Private message to Antonin Dolohov

[alt_sally_anne]

There were several of your fellow Councilwizards who fell in battle whose bodies are still at the school. Savitha Desai, Nisha Desai, Ned Pennifold, Xerxes Glozeman, and Maximus Truncheon. There are also the children of several Councilwizards who fell in battle whose bodies are still at the school, including Isabella Rowle. I assume her body is unclaimed because neither of the Rowles wishes to come here to get it, and not because she is believed to have fought for our side against her parents.

We will be burying our own dead sometime soon on the Hogwarts grounds. We will bury your dead with ours, if that's your choice. They'll be treated respectfully and their graves will be marked so that their families can re-inter them somewhere else later, if they want.

If you would prefer, however, we could send the Hogwarts elves with their bodies to the location of your choosing.

By the same token, if it is within your power to return the bodies of Harry Potter and Neville Longbottom to our keeping, we would appreciate it.

Comments

[alt_antonin]

In my religious traditions, no one dies while yet his name is written.

I have often been on the receiving end of some rather dubious looks when making this claim, particularly as the details are a mystery -- in the oldest sense of the term, unavailable to the uninitiated -- but I have had direct personal experience of the existence of a life after death, and the invocation of the souls from the kingdom of the dead. Yes, I believe in the world thereafter, and that it is the obligation of those on this side of that undiscovered country to keep faith with those who have gone ahead, so that we may be reunited in the world beyond.

I would offer you some further reading, but my library is, alas, slightly scattered at the moment.

It is customary to ask the traveller to carry any messages one wishes to bear to those who have gone forth some time ago. Or to make any last petitions for forgiveness. Or simply to reassure them that their names will not be struck out and their spirits will not be forgot.

[alt_sally_anne]

Then tell Harry his plan worked.

Tell Neville his sister's okay.

And tell them both they'll never, ever, ever be forgotten.

Ever.