Chapter 4: Fly
I couldn't believe it when I read it. The media exaggerates, you know. To make it interesting. I wouldn't have even seen the article if one of the boys hadn't have brought it in from the locker room because he noticed the resemblance of the girl in the newspaper picture and the one that I kept on my desk.
That was years ago, when that picture was taken. It was taken on a perfectly placed quidditch field, in the middle of the perfect afternoon. Gryffindor had finally won the cup. Finally. Harry Potter won us that game. But she helped.
In the picture Harry is holding the cup skyward and it is catching the sun just so. I am crying on his shoulder with as much dignity as one might have. The girls and the twins and bunched together and laughing. We are all grinning madly in this picture that never sleeps. It is constant joy. Katie has a scrape up her cheek, but she doesn't look like she cared much.
She never did. Every sacrifice was well earned and every drop of blood was for the team. I admired her for that because that is what I taught them all. She was the only one who never complained. Out of all six of them.
This was big news, or so The Daily Prophet proclaimed. And I didn't even know if it was true or not. Grudgingly, I unburied the paper that held all their house numbers. For further reference, you see, Angelina had told me as she slipped it into my coat pocket. Sinking my fingers into the Floo powder on my desk, I tossed it into the smouldering fire. "The Burrow," I whispered. I wouldn't contact her house.
Soon enough, a ragged face with flaming red hair arrived right in my fireplace. I wouldn't have been able to place it if I hadn't recognized the familiar freckle pattern.
"George?", I asked hesitantly. Raising an eyebrow to the fireplace, I mentally compared the twins in the picture to the one in the fireplace. This one looked tired, with circles under his eyes and hair that looked like it could use some taming.
"Fred." The head corrected. "What do you want Wood?" Fred barely sounded like himself and all the joviality was gone from his voice and features. I hadn't seen him since his own wedding and couldn't believe the laughing man from that time was the exausted of this.
"Is it true?", I asked, slowly. "Is she gone?" I ran my fingers over the smooth front page as the picture recounted her accident over and over. At least they gave her the last right of it not being written by Skeeter.
"All of it." Fred looked pained. "Every word. Wood, I have to go." Then the fireplace was dark. The room was dark. My face was dark.
Flying was always one of her strengths. She was always so graceful at it that at any moment, you expected her to leap off of her broom and stretch her arms out towards the sky.
I don't know where she is. But I expect that she is flying now. So close to that liaison that you could swear that she was from another world.
Her hands so close to clouds, that you could swear that she was touching Heaven.
I don't know positively, but I swear that somewhere, Katie Bell is flying.