards. They've seen you two talk before but they don't particularly mind, just as long as people stay in their respective areas, "Your sister says to tell you that you've got a nephew, his name is Jackson."
"Oh god," you say and you bite your lip as Luna passes you a photograph through the fault. He looks so much like your brother in law but you can see elements of your sister Daisy in there. You wish that he didn't have to come into a world like this.
"How have things been here?" she asked. Lavender tore her eyes away from the picture of her nephew.
"Same old," she said, "you?"
"The ministry is getting beaten," she says, her voice strained. You bite your lip again, you don't know what might happen if the ministry gets overthrown. If that happens, they may as well take down the wall and reunite the two halves again.
"You can't let that happen Luna," you say, reaching through the fault and taking her hand in yours.
"There's not a lot I can do," she says dejectedly. You look deep into her grey eyes and squeeze her hand encouragingly.
"You can inspire people, you can get them riled up to fight, if you can encourage enough people that what they're doing is worthwhile, then we might just be able to fix this."
Luna shrugs, "I can try, but everyone is scared senseless."
"Then you try, and if you fail then at least you can say that you went down fighting," You tell her.
She nods back at you with a smile and then she disappears so quickly it's almost like she's apparated.
You see her nearly every day at the wall. You exchange stories of what's happening on your side of the wall. You mourn friends who have died and you talk in hushed tones about overthrowing the death eaters. It once seemed like a possibility but now that the Death Eaters had completely overthrown the ministry on the other side, the opportunity has all but gone. Yet you continue to meet each other – to fantasise about what life would be like if the wall was down. And slowly, ever so slowly you feel yourself starting to fall in love with the enigmatic blonde girl who sits across from you.
It can never work, you're separated from each other by a sheet of glass, the only contact that you're able to have with each other is through the small fault in the wall. Whenever you reach through and touch her skin you feel tingles go up your arm and through your body. You feel like nothing better could ever happen to you. You feel like there is a cause left to fight for even though the Death Eaters had taken over the entire wizarding world.
Luna was your best friend, she was the girl whom you shared everything with, the girl who risked her life to come and see you every day. You know that these meetings can't last forever – that someday the guards on the wall that have come to be lenient with you, will be replaced and going near the wall would kill you with a single spell.
You try to make the most of these meetings while you can because you know that one day you won't be able to see her ever again.
"You know, daddy always told me that if I didn't find someone that I fell in love with while I was still at school, I would find them in a completely obscure set of circumstances." Luna says as the two of you lounge against the wall making small talk.
"Oh?" you say, raising an eyebrow at her as you shred a piece of grass between your fingers.
"You're very nice, Lavender," Luna says, "And I like you very much."
You smile at her, "I love you too," you say before completely registering the words that are coming out of your own mouth. Luna looks slightly surprised at your words also. "Sorry, Luna, I didn't mean – "
Luna laughs her tinkling laugh, "It's okay Lavender, I love you as well."
And for the first time in what seems like forever, your heart starts to put itself back together as you both slip your arms through the fault in the wall and lace your fingers through each other's. You feel like your heart is soaring far above the boundaries of the wall.
"good," you say with a grin, "because I've been scared that it might ruin our friendship."
"Not at all," she smiles, "not at all."
You lie on the grass that has grown up over the year that you've been meeting each other here. You have your hands linked together through the fault in the barrier and you can feel Luna's thumb stroking the top of your hand. You've run out of things to talk about so the two of you just lie there, staring up at the stars that you share in the same sky, but at the same time seem worlds away from where you are on the other side of the wall.
"Lavender," Luna says softly.
"Yeah," you reply as she twists her fingers in with yours.
"Have you ever thought about coming across, when the guards are sleeping I mean." She asks. Your mouth hangs open a little bit at this request.
"I can't Luna, I'll be killed on site."
"Not if there's nobody around to see us."
"I can't do it Luna, how am I even going to get up this wall? It's smoother than marble! "
"There's a way. A man from our side did it last November, you have to place your feet completely flat on the wall and it acts as a suction pad and you can walk right up."
You look at her quizzically, "I find that a bit hard to believe."
"Try it," Luna urges, "The guards went to bed thirty minutes ago."
"Luna, I can't risk it, they'll know I've gone over," you say, pleading with her not to make you do this.
"Come on Lavender," she says with a smile, "we could be heroes, you and me. Just for one day. We could start a revolution, we could fight back. I can't do it by myself but I know with you at my side, we'd be unstoppable." She bends her lips down to your hands and kisses it. You gasp softly at the touch and you think about it for a split second and realise that climbing over the wall would mean that you would be able to hold the blonde girl in your arms and kiss her lips that taunted you every day. Before you know what you're doing, you've spun yourself around and have placed your feet on the wall to find that Luna was right. Your feet stick securely to the wall when you're not moving.
You take one careful step after one careful step until you reach the top of the wall. The lights are off in the cabins where the guards slept. After a year of nobody even attempting to get over, they had simply given up their night duties in favour of sleep.
Your heart starts to hammer as you tiptoe across the top of the wall to the other side where you can drop down onto a cushioning charm that Luna had set up. You walk to the edge and before you can turn back or have time to be afraid, you've stepped off.
You're falling and just before you hit the ground something stops you and you fall gently on your side. Luna is there before you can even get a sense of your surroundings. She's helping you up and you're looking at her in full, you're touching her face and pushing her hair back , you're feeling her skin and pressing your lips against hers and she's kissing you back as her hands snake their way around your waist and she pulls you closer, and in that moment you feel like you are already heroes, and you never want to look back.
AN: Gamma m'dear, I tried so hard to write you a bellamort but I literally sat there staring at a blank document for a whole month, so I'm going to try and write you that for your birthday okay? LunaLavender seemed like a pair that you might enjoy so here you go, I hope it doesn't suck and that you like it!
This is also for
Camp Potter: Fireworks Show
I'd love it if you could spare the time to leave your thoughts in the box below. Thanks!
DFTBA
Nayla xx
