“How did you turn out so normal? I was in that place for only a few hours and I was at my limits. If that lasted for days, let alone years, I’d have gone insane”, Hermione rested after their practice session. The children were so exhausted from running and jumping at the floating lights that they fell asleep on the floor, and they had a peaceful moment now.

“I believe you, but you were actively tortured by aunt Bella, in the same way she mentally damaged Alice and Frank Longbottom to the point where they are permanently in St. Mungo’s and unaware of the world around them. I was at no point the target of their focused attention in that way, which was fortunate for me”, Lyra pointed out.

“But still; you’re so incredibly sorted out that you’re basically healing everybody and providing comfort, rather than being broken and in need of healing yourself. How did you even manage that?”

Lyra thought about it. “It was horrible. I still feel cold terror and start sweating when I visit that house. It is full of terrible memories for me. I wouldn’t look nearly as sorted out if I had to live there”, she smiled. “But to me, the actual terror was of a different kind. It started when Voldemort returned, I saw what a horrible person he was, I understood that my parents were wrong about him, and I returned to school to tell Harry, only to find him flirting with another girl”, she shrunk into herself a bit. “I understand now that I assumed all sort of things about our relationship he had no idea about, so he didn’t understand how that would affect me, but from my perspective… my life was over. I chose him when I was eleven. It could be only him. He looked at me with suspicion and fear thinking I sided with Voldemort now that he’s back, and he kissed another girl; he never kissed me like that. When I gave him a hateful look because he betrayed me, he took it as a confirmation, because argumentum ad Voldemort always seemed to hang between us”, she smiled, and wiped a tear off Hermione’s cheek. “For two years things were broken between us to the point where he ended up almost killing me”, she continued. “Those two years were the darkest in my life; I had Voldemort and his minions in my home, and they contributed to my despair and terror, but after Harry realised he loved me – and by the way I will be eternally in your debt for your role in this – and he told me he’s mine if I wanted him, it was as if a sun lit up in my heart again and I was whole, and I felt my life returning, I felt I had something to hope for, other than merely trying to keep my parents alive and surviving for their sake. My chosen life was back on track. I might not die as an old maid after all”, they both laughed through tears. “I was still terrified at home, but it was all external now, not terror feeding my inner despair and hopelessness. I understood what truly mattered, what I had to protect at all cost, and what I merely had to endure”, Lyra smiled like a small sun.

“So that’s what you meant by ‘nobody hurts what is mine’, after you wiped out those thugs”, Hermione realised.

“Yes”, Lyra nodded. “I realised that life isn’t time, or place, or things. It’s the people you love. Life is when you spend quality time with them, and everything else is just scenery and energy to power it. At the time I came to that realisation, my life were my parents and Harry. When my parents had a change of heart and allegiance about Voldemort, and Harry understood he loved me, the two parts of my life that tried to tear me apart came together to heal me. Voldemort, werewolves, death eaters – they were just scenery. Sure, they were the scenery of a Lovecraftian horror, and they still threatened everything I loved, but after my heart was healed, it was just an external threat. It was manageable. I still shivered in fear every time I had to pass through a dark corridor in my own home, and I would wake up screaming in terror from nightmares I had about what would happen if it came to the worst, and the absolute worst were those five minutes when Hagrid brought Harry from the woods, as dead. How I even survived that, I will never know. I was in a daze even when he stopped pretending to be dead and woke up properly only when Voldemort was dead. Then I realised that I lived life conditionally, until that moment. I expected us to die together more than I expected us to live together. I didn’t mind, as long as the ‘together’ part was there”, she smiled, and wiped both their tears now. “After all, I didn’t know if Voldemort could be defeated at all, now that Dumbledore was dead. I hoped, but it was a weak hope, easily defeated by reason. And then we went to talk, we both apologized for our respective roles in our misfortune, and he asked me to marry him, and I said yes”, she beamed. “From that point on, my soul was so thoroughly and profoundly healed, that nothing really bothers me, unless it threatens the people I love, but as you could see, I practiced magic a lot in case that happened”, she grinned. “And there was another thing that felt like deep healing: when I surrendered my virginity to Harry in our first night together after the wedding, and I felt such relief and happiness that it got to be him, and not some filthy creep Voldemort gifted me to, or that accursed werewolf raping me as prelude to eating me alive”, she shivered. “That fear was with me for years, and only at that point it felt finally resolved, and I got to live my life as I chose it”, her smile came back.

Hermione just hugged her, because there were no words.