DISCLAIMER: Yeah, like I said before, I have no life. I didn't write Harry Potter. I don't own anything 'cept the ideas for the plot thingy.

Chapter 3: A Cousin's Funeral

When Alana saw just how many wizards were hanging about her room, she tried to slip back into the study but with fouled luck, a young witch with pink hair spotted her standing amid the soot and ashes.

"Hey!" the woman shouted "Who are you? You can be in here!" Alana didn't wait for the woman to even finish her sentence before she reacted. She bolted straight for the door but misjudged her speed and slipped an the polished wood floor. She tried to steady herself and keep running but skidded straight into the door across the corridor and collapsed to the floor in a crumpled heap.

"Hey! Are you okay?" The pink haired lady bent down to help Alana up from the floor, but instead of taking her hand, Alana backed into a corner.

"Get away from me!" She shouted "I have half a mind to kill you were you stand! How dare you come back here after what you did yesterday?!"

"What? This mess? No one here had any part in it. We've just come to fix it up." She woman reached her hand out for Alana to take once again "I'm Tonks, I work with the Ministry of Magic up in Britain and with Albus Dumbledore." She hoped the girl would trust her. Instead of accepting her hand, Alana jumped up grabbed the woman by her shoulders.

"Albus?! Is he here now?! Tell me where he is!" The girl had a wild look on her face, as if Dumbledore was her only ally in the world.

"Hey, calm down. He's not here. He's still in England. Mind telling me your name?" She tried to catch the girl's eyes but she look up from the ground.

"Alana Lucas" She replied, still looking down. Tears began to well up in her eyes again "Are their any survivors?" she whispered quietly, afraid to here the answer she knew was coming.

"No, only you" Tonks replied just as quietly as Alana. She wrapped her arms around the girl as she started to cry harder.

"Hush now lovey, its alright, they're in a better place now." Alana pulled out of Tonks' embrace and looked the woman straight in the face, all tears wiped away and eyes no longer moist.

"What have you done with the bodies?" Her tone was a little more harsh than she intended but she had to make sure Maggie's body was given the proper ceremony for someone of her kind. It was Alana's duty as a friend, and a member of her family, however distant she may be.

"We only covered them, we figured the parents would want their children's bodies back. Normally we would have buried them ourselves but since their all muggles, we thought it would be a bad idea not to tell the parents about the incident." Tonks shrugged and tried to look like the carnage didn't bother her but it was really traumatic to her. Alana could see it in her eyes, they had a haunted look in them, the same look she knew was in her own eyes and on her face at the same time.

"About a quarter of them are from around here." Alana said, trying to help the group of wizards "Some are from Venice, Some Bari, and a few are from around Peliza." She paused to think for a moment, trying to remember where all the girls were from "about thirty from Sicily and the rest aren't even from Italy. I think ten were from Santorini in Greece and another fifteen from Athens. Maggie is from Australia and I'm from all over." She stopped to think again and realized she had spoken about everyone as if they were alive. She shook her head and continued, "You can find specific addresses in the headmistress' office upstairs, and one of the girls won't be returned to her family. Maggie is my family so I'll deal with her ceremony." She cast her eyes down to the floor again so no one would see her sparkling tears.

Tonks placed a hand on Alana's shoulder "Thanks, and sorry." she whispered "Was she your sister?"

"No, A distant cousin" Alana replied "We didn't know until a month or two into the first term we shared a dorm. She said something that's somewhat of a virtue in my family, so I asked her who she was and it turned out we were related." She had bent the truth a little. She had actually walked in on Maggie casting a spell that her kind used to protect themselves from enemies and demanded to know where she had learned that magic and if she had been going through her books. Maggie only stood up, which ruined the almost completed spell, and said she learned it from her family. They both had realized they were related and were rarely apart from each other after that.

"Well, I truly am sorry." Tonks said and started on her way to the headmistress' rooms to find the list of students and their addresses. Alana watched her walk away and when she was out of sight, wasted no time dashing to the spot where she left Maggie the night before.