A/N: This is the sequel to the-still-in-progress Polar Opposites. If you haven't read that yet, that's okay, it hasn't been written yet.
Summary: The war for peace is over, peace didn't win. After sixteen years of constant fighting, many wonder if it will ever stop. The children born during the war will do anything to stop it.
Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended. I only own Katrina, Chloressa, all of the grand children, Draco's brothers and sister, and the mentioned Death Eaters.
Like Slaves
~~**~~
Life After Hogwarts
~~**~~
Sixteen years of war, and there was no sight of the end of it. Many had died, but many still lived. The Death Eaters had the most casualties, two and a half million in one year, but there were more coming everyday. The Order of the Phoenix had the best Aurors the Ministry had to offer, and the best medics in the world. More and more people were going from neutrality, and choosing a side, most chose the light, but the battles were never ending.
Virginia Malfoy stood at the balcony of the children's nursery and stared out over the water at the steadily moving boat that was taking the love of her life away from her, again. As the boat disappeared over the horizon, she slowly raised a white handkerchief and let it go. She watched in silence as it fluttered in the breeze racing after the boat.
Draco, Harry, and Blaise had all been a part of the planning up until seven years ago, but they were called to fight, and they only came home once a year. The attacks on private homes were becoming less scarce, and they were prone to stop it. They, and all of Ginny's brothers and Draco's brothers had moved their families to the Malfoy manor eleven years ago to keep them together and hopefully safe. That castle of sorts had more wards on it than Hogwarts itself. They hoped they would stand.
She looked off to the west and from the tower window, she could see flames in the distance, and the dark mark hovering dangerously in the sky. In only a few days, it would not be safe to stay here anymore. The raids of Lotus houses were coming closer and closer.
Ginny's nose wrinkled, Lotuses, that what the Death Eaters called everyone against them, like bugs. They were so used to it, that they'd started calling them selves that.
"Mum?"
Virginia turned at the sound of a voice behind her and saw one of her nieces behind her. Seventeen-year-old Elizabeth Weasley, Bill's only child. He and his wife Charlotte had died in the first year of the war, and as newlyweds, Ginny and Draco had taken Elizabeth in. The young girl sometimes referred to her aunt as 'Mum' and her uncle as 'dad, but always called her biological mother, 'mother' and the same thing with her 'father'. Ginny didn't want to replace Charlotte, nor did Draco want to replace Bill, but the girl needed parental figures, and they were all she had.
"Yes Elizabeth?"
"Will you miss them?"
"More than they will ever know." She put an arm around the younger girl's shoulder and held her close.
Elizabeth looked at the horizon. "I'll miss them too, but they're doing this to keep us safe right? That's what Dad said."
"Yes darling, they are. They're doing this to make a better world for all of you young ones. So that you can go to Hogwarts without your parents worrying if you'd come back alive like ours did."
"I'll never be able to go to Hogwarts will I?" The girl was seventeen and hadn't had an ounce of proper school teaching in her life. Ginny had taught her very elementary magic when she turned ten, then decided to teach her as much as she could before it was too late. Ginny had been head girl in her seventh year at Hogwarts, and by the time Elizabeth had turned twelve, she had enough magical knowledge to be a fifth year. Now, at seventeen, she could easily ace her NEWTS without batting an eye.
"I highly doubt it. The war's been going on since you were almost two, and I don't think it'll stop now." Ginny sighed defeated. "I just wish they'd let me help, I just feel as if I need to do something."
"No, you can't go, who would take care of Elena, Bridge, Haley, Hayden, and I?"
"Well-" She was going to tell Elizabeth her all ready formed plan, but the fearful look on her niece's face stopped her. "You're right, I couldn't leave you all now could I?" The truth could wait a little longer.
Elizabeth's face cleared somewhat. "I'm just tired of people leaving me. First it was mum and dad, and now Uncle Draco, I don't want to loose you too Aunt Ginny."
Ginny flinched as the young child voiced the three people she loved most that she had lost. She sighed deeply, Draco wouldn't die, he's too stubborn for an eternal sleep. She smiled at that and looked down at the girl beside her.
Even though Elizabeth wasn't her child, the girl was a complete miniature of herself, oddly enough. She was a bit tall for her age, and she had innocent features, coupled with the turquoise eyes of Weasley women. When she was nine, she insisted that she get her hair died like Ginny's, streaked blue, long, layered, and choppy. She had been forced to grow up so fast, and all in the face of war, just like all her cousins, but as the oldest, she held an air of importance.
Eliza turned to the right and looked at the flames rising higher in the sky, tingeing the darkness red and orange and green. "They're coming."
"I know."
"Did Uncle Draco leave the notes for the escape plan?"
"Yes, we have to tell the aunts tonight."
Ginny watched as a single tear slid out of Elizabeth's eyes, and the girl wiped them away hastily, and shivered.
"Come on Liz, let's go check up on Narcissa." Ginny led the girl away from the railing, and back into the warmth of the nursery. Taking one last glance at the horizon, wishing for her love to return, she shut the glass doors and locked them securely.
Hayden Malfoy and his older sister Haley stood watching the same horizon as their beloved mother.
"He's not coming back is he sis?" Hayden said sadly. In his thirteen years, he was the splitting image of his father.
"No, he's not coming back. We're going to him." Haley said with wonder in her voice.
"What d'ya mean?"
"We're going to him, to where he's going."
"When?"
"I dunno, not for a while though, other things haveta happen first."
"Young master and miss? Your grandmother requests that you come inside, it's getting dark out." Called a voice from the doorway.
"In a minute Gives." Haley called back.
"Haley, how do ya know all these things?"
"I see them in my dreams."
Hayden was quiet for a minute. "You know that you'll have to tell mum about this."
Haley stared at the house. "Yeah, I know."
Ginny walked into the drawing room with Elizabeth in tow.
Inside there was absolute chaos. Molly Weasley and Narcissa Malfoy were throwing absolute fits in the middle of the room, crying loudly about losing their remaining sons to yet another war. The wives of said sons stood at the window conversing in quiet voices and the grandchildren were doing all they could to keep their grandmothers happy.
"'Ook g'ma I dew a pikure." Four-year-old Trinity shoved a paper in Narcissa's face.
Narcissa picked it up quietly. "It looks like Dimitri!" And she desolved into tears again.
Looking defeated, the small child shuffled back to her mother who picked her up.
Ginny surveyed the room, her eyes widened.
"EVERYBODY STOP!"
The room went dead silent, everyone searching for the person who shouted.
Ginny looked down at Elizabeth and saw her eyes glinting dangerously.
"Look," The girl began, "We all miss the men, but we can't do anything about them being gone, and your tears aren't going to help them any. Be strong. We have to be strong, or we won't live."
Ginny took off from there. "Liz is right, if we wallow in misery, we'll never get through this."
"Ginny, what are we supposed to do? Every time they come home scratched uo and wounded, it just gets harder and harder to let them go back!" Katrina Potter said. She and Ginny's other best friend Chloe Zabini had turned to the Weasleys and the Malfoys as a source of stability. Both their own parents, and their husbands parents were dead.
"I know it's hard, but they are fighting for a common cause."
"Who's fighting mum?" Hayden asked walking in the door.
"Your father darling."
"Ohhhhh."
"The Aunts and I have something to talk about. Ladies, study."
The mothers left their young to join in the study, and Elizabeth and seventeen-year-old James Potter tagged along.
They sat in chairs and couches around the room, James stood next to the desk, and Ginny and Elizabeth sat on the desk. Draco's desk. Ginny thought with a twinge of her heart.
Ginny sighed and looked at the women of her family. Weasleys, Malfoys, Potters, and Zabinis. "Ladies, before our husbands left, they devised a plan for an escape for us. Eliza, the map please."
Elizabeth stood up and went behind the desk and touched a button on the wall. A map of the country and Scotland fell down. She picked up a pointer and pointed as Ginny spoke.
"Draco and Blaise worked on this before he disappeared. The black X's are Death Eater camps. The green stars are where the safe holds are. The red lines are the attacks on homes, and their getting closer to this purple dot, this house. The closest safe hold to here is in Grenbury, west from here. But we can't go west because that's in the direction of the attacks, but if we could get around the attacks, and make it to Grenbury, we'd be safe. After we reach Grenbury, we wait. The death eaters have moved in on Hommersfield, it's one of their bases, so we'll have to wait for the oppertune moment to move on to Hogwarts from Grenbury."
"What about the children?" Daniel's wife Linda asked.
"What, you think I'd leave them, they're coming with us." Ginny tossed a blue strand of hair over her shoulder. "We have a plan, all we need is to put it into action. Dillon, make a list of things we'll need like water, supplies, and things like that."
James sat at the desk chair and pulled out a quill and a sheet of parchment and began to write.
"Once we get to Grenbury, Kat, Chloe and I are headed to Hogwarts to help take care of the wounded. When the boys were here last, they told us they had a shortage of nurses, and we want to do all we can to help."
A long silence followed, everyone stared at the women in question. Elizabeth stared at the back of her beloved mum's head in confusion, and questions piled in her head.
Ginny could feel her surrogate daughter's eyes boring into the back of her head, but she surged on with the meeting. "Okay, now we need volunteers . . ."
All of the children sat in the drawing room, staring off in silence, and sighing every once and a while. Finally, the oldest male present, Charlie's son Haven (15), stood up.
"Liza's right guys! We can't just sit around and mope all day!"
"Well, what can we do? We're only children!" Twelve-year-old Angel said. "We don't have wands, we can't do magic, it's not even positive that we'll even get to Hogwarts! Some of us should have been there a year ago! Liz and Jay should have been there seven years ago. But we can't do anything about that!"
"We can help our mothers."
"How do you expect us to do that?" Leilani Potter (15) said cradling three-year-old Lilly who was still sobbing about losing her father. "We're all too young, and too distraught over things!"
"It's literally impossible for us to do anything useful." Dona, twelve, said.
Haley had been sitting in the corner surrounded by three fully grown Bengal Tigers, one white, one mostly orange, and one with deep black stripes. She had been methodically stroking the white one behind his ears, completely silent, and listening intently to her cousins. But at Dona's comment, she stopped mid stroke and looked up.
"No, that's not entirely true." Haley said.
Everyone looked at the fifteen-year-old in question. Her opinion was greatly respected in the group of cousins, she was their leader so to speak. If she said jump, they yelled how high. As the most powerful in their group, she was held as a goddess.
"How do you expect us to help?" Landon, ten, asked.
"I remember once when Aunt Hermione said that we were being annoying on purpose, all we have to do is not be annoying, we can be good."
"That's hard." Donavon (7) said.
"It's a shot worth taking." Haley said. "We've got to stop being selfish, and grow up. This is no time to revel in being young, and obligation less. We've got to try our best to help at anything we can. We have no choice. You talk about us not being able to go to Hogwarts, we, don't need it. We have fully eligible mothers to teach us what we need to know, we just want the security of a normal life. Going to school every fall, coming home every summer, well, it's not gonna happen. Not if we just sit here doing nothing!" She eyes scanned over all of her cousins.
Her thirteen-year-old cousin Jamie Lynn took up from there. "This war's been going on for sixteen years, and no side shows signs of even letting up an inch, so we either fight, or we die, what'll it be?"
James looked at the list he had drawn up.
Things We'll need:
1) Food- grain, fruit, meat, dairy?
2) Brooms- 22
3) Robes
4) Blankets
5) Extra shoes
6) Herbs
7) Particular healing potions- Monthlies, bruise diminishing, blood clotting . . .
8) Bags
9) Sanity
10) Wands for everyone able to use them
He drummed his fingers on the table thinking.
"You forgot something." He turned at the sound of a voice behind him. It was Elizabeth.
"What?"
"How about cat food? Xeda, Xian, and Xena won't be very happy if they don't get fed, they might resort to other measures." She sat beside him at the kitchen table.
"They won't bite any of us, they're too protective of us. You saw how Xena reacted when that man tried to mug Aunt Penny in Diagon Alley last week."
Elizabeth laughed heartily. "Yeah, she almost bit that guy's arm off, he was so scared." Her laughter died down, and she looked at James. He had grown in the past couple of years. At fourteen, he was all ready strikingly handsome, looking just like his father. Shaggy cole black hair and piercing green eyes hidden behind black rimmed glasses.
They were alike in some ways. They had both been born the year before the war started, and they both lived in a world of constant hell. James had lost all four of his grandparents, and some aunts and uncles to the death eaters, and Elizabeth had lost both of her parents, all losses at a very young age.
Elizabeth suddenly had a question. "Why'd you stay?" She looked at his odd expression. "Not that I didn't want you here, just curious." She added blushing furiously.
James frowned looking out the window. "My dad told me to be a man, to prepare for the future, figured I might as well do that here, take care of the people I love." James yawned, then shook himself trying to stay awake.
"Go to sleep James, you'll need your strength tomorrow. We've been elected to take eight very lucky kids to buy wands."
"Who?"
"Lindy, Donavon, Angel, Dona, Landon, Luke, Bridgett, and Hayden. Also Haven Weasley will be our lovely escourt."
"Eight of them? That's bloody wonderful, I'll see you in the morning." He grabbed his papers and stood up from the table and stopped at the door. "Night Beth."
Elizabeth looked over her shoulder at him. He hadn't called her that in years, not since they were about three. "Night Jay." She said, her voice a little breathy than normal.
He left, and she slammed her head on the table. "Get a hold of yourself girl, you cannot fall for him." She stood up to leave, but something made her look back at the table. There was a drawing there, a loose sketch of herself. It was beautiful. Motion and stillness captured in one sketch. "Maybe I ought to give it back . . ."
She slipped the drawing under the door as she passed James's room. Then, her face set with grim determination, she marched off to her aunt's room.
Ginny stood on the balcony of her bedroom, tears falling silently down her cheeks, crying silently for all that died every year.
Katrina and Chloressa stood on either side of her, not knowing what to do.
"Ginny, I know you're sad, but you've got to stop crying yourself to sleep every night." Kat said putting an arm around Ginny's shoulders.
"Yeah Gin, the boys will be back soon, the year will be up before you know it." Chloe said.
"Guys, I love my brothers and brothers-in-law, and Merlin knows I love my husband, but I don't cry every night for them."
"Then who do you cry for?" Kat asked hesitantly.
"I cry for the people that die every year. When I sleep, I see death on the inside of my eyelids. Every person that's died, I've watched it happen, and I haven't been able to stop it."
"I know what you mean." Kat said seriously.
Ginny looked surprised. "You do?"
"We wanted to tell you, but you were always so busy with the kids, and the affairs that we didn't want to bother you with our worries."
Ginny stared at her friends. "Guys, that wouldn't bother me! You're my best friends!"
"I know Gin, I know."
"So how does it effect you guys?"
Kat tugged on her ear lobe, nervous habit. "I hear them screaming in pain and misery all night long. It happened when Harry was here, he wouldn't go back to sleep until he was sure I was okay."
"I just know it. I woke up once screaming while I still had Blaise. He was sure something was wrong with me. How could I possibly know the precise time and date of someone's death, if I had no idea who they were, or where they were? I honestly didn't know how to answer him."
"Yeah, when I told Draco, he wanted to have me checked out. When I told him it was just a part of being a seer, he started treating me like an invalid, but I wouldn't let him."
"Maybe this will help us at Hogwarts."
"Maybe."
"Speaking of Hogwarts," said a voice by the doors, "I'm going with you."
The three women turned and stared at Elizabeth Weasley.
Kat and Chloe turned to Ginny. She was after all Liz's legal guardian.
Ginny sized Elizabeth up. "You're old enough to make your own decisions now, so I'll trust you on this one."
Elizabeth rushed to hug Ginny. "Thanks mum. I just didn't want to feel usless."
"So what will we do about your cousins and my godchildren and my neices?"
"You don't have to worry about me, I'm coming too." James said. He was leaning against the door frame, looking like a fallen angel in Elizabeth's mind.
Katrina rushed to him and shook him hard. "No you won't, don't even think of things like that! No son of mine will rush off to war to be killed by some sadistic man." She was two feet shorter than he, and about one hundred pounds lighter, her shaking didn't even faze him.
James reached up and grabbed his mother's hands in his own. "Mum, I'm seventeen. I can take care of myself."
"Maybe before the war James, but not now!"
"Then why'd you let dad go?"
"James! Your father is the only one that can kill that creep!"
"Kat, he's of legal age, he can make his own decisions now." Chloe said softly.
"Yeah, and it was Chris's decision to leave too, but he didn't come back did he? I don't know about you, but I'm not going to force my son to leave me like Chris did to you."
Everyone was quiet and Chloe stared at the back of Kat's head in enraged silence.
Slowly, Kat turned around to face Chloe. "God Chloe, that's not what I ment."
"So what did you mean then? You think I forced him away from me? You think I forced that good for nothing slime ball to betray our family and hand us over to Voldemort? You think I forced his wand on our own mother and father? You think I forced him to kill his innocent defenseless three-year-old sister?! Is that what you think!?" Chloe was shouting by now. "If it is, then think again." Quickly, she brushed past mother and son and out the door of Ginny's room.
"That was a low blow Kat." Ginny said. "You know she's still sore over him."
Kat sighed. "I know, but I was angry, I tend to say stupid things when I'm angry."
"Don't I know it." James muttered, he was ignored.
"James, I'm just worried about you, you're only seventeen, I don't want you to throw your life away."
"Don't worry mum, I'll be safe. I'm going with you, away from the fighting, to Hogwarts."
"Well, all right, you can come."
"Thanks mum, that means a lot to me." He hugged his mum and they left, saying goodnight, and shutting the door behind them.
It was quiet for a minute. Ginny stared out at the ocean, and Elizabeth watched her features change.
"Mum?"
"Yes?"
"I was wondering, what are you going to do with Lacy? She's only a couple months old."
"I'm going to bring her with us. It will be safe enough at Hogwarts."
"Oh, well, I'll see you in the morning."
"Goodnight Elizabeth."
A/N: Well, that's the first chapter, tell me what you think. In other words, REVIEW!