Packing Hope Away
1.
Despite the new wand, despite the new experiences, despite the new moniker, despite the NEWT scores under his belt, Neville Longbottom feels like he still has much to catch up to, much to improve, much to shake off.
It doesn’t help that Gran has passed away in her sleep shortly after she received news that Voldemort is truly dead.
It also doesn’t help that Harry Potter, the figure he has been looking up to since even before they met each other on their first train ride to Hogwarts, has been sentenced to the Veil because of legal technicality. And Harry can’t tell Neville himself because he is to spend these three days leading up to it in a holding cell like a true criminal.
This travesty is in fact what has shaken Neville’s last shreds of respect for the Ministry. He withdraws his assets from all round the Common Wealth, and packs them up or liquidates them like what Hermione has been doing with Harry’s own assets. He is moving to somewhere remote and will raise any family he might have there, far away from the nonsense rife in the so-called civilisation.
He is a little sad and regretful that none of his relatives would go with him, even though he has pointed out everything that is wrong with the world. He understands them. He knows that they are set in their ways, like Gran was. But family is still family, and he wishes that he did not have to part ways with them.
He won’t tolerate anyone badmouthing Harry, though, and he doesn’t, not even when the words come from his relatives. Harry has suffered more than enough on the hands of ignorant witches and wizards like them, and Neville has stood aside for too long when it comes to that.
Never again.
2.
Dean Thomas aspired to be a famous, talented artist since he had been really little.
He found out that he had magic, instead, when he was eleven, and went on to study at Hogwarts.
Life at Hogwarts wasn’t as magical as Professor McGonagall had led him and his family to believe, though, sadly. There was no arts class there, and “muggleborns” like he is were – are – ridiculed, shunted aside, even treated unfairly.
And then there was the war.
The war that, in a way, is still on-going. Because Voldemor tmay be dead, but Harry will soon be murdered by the government for some technicality related to Voldemort, and nobody thinks to even question that.
Not that the fate of muggleborns is any better than during last year, either. As a matter of fact, Dean has been stuffed together with other muggleborn victims that Hermione could find here, in the safehouse she set up with Neville and damned Looney Lovegood.
No drop of help from the government. Nothing from the “good” citizens of British wizarding world, too. Just from fellow “mudbloods” and “blood traitors.” And it doesn’t help that Dean, like so many other mundaneborn children, has lost everything within the last year alone. All of his family were slaughtered that night, when Death Eaters came to their home when they were asleep and toyed with Mum and Dad and Karie and Kathie and Kalie before cutting them into pieces.
Now Dean just aspires to live, and to repay the Death Eaters that robbed him off everything and everyone. He’d even take either, if he can’t get both.
He’d even take living in some remote place, like Neville’s just offered him and the others. He might rebuild himself, there. And, who knows, if there’s a chance to prepare a strike back or at least to build a better community….
3.
Hermione Jeane Granger regrets having Obliviated her parents sorely.
The three of them had grown more and more apart since her first year at Hogwarts, true, but they are still her parents. And, given what has happened again to Harry, she cannot go to Australia to try to track them down, not just now.
Harry needs her more, at present, just like last year. And Harry’s people, even more.
She never even knew that Harry got a people of his own. People like in medieval time. Not until a representative from Gringotts met with her and dumped a trio of self-updating books in front of her, claiming that those are lists of Harry’s assets under House Black, House Potter, and personal bequeathments. She bets that Harry himself never knows of them, or he would have at least talked about them.
He so loves to have a family of his own, she knows, and he would love these folks, she bets. Because, when she visits each pocket of them spread round the world, they insist that they are his, no one else’s, just like he is theirs.
And each group of these folks have never failed to demand to go with him even through the Veil, which necessitates lots of scrambling on everyone’s part to accommodate such a wish for the people and the properties they are “keeping for the Lord” plus the respective wards.
Oh, and a Time Turner that Director Croaker discreetly slipped her, too, which could go for a month at each full turn and got twelve full turns plus some half turns in it still, which is a life-saver especially when Harry’s other friends got wind that she is gathering things for him to bring across the dimensions.
Well, she hopes he will appreciate the hard work wen he at last meets them – not if, never if, he must live, because the Veil is just a dimension portal or something, no doubt, like that book he mentioned when she asked why he chose the Veil.
She might even join him, after she has reunited with her parents and hopefully reversed the Obliviation, if her parents want nothing to do with her. She is quite complicit in taking a chunk of the wizarding world away and to another dimension, after all – land, people and valuables – so nowhere on earth – this earth – will be safe for her from the retaliation of those impacted by such a move. And she will shove little Teddy Lupin along with Harry through the Veil, too, soon enough, so she might not even find sanctuary with someone like Neville, if she can’t convince him of the necessity of it.
She doesn’t regret this, though.
4.
“Hey, you look bad. May and the kid all right? The maggies been causing havoc again?”
Owen Grady stares at his identical twin Ewan, who is not being so identical right now given how the other is looking grim and dejected and regretful. Owen is feeling chipper instead today, on the anniversary of him stepping foot on Isla Sorna, the island of dinosaurs. Everyone involved in the successful rescue of those lunatic stranded in the island has formed a club, and he’s just been from its anniversary celebration.
But, well, Ewan’s face and the way he seems to be memorising Owen’s own face for a forever parting, it’s sucking all the glow from the memory like… like… like a blue whale sucking in seawater for the planktons, maybe.
Owen scrunches up his nose on that thought. And, above all, it’s what makes his twin’s mournful mask crack. If a little. With a smile. The jerk.
But then Ewan tears up. Oh no! Owen can’t even remember when either of them last cried. Maybe it’s when they were eight and their parents died in a car accident? Because then their harpy of an aunt took them in, and “toughened them up,” and there’s no leeway to cry then.
So these tears now… “Umm. Nothing’s wrong with May or Mitch, right? Please say I’m right?” Because Owen adores his nephew, magic and all, and Mayva isn’t half bad if too secretive and proper-like, and–
“Can’t force you to choose, but can’t force myself to choose either. You’re my only family, but May and Mitch are, too.”
–Ow. Even the manly voice cracks, and Owen is positively spooked, now. Not to mention feeling like tearing up, himself.
“What’s going on?” he demands, but his own voice is far from manly – their aunt’s version of “manly,” that is – with how high and reedy it is. “Did May force you to distance yourself from me? What for?”
Ewan’s headshake is relieving, at first, but, “Then what?”
“You remember the fracas down in UK? – No, listen. It’s over, and Lord Potter isn’t coming here as a fugitive or refugee or whatever. He won’t ever come here, in fact… and we’ve decided to come there, along with the rest of his Houses. – no, listen, Owen, I married May knowing full well that she’s wholely devoted to that sprog, and that sprog isn’t bad either. If not for Dumbledore, we’d have been introduced to each other and Mitch would’ve tweeted endlesly about his hero. And now… and now the government there screwed the boy again. He’s sentenced to death, practically, though May’s convinced it's cross-dimension portal or something, and we’re to… follow him.”
Owen blanks out, just so. he would’ve never known that he’s sprung to his feet and yelled, except that Ewan is giving him a bear hug now and his damned throat hurts.
His eyes are definitely wet, too.
And the tears fall, when Ewan explains that the damned feudal maggies have found a way to detect if the “Veil of Death” is a cross-dimensional portal or not in truth and save everyone if the thing turns out to be an execution method indeed, “So, it’s safe. So, will you… come with us?”
God damn it. he loves his job in the Navy, he loves and cares for many in it and outside of it, he adores the dinos, but if it’s between those and his twin and his adorable nephew and the nephew’s adorably proper, adorably fierce mother?
He’d pick the latter. Always. However much he rues the lost chances here.
Time to pack up, then.