One Day

One Day

(Ron Weasley sits on the sofa with his eldest son, Caimen, who will be seven in December. There are a few other young ones, one or two his, one or two Fred's, and Bill's twins. A few are actually Remus and Tonks' as well. There are photo albums spread out in the living room and the adults are telling stories behind them, telling this new generation about all those who have gone before, who died to give them all a future. Caimen is pointing at a picture taken of Ron, Hermione, and Harry moments after the three had graduated from Hogwarts. Ron is looking at the picture on the other page, of two gravestones surrounded by a field of wildflowers and a weeping willow.)

~*~

A life isn't supposed to encompass all of one day.

Everyone deserves, at the least, to reach adulthood, right?

I mean, never once have I expected not to make it that far, and I was best mates with the Boy Who Lived, the Man Who Conquered, the Chosen One, the One Who Loved and Lost.

Merlin, Sweet Merlin, Harry always hated those names. We used to make it a game, Dean, Seamus, and I... coming up with all sorts of different 'titles' for him. There were a few I had to beat up Seamus for... The Boy Who Shagged His Best Mate's Little Sister... he was only lucky that he waited until after they got married to venture that one... It was the only reason I let Hermione hold me back.

~*~

Honestly, no one's life should encompass all of one day.

Everyone deserves the chance at friendship and love of all types and a detention with Snape and winning a Quidditch match and passing classes and graduating from Hogwarts and getting married and holding one's child and having a job to make you proud. You can't get all that into one day. It just isn't possible.

And of course, I've forgotten all about being targeted by Dark Lords, yearly battles for one's life, loss of loved ones through different ways, what war took from one's humanity, and how to make it through all of that and still be one of the bloody best and decent men I've ever had the fortune to know.

I don't know how Harry did it... There's no way I would have made it through so well, which is probably why I forgave him so much.

~*~

Like I said, a life shouldn't encompass all of one day.

You can't appreciate the world in one day, the beauty of a sunrise (stinking double-A getting me up to see it every day for three years) or of a sunset as the stars come out to glitter and shine above you.

There are so many places one needs to go, in Nature and out. The sea shore, the middle of an old forest, the top of a mountain, the bottom of a valley, the shore of a lake, the middle of the ocean, the Three Broomsticks on a Friday night, Hogwarts at Christmas, the Burrow during the summer holidays, Diagon Alley right before term, Ollivander's for your first wand.

You'd need more than one year to really fully appreciate all of that, more than a single season of Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter to understand what those words truly mean and you can't fit those years into one day.

Harry used to say Hermione and I didn't have to stay for Christmas every school year, but I always enjoyed it so much. Hogwarts was beautiful at Christmas... is beautiful at Christmas.

The Burrow, I know it was some of Harry's best memories, and I miss it so much. It seemed to be the first thing to fall apart in my family.

~*~

No one deserves a life that only encompasses one day.

My dad was given almost fifty-three years of life, Bill almost thirty. It wasn't enough, for either of them.

Bill never knew his twin sons, never knew he'd become a dad.

Dad never got to walk Ginny down the aisle or hold any of his grandkids. Of course, Ginny walked down the aisle a bit sooner than even she had expected, earlier than Harry had been ready for. And, I haven't ever been able to hate him for it. He had needed her comfort that summer.

Killing Voldemort, even as he did, had really affected Harry. He couldn't remember humanity, he had come close to losing it a few times and this one act had seemed to make it impossible for him to keep it together. Not that he ever tried to kill himself again, no... he just... lived... in the most general meaning of that term.

Survived, might be a better word.

Eek'ed out an existence until Ginny forced him to remember. Can't really fault them... I think they were the most surprised, a couple months later, married, expecting a child, Ginny unable to finish Hogwarts, Harry still without a job to make him feel productive.

~*~

A day is not a life, it isn't enough.

A person couldn't find out how absolutely annoying dorming with other slobs are. Couldn't find out how horrible potions was with Professor Snape. Couldn't experiment to see how thin Professor McGonagall's lips could go when she was angry. Couldn't discover how flammable Hagrid's hut could be and how Fang was a sissy on the inside. Couldn't watch as Professor Flitwick got so excited when a student succeeded that he fell off his pile of books.

Of course, of those professors, only Uncle Severus is alive. I don't think he's too glad of that fact either. I know his past haunts him, and I know how he would trade his life for any one of those three others, for even Bill's. He doesn't realize how much Hogwarts and her students count on him as the Headmaster.

I have no idea how Harry accomplished that. Probably used just a touch of his celebrity status and gotten it done. Though, when did he do it? Probably that one thing he did right after, before the lifelessness set in. He never did tell us what he'd done, that one thing.

~*~

How can that be the length of a life, that one day?

How can that be fair?

Ginny was able to finish Hogwarts up through December, though the rumors almost killed her. It couldn't be kept a secret. Bloody Harry Potter, Savior of the War, got married to his girlfriend, a seventh year at Hogwarts. And why? Well, there really was only one possible reason. It would have made Rita Skeeter's life if she had still been alive to write the gossip column.

Ginny Potter.

She had been too with-child to sit for the N.E.W.T.'s though she continued her studies, Harry ended up tutoring her those months. The plan was for her to take it the next year; lots of people re-sat exams if they needed better scores or have studied another subject in the mean time. Of course... they tend not to take all of their N.E.W.T.'s, but that was beyond the point.

Harry was so proud of her, he almost seemed normal for the first time since the end of the War.

Alive.

His eyes twinkled. He laughed and was always smiling. He was always watching Ginny when she was in the room. I couldn't count all the times I caught Harry touching Ginny's growing stomach, overjoyed and overawed at the life growing inside of her.

His child.

Their firstborn.

They were so happy.

~*~

That one day, it wasn't fair that a person's life contain only the events of one day.

They wouldn't be good events, wouldn't be events worth remembering.

No lazy evenings surrounded by friends and family. Really, no friends either; a day wasn't long enough to make friends. No quiet evenings camping with family, vacationing with them, no loud evenings passed around a dinning room table.

A day spent in St. Mungo's.

Charms and spells and potions.

Strangers.

Noise.

Fear.

Rushing.

Crying.

Terror.

If a day was all the child was to be given, it should have been at her mother's breast, her father caressing away her fear.

But... it couldn't be that.

Ginny wasn't able to give any comfort, she had her own treatment of charms and spells and potions. She was too young, they said, too small, her hips weren't wide enough, she's still not fully recovered from the War. They had been saying it from the start. Ginny had always been a slip of a girl. She had been playing with potion ingredients all fall, trying to distract herself and Uncle Severus. Who knows what it was in the end. I'm sure the Healers do, but I didn't want to know.

Five days in labor, I don't know how I made it through, let a lone Harry. But we've already covered that Harry's stronger than I am.

He was at her side, wouldn't leave it when he was told to, ordered to. He just stood up to his full height, which was more than a physical height, it was a magical height and something else as well, and told them no.

"I'm not leaving her!"

And that was that.

~*~

That one, short, painful day.

Born shortly after midnight, May Twenty-eighth, Ginny giving one last cry of desperation.

The babe took a long time to cry, to make any sound and when she did it was the tiniest of whimpers.

They rushed her off and took Ginny elsewhere.

They left Harry in the corridor, looking from right to left, undecided.

Go left and worry about the small life you helped create or go right and take care of the love of your life?

He ended up not making the choice. Sat down, right where he was. Stopped every Healer and assistant that passed, asking them. And they always answered, even if it was a short, "I don't know!"

It was such a long day. The sun rose, though we were all too worried to notice it until it was high in the sky. Hermione was urged to go eat, a couple months pregnant herself. Hermione Weasley as of December Thirty-first that past year. Those girls were excited to be so close, to have kids so near each other in age. Not that they'd be in the same year once at Hogwarts, but that was years to come, at least that's what we had all thought then.

We didn't think the life would only last all of one day, not in our worst nightmares.

~*~

"Thank you for coming to the funeral of my niece and Goddaughter, Larena Ginevra Lily Aithne Potter. Given only a day to live, not even twenty-four hours, but she has done so much, and taken so much. Her mother loved her completely. Her father came back to life with the news of her small form growing. Our families healed after the War. But she took so much as well. Ginny gave her life trying to give this little one her own chance. Harry lost a wife and a daughter. I can't fault her, it wasn't her fault, it wasn't anyone's. A day isn't enough for a life, but it was all Larena was granted. Let us join together in our grief and in that way give each other comfort."

~*~

That short day had been the longest in my life and the only one of hers.

It had been a double funeral, in the end, several days later, the first day of June. Harry spoke at Ginny's pyre without problems, and managed something for Larena's.

Of a family of nine (ten if you count Harry), my family is now down to Mum, Fred, and me.

Dad and Bill died in the War, Dad at the Second Battle for Hogsmeade, Bill in the Final Battle.

Ginny died from complications related to childbirth not even a year after the War ended.

Charlie and Percy are still alive, if it can be called life, insanity from Cruciatus exposure.

George is with them on the Closed Ward, a victim of a Dementor's Kiss.

Harry pays for all of it. He's also set up a magical orphanage for the youngest survivors of the War. He doesn't do anything but fund it though.

I haven't seen him in years. Not since the funeral, actually.

~*~

Because of that day, my oldest son doesn't have a Godfather, though Harry is the unofficial one, if he even received that owl from me. Pig said he had delivered it, once Hermione was able to ask. Caimen often asks about the third one of the trio in all the pictures of his mum and dad.

"That's Harry, your Godfather, the greatest friend we ever had."

"Is he with Aunt Ginny?"

This is a new question and it stumps me.

I guess... he is... in a way.

That one day, the only day Larena Ginevra Lily Aithne Potter lived, was the last day Harry James Potter did.

The last day he could.

Every night I ask Ginny to send him back to us. There are nieces and nephews that need their uncle. There are friends and classmates that need their anchor. There are friends and family that need to see his twinkling eyes once more. There's Hermione and me, needing to hear his laugh again. Mum, who lost a granddaughter, a daughter, and a son that day, feels like she let him down someway.

Where ever he is, Ginny, please let him live one day and then another and then another... please...

"No, he's off healing somewhere," I heard myself answer. "He'll be home someday."

Everyone looks up at my words, Hermione's eyes filled with tears. She's cursing the hormones as she's pregnant with our third child at the moment.

No one wants to believe, no one wants to hope.

What if he never comes?

But, we only kept going throughout the War because of the hope of a "Some Day" and it was what would keep us going now. Ginny will lead him back and Harry will return.

One day.

~*~

One day just isn't long enough to live. Harry's got to live so that Larena's life isn't only one day.

That was the simple truth of the situation.

A life shouldn't encompass all of one day, even if "One Day, Some Day" is what someone can live for.