It’s the first day back to school, but it feels all wrong.
I wonder whether coming back was the right choice, but shake the thought off as quickly as it comes. As my stomach floods with anxiety, my mother’s words from this morning ring in my head “ There’s nothing to be gained by stopping your education. You should be glad to have the chance to repeat your seventh year, Susan. What she didn’t say resonates more powerfully, though “ that some people weren’t so lucky. But I know she’s right, really, I do. Staying away from Hogwarts won’t bring back what the war took from us.
(I lost my favourite aunt, my childhood, my ability to believe the best in people.)
Still, it feels decidedly different when I step back inside the castle for the first time this term. For a moment, I remember how excited I was when I walked through the front doors as an eleven-year-old. My hair was tied back with a white ribbon, my new shoes were on, and my hand was slipped tightly into Hannah’s. It’s nothing like that now, though, and the differences paint a stark contrast. My hair is longer to cover the scar on my cheek, my shoes are scuffed and scraped, and my hand is tapping out an incessant, nervous rhythm on my leg.
(Laura Madley lost her home in a fire, lost everything she owned. Wayne Hopkins said he’d have given everything away if it would have saved his little brother.)
The group of us “ the ones who made it back “ file nervously into the Entrance Hall, and I’m struck again by how strange it is to be here. It wouldn't be a lie to say that there were times when I thought I would never be back, let alone call this castle home again. The whispers around me prove I'm not the only thinking this, and I'm comforted slightly by the assurance that I'm not alone. Still, my stomach is in knots and my heart is pounding.
(Megan Jones lost her only sister in a surprise attack on London. She was visiting her Muggle boyfriend.)
From the Entrance Hall, we step into the Great Hall. And while the train ride to Hogwarts was strange, it was nothing as surreal as this. On the Hogwarts Express, I had noticed the empty spaces in the compartments and the stilted tone to conversations as everyone danced around the subject of who was coming back, but if I closed my eyes and didn’t listen too closely, I could pretend I was only imagining it. In the Great Hall, however, there’s no hiding from the jarring differences from years before “ even from last year, when the silences stemmed from fear, and no one met each other’s eyes.
Today, the atmosphere is wrought with tension. People are talking in low voices, and there are spaces at each table that everyone is trying, and failing, to cover up inconspicuously. Memories of the war are all around us, suffocating and haunting.
(Owen Cauldwell lost his parents. They were killed while he was taking his OWLs.)
I shuffle through the crowd and take my spot at the Hufflepuff table. A few painful moments pass before Justin sits to my right and Ernie fills in on my left. And though I keep telling myself I’m used to not having Hannah here, it still twinges whenever I automatically look across the table, searching for her blonde pigtails and easy smile. We sit quietly once we’ve said hello, but it’s not an uncomfortable silence, just the kind that comes from having been through everything together.
(Justin lost two cousins, Ernie his self-assuredness, and Hannah her chance at finishing the education she had always dreamed of having.)
It’s not until the Sorting ends that I realise the first years have been as scared as ever, and I find it strangely comforting to know they haven’t had to grow up so much that they’ve forgotten how to be worried about making new friends and fitting in. I wonder if anyone remembered to tell them that they'd be fighting a giant troll.
But conversation still seems muted, as though everyone is afraid to enjoy themselves in a place where so much death happened. And maybe that’s the problem - maybe the ghosts of the Final Battle still linger in the corners of this room. I know that for me, a moment’s lapse in concentration, and I can hear the screams. I can see the falling bodies and smell the scent of death that coated everything.
I try not to think of that day, though, and focus instead on other things about the Hall. I think of old House Cups won and feasts enjoyed, and try to remember that there are still so many people who returned this year.
I look down the Hufflepuff table and smile slightly. I can see Kevin Whitby and Rose Zeller discussing something intently, with Eleanor Branstone looking on with amusement. Across the room, there are four Gryffindor boys who look suspiciously like they’re considering throwing the food they’re holding in their hands. Luna Lovegood waves at me from the Ravenclaw table, and a pair of Slytherins are high-fiving enthusiastically.
I can see life going on.
With a timid grin, I turn to Justin and Ernie. “So, do you think everyone is going to call us eighth years?”
“I don't know,” Ernie says slowly, considering his answer. “That sounds a bit like we failed a year.”
“Yeah,” Justin agrees, “but it’s better than being a seventh year again. I don’t wanna be grouped with them. We're too mature for that.”
They are both smiling at me, perhaps not as much as they might have once “ after all, no one is quite sure how to be as happy as they were “ but it seems like a start, a new beginning.
I grin in spite of myself, and then look up at Justin. “Will you quit being a fat arse and pass the pudding?”
(We all lost so much in the war, but we have gained things from it, too. We now have resilience, solidarity, a history that makes us stronger. We will keep fighting; we will never give up. And one day, all will be well.)
What We Lost in the War by solemnlyswear_x
Chapter Notes: Inspired by the current Three Broomsticks Challenge in the forum. :)