A Chance You Only Get Once

Children rarely grow up until they are forced. It's why spoiled brats remain immature most or all of their lives. However, even the great ones are slow to change, slow to assume the great fate that destiny has in store until they meet their inspiration and their first tragedy.

Hogwarts seems a fairyland to the eyes of an eleven-year-old. Especially the Muggleborn but even the child of the purest blood sees Hogwarts Castle as the fulfillment of every childhood dream - every fantasy, every game that up until now was only imaginary. But Hogwarts, for good and ill, is a very real place, with all the ordinary and extraordinary troubles of any imaginary world.

Subtelty was never the strong suit of the Marauders. Or any of the fifth year Gryffindors. In fact, little about the wizarding world is subtle. It's more fun that way.

Marissa knew that she couldn't keep Mundungus a secret for long, but she didn't think that it would all explode in her face quite so soon because of something that seemed so small at the time. But then, a single stone can start an avalanche. And she has been playing with fire.

When people tell Marissa that she has her mother's eyes, she doesn't glow with pride. She just misses the woman who kept her world still. But just who all sees her mother in Marissa when they see her laughing smile? Will Mundungus be around to see it much longer?

Valentine's Day may be just the thing to cheer Marissa Fletcher up, and she'll have a job convincing the rest of the castle to do so as well. Lockhart's mad he didn't get to do the decorations, Karkaroff's mad at Sirius, Gideon and Lizzie are fighting, Lily and James too (surprise surprise), and Peter can't get over the fact that Marissa doesn't love him back.

Gideon won't talk to Lizzie, Snape talks too much to Marissa, the Head Boy and Girl duck out of a Quidditch Match and lingering distaste for Quidditch itself is revealed...they really should have stuck to "the weather's fine."

Peter's always felt out, but now he is beyond a doubt the center of attention, just not quite in the way that he had hoped. But how could chaos be avoided when on the last night before Easter Holidays not only are the Marauders sneaking out with Snape on their tail but Lily and Dennis plan a romantic evening gone awry and Lizzie and Marissa plan their final entrapment of Gideon Prewett? Just throw in a caretaker who can't bear it if he sees one more rat and you have. . .a rat race.

It's the Easter Holidays and everyone's going home, to varying amounts of excitement from their families. Witness Petunia's grudge and the first appearance of Uncle Vernon, Regulus's recruitment, the impending divorce of the Pettigrews, how Remus gets by on full moons at home, and the return of Mundungus. Not to mention the birth of the infamous Mrs Norris.

O.W.L. frenzy has descended on our beloved fifth years, and the stress is getting to everyone. As the tests draw nearer and even James and Sirius are studying, everything from friendships to old hatreds are strained. In this mess, it stops being only their marks that they fear may not survive the O.W.L.s.

Exams are here and just about the only Arithmancy equation that makes any sense is O.W.L.s = chaos.

Sometimes life boils down to just the things that you know will always be true. Sometimes these things become the most important thing to us, even when they tortured us or annoyed us. Someday, we may look back on the things we thought we hated and sigh that we had something so wonderful: something that you could depend on to be true. Even if it was Lily and James fighting or that Voldemort will always be looking for you or that you and your family will never work out again or that you will always have this time, when you were not alone. But how do these things get to be known? How do you trust enough to let them become true?

Sometimes there is only one way out. Sirius only has one way out of his family. Marissa only had one way out of Muggle society. And for Lizzie Walker, there is only one way out of danger. Which of them will make it?

In every life, in every story, there is a moment that changes everything. They can take us by storm or they can slip by without us knowing that they have changed everything. But they shatter the old world just as surely either way.

After some events, things can never go back to the way they were before. After some trials, you don't feel like you can ever be carefree again. When everything changes, you can never go back. All you can do is figure out what you've lost in the carnage ... and how to live without it.

There comes a point in the darkness when you can't bemoan your situation any longer. You have to take steps to live with the consequences of your actions. This moment and the choices you make sometimes mean more about who you are then how you dealt with the crisis in the first place. Will you think of the cost to others or yourself at that crucial moment? What choices will you make?

The Marauders have had a very hard summer. So they do something a little drastic to try and bring back their once ready smiles. But can things ever really go back to normal after everything that's happened? Or are the carefree days of fifth year a thing of the past? These are questions for another day. For the train ride, they'll pretend like nothing has changed.

Voldemort's greatest victory was not the elimination of the greatest witches and wizards of the age or his great siege of Diagon Alley or his hostile takeover of half the wizarding industries. It was not even recruiting brilliant followers. His greatest victory was the lack of trust that he created, the friendships and families that he tore apart even when he didn't actively try to. His image was enough. And it wasn't like they didn't have warning that it was going to happen, but the people who saw it coming were the very ones accused of conspiring with the enemy. The divisive force was unstoppable.

Discretion is perhaps the rarest quality in humankind. Someone who will keep a secret absolutely is rarer than any of us would like to believe. The trouble is, that it only takes one thing to become trustworthy. That's something hard for human beings to face. The only things necessary to inspire it is belief in a cause or love for a person.

No. Snape is not taking it well. No. Lily can't get over it. No. Some grudges don't fade with time. No. Peter will not tell them THAT. Well, there will be plenty of sparks flying at the very least. And one of Marissa's dearest held maxims will probably have to fly out of the window. Sometimes, everybody just can't get along. Sometimes, people can't be friends.

Secrets are a dangerous and deadly thing. They destroy trust and shatter friendship. They kill relationships. They eat away at your heart. They twist around in your mind and strangle all other thoughts. They make your conscience hoarse with shouting. They also protect. That's what's so very tricky about them. They can be just as deadly when they are released.

In the days of Voldemort, the world was full of news that no one ever wanted to hear. Everyone wished to hide from news. Denial was the greatest blessing around. Secrets protected in this era, but they could never survive long.

The name "Death Eaters" was not invented by Voldemort or those who bore the title. It was created by a frightened population because Voldemort seemed to feed on their terror and death and suffering. He grew stronger with it. In such a time, moments of happiness were few and far between. All hoped seemed stolen. In such a time and in such a world, Marissa isn't the only one to steal from death and despair.

Looking back on Hogwarts days, the Marauders and Lily will decide that those years were an illusion of safety only paper thin. That their childhoods were protected by very fragile walls. They will wonder what they would have done differently if they had known that it could shatter at any moment. They will wonder how it felt to Marissa who had known. They will look at the scars the breaking glass cut when the world caved in around them and try to remember what it felt like to be without the deep wounds. They will wonder how they ever could have believed that forgiveness, laughter and love could be obtained so easily. Most of all, they will wonder that they ever could have been so carefree, so easily comforted, and so very young.

At Hogwarts, red and green are the colors of ancient and automatic enemies. In the hands of a Dark Wizard, they are the colors of life and death. They bring to mind many pictures: a new grown leaf and a speck of blood, two curses meeting in midair as Harry Potter and Lord Voldemort duel, a basilisk fighting a pheonix, the Killing Curse rushing forward to hit a red-haired witch as she dives in front of her child. Eventually, they will be the eyes of two wizards meeting, who cannot live while the other survives. But long after that inevitable confrontation, long after Hogwarts is rubble, they will still be the colors of Christmas and the colors of life and death.

We all start out with a clean, whole piece of glass. Things happen and mean people leave smudges and fingerprints. Ideals are shaken and tiny surface-cracks appear in the glass. Traumatic, frightening things happen, and it cracks. No one leaves childhood with a clean, whole piece of glass. But sometimes, something happens when someone you loved and depended on and needed so desperately disappears in an instant that shatters the glass completely into a thousand different pieces. Then the glass plane that was your childhood is gone forever.

There are some things that death does not erase. It takes nearly everything, but not the life that the person lived before their death. Not the thousand of ways that they have touched those around them for good or ill.

The Furies were three sisters who delighted in causing pain. They were employed by the gods who used them to punish injustice. They knew no mercy and heard no excuses. They never paused to confirm the charge. Theirs was the harshest kind of vengeance. In a school that teaches a world controlled by the language in which these sister first gained renown, where names of people and places still echo the ancient culture that first conceived of them, is it any surprise when they rear their ugly heads? Dennis Wemmick learned when he broke up with Lily Evans the power of the wrath of the Marauders, and all he destroyed was Lily's reputation. Now, the Marauders are not simply jealous and outraged but half-mad with grief and anger.

Marissa Fletcher always gave forgiveness freely, deserved or undeserved. She gave it so easily because she always made an effort to understand people. But if that is what allows forgiveness to be cheap, what about between people who can never understand each other? What about someone who closes himself off from ever getting close enough to understand anyone again? Who instead wants to make war on the whole world?

It's been a year since Marissa Fletcher died. It takes each of her friends a different amount of time to recover. Lily and James and Sirius have managed to build over the wreckage and start new lives. Peter has a new life, whether he wants it or not. Remus, well, Remus took a great deal longer than the rest of them.

If you drop a small stone in a stone pond, the ripples spread and grow smaller and wider. It becomes harder and harder to distinguish them as they grow, but they never stop moving along the surface of the pond, affecting everything in it from the surface to what lies beneath it, long after the ripples are visible to the human eye.