I’m a huge sucker for characters that chose to be heroic. Like, no big prophecy, no great chosen one moment, just someone who consciously decided to do the right thing because someone fucking had to.
Reblog this if you’re pro-receiving a brown paper package containing one (1) handwritten love letter, a small jar of strawberry jam from the farmers market, and a smattering of pressed flowers.
Dennis Creevey came to visit Parvati at the Ministry and Parvati could tell, as she walked him through offices and archives and elevators, that people were wondering if it was Bring Your Kid to Work Day.
Dennis had not grown more than a few inches even though by the end his brother Colin had started shooting upwards. Colin had died at almost their father’s height. Dennis had drifted home, after the war, and felt small.
Parvati knew better than anyone what it was to have people see another person when they looked at you.
(She knew better than anyone but George Weasley) (but she tried not to think about that).
It didn’t get bad until they went down to the shooting range and Dennis shuddered to a stop. They got him out into the hall before he started hyperventilating. A big man who had been one of Parvati’s combat instructors helped them out, choking back a laugh. “Brought your little brother in?” He tousled Dennis’s hair while Parvati glared. “Unblooded, eh?”
Parvati’s shoulders settled back as Dennis flinched. She snapped, “Dennis fought in the Second Wizarding War. He’s a veteran, a soldier.”
“What’s he jumping at then?” said the man. “Looks like a kid to me.”
“I shouldn’t have taken him in there, with curses flying,” Parvati said furiously. “It looked like a Defense Against the Dark Arts Class, from that last year, except our targets aren’t—”
“Children,” said Dennis, breathless. His hands were shaking, but he was trying to pull himself together.
“I thought you said you were soldiers,” the Auror sniffed, trying to bluster.
“We were both,” she said, pulling Dennis down the hall. Potter, being Harry Potter, had gotten an actual office, if a small one, so they ducked in there to let Dennis shake it out.
After Parvati had gotten some liquid in Dennis, a smile out of him, and gotten him into the Floo home, she took the elevator up to the office of the Auror instructor who had helped them out of the firing range. He made her cool her heels in the hallway.
When he finally put down his papers, he said, “I take it you have a problem?”
“That was disrespectful, sir, your conduct earlier,” said Parvati.
“Disrespectful? This is the Aurors, Patil. Respect doesn’t run the other direction. It doesn’t go from men like me to greenies like you, or civilians like your little friend.”
“He is not a civilian,” said Parvati.
The Auror shrugged. “So you hid for a year from some teachers who wanted to rap you across the back of the hand with a ruler.”
“You ever had that hit?” said Parvati. “Wood and metal slammed across your phalanges and metacarpals—my sister is a painter. They didn’t use a ruler. They used a vice hex.”
She stepped inside the office, shutting the door behind her. “Have you ever been Crucioed?” she asked.
The Auror opened his mouth to speak, but Parvati kept going, calm, dismissive: “I don’t mean in training, in a nice padded room with an instructor who will take you for beers after. I don’t even mean by some criminal in a dark alley when you don’t know if you’re going to make it to the end of the day. I mean have you ever been Crucioed in a classroom, in front of your sister and a bunch of terrified children. Have you ever been Crucioed by someone who enjoyed it, when you were expendable? Have you ever gasped yourself back to life when they were done and known the next morning you were going to walk right back in and sit at your desk, and wait, and hope it happened to you and not some kid half your size?”
The Auror had gone silent.
Parvati looked him over slowly. “I have been an object lesson in disobedience from people I couldn’t get away from. I have watched children scream, and done nothing, because I was in a war and it wasn’t strategic and they were soldiers too. They would survive. And most of us did. But we are not the same as we were. You will respect our war.”
– from “silly: in defense of parvati patil (in memory of lavender brown)” (Ao3)
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