Death Becomes Her

A/N: Look, I know someone else wrote a fanfiction with the same title and maybe the same plotline. But I think it's different, and I'm not trying to copy that person. Read and enjoy, and definitely review. (Looking for beta- readers if any of you are interested.)

I enter the cool air-conditioned interior of the mauseleoum. It is dim but not too much so. There was still enough light to see. I wonder, why do they bother keeping this place lit enough to see? There's nothing to see, after all. Oh yes, I came here for a reason. Before I do what I was sent here to do, I want to explore this place of cool death. I walk around the tombs, some pretty, some plain, some obscenely big; but they all held the same thing: a corpse. Something that doesn't belong in this world anymore. I walk up to an interesting coffin. It is white, clear, and made of crystal. On it is a plaque with a picture of this witch, her name, and how old she was when she died. I have seen this person before; often, in fact. And yet, she is still a stranger. Her name comes easy to my lips. But it is as if we had never met. I knew nothing of her. Her childhood, her dreams, her hopes, her loves... nothing. Death becomes her. In her picture, she is with her husband. They are at some kind of party. I smile, a smile as cold and impersonal as the tomb. It was always some kind of party. Never an actual party. In the picture, she is standing next to her husband, her arm around his, her face open with apparent laughter. But still she looks more dead in that picture then actually... dead. I strive to explain to myself. It is her eyes; they seem lifeless, as if the owner of them no longer had dreams, or hopes... as if nothing would make her eyes sparkle anymore. She was young, but seemed to have nothing to live for. That was what eventually led to her demise- that nothingness. It all started with a common cold; it was in the winter. We all tried to get her to come into the house, to sleep. But she stayed awake many nights. Sometimes, if she was weary enough, her head would fall, and one of the house-elves would find her and bundle her into her bed. The only times we had no hope that she wouldn't sleep was when it snowed. When it snowed, she would sit next to the window in her bedroom. She wouldn't eat, and she didn't respond to anything. She would stare out the window, a wistful expression in her eyes. Sometimes I would wake, to see her, in the garden, digging in the snow, trying to make a snowman. But she would be too weary, or I would have dragged her back into the house before she could. It snowed very often that winter. Death becomes her. Those excursions(for lack of a better word) was what led to pneumonia. And, as is usually the case, pneumonia led to her death. But now, she looks placid, untroubled, even happy. Nothing mars her cold features. I leave, my duty done, my last words to her said in silence. Death becomes you, mother.