Chapter 30: Where We Began
The fifteenth of May was originally when Luca was supposed to play his last Quidditch match of the season against Hufflepuff. It was announced on the morning of the third, the first day of classes after Voldemort's death, that the game would change to the twenty-second instead. Instead on the fifteenth, McGonagall would open the grounds of Hogwarts to the wizarding world at large. The time had come to celebrate Dumbledore's life.
With no more Death Eater trials or mysteries about Voldemort to distract anyone from his absence anymore, people started to move forward. The Daily Prophet wrote about Dumbledore as often as they did anyone else relevant in the wake of the war. Bellatrix Lestrange indeed survived beyond the sixth, and Rodolphus the ninth, when their death sentences were commuted to life in Azkaban instead.
The scheduled Hogsmeade weekend on the eighth was a subdued affair, which Luca split by meeting Kingsley Shacklebolt at the Hog's Head in the morning and then Blaise at the Three Broomsticks in the afternoon. Blaise had brought Luca the two messenger halves he requested. The others had been owled to Dagmar in Bergen, and Hildegard in Berkshire.
Maybe because Dumbledore specified a wish for life celebration rather than funeral, the mood in the castle actually rode quite high when Luca emerged from the dungeons on the fifteenth. So many had already arrived that more people than lawn was visible out of any windows.
Blaise had planned to arrive around nine. Knowing him to be punctual to an eye-rolling degree, Luca started to walk toward Hogsmeade to meet him on the way. Sure enough, Luca spotted him. He'd accrued a small crowd already that consisted of Draco, Dagmar, Theo, Daphne, Milly, and—to Luca's slight surprise—Crabbe and Goyle.
"Hey," Luca greeted them when they all came toe to toe. "You're back?"
"Just for this," Crabbe replied with a shrug. His accent had changed from living out of the country for so long. "Us and everyone else that left, I think."
He wasn't wrong. As the morning wore on, way more people gathered in groups on Hogwarts' lawn than congregated a few weeks ago for Voldemort's trial and subsequent death. Alcohol started flowing through the crowd with no obvious source, although Luca placed pretty strong bets on Hagrid—or maybe Sirius Black—being the culprit. Merriment spread just about as quickly. Frequent toasts were made, all started by someone (most often Hagrid) yelling Dumbledore's name aloud. Everyone else would respond in kind before downing whatever drink was in their hands.
Luca didn't want to get too carried away. Floating around through everyone, he lost track of Blaise and their friends for a while. He found Draco and Dagmar first, chatting with Professor Snape.
Dagmar lit up. "I was just going to track you down. Are you ready?"
Luca's stomach fluttered. He'd drank a little bit of firewhisky to temper that, but it did little more than take the edge off. "Whenever you are."
They headed for the Quidditch pitch, which took much longer than usual given everyone they had to weave through. A few people wanted to chat too.
Dagmar waited outside the male Slytherin change room while Luca fetched his broom. They doubled back the way they'd come, taking a wide berth around the Whomping Willow to the greenhouses. From there, Luca figured they had the best chance not to be spotted crossing the lake to the island at its centre.
They stayed low, their toes nearly grazing the crests of lazy waves. Luca's nerves worsened as they grew closer. They'd graduated into a firm flutter when his shoes sunk into rich sand.
The sound of the waves lapping up on the shore was weirdly familiar. Luca couldn't tell if that was real, or he only felt that way because he expected it. Other things invoked a sense of déjà vu too, though. Flakes like golden dust floated in the air, bringing a hush down on the beach the same way that freshly fallen snow did. Although Hogwarts sat across the expanse of lake separating them from land, it fell away. The celebration went with it.
Dagmar slipped a hand into Luca's. "The house is this way."
Luca's feet slowed and his heartbeat came up into his chest when he heard underbrush rustle off the side of the path. He swallowed as Lys emerged from behind a tree. He experienced a strange wave of reminiscence from the way her white dress fluttered in the wind.
Lys' circled lips straightened back out as recognition overtook her curiosity. Her blue eyes crisped and quickly overran as she stared unblinking at Luca. She came closer.
"Bjorn," she said breathlessly in Druidic. "You're home."
"Er—I go by Luca," Luca replied in Parseltongue. "That's my name."
Lys melted into a warm smile. "It's so good to see you again. Do you remember me?"
"Maybe."
She blurred in Luca's vision before he grew mildly disoriented. It felt like his mind flexed by its own accord. As if Luca imagined it for himself, he gazed at a chubby little baby—himself. He looked about six months old by Luca's reckoning, with a skiff of fuzzy dark hair on his head. He laughed at Lys poking his nose. He sat in Hildegard's lap with her arms around his middle. While Luca watched, Hildegard dipped her chin to kiss the top of his head. She rested her cheek there afterward, nuzzling him.
Luca's cheeks were wet when Lys released him from her grip. Her smile took a sad turn.
"Maybe you were too young," she said. "That's all right."
"Would you show me more?" Luca asked.
She nodded before his mind twinged again. It all came like a flood, an exhausted looking Hildegard laying in a bed with a tiny newborn him on her breast. Hildegard showing him to a very curious Dagmar that had crawled up onto the bed sometime a little later. Luca gradually turning chunky, learning to smile, learning to laugh. Him with a man that Luca recognized as Magnus, now he'd seen pictures. Him crying and Dagmar trying to give him some sort of berry, as if that would make his upset go away. Him crawling around on the floor while Magnus and Dagmar played with crafts nearby. Him unsteady on his feet, Hildegard holding his hands while he tentatively walked. His confident little smile when he managed it all by himself to applause from Hildegard and Magnus. Him falling shortly after, with Hildegard quickly leaning forward to catch him before he hit the floor. Him babbling as he sat in a high chair. Hildegard sat beside him with Dagmar in her lap, indulging whatever sounds Luca made while Dagmar made a mess of her food.
It dark, Hildegard sitting like a defeated lump on the beach in moonlight, her expression contorted with pain—
Lys reappeared jarringly quickly. She looked bashful. "You probably don't want to see that much. It was very sad when you were taken. It still is. This place has never been the same."
"I'm sorry." Luca wiped his face and sniffled.
"You shouldn't apologize."
"No—I mean, it's sad it happened that way."
Luca felt comfortable acknowledging as such without it being some sort of slight against the life he'd lived instead. He could never choose one or the other. He would forever straddle between two mothers, whether or not one was no longer here. Two countries, two families, two cultures. . .the list went on. Luca came here today because he wanted to try and embrace all of it.
Dagmar squeezed Luca's hand. Emotion had messed up her makeup. Some mascara formed a line away from the corner of her eye, where she'd wiped it. "Come on. Let's keep going."
Lys said goodbye before slinking back into the woods to give them their space. Luca sighed.
"I wonder if Madam Bones and your mum beat us here," he said to Dagmar.
"I don't think so," Dagmar replied. "Lys would have mentioned seeing them."
"Oh—yeah, she probably would have."
Dagmar looked over at Luca, lips pursed. "I didn't realize I told you they were meeting here today. Did I? I don't think I did, actually."
"I heard about it from Kingsley."
"Oh, today?"
Luca shook his head. "Last weekend."
While Dagmar's study of him grew more critical, Luca fended off a smile. She started doing the same before eventually bumping their shoulders together. "All right. What aren't you telling me?"
"It's not for sure, so I don't know if I should say anything." Luca hesitated. "I'm thinking it over, but I'm probably going to stick around after I finish at Hogwarts."
"Really?" Dagmar's step slowed. "No dragons?"
"No. . .well, one day, maybe," Luca said. "I'd still like to, but I feel like there are other things I need to do first. I asked Kingsley about how I would go about getting into Magical Enforcement when I never applied for it back in December."
Dagmar's eyebrows rose.
"I wasn't even really sure where I wanted to go with that." Luca kicked a rock on the path. "I don't want to be an Auror. That was Mamă's path, not mine. I just thought that maybe, given who I am, there was somewhere I'd fit. And it just so happens there is."
Dagmar had turned serious as she rushed ahead to the same conclusion. "Here."
"Yeah." The nerves Luca had mostly left back on the beach reemerged in a wracking flourish. "Kingsley asked if I thought I could handle Bellatrix."
Dagmar made a small noise in her throat.
"That's what makes me hesitate," Luca said. "I mean, she killed my mum. I'm still not sure I'm happy she got a second chance at living. A third chance, given what they plan to do, doesn't seem fair at all. But at the same time, the Death Eaters can do more here on the island than sitting and twiddling their thumbs in Azkaban."
"Ja," Dagmar agreed with that. "I mean, St Mungo's can't handle the remaining kissed prisoners forever. To me it made sense that the Death Eaters' punishment be to take care of them."
The Ministry's goal of reformation was secondary to that. Kingsley would be put in charge of the whole thing once it was underway. His own experiences among the Death Eaters this winter offered some insight on how people could be remolded. The Death Eaters would never go free, even if they really were peeled away from Voldemort and his ideology, but it might very well be possible to erase this particular vein of his legacy.
"Thing is, if you think about who I am, who else would handle Bellatrix better?" Luca posed. "And I have to admit I'm very curious about who she could be with the right hand extended."
"I am too." Dagmar paused. "I would hope that if you do it, you're very careful. Maybe you could pull her up, ja, but she could very well drag you down too."
"Kingsley and I talked about that. We'd all be one-on-one ratio with the people we're handling, since they'll be about one-on-one with the kissed person they'll be caring for. There'll be Kingsley on top of that, and I think Madam Bones and Mr Weasley are going to have a lot of oversight."
Spires appeared ahead of Luca and Dagmar. As they came over the hill, the house became visible through the trees. They started their downward venture into the island's central bowl.
"I guess coming here today had more than one purpose, then," Dagmar mused. "This isn't just about seeing where you were born. You're going to spend a lot of time here if you take that job."
"I wouldn't be staying here with the Death Eaters and their charges." Luca glanced at her. "I'm moving in with Blaise after my NEWTs. McGonagall said it's all right if I don't want to hang around Hogwarts after I write them. I can leave early."
"That was nice of her."
Luca's feelings toward Hogwarts had softened since things calmed down. He wouldn't have minded sticking around a few extra weeks if he had no choice, but he was very ready to live full-time with Blaise. Being away from him while finishing school had been far too rough, considering everything they had to deal with.
"Well, wherever you wind up. . ." A glint of humour touched Dagmar's smile as she bumped their shoulders again. "You need to book off July seventeenth."
"What for?"
"Slight change of plans on me and Draco's date," Dagmar said. "Apparently we're having an actual wedding now."
"Oh?" Luca tilted his head slightly. "How come? Change of heart, or. . .?"
"We had Lucius, Narcissa, and Wes over for dinner last night, so we told them our idea for going about getting married." Dagmar rolled her eyes in a good-natured way. "Lucius got offended—and I mean really offended—that we didn't have a wedding in mind. We tried to explain, but eh. It was a nice thought to get married on our anniversary, but all he focused on was that that was a Monday. We wanted a small thing, so just our siblings and their partners. But why can't we be there? Because then we'd have to invite this person and this person. . .and then he made a pretty good point that a wedding is meant to be a celebration of two lives coming together. Considering everything Draco and I have been through for each other, he didn't understand why we wouldn't want that. And of course it's tradition."
"But it's your decision, ultimately."
"Let's just say it didn't really take much to change me and Draco's minds." Dagmar laughed. "I'm already kind of excited. I'm going to ask Daphne if she's all right to be maid of honour. I just hope the middle of July won't be too close to her due date. She doesn't have much to do, anyway. Just stand there and look pretty. Narcissa started prattling off a bunch of names of wedding planners, so it should be pretty hands-off."
A slow grin came over Luca. "Well, I'll be excited for a wedding."
"Heads up, Draco's going to ask you to be in the party. And he's asking Blaise to be best man."
"Cool."
They cleared the tree line. The house didn't take up much of the clearing, although Luca supposed that would change as it expanded to accommodate all the people that would soon come to live here. As Luca took the first few steps up to the front door with Dagmar, the way the wood creaked made him pause. It, like Lys and the general air of the place, felt weirdly familiar.
The interior was familiar too, but only because Luca had just seen snippets of it in Lys' mind. He felt like he already knew the layout. Library to the right, living room to the left. Stairs leading upstairs, and a hallway straight ahead led past a bathroom to the keeping room. At the same time, he only knew that because it was what he could see from where he stood.
"I'll show you around," Dagmar said. "There's not really a whole lot to it."
The library had been emptied, all of its contents taken to the Ministry's druid office for cataloguing. Dagmar led Luca through the living room to the dining room, then the kitchen beyond. It looked into the keeping room, which had a nice fireplace. Dagmar vanished dust as she went, maybe just because it didn't feel right to see the place like this. Luca tried to imagine what it had been like on here a few months ago, with nearly twenty-five people calling it home. This place, now so incredibly quiet and neglected, had thrummed with too much life for a short while.
"Did you want to see upstairs?" Dagmar asked as they stood on the hearth rug. "It's a little strange to see your old room intact. Mine is too."
Luca swallowed his hesitation. "Yeah, I want to see."
They went back down the hallway and headed up. It came to a blank wall, the landing running along to the right. There were three doors off it, and one more down at the end. Light came in through skylights above. Given the time of day, Luca had to block his eyes when sunlight hit them unimpeded.
"Mine, yours, bathroom, Mum's." Dagmar pointed at each door in kind. "Oh, she must be on the island. The door won't appear otherwise."
They headed into Luca's old room. Luca wasn't sure what to feel about it. It was difficult to see it as his just because it was unfamiliar, and yet a pensive heaviness draped over him as he rested a hand on the side of the crib. The blanket still lumped up as if it was just last night he'd woken the sleepy house with his crying.
"What do you think?" Dagmar quietly asked.
Luca shrugged, turning enough to see her. Dagmar stood beside the chair in the corner. "Doesn't feel much differently than the rest of the place. Weirdly like home, but so far away."
"Ja." Dagmar looked around. "I get it. This was home for me for a very long time, and even I don't. . .you know."
Dagmar struggled to put it into words, but Luca found that he understood anyway. Home was where they'd made it, regardless of their cradle. It was a little bit of a miracle that despite the way they'd all floated apart, life had a way of bringing them all back together.
That sentiment sharpened when Luca heard voices outside. Dagmar's gaze snapped toward the bedroom door when footfalls sounded on the steps. A moment later, the front door opened.
Madam Bones was speaking. "When do you think you'd be able to move Chelone out of the lake here?"
"Whenever you want," Hildegard replied. "She's probably all rested up from the big swim she took back in winter. It's not like she's going very far this time anyway, right?"
"No, just to Azkaban. I have a personal goal of shutting the place down by the solstice, so even if she takes it slow. . ."
They kept on chatting downstairs—in the library, Luca reckoned, by the lingering nearness of their voices. He and Dagmar headed for the landing and peered down over the railing.
Luca exhaled through his nose, drumming his fingers against the dark wood. "I'm thinking again that I should've gotten her something."
"Don't worry about it," Dagmar reassured him. "Get to know each other a little more first, and then worry about things like birthday gifts. Trust me, this will be more than enough for her today."
"Yeah."
Luca gathered as much from the little bit they had already written back and forth. Hildegard didn't really say a whole lot about herself. A hunger came through in her expressed wish to know absolutely anything Luca willed to tell her about his life. She wanted to know about his mum, his grandparents, Romania, the villa, Durmstrang—anything and everything. Luca had been glad she opened that door, because otherwise he wouldn't have known the decorum on mentioning any of the stuff unsolicited. To him it was a real possibility she might not want to hear any of it. She did, though. She seemed genuine when she said it sounded like Mamă had taken good care of Luca. She said his grandparents sounded like very nice people, that the villa sounded lovely, and that she would be honoured to visit there when Luca extended the offer.
Madam Bones and Hildegard hushed when the stairs creaked under Luca and Dagmar's feet. Dagmar stopped at the bottom, halting Luca too. He smiled tightly with his nerves when his and Hildegard's gazes met.
"Oh, you two are already here." She toyed with her hands in front of her stomach. "I didn't realize."
"Ja," Dagmar replied. "We're here."
So that's that, nearly a million words later.
If you stuck through this series right through to the end, I hope you enjoyed it! I had a lot of fun finally getting it written after years of it brewing away. There won't be any sequels, or anything like that. Originally I had planned Equilibrium to go a bit longer, given that Luca finds Bellatrix in a vulnerable place and then everyone's heading into their Happily Ever After, but to me this is naturally where the main focus of the story ends - with Voldemort's death.
Anyway! Thank you for reading. I'm glad I could entertain you for a while and distract you from the clusterfuck our world has currently descended into. Stay safe out there, and stay well.