lionheart || hp au
She is a child born of cast-aside flowers, the magic planted like daffodil bulbs inside her until one day spring bursts forth.
First year - The Sorting Hat declares her brave.
She watches the others - reckless Lee, the champion of the little guy, creative Kayla, who dares to be original, and she wonders why.
She is practically the adopted sister of the Belmont family. When Will plots a disruption in Snape’s class, or Lee sneaks sweets back to the dormitory, or Kayla enchants the breakfast plates to sing, Katie reminds them of the History of Magic essay due next Tuesday.
They joke that she is the Ravenclaw among them, ever so careful in Potions, ever so curious in Herbology.
Second year - a pair of tag-team Gryffindors arrive, blonde and brunette, whispering together in the corners.
“I didn’t really know my mum,” Miranda says, and when Katie agrees, the pieces fall together all too quickly.
She writes her dad, but the word ‘half-sister’ never touches the page. (She doesn’t want to burden him with remembering the past.)
She sees Kayla’s great laughing extended family - brothers and step-brothers and half-brothers, and Katie asks Miranda if she wants to take a walk to the greenhouses. (Family is a gift, not a curse.)
They all have complicated families, and Katie begins to dream of doing better than their parents (better than her mother, her father was the one who had tried).
Build a better world where Lou Ellen is not cast aside as unnatural, where Kayla and her siblings don’t have to cling to each other because they are forgotten at home, where a fifth-year does not hiss ‘Mudblood’ at Katie as she tells Miranda about her Muggle father.
Muggleborn is not the truth, but she lets them believe it, lets it become a badge of pride. She feels Muggleborn, and she doesn’t need to be tied to a mother who left the moment she was born.
She wants Muggleborn to mean something.
The years pass, and so rises the Slytherin inside of her - the fierce ambition, a desire to be greater. She is the resourceful leader - Kayla calls her the mom of their group.
(But soon, all too soon, the darkness has risen.)
Katie has never held faith in rumors, but these stories - of chess pieces and riddles and a glimmering red stone - the truth they hold is terrifying.
Third year - She and Miranda spend their time before dinner in the greenhouses, helping Professor Sprout with the Mandrakes.
Fourth year - She brings back sweets from Hogsmeade for the first years having nightmares about dementors.
Fifth year - Gryffindor Prefect. She sympathizes with the frustrated Hufflepuffs and consoles the indignant Gryffindors, but she will not stand for cruelty from either.
(When only one returns from the graveyard, she finds Cho in the courtyard and gives her a small bundle of photographs - snapshots, memories she loved to capture with her Wizard camera - and a promise of listening.)
Sixth year - She doesn’t join Dumbledore’s Army straight away, but when Lou Ellen jumps at the chance Katie covers for her without even thinking.
(Katie becomes friendly with Hermione. As much as they are similar - conscientious, hardworking - they are ever so different. Hermione creates the DA in a burst of bravery and righteousness to attack injustice. Katie joins eventually to shield those struggling to defend themselves.)
They say she should have been in Hufflepuff, and Katie watches Hermione defy the Ministry, sees Lou Ellen stand up to Umbridge, and she agrees.
Seventh year - She learns that a girl who had stood up for her before she learned to stand up for herself is missing.
(It is a year before she meets Amiya on the field of battle and realizes that ideals crumble in the face of threats.)
She is so tired of this world where everyone might be your enemy. Aurors are guarding the school, and she throws herself into her Herbology and Potions studies. If she can’t fix the world, she can at least soothe the trembling second year in the corner, the first year who tries to run away because Hogwarts isn’t magic. She can heal cuts and aid sleep and brighten up the Hogwarts gardens.
(She learns of poisons too, of thorns and plants more animal than leaf. She learns so she can fight.)
It is not enough.
Katie leaves her family halfway through the next summer, and they leave her - all running to find a safer place.
She researches constantly, hiding out in the Muggle world to piece together the Death Eaters’ movements. (This is the Ravenclaw.)
She practices concealment and disguise and uses her knowledge of poisons to knock out the and flag the Snatchers in hopes that the Order, wherever they are, will have an easier job. (This is the Slytherin.)
She uses her Muggle money to buy nonperishables and slips into small wizarding communities with bundles of food before running out just as quickly. (This is the Hufflepuff.)
She is a coward.
She never comforts those crying, she doesn’t try to contact the Order directly, she doesn’t try to poison any of the Death Eaters themselves.
She burns the letters her friends send, and for more time than she is helping she is running, she is trying to be a Muggle, she is trying to forget.
When she tries to settle in London, she finds Miranda (Miranda finds her), and there are angry words thrown back and forth before Miranda becomes her traveling partner.
She still cannot find the Gryffindor inside of her.
They listen to the radio every day, and when word comes that Harry Potter has returned, Miranda gives Katie a look full of certainty.
Katie is not brave, but her hand hovers above a poisonous mushroom, a healing leaf, and she knows there is more than one way to be a hero.
They return. Lou Ellen’s brother is missing, Kayla bears the scars of torture, Connor and Travis are failing to smile.
Where is her bravery?
You have until midnight.
She remembers giving chocolates when those crying in the corner were ignored. She remembers choosing to wear ‘Muggleborn’ as a badge of pride. She remembers refusing to play pranks on the teachers with her friends.
(Perhaps she has been a lion all along.)
Katie Gardner no longer wears a Prefect badge, but she leads the first through sixth years to the Hog’s Head exit.
They gather one last time in the Room of Requirement: Kayla and her brothers - Katie’s first family at Hogwarts, Miranda - her younger and wiser sister, Lou Ellen - her most loyal and unyielding friend, Connor and Travis - the friends she grew to depend on, Pollux, Castor, and Drew - those she learned were not so different from her.
The lion R O A R S inside of her because it is her time - her time to protect, to stand against those who would harm. It is time for her to be clever and ambitious and loyal -
-but most of all brave.
She keeps fighting when the seventh-year Hufflepuff she worked alongside in the greenhouses is blasted over the battlements.
She keeps fighting when she touches the forehead of a crumpled first year who snuck back in and finds it cold.
She keeps fighting when she meets a Death Eater in a corridor and fails to stop him from blinding her former classmate.
She keeps fighting when the girl she looked up to whispers a curse with too much darkness in her eyes.
She keeps fighting when she sees a little girl sobbing and begging a boy who must be her older brother to wake up.
She keeps fighting when Lee’s hands slip through her fingers, and his eyes are suddenly empty.
(She keeps fighting when her vision is blurry enough that she can’t see friend from foe.)
Katie Gardner stands.
She will not be the one to win this war, not through curses flying through the battlements, not through Mandrakes lobbed over the walls.
She wins subtly, through victories small enough not to matter. (But they do.)
She heals a girl whose head is bleeding from a collision with a banister. She pulls a boy out of reach of a Killing Curse.
Minute by minute, Katie Gardner defines Gryffindor in her own terms.
When the ceasefire is called, she runs to the tapestry she covered Lee’s body with. She carries him to the Great Hall with the help of a seventh year Ravenclaw and watches Kayla’s eyes shatter into a million pieces because Michael’s body is already lying beside her.
She finds Lou Ellen in the crowd, her arms around Pollux as he sobs over Castor’s body. She finds herself crying, an arm around Drew because this is the final straw.
Katie Gardner stands.
When word comes that Harry Potter is dead, the lion R O A R S. They will not be broken any further, and Voldemort’s Silencing Charms are not holding.
When chaos resumes, new fire ignites inside of her - the fire of a Gryffindor who will not back down, who perhaps never did.
She leaves three Death Eaters Stunned and wrapped in vines. (One for Lee, one for Michael, one for Castor.) But she releases her anger there, and the next spell she casts is Protego.
They win a broken victory, but Katie Gardner has learned that the smallest victories - the very little won amidst much lost - those can mean the most.
(And they tell her, those that matter, that she was meant to be a Gryffindor.)