Author's Note: Try to read this with As Baile by Enya (A Christmas Album) in the background.
The room was lit with black candles around the walls, candles as wide around as he was, and, he knew, at one point as tall. Each flame was purest white, no flickering to be seen. The light, however, danced on the walls as if there was.
The desks had been totally removed, leaving a great deal of empty space. In the center of the room a circle of white candles had been lit at the five points of the pentagram that glowed with white flames into the floor.
The air was drifting a scent of roses throughout, mixing with the smell of wax. The incense was matched by the most haunting music the heart could hear, music that evoked tears in all who listened to it, even those who did not mourn.
All this Dumbledore saw later. His attention remained on the figure in the center of the pentagram, knelling on the floor, lost in memories or prayers he did not know. Severus Snape's features were gaunt, pale and tearstained.
Dumbledore knelt before the other, murmuring to the air the standard prayer of loss and mourning. Before he stood, he placed a single white rose at the uppermost point, his offering to her memory. Standing, he retraced his steps back to the door, closing it quietly behind him and resetting the locks.
He did not know what he had expected, but that ceremony, centuries old, was not it.