Leanne Moriar was.
She was young, and quiet, and lovely. She was sad and musical. She was a Gryffindor. She was a smoker.
She was Katie Bell's best friend. (Or that was what people remembered her as, anyway.)
The people at her funeral had a picture of her in their heads: small and thin and tanned, with a lot of dark spiral curls surrounding her heart-shaped head like a halo. Almond-shaped brown eyes that revealed nothing except apathy. But Katie sat among a sniffling Angelina and a blank-faced Oliver and thought that the tufty-haired wizard droning on about the great life Leanne lived really knew nothing about her.
Leanne wasn't a saint. Of course she wasn't. But she fought, didn't she? And that was what counted, according to Katie. Leanne, who had always been hesitant to get into trouble—she hadn't joined the D.A., and she didn't read the Quibbler when Harry Potter gave that interview—Leanne had fought. Her parents, her beautiful Muggle mother and her firewhisky-scented, furious pureblood father—had been killed by the time the battle was fought. The nerdy Muggleborn she had loved, Eddie Winthrop, had been escorted to Azkaban on the train ride to Hogwarts. Leanne had had nothing to lose—except Katie, but she hadn't thought of Katie.
"Leanne was a good friend to many..." said the Ministry wizard.
That was a lie. The only friend she had ever had was Katie—but she hadn't thought of Katie.
They had been friends since third year, when they were forced together in Herbology. Katie had declared her loathing of the subject, and Leanne had declared her love of it, and Leanne had helped Katie wrestle a Venomous Tantacula—and somehow, when they went back to the girls' dormitory to wash up, they were kinder to each other, not simply uninterested anymore...
"Leanne was pure, and kind, and forgiving..." he droned on.
Another lie. Leanne had never been pure...she started smoking when her father got a girlfriend on the side in their fifth year...Katie had tried to persuade her to quit, to no avail—Leanne hadn't thought of Katie.
It was eventually Eddie Winthrop who stole the carton of cigarettes in Leanne's book bag and kissed her and made her swear she wouldn't do it again.
Leanne hadn't been notably kind. She never went out of her way to help an innocent first year. She was quiet and contemplative, and always seemed a bit surprised when a favor was asked of her. She was rude to Hermione Granger when the bushy-haired girl had defended her seemingly insane best friend in the common room...and to Oliver in sixth year, when he hadn't let her be Beater on account of her small, breakable body, not even glancing twice at her flawless flying...
Leanne wasn't forgiving, certainly—Katie knew enough of that. After the Necklace Incident, she had sobbed for hours in the waiting room at St. Mungo's, and was angry at Katie for months for not listening to her when she said not to touch it...("I was under the Imperius, Leanne!" "But you should have listened!")...then finally, at graduation...("You could've died—oh Katie!")
Perhaps then, thought the tall, pale girl, perhaps then she had thought of Katie.
"We will all keep Leanne in our hearts..."
If Leanne had been there, thought Katie, she would have snapped that she had no intention of keeping herself in her chest cavity.
But figuratively, yes, Leanne was in Katie's heart. She weighed it down like a solid gold cage, making it difficult for Katie to take in deep breaths, or walk...
"We'd better go," murmured Oliver, clasping his hand over hers. Angelina was sobbing into George's shoulder.
"Yes," agreed Katie, pecking him on the cheek but keeping her eyes focused to the front. "We should go..."
As the couple walked to the approved Apparation point, Katie turned back one last time to look at the photo of Leanne displayed on a banner at the entrance to the church. It was originally a photo of her and Eddie Winthrop, but Eddie had been cut out. The photograph only showed Leanne, her wild curls disheveled and a rare, ecstatic grin lighting up her flushed face as she waved at the camera.
Leanne Moriar was.