InsaneJournal

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."