Magic? || Years 5-7

We Learn to Live: The End

(If you want a song for this chapter, I recommend Persephone in the Garden by  Aidoneus or Ready Now by dodie)

Now, in the world of magic, a spell wasn't hard to come by. It was a word tossed around like a tool because for these witches and wizards and anyone in between, it was. Spells were words; Latin and Greek and thousands of other languages poured into the syllables and tweaked just so until a shower of sparks erupted from the end of a wand, or a foe dropped at their feet.

But here, as the sun rose steadily over Hogwarts and the Great Hall grew warm under its rays, a decades-long spell lifted off the shoulders of the castle all at once. And it was no magic. It was years of dread, of fearful glances over the shoulder, of desperate, fervent attempts to cling to life's fickle grasp.

Tom Riddle was dead, and Harry Potter stood victorious in a beam of golden sunlight.

Half-hysterical, Amisty River launched herself toward him, sobbing with relief as she collided in a flurry of limbs with her best friends. There were shouts and tears and roars of triumph all around the Hall as they consolidated around him, deafening in their joy and Amisty couldn't bring herself to care even as her ears rang. Luna, Neville, and Ginny wrap around them, the Weasleys, Hagrid, Kingsley and McGonagall, and Flitwick and Sprout, and she couldn't make out a single word anyone was saying and didn't care because she was free and it was over, it was over—

Like rain, Amisty could feel the invisible target painted over her skin washing away with each passing second, a warm glow deep in the center of her chest she hadn't felt in a very long time.

Safety, security.

Love.

She tumbled into Hermione's embrace, the two of them clinging to each other and crying into the other's shoulders, wrapped so tight it ached but neither could bear to let go.

"We made it," Amisty said, hoarse and brittle at the edges. "We lived."

Hermione smiled, something watery and fragile that still managed to brush the corners of her eyes. "We lived."

They were thrown into the dichotomy of grief and jubilation soon after that, exhausted and honestly very hungry, struggling to come to terms with the 'after' now that the war was done.

The war was won.

Amisty had to keep mouthing the words to herself, incapable of wrapping her mind around it. After spending months locked in a dark, damp cellar, of spending days in chains and collared like a dog, of scrambling around with nothing more than the clothes on her back and whatever Hermione had managed to salvage. Wandless, and so close to letting hope slip through her fingers it was a wonder it still flourished at all.

Owls came fluttering through the shattered windows, bearing messages of the thousands of Imperiused finally coming back to themselves. That Death Eaters were fleeing the country and coming back shackled at the wrists. That the mass arrests flooding the Azkaban cells were being released, and, all at once, Kingsley Shacklebolt was being named the temporary Minister of Magic. . .

The House tables were back, but no one was really paying any attention to the symbols and colors. It was a jumble of them all, of ghosts and centaurs and house-elves and Grawp peering through the smashed windows as Firenze lay recovering in the corner.

Voldemort's body was left outside of the Hall, away from those who deserved a proper burial, those who'd died fighting him. Amisty and Noel wandered amongst the fallen, their magic the same color as her eyes, tracing runes of safe passage across the dead's foreheads and closing their eyes. If one looked very, very closely, they could see the faint shimmer of Echo River watching her husband and daughter with an immeasurably proud expression. And, if one looked even closer, they could see thousands of silvery silhouettes rising from their bodies and guided to the skies by dark-haired, golden-eyed spirits. Lupin sat up to meet Elijah, dipping his head in a quiet, thankful nod. He bent at the waist to help Tonks to her feet, and the two left for the skies together. Colin went bright-eyed and cheerful, bouncing after someone Amisty couldn't recognize with question after question pouring out of his mouth. The Ravenclaw girl Amisty held while she died took Ember's hand with an elegance unparalleled, her eyes bright with silver as the two disappeared into a ray of sun.