Disclaimer: I am not pretending to be J.K. Rowling, I acknowledge that she wrote the books, bla bla.
Rating: PG
Warnings: Um… the entire ficlet is based around death. It's basically how the characters in it have changed and kept going around a significant death in their midst… so, uh. If that bothers you…? I dunno. The little girl's a bit strange—so she thinks she's playing a game with her dead father, cut her some slack. I love her the way she is. *sniff*
~**~**~
It's highly tabooed to walk over someone's grave. A little girl tumbles out of the apple tree she's been exploring, right onto the soft, damp patch of earth in front of a simple gravestone marked:
In memorem…
Harold J. Potter
1987-2017
There are grass stains on her bony knees and caked dirt fills the little crescents of her nails. Her looks are nothing special; a uniform shade of industrial brown for hair and flat bangs that frame her murky green eyes. She grabs a plush toy from where she left it at the base of the apple tree, not perturbed in the least by her fall, and weaves stories and plots involving the neon hippogriff clutched in her hand and an imaginary counterpart. The hippogriff holds lengthy conversations with nobody about all kinds of things.
"Vegetable?" She waits for a response and when it doesn't come, whispers, "No," so the toy can get on with its guessing game. "Mineral?" … "No." Her lips purse in concentration, stumped by what the hippogriff is trying to figure out, even though she knows the answer by heart. "Animal?" asks the tiny stuffed animal. As the avid make-believer opens her mouth for the finishing line—
"No? Then it must be… a lady. A beautiful lady," says a baritone voice in the perfect imitation of Captain Hook. The plaything is dropped and forgotten in surprise.
"Who are you?" she inquires with too much skepticism for her age. The man's cloak whispers as he moves, full-length, of a dark woolen material.
"Captain Jas. Hook, at your service madam," he says, bowing his head curtly. He hasn't lost himself in fun and games for what could be decades, his acting needs practice.
"No really." Strangers cannot play her game. Again she seems oddly mature, but he hasn't realized whose daughter she is yet. The father she has lost…
"Severus Snape," he says, relenting.
"That's an awful name." Children are only honest, they don't mean to offend.
"I've been told as much," he answers dryly. The older man glances around, if she's here with anyone, they're nowhere in sight. She smiles at him, he's funny in a droll sort of way. She pats the ground opposite her and he sits down, careful not to tread on the grave of his former student. He'd have to absolve his guilt later, there was a kid running around. In a graveyard, of all places. He was entertained by the notion. "Did you come here with your parents?" She hums and chooses to pick up the hippogriff again, rather than answer. "There's probably a policeman just outside if you're lost, you—"
A shower of leaves bursts into life as Virginia trips over a bush on her way over to the secluded burial plot.
"Honestly Sable, you can't do this anymore, I had to hang up on an important… oh. And who's this?" She bristles and snatches her daughter's hand, ready to pull her from danger. Her charge pulls her hand away.
"Mummy, I was just having a game with Dad," she protests. Her mother looks from Sable to the aged man in his dramatic cloak and back again.
"Dad? What, this man?" she asks with a snort, thoroughly lost. The girl groans.
"Nooo! –He- barged in in the middle, I don't know who he is. He has a really gross name," she adds. The man's forehead creases in worry and then the green submerged beneath the muddy color of the child's eyes pulls a string in him at the same moment his hooked nose pulls a similar one in Virginia's mind.
"Snape?"
"Ginny Weasley?" Her gaze is uncomfortable before she speaks.
"No… Potter."
They lose themselves in a flurry of conversation which bewilders the seven year old, who wanders about between the other stone tablets, examining their mossy engravings and in some cases, shiny plaques.
Ring around the rosie,
A pocket full of posy… She sings to herself, soft, so as only to stir those who are listening intently. She waits. No one seems to be.
Ashes to ashes,
We all… Her song trails off, she listens hopefully. Still nothing.
Fall… Over there her mother is more renewed than she's been in four years, talking to the funny cloaked man. He's making her laugh. There's the smirk, and the teasing eye-roll… Yes, they're getting along.
DOWN. Sable grinds her heel into the soil of someone's grave. She feels the heat emanating from her body in waves. Anger. Anger could wake him up. Then he might notice that she's over there with shining eyes, talking to someone new. Dirt flies everywhere and her mother stares, horrified.
"-What- are you doing? " she cries, tugging her away. "Sable? What on –earth?-" Trying to scoop the misplaced ground back where it belongs. All signs point to a tantrum, goaded by her mother's scolding, but then she sees it. He flashes a secret smile, just for her. In an instant she knows he understands. He sees that in certain situations, tearing into a stranger's grave with your bare hands is excusable. Perhaps awful names don't matter.
The Honda's engine sputters a few times before starting and the air rushing from the cooling vent in the car makes Virginia's hair flutter in a mundane suggestion of romance.
"Friday then," he calls to them. Sable snickers because he is old enough to be her grandfather, though with illegal anti-aging potions it isn't obvious.
"Friday," her mother calls back, switching the radio on as they pull away from the curb. A dirty, uprooted dandelion lies on her daughter's lap, while grubby fingers pick it apart and cast the pieces out the window. Older fingers drum the steering wheel absently.
~end~