The saviour of the wizarding world was dead. Professor Trelawny, as he had so often joked in these last years, had been right on one count out of three. But even the ripest of old ages ends sometime, leaving a great gaping hole in the lives of those who knew him. And a new problem.
"Why do they want a monument to the barmy old codger?" demanded James, whose manners and morals, as Al pointed out at family gatherings, were getting corrupted by his grandchildren.
Lily cast him a reproachful little sister glance, and picked up the letter again. "The Minister wants our views on the form and location of a statue 'in honour of the late Harry James Potter.'" She put down the official gold-edged Ministry parchment-for-special-occasions, and looked questioningly at her two brothers. "So...?"
They were gathered, the only three people in the world who knew him just as 'Dad.' Nothing grander, nothing less wonderful. All the other honours and plaudits and achievements, that all the obituaries and reports had said so much about, were nothing compared to that. Not to them, and not to Dad either.
But to the rest of the world, it was different. They all stared down at the letter. A statue in honour of Dad? How did you sum up Dad in a statue? There already was the one of him, with their Potter grandparents, in Godric's Hollow. Dad had taken each one of them, when they got to about the age of four or five, to meet it. It was special to him; every occasion when they went to Grandma Lily's and Grandad James' graves, birthdays and Halloweens and Christmases, he'd go and take a look at it.
But beyond that, Dad wasn't really one for statues. They all grinned slightly in unison, reaching the memory of the delight with which Dad had repeated to each one of them Uncle George's nickname for the new Fountain of Magical Brethren which Minister Shacklebolt had put up. It was impossible even now to walk past that group of witch, wizard, goblin, centaur and house-elf all holding hands without remembering that it really was "The Paddlers in the Pool." That information had somehow been passed on down the Potter clan, usually after a visit to 'Grandad Harry.'
"James will have to do it now," said Al. "Unless the portrait will take it up."
When it came to monuments, they did have Dad's portrait, hanging in the sitting room at Grimmauld Place. It was now active, but Dad didn't seem to have updated much after turning a hundred, so it was a quite a few years out of date, and also rather crabby. He hadn't particularly wanted a portrait; it was Mum and Aunt Hermione who'd insisted, and the portrait remembered this. Most conversations with it weren't too far different from talking to Phineas Nigellus. Okay, so there was a twinkle in its green eyes when it said it needed its sleep.
"The question is," said Al slowly, "what would Dad have wanted?"
Dad? Dad, who had always said what he wanted most was just to be him and Mum and James and Al and Lily. Together, safe...
James, who always spoke first, shrugged. "Don't know. Not pigeons doing whoopsies on his head."
Lily, who felt everything deeply, happy or sad bit her lip. "A quiet life, really..."
Al, who thought deeply and then acted decisively, jerked out a quill and flipped the Minister's letter over.
"In regard to your request for a public monument to our late father," he wrote rapidly. "We wish for a plain slab-"
"Of British granite," James butted in, thinking of the hills about the Burrow Dad had loved to walk and fly among.
"Hewn by hand not magic," Lily added, remembering the grave above the cliffs at Shell Cottage.
"of British granite, hewn by hand not magic, to have the following inscription:
'Si monumentum requiris, circumspice.'
~:~fin~:~