AN: My return to the HP universe. I have been gone too long.
Susan Bones does not like abbreviations and she does not like contractions.
She is not the short hand type—does not smush he is and she is and they are and we are and how are together, because she feels lazy, like she is cheating.
Susan is scared to fight.
She is scared of the war, of what might happen to her, to her family, to their world. Susan is afraid she might wake up one day and it will all have been stolen in the night—the good will fall and there will be no happily ever after, not for her.
But if she does not fight and she wakes up to that nightmare one day, then she will always wonder what if.
(She feels a little selfish, a little self-important, feeling like she could make a difference, but if she does not believe in herself, then what does she have to believe in?)
The day that her Aunt Amelia dies is the day she officially decides to fight. (It does not make sense that Amelia's death is what set her off. Amelia's death is small compared to everything else Susan has lost.)
Hufflepuffs are not the fighters and they are not the smart ones and they are not the evil ones—they are the extras, the ones who just fill in and do the best they can while the Gryffindors are off saving the world and the Ravenclaws are busy. The Hufflepuffs are not really good at anything but being the background.
The day Neville Longbottom stands in front of them and calls them to fight, to stand with him, for Harry, Susan reaches for Ernie's hand (Ernie has always been hers, the way she has always been his. They just are, it just is.) and Hannah takes her elbow and that is that.
How can she not? Turning away from this now will feel like abandonment and Hufflepuffs do not abandon their friends. And Neville is a friend now, and maybe more. The war forges bonds between people that can never be truly understood. They are all closer than siblings, more than family, better than friends. They are bound by a war, and it identifies them with each other. They cannot abandon that.
Susan takes a deep breath and squeezes Ernie's hand, offers Hannah a tentative smile. For Amelia, for Edgar, for all the left behind and the fallen, for Harry and for Dumbledore and for Cedric. She squeezes again and closes her eyes and jumps in.
The day she moves into the room of requirement, she cries.
This is not what she signed up for. She will not back out now, but this is not what she thought it would be. It was so easy to see the glory when Neville stood in front of them, with the light in his eyes and his fist raised and his voice strong and proud—it was so easy to get lost in the glory and the heroics.
But this war is so much more—it is an all or nothing kind of thing—the glory comes with sleepless nights and hard floors and weeks without bathing. It comes with blood and sweat and tears and being so scared you cannot breathe. The glory will make it into the books, but Susan will always remember the terror so much better.
She feels like they have lost, when the castle is overrun—she means visibly overrun, because the Death eaters have been in control of Hogwarts for a while now, but the day the castle walls start crumbling, Susan feels like a failure.
This is what they fought to protect, right? It was not supposed to end this way, and Susan cries, even as she grips her wand and squeezes Ernie's hand tightly in hers and they walk into battle.
It is odd, that her last thought is about abbreviations. Ernie is dead—Fred too, and Professor Lupin, and his wife, and and and—the list goes on and on and it all just feels like an abbreviation and Susan cannot help but think about how much she hates abbreviations, even as she falls to the ground and stares up at the man who killed her, her last breath fading from her lips.
Twenty Years Later
The group of first years floods the main hall and Hannah takes a deep breath, studying each eager face, brushing a hand across the memorial as she stands in front of them. She hopes, she prays, that none of them will ever experience what she and her best friend did their seventh year. Hopes and prays that their lives will not end as abruptly as Susan's and Ernie's and Fred's and… Hopes and prays for no more abbreviations, no more endings come too soon.
Thanks for reading. Leave your thoughts on the way out.