{nineteen years later}

Diana Potter, The Girl Who Came Back From The Dead, had never been inside Platform 9 and 3/4. She had often wondered what it looked like, back when she was a soldier. Harry and Ron and Hermione and Ginny and all of her other friends would come whistling into Hogsmeade Station on the bright red train, coming in from the fog that marred the farthest tracks. She often imagined the bustling children, excited for their next year at the wonderful school of witchcraft and wizardry.

And as she stood on the other side of the brick wall, watching steam billow from the train like a faucet spilling water, it was just as she had hoped, just as she had dreamed. She saw everyone she had faught with; Luna, with that Scamander boy; Dean Thomas, who the Potters smiled at. She saw Ron and Hermione, shamelessly bickering with slight grins on their faces as Rose told Hugo that he wasn't allowed to Hogwarts just yet.

"I'm sorry, Hugo," said Rose. She was a very pretty girl, and smart like her mother. She had a painfully similar look in her eyes, though, that the Weasley twins had had.

"Ah, it's the rest of the gang!"

Ron beamed at them, obviously delighted to be back in the old train station that harbored so many memories.

"Sorry we're late, Teddy couldn't decide what color to change his hair to," said Harry, the same boyish smile on his lips after all of these years. Diana watched the old trio. They had aged, but they were finally happy.

"Oh, come here, then!" said Hermione, pulling the two of them into a tight hug. "And don't think I've forgotten about you---"

She snatched two of the three Potter children into an embrace, but James had managed to dodge away.

"Where's Ginny?" Diana asked Ron. He shrugged, waving a hand.

"Her last owl said she and her girlfriend were following the Chudley Cannons around the world. Though, you know how they are---they can never stay too long in one place. They could be in the damn Arctic by now, for all I know."

"Mum," whined a child behind Diana. "Why do the boys get to go and I don't?"

"You'll be boarding that train in no time," said Diana, taking Lily Vera's hand.

The train bellowed a ten-minute warning.

"Tell James that I won't be in Slytherin!"

"James," said Harry boredly, "stop terrorizing your brother."

"You'll write to me, won't you?" asked Albus in a worried tone.

"Every day, if you'd like," said Diana.

"Not every day, James said---"

"Don't listen to anything your brother says," said Harry with a grin. "He likes a laugh."

James Sirius Potter, the eldest of the three children, was quite similar to the men he was named after.

"Hey, hey," said Ron in an indelicate whisper, "Look who it is."

He nodded toward something behind Diana and Harry. They turned, along with Hermione, to see.

Draco Malfoy, his hair still white as snow, his eyes permanently sullen, stood with his wife, Astoria, and his son, Scorpius. Astoria talked with Scorpius, who buzzed with excitement, holding an array of books against his chest. Draco looked up, and caught eyes with them.

He met each of their eyes: he flipped from Ron to Hermione, then to Harry, who he lingered on. He waited for Harry to glare, or to turn away, but Harry did not. Lastly, Draco turned his eyes to Diana.

Diana didn't look much different from all of those years ago. She still had the same vibrant dark hair, the same blackish eyes, the same porcelain skin. All was the same, except for a few more lines in her skin and a light peppering of white in her hair.

Diana met his eyes shamelessly. They looked for a moment, seeing how each other had aged, seeing their spouses and children. Diana smiled lightly at Astoria, who was so beautiful, and Scorpius, who was so much more full of light than Draco had ever been.

Diana looked to him once more. With a gentle, slow, meaningful bow of the head, she smiled. His lips flickered upwards, for Diana Riddle, Potter, was one of the only people he had truly considered a friend. She was one of the only people who understood what it was like to be stuck under the hand of Tom Riddle.

James, who had somehow disappeared, now stood before them with a chocolate frog in his hand. "Teddy's over there," he announced, panting and eyes wide. "Just seen him! He tried to bribe me with this Chocolate Frog to keep quiet, but I shan't! Guess what he's doing? Snogging Victoire."

He gazed at them, obviously disappointed in their lack of reaction.

"Our Teddy! Teddy Lupin! Snogging our Victoire! Our cousin! And I asked Teddy what he was doing---"

"You interrupted them?" asked Diana. "Well that's rude---"

He spazzed a hand at her. "Nevermind that! He bribed me and told me to go away! He's snogging her!"

"Oh, it would be lovely if they got married," muttered little Lily, still holding her mother's hand. "Teddy would really be apart of the family, then!"

Diana looked into the sea of students lingering till the last minute to board. She remembered the first time she had met Teddy: all those years ago, on the night she found out about the event of her birth, the night she found out she was Dumbledore blood. He was so small, then, but his hair was a vibrant turquoise. She looked into the crowd; here and there bobbed the same bright turquoise hair. He had never truly changed. He was, and always will be, a Lupin and a Tonks.

Diana was just grateful that he will always be welcome to be a Weasley and a Potter, too.

"He already comes round for dinner four times a week," said Harry. "Why don't we just invite him to live with us and have done with it?"

"Yeah!" said James enthusiastically. "I don't mind sharing with Al---Teddy could have my room!"

"No," said Harry firmly, "you and Al will share a room only when I want the house demolished."

Harry turned to look at the old watch on his wrist that he had received from Molly Weasley when he turned of age. He never took the thing off after all of the years he'd had it; he'd even charmed it to be waterproof.

"It's nearly eleven, you'd better get on board."

"Don't forget to give Neville our love!" called Hermione after Rose, speaking for all of the adults.

"Mum, I can't give a Professor love---"

"See ya Al, watch out for the Thestrals!" called James from his spot on the steps of the train.

"Goodbye, James, we love you!" Diana called obnoxiously. James rolled his eyes, though smiled nonetheless.

"Thestrals are nothing to worry about," said Harry at once. "They're gentle things, there's nothing scary about them. Anyway, you won't be going up to school in the carriages, you'll be going on the boats."

Harry turned to Ron for a moment, and Albus paled, watching his feet. Diana knew the look well: fear, the kind that makes your heart cold.

"Albus?" she asked him quietly. Lily had run off to play with Hugo near Hermione, so Diana took her seat on the luggage trolley. Little Albus looked into his mother's eyes.

"What if I'm in Slytherin?"

The whisper was for Diana alone. It was obviously a sensitive subject, but throughout their childhood she had tried her hardest to keep it from weighing on them. The children knew they had Slytherin blood, dark blood. They also knew, though, that they were Dumbledores. They had too much light and too much dark. Diana had only hoped that they would balance within them, just as it had balanced her, in the end.

Diana knew there was so much good in him, though. He had Lily Potter's eyes.

"You know, you remind me very much of me, when I was young."

"I do?" he mumbled, his eyes slightly widened. He had always been compared to Harry, or to his namesakes, but never to his mother. Really, he had never considered his siblings to be like her, either. His mother was like no one else. He always thought no one could ever be like her, not even him, because she was far too unique.

"Yes, very much so," she said, smiling. "I was so afraid, so afraid of my own blood. For so long, I tried to dispel the thoughts that mentioned that blood. It made me weak, you know. That hatred of my own self, of my own blood, made me a darker, sadder person than I would've ever been if I had just embraced it.

"Our blood is powerful," she told him quietly. "Power in itself is not evil, Albus--- it's those who seek it, those who crave it, that turn Dark."

"But you were never in a House," he said quietly, "our entire family was Gryffindor. Luna was Ravenclaw. Your mum was Ravenclaw. I don't want to be the only in Slytherin House."

She brushed a bit of his unruly black hair out of his face. He looked very much like Harry. It almost struck her odd that she did not see a lightning bolt underneath.

"Some of the bravest people I've ever know had been in Slytherin," she told him earnestly. "You're named after one of them. He was in Slytherin, and he saved the world, Al. He saved me, and your father."

"But he was a Death Eater."

"That doesn't mean he wasn't good," she told him. "I knew of a boy, just a bit older than our Teddy. He was one of the bravest boys I had ever met." She didn't tell her son that she had only met him once, when she was dead. Regulus Black died much too soon, but he had done so much with the years he had. "All he ever wanted was to be good."

"But---"

"Your father," she pressed, "was just a hair shy of being Slytherin. The only reason he wasn't was because he asked the Sorting Hat to not put him there. But had your father been in Slytherin, I'm sure he would've been the same great man he was always destined to be."

Albus was quiet, soaking in the words of his mother. Diana had never truly said any of this, to someone else or even herself. These were cleansing words, words that were so true but words she couldn't bare to face.

"Albus Severus, you were named for two headmasters of Hogwarts. One of them was a Slytherin, and the bravest man I ever knew. If you are sorted into Slytherin, then that House will have gained a wonderfully bright new student."

But now the train was whistling loudly again, a last warning for the lingering students. A great number of faces, both on and off of the train, were staring at their group.

"Why are they all staring?" asked Albus.

"Don't let it worry you," said Ron, "It's me. I'm extremely famous."

"Now go!" said Diana to her youngest boy, "you'll be late."

"Love you, Mum, Love you, Dad!" he called running to the now-closing doors of the scarlet train that Diana had never known, but always wished she had.

"He'll be alright," murmured Harry, taking Diana's hand in his own. Diana kissed his cheek lightly. After all these years, it still gave the both of them butterflies.

Suddenly, she felt a quick gust of wind. A few feet away, against the nearest brick wall, leaned four pearly figures.

She squeezed her husband's fingers, her lips lifting into a light smile.

"Lily, James, Albus, and Vera made it."

Against the brick wall, the ghosts stood. Ever since she died, she had been plagued with them.

Death comes at a price. This was hers.

Lily Potter, still as beautful as the day Diana saw her when she died, waved. She looked at her son, who was trying to find them in the nothingness. Then, she looked at Diana. She smiled, waving girlishly.

James Potter, his hair as messy as his son's and his glasses just as tilted, gave them a double thumbs-up with a dumb grin on his face.

Albus Dumbledore nodded simply at her, smiling. He visited her the most often.

Though they were a little far away, he spoke, and she heard him as if he was right in her ear: "Don't worry about Albus. I'll be sure my portrait keeps a keen eye on him."

Then Vera, so beautiful, so lovely, gave her daughter a watery smile.

Diana, Harry, Hermione, and Ron stood together like the old days, when they were so much younger. They had been through so much pain, so much darkness, that it was a miracle the four of them still stood on two feet.

They had lost people, so many friends and family and people they had never known but wished they could've saved. It was the four of them, the four of them forever. That was how it had always been. That was how it would always be.

Above them, the gods watched. Now, Diana knew that those who watched were not gods, not deities, not some all-powerful being that set that horrible path before these children. She knew now that those who watched were all those that had ever loved her, all those that she had ever loved, all those that she had died for. Lupin, Tonks, Sirius, the elder Potters, Albus and Sirius and Dobby and Fred.

Another joined the group of ghosts against the brick wall. Severus. He smiled at her. After all of these years seeing his ghostly smile, she was now quite used to it. She smiled back.

Above them, the souls watched. They were never gone. They would never truly leave any of them.

Diana Riddle, Diana Potter, finally found harmony. She had found harmony in the world, in the song that all of them sang. They still had their own verses; but it was a sweeter song now.

They finally knew what peace was. In the end, all was well.

{see a/n in next publishment}