Ch. 16 Pieces
Come raise your lantern to the sky
Can we illuminate this night?
We'll dance like heathens around our flame
While the world sleeps we are awake
~Lanterns by Rise Against
It was a few weeks later when Maggie was finally well enough to leave the hospital. We left St. Mungo's in a triumphant, if mournful; procession, with our entire family walking out with us. I noticed keenly the empty holes Seamus and the others had left by their deaths.
As we walked out of the building, Maggie leaning on me greatly, passing wizards cheered us on. I smiled weakly downa t her and she smiled widely in response.
"I'm tired, Neville. I want to retire," she sighed.
"You deserve it, love," I responded calmly, "But will you think this way forever?"
"Yes," Maggie stated calmly, "I really think so."
"We'll see," Harry laughed. Maggie looked over at him in annoyance.
"Well, you're a female, more reckless, and probably smarter version of myself Maggie," Harry paused, "But you're still a load like me. And you won't be happy just sitting around."
Maggie scoffed but Jethro was laughing silently as he walked with Elena, their hands tightly grasped between them.
"We'll all be OK," I whispered softly to her, "We're all going to be OK now."
She looked up at me skeptically, "Are you sure? Because I feel like I've lost too much now and I'm much too old to continue on with this."
"I disagree," I murmured, "You're a survivor and you'll be able to fill the void with new experiences, our family, and the remainder of your loved ones. I truly believe it."
Maggie nodded and we continued walking out of the hospital and all apparated together to our house. Hermione and Ron went to the kitchen to help begin to cook a meal as we all stood around in the family room together and began talking and sitting down and simply relaxing, fully, for the first time in years.
"We have a lot of work to do back in the states," Ezra sighed, "Putting the country back together after these years. Simply too much to do."
"We'll have to go back and help," Kita paused, "Most of the UDRA will have to."
"Obviously we don't expect you to, Maggie. Or even you, Jethro," Ezra continued, "You have earned a respite. You have earned your lives back here, in the UK."
"Thank you," Jethro whispered.
"Will you visit?" Maggie asked calmly.
"Of course," Ezra nodded.
"After all we've been through? There's no way we're not going to see you again," Kita smiled calmly.
There was a long pause as Molly came in holding young Peggy, who was crying once again. She had cried nearly constantly when awake since she realized her parents hadn't appeared in much too long.
"Did she ever say why Peggy was a single child?" I realized as I looked at the babe, realize she didn't have any siblings.
"Ky… Kylie said the others died during all their traveling. Peggy was the only one who survived. Yet more who were killed because of that god awful, weak woman," Maggie spat. She was crying again, streams of tears running down her face.
"Oh sweetheart, don't get more worked up again," I soothed, gently wiping the tears from her face, "There's no use in dwelling on it."
There was a long pause as Hermione brought out tea and passed it out, us all sitting and drinking it calmly. Maggie managed to stop crying after a while, though she still looked dejected and forlorn.
"Who has been given custody of the child?" Kita finally asked after a pause, "I know Molly can't look after her forever."
"Maggie's her legal guardian now," I paused, "Molly's just been looking after her for us while she's been at the Hospital."
"Of course Maggie was given custody," Harry nodded fervently.
"Actually, she and Seamus were given joint custody…" I managed to choke out Seamus' name without sobbing, but Maggie immediately began to cry once again.
"I can still care for her until Maggie's recovered, if you want," Molly offered softly. I looked down at Maggie and back up at Molly, nodding in thanks.
They all soon left, even the children to go back to Hogwarts. The babies were still with Molly as well, so it was just the two of us in the house.
Maggie collapsed into my lap and began sobbing in earnest, her tears trailing down my pants and soaking them. I could feel through our link just how exceptionally depressed she was. It was as if there was a large weight in her heart, pinning her down. For the first time in fourteen years, she finally felt everything she had been bottling up for such a long time.
"Mum," she finally gasped out, "Mum, Snape, Luna, Fred, Dad, Phillip, Gerald, Leslie, Seamus, Lavender, Charlie, Audrey, Richard, Kita, Cho. Everyone. Everyone died and I can't believe it."
"I know," I whispered softly.
"I can't… so much… I can only handle so much," she replied, shaking in my arms as I tried to hold her tightly and to this world, trying to keep her sane.
"You have so much time to find yourself again, Maggie. So much time. And I will be here every step of the way. We'll be safe, you know," I whispered, "There's no one who can hurt us again. Not unless we feel the need to put ourselves in harm's way again. And we won't. We're safe now. We haven't been for fourteen, nearly fifteen years but we are."
"I love you so much," Maggie sobbed, "And I almost lost you. I've almost lost you so many times and I…"
"But you didn't," I reassured, "You never will. I promise."
She looked up at me with bloodshot eyes, "Never?"
"Never," I paused, "Can't get rid of me that easily, Johnson."
She laughed weakly, but she still had that depression weighing down heavily on her heart. I pulled her even closer and rocked her back and forth as she continued to cry, finally allowing it all to come out, finally allowing herself the time to mourn those she had lost.
Her depression was a hard thing to fight. It had entrenched itself in her heart and I knew it was the buildup of years of emotional repression, of years of not letting anything out at all. I felt bad for neglecting our children, but it was a rare time for someone like their mother to actually really need someone, and to admit it. So I took care of her.
The weeks went slowly, but I didn't become discouraged. I helped her talk through her emotions and I made sure to always be there for her. I heard from the school that Sprout was filling in for me as I tended to my wife.
Maggie was reluctant to admit how she felt about most things, but with this it was like pulling rotten teeth. She wanted the pain gone but she didn't want to deal with dealing with it. But I forced her to. Every day I would sit down with her on the family room floor, holding her hands and forcing her to talk through everything. How she felt she should have stopped her mother and saved her, or realized what was actually going on. How she felt like she didn't do Luna justice and owed her more than the friendship she gave. How she didn't understand how someone so filled with life like Fred could just die and not still be in the world causing people to laugh. How she felt she ruined my life.
I reassured her so many times that she never ruined my life; she had made it better, more fulfilled. It took a good week to convince her otherwise of that one.
We then managed to get to the Dragon War. She spoke of how she should have been there more for her father and done something to rescue him; how it was her fault his exodus had gone so spectacularly awful. We discussed how she felt that Phillip had died prematurely, how he had so much more to live for. We reached Gerald, and how she wished she could have helped him, helped him out of the Unionists before they had dragged him in too deeply and forced him to be who he wasn't comfortable with being. We discussed Jethro's 'death' and how she wished she hadn't ruined his life, too.
That had taken another week to break down and destroy. Jethro even had to come in and help reassure her that she really hadn't ruined his life.
Then we discussed Leslie, and how Maggie wished she could have been a better friend for her, how she wished she could have rescued her. The rest- Seamus, Lavender, Audrey, Charlie, Kylie, Richard, and Cho- were particularly raw and painful. Maggie blamed herself, personally, for each death. She couldn't accept that they had died on their own terms. She couldn't believe that Seamus and Kylie, two of the people in the world she was closest to, were gone, just like that. She didn't understand that she hadn't directly caused their deaths.
I helped her for a full month and a half to finally break down all these thoughts and destroy them. She was still mournful of her lost friends and family, but I finally managed to convince her that it wasn't her fault. Her depression managed to ease up with this news and revelation.
It didn't end then, of course, but at least she was functional to finally take care of her children, and Peggy. She would still cry herself to sleep at night again and she would still occasionally break down at the dinner table. But she was functional again, at last.
It took another year for her to finally be free of her depression. She would never be fully cured of it, but I expected that. I always would feel some depression in my own heart. But she was no longer controlled by it, and soon she laughed the same that she always had, back our early days, before the war against Voldemort had destroyed part of her.
In that intervening year, Nate and Victoire got together, an event no one was surprised by. Jethro and Elena got married, deciding they might as well in the end. Draco began to get to know the lot of us, realizing that we weren't the enemy to him and his family any more.
At the end of that year, most of us discovered we were expecting kids. For Maggie and me, this wasn't much of a surprise. We still needed to have four more children and we were glad that it was time to get it over with. For Elena and Jethro, it also wasn't much of a surprise. They knew that they would probably have kids at some point, and both were actually rather excited by the prospect.
But Ginny and Harry were expecting again, something they thought they were done with. Hermione and Ron were also following suit, along with George and Angelina, Draco and Astoria, Ezra and Kita. In fact, really only Bill and Fleur didn't get pregnant, which they considered a blessing. They really didn't need more children.
As a result, the following year, many more babies were born than had ever been witnessed before in Wizarding history. This many children hadn't even been born after Voldemort was defeated completely, or even when he was defeated when Harry was a baby. Arthur said the reason for this was after Voldemort's first end, most people just wanted life to get back to normal, and after the second end the target group that had been affected the most were people my and Maggie's age at the time- people who were too young to be thinking about children (even if they did accidentally occur.) But for this war, the major age group affected was people who were at the breeding age- whether they had yet to start, were in the middle, or thought they were finished. As a result, our Quadruplets' year at Hogwarts was one of the biggest ever seen- one hundred students.
We had Hermione, Ginny, Harry and Ron, and were proud of our names for them. The four of their namesakes were honored as well. Jethro and Elena had Carlie, Desmond and Renee. Harry and Ginny had twins, due to his newfound dragon nature, whom they named Neville and Elena. Ron and Hermione had Millie, George and Angelina had Remus, and Ezra and Kita had Bill, Richard, and Madison. Draco and Astoria had Nymphadora, who absolutely hated her name.
I was amazed that life was able to go on even after that- Alice and Teddy and Nate and Victoire all got married immediately after graduating. Alice joined the Dragon Riders, Teddy became the new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, Nate became the new Care of Magical Creatures teacher when Hagrid needed to retire, and Victoire became a magical lawyer along with her aunt Hermione.
And one day, just as I was ready to go to bed, my four youngest children wished to know how we had got our scars.
Oh, did they have a story to hear.
AN: I know, a bit of a short ending, but that's just me wrapping up loose ends and such. I'm looking forward to my Maggie-growing-up-with-Harry universe, it should be quite a bit of fun to write, especially since so many things change in the story.
Please review, though once again, I don't expect it.
