Lilacs. Summer lilacs.

Katie smiled as she remembered them, remembered walking in the meadow in the woods near her old neighborhood, the one she'd grown up in. Lilacs had grown everywhere, there. If you didn't grow lilacs in your yard, you were very nearly ostracized from the suburb. It was strange how particular people could get about little things like that.

The birds had liked them, too. They'd taken the seeds and spread them to the meadow Katie was lying in, now.

It was peaceful. The gentle breeze caressed the grass, bending it down from lifting to the bright blue sky. Only a handful of clouds dotted the azure sky.

Katie pillowed her head with her arm, lying on her back. She watched as her daughter picked handfuls of wildflowers and lilacs into a bouquet. Only three years old, but fascinated with pyrotechnics, just like her father had been, and she loved flowers.

Her daughter. Katie smiled to herself. It was still incredible to think she was a mother. Little Meredith with her father's red hair, freckles, and blue, blue eyes. She had her mother's heart-shaped face, one of the few things Katie had passed down to her.

Sometimes it hurt to look at her, Katie thought, twiddling with the engagement ring she still wore on her finger. She looked so much like her dad.

If only he were still there, Katie thought. He'd curl up next to her and whisper naughty things in her ears, tease her, make her laugh, fight with her, smile, and be a father.

He'd never known she was pregnant. Katie had barely known herself. She'd found out the day of the Battle. Only hours before the galleon in her pocket had burned red-hot and she and Fred had rushed off to Hogwarts.

Katie had known there was a possibility of dying, but she'd always thought they'd go together. It had never occurred to her that one could live without the other; they were a pair, a set. If one came, the other did, too.

No more, though. Katie was all by herself.

"Look, Mum, I brought you flowers!" Meredith pronounced each word carefully, thrusting a bouquet into Katie's face.

Katie smiled and took the flowers, inhaling the scent of lilacs deeply.

Well, she thought as she pulled Meredith into a hug and tickled her stomach, making bells of laughter echo in the otherwise still meadow, laughter that sounded extraordinarily similar to her dad's, I'm not completely alone.