chapter three

"teach me to be happy again, because i don't know how,"

"I'm scared, mummy," Teddy whimpered quietly, clutching onto her hand with a death grip. His brown hair, usually a lively aquamarine that was as unruly as her own when she was younger lay limply on his head. He looked sad and tired, and so very small in the bed all by himself. Isolda breathed in quietly and took her little boy's hand, trying very hard not to cry. Teddy had been hurting for a long time. He had just been clinging on because the last thing he wanted was for her to cry. Isolda had been selfishly holding on all this while because she had been terrified, but she knew now.

It was time. It was time to let go.

"I know, baby, I know," Isolda whispered tearfully, unsuccessfully fighting back on her tears. She could only stroke her son's hair with trembling fingers and try not to break apart completely.

"I love you. I love you so much, my baby." Isolda said, tenderly, fiercely, biting back a sob.

Hold on, hold on, just hold on for a little more, she told herself, you can cry later, but right now, your son needs you. The Healers fussed with Teddy's IV, but Isolda didn't take her eyes off her son, too focused on committing every single detail of his face to her memory.

"I love you too mummy," Teddy mumbled, and his eyes slipped shut. Everything else was a blur after that. Isolda was only aware of her knees buckling, losing the strength to hold her up when her entire world was gone. In response to her grief, her magic spiralled out of control, lashing out to destroy everything in sight. Completely unaware of the devastation, Isolda knelt there, crying for what felt like an eternity.

"Lady Potter, please," the Healer murmured quietly, her clear voice piercing through the silence. Isolda looked up, and through the tears blurring her eyes, she could make out the familiar curve of Hermione's shrewd brown eyes. The nurse wearing Hermione's face was staring grimly at her. She opened her mouth and said, "You need to wake up."

Isolda jerked awake with a gasp, choking back on the tears dripping down her face. Her heart was attempting to jackrabbit out of her chest, her entire body shaking from the hysterical sobs shuddering its way out of her chest, and for a while, as she sat in her big, lonely bed in the dark, there was a terrifying moment where she struggled to distinguish her nightmare from reality.

Isolda reached up, instinctively searching for the reassuring warmth of the pendant on her necklace. The smooth stone was warm under her touch, which meant that Teddy was unhurt. Isolda breathed in deeply, reminding herself, not for the first time since she came back to Great Britain, that Teddy was sleeping peacefully in the room adjacent to hers and if he was ever in any sort of danger, not only were there the best wards that money could by, courtesy of Gringotts, there was also a protective Dobby, whose devotion to Teddy was only rivalled by Isolda herself.

"Merlin," Isolda whispered, waving her hands to activate the lights, magical, of course, as she relaxed into her pillows. "I need to get out of this place." Though her heart rate was slowing down to a more healthy pace as she calmed down from the scare her nightmare had given her, Isolda hated the way being back in Britain could so easily affect her. She hated the way it made her relive the most terrifying of her nightmares every night, and more importantly, she hated the way it made her feel so helpless.

"Isolda?"

Isolda turned her head, smiling comfortingly at the sound of her dear friend's quiet hiss. "Are you dreaming about bad things again?" Auryon questioned sleepily from the warm rock she was draped over.

"Yes," Isolda answered candidly because if there was anyone she couldn't bear to lie to, it was to her oldest friend. Darling Auryon who had been the kind and loyal to her from the moment they first met, who had followed Isolda down to the Chamber of Secrets even though she had been terrified of the basilisk many, many times the size of her, who had most importantly, given Isolda the courage to be brave, to be kind, to open her heart and place her trust in people when they've only ever let her down before.

"But I'm okay now, Auryon, it's okay, go back to sleep," Isolda whispered softly and dimmed the lights with a wave of her hand. Auryon hissed sleepily in assent and her black and yellow head drooped back down.

It had been a little over five years since she read that report in 2003. Isolda found that her gut feeling was right, and the files were only a prelude to sheer destruction that plague would wreak on their kind. Meetings had been called, countless hours had been wasted on endless debates about measures and plans and failsafes. Isolda had borne witness to riots, mobs, an attempt to overthrow the Ministry that had resulted in the deaths of countless innocents; the worst of humanity had unveiled itself when all hope appeared to be lost. It was truly terrifying how the helplessness of inevitability could twist people.

It quickly became apparent that there was no logical pattern to those that had been infected; young, old, magically powerful, magically weak, the wealthy, the poor, no one had been spared. Death didn't discriminate, it just took, and took, and left those that had been spared to pick up the broken pieces.

For how much they had grieved in those five years, it seemed as though the war had never ended. Isolda had lost so many people; all of them did. Maybe it was healthy to mourn for the dead, but what did Isolda know? She just wanted to stop hurting. She just wanted to stop missing Ron, and the way he smiled and how he had accompanied her so bravely through the entire war. She just wanted to stop missing Mrs Weasley, who had taken her in and sheltered her and gave her solace, even if it was just for a little while. She just wanted to stop thinking about the what if's. What if they lived a little longer and gotten the cure they had missed by a mere two months, what if she trained more, what if she had been more ruthless, what if she had been kinder? But she knew more than anyone how unhealthy it was to dwell on the millions of other futures that could have happened if things were a little different. All they could do now, in the present, was mourn for every one they lost and move on, and for how tight-knitted their group was, everyone handled things a little differently.

Hermione had gone completely hysterical when a grim, silent Padma floo'd over. She dropped the plate she had in her hands, nicked one of her major veins on the sharp porcelain, bled so much she nearly gave everyone a heart attack-Fred included-when they saw a pregnant witch kneeling in a puddle of her own blood. After she exhausted herself out by crying so much she fainted, Hermione would fluctuate between two moods; studying with a conviction that bordered on fury and screaming at anybody who was hurting as much as she was.

Neville, the rock Isolda could always rely on, went completely blank. He didn't cry or scream or lash out, at least not during the funeral. He stoically supported Isolda when her knees buckled at the sight of a distraught Lavender and two-year-old Alice, let her dig crescents into the palm of his hand when they lowered Ron's casket into the grave and held her when Isolda broke apart after everybody left. Then after everything was done, Nev completely shut himself off in the greenhouse until somebody, usually Hermione, went in there to shout at him until they both cried themselves better.

Isolda, unlike Neville and Hermione, could not stand the thought of crying in front of anyone, so she locked herself away in her apartment to sob so hard she threw up, drifted around the house aimlessly and cry at the smallest thing that reminded her of him; like when she saw stale mint humbugs, which Ron loved, had loved, in the back of her pantry one day. Isolda went to the Auror training courses where she duelled with anyone that could keep up with her, throwing herself into spellfire with a recklessness that bordered on being suicidal.

She wanted so badly to leave, but how could she when everyone was hurting so much?

"Sol."

Isolda looked up with a start, meeting Hermione's drawn, tired gaze with a weak smile. "Yeah? What's wrong?" She asked, idly stirring her milky tea with a delicate silver teaspoon and lifting up the teacup to take a sip.

Hermione shared a concerned look with Neville as Isolda busied herself with pretending like she didn't know why they both dropped by her apartment at the same time under the pretense of having dinner together. While Hermione and Neville expressed their anger and sadness in healthier ways, Isolda had a tendency to suppress all her emotions and act like she was okay until she finally exploded, which wasn't exactly the epitome of a healthy coping mechanism.

In a misguided attempt to be the leader that everyone had always needed her to be, Isolda had said nothing about leaving, even though Hermione knew she was itching to. It was clear to Hermione, and it always had been, from first year till now, that Isolda hated Wizarding Britain with a great, fiery passion. At first, it was because she'd almost lost everyone she loved; her parents, Sirius, Remus, Tonks, and countless others. Now it was because everything reminded her of Ron's death, which even after five months, was still too raw of a topic for anyone to breach.

Isolda had always talked about traveling the world, and when the war ended, she packed her bags to fulfill the hushed promises she made with Hermione in the middle of the night in their dorms and disappeared for the next year and a half. Other than the sporadic letters she sent through owl mail from different parts of the continent, it had been complete radio silence from Isolda's end.

In that time, Hermione and Neville had applied for and accepted to Académie de Magie, one of the best institutes of magic in the world located in France, and Ron had decided to try for a career in law enforcement as an Auror, which Lavender hadn't been too happy about at first.

While Hermione struggled daily to manage the insane amount of workload that she had to deal with for her course, magical law, which she took to prepare herself for the court, where she would fight for equality until there was change, she still graduated at the top of her class with full honours and law firms practically on their knees for her to join them. But of course, in true Hermione fashion, Hermione had decided to go pro bono, and defend anyone and everyone who couldn't afford an attorney.

Neville, on the other hand, who had been partially bullied to coming along to France with her, to no one's surprise, took Herbology as his major. After discussing with Isolda about it, Neville arrived at the conclusion that he had enjoyed teaching the DA, the Defence Association which had sprung into existence after the arrival of Umbitch, and thus, decided to go back to Britain to teach in Hogwarts after he completed his studies.

And Ron, whose ability to strategize logically and unconventionally had been honed to a fine blade through nearly a year of them on the run as war raged on, quickly proved himself to be a remarkable trainee and rose through the ranks with a speed that startled even the instructors.

It pained her to say it, but the last time Hermione saw Isolda smile properly-smile her brilliant, incandescent smile that made the receiver feel like they were her entire world, had been at Picardy, France, in the little townhouse she had inherited from House Black when she became Lady Potter-Black shortly after the war. Hermione and Neville had just both finished their exams, and Ron, who had just been accepted into the Auror training program got an international portkey that brought him all the way to France for them to get together for a celebration.

Hermione had brought out for a nice dinner at a local restaurant that was both far away enough from the campus that Isolda wouldn't be in danger of someone recognising her and offered them enough privacy to laugh a little too loudly. When they got back, Isolda broke out the fancy champagne from the Black's cellar and a platter of shortbread cookies from an artisanal bakery down the street, and they all got a little tipsy in the living room at nine thirty at night

Then with the four of them sprawled out on the thick fur rug before the fireplace, reminiscing about the past and all the shenanigans that Isolda's stubborn righteousness, Hermione had looked up from her animated retelling of Isolda's first struggle with boys, to catch the radiant smile brighten Isolda's entire face as she fondly watched them bicker lightheartedly amongst themselves. It was the kind of smile that took her classically beautiful features and made it something worth fighting for. It was the kind of smile that inspired loyalty, that inspired you to want to be a better person; the kind that would fight with them when things came down to it because it definitely hadn't been Hermione or Neville or Ron that had drawn so many to stand with them during the Battle of Hogwarts. It was the kind of smile, easy, carefree, luminescent, that Hermione wanted to see on Isolda's face forever.

Even if that meant having her best friend go somewhere miles away. Hermione glanced at Neville, who was wearing the same expression that she was. Sad, but resolute.

"Sol," Hermione hedged, hesitant at first, then gaining in confidence the more she spoke. "Sol, I think that you and Teddy should go."

Isolda looked down at her tea, then lifted her head to give Hermione and Neville an inscrutable stare. Then, slowly, she started to smile. It had been a long time since Hermione saw Isolda smile like that, and that eased the hurt in Hermione's heart and the worry in her mind at Isolda leaving the protective bubble of Britain where they had always lived in. Isolda will be fine. She will be happier, Hermione said to herself, and for a few seconds, with her best friend smiling in the sunlight, golden and untouchable, Hermione believed in that future.

It took Isolda four months, give or take, of hopping all over the world, to stumble onto a small town in the middle of nowhere, and just about five seconds to fall in love with everything about it. Quiet, idyllic, and to top it all off, located in a nondescript little town in the middle of nowhere with friendly but non-invasive residents, it was dare she say it? Absolutely perfect.

After two hectic months of arranging contingency plans, layering wards over the property, and making sure the house was habitable, Isolda and Teddy took a portkey over to America, the land of dreams where anything could happen, to start on the next chapter of their lives. It was, Hermione would also come to realize a few years down the road, also where Isolda would start to live again.

"this is where it all begins,"

author's note: I know, what you guys are thinking: Where the heck is Bucky? Don't worry, I've heard your demands. He will be in the next chapter, and Isolda will finally meet her soulmate, pinky promise! Also, I read all the reviews you guys leave me, in fact, they are the driving force behind my motivation to write when I'm stuck in a writer's block, so as always, do let me know your thoughts :) See you guys in the next chapter!