video; man's greatest treasure (after the blood rains stop)

[reparo]

[The video isn't accidental this time, and focuses on Hermione - her face rosy-cheeked and smiling, actually smiling.


To the observant eye, one can tell she's in the old, dilapidated house that some people used during the final battle in Hatthevar as a sort of refuge. (It's the Macarena house.)]

Friends - ah, I've been thinking all day what I'd say to us all after a battle as final and difficult and hard as this one. I didn't get to say this to my friends back home, I didn't get the chance to say this to Harry, but...here goes.

Well done. You did your best, and you somehow saved the day. Look at this place. Look at this world! I know the beacons are being repaired, so it's still sometime before we leave but I think we could say we're leaving it better than we found it?

[Like it's hard. She lets out a tiny laugh.]

Also, I think - and I'm not taking any feedback on this - that I've earned myself this.

[The view focuses on the floor, where she is sitting currently, and specifically on a half-empty bottle of wine. Hermione gone wild.]

Comments

[reparo]

You sound proud of me.

[bravelyrunsaway]

I am, with you enjoying a proper moment to relax!

[reparo]

You're welcome to join, if you promise to keep yourself from shedding all over these floors I've just cleaned.

[bravelyrunsaway]

Love, you cleaned that place and it still looks like that?

( Mock horror on his face. He cannot. He cannot believe! )

[reparo]

I rescind my previously heartfelt invitation.

[bravelyrunsaway]

Here I am thinking what a lost cause that residence is... some are like that, you know! I was assuming the wine was improving it. Is it not?

[reparo]

[Picture the most outraged arm-crossing, complete with a huff that has no right to be fond. She's exasperated here, not fond. Goddamnit, Licyn.]

I was actually planning to return it to its previous owner, in a better state than he sold it to me. I can forgive the state anyway, it was during a difficult time and all - what with him being a ghost - and it was a cheap price really.

[bravelyrunsaway]

Are you selling back at an improved cost? Or being kind and selling it for what he got from you?

[reparo]

I'm not sure I would call it being kind, since I'm going to ask him to also show me a dance I've never seen before in exchange.

[bravelyrunsaway]

He can dance if he wants to!

[reparo]

Whether he wants to to or not, I'm not going to be keeping the house. We are not going to be keeping the house - and he has his life back, my dancing merchant.

[bravelyrunsaway]

Do ghosts really have... life? Or haunts?

[reparo]

[A pause.] I don't know - but these ones have feelings, and deserve comfort as much as the rest of us.

[bravelyrunsaway]

Are they ever going to... move... beyond?

[reparo]

I suspect we won't be here when and if that happens.

[bravelyrunsaway]

No, we'll be gone within the next handful of days or so, and good for us and for them.

[reparo]

Do you think there are people who are staying?

[bravelyrunsaway]

Yes. If it was here or death, or a life that felt like death, what would you choose?

1/2

[reparo]

Here.

[reparo]

Or maybe I would follow others to other worlds.

[bravelyrunsaway]

Is that even possible?

[reparo]

Why wouldn't it be?

[bravelyrunsaway]

Being pulled here wasn't all that stable, don't some of us get pulled back, or whatever it is? Even without the gateways. Or that might have been because of the stormstruck nonsense that Matthias was up to, so it might be safer now than it would be before.