This is all in all my second attempt at writing a fanfiction. Please read and review :)
Do I need to go through the I-don't-own-the-Harry-Potter-books-all-credit-goes-to-JKR rant? 'Cause I'd rather skip that. However, Ellie Winter, Susan Salinger, Jasper and Emily Crowfeather are mine and mine alone!
That said, enjoy! Or don't. Please comment either way!
The way I saw it, the world had ended when I had read that parchment two weeks ago. I was stuck in a nightmare.
"Ellie, please," Susan was crying next to me. "Please calm down and let us go to the Common Room."
"You go," I managed to say through hysterical sobs. "Go and leave me."
"Ellie, please. I can't leave you in the Forbidden Forest at night. Please have some sense. There's still a lot to live for."
I didn't want to listen. I just wanted to die right there, drowning in my own tears and deafening by my own screams. I just wanted to be left alone to die, but Sue didn't seem inclined to do that.
"Ellie, please," she frantically insisted for the n-th time. I felt too broken to care what I was causing her to go through just then.
We never heard the footsteps, because of my crying too loudly.
"And what, if I may ask, is going on here?" hissed Severus Snape, the Potions professor, out of nowhere.
I didn't care to answer. I didn't care if they expelled me. I just didn't care anymore.
"Professor, please just make her go to the Common Room," cried out Susan. "Please… Her mother… Surely you've heard…"
The way I saw it, there was no Ellie Winter anymore. I was nothing but an empty shell that was left to hurt in agony.
"Go back to the castle before I report you to the Headmaster," Snape snapped at Susan.
"B-but Ellie…" she stammered.
"I said go. You don't wish to get on my nerves."
After a few moments, I gathered that Sue had finally left. All the better. There was still some weak part of me that felt guilty about making her see her best friend in such a condition.
"And you'll come with me." It was a plain statement, and the tone with which it was said implied that any contradictions whatsoever were going to be in vain.
"No," I shook my head, still crying. "Leave me. Report to the Headmaster. Whatever. It doesn't matter. It's never going to matter now."
"Little drama queen," Snape gritted through his teeth. "Same as Jessica at your age."
First thing since I had read the parchment informing me of my mother's death that reached out to that Me that I had though I'd never again be able to be.
"You knew her?"
"Obviously. And I imagine you must have been told better than running away because 'it's never going to matter now.' Now come with me before I start thinking Jessica hasn't thought her daughter anything."
He let me cry my eyes out, I'll grant him that. I sat in his classroom and cried until the tears dried up on my face and my voice became hoarse from sobbing, and Snape just sat on his desk and busied himself with some paperwork meanwhile.
"Very well," he but whispered when silence fell upon the room. I was lying on the desk and I was finally starting to register the exhaustion sinking in. "I suppose you'd be willing to return to the Common Room now?"
Hesitantly, I nodded.
"You might want to inform Susan Salinger that you're fine and you're not planning on killing yourself just yet."
I nodded once more.
"One more thing," he said just as I was exiting the room. "Next time, instead of running to the Forbidden Forest at 3 a.m., come see me. Consider yourself warned that if I witness another such scene I won't hesitate to report to the Headmaster, and, I promise you, the thought of being expelled will start to matter, Miss Winter. Good night."