Title: Potential
Prompt: one of my entries for the 'Your Favorite Hogwarts House Boot Camp Challenge' – Bittersweet and the 'Minor Character Boot Camp Challenge' – Elephant in the Room, and 'The Battle of the Houses Competition – Hufflepuff, Prompt 4, Disappointment' on the HPFC
Disclaimer: Harry Potter is a trademarked brand owned by J.K Rowling and Warner Brothers. Any material used belongs to the aforementioned parties. This material is only used in recreational purposes and I receive no monetary or material rewards from using it. Please don't sue me.
For Pomona Sprout, it sets in sooner than most.
The other survivors are still too relieved, too overjoyed to feel it yet, but as she surveys what remains of the Great Hall, she can't help but think that there are just too many.
Too many students that will never make it to graduation.
Too many people that might not make it to sunset.
Too many parents that have outlived their offspring.
Too many children that will wake up as orphans.
Too many young people that had their whole lives ahead of them.
Too many adults that died for the freedom of the next generation.
Too many revolutionaries that fought and fell with the fire of rebellion burning bright in their hearts.
Too many bigots that spent their entire lives believing in their own superiority, only to discover that death is the one great equalizer.
Too much destruction.
Too much death.
She walks past each body slowly and deliberately, grieving silently for all of them, even for the people who didn't fight on the same side she did, even for the people whom she knows would never have given her the same consideration.
Death should be expected from any war, and to call it a waste of life would be an insult to their sacrifice, but Pomona can't help but think that it didn't have to be this way, that it didn't have to be so much.
(A person can never be a waste of life, but it's all too easy to become a compilation of wasted choices.)
It would be very easy to stare at these bodies for the rest of her life, thoroughly caught up in the could-have-beens, but what would that accomplish besides more sorrow and disappointment? She gives them one last glance, then turns and exits the hall, feeling older and sadder than she has in a long time.
Indeed, Pomona Sprout feels it sooner than most: the loss, the sorrow, the waste.
('What's the hardest part about being a teacher?' she'd asked her mother once, way back when. Her mother had smiled sadly and replied, 'The waste.')
(Oh, and this is the most painful sort of waste, isn't it? This terrible waste of potential.)