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I run through the forest, wild, with flowers blooming where I step. I pick bright red berries off of poison bushes and speak in whispers with lips stained black.

I am a woman.

I am a witch.

I smile as I see the bonfire, and know that I will be the first to burn. I laugh as they drag me out of my house and bind me to a pole. And as the flames lick the fabric of my dress, I curse them.

I am a witch.

She was the girl with the stars in her eyes. She was the girl with the soft smiles and soothing words. She was the girl who fell in love with the beauty of the world around her. She was the girl who comforted anyone in need.

But

Class: *listening to music while they work*

Loud Boy: Why is it so quiet?

It was the middle of the night when Harry entered the cemetery.

The war had ended a little over a year ago, and slowly but surely, the Wizarding World had begun to recover. Stories had been written about the events of the war, and everyone who had fought were praised as heroes. 

Everyone was starting to move on. But Harry couldn’t stop thinking about all those who had been lost. Which was why he was in the cemetery.

Harry made his way to the back of the cemetery, where the war heroes were buried. The graves there were covered with flowers and gifts, put there by grieving family members and friends. But at the very end of the last row, one grave was painfully bare.

That was where Harry was going.

He knelt down in front of the grave, tracing the words that had been carved into the stone at his insistence.

Sirius

1959 - 1996

We’ve all got both light and dark inside us. What matters is which part we choose to act on.

Harry had decided not to put his last name on the grave. He knew that Sirius wouldn’t want to be tied to his family in death, since he hadn’t wanted any ties to his last name even in life.

“Here you go, Sirius,” Harry said, putting a photo album down in front of the grave. “I hope that you are all together now.”

It had taken Harry a long time to compile the album. He had asked everyone he knew - even Remus, before his death - if they had any pictures of the Marauders, before everything had happened.

Harry stood up, and with a last glance at the grave, walked away with his hands in his pockets. The photo album glowed for a second, as if in recognition of where it was, and when the glow faded three animals had been engraved on the grave.

Harry couldn’t sleep.

No matter how much he tried, he would always scream himself awake, sobbing and gasping for breath as the faces of all of his friends, now dead and buried, flashed before his eyes.

One night, when his nightmares woke him up once more, he apparated to 12 Grimmauld Place. He hadn’t been back yet since the war had ended, over a year ago, and he didn’t know why he had decided to go back now. He turned away, already regretting his decision, but something in him wouldn’t let him leave. 

When Harry entered the house, he felt like he couldn’t breathe. All of the memories rushed at him, threatening to drown him, and it was all he could do not to fall to the ground and cry until he died.

He moved down the corridor slowly, trailing a hand along the dusty wall in an effort to ground himself to the present. Here, this is where he saw Sirius for the first time after being rescued from the Dursleys in fifth year. This is where he and the Weasley children had eavesdropped on the Order Meeting. This is where Crookshanks ate the Extended Ear.

Harry found himself smiling. Even when he tripped over an umbrella stand and landed flat on his face on the ground, he didn’t mind, because he remembered Tonks doing the exact same thing. He stood up, dusting himself off, and was about to explore the house more when he heard someone cough quietly next to him.

Startled, he whipped around, already reaching for his wand, but he stopped when he saw who it was. Walburga Black gazed at him with sharp eyes, but there was a new grief in them that he had never seen before.

“He’s dead, isn’t he.” It wasn’t a question, it was a fact. Harry frowned, not quite understanding who she was talking about. “Sirius. He’s dead.”

Harry drew in a sharp breath, trying to ease the pain in his heart, and jerkily nodded his head. Walburga smiled sadly.

“I thought so.”

There was silence after that, the two of them staring at each other, lost in their grief.

“Did you hate him?” Harry asked suddenly. “Sirius, I mean. Did you really hate him?”

Walburga shook her head. “Of course not! He was my son! I loved him just as much as I loved his brother.”

“You never showed it.”

She sighed heavily, the weight of three lifetimes seeming to weigh heavily on her shoulders. “I know. I wanted him to leave the house. It wasn’t safe for him here anymore - he was so vocal about what he believed in, and if he had stayed, he would have died for that.”

Harry studied her intently, looking for any sign that she may have been lying, but found none. He nodded, once, before turning on his heel and striding back towards the front door, not even bothering the close the curtains of the portrait behind him. Just before he left, he heard Walburga call out. “Will you be back? It was lovely, talking to you.”

Harry didn’t respond. But, a few weeks later, when he returned to Grimmauld Place, he woke the portrait up and talked to her.

It became a ritual. Harry would tell her everything, and she would listen, comforting him as he finally broke down over all of the people who had died to take down Voldemort.

When he and Ginny got engaged, the first person that he told was Walburga, smiling brightly in a way that he hadn’t for years. She smiled with him.

When Ginny got sick, and the doctors said that she was most likely going to die, it was Walburga that Harry sought comfort in. She murmured soothing words to him as he sobbed, pulling his hair in anger at the unfairness of it all.