Theirs Not to Reason Why

Once, they would have been told 'You're too young'. The adults would have tried to protect them, to shield them. The adults had said that, had tried. It was too late for that sort of thing now. They weren't too young anymore; they'd forgotten what that was, remembered only vaguely that other life, where they'd been teenagers, had crushes, played Quidditch, worried about homework and tests.

In chronological terms, they were still teenagers. That didn't count for anything, now. They were warriors. They loved passionately and played to win, because losing just wasn't an option. They knew that to lose meant to die, but they had lost so many that sometimes it seemed that death was perhaps the better option, and sometimes they thought almost longingly of being free from pain and fear and the deep, heavy fatigue that couldn't be slept off, but knew that they had to remain alive for as long as possible, resisting, fighting, helping each other to keep to the long road they had to walk. They needed each other more than they had ever needed anything; they were parts of a whole; a weary legion of battle-scarred soldiers.

Most of them were sleeping now, uncomfortably, sometimes crying out in their sleep, confronted by the horrors that would never leave them. Nights were long, and black, when those who didn't sleep had to stare into the darkness and think.

The three sentries sat upright, stiffly, willing themselves to remain awake, to remain focused on their last Foe Glass and other Dark detectors, trying to see anything in the darkness that could be the enemy, waiting, hopeless, left to listen to the others cry out in their sleep.

Lavender Brown rested her chin on her drawn-up knees and wrapped her cloak a little tighter about her, glancing at the Foe Glass then out into the darkness again. They were in a desolate area of the Yorkshire moors that had been rendered Unplottable and placed under a Fidelius Charm, not that that sort of thing would stop Death Eaters from stumbling across them in the dark. The fact that they slept under the stars made Lavender feel just that bit more vulnerable: had they been in some kind of shelter, she'd have felt, irrationally, that they'd be safer. But they'd known, the day they'd chosen to leave the charmed walls of Hogwarts, that they were leaving the safest wizarding place in Britain.

Lavender glanced around at her schoolmates, the people who had become her family, an extension of her body. Her biological family were Muggles. They didn't understand about the war or why Lavender had chosen to fight. They tried, but that gulf was uncrossable. These people were her family, now. Family took on a whole different meaning when you were in a war zone. Your family was the people you risked your life for; the people who knew the little things about you that most people didn't bother to notice.

Pressed close together on the ground, Lavender's family looked like so many dead bodies clustered together under a few thin blankets. They'd left Hogwarts a team of twelve; they were down to nine. They'd lost Hannah, Terry and Colin, three people who had never had a chance to live, marry, have a family. We can't lose any more people.

They'd known that there was zero chance of all twelve of them coming home alive. Minerva McGonagall and Arthur Weasley had spelt out the risks as they'd sat in the Hogwarts Great Hall, the youngest of the trusted volunteers. No one had been forced to walk out those gates. They'd each chosen to make their sacrifices in the hope that the world would be rid of the scourge of Lord Voldemort, and that even if they lost their own lives the others would go on.

Lavender thought that perhaps the going on was worse than the dying. She knew she wasn't the only one. She remembered when Remus Lupin and Bill Weasley had come to them with supplies, instructions, and the gravest of looks on their faces. Lupin had stood with them as Bill had taken Ron, Ginny, Harry and Hermione off, then turned to them and told them that Ron and Ginny's twin brothers, Fred and George, had been tortured and killed by Death Eaters, along with their wives, Angelina and Katie, and George's baby daughter, Rose. In shock, they heard Ron swear, angrily, desperately, saw Hermione, tears running down her face, grab him and hold him and rock him like a baby. They saw Ginny drop to the ground, obviously in tears, saw Harry sink to his knees and try to comfort her, saw Ron and Hermione join them on the ground, clutching each other, and heard the sobs.

Colin had sworn too, then, because Colin had been alive then. Lupin had just looked at them with the face of an old man and hugged each of them fiercely. Lavender remembered how Seamus had taken her hand and gripped it tightly, how Susan had stood there, shaking, how each of them had been glad it wasn't one of their relatives, but felt guilty because it had been the twins and Angelina and Katie and they had felt glad.

Lupin told them that he and Bill, and Minerva McGonagall, had been with Arthur Weasley when a Howler arrived with the morning mail. They'd all expected it to be the usual complaint about how Arthur and Minerva were handling the war effort. Instead, the last moments of the twins and their families had filled Arthur's small office at Hogwarts: Katie, begging for the life of her baby; the twins trying desperately to curse the Death Eaters who'd surrounded them; the cool, hard voice of Lucius Malfoy ordering his subordinates to torture them all; the screams; a chilling silence; Fred obviously succeeding in killing a Death Eater because Malfoy killed Angelina and then baby Rose; Fred and Katie sobbing in anguish, George pleading with the Death Eaters to do whatever they wanted to him but to let Katie live; Katie's broken voice saying that she couldn't live without George and their baby and Lucius Malfoy's hard, cruel voice killing them, one by one.

At the time, Lavender had wondered why Lupin had told them all that. As he spoke she'd heard Katie's voice in her head, imagining the words: Don't kill Rose. Please. Kill me, you can kill me, but don't touch Rosie. Please, oh please. Don't hurt her, don't hurt my baby. I can't live without you and Rosie, George. Katie had been a year older, but she'd been a friend of Lavender's. She and Angelina had married George and Fred in a hasty double wedding, knowing that any of them could die any day. They should have grown old together, the four of them, not been buried together when they were only just out of their teens.

Lavender had thought Lupin was torturing them unnecessarily with the image of Arthur forced to hear the things no parent should hear. It wasn't until later, after Colin had died, that she realised he'd been torturing himself. She'd done that too, going over and over Colin's last moments in her mind, dwelling on the horrors to punish herself for the guilt of surviving.

After Lupin had left them that evening Ron, Ginny, Hermione and Harry had rejoined the rest of the group. The ten of them had sat in a tight circle, silent, trying to draw comfort from each other. They'd sat like that for almost two hours when suddenly Ginny had cried out. Sometimes I don't want to live, she'd cried. Sometimes I just wish I could die. It's not fair. The twins shouldn't have died; they were my brothers. I hate this whole bloody war. They'd all understood what Ginny was feeling because they'd felt it themselves. This was the first time anyone had said those words aloud. I just wish I could die.

Hermione had slowly raised her head from Ron's shoulder and looked round at them all. "We can't give up. None of us can. We all need each other now... we're all family now. We've got to fight until we die, or until we win. If we take the easy way out... maybe more people will die because of it. No matter how hard it gets we've just got to keep going. We've got each other, we have to look out for each other."

They fought on. Three weeks after that night, they lost Colin in a raid on a Death Eater camp with two other groups. Theirs had come off lightly; they'd only lost one person. A team of ten had lost four.

It was the deaths that made them want to give up; at the same time it was the deaths that made them keep going. Hannah, Terry, Colin. Fred, Angelina, George, Katie, Rose. Lavender had promised herself that she wouldn't let them die in vain.

Now, as the others slept, that thought was the only thing that kept her going.

Lavender checked the Foe Glass again. Nothing. She remembered the days when she and Parvati had checked their dorm mirror every few minutes, in that long ago dream world of Hogwarts. Well, Parvati and Padma had been made by their parents to sit out the war in India, and Lavender hadn't looked in a mirror for weeks.

"Time for shift change, guys," Seamus whispered. With movements born of long experience, Lavender, Seamus and Anthony woke Harry, Ginny and Susan, then took their places under the blankets.

Lavender closed her eyes, listening to Ginny murmuring to Ron, who was muttering something anguished in his sleep. Seamus wrapped his arm round her waist and she pressed her face against his shoulder. She'd fancied Seamus once, as he told jokes in the common room in his broad Irish accent. Now she knew she loved him. Whether it was romantic love or not only time would tell, if they only got the chance. If they'd learnt anything, it was that life could be snatched in an instant.

They'd be going into battle tomorrow; the most important one they'd yet fought. This could knock out the heart of the Death Eaters and bring them that one step closer to Voldemort. Somewhere in the darkness were five other teams, families, like theirs. They didn't know who'd be there tomorrow. Maybe old friends; maybe complete strangers. All people fighting for the same thing they were.

Some would die tomorrow. Others would live. In the world Lavender now inhabited, there was only a minute difference between the states of life and death. She lay there in the darkness, listening to Seamus's breathing, Ron's frantic, agonised mutterings. Tomorrow they'd fight. Live or die, it was because they had to do it for each other and for the whole vague, intangible world.

They were warriors, the nine of them. They were warriors and they were family. They should have been teenagers, but that's not always an option in a world at war. They'd made an adult decision and faced the adult consequences - life bore a whole new meaning now.

Lavender Brown, who had never wanted to be a warrior, opened her eyes and looked up into the dark sky above her. Fear had long since ceased to be a choice. Biting her lip firmly, she pressed closer to Seamus for warmth and comfort, and pleaded with the powers that be to let them all live, this precious group, and to let them win. Because despite the brave fighting talk, the thoughts, they were running on desperation, fueled by the loss of loved ones. They had to win this war soon, but until they did, Lavender would keep fighting.

It wasn't a comforting thought. Lavender knew, if she managed to sleep, there'd be nightmares. After all, she was only eighteen, and she was scared.