Disclaimer: I do not own the original canon nor am I making any profit from writing this piece. All works are accredited to their original authors, performers, and producers while this piece is mine. No copyright infringement is intended. I acknowledge that all views and opinions expressed herein are merely my interpretations of the characters and situations found within the original canon and may not reflect the views and opinions of the original author(s), producer(s), and/or other people.
Warnings: This story may contain material that is not suitable for all audiences and may offend some readers.
Author's Note(s): This piece was written for a challenge in the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft & Wizardry (Challenges & Assignments) on the FFN forum.
The Challenge Information:
House: Gryffindor
Claimed Pairing: Lunar Heroes (Neville Longbottom/Luna Lovegood/Harry Potter)
Day 20: Remember Past Lives and then Seeking Them Out
Extra Prompt[s]: n/a
Word Count: 1205
-= LP =-
The Sacredity of Life
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I have died every day, waiting for you
Darling, don't be afraid, I have loved you for a thousand years
I'll love you for a thousand more
– Christina Perri, "A Thousand Years"
-= LP =-
Harry remembered death.
He remembered other stuff as well, but that was what ended up sticking with him the most.
Over and over again—he failed to protect them. He held them as they died because of something he couldn't stop, no matter how he fought against whatever enemy took them. It was just an endless cycle of lose them, die, be reborn, train against the last enemy, find them, and then lose them again, probably to something new.
There was so many ways to lose the two people who meant so much to him—every version of him, too. He had heard other people talking about their Remembered, about how some lives they couldn't stand each other. Harry never had that issue. Every life, the three of them would come together as a unit, as lovers and best friends.
Every life, he would be the one to bury them both.
It didn't matter what their bodies ended up either, not like it did with some Remembered. Maybe that was because there was three of them, instead of the pair that was more common. The group of four that they had met a few lives back didn't have that issue either. It was hard for the parts to matter when there was almost always a repeated genital in there. Maybe losing each other so many times had fundamentally changed their perspective on what really mattered—because if the package was constantly changing, what did it even matter?
As much as it hurt to lose them—that powerless ache that ripped at his very being—Harry was glad that it was always him who buried them. If shouldering that burden for their triad was the only thing he ever succeeded at doing, then it was worth it. The few times that he managed to keep one of them instead of losing them both at the same time had been far harder—the kept one always became a faded copy of themselves.
Grief was an enemy he never could figure out how to fight.
Harry would never be able to greet Death as an old friend, to borrow a phrase from an old nursery story that had apparently lingered through the centuries. Death was too common a face across the battlefield (or lurking in the shadows, like the thief She was). They simply knew each other too well to be friends.
Harry remembered Death.
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Neville remember protection.
It was a comfort as he grew in this latest life, raised by a woman who seemed to have been turned to stone by the losses she had faced this life. She loved him, and in a vague way, she made sure that he never doubted that, but Augusta wasn't what most would call openly affectionate. Her Remembering was still new, and the grief was not something she had learned to handle yet. It was a position that Neville had found himself in before—the whole reassuring a younger set thing.
They had been doing this for so long now that it seemed like forever.
Yet through it all, there was always one thing that remained true: being with them was the safest place to be.
Always.
Even when he died in one of their arms, their face of that life the last thing he saw before opening his eyes in the next life.
Even when his death was messy or violent.
Even when pain was all he knew for hours, days, weeks, months, before it finally ended—when death was a blessed relief more than it was an ending.
Always, always, always, being with them was the best place to be. They were his shelter, no matter where they ended up for a given life. They were his home. His Remembered were what made this sorry trudge through time worth it. He could count on them every single time—and he always found them eventually, even if it was just as he was dying.
This life he was raised in magical Britain, and their nursery tales had not changed in the last few centuries. (Not that anything really seemed to progress much in magical Britain. Age was making him cynical.) The simple analogy stuck with him. They were his Unbeatable Wand. With them by his side, Neville could face any force and win. Nothing was beyond his capability when they were with him.
Neville remembered protection.
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Luna remembered knowledge.
They had lived for so long that things which had been lost to ordinary means where still within them. They had seen it; they had lived it. They had walked the halls of the Great Library at Alexandria. They had witnessed the daily sacrifices on the Temples of the Aztecs. They had helped build the Wall in China—and helped usher in the Meiji Era in Japan. They had danced with the Fae before their retreat. They had seen the dodos, and the mammoths. They had known the world when humanity had been so young and magic was so think that there was no real difference between muggle and magus.
She knew that she probably had the best memory of their triad. She never focused on pulling feeling forward or an ever-growing list of masteries. That was not what her purpose was, not for them. Her burden was to carry the weight of their years, so that the other two didn't have to. She did so gladly, as well, because any extra weight of that timeframe—that measure of eternity—on her was not on her Remembered. The nights spend screaming in remembered horror or weeping in sorrow already thousands of years old were worth it.
They were her loves, both of them. They belonged together. Like puzzle pieces, they fit together. Never, not once, had they ever rejected each other and never, not once, had they ever failed to find each other.
Because she wouldn't let them.
She held the knowledge of everything they had ever been, both together and separate. She could pick them both out of a crowd as if they were wearing coronas of heavenly delight or glowing like those cave fish they had seen once. They had their code phrases, to confirm that they were themselves. But she had never been wrong, not once.
If this was The Tale of Three Brothers, she would be their Stone, finding them in whatever far reaches they had been born into this time. They were hers and she was theirs and she would never let any of them forget that.
She remembered that knowledge.
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"Will you claim them, sister?"
Death turned from watching her Chosen Ones sleep after their latest reunion. Destiny was as expressionless as always, his book opened before him as he wrote the events of time. He did not look up—but of course, he didn't need to. His blind eyes saw nothing except for the workings of time. She turned back to watch her Favored, absently playing with the ankh on her collar before reaching out to touch the floating image.
"Yes, I think it is time to claim my Hallows. They're finally ready."
"It won't be any easier."
"Mastering death never is, dear brother."