"Have you seen this girl?"
Ginny Weasely looks up from where she's crouched behind the statue of Bridget Baston on the third floor. Screams can be heard from above and the entire castle shakes. Ginny thinks wildly that she must be in a nightmare because it wasn't supposed to be like this!
"This girl, have you seen her?" the man before her (young, maybe in his mid-thirties) shoves a photograph into her face. Ginny shakes her head to get her eyes to focus in on the image. The girl in the photo is young, maybe twelve and smiling at the camera as she swings back and forth on a makeshift play set.
She looks back at the man. "No, I'm sorry I haven't seen her."
The man's shoulders slump for a moment, but then he seems to pull himself together and runs down the stairs towards the Entrance Hall.
Ginny closes her eyes. She hopes he finds who he's looking for.
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"Have you seen this girl?"
Luna Lovegood looks up at a man that can't be more the forty at most. He seems upset, which isn't odd given the circumstances. She looks at the picture that he has in his trembling hand. A little girl, maybe twelve, smiles back at her.
Luna looks out over the rows and rows of dead that are laid out in the Great Hall during this brief reprieve that Voldemort has inexplicably given them. She would remember seeing a body that small.
"No. I haven't seen her here."
The man looks relived (of course he is, his daughter isn't dead yet) and walks quickly away, over to where Madam Pomfrey is tending to the wounded.
Luna closes her eyes before turning back to the lifeless body before her. She smooths Fiona Belmont's hair and wishes that the man doesn't find the girl here, among the ruin that was once her home.
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"Have you seen this girl?"
Molly Weasely looks up at a man who has the worried eyes of a father. She looks at the picture he holds out to her. A little girl in a green dress grins at her and twirls around before getting on a swing. She shakes her head. Fred used to smile like that little girl.
The man's face falls, if that were possible, he already seems so worried.
"Thank you." He sighs, dejected, "and I'm sorry for your loss."
He walks away and Molly starts crying again. She prays that he finds his daughter before the little girl is gone like her Fred.
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"Have you seen this girl?"
Hannah Abbott looks up at the man who pulls her to her feet. There are curses flying all around them and the man has to scream in her ear to be heard. She looks down at the picture he is holding. A little girl with wide brown eyes and a smile that could light up a room waves back at her. They have to jump out of the way as a blasting curse hits the wall three feet above where they are standing.
"NO!" she shouts at him and he nods and runs away.
She guesses that he will never find his daughter in this mess.
Page Break
"Have you seen this man?"
Hermione Granger looks at the photo that the sad little woman before her holds up for her to see. A man with brown hair and a handsome face, no older than thirty five, smiles back at her, his arms around the woman and two children, a girl that's around Hogwarts age, and a boy around five or six.
Hermione sighs, "Yes I have. This way please."
She leads the woman down the path of the fallen, through the Great Hall towards the end of the chamber, where the most recently found bodies lay. They ran out of sheets after thirty one, so the body of Kenneth Hastings is on display for anyone to see.
The woman moans and sinks to her knees, throwing herself onto her husband's still chest.
"He thought Abby was still at school." She sobs, "He didn't know that she'd been evacuated."
Hermione nods, because that is all she can do.
"I'm sorry."
The woman doesn't acknowledge her. Hermione walks away, out of the hall, out on to the grounds. She sits out there for a very long time and cries and cries and cries.
Because Mrs. Hastings found what she was looking for.