Though the victory was sweet,
The cost was not.
The three figures arrived in a silent swirl of robes, fanning out into a defensive posture. One tall, a man. Another short, a man as well, and one of middling height, who was a woman.
The shortest stood in the center, never having been comfortable with his flanks exposed. They took in their surroundings quickly, eyes of green and blue and brown and yellow taking in every move, wands in hand and twitching when a squirrel leapt from one branch or another. Taller of the two men seemed sheepish and he gave a guilty roll of the shoulders when a dove took flight, glinting bone white in the darkness of the forest, and he cored it with a nasty and twisting curse, acid green and hissing, before the thought to do so had even crossed his mind. His companions didn't even blink.
It took a moment to remember that they didn't necessarily need to do things this way anymore, and they allowed themselves to relax, fraction by fraction, until they were merely wary instead of being filled with the switched-on, wire-walking tension that the feeling of a portkey always seemed to leave them with.
The short man sighed, lifted his hand. One of his wands rested on his palm, the one made of holly and phoenix and fond memories, and he felt a bit more of his tension fall away as he allowed a small sip of his being to slip into the innocuous little twig of wood. It shifted, pointing due north. He nodded at his companions and began to move.
The woods were dense but not dark, having the sort of ethereal quality that only Ireland's fens and those few remaining enchanted forests can provide. They had the good luck to be in both at once, drooping willows seeming to beckon them closer, the light of the early morning sun reflecting off the low autumnal fog, creating an air of mischief and mystery. It reminded the woman of better days. She cut an imposing figure, tall and dark and scarred and limping and lovely, even with the scars marring the space around her left eye. Even despite the piercing yellow of the eye they had had to form out of magic wholesale on this very night, one year previous, for her gaze was no less knowing, no less caring when she gazed at her boys.
The going was slow, as their wounds from the battle a week previous were not fully healed.
The tallest of them had the easiest go of it, as the replacement of limbs with magical prosthesis was in fact quite a simple procedure, and the living wood that made up his leg seemed to take vigor from the surroundings. He did his best to ignore the slight limp the shortest still had, but still found himself walking rather slower than they normally did. They, since they never walked apart. He smiled, eyes still wary above a freckled nose, and reached out to trace a hand down the curve of the shortest's jaw, not looking away from the forest surrounding them. That worthy smiled minutely, eyes that could be so cold glimmering with affection even as they still scanned his surroundings. No words were exchanged, none being needed for the three to feel comfortable with each other.
As they walked, they came upon a circle of stones, about a meter across. It was well hidden but not quite well enough, just before a river just slightly too deep and wide to simply wade through. They made very brief eye contact, remembering a story told to them by an old man whom they missed terribly.
The silence was broken for the first time by the short man, running a hand through messy black hair.
"Trap."
The others nodded.
Warily, very warily, they edged around the makeshift circle, the tallest assuming a lookout position a few meters out, his partners' wands waving in intricate patterns as they attempted to detect the trap. From their wands, a net of sigils formed a dome out of the circle on the ground, forming and reforming at different points, glowing dully with orange and lavender light. The search returned nothing, so they continued with more advanced detection spells. They had to be sure, they had to, because one did not leave a potential landmine on the ground, not for some poor child to stumble upon. They were only a few miles out from the nearest village.
An hour passed, and they found nothing.
As they began to move on, the short man's hand suddenly shot out, stopping the woman before she could begin to use some conveniently placed rocks as stepping stones to cross the small creek. He summoned a twig, and tossed it onto the second stone.
Nothing happened.
He conjured a snake, petrified it, and levitated it to the same stone. With a flash, the snake and stone disappeared.
"Portkey. Crafty buggers." The tall man shook his head, red hair glinting in the light.
"Likely to a lethifold den or something else equally horrid," the woman chimed in, lips twisting as she worries her lower lip, fingers tracing her cheekbone and the thin white scar splitting the dark skin there.
The redhead snorted. "Nah. We can handle lethifolds, and this is for us. Likely took it to a volcano, or an old holding cell."
The green-eyed man said nothing, but nodded at the woman.
"Hermione, you're the best at transfiguration. Can you make a bridge? I'll get to vanishing the rest of those stones as we cross."
She rolled her eyes, knowing either of them was perfectly capable of such but allowing the compliment nonetheless, and touched her wand to the water. The water rippled more than such a light touch could account for and began to freeze in a line. The frozen water formed a bridge, ripples freezing as well,providing traction.
As they stepped closer to it, and set their foot down, the ice became stone, and the water began to move underneath it. They walked across the bridge, following in the stone's wake, watching in wonder as it reached up to form simple but elegant handrails.
"Christ, Emma. You're fantastic." The ginger's voice was awed, and the noirette's eyes were admiring.
She blushed, and began striding across the bridge a little faster, ignoring the twinge in her knee. A gift from Petrekov. "It was nothing."
The men shared a small smile behind her, and went back to watching and walking.
After 2 or so hours of walking, they came upon a clearing, in which was the burnt ruin of a cottage they all knew had once been lovely. As they came to it, they began their work.
Hermione, ever the pragmatist, began setting wards around the perimeter, to ensure they wouldn't be disturbed.
Ron, ever sentimental, began to search the ruin for signs of an old friend long gone.
Harry, who among them carried the heaviest guilt for this ruin, found himself lost in memories. The heat of the hellfire waking him moments before his partners, shooting up in bed with the other two following soon after. The fight in the cottage, the three companions who had fought alongside him and his, six good people fighting 23 enemy wizards, in and around a house that had been given over to Hell itself. He remembered the beam falling, looking over at the burns on Ron's arms where he had tried to lift the bar that had separated the triad from their friend, Susan and Cas having been on the same side of the beam. The angry yelling, the pulling Ron out while a good man told them to just go. That wouldn't be coming along, to go and make him mean something, please.
They had left, and they had come back in 20 minutes with 10 more fighters, and the 15 of them had wreaked horrid vengeance on the perpetrators. Harry looked at the bloodstains, invisible but still there, just like the bodies and the tears.
They had waited, after, all 13 hours that it took from the start of the blaze that had killed their brother, and they picked through the remains.
Hellfire didn't leave ashes, not unless those ashes already belonged to something else. They had gathered him up, the dust that once was a friend, and put him in a Ziploc. A fucking Ziploc.
"Sweetheart."
He came back to himself to see baby blue eyes, staring with concern.
Harry realized he was shaking.
"Anything?"
Ron shook his head, kissing Harry's forehead where he knew their fallen comrade always had.
Hermione approached, hugging both. After an hour or a second, she looked at Ron.
"Do you remember where?"
He nodded and extricated himself from their arms.
He led them a very short ways, still within Hermione's protective enchantments, to a piece of wood that had miraculously survived hell's hunger, carved with words. He remembered picking it up and carving the words into it, thinking of how fitting it was, that this plank of oak, so seemingly innocuous, had survived the trials that turned its kindred into so much less.
He ran his hands over the carvings, the other touching the knife he had carved it with, still hanging where his fallen friend had hung it.
Ron read it aloud, not having had time last they were here.
"He was a friend to all he met, and a brother to those who did so in the middle. Hm. He'd have thrown something at your head for that, mate." Ron looked over, chuckling somewhat wetly.
"Something soft, though."
Hermione had a sad smile, also with tears brimming.
"You know-"
A twig snapped, and two jets of light shot out into the woods, one spiralling grey and another an almost jolly slash of orange, as a bluish, transparent wall sprang up before them.
The deer that had been investigating the strange new smells dropped dead, a hole appearing in its chest, as if a giant had used an ice cream scoop and simply removed a 20 centimeter semisphere of flesh. Half the heart could be seen within, like a medical diagram made terribly real. Hermione's severing curse struck the tree and gouged a deep scar in the wood, like as not to be lost among the other scars on the trees surrounding the ruins.
"We better be careful, or peta will be nipping at our heels. That's two today!" Ron, joking weakly.
The others smiled minuscule smiles, of the kind given when someone tells a small joke at a wake in the hopes of cheering someone up. More touched at the attempt than amused at the content.
Harry conjured a shovel, since simply moving the dirt with magic felt wrong somehow. He began to dig, his lovers keeping watch. He dug until the wound on his side reopened, at which point Hermione took the shovel out of his hands and handed it to Ron, muttering something insulting about men and machismo while she tended his wound.
Thus it continued, taking the dig in turns and, many hours later, nearing sunset, they found what they were searching for. A cauldron, old iron and rust, top still sealed. Hermione and Ron heaved it out of the hole, now upwards of 6 feet deep, and clambered out, Ron hoisting Hermione up and out before climbing out himself.
"Can't believe he's still heavy."
Harry snorted, replying. "He isn't."
They opened the lid, undoing the powerful sticking charm Ron had applied last year, and pulled out the Ziploc bag, still full of the silvery, fine dust that had once been a good man, some leaves still in it from the rush. Those were vanished with a wave of a dark hand.
Harry produced the ceramic urn he had bought, etched in silver with the same words as the plank of wood, and transferred their friend into it.
The three took each other's hands, and after taking up the plank, vanished with a whisper-quiet pop.
They put him on the mantle in the new flat's music room, just as he would have wanted. The plank of wood was hung in a place of importance next to a picture Dean Thomas had drawn of him, in the Remembering Room. Sometimes they played his music for him.
They knew he couldn't hear, but they did it anyway. It was the least he deserved.