A/N: I've never written anything on here and English isn't my first language so... I'm not sure if this is going to work. But, if you like it, please let me know. And if you see a typo, please, correct me!
All the heroes fall, by Holliday McAlister
A year has passed since Lord Voldemort’s fall in that Halloween of the ‘81 and that’s why today I want to take a moment to remember those war’s wounds that, in days like today, hurt the most, making as remember why violence and blood supremacy is never the answer.
The first time I realized our world was in war, in an actual war, I was just 17. I was aware of the attacks, I used to read about them and the teachers would tell us about the outside world. They would even train us to face that world. Nevertheless, knowing that something was happening and really understanding what was happening, were two completely different things.
The first time I realized our world was in war, in an actual war, I was just 17. It was my seventh year at Hogwarts and I was wandering around Hogsmeade. For some reason I already forgot, I had fought with my friends and was alone, in my way to the Three Broomsticks.
Nothing could have prepare me - not the teachers, not the news, not the training - to what I saw. In front of me, under the premise ‘let them serve as example’, I saw two of my housemates being murdered.
Mary Macdonald and Sierra Fahey were two girls, both mudblood like me, who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. I could have been me, one of my friends or anyone whose blood wasn’t “pure enough”.
Mary Macdonald was weeks away from being 18 years old and legal in the muggle world. She wanted to move out with her best friend and partner in crime, Sierra, but before that, they wanted to travel all around Europe. She wasn’t one of my best friends, we barely know each other, but we had shared a room for seven years and I was used to see her around.
Sierra’s death was even worse. She was 16 years old, one year younger than me, and for the first time since I knew her, she was learning how to smile, how to be happy. The main reason for that was, probably, her relationship with Remus Lupin and Mary’s promise to take her away from her abusive father to provide her with the home she deserved.
In one moment, they were both there, smiling, chatting, being the teenagers they had all the right to be, and at the next minute, the only thing that was left were two cold bodies and the memories people had of them.
Hogsmeade didn’t seem safe anymore; inside the castle, the feeling wasn’t different. We lived scared. Every week, the heads of houses, sometimes even the headmaster, would interrupt a lecture to take a student to somewhere quiet, where they could inform their family had been added to the long list of victims of who make himself be called “The dark Lord”.
Being a teenager at the 70’s wasn’t easy.
After winter’s break and a terrible attack, one of my housemate left school to hide with what family she had left. And that’s how we went from being five to being three, in a bedroom that felt too big and too cold without all of us there. Trying to fix in our memories their voices, their smiles.
Every day, we would feel the fear. Every day we would watch our classmates’ faces, wondering if that would be the last time we’d see them alive.
A year has passed since Lord Voldemort’s fall in that Halloween of the ‘81. A year has passed since the end of the war and today, while a lot of people decide to drink for the peace, I want to take a moment to remember everything we lost in the way, everyone we lost.
The night of October 31th didn’t just mean the death of a dictator – I apologize for my Nazism’s analogies, but the analogies are more than a few – but the death of three young persons who have their whole life ahead.
Lily and James Potter will never turn 22. They won’t be able to travel around the world, falling in love again and again at every new place, crossing wishes from their bucket list. By the time he’s 3, their son, their only legacy, will have spent more time without his parents than with them; Harry will never talk about Quidditch, Transfiguration and girls with his dad neither learn about compassion, potions and charms with his mom.
Peter Pettigrew was as old as the Potter, but his family legacy ended with him. To die at such a young age is tragic, but to die at the hands of one of your best friends is too Shakespeare-like. That night, Peter’s chance to find the love of his life, form a family or fulfill his dream of coaching the Tutshill Tornados was taken away.
A year has already passed and their deaths aren’t the only ones but are probably the ones that hurt me the most.
More than a year has passed since Dorcas Meadowes, Gideon and Fabian Prewett and Benjy Fenwick’s murders by Death Eaters.
More than a year has passed since Marlene McKinnon and Caradoc Dearborn’s disappearances, leaving no clue behind, like they never existed.
More than a year since the Bones’ brutal massacre, in which we lost Hanna, who was 7 years old, and the little Hunter, who was 3.
More than a year and while some people decide to celebrate, I raise my glass for them. For the ones who fought endlessly for a better world. For the one who aren’t with us today but will live in our hearts forever. For the ones who died, who disappear, the one who were tortured and humiliated.
For them and for every soul we lost in this war, I raise my glass and toast, hoping we will never have to sacrifice young people in order to regain the peace.
