Grief
All characters and settings belong to JK Rowling and the producers of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince
Harry clutched the old mans robes while staring into the wise old face that had forever x-rayed Harry's very soul. His eyes where still open staring blankly with something like a smirk etched across a withered and tired mouth. Harry knew he should cry but sobs didn't come immediately, he had seen this so much before. This time he was not wailing over the din of shouts of joy and screams of delight at his return with the cup he was never supposed to win, pounding the chest of what used to be his nemesis trying to make him breathe again, trying to make everyone believe what he had seen. This time he was not filled with disbelief when his only family ever passed behind the veil never to return and running with an animal rage to hurt the woman who had ripped this from him. No, Harry was blank; nothing remained inside his heart as his stared into the deep blue eyes that would never stare back at him. Then the sobs came as he grabbed the big bushy legs of Hagrid hoping that the old man would dust himself off and give him a smirk that Harry really thought the greatest wizard of the age was dead. He turned his head and sobbed deeply knowing it made no difference.
She was the first, as she was the one who knew him longest; McGonagall raised her wand in remembrance and in grief of the headmaster. She was followed as one by one every house, every student, and every teacher lifted their wands unified for a split second not in love, not in unity, not even in remembrance; they were not unified by what He had called the most powerful force in the world, but by something stronger, something bitter. Grief. Everyone there did not disperse the dark mark hanging in the sky because of some fundamental struggle between good and evil, they did not disperse the mark because of a high ideal written by a higher person but because of the thing they all felt. Single, unadulterated, grief.
