For Quidditch League Fanfiction Competition: Round Nine.
Written to "Dream" by Priscila Ahn.
There's a reference to the tarot card The Wheel of Fortune, for awareness' sake.
Dumbledore led the weeks of search himself, flying lines of brooms across the United Kingdom.
It wasn't supposed to go this way. Not yet. Not yet.
The witches and wizards with him say that he stood and cried over the two rotting corpses, not even waiting to have them identified. They were still in their robes, though blood and other fluids had stained them, and Harry still had one eye, the thin circle of brilliant green taunting them in the early morning sun, the graveyard washed of color and soaked in a painful sober air.
One wondered why no one had found them, another who had made the circle of footprints, and one witch only stared at an abandoned cauldron and a knife and could not find a peculiar thing about their presence. She was only Enforcement Patrol, she had never dealt with the dead. She found missing kneazles and gave warnings to teenagers that pranked muggles.
But the world was turning, and once again war was rising to its turn atop the wheel. There were two dead boys and a lot of footprints and the only clue the last spell on Harry's wand.
Dudley found that he struggled with his cousin's death. Harry had been scrawny and annoying and had magic, he'd taken his second room from him and insulted him in front of his friends over the years and summers, but he'd been his cousin. There was strange urges to say he hadn't meant to punch him so hard that his glasses broke, and then punch him so he had to retape them. It was a lie, but he wanted to say it anyway. It was okay when Harry was alive, but when he was dead he wanted to be forgiven for everything that Harry could possibly think he'd done wrong. He wanted to tell the neighbors his dad had lied and that Harry wasn't actually a criminally insane boy, to stop pitying him and clucking their tongues. Daddy was liar who wanted attention.
He couldn't go to the funeral. Dad held a party, telling the neighbors that "the boy is finally gone!" but wouldn't say where, and Mummy stood in the kitchen, whispering to the dirty dishes that she had failed. Dudley saw her write a note of apology to dead aunt Lily from that part of the family and burn them in the stove flame. The smoke alarm went off.
Dudley brushed off the sleeve of his best suit, getting up on a chair and turning it off, taking out the batteries in case Mummy needed to send anything else to heaven in peace.
Ron would have loved some peace — his entire family would have. His best friend — just dead, just like that, and they'd fought for so much of the year over stupid things. They should have been playing one-on-one Quidditch and forgetting homework. But Harry was dead, over a tournament Ron had wanted to be in. What had Harry ever done to die?
The casket was closed and he wore robes that, for once, weren't worn. They were new, and fit almost perfectly. When a wizard had gone to the deliver the money from winning (Cedric had died first, the morticians found. Why had it mattered? They were dead. Stupid tournament.) he found Mister Dursley throwing a party. Bloody evil muggle. Ron hoped he died. Him and his stupid son and stupid wife.
The wizard gave them the money, and Mum gave half to Mister Diggory, because his son died too, but not everyone remembered that at first.
To own new robes, but to be funeral robes. Ron decided then that he didn't like new things, as he sat by the two caskets side by side. Hermione sat with him and they filled the space between the dead boys with memories. They barely knew Cedric, but Ron thought of him a bit too, just to be fair.
Sirius, a large black dog sitting by Harry's new tombstone in Godric's Hollow, howled and howled. He looked like a dog, so they couldn't let him inside. There were stupid rules against it.
Hermione's parents hadn't really known what to do with her. Her great-grandmother had died when she was seven, and her grandfather when she was eight, and she had been to the funeral of a great-aunt she'd never met who liked to wash her hair with tea leaves when she was three, but that was different. Old age was different. You expected it, even when you said to yourself "She's 97, she can't die!" because that was exactly the reason. Even if they were young and got sick with horrible diseases or cancer, it was tragic, but you expected it, by the end, and you held their parents and sister and brothers and in your head said it was horrible but at least the young gal wasn't hurting.
But murder... They'd never had someone be murdered. None of their friends or family had died in a burst of horrible violence, none of their friends' children, only one hit dog and some missing cats between all of them.
Furthermore, it was a magical murder. They couldn't sign her up for therapy, they didn't know a single one that would even pretend to believe in the magical world, and they didn't dare to try and to take risks looking for one among the witches and wizards. They didn't know what to look for.
So they bought books and their daughter bought books and she read up on magical subjects and defending oneself and they read up on grief counseling, and they tried their best. But Hermione still spoke not a word, shuffling between bedroom and bathroom when they saw her out of her room, a few tear tracks and her cat as a companions. His fur was cleaned and brushed, his foodbowl was filled, and she was writing her essays for school, so they hoped that she was coping and kept reading up.
They lost their daughter, little by lot every year, when she went months away from home and told them not a thing when she came home - if she did at all - but she was still their daughter, and even if they had now lost her entirely, it didn't matter. One day she would remember them, maybe she would come back or just think, but she would know they loved her, for all their faults.
Poor Harry, who they'd barely met, with no parents to show they loved him. But lucky Harry, who they'd never known, whose parents did not have to grieve for him. Sometimes, this summer, they felt like they were grieving for their daughter, and she had only left them spiritually.
Draco found that his life fell apart at the seams he'd sewn himself when Harry died. His rival was gone, the idiot Gryffindor he had been trying so hard to best because everyone liked Scarface-the-born-famous, a corpse. If he wasn't trying to beat him, who was he trying to beat? Granger? But there was no heart to that, only homework and tests that could be easily cheated at. There would be in-class work, but he couldn't try to humble the trio if they were only a duo, and Buckteeth only put in her heart when her friends encouraged her or she raged. Anyone could beat Weasel.
He wouldn't be trying to be trying to beat Harry as he flew circles above the Quidditch field. He wouldn't be trying to be that bit faster than "Harry Potter and isn't he flying gracefully today," it would be whoever replaced him, someone he didn't know or care about.
Where would be the fun?
The challenge?
Thinking all summer, resewing his life to fit a frame lacking what he'd secretly enjoyed, he grieved without quite realizing.
Hogwarts returned for the year much more somber, its students still a little shocked and still very hurt, and not even unaware first-years could drive the sadness from the halls. Dumbledore, in his tower, knit his old fingers together and wondered if that plan he'd made had truly been the right idea, if trusting someone so young without him knowing had been right.
It did not matter. His plans had to change. Closing his eyes, he began to visualize a new one. Voldemort had to be defeated, even if the costs had to be children.
A tear trickled down into his beard.
Yes, even if it had to be children.