A/N: I think it's safe to say you know I don't own any of this except my personal word choices. I am playing in Thanfiction's section of JK Rowling's big playground. Only the swing is mine, to put it metaphorically. I hope you find this chapter a bit different than some might interpret the prompt.

Prompt: Anniversaries

The one thing that most people forgot to realize was that the war affected everyone. Not just Potter and his Golden Trio, not just McGonogall and the staff forced to unite with dark enemies, not just Dumbledore's Army even, and they were the ones it ought to have scarred. And for most D.A. it was true- they were scarred by their memories and the livid wounds across their hardened bodies. But it was never just them who felt hollow on the day of the battle for all of the years following.

It was Mrs. Weasley, as she began to knit a sweater embroidered with the letter "F" before realizing that it was a waste of yarn. Fred would never see it, and he'd never wear it. She never knew why she always knitted him one anyway, every single year, and laid it upon his grave like a wreath of roses. The sweater from the year before, if it was still there, would go to George. Merlin knew how he enjoyed wearing the faded red and yellow, a commemoration of a true Gryffindor, as he laughed at the looks on the faces of those who assumed he was Fred, back from the dead. Although she did hope that wherever Freddy was, he was warm inside of a Weasley jumper, looking down at her with a cheeky grin and laughing that she still bothered to make him one.

It was Fiona Macmillan, who pulled out a pair of Ernie's work gloves and sobbed over them like they were a sacred artifact. She often laid them besides the mittens she had made for him when he was a baby and marveled at the way his hands must have grown from then until his last Christmas here. It was hard to admit that her boy, her man, her son was gone forever and those gloves couldn't ever be filled again, though Susan often slipped them on despite the size and remained entranced by a single hole at the tip of the pointer finger. How had Ernie made that hole? What was his favorite flavor of Bertie Botts Every Flavor Beans? There were so many questions left unanswered that had seemed insignificant in the face of the battle and that dreadful year that now seemed vital, and left both women feeling hollow.

It was Elaine Corner on each anniversary of the battle, when she ran into Michael's room to admire his many books with a trace of sorrow, and pulled one from the shelf, watching as the two letters she had read every year since his death landed on the floor. The first was from her husband, an old one that she had passed on to Michael to show him that even when Daddy was away on business, has was still writing and loving them all the same. The second was from Terry, and it had initially roused intense suspicion within her that her sons sexual preference wasn't spot on. Something she wasn't sure she'd want to live with knowing.

Mon Ami,

You don't know how grateful I am that your house has been open for my accommodation these past few weeks of summer. How thankful that I didn't have to go home. Je déteste ça là-bas. You know how I hate it there. But I am not only writing my thanks, toi que j'aime. We have something huge to discuss, and I need to get in close proximity with you so we can talk; it is not the thing to say for listening ears. It involves a book, though no more on that can I say. I believe you know which book, because times are truly getting desperate. Please understand this as best you can without detail. I fear this owl could get intercepted and searched.

Ne vous oubliez pas avec tous ces ennuis. Je suis désolé que ces semaines sans votre papa sont durs. Tout ira bien.

Terry

One thing Mrs. Corner knew for sure was that her son and Terry seemed very close. She almost wondered if they had become…Well, an 'item' of sorts. The way Michael described it, the way they looked at each other at the table, either they were highly connected together or they could read each others minds. The latter of which she had deemed impossible. The boys were brilliant, but two-way legilimency was virtually unheard of. But these days, she didn't care anymore what had roused her suspicions so high. All she knew was that her son was somewhere, burned and buried, and with him had died so many secrets that as a mother, she ought to have asked about. It was a deep regret.

All of them, all of the parents, mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, and now even children, felt a terrible sadness on the Anniversary of the Battle of Hogwarts as painful as the scars upon Fearless Leader's back when they had been fresh.

That's what death and war does. It leaves one with so many regrets, so many losses, and so many remaining agonies. But perhaps it was good to feel those hideous emotions, because it meant one vital thing to those who remained. They were alive. They had survived. And they would live on to maintain the memories of the fallen, to pass them onto their children and their childrens children, and everyone who would listen.