Epilogue


Skip forward a month or two. My birthday had passed without occasion and I was beginning at Hogwarts. We had moved house, from our comfortable upper-middleclass with timber slatting and two porches and a rolling garden rimmed with hedges, to a grotty little cottage in Godric's Hollow. I had arrived at Hogwarts in robes that my mother had taken out a loan for, determined that I wouldn't look shabby in comparison to everybody else. She had spent the latter part of the summer largely ignoring everybody, lying in bed sobbing into her pillow, refusing to do anything but drink tea and cry. I was leaving Aberforth alone to care for Ariana.

I didn't talk to anybody on the train. Sometimes I found it hard to talk at all, when there was so much inside I could not say. I was glad to escape the house but I wasn't particularly looking forward to Hogwarts. Already I had earned the glares and suspicious stares of the other students.

But once there…Hogwarts was a breath of fresh air. It was so different in those days. Now students wear plain black robes and uniforms underneath, but back then we wore full suits and dress robes each day, and changed for dinner and wore top-hats and addressed each other formally and were told we were the future. It was glamorous, luxurious, a soft reminder of the way I had lived when I had been happy, a long time ago.

I was sorted into Gryffindor, and for the first time in so long I felt a rush of happiness and a smile came to my face.

I sat down and the previous boy who had been sorted, Elphias Doge, was a Gryffindor as well. I sat down next to him and for a second, in a trick of the light, I saw Bert with the same acne marked face and broad shoulders. For a second my heart soared even though the sensible part of my brain knew it was not, could not, be my Bert, whom had ruined me forever, and who had been ruined in return.


Well, that was my short little story. I've had this lying around for a few years now. Please tell me if you enjoyed. I tried hard to make dates accurate and I think everything fits with canon, but if you notice anything feel free to tell me.