Author's note:
The title corresponds to a Japanese movie I adore and you must watch –if you haven't already.
Here, some characters talk a bit about whether or not God's there. If I am taking a position, it is the opposite of my own. This is fiction of fictions, folks. Characters don't know about this more than we do. But what's a funeral if you don't get to talk about transcendence?
Okuribito
That chalk was Umbridge's quill's cousin. I watched it warily. Bad memories. I still prefer to cut my fingers the old way and endure the pain of cuts brushing against the dusty floor. Even if it burns like hell.
"I'll finish up before you…"
"Harry!" she scolded. "We can't race. This is serious. It'll affect us for eternity".
It was half act, of course. I saw it in the way the corners of her lips arched.
We were drawing the alchemic circle with our fresh blood. Pain was part of the magic too. Hermione had explained it to me. I didn't like it. I specially didn't want Hermione holding that chalk that drank from her arteries, even if she didn't mind the tattoo being drawn simultaneously over her left breast.
On my fist, I read my own scar.
A wizard went by, folder in hand, taking notes and examining our circle. I could tell him it was perfect. Come on, Hermione had designed it.
"Who's the lucky one" he asked.
"Sorry?"
The man fixated his gaze –blood-stained eyes– on Hermione, pursing his lips. He obviously didn't like the ceremony.
"Who are we to sacrifice should this go wrong."
Like every other time they had asked, we both jumped at the same time.
"Me"
We gazed at each other with rage, but the man only made a disapproving sound with his tongue and took notes as he left.
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"I'm so sorry"
"She died with honor. We'd all want to go away like that."
Vague, low, respectful whispers. The occasional smile, a psychological defense mechanism facing solemnity and general pressure.
Death is somehow banal, as life.
The line of statutory white cloaks, white gloves, is greeted by the family of the fallen. Harry hates funerals, despite his prolonged contact with death –or perhaps because of it–, he never knew what to say. '¿Next great adventure?' Come on… He still feels the hex from the only time he dared say so to a sister. The deceased have a tendency to understand it better than those left behind. Deep down, Harry himself have come to doubt that time with Dumbledore at King's Cross, it might have been a dream, it has been so long… Happening inside his head might not automatically mean that something isn't real, but it doesn't exclude it, either. What if it was an "endorphin cocktail", as Hermione once suggested? (As if he were to grasp what's an "endorphin")
This time at least no unformulated spell reaches him, and he reaches the room relatively unscathed.
The gloves itch to those who have no habit of wearing them.
Conversations calm down a bit in his presence. Someone looks around, finding Hermione's absence as rare as he does. Half a body. She's with Ron, for today, with makes him nauseous and relieved. He has no idea on how to face her, after the raid and everything. They'll meet inside, of course, but they might not even talk, it's a funeral after all.
'What a coward" he thinks.
An auror walks past him on the way to a pensieve; into another, there's an old lady, shaken by grief, pouring silver-blue threads from her head. Someone just disappeared into a third one. White pensieves, with no décor, though different in design. Seven… eight… Too many. He gets goosebumps. Some portraits haven't still arrived, but in front of each pensieve there's a white label stating the name of the deceased.
Too much white in that blood-colored wood room.
He remembers commissioning his own posthumous pensieve with Hermione. Both very young. Joking, or pretending to, because that's what they expected young ones would do in cases like that. Young ones that would fancy themselves immortals. But they liked to fake that they hadn't fought any dark wizard or seen death in so many of their friends. Even for an afternoon. They fancied faking they had been their age at some point beyond infancy.
"Harry!"
Startled, he looks around, to find a portrait –today wearing all gray, in hair and eyes and even skin color- wearily smiling to him from in the wall. He smiles to her heartily.
"Tonks" he greets.
"Where's your other half?" the ancient auror asks frankly, looking around him.
The wizard blushes, but he's in no condition to answer as if she was talking about Ginny. They both know she isn't.
"With Ron, today. What about Moody?"
"You know how he is. Muggles are too easily unnerved. When they come, the personnel move him to the other room. Aaaa!"
The portrait has just stumbled upon her own armchair. Harry conceals his smile as she mutters a protest, her gaze suddenly darting to the people in the room to see if they noticed anything.
"Dead clumsy to look dignified" she's protesting. "So how's Teddy?"
There's the sad yet happy tone she always uses when talking about her son. So he tells her how the kid does in his training at the WeRD (Werewolf Relationships Department) and that he has a feeling he's about to propose to Victoire, because he's such a nervous wreck these days –in a good way-, though he hasn't breathed a word yet.
And then here they bring the portrait of Christine. She's having problems staying solemn; she never was. Those who met her are concealing laughs. No defense mechanism, this time. Years ago Hermione theorized that it was almost like a conditioned reflex, to laugh in her immediate vicinity. Harry suddenly comprehends the void her absence will leave in the department, how dull it'll be now that there's no chance of Christine coming by, late as usual, faking scare just to make a comedy of it, while knowing perfectly that all bosses are on her pocket, thanks to her charisma.
Everyone turns around looking for her partner, though custom dictates family must be first to approach, and there's her husband, first row. Or who used to be her husband. She's dead, after all.
"Where's Sam" someone whispers, nearby.
Samuel is tall, skin almost blue –it's so black-, powerful shoulders and what Hermione has described as the gentlest eyes she has ever seen. The only auror they know that refuses to kill. The only objector of conscience in the department. When he heard of his Christine's fate, everyone heard his screams, the insults, the denial of everything he has ever believed. Ironic, since he spent his life trying to convert Christine, increasingly afraid of going to heaven without her. Hermione would have wondered if, by rejecting his god, he was seeking to go to the same hades he's certain Chris went to.
It'd be impossible, if he were here, to not notice his presence. He's not in the room.
So Chris thanks her husband for everything that involved sharing her life, and her jokes make everyone laugh uncertainly, not meaning to offend. Harry notices the man's relief (muggle, he thinks) as he leaves. With her children the pain is bigger and the jokes, funnier. It's the only way she can still caress them. The youngest one starts crying, and pensieves around tremble, maybe it's the oldest one the one casting accidental magic; a neutralizing shield is cast over them. Chris' mother Catherine, approaches, cheeks and skin itself, dry and pale and stained like old parchment; she's in a sort of stupor. Chris' eyes go over the room.
And they suddenly lighten. That's how everyone else know Sam arrived. By his magic, Harry knows he has been sedated.
Gazes cross.
"Samuel" the portrait breathes.
Everyone else holds their breath, and silence reigns, endless. The portrait's eyes have every quality of the eternal.
"You know" she says at last.
The black-skinned auror nods once, then again, then in quickening, jerky succession, teeth clenched. Mute tears cross his cheeks. He opens his mouth, but no sound comes out. Harry wonders if he was silenced, too.
Harry doubts he'll survive the night, despite measures taken to protect him from himself.
Not taking his eyes off Sam's trembling shoulders, Harry senses the presence of his own partner, and he no longer seem to have reason enough to flee her. For today.
He doesn't have to look to find her. A corner of the room is filled with books (histories, biographies of aurors whose portraits adorn the walls). Even if he didn't feel her, he'd find her always next to the books. Indeed, she's there, sitting on the floor, hands on her thighs and eyes on the ceiling, despite the abundance of cozy armchairs. She's almost invisible there.
He sits by her side.
"Harry, did you know?" Hermione asks. "I used to think that, if God existed, he must be a writer."
Harry stares at the ciling too, the image of Sam and Chris engraved in his retina. No surprise there. How else would Hermione imagine someone theoretically good and almighty?
"And I truly admired him" she adds. "I mean, if he exists, the he's the one who has created all this" and her arm waves, gesture encompassing the decorative plant in a corner, the sunlight coming from the window and a book levitating from one shelf to another, ordering itself.
"But God's not the writer" Luna intervenes.
They both turn to her. She looks rare in the white outfit, eyes wide open, as if to convey something without anyone else knowing.
"There's a God, and there's a Writer. They are not the same. There are also sub-writers. Each plays in the world the other has created. Pretty funny, if you ask.
"A bit crowded, the office" Hermione mutters, skeptical.
Luna ignores her, grabbing a book and sliding away in the same casual movement. Harry doesn't miss the irony: they both agree on something for once, yet still differ in specificities.
Hermione laughs.
"Imagine, someone somewhere, in short and slippers, writing great and small miracles and turns of events with the same ease… binding them all in a novel: "Hermione Granger and the Magical Library"
The auror turns to her, glasses bending as their side make contact with the wall. The muscles of his cheeks tense in a smile that's barely there. He imagines a big volume bound in dragon skin. (He can't imagine a book whose title starts with that name, being thin.) Hermione's eyes have stars, and her hair, as rogue as usual, falls before her ears. She's stunning…
"When I was a teenager, I liked the idea"
"Not anymore?"
… even frowning, as she's now.
"Sometimes I feel like a puppet"
And the silence becomes so heavy that Harry dares theorize:
"It'd be a given, right? If you were a character…
"Of course not" she protests vehemently; fierce eyes meet those of the man, and it is perhaps his gaze what makes her look down, wringing her hands. "'Person' was first the way they called the theater masks. In itself, the term does not imply independent life, outside the pages of a book. Real or imaginary, you are a person."
Harry imagines a bunch of grieving souls going through the library, touching books or talking to each other. He shakes his head. Only Hermione would feel that way towards someone who is nothing but ink on paper. The vehemence in her voice has not diminished one iota as she elaborates:
"Characters have attitudes, tendencies. Personality. The writer owes them respect. He owes them those sleepless nights, thinking about how to take them where he wants the argument to go. He owes them changing the argument if he doesn't get them to go there. You can't write Romeo and Juliet, and make Romeo marry Rosalina."
She still frowns, frustrated with reality itself for being incomprehensible. Harry thinks that Hermione, if she were a character, would give the writer many headaches; she's have rebelled and revealed herself, no doubt, despite the wishes of the "master." Surely she would have managed to show her own, even if she was finally subjected to the unappealable power of the ink. He sees her stretch her neck, rest her head on the wall. He thinks about reaching out and holding her hand. He doesn't dare. The sorceress, in all of her personality, looks like one of those characters of ghostly transparency she has evoked in her partner's mind.
"Harry" an auror interrupts, gazing from one to the other, uncertain. "Can you help bringing Melody's portrait?"
The disruption irritates him, and he inches towards his partner, who has also moved a bit closer. But he can't say no. Taking personal, physical care of details as this one, is the way of living aurors to pay their respect, much like he did when burying Dobby with his own hands. And he remembers Melody –far too young, far too sweet-. So he stands and takes the parchment meant to guide him in the far too crowded warehouse.
It's dark and dusty. There are not many portraits left, it seems, yet it's hard to finds anything. Harder, to look into each portrait's eyes. Compare, locate, move forward. The first words Melody's addresses are:
"It didn't take long for me to die"
"I'm sorry."
"No" she shakes her head; blond doll curls sway around her face. "I guess it was better that way. I saw less blood. I liked being auror, but I never liked the blood."
"It was fast."
"Untrue." Harry's eyes widen, but she smiles merrily. "These portraits were designed to update memories until the very moment of death. Recent discovery, very useful for espionage. In fact, Albert is around there" she signals. "Up to minutes ago, he was still updating. I'm afraid it's not good news."
Rage fills Harry as he looks to the door, suddenly in an urge to go ask Luna about the rescue team they obviously should have set.
"Don't" she advices, pointing out bitterly: "You didn't have personnel to rescue him. I believe Luna wasn't informed. I'm sorry I even told you."
"Isabel…"
"Died first."
The exact state of Albert's portrait, he doesn't want to know. He shouldn't be mourning his mentors all over again. His mind cringes from the very concept, weary of so much death.
"They are better this way, Harry" the dead girl consoles him. "Let it go."
Two portraits beyond Melody, there's Hermione's own portrait. She's magnificent, in that beige tunic that stands out over the red armchair. Reading, of course. As he looks, his own image joins her, coming from the next frame, and hers looks up and smiles at him. The canvas Harry puts two fingers on his partner's forehead and caresses her cheek, and suddenly kisses her on the lips. Harry looks back at Melody, shock and a question in his eyes.
"What do you want?" she says, merrily again. "Marriage is until death do you part, and these portraits are designed for after death. Technically, only the Bond is valid here."
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Advance:
"That's not yours to decide, 'Mia" the girl answered.
"I'm worried about you… both of you. He is old enough to be your father, Duham…"
"That's none of your business…"
"… and a widow" Hermione continued, raising her voice. "And I don't know about whom I'm more concerned: you, being a substitute for some other woman…"
"He is as old as you are, and I'm already an adult!"
"… or him. You can't possibly understand the depth of the injuries you could cause to him only by being immature…!"
"That's enough!"
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Author's note: I adored writing this chapter, though I'm aware it's slow.
Did you like white for the funeral? (I was thinking of firefighters, of the "present weapons" with white gloves, hence the theme color). Tonks' presence? What about the portraits, eh?
What did you think about the writer and the characters? Both Luna and Hermione have come, each in their own way, to the conclusion that we all know true. And like Rowlings, I put my words in Hermione's mouth.
*which she did, by showing her preference for Harry even if Rowlings decided to arrange her marriage to Ron anyway ;)