Hermione watched the procession trudge along in front of her, towards the city square. Everything was draped in white: the pall bearers, the liveried guard, the casket cradling her deceased mother. Tears pricked at her eyes, but she looked almost directly at the sun to keep them from falling. Her father squeezed the arm he held tightly, in grim reassurance. When she looked at him, his face was emotionless, bare as always. Only the continued vice was a clue to his emotional state.
Finally, in the square, the funeral procession circled the Fountain of Brotherhood, once, twice, three times, a bell gonging loudly on the completion of each circle. The king sat atop a makeshift but no less magnificent throne. His queen stood to his left, his son to the right. The pall bearers lowered the casket in front of them. Hermione and her father parted ways and stood on either side of it. Her father bowed and Hermione curtsied, the way her mother taught her to. More tears welled in her eyes.
The king nodded and stood. "The entire kingdom feels a great loss today," he began. "Lady Jane Amelia Prewett-Granger was a good woman in all things. Beautiful and kind, her light shone brightly for everyone to see."
He went on to talk about little tidbits of information from her very short life that his wife no doubt supplied him with and his scribe no doubt wrote down for him. Hermione wasn't interested in how lovely the king could make her mother seem. She already knew. Her mother was warm-hearted and caring, smart and nurturing. A adoring woman whom Hermione and her father loved with all their hearts. She didn't know how her father would carry on now. Her mother was his world from the day he met her. As cold and distant as he seemed, he melted at her every touch and bent himself to her every whim and didn't mind at all.
Hermione herself felt a bit angry, along with the anguish of losing her mother. How could she leave me now? Hermione wondered. After she promised me never? She's up and left me with no clue of how to do things! She was supposed to teach me Italian and the ways of men! How to avoid annoying name-droppers and pick out the real friends! Without her, Hermione felt she had no direction.
Someone cleared a throat, waking Hermione from her down-trodden reverie. She focused and realized that everyone was looking at her expectantly. She was about to embarrass herself at her mother's funeral, disgracing her in her death. Mother would have known what to do.
All was quiet, and then something clicked. The king was supposed to ask her if she had anything to say and she could either grievously decline, or proudly make some powerful statement that would bring the crowd to tears. She couldn't help but think that her mother would have wanted her to say something. As the new lady of the house, she had to say something.
"My mother was not a boisterous woman," Hermione said quietly. "All this pomp over her would have made her blush unbecomingly. However, to see the love emanating from the friends, family and townspeople in this congregation would have made her break into tears. From the Granger family to all of yours, thank you for your support, love, kind words of comfort and the burden of grief you shared with us. Do not mistake, this is not a happy time for us, but my father and I are glad to know that we are not alone in these dark times."
Hermione didn't know where the words came from, but they flowed out of her almost elegantly. Maybe she was best under pressure. It made no one bawl, but a few women wiped their eyes with monogramed handkerchiefs. The queen smiled sadly, though still becomingly. The king nodded and a snare drum took up tattoo, the beginning to a funeral dirge, as well as the erratic rhythm of her heart. She stepped away from the casket and walked in a wide berth around it to meet her father behind it. He took her arm again and the pall bearers picked up the casket. A horn joined the drum and the procession marched out of the square and towards the grave yard.
The rest of the event passed in teary condolences, suffocating hugs, and pitying looks. The Duchess shook her head and invited Hermione to tea in two weeks' time, after the proper grieving period had finished. The carriage ride home was quiet and exhausted. Her father looked straight ahead, eyes straying neither to the right nor the left, focused however on a not so distant past. Hermione watched the city pass by her window, then the trees and shrubbery, too tired to think of anything, unwilling to let her mind run across her mother's beautiful face.
Her father left her in the foyer with no goodnight, but a lingering kiss on the forehead. The maids helped her out of her formal wear and into a nightgown, thankfully silently. When they left, she doused the candle lights and climbed into her bed for, hopefully, a long sleep, from which she would wake from this nightmare.