43

Olivia

Will came up with the whole plan. After the intervention we had all become closer but Will still was a bit of an outsider. That was until the plan. None of us were expecting it from him but he seemed to light up as soon as he suggested it. It was like a puzzle coming together.

Ian was a lot of help too. We probably wouldn't have done it without him. You wouldn't even know it was Christmas with all of us in our empty classroom, scheming. We even got Rhys and Maggie in on it and they were willing to do the more daring things. Everyone had a part to play and it seemed that everything was really going to work out this time.

We worked for the entire holiday, luckily with Wes' camera which he had left here. We stayed up as late as possible and kept our heads down whenever we left the classroom. We prepared. We ate. We filmed. We joked. And for once there was no tension between us. There was no time for anything but this. The greatest plan every hatched between Hogwarts student. A daring stunt that could hypothetically get us expelled. God, it was exhilarating.

On the last night of vacation we went back to the Room of Requirement. It was just the Potter Generation kids with the exception of Wes and we definitely weren't naked this time but it was still satisfying. The guys were absolutely amazed while Evie and I had smug looks on our faces. After so much work it seemed well deserved. It felt good to have a place just for us, that maybe no one else could conjure up.

"Will we still be friends after this?" Ian asked, his voice echoing off the cave like walls.

"Of course we will." I said, floating on my back in a turquoise colored pool. "I think it's a rule that if you make a documentary together you have to stay friends."

"But what about after this year? When we leave school?"

"You're a Debbie Downer." Will joked. It was the first time I had seen him look content and I liked it on him. He didn't look so ill.

"Seriously? Do any of us know what we're doing after Hogwarts?" Ian asked, looking genuinely concerned.

"I want to be a healer." Evie said quietly after an unbearable silence. "Madam Pomfrey is always saying I have potential and I like it. I like having something straightforward even if it's magic which is never straightforward."

"I think I might go back to Romania." Will said, staring into the water. "Apologize to my dad, get some of my stuff back. I never really cleaned up my mess, i just left it behind."

"There's this university in Cuba, now that I think about it." Ian shrugged thoughtfully. "My mom is always hinting that I should go there, mostly because she went there but still. I think I'd like it in Cuba."

"I want to travel. Maybe take some classes at other schools, see what I like. I've never really had the chance to see much of anything. I might just switch to a muggle life. That's what my grandmother did. I could live in London but still use my wand to clean dishes." I said. I had always thought about it but never told anyone. It never seemed important. "I could take Draco with me."

We were all quiet, imagining our very near futures. These past seven years had gone by so fast and we had been through enough to last us a lifetime. The problem was, we still had to go on living. We may have survived the war but there were plenty more decades to come. More to see and do. Hogwarts was just the beginning for us. It was terrifying.

"We should have a party." Evie said after a while with a knowing smile. "At the end of the year and then the same day the next year and the year after. So we won't forget."

"We could never forget."

"That doesn't mean we won't need a reminder.'