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Harry Potter (ab_harry) wrote in hogwarts_dawn,
@ 2021-05-02 21:03:00

Entry tags:

character: harry potter, character: james s. potter, character: lily evans potter, character: padma patil, character: parvati patil, character: remus lupin

RP: The Memorial
Who: Open
When: 10am 2nd of May
Where: In the cloister of the courtyard
What: It's Remembrance Day

Harry had been present to every ceremony since the end of the war. Each year, no matter how much he hated it, he had insisted on reading the names of the fifty-three witches and wizards that had fallen in the Battle of Hogwarts. It had been his one condition if Kingsley wanted him to show up. Each name had been an admission of guilt for Harry, another way he had failed, a reminder that if he had done better, maybe some of those people would be alive.

This time it was different. Even the weather was cold and rainy, a complete change from the last ceremony he'd attended.

"For the past five years, I've read the names of the dead. Fifty-three people that we mourned. I don't need the Ministry to give me that list. I know every name by heart, but if I were to read it today, there would be only fifty-one names. Remus Lupin and Severus Snape are two names I wouldn't have read, but for the past five years, we've also forgotten all of the other people who died in a war that lasted for decades." He couldn't help looking at his parents when he said that.

"That was that killed so many people ended decades ago and for the younger generation, some of whom are here today and older than us," he said with a small smile, "it was just history. They couldn't understand what all of us suffered. All the losses and sacrifices we made. Today, we're here, in a future marked by more losses and these affect all of us. So today, instead of remembering those fifty-one people, we take a day to remember all of the people who died, because their own government failed them. We take the time to honour them and tomorrow we keep living for us and for them and we make sure that a tragedy of this magnitude never happens again."

He looked around the cloister and realized how much tougher this speech would have been if his friends and his family weren't here. "And hopefully we also get to enjoy this second chance at life. So please join me for a minute of silence in honour of the dead and then I hope that you join us for a pint at the Styx."

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Remus

slowburn_alpha
2021-05-02 06:30 pm UTC (link)

Remus had stayed on his own for this, staying far enough back from the group he could have the castle wall at his back. His hearing meant he still hadn't missed a word of what Harry said. It was...strange, having it pointed out that he'd died on this day forty years ago, an event that was still fifteen years in his future. Remus couldn't imagine he had done it with any sense of hesitation. As he'd told Peter, he would never pick one of his friends over the others to save. He would sacrifice himself first to save them all.

He remembered the smaller, private memorials that still seemed to be just a couple years ago for him. There had been a large memorial for James and Lily, of course. Once the celebratory atmosphere had dissipated and enough people had understood that the tiny baby the young man addressing them had been then was now an orphan, his parents -- both standing off to one side today -- had died to save him. Golden eyes closed briefly against the memory as Remus reminded himself they were now alive again.

Too many days like this, too many speeches about holding onto memories and living for those who had sacrificed, had been what finally pushed his grief-stricken self to leave the country. Memorials, he had decided then, were not for the lost, but for the survivors, much as he'd told Harry after Cassandra's death. It wasn't about remembering loved ones gone, but finding a reason for the living to continue on. But how many didn't have Harry Potter to remember their names? How many names were lost to time because they were simply living their lives despite the politicians and heroes around them?

Memorials were for the survivors, but they weren't for Remus. The speeches were nice tributes, but ultimately, the people were forgotten except by those who knew and cared for them most. He and Regulus had collected enough names, photos, and fragments of lives ended too soon for Remus to think speeches meant anything to the nameless dead.

Still, Remus could look around and see others besides James and Lily who he'd been there to mourn after the first war. Marlene was one, the loss of her entire family had been a huge blow to those in the Order. Peter, of course. He may have been the one to betray them, but two years ago all Remus had known was his friend was gone.

That thought led him to Sirius, the best friend he'd wanted to hate for betraying them, but had never truly been able to believe it. Remus thought he'd mourned the most for Sirius, taken away to Azkaban, as out of Remus' reach as surely as death had taken the others. But, there had been no closure, no chance to ask why. The world had said he was guilty. Remus' heart wouldn't believe it. Now that they were both alive and able to talk, that sense of loss should have faded. And, yet, Remus still feared he was going to lose his best friend now.

His gaze moved then, inevitably, to Regulus and he smiled softly. He hadn't known Regulus well enough to mourn his presumed death beyond the sadness of a young life lost and his friend's loss of a brother. It hadn't been until they all got their second chance that he'd gotten to know the younger Black brother well. It was strange how much Remus had come to care for him in just two and a half months. And, yet, he knew that Regulus was now one of those he would sacrifice himself to protect.

The same people Remus would die for were the reason he would live, now, and try to do better than before. People didn't live for faceless graves and lofty ideals, he thought. People lived for the people in their lives, the people that mattered to them.

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