Fic: Regenesis (characters: Harry, the Longbottoms, the Weasleys, Snape, Peter, Remus and Tonks)

[lyras]

Title: Regenesis
Author: lyras
Rating: PG-13
Length: 4,500 words
Summary: An evening and a week after Voldemort is defeated. Various characters try to cope.
Warnings: Occasional gory descriptions.
Author's note: Another hp_remnants fic that also fits the latest omniocular challenge. This is the most complex story I've ever attempted, and constructive feedback would be very, very welcome.



Regenesis

On the evening of Voldemort's death, Augusta Longbottom hugs Neville, clinks her glass of sherry against his own, and allows the tears to flow unchecked for a few seconds. Then she sets off for St Mungo's.

Neville promises himself that he'll visit his parents tomorrow, and settles down to wonder what he should do with the rest of his life. When Ginny Weasley's head appears in the fireplace to invite him over to her parents' house for a while, he declines and says perhaps another time.

Ginny sits beside Harry, her warm fingers entwined with his passive ones, and hopes she'll be able to make him all right again eventually. Tonight, all she can feel is relief that he's still alive.

Harry drinks Ogdens Old until he passes out on the sofa at four am, but that doesn't erase the memory of Colin Creevey's dead face or Remus Lupin's screams.

Remus opens his eyes to find a woman in white bending over him. Everything is white, in fact, and the air reeks of antiseptic.

"Hospital," he murmurs, and then marvels that so small a mechanism as speech can cause so much pain. He answers the Healer's questions as best he can, until she sits back with a smile.

"You've got a long road ahead of you, Remus, but you're going to be all right," she tells him.

Frank Longbottom's day is much like any other. The old lady visits, but that's nothing new, although it does help to break the monotony. She's in a strange mood, though - tearful - and she keeps repeating something about people being dead, and him not having to worry any more. Frank is relieved when she leaves, because then he can go back to his painting.

Fred sleeps in the bed that used to be George's and relives the last few moments of his former life, before their twinship was blasted in half by their own invention.

George laughs; George digs him knowingly in the ribs; George sings a comical lament as he wanders into the toilets. Then George's wand explodes and George isn't there any more. When Fred reaches him, he is only gobbets of roasting flesh and pools of fat oozing amongst the water on the floor.

≈

On the first day after Voldemort's death, Augusta and Neville have Algie and Enid round for dinner. Gran suggests that Neville might want to invite some people of his own age, but he shakes his head. He imagines that Ginny, Hermione and the rest feel as little like company as he does, and anyway, they have each other.

Not wanting to place more demands on her overburdened hosts, Hermione takes refuge in the garden shed to weep. Ron - who has never willingly let her out of his sight in the past year - follows her, and they hold each other and cry a lot, and then kiss a lot, which somehow leads to more crying. But Ron knows that they'll be all right, because how could anything this good not be all right?

Rufus Scrimgeour watches Harry from behind a cup of Earl Grey and offers him the Order of Merlin, First Class.

"Are you going to give it to Ron and Hermione?" Harry asks, sitting up. "Or Parvati, or Colin, or Remus Lupin? Or Sirius Black? Fred and George?"

Scrimgeour interrupts his litany, saying smoothly that the Ministry is considering all possibilities at present. But Harry's right to recognition is obvious, and so here is the Minister for Magic to give him the good news in person.

Harry shrugs and tells Scrimgeour he'll accept his award when all the others get theirs. Then he walks out, leaving Mr Weasley to make his apologies to the Minister.

Arthur Weasley watches his children and their ghosts and feels lost. The house is fuller than it has been in years, but also quieter. Fleur tiptoes around Molly, who tiptoes around Fred, and everyone tiptoes around Harry. Arthur wants to sit them all down and say, "It is terrible, it will pass," but the silence is embedded in the very stones of the house.

On Moody's orders, the twins had calculated the impact precisely to ensure that only the victim would be hurt. Fred wonders who passed the explosives to the enemy. He makes endless mental lists, but one misgiving leads to another until he finds himself including Ron and Ginny among the suspects. He gives up.

Fleur observes them all, her hands on her belly for protection. She wants to reach out to them all, to say, "Look, here is hope," but her bump feels obscene, not hopeful after all, and if she isn't careful, she might lose herself in nightmares about the monster gnawing itself free.

Bill is summoned to St Mungo's again to be inspected by several Healers and the usual Ministry representative. "Of course we know you're not a werewolf, Weasley," he is assured genially, "but it doesn't hurt to be on the safe side, does it?"

Nymphadora Tonks sits by Remus's bed, hair carefully pink in case he rouses again, and tries not to wonder what sort of man she'll have if they ever let him out of here.

Remus wanders the tunnels that lead in and out of Hogwarts, James and Lily flanking him. James is bouncing around as he demonstrates some move Harry made in the recent Quidditch match against Ravenclaw. When they meet Peter coming the other way, he agrees with James that Harry is certainly slated for England in the near future. Then Peter transforms, with James following suit, and Remus can feel the wolf coming no matter how hard he fights it.

≈

On the second day, Neville rouses himself and goes to visit his parents. He explains what has happened, even though he knows Gran has already done so, and then finds himself confronting their uncomprehending gazes. Suddenly it's unbearable.

"Mum?" he asks. "Dad? Are you - please give me a sign that you're there." They stare back at him for a minute or two, and then Frank wanders off to pick at the jigsaw Gran brought in years ago, after Neville finished with it.

Neville kisses his mum and leaves.

Alice hands the nice young man a scrap of paper and thinks how pleasant it is to have visitors. She remembers the pretty young lady who asked her a lot of questions yesterday, and decides that she likes this lad better.

In a private room three floors down, Tonks listens to Remus's murmurs and wonders if she can ever be enough for a man who's gone through so much. She's doing her damndest, though, starting with the pink hair and the camp bed she's persuaded the nurses to install between Remus and the door.

They lock them in at night. Tonks doesn't mind - she feels safer with Remus than she does alone in her flat.

There are more reporters than gnomes in the Weasleys' garden. With a bleak look at them, Harry Apparates to the Ministry and proceeds unchallenged to Scrimgeour's office.

"I've drawn up a list," he says as Scrimgeour looks up from his paperwork. "All these people - their achievements need to be recognised. Then I'll take your Order of Merlin." He turns away before Scrimgeour can reply, leaving the parchment face up on the desk.

George's funeral is a miserable affair. Mr Weasley makes a speech - a good one, which is reported sensitively in the Daily Prophet on the following day - but most of his family are too preoccupied to take it in. Fred allows his mother to hold his hand tightly, even though it feels as if she's cutting off the circulation in his fingers. Pain is better than nothing.

≈

On the third day, Augusta brushes off reporters as she leaves St Mungo's, and again in her front garden. She plumps into an armchair with a sigh of relief, and begins browsing through Witch Weekly for interesting articles to show Alice next time she goes in.

Remus is five and terrified. People keep staring at him: his parents, the Healers, and a couple of men who take photographs. Most of the Healers are kind, but one lady pulls him about roughly when his parents aren't there.

"I'm not an animal, you know!" he protests once. She just shrugs.

"That's all you know, my little werewolf."

Suddenly the nightmare of a few days ago comes back to him and he screams and screams, until they shake him, calling, "Remus! Remus, it's all right, it's all right!"

But it isn't all right. He opens his eyes and meets Tonks's violet ones. "I'm a werewolf," he whispers.

"I don't care!" she says, and her tears drip onto his cheek.

"Phoenix tears," he thinks, and sleeps again.

Peter curls in a corner of his cell, wondering what they'll do to him. He didn't really expect to get this far: most traitors in Voldemort's ranks have minutes at most when they reveal themselves. He supposes he should hope that Harry's side gets to him first.

In the cell two doors down, Severus Snape is thinking about his mother. A guard - human - pushes some porridge through, and bread, and then lingers. "If it was up to me, you wouldn't be getting anything, you fucking traitor. You'll be dead in a week, anyway."

Severus doesn't bother to respond, or to eat.

Molly almost ignores the knock at the door, because it'll be a reporter; they're always reporters. But she glances into the spyglass and sees her son looking lost amidst the curious journalists.

She drags the door wide and pulls him inside. "Come in," she whispers, shutting out the magpie-like throng and turning to face her son.

Percy's skin is paler than she remembers it, and his glasses are foggy.

"I -" His voice cracks and he tries again. "I heard about George, Mum, and I had to come, I'm so sorry -"

That's all Molly needs to usher him into her arms; seconds later they are both weeping and she's not sure who is comforting whom, but that's irrelevant.

Ginny finds Harry in the shed by dint of Apparating there to see if he has done the same. He is messing around with some of her dad's plugs, picking at the wires protruding from several of them. He looks up at her arrival but makes no sound, of protest or otherwise.

"Remind you of home?" she asks only half-jokingly when the silence has stretched far too thinly.

Harry shrugs. "I used to hate them, you know?" He pulls at a wire, a red one, until it tears loose from its black casing. "I used to daydream about going back there and teaching them all a lesson - or at least showing them that I have friends here, whatever they thought of me. And now I just - don't care. I'm not interested."

Percy turns up for dinner, and Fred knows he should feel something, but he can't bring himself to care. Perce was his elder brother, the boring one who always knew best but was good for a few practical jokes. Now he's back, but George is gone, and that is not a fair exchange.

Ron and Hermione keep kissing, but somewhere along the line they stop crying. They touch each other constantly; each is like a lifeline to the other: proof that they've survived.

They're both worried about Harry, but Hermione suggests that perhaps they should leave him to Ginny for the time being, and Ron is glad to acquiesce. Being around Harry at the moment is like being near the epicentre of a storm that's about to break.

≈

On the fourth day, Neville enters the kitchen to find his grandmother snapping the blinds shut. From the table, the Daily Prophet proclaims: Is this how we treat our heroes?. His mother's face smiles timidly alongside an unflattering mugshot of his grandmother.

He scans the article, which makes much of the unkempt state in which the reporter apparently found his parents, and concludes with: "Voldemort is dead. But to what purpose, if our heroes are neglected, abandoned to callous institutional 'care'?"

They breakfast together in silence.

The doctors take Remus to the secure unit when the full moon approaches, although they have to forcibly disarm Tonks before they can do so. He's vulnerable, he's not even properly conscious yet, he could die in there, she shrieks, but all they do is shake their heads and say that they can't put other patients at risk - particularly not this risk.

When the Prophet arrives, Hermione is terribly upset. "Poor Neville, poor Mrs Longbottom," she repeats at intervals throughout the day. "Neville's poor parents, oh, it's such a horrible situation for everyone!"

Ron agrees. "We know they do their best - hey, we should invite Neville round, show a bit of solidarity!"

But then Tonks appears in floods of tears, and they turn their attention to the new emergency.

Percy doesn't apologise again, and he and Arthur do not speak of their previous disagreements. These things cut too deep, and neither of them wants to disturb the oasis of peace that exists between them at present.

Snape looks up to find Harry Potter being ushered into his cell. He gropes for an insult but can't quite summon the energy, so he waits instead for Potter to speak.

"Will you brew the Wolfsbane potion again?" Potter is out of breath, and his eyes behind his glasses have a feral light that Snape doesn't remember from Potions lessons, although he is unsurprised to observe it. They stare at one another until Potter repeats the question, adding, "I can get you out of here, if you'll do it."

Snape's mouth twists. "Bribery for your father's dear friend, Lupin? I don't think I can be bothered, Potter, and Albus is no longer here to force me."

Potter opens his mouth as if to argue, and then closes it again, turning towards the door. At the last moment, he turns back. "Why did you do it?"

"Do what? Kill Dumbledore? Work for the Order of the Phoenix? Work for the Death Eaters?" Snape looks down at the inscription he has been carving on the stone floor with a loose piece of flint. "You would never understand. You and your kind never will."

"Try me," suggests Harry, but Snape does not look up again.

≈

On the fifth day, Hermione begins to talk about her parents for the first time in weeks. She appeared to take their deaths rather well when the news caught up with them six months ago, but Ron, who heard her sobbing into her sleeping bag at night and watched the emergence of that little wrinkle above her right eye, knows differently.

Hermione isn't the only person who's suffered, though. She repeats this like a mantra, providing countless examples. "There are other people much worse off - look at those poor Ackerley boys, for example. Or Crabbe - I never liked him, but now he's probably going to be in care for the rest of his life. Think of Neville's parents, come to that - oh!"

Her face takes on an absent expression, and with a fervent kiss she is hurrying up the stairs, presumably to research something in one of the many books she has added to Ginny's bookshelves over the years.

"To what purpose?" asks Augusta, pulling off her hat. "My son is an empty shell - my son, whom I loved - and Alice used to be such a lovely girl. She was a wonderful mother, you know. Now look at them, and to what purpose? What was it all for?"

She sinks onto the sofa and begins to sob, painfully, unattractively, as if the tears are being wrenched one at a time from somewhere deep inside.

Neville sits beside her helplessly. He would love to tell her that these sacrifices have to be made; that some things are greater than human life. But he's not at all sure that he believes this.

The werewolf runs through the forest with his pack. Prey is scented; the werewolf jogs along, tracking the others at first, because he's never done this before - but then instinct takes over and he trails the meat, tongue slavering close to the ground.

Peter makes himself as small as possible, straining against the anti-transformation web that covers every inch of his cell. It makes no difference; she still knows he's there, and she's coming for him, he knows it.

"Wormtail!" Her voice is high and soft, like a mother calling for her children, but he knows that's just to lull him before she pounces. "Wormtail! Bella's looking for you."

Ice scrimps down his back, but he won't answer. He hasn't spoken a word in five days; he's not going to start now.

She hisses then, and he knows he was right. "I know you're there, Wormtail. I'll find you and you'll be begging me for death before I'm finished. You filthy little traitor!"

She finishes on a screech, and he covers his ears.

Today's visitor is Draco, clean and shaking in simple robes.

"They're letting me go," he announces.

"Good," replies Severus. "Take this chance, Draco. Don't waste it."

Draco stares at the ground, wrists twisting back and forth. "It should be me," he says eventually. "You're here because of me, because of Professor Dumbledore, aren't you?"

"I am here because I was a Death Eater," Severus answers.

"But you weren't," Draco argues. "At least, you were, but you're not like those other psychos. You protected me! And you were working for the other side, as well. They just want revenge on you because of Dumbledore."

"Time's up, Malfoy," a guard warns from behind the door. Draco shakes his head in frustration.

"Goodbye, Draco," says Severus. "Remember me to your mother. And don't waste your chance." For my sake remains unspoken.

"I'll get you out," promises Draco. "My mother still has friends in the Ministry - we'll get you out soon."

Scrimgeour visits the Weasleys again and politely tells Harry - and Ginny, who remained seated when the rest of the family left the room in deference to the visitor - that the Ministry cannot recognise the achievements of all the people on his list. Will Harry reconsider?

"No," says Harry.

Scrimgeour looks at him for a long time. "You'll be forgotten in a hundred years," he says at last. "You all will."

"So will you," Harry replies with a shrug.

Percy's siblings are harder to please than his parents, but he faces them one by one. Bill is the easiest: he simply claps Percy on the shoulder in a kind of aborted hug, saying, "All right, little bro?" and tells him Charlie will be home later, before proudly displaying Fleur and her bump.

Charlie greets Percy with a firm handshake and an expression that says there's more to come some time when they're not dealing with - well, everything that they're dealing with.

Fred barely seems to notice Percy's existence, and Percy, who has spent much of the last three years fulminating to himself over the cruel japes that marred his adolescence, finds this unnerving. Ron and Ginny are also distant, and Percy senses that he'll need to prove his loyalty to these two before they'll accept him back into the family.

≈

On the sixth day, the Owls begin arriving; assorted Howlers, but also letters of support, from both friends and people they've never met in their lives. Augusta hmphs when she sees the Prophet's Letters section, which is full of complaints about the handling of the article on the Longbottoms.

Luna floos Neville and asks if she can come over. He acquiesces because he can't think of a reason to refuse, or not one that she'll accept.

"Well, this is nice," she says, ignoring the dust on her t-shirt and the stifling dimness of the sitting room. "I came over because Father and I are off to the tropics! We'll mainly be hunting for bicorn eggs, but I thought I might bring you back some plant specimens, if you wanted. I bet there's loads of stuff out there that no one's ever really studied before." She waits until Neville nods.

"Lovely! We're not leaving until next week, so that gives you a few days to think about the kind of things you're interested in. Owl me your list when it's ready." She kisses him on the cheek and then leaves by the front door, to a cacophony of flash photography.

Despite himself, Neville begins listing flora in his mind.

Percy goes to work. Ron and Ginny roll their eyes, but Hermione and Bill defend him. "Some people just cope that way," says Bill, "and where would we be without them?"

Molly ushers Verity into the bedroom where Fred is sorting through some of the things he and George left when they moved into their own place. She waits for him to acknowledge her, but he just gazes at a dirty piece of parchment that looks like some kind of chart, and eventually she has to say his name.

Fred turns his head towards her slowly. "Verity." He smiles politely, and the contrast between this stranger and her fun-loving bosses almost breaks her resolve. Verity steels herself.

"Fred, I've come from the shop. We haven't sold much over the past few days - just party stuff, really - but I need help. I can't run the place by myself." Fred stares at her and she looks down. "I - I'm not expecting you to come back to work so soon - god, Fred, I can't imagine how you must be feeling. But if - if you could authorise me to take on someone temporarily, perhaps I could manage."

She blinks away tears desperately. Fred is still watching her with those blank eyes, and she wishes she hadn't come, but then he says, "Tomorrow."

"What?"

"Tomorrow. I'll come. We've got a lot of sorting out to do." She nods, and he turns back to the parchment. "Bye, Verity. Thanks for coming round."

Peter can hear Bellatrix again, closer this time, and silent. She's right outside the door, he thinks, and panic galvanises him. He has everything ready and he will not let them get him: for the second time in his life he's going to be the one in charge. There's a scrabbling on the other side of the door, and his breath comes in moans and gasps as he tries to ignore a mental image of Bellatrix borne towards him upon an army of snakes.

He won't let this happen.

They kill Severus Snape using a kind of improvised firing squad. Harry attends, and then uses his status as an untouchable to enter Snape's cell afterwards. It is bare, except for some crumpled black robes and the scratches on the floor.

≈

On the seventh day, Augusta opens her blinds and walks to St Mungo's.

Alice nods nervously at her in the corridor, and Augusta gives her a warm hug and a kiss on the cheek. She looks slightly stunned, so Augusta pats her hand and then shoos her in the direction of the dining room. It's breakfast time.

She finds Frank in the little room he shares with Alice; he is gazing at his pillow and doesn't look up when she knocks. So she hugs him, too: holds him tightly until his rigid muscles soften under her arms and he rests his head against her chest.

"My son," she says, looking down at him and kissing his forehead. "My son."

When she stands up, he places his hand in hers and she leads him out into the ward.

Hermione's head appears in the fireplace; she's flushed with excitement as she implores Neville to come over to The Burrow to discuss an idea she's had. "I think it's right up your street, it's about a charitable foundation for - ooh! Ron!" She glares at someone behind her and turns back to face Neville, blushing. "Please come, Neville! I'd really like to have your input." And she is gone.

Neville lays down his list of plants, throws down a pinch of Floo powder, and steps into the fireplace.

Harry smiles faintly as Ginny approaches, so that she is emboldened to catch at his hand.

"What are you up to?"

"I've been thinking," he says, drawing her down beside him on the sofa. "I'm not going to be an Auror - there are plenty of those about. What we need more of is justice." He hesitates. "I don't know what I'm going to do exactly, I'm not very good at talking, but I know I want to fight for justice with words, not wands."

He looks comically earnest, but she's so relieved and happy to see him back in the moment again, instead of preoccupied with horrific memories, that she kisses him. He blinks and kisses her back, and suddenly they are grinning at one another and Ginny can feel tears close to surface. Harry's fingers graze her cheek as he pulls her in close, and suddenly they are all frantic hands and lips and noses bumping and pulling and pushing at one another. The crumpled piece of parchment that he has been mulling over all day falls to the floor, and Harry's angry black scrawl declares Snape's self-proclaimed epitaph:

To have true freedom is to do what is right, not what is easy.

The guard opens the door, takes a step inside and turns back, coughing queasily into his hand. His colleague moves gingerly around him and into the dimness.

"Mad, poor bugger," he says. "They say Azkaban used to do that to everyone." He swallows down firmly on the bile that has risen in his throat. "Bloody hell, I hope they get some proper guards trained up for this soon. I didn't spend all those years training to be an Auror to rot in this place."

"We should - clean him up," the first man says indistinctly.

"Yeah…" The other moves further into the cell, wand ahead of him like a torch, until he reaches the indistinct bundle that was, until recently, a person. Passing the light over Peter's eyes, he recoils; they are wild and still bloodshot. Then discipline takes over, and he reaches out to close the eyes gently.

He hurries back towards the door. "We need to go and report this." Unspoken is the hope that by reporting the incident, they will make it someone else's business - that they will be permitted to go about their work and forget Peter Pettigrew if they can.

The heavy door closes quietly, and Peter is finally alone.

When Remus wakes, he can still taste the blood, but it's all right because Tonks is there again, and there's a firm light in her eyes that he's never noticed before. He tries to smile and feels cuts cracking across his face; her own smile slips, but in half a second it's back in place.

"Come on, my darlin'," she says, holding her wand over his face so that he feels the familiar itch of wounds disappearing, "we're going home."

"Where is home?" asks Remus, who hasn't had one in years except for with the werewolves and number twelve, Grimmauld Place.

Tonks hesitates, before saying, "Well, I meant my home. Just until you're better. Then you can go wherever you like."

"Your place will do for starters," he offers and cracks that painful smile again.