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i. sirius & regulus
no one tells you.
no one tells you until you come home, after azkaban, and your mother’s portrait curses at you and tells you she wishes regulus had lived and not you, filthy blood traitor that you are.
you are confused. you ask, what do you mean? you scream at her, what do you mean, even as dread pools in your stomach and you realise why regulus never visited.
you go to the tapestry, and regulus’ death is marked there, three months before james died.
you lost two brothers in one year, but here’s the difference: one death you knew. one death you mourned.
you don’t go into his room. (inside, everything is green and silver. regulus was proud of his house, and you cursed him for it too often.)
you don’t mourn. why should you? he was a slytherin, a death eater, and you are thirteen years too late anyway.
you do not mourn for your little brother, who followed you with stars in his eyes brighter than the ones you’re named after, who followed you until he learned better and the stars dimmed and all that was left was darkness.
you wonder: did he regret? did he-
why didn’t anyone tell you, you want to ask, did they think you wouldn’t care?
you sit and stare at the wall, at the tapestry, at that cross and that date, and firewhiskey burns in your throat.
ii. petunia & lily
there is a letter. there is a letter and a crying baby with her green eyes, and at first you don’t understand. you don’t understand that lily is dead.
dead, and they thought to tell you with a letter.
you crumple the letter up in your hand, but then you smoothen it out again, and reread those awful words, again and again.
there is no I’m sorry for your loss. there is no we understand this might be difficult for you-
there is only you must do this, because you are her sister. were her sister.
lily’s sister is all you ever were, but now you wish, briefly, that you could be again.
but you can’t.
you get the child inside and stick a bottle in its mouth. dudley is screaming for you upstairs, but you can only watch the baby’s green eyes like you watched lily’s. they’re enchanting. magic.
mama, it asks, and you hate it.
you hate it because it stopped crying like it doesn’t miss lily.
you hate it because it wants lily and lily isn’t there and lily will never be there again to cry at your spiteful words and run away but come back again like she always did.
you want the baby to just disappear. you want lily to come back and apologise for being magic and just be your sister again. you want to talk to her at least one more time.
you can never talk to her again, because she’s gone, and you got this baby in exchange. you want to complain to someone, because you never agreed to that.
you want-
oh, you want.
iii. aberforth & albus
you find out like everyone else does. the headlines of the daily prophet inform you, in big bold letters, that professor albus percival wulfric brian dumbledore, order of merlin, first class, headmaster of hogwarts school of witchcraft and wizardry, supreme mugwump of the international confederation of wizards, and chief warlock of the wizengamot, is dead.
there is a photo, and you turn away with a twinge of grief.
you go to the funeral. you fought with your brother, but you still loved him, once, and you’re too old for regrets. you’re old enough to have learned that love can be numb, painful like an old wound. old enough to have realised that albus was still your brother.
you think, sometimes, that you could have learned sooner, quicker, but albus was always the bright one.
you stare at the grave, at the crying people surrounding it. how many of these people know that albus had a sister, once? how many of them know of albus’ greatest sin, of failing to save her?
(you think that albus mourned, for a time. that he regretted. not enough – never enough - to change, to apologise. but he did mourn.)
maybe, you think, it is time to forgive your brother. but you taste anger, red and bitter, at the back of your throat, and you cannot.
you turn to go, and you consider, briefly, if you should have talked to albus. if you should have tried, at least, to make him understand.
(you think maybe albus didn’t want to understand, because maybe understanding would have torn him apart.)
but you are too old for regrets, so you stop. albus was always too sure of himself. always acting for the greater good. a sister didn’t change that. why would a brother?
you turn and you go, the white grave carved into your mind. albus is dead, and you are the only one left.
iv. george & fred
you look for him after the battle, when the bodies are laid out in the hall. you can’t find him, but you’re not worried, not at first. you’d know if he was dead.
but then, when you walk to the great hall, you hear your mother’s wails, and your heart drops, because something happened.
not to fred. you’d feel it if he had died. but you have four other brothers and one sister and one father.
you walk quicker, and then you run. it’s stupid, because it’s too late, but you run anyway.
and then you see fred on the floor. his skin is cold and pasty and white and dirty and his laugh is all wrong, and he’s dead.
you didn’t know, after all.
the battle, after that, is muted. dim. of course it is, you’ve lost an ear and an eye and part of your brain and half your smile. or maybe all of your smile; you’re not quite sure, in the months that follow.
you can’t cast a patronus anymore, but that’s the least of your problems, because the war is over and you don’t need to.
you can’t look into a mirror, but that doesn’t really matter, because you didn’t much before, either.
you can’t open weasley’s wizard wheezes, but that was as much fred’s as it was yours, so why should you?
it doesn’t matter that your mother looks at you like she wants to cry and stares at your ears, your two ears. that your father works all day and only comes home after you’ve left.
they never could tell you from fred or gred from forge, but now it’s too easy.
percy tells you how your twin died, and your first thought is you should have been there. your second is so percy only started laughing when fred stopped.
it’s an ugly thought, a mean one, but no one hears it, so it doesn’t really count, doesn’t really matter.
you’re george, not gred, and that matters. but forge isn’t there, so maybe it doesn’t, either.
v. dennis & colin
harry is the one that wants to tell you, but he doesn’t need to, because as soon as you see that look on his face, you know.
maybe you even knew before that.
maybe you knew, as soon as the battle started and you couldn’t find your brother hiding away with you.
colin was a better gryffindor than you were, and you know that. but you also know that bravery does not mean skill, does not mean experience, and you know that colin has never been lucky.
you’ve known that since the time when the letters stopped, all of a sudden, and a stern woman with a pointy hat and age in her eyes told you that colin had been attacked.
later, colin thought of it as lucky that he had his camera. that the basilisk didn’t kill him. you never could quite agree. you thought it was colin, and that that was why he had his camera.
you thought of it as colin saving himself.
this time colin couldn’t. (you wish he had tried harder.)
of course you’re proud of your brother. but there is also a part of you that wishes colin had been less of a gryffindor, and that’s the part you don’t let anyone see.
you publish the photos he took, all of them. you’ve stared at them for hours, but they don’t help you understand why your brother decided to fight. you didn’t really expect them to.
harry tells you that your brother was a hero, and you bite your tongue and don’t tell him that you wish colin had never gotten that letter and neither had you.
vi. padma & parvati
your arm hurts where a curse hits you and your back hurts where a man slammed into you, but you’re alive. the war is over, and you’re alive.
you check faces as you walk through the halls, and luna is alive. cho. terry. professor mcgonagall.
you remember who isn’t, but you try not to think about that right now.
you search the crowd for one face in particular, one you know like the back of your hand – you see it everyday in the mirror (except it’s a bit different now where parvati has a scar across her cheek because she refused to hex a third year) – but now you don’t see it anywhere.
you got separated in the fighting that broke out when harry came back to life, right after parvati swore to kill fenrir greyback. you don’t know if she did. if she succeeded.
you consider, briefly, that maybe he killed her instead.
parvati was injured, and angry and grieving, and you can’t help but calculate the odds. you’ve been so lucky, this war, and logically, that luck is going to run out. you can’t beat the odds forever, and parvati is the one who is reckless enough to keep trying, not you.
for a moment, you see george weasley in your mind’s eye. the way he sat, unseeing, unsmiling, a living ghost. you imagine yourself, if you lost parvati.
you still can’t see parvati. your heart starts beating frantically. the fight wasn’t that long, really. less people died in the second half, you’re sure. parvati isn’t dead.
you don’t remember the last thing you said to her. if it was something nice.
you don’t remember the last time you really talked, the last time you made time for her and her silly ambitions and giggly friends.
if she’s dead-
but then you hear a shout, and you turn, and there she is, running toward you – she crashes into you, arms open wide, and she laughs and you laugh because you’re alive, both of you, and you will be for a long time.