Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
≪ °☆° ≫
The castle hasn't changed.
Stone walls and stone floors surround me as my heels echo through the corridors. Candle smoke that clings to the rafters smells like memories. You step through the oak doors of the Great Hall, glancing around the room. It feels familiar but wrong at the same time. Like an old song you knew by heart played two beats too slow.
Hogwarts hasn't changed, but you have.
Your invitation had sat on your table for weeks. You moved it from the kettle to the fruit bowl to the windowsill. You told yourself it was only a reunion. People do this all the time. Come back, say hello, pretend they haven't been counting the years between who they are now and who they used to be.
The Great Hall is dressed up the way it always is for things that require smiling. Floating candles, charm-polished plates, a long banner declaring your year's reunion in tidy script. Tables have been pushed back to make space for mingling. The Sorting Hat watches from its stool, slouched and tired. Someone has added a spring of holly to it, even though it's not winter. It makes you want to laugh for a second.
You recognize faces first, then remember names. You're ashamed to admit that names have slipped your memory in recent years. You wish it were due to the time gone by and not the fact that you try to forget about the last few years here.
And then there are the faces and names you would never be able to forget, even if you wanted to. Which you don't. Not these faces.
"Oi! There you are!" Seamus reaches you first, arms flung wide like you're late and not exactly on time. "Thought you weren't coming." The smile eases something in you, reminiscent of the charming smile he'd always wear after a potions mishap.
"I thought I wasn't either," you say, phrasing it as a joke. The smile that's on your face feels like a muscle you haven't used in awhile. "You look good."
"Tell me that again after the third butterbeer." He winks and glances over his shoulder. "Dean's around here somewhere, pretending he doesn't like these things."
"I heard that," Dean says, appearing at Seamus's other side with two butterbeers and a roll balanced in his teeth. He hands you a drink and pulls you in for a quick hug. "You made it."
"I made it," you echo.
You let the room swallow you a bit. You let old voices press against your skin. People have grown into themselves. Lines around their eyes that hadn't been there before. A few new scars. A different kind of laughter. You're happy for them. You really are.
Hermione finds you next. She looks the way she always does after something she'd planned goes accordingly. "You came," she says, relief loosening her shoulders as she folds you into a hug. "I'm so glad."
