- Draco scrubs the skin on his arm viciously every time he showers. The skin is always red and marked by scratches. He tries so hard to get the mark off of him. He wants to feel clean again.
- George can’t look in the mirror anymore. Not without remembering Fred. He smashes all mirrors in their home. He cuts his hair, he dyes it.
- Neville sees Nagini in his dreams. But in his dreams it reaches Ron and Hermione before he does.
- Harry has multiple wands all around his house hidden in places that only he knows. Beneath his pillow, beneath his bed, under the couch. Just in case.
- Hermione’s boggart is no longer failure.
- Draco and Blaise are afraid of fire.
- Someone accidentally calls George “Fred” once. No one knows who starts crying first.
- Headmistress Miverna Mcgonagall is fierce, powerful and kind. All first years are intimidated and amazed, she seems untouchable. However some nights she roams the school hallways and remembers every student she lost, every life that got taken away too soon, every soul that left them too early.
- Harry suddenly can’t stay in very small rooms. He feels trapped, his throat starts convulsing and his eyes sting.
- Hagrid still feels the weight of what he thought was Harry’s corpse in his hands. It haunts him.
- Hermione, Ron and Harry had gotten so used to spending months having one small meal per day that sometimes they forget they’re supposed to eat.
- Harry rolls in his sleep once and hits his forehead against the night stand on accident, when he wakes up with pain on his forehead his heart sinks and his whole body freezes. It isn’t until he sees the bruise that he’s able to calm down. Because Voldemort isn’t back.
- Ron dreams that he’s back in their tent, traveling and hiding, he’s changing the radio stations and he hears Ginny’s names as one of the victims.
- Molly always has “where’s Fred?” on the tip of her tongue, at all times.
- Harry spends the year post-war discovering who he is, what he loves, other than the Boy-who-lived and the Savior-of-the-Wizarding-World. Because there are things he never had time to think about, never had time to experiment, never had time to experience. Sometimes he wonders if coming back had been the right choice, because it hurt so bad on some days that he couldn’t take it.
- When Teddy is sad or scared and he’s crying, Harry tells him stories and shows him pictures of his parents, it’s then and only then that he calms down and his hair goes back to normal.
- Harry pulls back to himself when the date of his death nears every year, his friends do everything in their power to bring him out of it.
- Draco and Harry have talks about the war some nights, both saw what Voldemort was capable of, Harry in his dreams, Draco in his home. Both understand.
- Luna is quirkier and weirder than ever before. She always does everything in her power to lighten up the mood in the room when the silence is bitter and mournful. It’s like she can’t stop shifting and smiling and nervously twitching and saying random facts about things no one has heard of before. Everyone knows it’s her way of coping, of staying positive. So no one minds. It’s comforting.
- Harry gets the sudden desire to travel all over the world. Sometimes Ron and Hermione come with him, others he goes alone, once Neville joins him. Draco does too.
- Draco starts writing, he writes thousands of words on some nights and none on others. He’s good at it, too.
- Harry always, without fail, looks for Sirius’ constellation. He visits his grave too, tells him how things are going in his life, how he’s coping, how he isn’t.
- Hermione getting a tattoo of blooming pastel flowers on top of her “mudblood” scar, because she’s alive, many her friends are alive and she wants to remember that.
And maybe not all is well, maybe they have scars time cannot erase, but they’re together, their hearts are still beating, so it’ll be okay. They’re going to be okay.
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