Imagine Hogwarts after the Battle, after the War, sure –
But imagine Hogwarts’ students, after their year with the Carrows and Snape.
Imagine a tiny little first-year whose porcupine pincushions still have quills, but to whom Fiendfyre comes easily. The second-year who tried to go back, to fight; whose bravado got Professor Sinistra killed, as she pushed him out of the way of a Killing Curse. The third-year who perfectly brewed poisons, hands shaking, wishing for the courage to spike the Carrows’ cups. The fourth-year who throws away all of their teacups, their palmistry guidebooks, because what use is Divination if it didn’t see this coming? The fifth-year who can barely remember what O.W.L.S. are, let alone that she was supposed to take them. The sixth-year who can’t manage Lumos to save their life, but whose proficiency with the Cruciatus Curse rivals Bellatrix’s.
Imagine the seventh-year who laughs until he cries, thinking about the first-years who will fall asleep in History of Magic while their story is told.
Imagine the Muggleborn first-years left alive, if there are any: imagine what they think of the magical world, when their introduction to it was Death Eaters and being tortured – by their classmates –for having been born.
Imagine the students who went home to their parents (or guardians, or wards, or orphanages) and showed them what they’d learned: Dark curses, hexes, Unforgiveables; that Muggles are filth, animals, lesser. Who, yes, still can’t transfigure a match into a needle – but Mum, there’s a hex that can make you feel as though you’re being stabbed with thousands. (Don’t ask them how they know.)
Imagine the students who will never be able to see Hogwarts as home.
Imagine the students Hogwarts has left, when it starts up again – the lack of Muggleborns, blood-traitors, half-bloods, dead and gone – the lack of purebloods; the Ministry would have chucked everyone of age (and possibly just below) in Azkaban for Unforgiveables, wouldn’t they?
Imagine how few students there are left to teach; imagine how few teachers are left to teach them.
Imagine the students who can’t walk past a particular classroom, who can’t walk through a hallway, who can’t walk into the Great Hall without having a panic attack or breaking down. Imagine the school-wide discovery that the carriages aren’t horseless after all; that everyone, from the firsties to the teachers, can see Thestrals.
Imagine the memorials, the heaps of flowers and mementoes – in every other corner, hallway, classroom; every other step you take on the grounds.
Imagine the ghosts.
Imagine the students destroying Snape’s portrait, using the curses, hexes, even Fiendfyre they’ve been taught how to wield – it has to be restored nearly every week; Snape stays with Phineas Nigellus semi-permanently. (None of the other portraits will welcome him. His reasons do not excuse his conduct.)
Imagine the students unable to trust each other – everyone informed on everyone, your best friend might turn you in.
Imagine the guilt that everyone carries (it should have been me, it’s my fault s/he’s dead, I told on them, it’s all my fault), the students incapable of meeting each other’s eyes because it’s my fault your best friend, your sibling, your Housemate, your boy/girlfriend is dead.
Imagine the memorials piled high with the wands of the dead. Imagine the memorials piled high with the self-snapped wands of the living.
Imagine the students who are never able to produce a Patronus.
Imagine Boggarts being removed from the curriculum because Riddikulus is near impossible to grasp, even for the sixth- and seventh-years. Because their friends and families dead will never, ever be funny.
Imagine the students for whom magic feels tainted.
Imagine the students who leave the wixen world – hell, the students who leave Britain entirely, because there’s nothing left for them there.
Imagine the students who never use magic again.
(Image source.)
(From the mind of the wonderful lavenderpatil, a keen look at how students might be after war.)
Reblogging this kickass post by the equally kickasslavenderpatilbecause everyone should read itI think… I could be wrong… but everyone Prof Trwylany (sp) said would die at the beginning of every term DID die in the battle of hogwarts? BUt yeah. The year after that was probably filled with grand speeches about those who sacrificed their lives, and how they would rebuild hogwarts, etc. meanwhile… the kids knew. They were there. They knew what it was really like. And the incoming first years probably had a very different relationship with the older kids, who’d seen shit, than in years past. I think there’d be a long year of seriousness and severity… or everyone would try to put on a happy face and pretend that Colin Kreevy wasn’t working on the school paper any more because he was dead. Stiff upper lip. But with a very subdued attitude.
Imagine the seventh years who came back. Because nobody finished their seventh year. That year was a loss. But the ones it really mattered for were them.
Imagine the older kids who are up in the night because they can’t sleep for bad dreams hearing the crying from the lower dorms and finding that little girl who can’t make pincushions but can make Fiendfyre hugging her knees, and saying, “You know what, bring your pillow up, you can sleep on my bed while I read.”
Imagine the new first years, the ones who hear the story on the train, who’re eleven and still young, seeing an older student sitting alone staring blankly and going over to them and saying, “D’you want some of my chocolate frogs?” because they can’t think of anything else to do.
Imagine one finding someone who’s sitting staring at nothing one day and asking in a quiet voice, “Do you need a hug?” and then staying for an hour while the older student cries and cries and hugs them, because some eleven year olds are really smart (and some eleven year olds already came to the school from Bad Shit) and know that sometimes it helps to hold someone you could look after.
Imagine the older students who look at these younger ones coming in, all new and safe and bright, and swearing on Merlin’s grave that nothing will ever, *ever* hurt these kids.
Imagine the alumni of Dumbledore’s Army, who refused to let the fucking Death Eaters win when they were here and kicking and sure as she won’t let them now, finding things to do on weekends, organizing things, refusing to have it so that people just stay there alone being sad. Fuck the third-year rule: *everyone* can go to Hogsmeade, you just buddy up the young kids with the older kids and I mean, fuck, *who’s going to be a threat to the older kids now*?
Imagine them making up insulting nicknames for their old enemies, taking Voldemort and the Carrows and Lestrange and metaphorically spitting on them every time they use them.
Imagine Ron volunteering to take on the Boggart that takes up residence in the one class cupboard because no, look, the stupid thing *still looks like a bloody spider* and look it’s fucking hilarious when you take its legs off and tie it up with a bow. And the class laughs.
Imagine Harry staying at the school for a couple years, even when he’s done, because once people understand how the charm worked - how because he let Voldemort kill him it meant that nothing Voldemort could do could hurt any of them anymore - everyone just feels *better* when he’s there.
Imagine the nights where everyone leaves the common rooms and camps out in the Great Hall and drinks Butterbeer and tells stories and cries and sometimes there are shouting matches because people get so raw, but in the end everyone falls asleep in a pile together.
Imagine all the really, truly inappropriate jokes the survivors make, the ones that make their parents’ eyes fill with tears and terrify the first years, because actually when you’ve been dragged face-first through Hell the *worst shit* becomes fucking funny.
Imagine how the owls don’t have to be kept in the owlry anymore, because every kid needs the animal they brought with them; imagine that for the kids that lost theirs, or never had one, their friends finding them some, buying them some.
Imagine the girl who knows the Cruciatus Curse breaking down crying because she can’t believe she did that, she can’t ever believe she would and she knows she’s wrong and evil and tainted, and Ginny holding her while she cries and when she calms down, Hermione tells her the story of Regulus Black, and about how just because you made shit choices once that doesn’t mean you can’t make better ones now.
Imagine that people have been dealing with this kind of horrible shit all through human history, and people are out there dealing with it today, and yes it absolutely sucks and it’s horrible and the scars it leaves are real and heartbreaking and sometimes people are too badly hurt to go on, but also former child-soldiers play team games and laugh at funny stories and refugee kids with horrible stories love colouring books with bright colours and play games with the friends they’ve made in the camps.
And these are kids who fought. Who fought like little demons. Who *chose* to fight. So yeah, it could be awful. It could be nothing but bleak from beginning to end, a year (a decade) of sternness and unhappiness. But it doesn’t have to be; it isn’t guaranteed.
(and as @tygermama notes, we Muggles have been figuring out this shit: we give it names and throw our best guesses at it, and some of them are good. So there’s help there, too.)This is my favourite response to this ficlet so far, oh my goodness, thank you.
