"Healing did not mean leaving the past behind. It meant learning how to carry it into whatever came next."
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The rays of morning sunlight slipped through the narrow gap between the curtains, painting a thin golden line across the bedroom wall.
Katherine had been staring at it for several minutes.
She wasn't thinking about anything in particular.
At least, she didn't think she was.
Her mind had simply gone quiet.
For the first time in weeks, perhaps even months, the silence inside her head wasn't filled with screams, spells, falling stone, or the faces of people she had lost.
It was simply morning.
A warm one.
The kind of morning that made England feel almost deceptively peaceful.
Outside, the wizarding world was slowly beginning to breathe again.
There were still rebuilding efforts happening everywhere.
Hogwarts remained a work in progress, with corridors being repaired and damaged classrooms restored.
Villages that had suffered during the war were slowly finding their feet again.
Shops were reopening.
Families were returning to houses they had spent months fearing they might never see again.
People were beginning to laugh.
Beginning to plan.
Beginning to talk about the future.
Katherine wasn't entirely sure she knew what the future looked like yet.
But she was beginning to believe that she might actually have one.
Eventually she sat on the edge of the bed and looked down at herself.
She had chosen a professional outfit for the reopening: a fitted skirt, thin tights and a crisp white shirt tucked neatly into the waistband. It wasn't particularly complicated, but she had spent far longer choosing it than she cared to admit.
Today wasn't simply another day at the shop.
Today was the reopening.
After everything that had happened there, that felt strangely significant.
The joke shop had been destroyed.
They had rebuilt it.
Veronica had been lost.
They had buried her.
And now, somehow, they were expected to open the doors and pretend the world hadn't changed.
Katherine didn't want to pretend.
She simply wanted to move forward.
There was a difference.
Three months ago, getting out of bed had sometimes felt impossible.
Now she was dressed before breakfast, preparing to walk downstairs and help rebuild the life she had nearly lost.
That had to mean something.
Her fingers intertwined nervously in her lap.
There was still fear there.
YOU ARE READING
We will meet again ~ Fred Weasley
Fanfiction________________________________________ It's always been the two of them. No one else. In fact, they had never expected to need anyone else. Hogwarts changed that. School proved that family isn't just about the blood that runs in your veins, you c...
