Disclaimer: I own nothing.
A/N: This is Luna, a little more than a year after the last book.
I don't know why I'm at the cemetery today. It's my eighteenth birthday – I should be celebrating with my friends, but instead I'm here, remembering everyone who died. I have a dozen white roses and several other things for more important people.
I'm not the only one here today, which surprises me. Today's not an important day for anyone, but I see three people moving slowly among the graves. I guess they miss people too. What's odd is that I'm not here because I miss someone – I just felt I needed to be here today, though I don't know why.
The first item I place is a box of Fainting Fancies on Fred Weasley's grave. I wonder if, wherever Fred is, he knows I'm friends with George now. I don't know how that happened, but it did – I make sure George doesn't do anything drastic, and he gives me someone to talk to.
I place a lot of my roses on the tombs of people I knew of but didn't really know – war heroes and kids from school I never really spent time with. I don't know why I place roses, but I do – even though I didn't really know any of them, very few have anything placed. It's like I'm here to remember the people no one really wants to remember, the ones who were pretty much faceless.
I have three roses left as I turn into the third row and come face-to-face with someone I haven't seen in a little over a year. Cho Chang was two years above me, and she was the first to get hit with a loss during the war. Far from the only one, sadly, but she took it hard.
I place my third-to-last rose on Cedric Diggory's grave, knowing that I'll get Cho's attention that way. I didn't know him at all – he was one of those people you heard about but never saw, which was probably for the better. We learned a lot after he died, but one of the more amusing things, in my mind anyway, is never to ask the Hufflepuffs to play a funeral dirge, because they can't.
"What are you doing here?" Cho asks me. Four years of grieving seem like nothing to her; she's crying as usual.
"I don't know," I tell her truthfully. "I just had a feeling I needed to be here today. Besides that, my being here will give my friends the time to set up a dreadful birthday party for me – I'm not going to try to stop them."
"Did you know him?" I know exactly whom she means.
"Not really," I reply.
"Then why did you place a rose?"
"Because I felt like it. I really don't know why beyond that."
"Thank you," she says as she walks off. I know why she's happy – someone else remembers the first casualty, even though that someone is a crazy headcase. I know people have called me that before, and I'm sure that's what she thinks of me as.
Two roses and two items to go, each of which has an intended location. I place the second item on Mrs. Weasley's grave. It's a small container with some casserole in it – one of her recipes, which no one eats anymore. I try not to think about that, since the real reason no one eats it is because Fleur took over as the matriarch of the clan, and she can't cook.
The two roses are placed, and now I must place my last thing – an unused and not-exactly-functional Decoy Detonator. People put all sorts of odd objects on the mass grave where they buried all the Death Eaters, and I'm no exception. It's just that I'm not quite as mean-spirited as some of the people, who leave nasty things. Even though I hate every last person who is entombed there, I respect death. So I place the Detonator.
No one knows what happens to the things that are left at the cemetery. I like to think that the people buried there, wherever they are, get the items somehow. I just wonder what the war heroes do with all the roses.