Title: Dreamers And The Dead
Author's Note: This is a just a short little thing that I've been working on in between other fic. At first it was just about Ginny but eventually extended to Luna and Neville too. I wrote about them previously in my other fic, Taken (wherein Luna was kidnapped from the Hogwarts train by Death Eaters), and I want to return to those characters. In Taken the war had only just started. In this fic the war is over, and a lot of things have changed. (Also I know it's slightly unrealistic to say that the castle is still partly destroyed on their return to school, but let's just say that the damage was huge (because it was), and no one felt up to cleaning it all up, though they still want to do it themselves.)
The Hogwarts Express puffed into the station, blowing steam over the platform and ruffling the robes of the students gathered there. Ginny stared at the train and sighed. This would be her last year at Hogwarts, and truthfully, she didn't know how she would feel when she saw the castle again. Would it look as it always had? Or would there be rubble still littering the grounds and castle, scorched stone walls looming everywhere, the bridge a mess of undergoing construction? Even with magic, cleaning up the horrifying mess of last autumn's battle would be a massive undertaking.
The platform had a hushed air about it – very different from the usual beginning-of-the-year hubbub. It unsettled her. All she wanted to do was get on the train and get going, but her mother was getting teary and fussing over the collar of her robes. She had to give Molly a proper goodbye. It wouldn't do to have her think that Ginny was eager to leave her behind, alone on the platform. Her brothers were all elsewhere – George at work in the shop, Charlie in Ukraine on a research grant, Bill at the bank, Ron... well, he was probably stressing over the beginning of his Auror training. He'd moved to London three weeks previously, having found an apartment for him and Hermione. Neither of them were returning to school, like Harry. It was going to be strange without them, but at least she had Luna and Neville.
"Now dear, you write to us as much as you want, okay? I'll be writing every week anyway. And don't be afraid to talk to someone else if you need to-"
"Mum, it's okay. I'll be fine."
"Are you sure, dear? Because Minerva did say that if anyone wanted to defer for a year they could..."
"I know. Really, I think... I think I'll be okay. I promise to write you guys, every week."
Molly smiled sadly, looking up at her youngest child. She enfolded her in a long, tight hug. The hug was reassuring, safe. Ginny stepped onto the train and waved as it pulled away. Grey smoke billowed around the front of the train and dissipated as they began to move, and soon the platform was gone.
On the train the time passed quickly. In the hours after it left the station Ginny talked to Luna about their coming exams, and wondered how much the student roll had shrunk after last year. With many dead and more gone, the classes would probably be a lot smaller. She had no idea which teachers were staying on, either. Despite Luna and Neville's presence on the train, she felt very alone, and she missed Harry desperately. Knowing she would have to spend months here at school while he trained with Ron at the Ministry was hard. They had spent much of the summer together, including a week-long period before school started when Ginny had spent every day and night at his new flat in London. At first they had simply shared many long, heavy kisses, reminiscent of those short months when they had been together during Ginny's fifth year. This was different, though. They knew there was no breaking up this time. The war was over; they were safe.
On the night before she'd left, Ginny, in a fit of resolute, daring boldness, had shed her clothes while Harry was in the shower and climbed in with him, drinking in the way his eyes roamed over her body, gasping as he'd pulled her close and kissed her hard.
She smiled, now, thinking about it. She glanced over at Luna, wondering if her friend had seen her blushing and biting her lip, but Luna's blonde head was, not surprisingly, buried in a book about fantastical animals. Lately she'd started reading about the more famous Muggle myths – the Loch Ness Monster, Bigfoot, the Yeti; all seemed likely, in this strange world full of werewolves and dragons and blast-ended skrewts.
She put her head against the window and dozed. It started to rain softly, and when they finally pulled into the station at Hogsmeade it was falling steadily, quickly drenching the students without umbrellas. Ginny and Luna sheltered under a tree while they waited for Neville, their new Head Boy, to get off the train. When he arrived they made a run for the carriages, which were idling twenty metres away.
The moment they stepped onto the road Ginny knew that something had changed. She walked carefully around the nearest carriage, dragging her fingers along the rain-wet sides as two strange creatures came into focus through the downpour.
"Luna," she said. "Come here."
Luna stepped lightly up beside her while Ginny stood still, not minding the hair sticking to her face or the water running down her neck.
"I can see… I can see them."
"Yes," Luna said softly, "the thestrals."
"I didn't really think about it. What the battle would mean once I got here – besides the wreckage, anyway. They're so…"
Death-like.
The strange animals stood peacefully in the rain, steam rising from their nostrils as they snorted softly. Ginny saw for the first time what the creatures she once ridden to London with her friends looked like. She saw now the skeletal frame; the spines sticking from their backs, the wings nestled at their sides, the skinny legs part buried at the hooves in the mud and water on the ground. She remember gripping the mane of her steed as they flew over the Thames, water streaming from her eyes as she was buffeted by the wind. She shivered.
Luna took her hand, saying nothing.
Ginny said, "You've been able to see them for a long time, haven't you?"
"Yes, ever since I came to Hogwarts I've known what they were. My mother died in a potions accident when I was very young. It was horrible, but it was so long ago that I barely remember it now."
"Luna…" she whispered, her voice cracking as she tried not to burst into tears. "We saw so many people die. How are we supposed to handle it?"
She suddenly realised that Neville was standing next to them, staring quietly at the thestrals.
"Keep living, and try not to forget them. That's all we really can do," he said.
"Okay," she said, wiping her eyes. Her hand came away damp with tears.
The carriages In front of them started to pull away, so they climbed aboard the last carriage in line, finding Seamus Finnigan and Ernie Macmillan waiting for them. Ginny took a seat at the front, where she could see the thestrals best. She wasn't sure why she needed to be near them; after all, they were a reminder of the deaths of people close to her – Fred, Lavender, Colin, Tonks, Remus, and many more. She had seen nameless others fall to the killing curse, seen a death eater thrown from the Astronomy tower, seen Bellatrix Lestrange and Voldemort die, in the end.
But when she looked behind her, and saw Neville, Luna, Seamus and Ernie looking ahead, like she was, she realised why the creatures were important.
They had all been through the same thing.
They had all seen people die.
Through mutual suffering, she felt a connection to them, and the thestrals were a physical manifestation of that feeling. Their differences no longer seemed to matter, and any old conflicts had disappeared. They were bonded by death.
She remembered the first weeks after the battle, after the dead had been removed from the grounds and buried, and the memorial service had been held. The school year wasn't over, and there were many with exams to do, but nobody cared. The teachers wouldn't teach and the students, however preoccupied with their futures, couldn't focus, so school had ended in the middle of May. The Burrow was too quiet at first, with Fred gone. Charlie, Percy and Bill had to return to work and George barely spoke. Ron stayed for a few weeks but eventually he left, too. Arthur and Molly were in mourning, trying to get on as best as they could, so Ginny was left alone. She did her chores and her summer reading and stayed out of everyone's way. At night when she tried to sleep she remembered her mother crying over Fred's body, in a roomful of dead kids and Order members and Death Eaters, some with crying relatives and friends, and some without. Thinking about it hurt beyond belief.
Some nights she went downstairs and found Molly sitting at the table, staring at the clock. Arthur would apparate home from work and stand in the front yard for a few minutes, quiet and still, briefcase hanging from one hand. His hair receded faster than before. Molly's face gained a few lines.
The worst thing was that, in the immediate aftermath, nobody much felt like talking about it. School ended and all her friends went home – the ones that could – to mourn, and bury their sisters and brothers, and seclude themselves until they could face an ordinary day.
So when the thestrals pulled up at the front gate, and the students climbed from the carriages and entered the school grounds, Ginny marvelled at how far they'd all come. There were no tears at the sight of the still ruined Astronomy tower, or the undergoing construction on the new greenhouses, or the gaping hole in the seventh floor east corridor – they looked on dry-eyed at the scene of the end of the war, and Ginny smiled when Luna took her hand and led her as they all walked in together.
end note: parts 2 and 3 will hopefully be up in the next couple weeks. thanks for reading! :)