That summer will always smell of lemons and thunderstorms.
It was a golden summer, interspersed with furious bouts of rain and lightening. It was the sort of summer where picnics were moved indoors, and then finished up outside again.
It was a summer where nobody mattered but the three of them.
It was a summer that will always be both blindingly happy and shatteringly sad. A summer of pancakes for breakfast, and salad for dinner, and lemon cordial in between.
-- * -- * -- * --
This summer smells of cold tea and dead flowers.
It is a gray summer, viewed through a dirty window.
People still laugh and play and picnic, but Hannah doesn't notice. She can't see how the world is still turning.
She would have thought it would be easier by now, but it's not. It's harder.
It is a summer of bleakness and regret. A summer for crying in the bathtub, and weeding flowers instead of weeds.
It is a summer for the two of them, but she never sees him. She doesn't know if she wants to see him. Because her father should be smiles and winks and tickling her under the kitchen table. And he isn't. He's all winter coldness and broken.
-- * -- * -- * --
That summer, they talked about boys and music, about charms and housework, about odd relatives, and the future.
Her mother danced to Celestina Warbeck on the radio, her hips swaying out of beat.
That summer, they bought ice-cream from the corner shop every Saturday, and raced to eat it before it melted. That summer they went shopping for groceries and came home with new shoes, and sunflower seeds, and candles that smelt like lemons.
They suffered family dinners by counting how many times Grandmother asked how school was going, and how many times Grandfather told them how far he'd had to walk to get to his school.
-- * -- * -- * --
This summer, relatives bring them pots of casserole and insist they come around for lunch. This summer the cards finally stop coming and Hannah puts away the vases. This summer she keeps looking over her shoulder, expecting to see someone there. But there isn't.
This summer, she doesn't dance and the radio lies dusty in the corner. They don't even get the newspaper any more because there doesn't seem to be any point. They've already had the worst news possible.
She wonders if the pieces of her life will ever fit back together again, and sometimes she hopes, and sometimes she watches her father sitting by the window and tries not to cry.
-- * -- * -- * --
That summer, when the heat made it hard to sleep, she'd wander down to the kitchen for a glass of water. More often than not, her mother would be there, and they'd practice cooling charms together until icicles started growing from the ceiling.
When they finally went back to bed, Hannah dreamt of winter and learning how to do heat charms.
-- * -- * -- * --
This summer, she can't remember the incantation for cooling charms, and it doesn't seem to matter. Because nothing matters any more, except that somehow she has to keep living.
She's never minded that her father is a muggle, but this summer she longs to ask him complicated questions about magical law, and the correct wand movements for healing charms, and what the properties of wolfsbane are, and how many young a hippogriff has on average. And she can't, because even though he understands magic, he won't know the answers.
This summer, Hannah longs for Hogwarts.
-- * -- * -- * --
Next summer will smell of fresh parchment and strawberries.
It will be a summer where she doesn't notice the weather. A summer where everyone around her will wear her trademark red eyes, and finally she'll be able to put them aside.
Next summer will be full of bright, new wishes, and silver promises. It will be a summer of letter writing, and forgetting. A summer of endless funerals, and laughing uncontrollably. Because sometimes the pain grows too much, and you have to laugh to keep from killing yourself with sorrow.
Next summer she will learn how to plant sunflowers, and how to eat a strawberry.
Next summer she will learn friendship. Next summer will be full of Neville Longbottom, and the beginning of happiness.
-- * -- * -- * --
This summer doesn't feel like summer at all, not really. But if she squeezes her eyes shut, she can feel the heat of last summer, and the promise of next summer. And for now, that will have to be enough.