Death, Be Not Proud
So I was in a morbid mood, because my STUPID SISTER sent me a forwarded message about some girl (one of those "send this 2 10 peopel or U wil DYE!1!" deals), and I started sort of thinking there was someone in my driveway that I kept getting glimpses of while I was mowing the lawn.
So, yeah. Thinking about death. Here you go.
Disclaimer: I am neither J. K. Rowling, John Donne, nor Alexander Graham Bell. Although some people have mistaken us.
Rose Weasley read the obituaries.
Rose Weasley could be seen every morning, without fail, at breakfast holding the Daily Prophet (though few were still subscribed these days; it was a bit of a laughingstock) open to page five, sometimes with silent tears streaking down her face.
"Why do you always read the obits?" Scorpius Malfoy heard himself saying one afternoon to his Potions partner as she added knotgrass to the solution.
A wry smile crept onto Rose's face. "My mother used to do it, too," she explained, "while she was at school. Of course, we have different motives: Mum did it to see who from their side had been killed in the war; I do it simply because."
"Yes, but why?" Scorpius persisted, ever-curious.
"I dunno," Rose looked up at the ceiling as if the answer would be written there, "I guess it all started when I would see my mum reading the paper at home. She's never really stopped, you see. I, meanwhile, check for the dates of the funeral."
"But it's not like you could go to every funeral; we're in school."
"But in the summer, I do," Rose pointed out. "Or I at least try to go to as many as I can."
"They don't even know you," Scorpius stated.
"I know," Rose replied with a small smile. "But I think it'd be terrible to have someone you care so much about die. You'd be devastated, but the whole world would keep on spinning, much to your chagrin. I just want to take a bit of time out of my own life and give it to someone else. You know?"
Scorpius didn't know, but he wasn't surprised at all when Rose Weasley turned up at his paternal grandmother's funeral that August with her brother, both sporting solemn looks of extreme sadness.
Hugo preceded his sister up the line of relatives, shaking Scorpius' hand, then his mother's, his father's, and finally Granddad Lucius', without a word. Rose approached Astoria Malfoy first, as Hugo was paying his respects to Scorpius, and hugged her briefly. She did the same for the men (Granddad, to Scorpius' surprise, held on the longest and the closest to the Weasley girl).
As Hugo stepped aside, Rose wrapped her arms around Scorpius and whispered, "You should see it from my side."
Scorpius and his family watched as Rose and Hugo took each other's hands and walked out the door, neither looking at each other, neither speaking.
Scorpius did not eat breakfast at the Slytherin table once his seventh year.
One week until the theme park. CAN HARDLY WAIT.