[Hi, this is my first story on here ever.

Please read. =)

-Standard disclaimer here-.]

Dawn's Pensieve

Just before the Battle of Hogwarts.

(Courage isn't the absense of fear, it's action in the presence of it.)

The D.A.'s fake galleon still worked. I held it in my hands, already in my comfortable pajamas, seated on a nice fluffy sofa, in my safe home across the sea from London, with my mother cooking in the kitchen. Safe. I was safe. The little galleon in my hand said that everyone I had grown to love, my classmates and friends, was not. I had a choice to make.

I took the metal in my hands and entered the kitchen. "Mom."

"It's almost ready. You really have gotten too skinny, Dawn. I knew I should've checked up on you more. This year especially. Really, how you convinced me to let you go-- and then to have you show up two days ago, looking like that." Her head shook, the blonde locks of hair rippling this way and that down her back. Her perfume wafted across the air, mixed with the smell of simmering vegetables. The smell of home made it harder to tell her.

"Mom." I repeated, but she did not look at me.

She sent some more onions to cut with a flick of her wand, "Apparating all the way back to New York, you must've been crazy. Did they decide to let people Apparate in and out of school? Ridiculous."

"Mom. Look at me."

She did. Her gaze caught mine. In the time I'd been away, on my own in the Wizarding World, she hadn't changed. I, on the other hand, looked very different. Strangely enough…She and I were the same height now, if I wasn't a half-inch taller. Her brilliant blue eyes mirrored my own. We could've passed as twins, I expected, if my hair had been her shinning blonde instead of dark gold. "They didn't lift the anti-Apparating charm, whatever it is they do. They might have, actually. I don't know. I haven't been at Hogwarts to find out. But…You knew that."

Gwen put down her wand, and the air-born utensils cutting and cooking for her lowered as well. "I did. But I knew you had set your mind to going back, and I figured it'd be easier to let you go thinking your lie had worked."

"How did you find out?" My curiosity got the better of me.

Mom laughed, "Dawn. Your father is the American President of Magic! Did you really think in these times we'd let you run around without tracking you? Seriously, I thought you'd be smarter!"

"Sorry." I bit my lip, unsure of how to continue. How much else had Mom guessed or knew for sure? From her perch here in New York, I thought she'd be cut off from information, out of the loop and, hopefully, safe. I hadn't factored dad in. Stupid, stupid me. "What else do you know?"

"Everything." Her eyes turned toward the food again. "Your dad tells me everything he knows. Of course, America has stayed out of the fighting. You know how this country is. Unless You-Know-Who made a direct attack we're content to stay out." She waved her hands, "All this crazy stupid shit is going on. And I really did not like you being over there with the craziness. It took a lot not to go get you and haul you back home. But I didn't. Besides, what I could I do? You're of age, and I'm just your mother. Jonathan agreed; He said he'd raised you with too strong a will and too thick a head."

The smile could not be hidden, so I flashed it at her proudly. I flipped the trick galleon over and over in my hands. "I would've come back. For a little while, anyway. If you two wanted me to, I would have. But mom, you know--I wasn't ever one to play on the sidelines. You raised me in the spotlight."

At this she smiled, "I did, didn't I?"

"Yes," I stepped forward. "And that's why I'm over there, helping the cause, in the fight. Because you taught me to not to let life pass me by."

"I didn't tell you to go chase your death, either." Gwen amended. "Dawn, you didn't have to go."

"Don't have to."

"What?"

"I don't have to go."

"But--" Mom's head tilted to the right, "You're safe here. Why would you go?"

I held the galleon up for her to see. "I have to go."

Confusion gave way to knitted brows and a quivering lip. "Dawn." My name was said with disbelief, worry.

"They're calling me." She took the galleon from my head, shaking her head.

"Don't go." She slammed it down onto the table top. "Don't. Go."

I stared at her. "I have to."

"No, you don't. Dawn, this is-- ridiculous!"

"No, it's not!"

"Yes, Dawn, it is!" She clenched her jaw, eyes wide with worry. "I really thought you wouldn't have that thing anymore. This would've gone perfectly if you had thrown it away--"

"What?! What's going perfectly?" I glanced around the house. "Mom-- where's dad?!"

She sighed into her right hand. "He's there."

"He's where?"

"There, Dawn! There at Hogwarts! He didn't have to go but he volunteered. Stupid, stupid man. It's not even his problem! He's American-born and raised! Yet he still rushes over there! This is between Harry Potter and You-Know-Who! This has nothing to do with him…Or you!"

"Yes, yes it does. Mom, I'm a witch. You are, too. It's not Harry Potter versus Vol--" I caught myself. It was Taboo to say it, he could track you. But would he care? Would it reach his ears a sea away? Just in case, "Versus You-Know-Who. It'll come down to them, but right now it's a need to fight for what I believe in. For a world your friends died for." I was still reeling with the fact that my dad was at Hogwarts and had neglected to tell and take me with him. But at the moment I didn't have time to argue his case, I only had time for mine.

Her worry turned into a glare. "Don't--"

"Bring them up?" I quirked a brow. "Do you really think it's better to forget them than remember? James, Lily, Sirius-- they gave their lives for Harry. They fought for what the knew was right, however the odds were stacked. Even Dumbledore! They've taken so many…I don't want their sacrifices to be in vain."

My mother's eyes were narrowed slits. "Lily did not die for kids like you to finish her fight, Dawn. She did not die so that someone else's child could die, too. That's not how it works, she was protecting her son!"

"And it's my turn to honor that sacrifice and fight for him as well. Mom," I took her hands. "If he's our only hope, if Harry Potter, who is in my year, in my House, the same age as me, can face Him…Then I can face a Death Eater."

"This isn't about proving yourself to anyone, Dawn. It's not about showing up to say you can do it. They will kill you, Dawn! Like they killed everyone else! It's not a game! This is your life you're staking."

I sighed. We stood their, hand in hand, in the kitchen. The pot behind my mom boiled it's insides, and the music from her room reached us faintly. I wondered if, after tonight, I'd ever hear the noise of my house again. "I have to go."

"No!" My mother shouted. She tore her hands away from mine and stomped around the island of the kitchen. "I won't let you!"

"If I stay here I'll live the rest of my life wondering what would've happened! One person makes all the difference, Mom!"

"And if you go you will have no life at all! Dawn, you are seventeen! Those Death Eaters don't care how old you are, or that you're a girl! And lord forbid they find out who you really are, Dawn they will kill you faster!" Gwen grabbed onto my shoulders. "Think! Think about what you're doing! Bravery is a beautiful quality, and everyone knows you have it, you're in Gryffindor! Don't show it by dying!"

Rarely did she ever speak of what I 'really was.' The one-forth of me that possessed werewolf blood. No one would ever find out, though. We'd promised that. The secret would die with me.

"I was in Gryffindor," I smiled sadly at her. "Now I have to prove why."

"Dawn!" She was pleading now, her blue eyes close to tears. "Don't! I--I could barely handle leaving Lily. She was all the family I had left--And when I heard she died…" Her voice trailed off, she looked to the floor between us. Then suddenly I was pressed tightly against her, and her iron grip wrapped around me. "I couldn't bear it if I lost my only daughter to this stupid, stupid war."

My arms around her were just as strong. We held tightly to one another, and I guessed she knew she would not win this argument. I felt she had already decided I would die, for her lack of faith, and thought this would be the last time she would ever hold me. It was her tears that dampened my shoulder now.

"I raised you. I kept you safe, and happy. I let you make your own choices, be your own person. I did it all. You're here because of me. And now suddenly you think you can just go? Because--because…"

"You just said it." I spoke into her neck, whispering really. "I am who I am because of you. Because you made me into who I am, and I'm damn proud of that! Not many people know who they are, but I do. Because of you. But now you have to let me be that person. You have to let me go. And.." The tears were in my eyes now. "You have to have faith in me, faith that I'll come back to you. I don't think I'll be strong enough…If I don't think you have faith in me."

"Oh don't be stupid." She squeezed me. "I have all the faith in the world in you, Dawn Lily Gwendolyn Rosalie Evan Slipton-Lupin. But I worry, as mother's do. It's not you I don't have faith in."

I waited for her to calm down. When her hold on me tightened we backed away slowly and held each other at the waist. "Now go. Do what you must. But come back to me. I didn't slave over a hot stove for you to die on me. Tell your father he's in trouble, too."

I smiled, and then the tears came freely. "I will."

We hugged tightly. She let me go.

The embrace broke quickly. I think I must've pulled away, for the moment her arms left me I was running. Running upstairs to dress, running to the bathroom to fix my hair (unimportant as it seemed, I'd always hoped to die looking decent), running to get one more hug from my mother. Running to apparate in the middle of the living room back to the danger.