So this is a little something I wrote… I just started thinking about how different characters might recover (or not recover) from the events of Deathly Hallows. It's mostly my headcanon (like the Seamus vignette) but it's not massively AU. Rating is T for one objectionable word, and some awkward topics. (yes, I'm rather paranoid)
Time passes. People change. And through it all, life goes on.
Parvati wakes up at night screaming. Padma's told her time and time again that he's gone, he's dead, but she can't get that voice out of her head. Always the same thing he'd said that night, before the Death Eaters attacked. Bring me Harry Potter, and you will be rewarded.
The voice could be promising free hugs and Honeydukes chocolate and it would still make her sweat in terror. She's tried everything from sleeping draughts to keeping a lit candle by her bedside, from working herself to the point of exhaustion to putting an extra Locking Charm on the door, but not even screaming can drive that horrible, rasping voice away.
The only one who really sympathizes with her – understands her, she thinks – is Professor Trelawney. They sit in her tower room and drink tea and for a while it feels like the war never happened. So many things have changed that she isn't even sure she recognizes herself when she looks in the mirror.
Lavender's funeral is the worst – everyone crying except for her. Because in a way, she's jealous. At least Lavender doesn't have to hear that voice over and over again. Then she feels horrible for thinking that because at least she's alive, at least she has a life ahead of her.
She doesn't try to "unfog the future" anymore, because she's afraid of what she'll see – and what she'll miss. So much has been taken and destroyed that things can never go back to the way they were. But she realizes that, sometimes, not knowing about the future can have its perks. She decides that some surprises aren't so bad when Dean shows up at her door one day and asks if she'd like to have tea.
George could swear that Fred's right next to him, sometimes. It rips his heart out all over again when he turns and sees – nothing. He knows he'd give an arm and a leg and anything to have his twin back. He writes Fred letters. Tells him what's going on, the new inventions he's come up with. Then he folds them into parchment birds and bewitches them to fly away, to Fred.
He's never gotten an answer.
He doesn't know what he'd do without Weasley's Wizard Wheezes. It feels like an insult to close after the war – like he's be dishonoring Fred's memory in the worst way possible. So he doesn't.
But it's hard. They'd been such a great team – coming up with ideas and then experimenting until it worked. "We're wizard scizentists," Fred had joked, once. But for a while, after the battle, George couldn't think of anything.
He doesn't know if the shop would still be in business if Ron hadn't stepped in. It had almost been a message from Fred: "You've got other brothers, you git."
He wants to kill Harry when he finds out he lost the Resurrection Stone in the Forbidden Forest. Because even though he's heard the tale dozens of times, knows it would probably lead to madness, he doesn't care. It could bring Fred back. They could talk, and joke, and everything would be all right again.
Sometimes, when he's in the shop late at night, he'll hear a laugh and turn around. And for a moment – just a fleeting half-moment – he'll see Fred laughing. Happy.
Pansy's glad her parents weren't Death Eaters. She can't imagine how hard it must be for Draco, after the war, when his father is sentenced to life in Azkaban. Still, she's gotten her share of dirty looks. No one's quite forgotten that she had suggested they hand Potter over to You-Know-Who. She's defended herself dozens of times against the question.
"Aren't you that girl who wanted to give Harry up?" Could they really blame her? All she'd wanted was to finish her school years in peace. Then Potter could have his bloody war and she'd be nicely away from it – but no, he'd brought it right to Hogwarts.
She misses Professor Snape terribly. Contrary to the opinions of most Gryffindors, he had actually been quite decent – friendly, in her case – towards students. Especially Slytherins. And he'd been understanding when she had had trouble in Potions, even offered her extra help.
She realizes that she was quite horrid to some people at Hogwarts. She even sent owls to some of them, apologizing for her behavior. And, for the most part, the past has remained in the past. No one's really brought up how she bullied the Golden Trio alongside Draco, and she's glad for that. But every once in a while she'll open up her text books and read over the notes, look at her photo albums.
Because, for the most part, the past was nice. Nothing was complicated then. (If you were in Slytherin, you hated Gryffindors.) But now it's harder. You have to be nice and friendly and obviously not have any anti-Muggle tendencies. Everything's so much more confusing now.
Dennis Creevey doesn't know what he would have done after Colin's death if Ginny Weasley hadn't come up to him. Her eyes were red-rimmed – she'd just lost a brother, too – but she gave him a hug and said, "He's not really gone, you know. He'll always be here." She'd pointed to his heart, but Dennis knew that Colin would always be in the castle, at Hogwarts.
He surprises everyone when he catapults to the top of every class except Herbology and Care of Magical Creatures. Nobody notices that he's throwing those two classes on purpose except Evanna Scrimgeor, a perky Hufflepuff in his year.
"Just because he's gone," she whispers in his ear during Herbology, "doesn't mean you have to take his place." He realizes she's right, and stops carrying the camera everywhere.
His sister gets married, and he's completely flabbergasted when Harry Potter shows up at the wedding. Turns out her new husband Dudley is Harry's cousin. He wonders what Colin would say if he were there.
He surprises everyone when he decides to take the NEWTs for Gringott's Curse-Breaker. He'd never given much thought to what he'd do after Hogwarts. He'd certainly never expected to be going deep into the hearts of pyramids at age nineteen. But he thinks that maybe deep inside timid, anxious little Dennis Creevey is a dragon tamer.
He starts carrying Colin's camera again, but it's not because he's trying to be Colin. He's just taking pictures for him, so he can show him.
Marietta can't help but turn the other way whenever she sees someone from the D.A. at the Ministry. The spots hae never really faded, but at least the word isn't visible anymore.
She thinks the "Golden Trio" isn't all it's cracked up to be. Sure, they're war heroes, but she doesn't think that's a good excuse for them to be treated like gods. She wonders if they've ever actually trusted each other – because, based on experience, it would seem like they don't trust anyone.
It's not like she's jealous of them – who would want to be friends with someone who didn't trust you anyways?
She's started a column in the Prophet – anonymously, of course – that's devoted to remembered how Hogwarts used to be. It's supposed to be for "sentimental" reasons, but really she's been looking for a scandal.
It's rather infuriating, because anything questionable can be explained, like how they put a Body-Bind hex on Neville Longbottom. But really, it's all right – they did it so they could protect the Philosopher's Stone. They attacked a teacher (and all right, it was Snape), but it was so they could clear a mass murderer's name.
She sees them together, sometimes, in Diagon Alley. They wave politely and she feels like she's supposed to wave back, so she grits her teeth and does it.
But the whole time she can't help wishing that the three of them weren't quite so close.
Seamus never thought he'd end up here, in St. Mungo's, as a Healer. Given his tendencies to destroy things violently, he's the last person anyone would expect to be a Healer.
He loses his taste for the Wizarding World after the Battle of Hogwarts and becomes a Muggle fireworks designer. He thinks there's too much feuding going on among witches and wizards and purebloods and Muggleborns. He tries to get away from it all – even locks his wand in Gringotts- but then he realizes that it's just as worse when there's no magic involved. Worse, even.
He loses his taste for destruction completely and begs McGonagall to let him take NEWT levels again. She agrees with a knowing smile, and he's struck once again at how cool his Head of House is. It's difficult but he keeps telling himself that he's doing this for the Wizarding World that if he Heals enough people they won't fight anymore.
He goes to Muggle bars more often than Wizarding ones. Because even though the Muggle world is just as messed up as the Wizarding world, there's less of a risk of running into someone he knows.
It's better that way, since if the y talked, there would definitely be raised eyebrows at his new occupation. Not that he doesn't love his job – thinks it's the best choice he's made. He sees Neville visiting his parents sometimes, and it's nice, because he feels like they're almost brothers, him and Neville. They survived that last year of school even when so many other students didn't.
And it's nice to see that someone else didn't like the taste of being a hero, too. (Just look where Neville is – teaching Herbology.)
Ironically, his first patient is a burn victim.
Teddy Lupin's heard all about how his parents were heroes, and amazing, and how he's so lucky to have Harry Potter as a godfather. And it's not like he doesn't appreciate it, but sometimes the spotlight's too much.
People call him the "Harry Potter" of the new generation. They look at him like it's awesome to have never known your parents, to have lost them when you were only a week old. And that's the part he hates.
Because it's hard enough being a Metamorphmagus and half-werewolf without having dozens of people looking at you, waiting foro you to fly or something.
He just wants to be normal.
Harry's the only person who he can complain to, because he was an orphan too. But he feels bad griping to his godfather, partially because Harry's been nothing but understanding.
At first all he wants to be is an Auror, so he can catch those bastards who murdered his parents, but then he decides he's going to try to be as painfully normal as possible.
He marries Victoire, and they open a small broomstick store in Hogsmeade. It's close enough so they can go see the Quidditch matches at Hogwarts. And it's nice, because even though by Muggle standards he lives a very strange life, he knows that by Wizarding standards his life is incredibly mundane.
Sometimes it's so blissfully mundane that he wonders when it'll all come falling apart.
Then one day Ministry wizards turn up at his front door. Turns out the building his shop is in was Death Eater headquarters in Hogsmeade during the war, and it's still got Dark artifacts in the walls.
He gives up on trying to be normal and takes over Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes from George.
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