Times

by those-painted-wings

The sum of a person's character is often determined by a series of events that would seem all but unrelated. With closer observation, they may be linked, but it is a rare person that understands themselves, and an even rarer one that may understand another.

3. Two of Five

Five Times He Thought About Death (Two of Five)

He was distracted by the whimpering and thumping of the agonized creature behind them and glanced back at it yet again.

"Are you sure we can't do anything?"

"There is no help possible."

The battered copy of Deathly Hallows – dust jacket missing, corners battered into shreds of gray paper – fell into his lap as he looked up at the noise, eyes flying to the window where he caught just a flash of confused wings as the bird fell to the ground. Without a thought he dashed outside, screen door banging behind him as he tumbled down the steps, coming to kneel in the dirt below the living room window.

The bird was stunned by its collision with the window, but its head twitched feebly as Jimmy loomed over it. Doing his best not to frighten it further, he gathered it into his hands where it lay on its belly, wings drooping over the sides of his left hand. He could feel its heart beating wildly, fluttering against his palm in a desperate attempt to keep the body alive. The bird gasped, beak gaping widely, but no sound issued. Jimmy stroked a single finger down its back, and it relaxed a little. He felt its heart slow, and entertained hopes of saving it – and then the pulse stuttered, and stopped.

He gaped at it, falling back so that his butt rested on the heels of his shoes, the soles of which were peeling away from the uppers with use. He poked the still brown body, and it slumped to the side. One dimming eye stared up at him from among the fine yellow-brown feathers of its face. Gone was the crescent arc of reflected light, the spark of life and energy that would have marked the eyes of a living bird. It was replaced by flat beady blackness, like the dark pupils of the dead prawns on ice in the supermarket.

He had seen dead animals before – roadkill, a pigeon floating in the fountain in front of the Town Hall – but this was the first time he had watched something die, seen and felt its life fade away. He ran another finger down the silver-gray back. It was already cool and stiffening in the October air.

It had been alive and now it wasn't. He shrugged and laid the bird down on the hard earth, going to fetch a trowel. Mom had tried gardening last spring, and given it up within a month, but the tools remained along with a few straggling perennials. The trowel was at the bottom of the hall closet, buried under several layers of shoes. He pulled it out by the tip of the blade and grasped it properly by the handle, admiring the way the sunlight through the still-open door glinted and pooled along its length.

The hole he dug was small but deep. If it were shallow, the stray cats and other wild animals would dig it up, and while Jimmy held nothing against them for taking a meal where it was available, he wanted this body to rot in peace. Before the laid it in the earth, he dislodged the primary feathers with two sharp tugs, tucking them in his jeans pocket. The heads of a few brave marigolds drooped over the disturbed earth when he was done, and he considered breaking a few off and putting them in a jar for his mother to find when she got home from her "family outing" with Georgie... but knowing her, she wouldn't even notice.

He sighed and tapped the blooms so that they bobbed and wept yellow-gold petals over the grave, then stood. He tried to brush the dirt from the legs of his pants, but it had engrained itself into the fabric to the point that it probably wouldn't even come out in the wash. There was dirt on his shirt, too, where he had wiped his hands. Mom would not be pleased.

Instead of going straight back to his book, he fired up their ancient console and called up the encyclopaedic archives.

The Mourning Dove, it read, (Zenaida macroura) is a member of the Dove family (Colombidae). It is one of the most abundant and widespread...

He shut off the console and pulled open the drawer under the desk, from which he pulled a twist of brown string and a tube of superglue. From his pocket he produced the two dark feathers. He tied a knot around the blunt ends, adding a drop of superglue as insurance. The ends of the string he knotted together, then pulled the simple necklet over his head and tucked it under his shirt so that the smooth feathers tickled over his breastbone.

(Quote from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, American hardcover version, page 709)