White Graves
Harry Potter attended another funeral today. The coffin was white, and was small enough for a child. It hadn't been an open casket funeral, there wasn't enough of the girl's head to warrant one.
During the service, conducted by an elderly witch, the child's grandmother if Harry recalled correctly remembering her introduction. Half way through the service the mother of the child had broken down into hysterics. Weeping, crying, mourning and grieving. Most could not meet the mother's eyes. She had looked half mad, as she sobbed.
Unassuming and as just another person bowed down in the background, he hears a gaggle of sharp nosed witches whisper and gossip. The mother had already lost two sons apparently, the little girl had been her last. Her husband had ran off with the housekeeper's daughter three years ago. The woman had no one, no wonder she sobbed.
Like the teary eyed mother, no one looked Harry in the eye, as the pall bearers lifted up the pale coffin, forsaking magic and using their own body strength. Harry closed his fluttering eyelids and took a deep, shuddering breath as they walked pass him. Someone rang out a low tune of a horn, the strange twisting bone still tinged with red. The man's whiskers were wet and glistening with tears.
He didn't know why he had wanted to come, he hadn't know the child or the family. Hidden away in his father's cloak, Harry had walked the small distance to the burial grounds. He was now invisible from their stares, their accusing eyes...
There wasn't a shortage of funerals. People were dying left, right and centre from both light and dark. Just two moons ago Moody had taken him to a sombre, almost embarrassing funeral. The man had been an Auror and a friend of Moody's. There had been two other people there, a tall witch with sagging jowls and a soppy, nervous wizard who kept fiddling with his hat. They had been both disguised for fear of attacks with Moody wearing a low hat to cover his eyes, but the witch had given them a regal nod anyway, her cool eyes taking them in. It had been an open casket funeral, and Harry couldn't escape the empty eye sockets that found in the night, sometimes the day.
Escaping from those who duty was to guard him, Harry had wandered away, uncaring of what people would think, of the havoc he would cause. He had wanted to be alone.
And he had ended up under a faded, heavy canvas canopy, listening to a service of a child he didn't know. There had been a photo, of a laughing, happy child playing in a backyard. She had looked happy, her smile seemed mostly real, but Harry could tell where he had stood some distance away from where he had stood, that photo must have been recent. Her eyes were shadowed. This was a war time shot. Her eyes weren't sparkling when she held up eight proud fingers. They were dead under the fake, silent laughter.
The little girl must have been hearing all sorts of things at the cracks of doors, way past her bed time. hearing the dark tales that were not story tales, but reality. They were happening every day, they were a factor of life.
They had buried her, with another dozen fresh white graves shining in the dim light. Off in the distance two men were making room for another casket, another body.
Through all of this, Harry had seen some of himself in her dead, dead eyes.
And that was what really scared him.