Disclaimer: Harry Potter isn't mine!
A/N: Sorry it's been a while!
WARNING- Feels ahead!
Enjoy xx

Two hours later, Peter and Remus had left, and Bathilda was leaving with promises to come again the next day.
"And I'll bring my photo album to show you, Lira, dear. Thank you for the tea!"
"Thank you for the Cauldron Cakes! They were really yummy! I'll see you tomorrow."
"Look after yourself until then, my dear."
"Bye!"

The front door closes with a bang, and Lira skips into the living room, stomach full, a wide grin on her face. Upstairs, Lily was putting Harry down for a nap.
"Have fun, did you, Lira?"
James is smiling as he asks her, and she throws her herself down on the sofa.
"Yeah! Bathilda is amazing! She knows so much about the wizarding world. One thing though, we were talking about Patronuses, and I kind of don't know how to do one. Can you show me?"
"Of course! It is kind of advanced though, most wizards and witches your age would struggle to produce a corporeal Patronus."
"Well, there's no harm in trying, is there?"
"No," James admitted, standing up and picking his wand up off the coffee table.
"OK, so the incantation is Expecto Patronum.
"Don't you have to do something else, too?"
"Yes. So, I need you to think of the happiest memory that you have. Let it fill you up. Tell me when you get one."

Lira closed her eyes, and scanned through her memories, trying to think of when she had felt truly happy in the past. Finally, she found a memory, one that was powerful, and to her surprise, it wasn't from her original time. However, merely recollecting it made her smile, so she focused on it, smiling.
"Got one."
"Is it powerful?"
"It's as happy as I've ever felt."
"Good. Now, concentrate, and say Expecto Patronum."
"Expecto Patronum."
A wisp of silvery vapour flew from the end of her wand, and James nodded encouragingly. "That's it! Keep going! Make sure that you focus."

The image of Harry flying around on a broom filling her mind, Lira closed her eyes for a second, and gathered up another memory, about the day that her mother had taken her to Diagon Alley to buy her school things. Harry flying around, and her mother laughing like a little girl as she dragged Lira off to buy her robes filled Lira with a delicious warmth, and she opened her eyes.
"Expecto Patronum."

A beautiful silver butterfly erupted from the tip of her wand, flying around her head, and James laughed in disbelief.
"That's it! Keep focused!"
The Patronus glided around the room as Lily came running down the stairs.
"James, are you doing your Patronus? I saw…"
She fell silent as she saw Lira, who was watching her butterfly in awe. A gasp from Lily broke Lira's concentration, and she turned to the Potters as the butterfly faded.

"Lira, that was amazing. Well done!"
James sounded impressed, and Lily pulled out her own wand, grinning.
"Expecto Patronum."
An elegant silver doe cantered out of the tip of her wand, prancing around the room, and Lira watched it, smiling, until it faded.
"So your Patronuses match?"
"Uh-huh." James nodded, and Lira furrowed her brow in understanding.
"That's so cool! So you're like…made for each other?"
"I knew it!" James cried, and Lily smacked him on the arm.

As Lira sat back down on the sofa, picking her book up off the coffee table, a wide smile on her face, she couldn't help but be grateful that nearly everyone she had met so far had been avuncular and kind.

When she had finished another chapter, Lira put the book down, stood up and stretched.
"Is there anything you want me to do?"
"Not really, love. You could go for a walk, if you want?"
"Yeah, I will, if you don't mind."
Lira stuffed her wand in her pocket, just in case and pulled her coat on.
"Bye!"
"Don't do anything I wouldn't!" James called, and Lira laughed.
"Bye!"

Lira did the buttons up on her coat and began to walk down the path, fishing around in her pockets. There was a crumpled-up tissue, a folded Muggle £5 note, a boiled sweet and a pen. Lira could remember how each of those things had come to be in her coat pocket: the tissue had been thrusted at her by her mother, as you 'always need a tissue'; the Muggle £5 had been given to her by her father just before she had left, in case she needed to buy anything; the boiled sweet she had been given by Artie, the baker, from the bowl in the shop when she went with Sirius, and the pen she had grabbed herself, in case she needed to write anything down on the back of her hand.

She crossed the street and walked briskly down the path, tucking her hair behind her ears and fiddling with the tip of her wand, which was tucked out of sight. The square was virtually empty, apart from a middle-aged couple, sitting on a bench, holding hands, so Lira crossed the square to the church, to where she knew the graveyard was. Pushing open the kissing gate, she stepped into the graveyard the sun reflecting off the stained glass windows, dazzling her.

Bathilda had told her all sorts of stories about the people around here, and especially about Dumbledore, who apparently grew up in Godric's Hollow, and Lira knew that his mother's grave was here. She walked along the rows of gravestones, running her hand along the tops of them, scanning the names until she came to a beautiful granite gravestone, the edges crumbling slightly, spotted with moss and lichen. It read:
KENDRA DUMBLEDORE AND HER DAUGHTER, ARIANA.
WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS, THERE WILL YOUR HEART BE ALSO.

There were dates, dates of their births and deaths, and it took Lira barely a second to work out that the daughter, Ariana, Dumbledore's sister, would have been fourteen when her mother died, the same age that she was now. And, like Ariana, she had lost her mother, but not just her mother, her father, her uncle and her friends. Tears traced a path down Lira's face, but apart from that she was still, like a statue, like a ghost, watching over the grave.

It was a few minutes later that Lira began to feel the cold, seeping through her coat; it was cold for October, but she was cold for a different reason. She coughed, and the sound seemed loud in the heavy silence of the graveyard, so she forced herself to move, to stop dwelling on the idea of the people, sleeping under the ground. There were no flowers at the grave and if there had been any, they had withered away to nothing. It made Lira sad to see that, because she knew that if she died, she would want flowers at her grave. Flowers to brighten it up, because the graves here were beautiful, but sad, and she wanted people to look at her grave and feel happy, and remember her.

After looking around to see if there was anyone around, which there wasn't, Lira ignored the fact that she had the Trace on her, ignored the fact that she was about to break the Statue of Secrecy, ignored the fact that she was underage, because these people, she might not know them, but she knew what that girl, Ariana, had gone through, knew what it was like to lose a mother at fourteen.

The flowers she produced weren't as extravagant as some of the flowers on the other graves, which were roses and lilies and petunias. The daisies that she laid on the ground, however, were beautiful, beautiful because they would live for a short time and then die, just like Ariana. She stowed her wand back in her pocket, ran her fingers over the names on the grave one last time, and turned, walking back towards the kissing gate.

As she walked, wiping her tears off her face with her thumb, she thought about Dumbledore. The man who'd won every award that there was to win, the man who was Headmaster at the most prodigious school for magic in the world, the man with skeletons in his closet. The man with a sister and mother lying in Godric's Hollow, with a grave that no one had visited in a long time. Now it had been visited, though. It had been visited by a fourteen-year old girl who had lost everything, and found quite a few new things too. A girl who knew what it was like to lose someone, and knew what it was like to be lost.

*starts ugly crying* Why do I have to make myself sad?!
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She-who-loves-fanfiction xx