Beyond the Grave
Disclaimer: Anything you recognise isn't mine – god bless JK!!!
Chapter 13 – Beyond the Grave
Reminder: I knew it, I hadn't done it, I hadn't tried to kill Harry, which meant I had no reason to kill myself, which in turn meant I had been murdered, and somewhere out there still at large was my killer.
Hell To Pay
I felt like a great weight had been lifted off me, I hadn't killed myself, I had no reason, my life was happy, and most importantly I hadn't attempted to kill Harry, for the first time in a while I felt free, even happy, it wasn't my fault. Perhaps I hadn't accepted it at the time but now I realised what Harry said was true. The weight had been relieved if only momentarily,
Because as soon as I started thinking about it and even greater weight settled over me. I found my mind running riot with questions
that night, the tower, what was I doing up there? Was I pushed?
Well that one was almost certain, so one major question remained…. who pushed me?
The mystery was driving me crazy….
why couldn't I remember?
Why didn't I know what had happened to me?
Was I blocking the memory because it was too horrifying, or was it more sinister? Had someone placed a memory blocking charm on me? And did they still work when you were dead?
My head kept coming up with questions that I couldn't answer…
How long before I died had I attacked Harry? Was it the same night? Or was it a week? A month? Maybe more …
exactly how much memory had I lost.?
It occurred to me that it couldn't have been more than a week, because Harry was still in the hospital wing the day I discovered I was dead. But then again, perhaps he was in there for another reason?
Was he there the night I died?
I pushed the thought out of my head, I would know, I would have remembered, but a small voice at the back of my head settled in even as I pushed these thoughts away, a voice that whispered with a nagging certainty…
You don't remember anything else – he could have been there...
But I knew, had he been there he would have said something, if not at the funeral, then to my parents, he would have offered some sort of solution, hewould have told them with conviction that I had not committed suicide…
Unless he was the one that pushed you…
I forced the voice to shut up, locking it away in my head, screaming it out, because I know it couldn't possibly be right... could it?
No that was impossible, Harry loves me, the even thought of it offended me, the idea that Harry could really be evil horrified me, and I was certain without a doubt that it could not possibly be true.
Even more horrifying was the thought that if someone could make me forget with a memory charm that carried over into the worlds of the dead, was the thought that perhaps my memories weren't my memories after all …
What if I had never attacked Harry? What if my memories had been tampered with?
Voldemort had fed Harry images that weren't real during my fourth year at Hogwarts … could legilimency work past the grave? Was I merely the puppet of someone else's thoughts a pawn in some bigger game? God that voice that blames Harry, they could be in my head right now laughing at me, turning me into a gibbering idiot.
I realised I was being irrational, I was letting my imagination run away with me yet again, paranoia had indeed set in… I knew Harry wouldn't attack me, Harry loved me, he's lost too much already, he just wouldn't do it.
I tried to force myself back into rational thoughts, taking a deep breath to try and calm myself, but even calmed I found thoughts running riot in my head… there were just too many questions and virtually no answers.
Had I made enemies during my time at Hogwarts? Did someone have an ulterior motive? Did they kill me just to upset Harry? If they had it had certainly worked.
Indeed it occurred to me that the reason for my death could have been a mere cause of distraction to get Harry out of the way for a bit, I had come to realise not only had I not fooled Harry, but the pair of us had never fooled anyone but ourselves, I wore my heart on my sleeve, and Harry did the same, but we were both too scared…. Too scared to come to terms with our feelings, scared of what it would mean.
Scared because we lived in a world that feasted on emotional weakness, scared because to fall in love was not a simple act shared by two people but a source of weakness, a target for enemies who thrived on misery and hatred, enemies like Voldemort who saw love as a means to an end, a foolish notion.
Voldemort had one constancy, and that was power, no good, no evil, no love, no hatred, just strength and weakness. And to display fear or love, to show reliance upon another, to him that was easy bait for the taking.
We had made mistakes, and now we were both suffering the costs.
They say you can learn from mistakes, but what if the mistake has finality like ours?
Well I had certainly learned from my mistake, I would never show weakness by caring for another ever again.
I decided I had to find my killer… find the motive…. I would become a glacier, cold and unfeeling, unstoppable….
I would destroy everything that got in my way, just like the ice torrent moving through a mountain. I would be relentless, unceasing until I had reached my goal, and my goal, well that was easy…
I would find my killer, I would stop them, I would exact my revenge from beyond the grave, I would find out why I was killed, if I was really just a distraction, or something more…..
When they killed me they had no idea what they would be unleashing, I realised I had been steering myself towards this moment since the time I first set Quill to the parchment of Tom Riddle's diary all those years ago.
Perhaps there is such a thing as destiny, I mused, perhaps this was fate, and perhaps I would be Harry's avenging angel I thought quite liking the idea.
I could even see myself in the getup with the wings a bow and arrow and burning fire in my eyes…
but that was enough, I could not allow myself to be distracted.
There was no time to ponder on fate, no time to lose myself in my thoughts, I had finally found my goal in death and I would stop at nothing to achieve it.
Harry was miserable, I was murdered, and now….
Now, there would be hell to pay!
[authors notes – I know it seems like a short chappy, but that seems to be the right place to end it.
Thanks to all my new reviewers - It was lovely to hear from you all
Big big thanks to my beta reader Sir Darlon, who pushes me to write better and is very helpful. J - Silvermoonluna]