Thicker than Water (Marauders Era) PART II

22 July, 1995 - Confrontation (II)

Lavinia's exhaustion from earlier in the day morphed into full blown rage as she made her way down the stairs towards the kitchen. It wasn't that she was mad at their guests or even that she was mad at the Weasley twins for their enthusiasm. No, she was mad at the world. Because it was happening again. Again again again. And the world never bloody stopped. It never gave up. And it kept making them all pay prices they weren't prepared for. Because it wasn't just the loss of life. It wasn't just the waste of youth, the waste of potential and the pain of death come too soon. It was the grief.

Because that, Lavinia had learned, was the real price. The dead were dead and yes, it was a tragedy, but the price was paid by those left alive at the end. Left to build up from the ashes. Left to deal with the painful reality that they had loved the brave and idealistic.

And those boys, these children... they had no idea. They were so eager, so convinced they could win, so filled with faith that they scoffed at death and said it was no price at all. But Lavinia didn't suppose they had stopped to consider their siblings. Their friends. Their parents. All the people who would be left to deal with their deaths. To live with their deaths.

Lavinia sighed and stopped a little ways down the hall from the kitchen, putting her hands over her eyes and trying to gather herself. She needed to pull it together. She needed to come back to these swirling, awful thoughts later and deal with the matter at hand. With Harry. And with admitting that particular failure. That cost.

She didn't want to, of course. What she wanted right now, more than anything, was to go home. She wanted to be sitting on her couch in her home with her friends having a normal evening. She wanted to be laughing about normal things. Stressing about normal things. She wanted to listen to Jasmine chatter on and on about her boyfriend. She wanted to hear Miriam giving terrible romantic advice and Kama pitching in with actually good suggestions. She wanted to pretend this wasn't happening. That there was no war coming. No deaths approaching. That none of it would happen.

And she hated that she didn't even have the luxury of pretending for just one night.

But however she felt about it, the fact remained that right now, she didn't have time to fall apart. She didn't have time to lose it over things she supposed she should have gotten used to last time. So instead, she set her shoulders and took a deep breath before walking into the kitchen, doing her best to look calm and collected.

Almost as soon as Lavinia entered the room, Dumbledore pulled out a chair for her, his expression rather meaningful and with a touch of what might have been impatience. She sighed, resisting the urge to rub her eyes and sat down, realizing that Dumbledore, apparently, was going to jump right into this. She had hoped, foolishly, perhaps, that the old man would take pity on her and decide not to have this conversation, or perhaps to at least delay it until Molly had gotten even slightly used to Lavinia's presence, but judging from the look on his face, that wasn't going to happen.

"It is time," Dumbledore said once Lavinia sat down. "For everyone in this room to recognize the roles the others play in Harry Potter's life."

Lavinia closed her eyes for a moment. Well. He really wasn't beating around the bush at all.

"Some of you know all of this information and some of you do not, so please allow me to explain entirely before you ask any questions," Dumbledore continued, sounding rather like he was trying to head off the possibility of an explosion. Which didn't make Lavinia feel good at all. She sighed softly, pinning her gaze to a burn mark a little ways in front of her on the table and waited for Dumbledore to explain, trying to brace herself for the inevitable onslaught. For the reiteration of every single reason why she'd failed as she tried and tried and failed to justify the hell that had been her world in those days at the end of the war.