Disclaimer: I don't own it.

Dedication: For the ever-wonderful Expecting Rain. Thank you!!

The little girl is absolutely perfect. Ten tiny toes and ten tiny fingers and a thatch of dark hair and beautiful brown eyes and she loves you simply for the reason that you are her mother. She needs you and it feels good to be needed.

In all your 18 years, you've never seen something so heart-wrenchingly beautiful, so innocent and helpless as this perfect little girl who looks at you with the utmost adoration.

"I love you," you whisper, and the little girl coos in response, gurgling and waving her tiny fists. In a way, it's "I love you, too" and that's all you need to hear.

You are 18 and this seems foolish and stupid and asking for trouble, but you can't scorn her father's sacrifice and give her up or abandon her.

You've been abandoned, you know what that feels like, and you could no more abandon this little girl than you could forsake the sacrifice her father made and this is your choice and for once in your life, you have a choice, a real choice, and you can't give that up.

You can't give her up.

"Don't," you snap at your best friend in the entire world—your only tie to reality right now, with the exception of Emma and Dennis, but they've got their own scars. "Just—just don't."

Romilda looks at you carefully. "Dem…."

"Milly, I said I would do it and I will, I just have to… figure something out."

"Dem, Colin wouldn't want—"

"Don't you dare," you seethe. "Don't you dare try to tell me what Colin would or wouldn't want. I don't know and you sure as hell don't know. He's gone, Romilda. Gone and I'm here raising his daughter without him and there won't be a soul in the world what knows what he would want because he's dead."

Romilda closes her eyes and you feel guilty, because Romilda has been there—was there when you suffered through the 18 hours of labor, was there to hold you when you cried because Colin couldn't see this other part of his soul, here on earth. Romilda has always, always been there and what a fine way to treat friends.

So you apologize and Romilda smiles and says it's no big deal and she takes Colleen for the evening to give you some time to just be Demelza and grieve.

Colleen is three today.

You're 21 and your beautiful baby girl is three and you feel old and at the same time…

At the same time, incredibly, impossibly young.

You smile as you hear Colleen coo over something Dennis and Emma brought for her. Oh, how you wish Colin could be here--!

It's times like these it hurts the most—when you feel like you're living a half-life, something that got cheated out of everything it could be. It feels like there should be another person here, like Colin should be laughing over every little cute thing Colleen does.

The other day, she looked up at you and said "Mummy, love you," and your heart broke because it felt wrong to be living and experiencing and enjoying this without Colin there to watch.

But dwelling on him won't bring him back, so you turn back to the living room and put on a proper face of excitement for your beautiful girl.

Colleen has just received her Hogwarts letter and, after waving it around in your face and owling Aunty Milly and Uncle Dennis and Aunt Emma and squealing about Hogwarts, she skips off to her room and you're left in the kitchen with the breakfast dishes and the tainted, bitter taste in your mouth that you get when you think of Hogwarts.

And then you're grateful—so, so grateful—that it's going to be the lovely experience it should have been for you—Colleen is going to have a wonderful seven years, Carrow-free and you are so, so thankful you cry.

You and Milly take Colleen out to Diagon to buy all her school things and you can see others there—Harry, in particular, following a green-haired Teddy about.

He nods to you, and you nod in return, but there are no words exchanged. His eyes linger on Colleen, on her sandy thatch of hair and eyes too big for her skinny face and pain spasms across those green eyes for a moment and you know he's seeing what you see every time you look at your daughter; Colin, reflected in every way, from the top of her head to the tips of her toes—the only resemblance she bears to you are her eyes—everything else, even her exuberant manner and her love for pictures and tendency of hero-worship (generally towards her Auntie Milly), is Colin's.

Harry does not approach you, which is probably a good thing. You've kept your distance—you go to the Hero's Banquet every year at the Ministry because Milly drags you along, insisting you'll fall madly in love with Anthony Goldstein; never mind that he's had a thing for Morag McDougal since before the Carrows. But you don't keep in touch with anyone—those relationships hurt too bad to maintain, so you just stick to Milly and Colleen and that's enough for you.

You cry when Colleen boards the train, but you manage to hold it in until the scarlet engine has gone round the bend. You'd go with your beautiful, beautiful girl in a heartbeat, get resorted and everything and never experience the hellish 6th year you seldom think of fondly. Sixteen-going-on-seventeen is too young for horror and heartbreak, but you survived (a part of you did, at least; the other half is buried under an oak tree, forever-seventeen) and this is the reason you did it—to watch Colleen go to school and learn and never have the horror you did. This is why you did it, why Colin did it. And a part of you thinks maybe he's watching her, just as you did—that he's got his eye on her.

It's a nice thought, regardless of its validity, and it's a comfort to you as you drag yourself back to the flat that seems smaller, despite the glaring absence of your excitable 11-year-old. You write a letter to your boy-hero and walk it to his grave; his baby went to school today and he has the right to know.

Colleen's letters are full of boys and spells and friends. She is sixteen and lovely and you wish you could, like your own mother, tell Colleen witty anecdotes and tales about boys in broom closets, but your sixth year is horror and Carrows and terror and armies and war and pain.

So you write your daughter about the good times that stand out in your memory; the night you and Colin danced in the common room as the boys catcalled and the girls swooned, the kisses and letters and promises, the nights sitting in a circle in the Room of Requirement, thankful to be alive and to have people to be alive with.

Colleen never has to live through what you did, but it's created a gap between your generations, and you can never understand Colleen's normal, no more than she can understand yours.

Colleen graduates today.

You never graduated.

Not with Colin's death and the rebuilding of Hogwarts and Colleen's birth. You took your NEWTS at the ministry and scored well enough that you were able to secure a desk job at the ministry to provide for you and your three month old baby. Your dreams of flying for the Harpies died with your boy-hero, and you made the best decision you could. The desk job was and still is a steady income, pays decently, and the 9-5 work schedule worked well with Colleen's babysitter.

Life went on, even though you didn't think it could, and now Colleen is graduating.

Colin has been dead for seventeen years and it just doesn't seem possible that the little person he helped create is about to start a life, a real life, of her own, grow wings and fly.

You stand in the back at the party, where all of her friends joke and laugh with her. Romilda is snapping pictures for a scrapbook and Dennis and Emma are laughing, too, and you smile.

It's hard not to be jealous of your beautiful daughter, who had the most boringly-normal Hogwarts experience, who has opportunities at her feet, who literally has the world on a string—she can do anything she wants to, can fall in love and get married and do everything in order and raise her babies with their father. You didn't get that—it was ripped from you by prophecies and war and horror and a dark lord with a God-complex. You gave all your opportunities so that she could have hers and sometimes it's hard not to be jealous. Why should you do all the work and not reap the reward?

But then Colleen's laughter rings across the room and it feels worth it. This is your reward, and it is perfect and lovely.

Colleen is getting married today. Dennis is walking her down the aisle in place of her father and you're happy for your baby—you are.

And, admittedly, it's been fun living vicariously through her as she tries on wedding dresses and picks flowers and chatters about favors and guest lists and all sorts of wonderful headaches.

But a part of you is jealous yet again. You never got a wedding day and (what amounts to) your wedding night was in an empty classroom, Colin sighing against you and you crying with the desperation of it all. There was no white, no rings, no bells, cake, or guest list, just you and your boy-hero in an empty classroom, with the ghosts of your classmates weighing heavy on your minds.

You cry (of course you do; you're the mother of the bride) when they say "I do" and they kiss and a part of you sees you and Colin and Dennis and Emma and Anthony and Morag and every other couple from the final battle; this is what you fought for, for Colleen and for the men and women all over the world getting married today and tomorrow and yesterday. So that they get to have a happily ever after, and never live horror and heartbreak.

It was worth it, even though a part of you screams that it's just not fair. It was worth it, and after the festivities are over and your baby has Apparated away to her fairytale honeymoon, you visit a grave in the moonlight, sitting under an oak tree for a long time as the dew seeps into your dress.

"I love you," you whisper, and the breeze that whispers back sounds like "I love you, too."

There are grandbabies—five of them, three with your brown eyes and two with sandy hair—one named for the grandfather they'll never meet, and one they call Demi, though that's her name and not a nickname, at your insistence. Demelza is a ridiculous name for anyone; long and awkward and mispronounced at every turn. Besides, Demi is more of a memorial than Demelza will ever be, though the memory it celebrates spelled it "Demy" and called you it between classes to irritate you. (Really, it didn't; you were flattered, like he knew you would be, that he had his own special nickname for you.)

Five grandbabies, all with sweet-smelling hair (be it sandy or blonde or brunette or the odd redhead that popped up) and chubby cheeks and fingers and this is what you fought for, though you're sad Colin won't ever see them, won't ever feel sticky kisses against his cheek, or hear a whispered "love you, Nan," as you slip them sweets.

Still, they are your reward and a better reward there never was; you'd do it all again for an adoring look from those brown or blue or hazel eyes.

Some say 67 is too young to die, but the last grandbaby turned seventeen last week and Colleen is 49—old enough to say goodbye to.

May 1st is a regular Saturday—you make your tea and sit on your porch with the Prophet.

Tomorrow will be the fiftieth anniversary.

It does not seem possible that it has been 50 years since horror and heartbreak; does not seem plausible that you have existed 50 years without Colin, but you have.

Fifty years is a long time; fifty years without Colin is longer, and you are ready to kiss these "golden days" goodbye.

Nobody needs you now and you have needed him for a long time.

It feels like coming full circle, walking into the warm white light of forever. It does not surprise you that you are seventeen again—and that none of the wounds from the final battle that pained you up until your death are present. You are pre-Carrows Demelza and you look around eagerly for your boy-hero.

He is standing where you knew he would be, big eyes still eager and excited, sandy mop of hair flopping into his eyes.

"Demy!" he says and you run—it is so cliché, but so, so lovely, and his hug is warm and tight and wonderful.

You have so much to tell him; about Colleen and the grandbabies and even the great-grandbabies, about a world he gave everything to, about sacrifices and fifty long years. There is so much to say to him, but words and stories can wait as your eyes search his face hungrily. He is perfect and wonderful and it was all worth it.

AN: By my estimations, Demelza would have gotten pregnant just before the final battle (say, late-ish April) and given birth in mid February in what would have been her seventh year. Regarding her age, she would have been eighteen (or very close to it) when she had her baby, because you have to be seventeen before going into your seventh year.

Sorry for the long-winded author's note at the end. I felt like I had to explain :)

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