It was supposed to be the best time of the year: beginning of the holidays. Not for me.

“Don’t,” he said in a low voice. “Something’s really wrong; he just jinxed me when I asked what was up. I wouldn’t bother if I were you.” Lily shrugged and shoved him out of the way. I smiled apologetically at him before rushing after her.
“OI, TOSSER!”
The guy just dumped someone, Lily; tact would be a gift right now.
 

"HAS WOOD SEEN THE SNITCH? Oh no, she just threw up-"
 
 
 
 
 

 

“We gave it a nice funeral. Samuel died a brave and noble death, and so we gave him his deserved farewell.”

“It really was beautiful.”

“A thestral ate him.”
 
 
 

“These are the books your mum wrote,” she told me, gesturing to the box. “All her finished ones, and even an unfinished manuscript of a novel she was writing.”

I bit my lip, and looked at the label.

It was hastily scribbled on, faded and aged with the black marker wearing away, but I clearly recognised my mother’s handwriting.

“Ellie, this is why your parents died.”
 
 
 
 
 

The characters on the screen were terribly portrayed, and we ended up making snide comments about how fat her butt looked in a ridiculous, puffed up skirt that I’m sure would have made Audrey Hepburn look obese.
 

 They concluded that there wasn’t anything there.

“But if anything happens,” Al ordered, “you yell for us straight away.”

“Even if it’s late at night?” James asked, wounded, then narrowly dodged Al’s curse with a laugh. “Jeez, I was joking.”

“We need Severus.”

“Snape?” Ginny asked, a frown in her voice.

“Yeah. He knew the Dark Arts like the back of his hand, he saved Malfoy in the bathroom without even knowing what I’d done-“

“Your Potion’s teacher?” Lily asked vaguely. Her brain was thinking far too much, I just knew it. She’d had an idea, or maybe the stirrings of one. “As in Albus Severus?”

 Then there was fire. It was fire in my veins, nothing else, and I was screaming and writhing. I wanted it gone, I wanted it ended, just put the flames out. Every muscle in my body was contracting, striking out and fighting this cloud of agony. I screamed and cried and hurt; everything hurt so endlessly.