The sun was resisting the need to go down, which was absolutely fine with Ariadne. She loved the long summer sunshine, and was refusing to listen when her grandfather said 'downhill to winter now' after the solstice the previous day. If he really wanted to, Ariadne was sure he could probably make it summer forever with all the weird stuff down in the Department of Mysteries, but it would really muck up all the plants and harvests.

In a couple of days Ariadne would be embarking on the Hogwarts summer trip with some of her school mates to reach exciting and unusual places and magical and muggle communities she'd only ever seen photographs of and heard about through her father. He wasn't going to make it back in time by the sound of his last letter, but she would catch up with him in July and August. For now, it was time to catch up with her favourite (though only) aunt - aunt Andromeda. Her aunt was an arse-kicking auror, and for some time as a child Ariadne had really wanted to be one too, only she didn't think she was brave or clever enough to catch dark wizards.

The table between them was full of all sorts of weird pastries and tiny ornately decorated sweets from the counter and steam rose from enormous coffee mugs.
"And so grandpa was being all glum and looking out for dementors because it was all happy at the Peppers' place, and he was convinced the dementors would want to come and eat all our happy. He's such a party pooper. Still, at least I got to go, because dad's caught up. " She reached for her coffee and wrapped her hands around it.

"But like what's been happening for you - it's been aaaaages since we last had coffee, or anything. I've missed you." Ariadne grinned. "Met any hunky aurors?"

Ariadne was Andromeda's favourite niece. She remembered when Ariadne was born. It seemed like five minutes ago. Andromeda would be done with Hogwarts this time next year. That was crazy. She was a lucky teenager, she was good looking. Andromeda had hated the way she had looked as a teenager. People thought she was strange now but she didn't care.
"I am sorry I missed the party." She told Ariadne. The Peppers were nice enough, but Andromeda felt awkward when she had to act normal like an adult. She didn't feel like she was one still. "I am glad you had fun. Dad is never the life and soul of the party. He's the black hole." Her dad was not miserable, but he was not that fun either. He was a serious person.
"Working, and same old people. The new recruits are being kept safe away from us. You gonna join them next year?"

Ariadne nodded at her aunt's description of grandfather as a black hole - she would imagine that!

It sounded like aunt Andromeda was stuck at the office of late by her response. Aurors were meant to have engaging jobs, but with all this dementor business, and probably the same faces misbehaving, it was not quite so fun, Ariadne guessed.

".. you gonna join them next year?"

"Me?" Ariadne asked, surprised, "I don't think I'd make a very good auror. Besides, you have to have brilliant grades, and I don't do potions which it seems I need to any job lately. Though I guess arithmancy's hard, but I don't think I'll get a clean sweep." She rubbed at her face, "Eugh, you're making me think of school work and it's the holidays!" Ariadne stuck her tongue out cheekily and then decided which of the treats between them she was going to have next.

"Go on, I dare you to eat that one, it keeps changing colour." She pushed an iced sweet towards her aunt.

"What this one? Easy." Andromeda pushed the sweet into her mouth. "It changes taste as you eat it. I win, that was awesome." She swallowed and sipped her coffee. She stuck her tongue out at her niece. They were as bad as each other. "You could be an auror. It is in your blood." She thumped her chest proudly. They laughed.
Ariadne was clever, but she did not think she was. Her aunt could sympathise. With her mum and dad being clever and unspeakables originally. Andromeda had felt like she had a lot to live up when she was growing up. Now she was an auror and her mum and dad were proud. But Ariadne was now the new Andromeda. Andromeda knew as grandparents Mortimer and Lyra expected a lot. Ariadne was Orion's son. Andromeda's brother was a bit of a tearaway. He stayed away from home with his boat. Ariadne loved him to bits.
"I would not have the patience to make these." Andromeda said. She stared closely at another sweet. It was like a piece of evidence. There was so much detail in the decoration. She almost felt bad to eat it. "Muggles make these too. But they stay the same colour. How do they do it?"

Ariadne had to find a dare that aunt Andromeda wouldn't take some day. The multi coloured food one wasn't too hard though, but Ariadne had suffered once at a joke cupcake from a Weasley mail order batch and turned into a peacock at school once.

"Magic." Ariadne replied to her aunt's question and then sniggered. "Muggles are really clever at getting round things we just use magic for without thinking." She had never done Muggle Studies at Hogwarts, but she'd got lost reading a couple of chapters from the text book someone else owned in the Gryffindor common room last term that had enlightened her on a few more topics.

"I don't think I'd have the patience to make them look nice before I ate them, no." Ariadne agreed, peering forward across the table at the one in Andromeda's hand. "I'd want to eat them as soon as I could." She slithered a hand up as if to attempt to steal it, mucking about.

"I dunno what I want to do after I leave Hogwarts, still." Ariadne admitted. "Part of me wants to do what dad does, another part of me wants to do something useful - you know, helpful. Then another part of me wants to be super serious and academic and go study some more. Like there's place the American students told me about, Laevenstrome's Fundunct of Sorcery. It's in America, in California. They study loads of stuff, and I would get to live in California. Dad's always saying we should go there." She propped her chin up on her hand. "But it could be like, boring, and expensive, and Grandfather said that it's not got the best reputation, but his standards are like…" Ariadne motioned way above her head with her other hand and pouted. "And I'm like," she gestured with her hand going beneath the table. I still remember the look on his face when he found out I'd got Acceptable for 4 OWLs last year. I thought I'd got dinner on my face. " Ariadne huffed, and shoved another piece of confectionary into her mouth.

Andromeda let Ariadne talk about her plans for after Hogwarts. When she was Ariadne's age, it had been very different. Hogwarts had been under siege. Ariadne had not had to fight outside of duelling club and Defence Against the Dark Arts. She was lucky. Andromeda knew she wanted to carry on fighting dark wizards. The auror office needed more people then. She did not want to rest until each of them were brought to trial, even in her first year of training.
"His standards are high, yeah." Andromeda agreed with Ariadne, "but he just wants the best for everyone. He did it to your dad too." She remembered Orion getting his job at Terror Tours first. Their parents wanted them to be great academics like they had, and be happy while they were studying books. "Yeah but you got an outstanding for Defence, didn't you? It wasn't like you flunked. Acceptable is still great. What if you had got a Troll? What if you told him you were going to travel with your dad instead of doing your NEWTs?"

"I did!" Ariadne agreed with gusto to her aunt's observation. It wasn't surprising that grandpa disapproved of her father as a teenager, he wasn't much better as an adult. "But I think," she lowered her voice, "it was partly out of fear and all those detentions I had with Professor Storm."

She shoved another pastry into her mouth.
"Ahaha!" She laughed with a muffled tone and stopped to finish eating before she continued, realising how yucky that was, "If I told Grandpa I was just going to travel with Dad I don't think he'd speak to me for the rest of summer. Or he'd get Grandma to lecture me until I went mad. It'd be a blessing I was going away on the school trip, but I bet they'd stop me going if they thought I was going to run away forever, besmirch the Gamp name." She licked a bit of icing off the end of her finger and reached for her mug again.

"I wish I could just skip the whole exams bit and get to the good bit of doing whatever I'm meant to do for my life, you know." Andromeda shrugged. "How did you decide? Would you do anything else apart from be an auror?"

Andromeda had heard of Professor Storm. The trainees had mentioned he was strict. Andromeda figured that was good. People like Lockhart were crap. Then again Umbridge had not been better and she was strict.
"Me?" Andromeda asked. "Hmm. I always wanted to do something worthwhile." She told her niece. "Then there was the war. I felt sick that dark wizards got away with it. I thought I could not let that happen again." Ariadne did not know how lucky she had it. "I was very angry. Your grandpa was in the Ministry and it still happened. Him and his friends. Not on my watch I said, so I applied. And here I am."

"Mm" Ariadne agreed, and sipped her drink, somewhat sobered by her aunt's mention of the Battle of Hogwarts. She'd covered it in History of Magic, and even in just text books it was frightening enough. Then there'd been a visitor who had given a first hand account that had given Ariadne nightmares for the following days. She didn't want to imagine living through it after that, it sounded like a living nightmare.

"Here you are." Ariadne agreed in an echo, and swallowed, her gestures a lot smaller all of a sudden, her thoughts taking her from the present to the fact her aunt had been right there.

"Aunt Andromeda?" Ariadne began tentatively, "Do you still," this was awkward, but she was curious, "do you still think about that year? A lot? I mean, do you think it's shaped who you are?" She frowned, "You don't have to answer - but grandfather said something about my generation being weak and needing a good war, and it's been preying on my mind."

Ariadne asked her if she thought about the bad year at Hogwarts. As soon as Ariadne asked, she could smell the state of the castle, and of fire. Her skin prickled and tingled where she and others had been riddled with cuts, bruises, burns and grazes. She had cut her hair short that year and kept it that way all through her training, prepared for battle. Her memory would throw up moments of the year. Things people said. People who had died. Choices she had regretted. All the time. At the least opportune seconds.
"Yeah." She told Ariadne. "I do." She stared over her niece's shoulder. "It is impossible not to. I'll be brushing my teeth and one thought will tigger another and bam I'm there as the barrier breaks. Or my classmate is screaming because Voldemort's in her head." Those were the sort of memories she felt able to mention over fancy cakes and coffee. "It showed me what I could do. It showed me how precious life is. You only get one. Every second wasted you don't get back." Andromeda looked properly at Ariadne again. "He would say that. He's trying to get you to react. Wars push boundaries and make people determined. They forward progress and then smash it all to pieces. Ignore him, or ask him if he feels half your generation should die."

Ariadne almost regretted asking when she saw how her aunt's eyes looked. There was pain, memories being brought to her mind there, and Ariadne didn't like to cause pain to people she loved.

"He would say that. He's trying to get you to react..." Ariadne looked glum and nodded, she thought that was the case, and that made her more grumpy at her grandfather. The faster her father got back the better. "... Ignore him, or ask him if he feels half your generation should die."

"I think grandma would probably ask me to leave the table if I asked that." Ariadne admitted, "Though if she can't hear, I might. He makes me so mad sometimes. One minute he's all complimentary about me and my classmates at the careers fair and then when it comes to results or being around him for more than half an hour, I'm the worst granddaughter you've ever seen. I don't know. I don't even know if it's worth my energy trying to please him when he gets like that you know." She paused, a fingertip running around the rim of her mug. "Merlin, I turned that round all self-centred again, I asked you a super personal question. I just, look, we are all thankful, you know, me and people my age. We can't even imagine. Oh Merlin. Perhaps I should just shut up." She seized the largest pastry between them and shoved it in her mouth so it was impossible to talk and stared into her drink.

Andromeda nodded. "He was the same when we were kids." When Ariadne shoved a huge pastry in her mouth, Andromeda laughed. It was good to laugh. It helped to push those painful thoughts away again. She reached out for a similarly big pastry. She shoved it in her own mouth and made a face at Ariadne to be funny. It took ages to eat and wipe all the flakes away from her mouth.
"It is ok. I can't avoid that it is my past. They told me talking about it would help. I don't mind telling you. You're my favourite niece. Even if you just ate the most enormous pastry. How did you fit it in your mouth?"

"It is ok. I can't avoid that it is my past. They told me talking about it would help. I don't mind telling you. You're my favourite niece. Even if you just ate the most enormous pastry. How did you fit it in your mouth?"

Across the table, Ariadne gestured mutely with both hands as she tried to chew. She ended up with a shrug gesture, indicating she wasn't sure either, but the thing had darned well managed to fit in her enormous mouth when she shoved it in there. There was a pause for about a minute as she recovered, and washed it down. They ordered some more to drink while Ariadne hastily rubbed at her teeth, keen to remove any crumbs or flakes of that gourmet over-adventure.

"I just feel guilty for prying." Ariadne confirmed, "But thanks for letting me know it's ok. Last thing I want to do is fall out with you, I mean who is going to bail me out of the Ministry cells this summer if go off the rails...?" She winked, though in truth it wasn't an entire joke - this was her last summer before she really had to find something productive to do. In theory this summer should also be something productive, but with her trip to South East Asia and her father's inability to get himself back to the UK without being detained, it had been forgotten about.

"What's going on for you though?" Ariadne asked, "Any big cases going on? The news has been full of dementors and weird stuff, and I like to imagine you're there sorting it out."

Question posed, Ariadne settled back expectantly.

End