Remembrance


The young woman stood alone in the pre-dawn gloom. She was standing on a hill overlooking the ruins of what had once been a great centre of learning. It bore only a very slight resemblance to the school of her youth, but Hogwarts had been repaired quickly - after the damage inflicted during the war – and was full of students once again.

This place was long abandoned, but the plain behind her was the real reason she had chosen this site. Headstones marched in neat rows, stretching off into the distance. The rolling plain was quiet, peaceful, a place for solemn reflection and remembrance. Here, the weight of the souls of those whose lives were lost on this ground seemed to lie heavy in the air. She had been here once before and, while there had been any number of Muggles around, there had been very little noise.

It had struck her as quite strange at first. In her experience, Muggles were a fairly noisy bunch. But, in this place, they had been quiet, reverent. It was only after returning home, and a chance comment to Hermione, that led her to discover the history that was concealed beneath those headstones. That history was the reason she was here today, on the anniversary of the end of the only war she, herself, had ever lived through. She had decided that this place, where the fallen of the Muggles’ Great War lay, was the only place for her to remember her own fallen.

It resonated within her in a way that the memorials in Diagon Alley and Hogsmeade never had; in a way that even the mausoleum of Albus Dumbledore, on the very grounds where the final battle had taken place, could not even begin to match.

In the Wizarding World, this day, this anniversary, was a celebration of the end of the war. That was the way the Ministry – and the people – preferred it. There would be festivities all day, and the gala ministry ball that evening. But the dead would only be remembered by their families and friends privately, never acknowledged publicly. It was how the Wizarding World had always worked, something she had never questioned. Since the war, however, Ginny had wanted to use the anniversary to remember the dead, not celebrate. But that desire was something even her own family had difficulty comprehending. The only one who felt a similar need was George, but he would just spend the day alone.

After last year, the sense of discomfort she always experienced on this day had finally driven her to seek out another way to spend the anniversary. She hadn’t known what she was looking for… until she saw this place and learned its history. Ginny truly believed that this was something the Wizarding world could stand to learn from their Muggle cousins. Those without magic understood the need for places of remembrance much better than wizards, who had other means to remember… or forget.

As the weak light of the rising sun started to extend its fingers along the grass, Ginny turned her back on the ruins… and the sun, and looked out across the quiet sea of green and white for a long moment. At some unheard signal, she bent her head and began her silent litany, calling up from memory the faces of her dead – both friend and foe, acquaintance and family.

She started with Cedric Diggory, who died to bring Voldemort back in her third year, continued through Sirius Black (the memory of him falling through the veil would always haunt her), then on to the deaths in her fifth and sixth years. Fifth year was always dominated by the death of Albus Dumbledore. While there had been other deaths that year, his had been the most painful, and had the greatest effect, not only on her, but on the entire Wizarding World.

She took a long breath before starting on her sixth year, ignoring a faint popping sound and the sense that she was no longer alone. She knew who was there, had known that he would find her, even though she hadn’t ever mentioned this.

Sixth year had been one loss after another. The list went on and on. Finally she got to the battle of Hogwarts, where there had been so many dead… on both sides. Some stood out, such as Remus Lupin and Nymphadora Tonks-Lupin, and Severus Snape. But her litany reached a final crescendo with the deaths of her brother, Fred, and her enemy, Tom. For Ginny, those two deaths had been equally painful – Fred’s emotionally and Tom’s physically.

No one had realised until that day that Tom had left a small piece of his soul behind after the disaster in her first year. That day she found out, and it nearly killed her. She had felt the pain start in her chest and soon her whole body had been wracked with it, as though she had been repeatedly subjected to the Cruciatus Curse. She hadn’t realised it at the time, but she had been fighting a battle for control of her own body. When Harry had killed Tom, his soul (such as it was) tried to flee back to the only anchor it had left – her. Ginny had won that battle… barely, and Tom and his piece of soul were expelled, consigned to whatever fate awaited him beyond the veil.

She was almost at the end now. Only the one death that occurred after the end of the war remained to be remembered. Ginny called up the image of the last of her dead – the messy black hair, the green eyes and the lightning scar – yes, that was the Harry she remembered. He had been her first love, and would always hold a special place in her heart, even though her present and future were bound up in someone else.

Harry had never left the war. Oh, he had seemed fine – getting on with his life, out from under the shadow of Voldemort. His body moved on, but his mind hadn’t. So much of his life had been centred on the prophecy and fighting (or preparing to fight) Voldemort, that he had no idea who he was once Voldemort was gone. And within the year, Harry, too, was gone.

Finally, Ginny raised her head, opening her eyes to the morning sun gleaming off the white headstones, bathing the entire plain in light. She looked to her left and raised a brow at the man watching her tenderly.

“I woke up this morning, at an ungodly hour, mind you, to find you weren’t there.” He scowled slightly.

She smiled back. “I knew you’d figure out where I’d gone.”

“That’s not the point, love. If you had said you wanted to do this, I would have come with you. You forget, I know you better that you know yourself. I know how you feel about this day, but you didn’t ask me to come. Why?” The hurt, the uncertainty in his voice was carefully hidden, but to her it was loud and clear.

She hastened to re-assure him. “I needed to do this myself this time, to be sure I could deal with it. You know there are things I still have problems with – some of these memories are a big part of that. I didn’t want you to worry.”

He snorted inelegantly. “It’s my job to worry about you – I’m pretty sure it said so in the wedding vows, something about ‘for better or for worse’.”

She looked up at the man she had given herself to, mind and body, heart and soul, as he pulled her gently into his arms and kissed her softly. As he released her lips, she whispered, “I love you, Draco Malfoy.”

He smiled, one of the quicksilver smiles she loved. “I certainly hope so, because I’m not letting you go ever.” His eyes turned serious. “I love you, Ginevra Malfoy.”

Ginny Malfoy stood in the arms of the man she would spend the rest of her life with, her husband, her lover, her love, feeling the peace of this place wash over them both. She turned within the circle of Draco’s arms to lean against him. His hands fell to cover the slight swell of their child growing within her. They stood that way for a long time, basking in the sunlight and serenity.

Ginny turned her head to look at her husband. “Can we bring the baby here next year?”

His only reply was a soft chuckle, as he Apparated them home.

Then there was only silence.

Lest we forget.