Albus Dumbledore had been watching the Gryffindor table out of the corner of his eye that morning. Now he paced his study and smiled briefly as he remembered the gesture Fred Weasley had given Rose.
But something bothered him, there was a day coming for her and all too soon Albus feared.
A noise drew his gaze. Fawkes looked at Dumledore as if hearing his thoughts and his cry echoed Dumbledore's mind. "Soon it will be time for her to fly the nest" Dumbledore said to his phoenix. "Innocence once lost will never return" He stroked his beard and popped a sherbet lemon into his mouth.
Severus Snape was sat in his office marking homework papers. He snarled as his hand traced the figure 'O' over Hermione's work. Putting her paper to one side he picked up the next piece of homework. Snape started to read "The Shrinking Solution was first developed in 1438 after the aftermath" he stopped reading and let his head fall to his hands. Severus found these moments difficult, whenever he read her words, her writing he would hear her voice in his head. Lily Potter would speak to him the origins and uses of the shrinking solution just as she had spoken all of her daughter's essays ever since the first one he had set; 'Do the risks of potion making outweigh the advantages?'
His classes with the fifth years were always uneasy, though he never showed it. On the one hand there was Harry, the very reason she was dead, and next to him sits his twin so alike in him yet so alike in her. "He has her eyes", the words slipped off Snape's tongue and caught him off guard. Shaking himself he returned to Rose's essay and continued to read.
The candles burned low and Snape stared at the fire as it flicked on the wick. He thought of Rose, her smile and her laugh. She was pure and kind and her presence around the castle brought a little warmth to him, a warmth that had been missing since the death of Lily Potter. Snape blinked, as his eyelids retracted he saw Harry and Rose on the night in happened, sat together in the little cot looking out to the scene of chaos around them. He had cradled Lily's body in his arms that night, he had looked across to the children and Rose had been gazing back.