"So you use the genitive case when the noun possesses or is of something," she reads aloud as she adds yet another dot point to her steadily growing page of notes. The hardest thing, she is finding, about learning Latin is learning how different nouns decline and verbs conjugate. She didn't even know what those words meant until she decided to fulfil her childhood dream of bilingualism so she could feel useful by creating new spells for the Order while in confinement. Trying to wrap her head around it all over the last few weeks has certainly provided her with a challenge. "But what's a dative?"
Sighing, she lets her head rest against the desk, wishing she had someone else to study with. James has been quizzing her, but his early forays into foreign languages turned him off the practice entirely, and he's the only one – other than Harry – that she has regular contact with. Closing her eyes, she tries to sort out all of the different cases in her mind, running through them and their uses and what she remembers of how they affect the endings of nouns from each declension.
"Mummy!"
Grateful for the distraction, she forces herself to stand. "Harry?"
"Mummy, come see!"
His tone is excited, not afraid, so she isn't worried as she makes her way into the living room.
She stops short at the sight that greets her.
A magnificent stag stands in the centre of the room. Natural light shines through the window, highlighting the orange tinge to the brown of his coat. Antlers stretch out proudly, giving him a mystical aura. No matter how many times she sees James in this form, he never ceases to remind her of some kind of overgrown woodland fairy.
And his boon rests atop his back, his little hands clenched in his fur to keep him from falling off. "Mummy," the boy says again, "look!"
"I'm looking," she says. "Did Daddy become Prongs again? Do you think he should start walking around?"
He nods in vigorous excitement.
"Hold on tight," she warns him, and her gaze meets the stag's. His eyes are browner and narrower in this form, not to mention further apart, but his love of family and adventure always shines out from his intelligent gaze.
Her heart fills with contentment at the sight. Seeing Prongs amuse Harry with piggyback rides and general silliness invariably fills her with pride and peace. There may be a war going on, and there may be cases to learn and nouns to decline and spells to create, but this here makes it all worth here. This here is why she fights.
This here is what keeps her sane.
A/N: I blame Pokémon X for the stags = fairies thing. Just looking at photos of stags to try to get the description right made me think of fairies, and it actually took a while for me to work out that that's because I was subconsciously thinking about Xerneas.
Also, I finally watched The Force Awakens today, and it was so good. I was really young when the prequels came out, so it was amazing to watch a Star Wars movie for the first time as a sort-of-adult and be able to predict where things were going. I've been talking Mum's (and Dad's, for a while) ear off with theories all evening. Unfortunately, my brother hasn't watched it yet, and my best friend doesn't like sci fi, so Mum and Dad are kind of stuck with me for the time being. But at least I can finally step out into the internet again and be all, "I'm no longer afraid of you, TFA spoilers! And I never again will be!"