Fortitudine Vincimus - Through Endurance We Conquer

This story is based on the students, mainly Hannah, Neville and the Hufflepuffs, , during Snape and the Carrows' reign and the Seventh Year.

It is rated K+ for mentions of violence, torture and romance. Which sound weird juxtaposed like that. But if you can read Harry Potter, you can read this.

Disclaimer: The characters, plot and settings in this are the property of JK Rowling. I owe any characters you might not recognise to the HP Lexicon essay, 'Secrets of the Classlist.'

Summary: The Seventh Year, the year of Voldemort's reign, was difficult for all of the students at Hogwarts. Excerpts from the diary of Hannah Abbott, a seventh year Hufflepuff, give a glimpse into this.

I'm writing this on the train. The train I probably shouldn't be on. The train to Hogwarts. Strange, really. I've been on this train hundreds of times – alright, not quite. Quite a few though. I've never been scared whilst I was on it, not since the Dementors in third year. They were awful. I hid behind Justin, who wasn't a good choice since I'm wider than him, but Sally-Anne had already hidden behind Ernie, who was the only person with enough brains to draw his wand. But they didn't come very far into our compartment, thank Merlin.

I'm glad that that happened in third year. I didn't have any bad memories in third year. Now, though, I would have ended up back at that moment, finding out that Mum was dead. Then all the year after.

I wouldn't have come back to school this year if it wasn't compulsory. I think I'm going to really struggle. I was never very smart to begin with, and now I've missed most of my sixth year. I'm not going to pass my NEWTs.

I almost didn't come. How can anyone make it compulsory to go to school once you're of age, which I am. Which I have been since last October. To be honest, I think I've been old enough to count as of age since I became an orphan.

Of course, I'm not technically an orphan. My dad is alive. Apparently. My mum left me some letters, letting me know who he was. She knew she might die in the War – she's a Muggleborn witch, so she was a target.

I didn't need to know. I never wanted to know. My mum and I, we grew up together. She was only sixteen when she had me – she got pregnant soon after taking her OWLs and dropped out of school. Like the Weasley twins, only with a lot less glamour and drama.

I never needed all those lectures about 'be careful, work hard, or you'll end up a dishwasher at the Leaky Cauldron.' I had the case study right in front of me – my Mum, who wasn't careful, didn't work hard and ended up a dishwasher at the Leaky Cauldron.

She could have been worse off. Tom is ever so sweet, so he gave her bed and board and a wage on top of that. Her family didn't want anything to do with her – they're respectable Muggles, and apparently having babies aged sixteen isn't what good Lancashire girls did in the 1960s.

But we ended up like sisters rather than mother and daughter. Susan's mum is a bit stern about girl stuff, so we always asked my mum about it. She taught us all the charms – make-up charms, hair charms…contraceptive charms before our fifth year. A long time before we were thinking about that sort of thing!

Anyway, my Dad – he was older than my Mum. Four years older. I think my Mum was a bit of a – well, not a good girl. She went to a New Year's Eve Party, invited by one of her pureblood friends, and from that, and that alone, I was conceived. Not so much never kiss a boy on a first date as never impregnate a girl on a first date.

First and only date. She never saw him again, certainly never told him that she was pregnant! I don't think she thought he'd be much help, looking after a baby. I used to think that she didn't even know who it was. But she did. She just wasn't proud of it.

Up until my third year, it wouldn't have been too bad. A war hero – a dead war hero, but a hero nonetheless. Then, slowly, I'd have discovered he wasn't a hero. He was a coward, and a traitor, and a Death Eater.

Peter Pettigrew and my mother had sex once. And I was born. Lucky me. I inherited a lot of him too – his plumpness, his shortness, watery blue eyes – I've seen pictures. Not like my Mum, who's a real statuesque-type blonde.

I wonder if he slipped something in her drink to get her to sleep with him.

Mum said in her letter that I didn't get any of his insides, though. I'm a Hufflepuff. Loyal, honest and hardworking. A bit thick, but if you just say things slowly…

Sorry. If you read this any further, you'll find out that I'm quite bitter. I think I'm entitled to it. I'm orphaned, penniless, seventeen and about to walk into a school whose Headmaster is part of the organisation who killed my mother. For all I know, one of the Carrows killed her.

Yep, I didn't really want to come back to school this year. I spent all of last year working at the Leaky Cauldron for Tom, so I could have just done that. Only I couldn't, not really. Business isn't really booming, and unless something changes then Tom is going to have to let some staff go. And he's too soft-hearted to do that now, when that income could be the difference between a witch or wizard starving on the streets. So he didn't need an extra wage to pay and an extra mouth to feed, aka me.

I wonder who will be back at Hogwarts this year. I wonder what I missed, not being at school last year. I missed all the Draco Malfoy trying to kill people thing. No big loss, although I feel a bit sad that I never saw Professor Dumbledore in the last year of his life. I bet there are lots of couples I missed – apart from Ginny Weasley and Harry Potter, whose relationship I apparently missed the entirety of. And Ron Weasley and Lavender Brown's. Where did that come from? We all know that Ron and Hermione are going to end up together. It's like when boys pull your hair at primary school – it means they like you.

That means that no boys like me – boys never pull my hair. I don't talk to that many of them. I only really talk to my friends – Susan, Justin and Ernie. The other girls in my dormitory either keep to themselves (Megan Jones) or are bestest best friends and don't speak to anyone else (Rebecca Rivers and Sally-Anne Perks).

I've talked to Wayne Hopkins a few times, and nobody can avoid talking to Zach Smith, more's the pity. Outside of my House, Hermione Granger is the only one I've ever spoken to. Even at D.A. meetings, I preferred to keep my mouth shut.

I'm going to stop writing now. I need to change into my robes, and I want to hide this right at the bottom of my trunk. I don't want anyone to find it. I've never kept a diary before. I used to be able to tell Mum everything that I didn't want to tell my friends. Now there'd be no point sending off an owl to her. I don't think they deliver to the afterlife.

Please review.

I hope to update this story (10 chapters in all) in about a week's time, at the most.

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