Written for the Create-A-Potion Challenge: write about a character making a wish :: Written for the War of the Elemental Song Quotes Challenge, for darkness: "Through the darkness breaks the light." - AFI, "Strength Through Wounding"

The house is stifling with the lack of Lakshya's presence. Parvati can tell that tension is rising - she knows things like that. She can tell that she can't talk to her mother about her father's absence, or her older brother. They are bombs waiting for the slightest offense to explode. Padma would talk usually, but she's angry at Parvati, and Parvati has nobody to talk to without leaving the house, since the Patils' owl died and she hasn't had the strength to go to Diagon Alley and get a new one.

Lakshya is the only topic on anyone's mind in the Patil household. As soon as the war had been declared "over," all of the Aurors had to hunt down the remaining Death Eaters. Parvati thought this rather defeated the purpose of a war being over.

She isn't dealing with this well. She isn't talking to anyone - not even Dean or her family. And not only her, but Dean, too, has been getting the silent treatment from Seamus since he went back to Ireland after the battle. She's spent three months shut up in her room, only leaving to Floo to St. Mungo's to visit Lavender. And even then she's plagued with when is Lakshya going to come home and if he's dead what am I going to do?

She feels the clasp of her necklace against the front of her neck as she's waiting for the lift at St. Mungo's. She pushes it back, making a wish, like she always does. This time it's for her father to make it home safe.

Gautami has been out with her friends. She says that Geraldine and Vela support her. She doesn't ask for her children to support her. Parvati can tell that she doesn't want them to.

Padma is frustrated by it - Parvati can sense it. Because why, after so long caring for her children, considering taking them out of Hogwarts, even, will she not care for them anymore? It's the thing that frustrates Parvati about Padma. Even now that they're older, Padma hero-worships her elders, even when they're just as human as anyone else.

Even if she's a daddy's girl, Parvati knows her mother. Gautami doesn't want to admit that she needs her children's help, and this is one of the least intelligent things Parvati's realized people think. Love goes both ways - Parvati knows it, but her mother doesn't.

She's bored one night, and she stares at her digital watch, a birthday gift from the Muggles who live next door, as the seconds tick by. 56. 57. 58. 59. 11:11. As always, Parvati makes a wish. Tonight it's for her family to realize that they all need each other.

Param is the same as ever. He goes for firewhiskeys with his girlfriend or, once, on a dare from his friend Terence, with a Hufflepuff girl called Heidi who he went with eight years ago and who still fancies him. Param takes it all with a laugh. Parvati thinks he's hiding his distress, although Padma doesn't think so. Padma's never really been good with that sort of thing, Parvati knows.

Sometimes Parvati wishes she could be the same as Param, to be able to lightly go out with someone, not really caring whether or not it could last. But Parvati's always had the whole true-love-at-first-sight thing ingrained in her head, or so she tells herself. She might be in love, but she's not the sort to run around talking about it. Sure, she and - she tenses up for a moment - Lavender would always talk about boys and who they had crushes on, but not love.

Gautami, of course, has already considered who Parvati will love, or at least marry. Parvati doesn't particularly want to marry Gautami's godson in India, Ishwar, who apparently is a hapless, stringy boy whose only real option to ever get married is if it's arranged.

Parvati blinks after losing herself in her thoughts and brushes a fallen eyelash off her cheek, not forgetting to make a wish. Today she wishes that she'll be able to make her own decisions.

And there is Padma. Padma thinks Parvati should talk to her more, and Parvati wishes she could talk to Padma more, but she can't talk right now, to Padma or to anyone. Because if there was one person who would talk to Parvati whenever she needed an ear to whisper in or a shoulder to cry on, it was Lavender. And she can't talk to Lavender, so she can't talk.

One night Parvati looks out the window as she's falling asleep. There's stars - lots of them - and she focuses on the first one she sees, making a wish, like she always does. This time she wishes that the two-story fall and the werewolf attack and the curses won't mean the death of her best friend, even if the Healers have been saying so for three months.

Through the darkness breaks the light.

With a single sentence, Parvati's world is okay.

"She's going to be fine."

And it's not long until everything is fixed, or sort of fixed, at least, like the resolution of a cliché teenage novel. Lakshya comes home - only for a week, but it's enough. Gautami tells Parvati that Ishwar Kadam has found a more well-to-do girl to marry.

But best of all, Lavender is going to be okay.