In His Memory
Part Two: From King's Cross to Hogwarts
By: WeasleyTwin2
There's a grief that can't be spoken
There's a pain goes on and on
Empty chairs at empty tables
Now my friends are dead and gone.
Here they talked of revolution
Here it was they lit the flame
Here they sang about tomorrow
And tomorrow never came.
From Les Miserables
And now you're looking back at me
Searching for a way that we can be
Like we were before.
Endless Summer Nights
Richard Marx
Fred and George Weasley stood together at the gate which marked the entrance to Platform Nine and Three Quarters and they were the first people I saw when I crossed between the Muggle and magical worlds. If they were surprised to see me they didn't show it. They merely clapped me hard on the back, like we were old friends, and helped me with my now extremely heavy trunk. A year had made a great deal of difference in their health. They looked much better then when I had last seen them, which was in the hospital just after their rescue from the collapsed tunnel to Hogsmead. Their bodies had completely healed and judging from the mischievous glint in their eyes and the humorous grins playing about their mouths so had their spirits. They told animated jokes as they helped me to the train and I couldn't help grinning myself at their antics. Soon I was joining in and laughing with them. I have to admit that laughter felt good. I hadn't laughed much in my life and had had no reason to in the last year. I knew what the twins were doing of course; they were trying to calm my nerves and they had managed to do just that through their joking. Soon the hammering in my heart subsided and I began to relax, somewhat.
I followed them onto the train and they led me to the very last car, the car that had during our school years been traditionally dubbed the "Harry Potter" car because it was the car where Harry and his friends had nearly always sat. I was somewhat shocked by this but the twins merely opened the compartment door with a flourish. They bowed at me and then they left me standing on the threshold alone as they headed for a different compartment. Squaring my shoulders and with a heart full of apprehension, I entered the compartment not knowing what to expect. Ron and Hermione were sitting by the window looking out as if expecting someone to be there, waiting for them on the platform. I cleared my throat and their heads whipped around to face me. For a moment our eyes locked and I saw the look of surprise reflected in them. Clearly they hadn't expected to see me.
"Is anyone sitting there?" I asked a bit lamely, not really knowing what else to say to them.
Ron and Hermione exchanged a glance before motioning that I could join them. I sat down and peered out the window too, feeling very uncomfortable. There were many people milling about on the platform before they boarded the train. They were waving and hugging each other. Our class, which I remember as being full of noise and laughter while we were in school, was now a silent and subdued group still grieving for our losses. I kept looking for faces that I knew were not going to be there and I'm sure that the others were too. We were all looking for Harry who we knew we would never see again in this life. Tears were beginning to make my eyes sting but I told them firmly to go away and to leave me be. The platform before me stopped blurring and became as clear as crystal. For a moment I thought I saw two people who I knew were dead. I leaned forward, with my nose almost pressed to the glass, trying to take a closer look at them but as I did so they disappeared from my sight.
"It's not possible…" I thought to myself, not daring to say anything out loud for fear of what my companions would think.
All to soon the train's final boarding whistle sounded and the Hogwarts Express departed from the station, leaving a trail of smoke to mark its passage. I watched as the platform slide backwards and then out of sight. I turned from the window to see Ron silently surveying me. When he noticed that I was looking at him, he dropped his gaze and looked instead at the scenery passing outside the window. Hermione, who was usually so talkative, sat silently staring at her hands that were clasped tight in her lap. I wondered what they were both thinking. A year had not changed them much; they still looked as they had when we left school, except that their wounds had healed. I touched the jagged and puckered scar that ran parallel to the eyebrow above my right eye, a gift of Voldemort's second in that final and fatal wizards duel. Sometimes it still hurt and in fact it was beginning to hurt now. I rubbed it until the pain subsided, remembering how Harry's scar had always seemed to warn him of evil. I wondered if my scar was trying to warn me of some danger, some nearby evil. I looked out the window again but saw nothing unusual in the trees that flew past, nothing even remotely evil.
I felt someone's eyes boring into me again and, taking my eyes off the passing forest, I saw that both Ron and Hermione were staring at me this time with eyes that were full of sorrow and some other emotion I couldn't name. Seeing the grief in their eyes, which reflected the grief within my own heart, I could hold my emotions inside no longer. Two tears ran down my cheeks and then all the sorrow and grief I had held onto for the last year was released at last. Ron and Hermione were crying too and we held onto each other as we had nearly a year previous at Harry's bedside. After several minuets our sobs subsided and my heart began to feel lighter then it had in awhile.
Ron looked at me curiously for several minuets and I wondered what he was thinking. Finally he seemed to make up his mind about something and he stretched out his hand, which I took and clasped for a moment. Hermione placed her hand over both of ours' and for just a moment I felt power surge between us. It surprised me and judging by their shocked faces it surprised Ron and Hermione too.
"So it's really true then?" Ron asked me in surprise. "You've really denounced the Dark Arts and all? I heard reports but nothing that I could verify."
I looked straight into his eyes and replied, "Yes, everything you've heard is true. I have renounced all evil. I am no longer willing to pay the price they have asked of me in the past."
Ron and Hermione both nodded solemnly, then Ron continued, " I heard you sold your house and everything and gave all the money away."
"I did. All those people were in need and how could I not help them. Harry would have." I said simply, though I didn't say what I was really thinking, which was "Harry would have but because of me he was unable to."
"Where have you been? We thought… I mean nobody knew where you had gone or what had happened to you?" Hermione said, concern evident in her voice.
"I needed to get away for awhile. I had to be alone to think about things. So I bought a small house in a secluded area. I really wanted time alone, away from the reporters and all that."
"You could have told us where you were going. We wouldn't have told anyone. What if…" she said severely and I was strongly reminded of Professor McGonagall.
I grinned sheepishly at her and shrugged while Ron attempted to stifle his laughter.
"What?" she said rounding on Ron, who looked at me. I smirked one of my old "evil" smirks and Ron burst out laughing.
"Honestly you two are as bad as Fr…" she began, and then she also started to laugh at something outside the window.
I turned to look and saw Ron's twin brothers staring back at me. They were hanging upside down in midair making faces at us through the window. Somehow they must have climbed out onto the top of the last car and found somewhere to hook their legs so that they could perform this feat. Just how they managed it, I'll never know but we all laughed for several minuets at the faces that Fred and George made and then we opened the window to let them in before someone caught them. They said it was the pinnacle of their mischief making careers and laughed. It was good to see them up to their old tricks again so soon after the battle that had claimed so many lives. We talked all the way to Hogwarts, trying to get reacquainted with one another and telling each other what we had been doing since we had last meet. Finally my fears were put to rest. I had not been friends with Ron and Hermione or with Fred and George at school but as we talked and I got to know them I realized that I could and did like them. We had a lot more in common then I would have ever thought possible. My parents would have berated me for my actions but I no longer cared what they would have thought. I was not the person I had been in the past and would never be him again. That Draco Malfoy was dead. He died at the "Battle of Hogwarts" and I had become someone else. The Draco Malfoy I was now had been forged in battle and I would never look back. I felt that I could trust Ron and Hermione with my very life if necessary and I could see that there was some kind of magical connection between us that had not been there before the battle a year ago. I wondered if they felt it too? If we were to defeat the ancient evil that Harry had mentioned to me then we had to trust each other so completely that nothing could ever divide us. Not words or deeds of the past nor anything yet unsaid or undone.
At long last the train arrived at Hogsmead Station and we all took carriages up to the school. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the repairs made to the school had been done so skillfully that you couldn't tell that a good two thirds of the building had been destroyed in the previous year's battle. The many turreted castle towered high above us as we made our slow way up the winding pathway that lead to the front entrance. The wrought iron gate that marked the entrance to the grounds was the same as it had always been. The grounds had been re-landscaped in such a way that if you didn't know, you couldn't tell there had been a major, magical battle fought here. My heart began to rest even easier when I saw these changes. There seem to be very little that would remind me of the battle we had all fought. At least I hoped there would be very few reminders as I closed my eyes and listened to the birds singing in the distance and the quiet talking of my new found friends, just relaxing for the first time in ages.
All to soon my time of quiet meditation was interrupted by the carriage's sudden halt. I opened my eyes to find we were now at the front entrance of Hogwarts, the entrance we three had helped to guard a year previous. It looked exactly as it had at that time; the marble was still cracked and scorched as if by lightning. It was left that way, I was later told, to remind everyone who passed through the entrance of the lives that were given and that Hogwarts had taken the best Voldemort could throw her way and survived. Suddenly memories came flooding back to me in a torrent and tears stung my eyes.
"This is going to be a lot harder then I thought."
I looked up at the shimmering walls of the castle, trying to block out the memories but they come unbidden to the surface. We stood together at the entrance, a swarm of dark creatures all around us, Harry cut his way to our side until we fought side by side, Harry and I charging the enemy ranks wand and sword upraised, the feelings of victory as we drove the dark creatures back and back again, the last battle with Voldemort where Harry was fatally wounded, and his last word to me "Promise…" before he closed his eyes forever. I sat in the carriage, unable to move or even breath, the force of the memories was too powerful. I found myself reliving the entire battle in a matter of seconds and I discovered that I was seeing, feeling and hearing everything that had happened during that battle. It was almost as if someone had cast a time travel spell on me, it was that real. Tears ran down my face, blurring everything around me into an indistinct gray mass. After the vision-for it was more than a memory-had passed I looked up to see Ron and Hermione's tearstained and shocked faces looking back at me. Obviously they had seen the same vision I had but I wondered if they had heard the voice, Harry's voice calling to me. Had it called to them too, I wondered. Ron's eyes looked into mine and held them for a moment and then I knew they had heard that same voice too.
"There was a voice in my vision," he said with disbelief evident in his voice.
Hermione looked up then and nodded and I did too, showing that I too had heard that voice.
"It was Harry's voice,…" said Hermoine, quietly as tears sprang into her eyes again to run down her face. I reached out my hand to her, which she squeezed briefly, trying to still her sobbing and managing to smile through them.
I nodded at Ron a second time showing my acceptance of what Hermione had said.
"He said 'Remember what was given here. Remember the cost of freedom is often high and that you may one day be asked to pay it'" I said, a shiver running through me and a feeling of dread in my heart.
The three of us stared at one another silently and as we left the carriages and climbed the cracked steps to the Entrance Hall, a feeling of deep foreboding in my heart. There was something evil lurking nearby, I could feel it resound in my soul. There was Dark Magic at work here, somewhere quite close and it radiated power that I could feel, and that power was greater then Voldemort's ever was. I began to shiver before I had walked three steps inside Hogwarts. I looked back over my shoulder but saw nothing sinister lurking anywhere near. Still, he was here somewhere, watching and waiting for a moment to strike. It was the new dark wizard Harry had warned me of on his deathbed. He had been freed at last and his powers were slowly growing. The Dark power I now felt had a distinctly foreign feel to it but it was still recognizable to me who had a great deal of experience in the Dark Arts. Soon he would strike, I could feel it in my heart and as I entered the school, I prayed we would be given enough time to prepare for the attack.
"Please, just grant us enough time."
A/N: I had this all ready to send when I noticed I forgot to put this at the beginning. Oh well,
You already know who owns most of these characters. I can only claim the plot and the newly risen Dark Wizard Seth-Ra, who will finally make an appearance in Part Three. Part Three will be called "Memoria and Warnings" Look for it to appear soon, that is if I don't have computer troubles again! Growl
WeasleyTwin2