1. Aurora
Note:This is a series of vignettes/drabbles/short stories/ oneshots written in response to reminiscent-afterthought's Alphabet Prompts Challenge. The character group I chose was the D.A. The chapters in this collection are all unrelated to each other.
The two best moments in Susan Bones's life were exactly nine years apart. May 1, 1988 and May 1, 1997.
May 1, 1988 was her nine-and-a-half birthday. Her actual ninth birthday was November 1, exactly six months before that, but it was a tradition in the Bones family to celebrate half-birthdays as well as actual birthdays. For her 9½ birthday, she and her Aunt Amelia had journeyed to Alaska to see the Aurora Borealis—the Northern Lights.
Late April or early May was not a good time of year to see the Aurora Borealis, but little Susan had believed in the power of miracles. Amelia, although well-known for her no-nonsense attitude, could not refuse the pleading child. So, she braved the cold weather and went with her niece Susan to Alaska in the futile hope of seeing the lights.
Much of the trip is lost to the ebb and flow of memories in the intervening years. But Susan recalls one moment perfectly.
She and her aunt are standing huddled together in the cold, jackets and sweaters stuffed on indiscriminately. It is a full moon, and the pale face in the skies shines down on them. Amelia is suppressing the desire to snap at Susan for dragging her to the wilderness, taking up a week of her time.
Susan is oblivious to her irate aunt; her blue eyes are fixed on the heavens. The night is cold, but she is waiting with bated breath, just as the moon and stars are waiting. The whole world is waiting.
Finally, at midnight, a flicker of green flashes across the sky. Susan inhales sharply. Aunt Amelia looks up at her gasp, and her jaw drops as well. Together the two of them stretch their necks back and watch as the displays light up the sky and the world for two hours. The sight of the northern lights against the full moon is surreal—it cannot be from this world.
When the Aurora Borealis finally fades and the sky is once again a velvety black sprinkled with stars, Susan lets out a long sigh of air, seeing her own breath turn to wisps of white in front of her and disappear into the ether. Seeing the northern lights has left her awestruck with wonder, but they have also filled her with a terrible sadness. She feels as though she has lost something and can do nothing but weep. The world seems a little less bright without the displays. This strange feeling—amazement and bereavement and joy all mixed up—is almost too much for the nine-year-old.
The bittersweetness of that moment remained with her throughout her life. Even though it hurt her and baffled her and confused her so much at the same time, her greatest desire was to feel so strongly once again.
She carried the memory of that moment in her heart, but remembering a feeling is not the same as feeling it. Susan tried, over and over, to re-experience it, but trying to recreate the exact details of a memory is like reading a faded letter read too many times. And the more she strained her mind, the duller it grew.
So she struggled with the memory for nearly a decade, as she continued on with her life, through beginning at Hogwarts, losing her dear Aunt Amelia, the rise of Voldemort, and the tumult that fills her adolescent years.
It was not until May 1, 1997, the Battle of Hogwarts, that she finally managed to re-live that memory.
She was standing outside the castle with the other front-liners, ready to die defending her school and home. The protective forcefield that McGonaGall had cast around the school was crumbling rapidly, but it was putting up a good fight. The midnight deadline had passed. The spells of the Death Eaters attempting to break in were flashing against the forcefield, and to the Hogwartians on the inside, it looked hauntingly like the Aurora Borealis lights that Susan had admired exactly nine years ago—right to the minute.
Half a lifetime ago, Susan had stood with awe underneath a full moon and northern lights, and tasted bittersweetness for the first time in her life. Half a lifetime later, she stood on the threshold of her castle and tasted it again.
She was prepared to go down fighting. She knew the odds were grim and she might not live to see daylight, yet she knew that she would have died fighting for what was right.
The knowledge of that—that even if she died, she had still triumphed in a way—filled her with bittersweetness once again. Susan allowed the emotion that had taunted her for half her life to fill her entire being. Northern lights and bittersweet—somehow the two were connected, at least for her. She let out a breath and squared her shoulders as the forcefield finally collapsed and the Death Eaters swarmed the grounds.
Two moments of bittersweetness and Aurora Borealis, both exactly half a lifetime apart. One under circumstances that could not be better, one under circumstances that could not be worse. Susan viewed those two moments as the best moments of her life.