Finger in a Box
By Alanna
The crowd was somber – too large of a crowd for such a small man. He must have been minuscule, for instead of the six-foot-long coffin, a shoebox was being lowered solemnly into the ground.
Tears were raining on people's faces; tears were raining from the sky. It was a cold November day: a stereotypical funeral day.
The mourners were not wearing black out of grief, but because few would have thought to wear anything else.
"I hear they got Cornelius Fudge to speak!" one woman whispered excitedly to another. A murmur spread through the crowd, an excited murmur. There was little genuine grief. A detached observer might come to the puzzling conclusion that few attendants even knew the deceased; that they were at the funeral as a matter of duty. And, however improbable that inference might have been, it was correct.
"No, he's too wrapped up in this election," the other whispered. "It's not easy to run for Minister of Magic."
A somber-looking man with long white hair and a beard of equal length was stepping up to the podium. "Greetings," he announced.
"Most of you here have never met this man, have never spoken to him – and now, never will. I am sorry, and I am sure that I speak for all in attendance, that such an ordinary man came to such an extraordinarily terrible end.
"When he was in school, if a teacher was asked to name the most promising student – the top twenty most promising student – who would become famous, this man would not have been on the list. And yet – and yet…Remember him. Remember standing up for what you think is right, even when it is standing up to a friend. Remember a wizard who never did anything distinguishing until his final moments."
A few blew their noses. The man cast his eyes over the large gathering. Off to the side, his face stung with shocked disbelief, stood a tall, black-robed gentleman with light brown hair and a careworn face. Silently, he walked forward and knelt in front of the grave.
"Now, Remus."
The man wiped his eyes, gave a gentle wave of his wand, and a small marble headstone appeared at the fresh grave. With a single word – "Remember" – as their farewell, the crowd left.
The last man stayed, soaking the earth and marring the stone with his tears, until the words were almost illegible in his blurred vision:
Peter Brutus Pettigrew
Order of Merlin, First Class
January 31, 1955 – November 7, 1980
"Death is swallowed up in victory"