The unfounded belief that only pure-bloods can produce magic from elm wands was undoubtedly started by some elm wand owner seeking to prove his own blood credentials, for I have known perfect matches of elm wands who are Muggle-borns. The truth is that elm wands prefer owners with presence, magical dexterity and a certain native dignity. Of all wand woods, elm produces the fewest accidents, the least foolish errors, and the most elegant charms and spells; these are sophisticated wands, capable of highly advanced magic in the right hands.

Susan Bones spends the majority of her time at Hogwarts being told that she should have been a Ravenclaw. She always responds that she was happy where she was, in Hufflepuff, and anyway, who said Ravenclaws had the monopoly on brains?

She had wondered, like all children brought up in wizarding families, where she might end up at Hogwarts and had suspected that she might be in Ravenclaw purely because she had wanted to be a Healer and was determined to get the necessary grades since she was five years old. But the Boneses were a very old family, and they had been sorted into every house over the years, so really, it didn't matter where she ended up.

And she likes Hufflepuff, just as she likes Hogwarts, and her friends, and the teachers, and studying. She gets six Outstandings and four Exceeds Expectations on her O.W.L.s, and is on track to do the same at N.E.W.T level, then end up at Healer school and eventually the upper echelons of St. Mungos'.

But the best laid plans have a habit of going wrong, and Susan finds, for the first time, her grades slipping in her seventh year at Hogwarts, as she tries to keep up with the nightly adventures of the DA as well as her homework. Between Potions essays and Healing her bruised and battered school friends when they return from escapades gone wrong, something has to give - and the something certainly can't be her companions' well-being.

She is lucky when all Professor Flitwick says is that he'll ignore the P she's just recieved on her test this time (the test she was going to study for, but then Seamus Finnegan had three fingers on each hand broken by Crabbe and Goyle and couldn't face going to Madam Pomfrey to get them fixed, so she had to spend the best part of a night healing them instead of re-reading her notes). She's luckier still when Professor McGonagall catches her asleep in Transfiguration one afternoon, and merely suggests that she go to bed a little earlier (but how can she, when there are third years - third years! - who need comforting after being tortured by the Inquisitorial Squad for their part in the DA's disturbances?).

She's not so lucky one evening, when she sneaks down into the dungeons to free Ernie, and is caught by Amycus Carrow. He pulls her into the room next door to where Ernie is tied, shuts the door and locks it, and she braces herself for the blow - physical or magical - that is surely coming. But it doesn't come, and when she looks up, he has merely pulled out a chair and is indicating for her to take a seat. She doesn't want to, but she doesn't want to be punished, either, and so she does.

"The Boneses are one of the oldest wizarding families, aren't they?" he asks her, once she's sat down, and whatever she was expecting, it wasn't that.

"I-I think so," she says.

"And you're such a pretty girl," he adds, and she certainly wasn't expecting that. She doesn't know what to say, and he just smiles at her in a way that she thinks is supposed to be calm and reassuring, but it just makes her feel panicked. "I apologise," he says at once, noticing her panic. "That was an inappropriate comment to make, as your teacher. I merely meant to suggest that you will be in very high demand when you leave Hogwarts."

"When I leave Hogwarts, I'm going to be a Healer," she says, because it's the first thing that jumps into her mind, and he seems to expect a response from her.

"A noble profession," he nods, and she wonders wildly if she'll just get away with a careers talk from him, and not be punished. "Noble indeed. I hear that you are a good student - you should get the grades. But you will need something more, of course. A woman must get married and have children - it is her duty."

Susan has always known that she will have children one day - she wants a large family and a loving husband - but she also knows that this is her choice, just as it would be her choice to never get married or have babies. It certainly isn't her duty to do those things! But she does not point this out to him, because she is scared.

"And like I say," he continues. "You are a pretty girl, and clever and talented too. Your bloodlines are impeccable - there will be many men lining up to wed you. I'm sure you will have the pick of the lot!" He smiles at her again, and the bubble of fear in her stomach grows larger. "As long as, of course, you make the right choices. Getting involved in activities such as ones the MacMillan boy is involved in would taint your reputation. You understand, don't you?"

The right thing to do, of course, would be to cry "Dumbledore's Army 'til I die!" or something equally as ridiculous, like the brave Gryffindors would do, but Susan is not brave. Even if she can't manage that, an acerbic comment like the Ravenclaws would make about a woman being worth so much more than just her husband's surname would also be appropriate, but at that moment, she can't bring herself to do anything more than just mumble an affirmation at him.

"Good girl," he says, and she doesn't think he means to be patronising, but he is and she hates him even more for it. "May I see your wand?" he asks suddenly, and she starts. "Oh, not take it," he says hurriedly. "I merely wanted to see what sort of wand you own."

Susan holds it out, gripping it tightly to stop her fingers from shaking. She isn't going to show him her fear. "It's Elm and phoenix feather, nine and a half inches," she says to the floor.

"Very interesting," says Amycus. "My own wand is Elm, though with a dragon heartstring. You got yours from Mr. Ollivander?" Susan nods. "You know, I have done some research into wandlore; it's rather fascinating, you know?" She nods again. "Elm ones are particularly prestigious. We purebloods rather pride ourselves on the fact that only we can get them to produce magic. Says rather a lot about the mudbloods, doesn't it?" He gives her a conspiratorial grin.

And something inside of her snaps.

"No," she says with such force that he actually flinches. "Justin Finch-Fletchly, one of the best Hufflepuffs this school has ever seen has an elm wand, and he's muggleborn. And because of your stupid prejudices, he's not here, and I don't know what's happened to him and I'm scared! But I'm not going to let you sit there and spout your stupid...your evil-" He raises his wand and so does she, and for half a second she genuinely believes that she's going to die (but Merlin, if she does, she's going to do her best to take him with her).

All the anger and fear she's been holding in all these months is bursting out of her, powered by adrenaline, and when he tries to crucio her, she ducks out of the way and then she, Susan Bones, who has never so much as spoken back to a teacher before, throws a hex at him. It misses, and he raises his wand again, blind fury in his eyes, and she's preparing another jinx and-

-and the door bursts open. Alecto Carrow is stood there, so gleeful that she doesn't even notice the fight between Susan and her brother. "Amycus, come quickly! Longbottom, the Weasley girl and that strange blonde one have been caught trying to steal the sword of Gryffindor! We've got them this time!" she cries, and Amycus lowers his wand.

"Can't it wait a moment?" he says, looking at Susan pointedly, but his sister shakes her head.

"No, Minerva is there already and by the time I get back she'll have alerted the stinking rest of them, and they'll all trying to protect them!" Susan gathered by the look of distaste, and the speed at which the two siblings raced out of the dungeon that she was talking about the other teachers. She spends a moment collecting herself, then remembers the reason she came down here in the first place.

"Oh, Susan, thank Merlin!" Ernie cries, seeing her emerge looking dishevelled but mercifully unhurt. "I thought-"

"Did you hear?" she asks, cutting him off. "About Neville and the rest?"

"Yeah, but they'll be fine!" he says confidently. "McGonagall won't let anything happen to them, and besides, they're all pureblood. You know they don't like to hurt too many purebloods. Anyway, fancy getting me out of these?" he adds, nodding to his chains.

Susan raises her wand and points it at his bindings. "Relishio." Nothing happened. She tries again and again and again, but she, who has never had trouble with a spell before, cannot do it. Ernie is looking at her with concern. "Where's your wand?" she asks, and he indicates that it's stored within the pocket of his robes. She removes it, and, even though it feels strange and unfamiliar in her hand, she manages to successfully cast the charm, and Ernie is released. She passes him back his own wand, but she doesn't move to pick up hers, lying on the floor.

"You need..." Ernie says falteringly, gesturing to it, but she just shakes her head. "Look," he continues, rather uncomfortably, like he wishes it wasn't him who has to say this. "I overheard what Carrow was saying..."

"Then you know why I can't continue to use that wand," Susan says, and Ernie explodes at her.

"Are you stupid?" he yells, so loudly she jumps. "You won't use the wand because it's made out of the same wood as Carrow's? What about Justin, wherever the hell he is? Do you think he's going to stop using his wand because it's the same as Carrow's? Don't be thick! And even if you do decide that you're going to stop using your wand, get a new one, where the hell do you think you'd get one from? Ollivander's gone, haven't you heard? Either he's defected or been killed, but either way, he's not here. You can't get a new wand, it's impossible. And even you can't be as stupid as to think being wandless at a time like this is a good thing." With one last look at her, he leaves.

Slowly, she picks up her wand from the dungeon floor, turning it over in her fingers like she did when she first brought it. She remembers Ollivander saying that it is the wand who chooses the witch, and that may be true, but it is she who performs the magic with it - without her, it would be just a useless stick. When she stopped believing in its powers - not wanting to associate herself with any of the Death Eaters and admit to sharing a wand with powerful pureblood connotations with any of them - the wand stopped working.

The wand, though good and powerful and capable of advanced magic, bends to her will and she chooses to make herself different from them. Raising it, and feeling its warm familiarity all down her arm, she casts a spell, and vanishes all of the chains from the dungeon, revelling in the simple, yet effective, act of resistance.

Then she hurries back to the Common Room, to apologise to Ernie for her stupidity, and to warn him, for the Carrows will know who was in the dungeon last, and will want to punish when they see what has happened. Thank Merlin, she thinks, hurrying along the corridors, that she has her wand to protect herself - and the others - from them.

-:-

The spruce wand requires a firm hand, because it often appears to have its own ideas about what magic it ought to be called upon to produce. However, when a spruce wand meets its match - which, in my experience, is a bold spell-caster with a good sense of humour - it becomes a superb helper, intensely loyal to their owners and capable of producing particularly flamboyant and dramatic effects.

Everyone likes Megan Jones.

Megan is the sort of girl who will always be there to lend a hand with some homework, or help a lost firstie find their way to Charms, or be a shoulder to cry on when someone's boyfriend has just finished with them. She counts as her friends people from every house at Hogwarts, often across the school years (although not so much with the older Slytherins during her later years at the school, what with the war and everything), and she manages to genuinely connect with them all.

She's one of the few people to arrive at Hogwarts genuinely wanting to be a Hufflepuff (even though her mother, Hestia, was a Ravenclaw, and her father, John, was a Gryffindor) because she knows thats where her talents lie - making friends, and making sure other people feel valued. Sure, she's good at her subjects, though she'll never be top of the class, and plays Quidditch for her house from her fourth year onwards. But her real skills have nothing to do with magic: she has superb people skills.

Everyone loves to see Megan Jones, her curly red hair bouncing across her shoulders as she walks down the corridors not because she's particularly beautiful (she's long ago accepted that whilst she looks nice most of the time, she'll never be a stunner) but because she's always so happy. She's rarely without a smile, and even in her seventh year, with all the hardship that's going on, her naturally sunny disposition shines through, even though half the time she has to fake it, for the sake of the lower years.

One evening, in early November, just when the Carrows are starting to really get a grip on the school, Susan comes up to the dormitory after a DA meeting and finds Megan sat on her bed with a group of fifth years, painting nails and plaiting hair like they're at a sleepover. She asks angrily what they're doing, playing at dress up when there's a war to be fought, and Megan, more angry than she remembers feeling before, drags Susan into the bathroom, slams the door shut and hisses at her that Emma's father was killed in September by Death Eaters, and she's slowly been getting quieter and quieter, to the point where her friends have taken her to Megan that evening to see if she can do anything to help her because they're running out of ideas to stop her just drifting away.

"And this, this 'playing at dress up' was the first thing I can think of, but it seems to be helping Emma, so I think I'll stick to it, unless you want to go out there and fix everyone?" she snarls.

Susan blinks for a moment, and then says, rather stiffly, "Makeovers are always okay for making people feel better, but I think it's hanging out with you that really helped her," and suddenly they're both hugging and crying. Susan pulls back shortly after, and catches sight of her reflection in the mirror. "Oh Merlin, my mascara's run everywhere! I look like a panda!"

"Better come and get made up again, then," Megan says with a smile, pulling her friend back into their dormitory.

A few days later, Susan and Hannah corner her before they can go down to breakfast. It seems that the girly night, however superficial and silly, has helped Emma Blakedown, who has been steadily coming out of her shell ever since. Perhaps Megan would like to start a little club for the lower school to help them through this difficult time?

"What, like the DA?" she asks, confused.

"No, no," says Hannah, "nothing like that. No fighting, no talk of war - something to take their minds off things. You know, a night of Witch Weekly quizzes and chocolate and makeovers and giggling about boyfriends and stuff. We thought we could do a different night for each year group, you know, firsties on Mondays, second years on Tuesdays and so on?"

"It's a nice idea," Megan agrees, "but I think it only worked with Emma because it was such a spur-of-the-moment type thing. Much as I love both things, a bar of Honeyduke's finest and a bit of lipstick isn't going to make people forget there's a war on."

Her roommates roll their eyes. "It's not the chocolate and the makeup, dummy," Susan says. "It's you. You help people by getting them to talk, but we need an excuse to go in there and make sure they're okay. We'll get the food from the kitchens if you supply the cosmetics and your company, yeah?"

Somewhat bemused, Megan agrees, and evening finds her holed up in the first years' dormitories with Hannah and Susan and the five eleven year olds. Her makeup and the butterbeer the house elves have supplied are enchantingly grown up and sophisticated and the three older ones paint dabs of glitter on their eyes and colour their lips and giggle with them, but she notices that, despite Hannah and Susan's big sisterly affection, she's the one they open up to.

The same thing happens on Tuesday night, with the four second years, and on Wednesday night with the six third years. The war isn't spoken about at all in the group at large - that's all shrieking and giggling and boyfriends and who you fancy, but when little Katie Parsons gets Megan on her own as she paints her toenails, she tells her about her Aunt who was killed earlier in the summer for speaking out against You Know Who, and Jenna Marston drops her aloof facade and breaks down into sobs, telling her how scared she is about her older sister who is in the Order. Megan never knows quite what it is that she says or does that gives the girls hope, but she manages it.

By Thursday, the end of her night with the fourth years, she's beginning to think that she might need some more makeup. Never one to wear that much in the first place, her supplies are running very low, but as all their post is searched on the way in, it'll be weeks before she can get any more in, and she needs it now - for the girly, over the top sessions are clearly helping the lower years cope.

So she starts making her own. Always a competent, if not stellar spellcaster, she starts brewing potions and asking Professor Sprout about plant dyes. When her Head of House finds out what she's doing and why, she hugs Megan so quickly the girl isn't entirely sure it happens and gives her free access to whatever she needs in the Greenhouses.

She goes to Professor McGonagall and asks for her help in Transfiguring empty lipgloss containers she's collected into full ones, and the older woman looks at her for almost a minute after she's explained why. For one mad moment, Megan truly believes she's going to get a detention, but then Professor McGonagall gets a faraway look in her eyes and says that maybe she'll join them in their makeup and gossipping someday.

Hannah and Susan can't believe their ears either when she tells them, but it's given her an idea, and by the time the Christmas holidays roll around, her evenings (she's never quite sure what to call them) have been instiuted across Ravenclaw and Gryffindor as well. After Christmas, Ginny Weasley approaches her in the Room of Requirement at the end of a DA meeting, trying to set up a time when she can come to the Gryffindor Common Room again. Megan can't resist showing her something she think she'll like - she's invented a few joke products: lipsticks that look cherry red but turn green on the lips, eyeshadows that change colour every thirty seconds and Ginny is impressed. "You could give my brothers a run for their money with this stuff!" she laughs.

And though she may be running her little makeover sessions for the benefit of others, she starts thinking about what she wants to do after she finishes school, when the war's over, when they've won. (She can't entertain the possibility that they might not). She thinks she would like to invent a magical cosmetics line - she's grown adept at charming and transfiguring colours, and by the Easter holidays arrive, she's invented products that will turn the exact shade of a colour that's most flattering to the wearer, acne removers that work painlessly and (her personal favourite) glittery nail polish that flashes different colours once applied.

She feels guilty for the amount of fun she's having with such a superficial thing when there's a war going on, but consoles herself with the fact that she is making a lot of people feel better, if only for half an hour. Plus, as Susan says one evening right at the end of April, wiggling her toes as the polish on them changes colour, it really is quite advanced magic she's doing.

She blushes a little and thanks her friend, and then someone yells something about Harry Potter and a dragon across the Common Room, and it's the start of all hell breaking loose.

Hannah and Susan and a few of the sixth years rush off, but Megan arrives at the Room of Requirement a little later than the others, having stayed to calm the younger students. When she does get there, she gathers that Harry's returned and You Know Who is on his way and they're going to make a fight of it! Order members are appearing left, right and centre, including her parents, who try to force her to go home, but she simply tells them - doesn't beg, doesn't plead, just states simply - that she's staying to fight, and then she is fighting.

She's not really sure how her group, who were meant to be guarding one of the passages, ended up down in the Entrance Hall, and nor how long she's been there for, when she's hit by a curse that has her falling backwards and struggling to hold onto consciousness. It wasn't the Killing Curse or she'd be dead now, but she can feel the life slipping out of her, and she knows she hasn't got long. The Death Eater who hit her is laughing in the shadows, his dark cape preventing him from being seen by the fighters, and she knows he will slink around hidden, killing her friends, if she doesn't do something.

But what? She still has her wand, but she's weak, too weak to even stun him. If only she could get someone else to deal with him...but she can hardly make a sound, and certainly not one loud enough to be heard over the noise of the battle. She needs to make him be seen...

It comes to her in a flash: she'll charm him like he's one of her makeup products. She doesn't know if the spell will work on humans, but it's one she's practised so hard she could do it in her sleep, and hopefully too in her weakened state. "Pretend he's a nail varnish, he's just a potion," she mutters, raising her wand slightly off the ground so it's pointing at him. She casts the charm, and suddenly he's lit up like a Christmas tree, flashing pink, green, yellow, purple, blue... She sees at least five different spells hit him, and he falls.

"Thank you," she whispers to her wand.

She drifts for a few moments, growing ever weaker, when she hears a high, cold voice. She's so far gone she can't make out the words, but the hooded figures are vanishing, and she gathers that You Know Who is leaving, whether permanently or not she cannot tell. People she knows are coming out of the castle, picking up the injured, but no one sees her, as she's fall into shadows. She's going to be left behind, going to die here...

Her wand, still clutched in her fingers, tingles. It's almost as though it's telling her not to give up, that she'll be okay. She's known witches and wizards who treat their wands with a kind of reverence, almost worshipping it, but she's never been like that. Her wand is functional, sure, but nothing more than that. She doesn't have a connection with it, or anything.

But she can't ignore the tingling - the wand itself doesn't want to be ignored. She hears footsteps pass her by, and she casts her flashing colours charm again, lighting herself up, almost as soon as she's thought of it. She's weak now, so weak she can barely move her fingers to cast the spell. But it's the strongest charm she's ever cast, and she's glowing so brightly it's mere seconds until she's found.

And then there are voices, and blessedly cool hands telling her she's going to be okay, that she'll make it. "Yes," she wants to tell them, if only she had the energy. "I will make it, I have to! This wand has some magic in it yet..."

-:-

The proper owner of the aspen wand is often an accomplished duellist, or destined to be so, for the aspen wand is one of those particularly suited to martial magic. Aspen wand owners are generally strong-minded and determined; this is a wand for revolutionaries.

Hannah Abbott's spellwork is mediocre at best.

Often, it isn't even that. She'll stumble over her words, unable to pronounce them, or she'll use the incorrect wand movement, swishing instead of jabbing and it all goes to pot. If, by some miracle, she manages to cast the spell with the correct words and wand movements, the enchantment is usually weak, and won't last half the time it is supposed to.

She usually manages to scrape by on her exams by doing well in the theoretical side - her ability to memorise five signs of werewolfism or the twelve uses of dragon's blood gives her high marks on the written half of exams which make up for her abysmal practical marks (she performs even worse under pressure).

But that's okay.

She was never going to set the world on fire with her magical prowess, but that's okay. Not everyone could be a Ravenclaw, and as long as she's happy (and she was), that was all that mattered. Indeed, her first five years at Hogwarts are amongst the happiest of her life. She has an older sister at the school, Naomi, who's three years above her, who helps to stop her becoming homesick at first, and she quickly becomes firm friends with the other Hufflepuffs. Her less than stellar spellwork means that she'll never be the teacher's pet, like that Hermione Granger, but they mostly like her for her efforts and the fact that she hands in her homework on time.

For all her mediocrity, Hannah Abbot is happy.

Until her mother is killed. After that, she is not happy, not for a long time.

She drops out of school to be with her father, who isn't coping. He sells their house, and the two move in with her Great-Uncle Tom, who runs the Leaky Cauldron. She spends the next nine months washing dishes, cleaning tables and serving drinks. Her sister, who by this time is married and working at the Goblin Liaison Office at the Ministry, manages to find out that it was Antonin Dolohov who killed their mother, and Hannah isn't surprised - the Dolohovs and the Abbotts are distantly related, and he was never have been likely to support her mother's vocal anti-Voldemort stance.

Naomi makes Hannah promise she won't go after Dolohov and attempt to get revenge for their mother's murder, and Hannah almost laughs for the first time in months. She, who for all the DA's training, can barely manage a Jelly-Legs Jinx, go after a Death Eater? Times may be hard, but she's not suicidal.

She doesn't expect to ever go back to Hogwarts, but the mandatory attendance decree is passed in late August and she finds herself packing her bags once more and heading back to school for her seventh year. Susan and Megan, at least, are glad to have their roommate back. School is hard - she's missed almost a year of work on top of her general mediocrity, but none of the teachers except the Carrows punish her for routinely coming near the bottom of the class (and besides, she's still better than Crabbe and Goyle).

When Neville and Ginny and Luna start up the DA again, she's reluctant to join at first - not because she's scared, but because she doesn't see what good she'd be for the group. But Neville finds out what an excellent strategist she is, and drafts her in to plan their various escapades, and soon she's drawing up timetables and making them all memorise the Carrows patrol schedules and synchronise their watches and it works. They're able to paint messages and hide the torture devices and Dungbomb the Carrows' classrooms because of her meticulous planning.

One cold February day, in the very early morning, after another successful night's adventures painting "Down With the Dark Lord" on the Slytherin Common Room door, she asks Neville to teach her all the hexes and jinxes and curses she can't do. He agrees, and they spend days and nights in the Room of Requirement practising and practising and practising defensive magic. Neville understands what it's like to be rubbish at something, and doesn't laugh at her or give up when it takes her three weeks to master jinxes the third years managed in about twenty minutes. He is patient and kind, and under his tutelage, she actually becomes good at magic for the first time.

She doesn't realise quite how good she's become until early April when Jimmy Peakes, caught unchaining his friends from the dungeons, is to be made an example of at breakfast time by the Carrows. Just as Alecto raises his wand to crucio him, Hannah decides she can't stand it anymore and sends out a Shield Charm so strong it blasts the Death Eater five feet backwards, knocking her over. The look of utter surprise on her face gives it away that she was the one to cast the spell, and she is crucio'd in his place, but the look of unmistakable pride on Neville's face makes it bearable.

And then the battle comes. She stays, even though she fears she'll be more of a hindrance than a help. She remains mostly in the Great Hall, directing groups of fighters, instructing them on where needs defending, ensuring that there's a clear path for the wounded to get to the hospital wing. At one point, she tells a group consisting largely of Order members that there's no one covering the Astronomy Tower and they need to get over there with such authority that even Kingsley Shacklebolt doesn't argue with her.

Once this has been sorted, she hurries down to the grounds, to make sure that the boundaries are being adequately manned, but spies Neville in the Entrance Hall, battling a Death Eater alone. The man's hood has fallen down, and she recognises him: Antonin Dolohov.

She freezes.

She's exposed, there, to the curses coming from all sides, but she doesn't care. She can barely breathe. The act of inhaling physically pains her more than it did in the moment when Professor Sprout told her that her mother had died. It's almost as though seeing him standing there, duelling Neville, makes her mother's death real in a way it wasn't before.

Then, several things happen in quick succession. The first is that Dolohov fires a Killing Curse at Neville, who manages to duck out of the way. The second is that Hannah realises that the reason her mother is no longer living, that her father is barely coping is standing before her, and it nearly took the life of the man she thinks she might be in love with. The third is that Dolohov sends another Killing Curse at Neville, who, by some miracle, misses death by inches for a second time, and the fourth is that Hannah realises there is no 'might' about it: she loves Neville, and this man will not take away everyone she loves.

And so she raises her own wand, her fingers trembling slightly but her voice steady, and she says the two words: Avada Kedavra.

He falls, and then she does, her knees giving way. Neville takes one look at him, then steps over his corpse, picking her up bodily and dragging her into - of all places - a broom cupboard. He's asking her a million questions - is she okay? Is she hurt? Does she want a glass of water? Has she heard from Luna, or Ginny, or Harry? Is she alright? - but she doesn't hear them.

"My wand," she say, pleading with him. "My wand. It killed him. My wand." She drops it, unable to hold on to the weapon that has just taken someone's life, but he reaches down and picks it back up.

"It wasn't your wand, Hannah," he says softly, and she lets out a moan.

"I killed someone!"

"No," he says, taking her hands. "You saved someone." She blinks, confused. "I'd be dead, now, if it wasn't for you. You saved my life."

"I didn't want him to take you," she says, he voice ragged. "He killed my mother, Dolohov, he killed her. I didn't want him to kill anyone else I love." Neville just nods and rocks her. She breathes. "I don't know how I did it," she says. "I'm hopeless, I can't do anything. I can't do magic, I should have been a squib. I can't do spells and I killed him. What does that say about me?"

Neville can sense her panic, and tries to calm her. "Hannah. You are not a squib - all that work we've been doing? All those jinxes and hexes and charms you can do? Are those the work of a squib? Don't be ridiculous!" She's about to protest, but he stops her. "This last year, the DA could not have coped without you, but more important than that: I could not have coped without you. You are as much a leader as I am - do you know how much the younger ones look up to you? Jimmy Peakes would do anything for you after what you did for him... And sure, you'll never come top in Transfiguration, or brew the perfect Potion, but you can fight better than anyone to protect those you love. And Merlin knows, they need protecting right now."

He looks at her with so many expressions in his eyes she feels that even if they sat there forever, she wouldn't be able to decipher them all. But she understands one thing: he loves her, and she loves him.

She takes her wand, her beautiful, Aspen and dragon heartstring wand off him, the wand that has just saved one of the lives most deserving of saving, and stands up. "I think," she says, reaching down for his hand, "that we had better go out there and help to protect a few more people."

He takes her hand, and they exit their little sanctuary, into a melee of spells. It isn't over yet, but even when it is, she will never stop fighting for those she loves.

A/N: This was written for the wand challenge over at HPFC. All information in italics comes directly from Pottermore, and can be added to the list of things I don't own, which naturally includes Harry Potter. I hope you enjoyed reading this, and I would really appreciate you reviewing, as it is the only payment I will get :-)