I don't own Harry Potter.
A parent should never have to bury their child. A phase stolen from her childhood, one tossed around over her head as she walked beside her mother in a sea of black. She remembered walking to the casket, and wondering why it was that her brother wasn't moving and why he wasn't at home anymore. She remembered setting a place for he brother at the table, and she remembered asking her mother when her brother was going to come home a week after the funeral.
She remembered those years she spent with Hermione, so vibrant and bright. She remembered remembering, and she remembered looking out at her daughter in the setting sun and thinking that it must have been the worst thing in the world for her mother to bury her brother. That no one should have to be parted from their child like that. That no one should have to choose an outfit and arrange for a burial plot and see their child looking like a porcelain doll as they are lowered into the ground.
She has changed her mind now. She can clearly see the surprise and grief of the woman with red hair and the tears of the woman's son and daughter and the boy with the lightning scar and the green eyes. She can still hear the jumbled voices in the background telling her that they are so sorry and that she was a wonderful girl, and she can still hear the people hiding behind them whispering furiously about whose job it was to tell the "muggle parents".
She wonders how she will tell her husband. How she will tell him their daughter had gone off to some far away place and never came back and they wouldn't even get to say goodbye to her or visit her grave. She knew would give anything to choose and outfit and arrange for a burial plot and see her daughter looking pale as a porcelain doll as she is lowered into the ground.
She was wrong. It wasn't the worst thing in the world for a parent to bury their child. It was for someone else to do it for them.