Hope

My parents named me Hope.

After the Dark War, after Harry Potter had defeated Lord Voldemort, when everyone was trying to pick up the shattered pieces of their lives, Mum found out she was pregnant.

She cried for days when she first realized the truth. She assures me it was out of happiness, but sometimes I can't help but wonder if she only says that to make me feel better. My sister says that she cried when my parents told her that Mum was expecting, and I also have my doubts about whether hers were happy tears or not.

My beautiful sister, Hermione. My beautiful, intelligent, sad sister. I know she is sad, all the time. Sometimes some happiness finds it's way in, but every emotion is tinged with a sorrow that I suspect is timeless.

How do I know all of this? It's simple, really. I'm an Empath. It means I can sense other people's emotions. Apparently I'm a strong Empath, because sometimes I even catch a wisp of memory from those I'm closest to. That is where I've gleaned my knowledge of exactly how horrible the war really was.

So I am Hope. My sister said that I was everyone's hope. A new little person, untainted by the atrocities of the Dark War, someone they could all love. It's been fifteen years since my birth, and I still cannot count the number of people who would die for me, or even kill for me.

I feel loved, and yet I feel undeserving of their love. I was just a chance, just something that happened, and all these people were affected by it. It's a strange feeling.

I'm not the only one, which takes some of the pressure off. The Potters' son, Sirius, is a few months younger than me. You should see him playing Quidditch with his father, it's a sight that will stay with me forever.

I expect that, when I'm old and gray, I'll think back and still remember Sirius and Mr. Potter flying through the air at breakneck speeds. I'm a Chaser, and can't understand why anyone would want to fly around the entire game looking for a little golden ball, but it's what Sirius lives for.

My parents are way too old to have had me. It shouldn't have happened. But by some chance they managed to do exactly what was impossible. It was okay, though, because I had a never ceasing influx of babysitters.

Every single Mrs. Weasley had a hand at raising me. Fleur, Tonks, Angelina, and Alicia...They all babysat, changed diapers, and fed me that awful baby food until their own little ones came along. Ginny too, although she wasn't a Mrs. Weasley, rather a Mrs. Potter.

There were nine Weasleys. It seems a miracle that only two of them were casualties of war, but it seems unfair. I never got to meet them. They're talked about, of course, and honored, but I never got to see them for myself.

I wonder about Percy. They say he was just like Hermione, uptight and prudish, but they must not know Hermione very well. She's anything but that. I will never know for myself. He'll never lecture me about cauldron bottoms, patch up my scrapes or tell me about his wonderful wife. Because he never had the chance.

Mostly, though, I wonder about Ron. Hermione used to talk about him, before I discovered her I was an Empath. She helped me research Empathy, but she stopped talking about Ron. I wonder why this is so. Maybe she's afraid of what I'll find out.

She thinks about him all the time. I can tell by the look on her face, and by the waves of emotion that emanate from her. It feels like someone is twisting my heart, and I can't tell whether the pain is because it's so heavy, or because it's so light. The emotions are bittersweet, and the sympathetic pain that washes over me threatens to bring me to my knees.

I wonder how she can stand there and pretend that she isn't hurting. Maybe it's easier for her that way. Myself, I'd be running down the halls screaming out my anguish, and they'd lock me up in St. Mungos and never let me out.

I found a picture of them once. It was a picture of Hermione, Harry and Ron. It makes me laugh, because they're so young. It's hard to imagine them as second years.

Harry and Ron are standing on either side of Hermione, their arms around her and hers around them. Harry is grinning, Hermione is smirking, and Ron's ears are slightly red. He's smiling nonetheless. They waved at me as I looked down at them, and I was struck mostly by their eyes. Their innocent, young, bright eyes. I'd never seen Hermione or Harry's eyes like that.

You can tell who has been in the war by their eyes. They have a slightly deadened look, as if they'd already seen the entire world and found nothing in it worthwhile. It's less prominent in people like Fred and George, who manage to stay happy through everything. I've found the most extreme case, however, in the eyes of my own sister.

I wish I could have met Ron. He sounds like someone I would like. Ginny got a bit sloshed once and told me that Hermione never gave up on him. Ron's body was never found, you see. He was missing in action, presumed dead. But Hermione waited for him to come home, and she waits still.

Thinking back to the picture, I wonder what drew Hermione to Ron. He wasn't particularly good looking, nothing at all on Orien Malfoy. From the stories I've heard, he seems a bit of a prat. But there was some indefatigable quality about him that shone through even in the second year picture.

She waits for him still.

She isn't the only one. Tonks waited. She waited for ages, and was always over at our house. According to Hermione, she walked around holding me in her arms, crooning lullabies and crying.

Tonks had been the one to find his body. One of the Dark War's less celebrated heroes. Remus Lupin. Most didn't like him because he was a werewolf, but the Weasleys were always firm in telling me just how much he did for the Order.

Tonks sometimes tells me stories about him. Stories about his childhood that he'd related to her, stories from school that she'd heard from Sirius Black, yet another hero I never had the opportunity to meet. Stories about Remus when she'd known him, tales of his bravery and intelligence.

She loved him. I can feel it from every pore of her body. But eventually Charlie won her over, with his infinite patience and never ceasing care. She stopped coming over as often, and started spending time with Charlie. When he proposed, she said yes.

She stopped waiting, but my sister never did.

The doorbell is ringing, and I call out that I'd get it. Hermione is up in her room, cleaning. So she says.

I answer the door, and to my surprise am confronted by a person who highly resembles Charlie Weasley. It's insane, as I don't think they have any family I haven't met. A strange aura of hope surrounds him.

"Can I help you?" I ask politely.

He stares at me as if I'm the realization of all his nightmares. I can sense the sorrow starting to emanate from him, and the hope I'd detected begins to fade.

"You look just like her," he whispers, staring at me sadly. He starts to reach towards me, but pulls his hand down as embarrassment starts to flow from him. "I'm sorry," he said. "I just hoped..."

"Hoped what?" I ask, interested despite myself. I find myself thinking that I should call St. Mungo's, because he was evidently mental.

"It was silly," he says unhelpfully. "Of course she's married. What are you, fourteen?"

"Fifteen," I answer, beginning to suspect.

He laughs hollowly. "She didn't waste any time, did she?"

"I think you have the wrong idea," I say carefully.

"What?" he says, now confused himself. It sort of puts us on equal footing, because now neither of us knows what's going on.

"If you're talking about my mother..." I try again, "I think you're mistaken."

"Your mother," he says as if any idiot should know, "Hermione Granger."

I shake my head, pleased that I've guessed right. "Helen Granger," I say. "Hermione is my sister."

He stares at me in shock. "Is Hermione..."

"Married?" I finish. "No, she's not. Never was."

I sense an intense feeling of relief, drowning out all others except for one emotion I've come to recognize as love. Having never felt it for myself, aside from Empathic connections to others, it never fails to stop me in my tracks. The idea that one person can feel that way about another person astounds me.

"What took you so long, Ron?" I say quietly.

"Long story," he says. "How do you know my name?"

"She talked about you," I reply. "And you look just like your brother."

"My...brother?" Ron asks, confused again. I can see the knowledge dawning on his face, and smile as he continues. "I've lots of brothers. And a sister, Ginny. Wow."

"You...you didn't remember?" I ask timidly.

"No," Ron says heavily, heaving a great sigh. A clatter on the stairs draws his eyes, and I know from the look he suddenly develops that Hermione is behind me. I turn around to see her looking at him, surprise evident even if I didn't have Empathic abilities.

"Ron?" she asks, her tone disbelieving.

"Hermione," he replies on a whisper, looking up at her. "It's been so long..."

He never has the chance to finish his sentence, as my sister runs down the stairs and throws herself in his arms.

"What took you so long?" she asks, and Ron smiles at me over her shoulder. I like him already.

"I woke up in America," Ron said. Hermione gasped and looked up at him, a question in her eyes. "Dallas, Texas, I think. I don't know how I got there. I wandered around for a while, bleeding and lost like you wouldn't believe. I couldn't figure out how to get home, and I didn't know what to do. Eventually a kind soul took me to a hospital, where they checked me over, patched me up and put me to sleep. When I woke up I didn't remember who I was."

Tears were running down my sister's face now, and a few sympathetic tears were falling from my own eyes.

"No one there knew who I was, either. They couldn't find me anywhere in their systems, it was like I never existed. I didn't even know my name. Even if I had been on the island, no one would have known who I was. I'm a wizard, I don't have muggle identification. So I started a new life, and had to relearn even the most basic things. They thought it was extreme amnesia, but I had this bugging feeling that I had never learned any of it in the first place.

"They called me Rob. How chilling is that? I answered to it because it sounded familiar. I went to college, became a teacher."

"Did you ever date?" I ask, knowing that Hermione wouldn't have the nerve to ask.

"No," Ron replies, shaking his head ruefully. "There was always that same bugging feeling holding me back. I could never give my heart away, and I didn't know why. It killed me for a while, but I got used to it. I lost myself in my new life, although I spent almost all of my salary hiring private detectives to search for any clue to what I was. They never found anything."

"Then how did you get here?" Hermione asks.

"Last night I got mugged," Ron continues. "Two big guys confronted me while one snuck up behind me and hit me hard on the head. I woke up with an empty wallet and my wristwatch gone, but I had regained some of my memory."

"Some of it?" Hermione asks.

"Your little sister here had to remind me of my gazillion brothers," Ron says, gesturing to me. Hermione turns to me in a daze, and I realize that she had forgotten my presence. No one has ever not noticed me before, and I find the sensation not entirely unappealing.

"So, what about your teaching job?" Hermione says. "What about your new life?"

"It was a wrench leaving some of the kids," Ron says. "But I knew that there were important things I had to do here. I booked a ticked on the next plane to London, and here I am."

"I missed you," Hermione says, the understatement of the year.

"I missed you, too," I add, and Ron smiles at me.

"You've never even met me," he points out.

"That's why I missed you," I say, and he gives me a very strange look. I'm used to them, though, so it doesn't bother me.

They want some privacy, I can feel it. So I leave them to make up the last fifteen years, going to the fireplace and flooing over to the Potters' house.

"Sirius!" I shout as soon as I emerge. "You'll never guess!"

"What?" he asks, coming into the room completely unfazed by my appearance. After all, I do it all the time.

"Ron," I say as Ginny walks in. She looks at me intently, obviously wondering why I want to talk about him now. "He's back," I say simply, and Ginny's disbelief engulfs me like a cloud.

"That's impossible," she says, shrugging. "He can't be back."

"Who can't?" Harry asks, walking into the kitchen.

"Ron," Ginny says. "Hope told us he's back."

Harry's piercing eyes turn to rest on me, and I look back with my chin uplifted. "I'm telling the truth," I say in a hurry. "He's been in the States all this time, with amnesia."

"I believe her," Sirius states unnecessarily. Of course he believes me. He always believes me.

We rush back through the fireplace, for once thinking floo powder is a slow way to travel, and find Ron and Hermione locked in an embrace, not having moved from the doorway. Harry and Ginny stare at him in shock.

"Ron?" Ginny breathes. Ron looks up at her, a huge smile plastered on his face with tears in his eyes.

"Gin," he says quietly. "Harry."

They run to embrace him, Sirius and I suddenly feeling like outsiders in their joy.

"Godric Gryffindor's sword," Ron says in disbelieving tones, his gaze now resting on Sirius from the tangle of arms surrounding him. "He looks just like you, Harry. I'm your Uncle Ron, son." He glances at Ginny. "At least, I think I am."

"You are," Ginny assures him, finding Harry's hand and giving it a squeeze.

"It's nice to finally meet you," Sirius says, walking over and shaking his hand. "I've heard a lot about you."

I am so proud of Sirius at this moment. The waves of nervousness coming from him are practically tangible, but he carries himself like a man. At fifteen, that is quite an accomplishment.

Ron wants to go see everyone, so we all floo to the Burrow. Mrs. Weasley almost has a heart attack when Ron unfolds his tall frame from the fireplace, and spends the rest of the night in happy tears. Mr. Weasley isn't much better.

Each of us floos to a different Weasley home, gathering everyone at the Burrow to see Ron. It's a joyful reunion.

Tonks isn't as joyful as some. I can feel her pain, I know that she's never really gotten over Remus. From the looks Charlie keeps throwing her direction, I surmise that he knows it, too. Ron's return reminds her of the one she lost. Unlike Hermione, she doesn't have the hope that he might come back.

Others feel the same way. Draco Malfoy is here, how he heard about this little gathering I can only imagine. I've heard the story from Orien, how he was married before the war. Orien's mother, a girl named Lisa Turpin, was another who lost their life to the Dark War. Draco has never remarried, and I suspect he never will. He is also one to whom this reunion is not all wonderful.

So Ron's arrival is bittersweet. It's fitting, of course. The last fifteen years of Hermione's life have been bittersweet. Tonight I look at her and see something I've never seen before on her face. Pure, true happiness.

For Tonks, Charlie, and Draco, this night is like others in their lives. They watch happiness, always on the outside of it. It would take a great miracle to heal their scarred hearts, and I'm not predicting one in their near future.

Orien smiles at me across the room, and I nod in acknowledgement. He nods his head towards the doorway and I nod again. We sneak away into the garden, and Sirius joins us a moment later.

"What do you think?" Sirius says, and both boys look at me expectantly. I've told them of my Empathic abilities, and now they think I have all the answers. They're wrong, of course. I only have most of the answers.

"I don't know what to think," I confess. "Ron is back. From what I can discern, he's about to become my brother-in-law. And I've only just met him."

Sirius looks at me strangely. I can feel a certain dry humor coming from him, and know he's about to point out something amusing, like he always does.

"You know what this means, right?" he asks. "If your sister marries my uncle, that makes you my aunt-in-law or something."

"And you get to be my dear nephew Sirius," I say, clapping him on the shoulder.

"Lovely," he says dryly.

As we sit in the garden, all three of us together, I think of how strange everyone would have thought this when they were young. From the stories I've heard, to say that our relations didn't get along would be an understatement.

Now here we sit, a Potter, a Granger and a Malfoy. It took a war to unite our families, and now it would take a war to separate us.

Those who have lost their loved ones are those who are most adamant about the war being the right choice. There are those who say that war solves nothing, but they are invariably those who have never seen it.

I advise you to never suggest to Tonks that Remus died for no reason, that his cause was unjust. She knows a good many hexes that would render you incapable of expressing that opinion to anyone else.

Try telling the Weasleys that Percy's death was unnecessary. Try telling them that, valiant as Percy was, his cause was unstable, his death an unfortunate consequence of a war that was ill-conceived and fought for the wrong reasons.

They said Voldemort couldn't be defeated. They said there was nothing anyone could do. But the Order of the Phoenix stopped him.

Sometimes war is a necessary evil. Sometimes the evil people in this world can't be stopped any other way. Sometimes we must stand up for what we believe in, even in the face of great adversaries. Sometimes we must band together to put a stop to things that never should have gone on in the first place.

Sometimes all the world needs is a fresh set of eyes and a new point of view to see the great heroes of our time.

And sometimes we all need a little hope.