May 2, 2022

"You know, McGonagall said something last autumn that I've never asked you about," I said.

"Yeah?" Dad said. "What's that?"

It was early, and cold. Stars still cast their reflection in the lake in front of us even as dawn began to show itself in the graying sky over the Forbidden Forest. For the first time in my life, I had risen on the second of May without complaint; risen early enough to meet meet my father at the memorial site before everyone arrived, while Ministry workers and the Headmistress were still setting up the stage and seating.

"After…." I hesitated, not wanting to remind Dad of the events that had resulted in my mum spending an entire fortnight shadowing my every move. "Before Mum visited…."

He hummed, a low sound that indicated he recognized the evasion but would let it slide.

"When Mc—when Professor McGonagall took the Cloak—" I hurried on, using McGonagall's title in acknowledgement of the immense disrespect that had immediately preceded the event in question. "She said—" I closed my eyes, trying to remember her exact words. "She said, 'The last time I saw this was the night of the Final Battle. Your father and Luna Lovegood appeared from underneath it in Ravenclaw Tower.'"

"Oh!" Dad said in surprise, turning from his contemplation of Dumbledore's tomb. "I've never told you that story?"

I shook my head. "What were you doing in Ravenclaw Tower? For that matter," I added as the thought occurred to me, "what was McGonagall doing in Ravenclaw Tower? Mum said something about her being the one to capture—what was the name of the Death Eaters teaching that year? Hollow? Harrow?"

"Carrow," Dad corrected. "Amycus and Alecto Carrow. They were brother and sister."

"Were they Ravenclaws?"

He snorted. "Hardly." He paused, obviously thinking where to begin. "One of the Horcruxes was Ravenclaw's diadem, do you remember?"

Dad had explained the Horcruxes, plural, to me and Al over the Christmas holiday. I'd never heard of that particular type of dark magic at all until Mum showed me the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets and explained about Tom Riddle's diary; but there had been more than just the diary. I tried to remember the few details I had been told. "The crown-thing that got destroyed by Fiendfyre?"

"That's it."

"You thought it was in Ravenclaw Tower," I guessed. Seemed logical.

"I didn't know where it was," Dad said. "No one did, not any of the Ravenclaws or even Professor Flitwick, who was head of Ravenclaw House. No one had seen it in living memory."

The phrase sounded odd, almost as if he were reciting from memory, like a poem.

"But Ravenclaw Tower seemed the only logical place to start. There was a statue there of Rowena Ravenclaw, so at least I could see what it looked like. Luna—"

Dad's mouth twitched, but not in remembrance of an amusing anecdote about her oddity, as I expected.

"My ex-girlfriend suggested it, but your mum volunteered Luna to show me. I'd never been to Ravenclaw Tower and knew only that it was somewhere in the west wing. We took the Cloak and the Map, and Luna answered the question that allowed us into the Tower."

"What question?"

"'Wit beyond measure is man's greatest treasure,'" Dad quoted. "There's no password to Ravenclaw Tower—the door asks you a question. If you can't answer it correctly, you have to wait for someone who can."

Interesting. Despite cousins in Ravenclaw, I'd never been told that. Or maybe I'd just never paid attention. "Do you remember the question?"

"Not that one, but I remember McGonagall's. In a minute, James," Dad said when I opened my mouth.

I grimaced an apology and he continued.

"I assume Alecto had used a Disillusionment Charm; whatever it was, we didn't notice her and I stepped out from the Cloak to examine the statue. She activ—she notified Voldemort before I could Stun her."

I suppressed the spurt of irritation that tensed my shoulders at his hesitation; obviously, I still didn't know the whole story. Part of me believed Dad, Aunt Hermione, and Uncle Ron would take it to their graves.

"But Luna did. It was the first time she'd ever Stunned anyone outside of DA lessons, and Alecto hit the floor hard. The noise woke the kids in the Tower, and they came down the stairs to see what was going on. Then her brother was pounding on the door, demanding to be let in, and McGonagall—I don't know if you've ever seen it, but she has this way of being sarcastically insulting while remaining perfectly polite."

I grinned. I had seen it. Not often, as McGonagall was my Headmistress rather than my teacher, but she didn't suffer fools gladly. Myself included.

"Amycus was just trying to break through the door with brute force, he never knocked, but McGonagall did. I remember the question it asked her because when I heard it, I thought we would be stuck in the Tower until Voldemort arrived."

"What was it?" I asked again.

"Where do vanished objects go?"

I stared and Dad laughed. "Exactly my reaction, but she answered smooth as you please. 'Into non-being, which is to say, everything.'"

"Well, that—no, that doesn't make sense," I protested.

Dad shrugged. "Once things calmed down, after, and I started going over everything in my mind, I really started wondering about the magic in that door. Of all the questions it could have asked Hogwarts's Transfiguration teacher, it choose one about—"

"Transfiguration magic!" I breathed, fascinated.

"Mm-hmm. So, all the kids had run back upstairs at this point, and McGonagall and Amycus enter the common room to find Alecto Stunned on the floor and Amycus just goes crazy, ranting about how Voldemort will kill them all when he arrives and finds out I'm not there."

"Doesn't sound too crazy to me," I muttered. I may not know all the details, but I knew enough to know Voldemort did not consider murder a last resort.

"Quite. He decides to blame the Ravenclaws, and McGonagall drew the line. He spit in her face."

Dad sounded amazed, as if he still couldn't believe his own eyes, and I was rather amazed myself. Spitting on Minerva McGonagall revealed a tremendous amount of stupidity—even more so than ambushing her with catnip in her Animagus form.

"That's when I stepped out from under the Cloak, cursed him, and asked Professor McGonagall about the diadem. Then Luna reveals herself while McGonagall is trying to convince me to leave the castle, and—well, you have to remember … at this point in the war, there was so little news that rumors were flying. People thought I was dead or had fled the country. Luna had been kidnapped off the Hogwarts Express months before, at Christmas, and here we were not only at Hogwarts, but in the Ravenclaw common room."

I tried to picture it. Two months ago Dad and Uncle Ron had captured the last living Death Eater. We—me and Al and Lily and our cousins still at Hogwarts—found out the next morning when an incriminating picture of Uncle Ron choking the accused appeared on the front page of the Daily Prophet. Rose had read the article, brought it to Hugo at the Gryffindor table, and headed straight for the library. The rest of us weren't far behind, and we all skipped our first lesson digging in the library's archives. Out of all the dark wizards he had interviewed, after all the time spent testifying at the trials, why had Uncle Ron broken every interrogation law in existence and attacked this particular Death Eater nearly a quarter-century later?

Over the following days, Rose and Lucy had pieced together a rough timeline of the year Dad, Uncle Ron, and Aunt Hermione had been on the run with various news clippings and by interviewing each of us kids about what we had been told by our parents (or overheard). The only actual news of the "golden trio" that year had been on September first, when they didn't show up at Platform Nine and Three-Quarters, and the following day, when they had broken into the Ministry of Magic. There were rumors of a capture and escape in radio transcripts around Easter, and the rumors of a break-in at Gringotts on the first of May were even wilder than what actually happened, but the rest was all speculation and propaganda. I could still see Dad's face staring up at me from the wanted poster that declared him "Undesirable Number One" and imagined what it would be like to have him appear out of thin air in front of me.

"Yeah, I could see how that might give one a bit of a shock," I said.

People were starting to arrive. It was still a few minutes to sunrise, and the rest of the pupils from the castle weren't here yet, but the regulars—former members of Dumbledore's Army, the Order of the Phoenix, people who had fought in the Final Battle here at Hogwarts—were filling in the rows of chairs.

Dad smiled. "Save me a seat, yeah?"

I rolled my eyes. Of all the officials and fighters honored every year, Dad would be the very last one to lose a seat. He stood to greet the small knot of people hovering in the aisle next to us, people who had known him well enough as a teen that they wanted to speak to him but not well enough to be part of our social circle year-round. Neville—Professor Longbottom would be here soon with all of Gryffindor House, and I spotted Aunt Audrey, Aunt Fleur, and Uncle Bill a few rows back, but I was still looking for Luna, hoping she might share additional details, when Mum dropped into the other chair beside me.

"Morning, Jamie."

" 'lo, Mum." I hated the childhood nickname, especially here at Hogwarts, but after everything I'd learned this year, I could forgive my mum's sentimentality today.

The day her brother died.

"How long have you been here?"

I heard the curiosity in her tone and the question behind it. Why, when you've complained about getting up in the middle of the night for a ceremony you've seen over and over, are you here before the rest of the pupils?

"I got up early to meet Dad," I said simply.

Her eyebrows rose. It said something that my parents didn't arrive at this event together. Normally if one of them was hurting or had a problem, the other was right by their side. This day was difficult for both my parents, but for different reasons … and they each gave the other space to deal with it in their own way. Dad always arrived crazy early to have some time alone to pay his respects, while Mum prefered to spend as little time as possible on the Hogwarts grounds. After what I'd witnessed last October and the stories she (and Professor Longbottom) had shared, I finally understood why. She would leave without Dad too; once people started to arrive, he wouldn't have a moment to himself until he'd spoken and shaken hands with what seemed like the entire wizarding population of England. It wasn't, of course. I hadn't been born in the early anniversaries, but even since I could remember, other than the twentieth anniversary in 2018, the crowds thinned a little more each year.

"That was nice of you," Mum said.

I shrugged. Dad had invited me every year since I'd started Hogwarts, but since it took me six years to accept his offer, it didn't seem very nice to me.

"Are you going to sit with the Gryffindors?" she asked.

"Yeah," I said, craning round to see if there was any sign of their impending arrival. "Unless-" I turned back. "Do you want me to sit with you?"

She smiled, then shook her head. "I'll go over with the family in a minute. I just wanted to say hi." She squeezed my hand, obviously restraining herself for what she perceived to be my preference for minimal displays of affection, so I leaned over and hugged her.

"I love you, Mum."

I felt her shoulders jerk as the emotions hit her suddenly and squeezed harder, but true to form, Mum contained her tears. A sniffle and a quick swipe and she pulled away.

"Come say hello to your grandparents afterwards," she said. "And bring your brother and sister."

I nodded as she walked off, accepting we'd be late to the breakfast feast McGonagall always provided after the memorial in appreciation for the castle's early awakening.

For the first time, I felt like I understood, at least a little bit, what this day meant to my mother. As difficult as it had been having her at Hogwarts in the autumn (and now, in the privacy of my own mind, I could admit I'd been a large part of the difficulty), it had changed how I saw her. She was as much a war hero as any of the more familiar names the public associated with the war. I had always assumed her sadness and uncharacteristic reserve on May second was due to Uncle Fred's death, and it was … but it was so much more. A year of fearing for and missing my dad, Uncle Ron, Aunt Hermione; watching Luna, her oldest friend, be kidnapped off the Hogwarts Express; wondering about her disappeared Muggle-born friends and classmates; detentions with dark magic; organizing an underground resistance under the very noses of Voldemort's followers. It made my sixth-year look like child's play in comparison.

Here came my classmates, a long progression four abreast, led by the Gryffindors in honor of the house that had had the highest percentage of student fighters—one hundred percent. I slipped into place beside my best friend Cameron Davies, ready to honor the fallen and celebrate the victorious.