Whenever You Remember (Irina)

[parvati patil macmillan]

July 2028
Hogwarts Grounds

If there was a dry eye left by the end of the graduation ceremony, anyone would have been hard-pressed to find it. Being able to celebrate the first graduations at the reopened Hogwarts was a tremendous achievement for so many people. It was a testament to the resilience of the students, many of whom had had their lives upended multiple times but who had managed to continue their educations and persevere despite the odds; it was a testament to the strength of the Hogwarts schools'—plural now—staff as a collective, who had continued to give their best day in and day out and adapt to the changes that had been made over the course of a year of planning and rebuilding from the rubble. It was also a moment to remember all those who hadn't made it to that point, particularly the students who had been killed at the hands of Elaine Dupree. But they were there, too, in spirit or in the sunshine gleaming down from a blue sky.

Parvati looked on as students embraced their loved ones who had come to the campus for the occasion, relief evident on the faces of those who didn't have to give a single thought to OWLs or NEWTs or higher studies again. From where she stood on the periphery, she would give the occasional nod or smile. It was the students' time to be proud of themselves and their accomplishments, not that she wasn't immensely proud of them herself. She had been working at Hogwarts for long enough that she had seen many of them grow up before her eyes. She'd helped many of them through tragedy, and she'd had to draw on the strength she saw in them to get through some of her own pain, particularly since losing her daughter, Shreya.

Every so often, she would have a student or family member—or both—approach her to comment on what a help it had been to have Madam Macmillan at Hogwarts to provide counseling. Parvati felt that it was nice to be reminded that her work mattered. She didn't always get to hear it or to see the impact of her sessions with students who had been struggling, typically because they were the ones who didn't want to admit that there had been any problems to begin with. Getting to see students achieve something so significant for them was special, and there was something gratifying in knowing that she would get to see many of the students' continued progress as they moved on to the next steps in their educations at Hogwarts.

Irina Rose Krum

[Irina Rose Krum]

Irina couldn’t believe that her baby sister had finished her fifth year at LIFE and was continuing her studies further. This option had not been available to Irina, but she wouldn’t trade her years at Hogwarts for anything.. Everything that went with it. From learning about and living with her Clairvoyancy, to her first real relationship (beginning middle and end), to dreaming of and ultimately realizing her passion for Cursebreaking, and the traveling no-mad lifestyle it gave her. Sure she had an apartment her father had bought as a sort of “home base”, but it was rare she was home for more than a few days at a time. In fact, three days from now Irina was heading out on assignment in a mountain village in Belarus. But she was here to celebrate Ivanka and her accomplishments.

At the present moment however, Ivanka was surrounded by her friends so Irina let her be and wandered around. She saw a few familiar faces from her days at school, and some who she was quite sure were 10 years younger just last year. Finally she saw her former Head of House Madam Macmillian. She lifted her hand and waved in greeting. “Hello Madam Macmillan, good to see you,” she said warmly. “How have you been this year?” she asked, figuring it was a safe enough topic. She had known Shreya well, yet she could never imagine what her Head had been through. There was some distance now, and Irina knew her question wouldn’t automatically allude to what had happened that night.

parvati patil macmillan

[parvati patil macmillan]

July 2028
Hogwarts Grounds

The size of the magical community meant that some of the family members she happened to speak with at graduation were former students of hers themselves. That was the case with Irina Krum, whose younger sister, Ivanka, was graduating from LIFE in Curse-Breaking. Unlike many of the other graduates, Ivanka had made the decision to begin a level of higher study that hadn't existed within the Ministry of Magic's framework until the establishment of LIFE, something essentially equivalent to a Muggle postgraduate degree. Parvati imagined that Ivanka must have been busy, whether that was because of other family members or friends, because she wasn't with Irina when she saw the former Gryffindor student wave to her.

Irina greeted her and said that it was good to see her, and Parvati felt likewise. She didn't always get the opportunity to catch up with former students, even those whose parents she had known for decades. It was just how life played out. If anything, she had gotten to see more familiar faces than usual because of the students who had continued to study at LIFE beyond the NEWT level, but plenty of students who had entered the workforce already had stayed there instead of choosing to go back to Hogwarts. Irina was one of those. Having already established herself as a Curse-Breaker, there probably wasn't much need for her to go back to formal studies.

"How have you been this year?" Irina asked. She had been friends with Shreya, and she wasn't oblivious to what had happened. In general, Irina had always been a conscientious young woman, the kind of student who served as a model for what their peers' behavior should be.

Summing up how she had felt over the entire year would take far longer than either of them had, thought Parvati. Over time, she had adjusted to the new structure of Hogwarts and how it worked in actuality, not just in the planning stages of meetings at the Ministry and the various processes required to get documents approved. It didn't feel the same as it had before Elaine Dupree's destruction of the castle, and she doubted that it ever would. It was for the better, in a sense. They could all honor the school as it had been while not being forced to dwell on the past. A different Hogwarts was better than no Hogwarts at all.

In spite of the many ways the past year had made her feel, both good and bad, the year had been undoubtedly better than the one before it. Being back in something closer to her previous routine felt like a relief. It was better than the complete upheaval that had been the months following the fire. Accepting a new stage of life as "normal" took time, but Parvati had been trying her best to move forward.

"I've been well, thank you," Parvati replied to Irina with a small smile. There was always room for improvement; she couldn't say that she was on top of the world or anything so exaggerated, but she was doing better than she had been in years, come to think of it. The stress of having to think about when or where something horrid might happen was not as present. For however long it would last, there was peace.

"How have you been, Irina?" It was only right to ask her how she had been, too. Her experience of everything that had gone on hadn't been the same as that of the young adults who had been Hogwarts students still when the fire had devastated the school, but Irina was also young enough that she had experienced plenty of what Elaine Dupree had done firsthand.

Irina Rose Krum