"I would like to change the subject," Kiara says to Callie.
It's been over a month since she's last seen Scorpius. There's no doubt in her mind that he is making just as much of an effort to avoid her as she has been making to avoid him. She's missed all Quidditch matches, Slytherin or not. And with Scorpius being a year older, it's been easy to miss accidentally running into him between classes.
She knows that Emmalee went and told as many people as she could about Scorpius and her in the infirmary, holding hands. Even with no one knowing what actually happened that day, Emmalee has been skillfully vague enough for stories to develop by word of mouth and get out of control. Some of the rumors don't stray far from the truth. It doesn't help that Callie, with her obsession of men, has helped amplify Kiara's personal life with a barrage of comments and questions about her love and sex life.
It's not all Callie's fault. Emmalee is masterfully deceitful. Kiara never trusts a single thing she hears from, or about, the girl. Emmalee has become suspiciously close with Callie, in a very short period of time. It seems like Emmalee has only befriended Callie as payback for Kiara befriending Scorpius. Kiara tries not to think about things in this toxic manner, but a part of her can't help it: Her brain has been a frazzled mess ever since she discovered the VHS tape.
And she reckons she's been overreacting about things. Everything. Why should her accident that happened over five years ago be affecting her now? Whenever Kiara starts to feel down, which is on a daily basis these days, she berates herself. Then she'll punish herself by hiding from Albus, who has gone out of his way every day to ask her if she feels all right.
Albus does not deserve to be victim to her baneful outlook on life—likewise, Kiara does not deserve to be around his ethereal positivity.
Though she hasn't sorted out how she feels about Albus, she's noticed that he has seemed entirely indifferent to the rumors. He doesn't seem to care about what happened between her and their friend. Kiara isn't sure how to take this; it only confuses her more. Maybe she was wrong to think Albus had any romantic feelings for her.
There I go, overreacting again. Why would I confine myself in a relationship? Why do I care how Albus feels for me?
She buries her face in her hands in frustration, then practices a smile between her knees and looks back out over the pitch.
Kiara has been sleeping even less than usual. Some days she may get a couple of hours a day between classes; a handful of minutes here and there. But every night this past month has been spent outside the castle, staring up at the stars on the warm June evenings. Time passes so quickly out there, she'll see the sun set and rise hours later, and not yawn once.
"Whatever, Kiara. It's always about you and your constellation shit, all the time. You're so lucky that I haven't reported you to the Headgirl. You'd be so screwed for sneaking out every freaking night. The least you could do is tell me what's going on with Scorpius. But you never want to talk about what I want to talk about."
"I apologize that I am not interested in gossiping about other people all the time."
Callie pouts. She's never been offended by anything Kiara says, which is a positive in their friendship. Both girls have a lack of a filter and tend to say what's on their minds, regardless of the outcome.
"It just seems like you think you're better than me or something," Callie says. "You know, I've actually heard people say that about you."
"I do not care what people say about me."
"Yeah, right. Sure, you don't. That's why you avoid all your friends. Because you 'don't care'. Fine, Kiara. You're such a drag. Can't you ever gossip? My god, not everyone wants to think about depressing things all the time."
"How is me asking about your future depressing?"
Callie rolls her eyes. "Hello, because my future is abysmal? I have to go live with my mum for two whole years while my dad is traveling the world, investigating how poltergeist claims are different in other countries. My mum is a Muggle, Kiara. I can't even use any magic at her house. And she's going to make me wash all my dishes by hand. You keep making me think about that! It's no wonder he divorced her—Muggle life is terribly boring. Uh, no offense."
Kiara sighs, resting her cheek in her palm. She wasn't interested in coming to this match at all, but Callie was eager to go together. With it being the last of the year—and between Ravenclaw and Slytherin, at that—she figured she may as well.
"Emmalee says there's going to be a show. I hope it's fireworks. She hinted really hard that it's going to be fireworks."
"They are banned here."
As she says this, she recalls the fireworks that Finley, Henry, and Tucker snuck into Hogwarts over holiday break. It seems so far away, it no longer makes her smile.
"I know they're banned here. But they could've made a special exception."
"On what grounds? Just for a Quidditch match?"
"OK, I'm done, Kiara. I'm completely done. You've been absolutely miserable this month, and I can't even handle being around you anymore. It's really bringing me down. You can't even let me enjoy Quidditch. That's messed up."
Truthfully, Kiara has had some trouble being around herself as well. But she buries this deep in the back of her mind and pretends it doesn't bother her.
"Why do you not go sit with Emmalee, then," she says.
Callie swallows hard and her eyes well up. "I thought you were my best friend, you know. I've been trying really hard to cheer you up for weeks."
"Yes, making me feel guilty all the time really cheers me up."
Callie clenches her jaw and narrows her eyes—in this moment, she looks just like Emmalee. She says, "I'll just see you around." Then, under her breath, she adds a harsh, "Bitch."
Kiara looks away as Callie stands and leaves. Of course she feels bad. In fact, she feels awful. But Callie hasn't ever been her 'best friend'. She doesn't even understand the term. How can she have a favorite person, when everyone is so peculiar?
Besides, Callie doesn't know a thing about Kiara, and has never bothered to ask. If they were as close as Callie thinks, she reckons it would be a two-way street. Callie is not someone she's ever asked to share her secrets with. That offer is reserved only for people she can picture being in a relationship with: Like Cory, and Rose, and Albus. Introspective thinkers—not relentless gossipers and complainers. She's always curious how people who like to think for themselves may react to her thoughts.
Still, though. . . . Callie has been her only friend for five years. Kiara has cut her out of her life like she meant nothing, and carries on like she doesn't care.
Of course she does.
Michael Sean, the regular commentator for all Hogwarts Quidditch matches, riles up the entire crowd. Except for Kiara. She realizes in this moment that she can't stand events like these: Loud and raucous, with everyone acting the same way because they're expected to. At these matches, everyone—students, players, and teachers alike—look like a crowd of mindless lemmings.
But Kiara doesn't see herself above it. And she doesn't think she's better than them, as Callie said. After all, she's still here. Some people choose not to go, ever.
She just finds it all dreadfully uninspiring.
Kiara gets a biting tension behind her eyes as she thinks of how her relentless friendship with Callie has ended over nothing. She feels like disappearing. She stands to leave, when the audience all jumps to their feet with their omnioculars and pointing fingers. She can't get through, so she crosses her arms over her chest and watches with the rest of them as Scorpius shoots up into the sky with a leisurely swagger.
He seems to be taking his time. The Ravenclaw Seeker is all the way at the other end of the pitch and has little chance of reaching the Snitch in time unless Scorpius absolutely botches it. Kiara stares indifferently, biding her time knowing that at least it's almost over and she can go take a cold shower in the girls' dormitory.
Her thoughts recently have been very surface-level. Even in her state of delirium she knows this. If she's being honest with herself, it's not really the Quidditch match that makes her feel lethargic. She is only trying to find an excuse to justify her apathy. She feels that recently she has simply been drifting from one moment to the next, without regarding anything around her. At times she feels half-dead.
Sometimes she has to remind herself to breathe. Or to blink. Or to at least behave as human, and not an emotionless, inorganic automaton that needs no breathing, blinking, or behaving whatsoever. Plus everything is too much and too little. Her surroundings are overwhelming, and yet she floats through it all, no matter the stimulation, as though she lacks the ability to interact.
Something explodes over the pitch.
Kiara listens, detached, as half the school screams.
-o-o-o-
Scorpius is falling.
He can recognize this, but he's not sure how he got here. It's awfully hard to ignore the cold wind soaring through his clothes. One moment he was stretching his fingers out for the Snitch, and now . . . Well. It was going to mean an awful lot to him to catch this last Snitch of his Hogwarts career. He's been playing since he was twelve years old and, though only a game, it's been a highlight in his life these past six years. While a naturally inclined student, nothing motivated Scorpius to get good grades like his involvement with the Quidditch team.
And the Slytherins were most certainly going to win just now, by his hand. He had a feeling even before the match: This was going to be his greatest victory. It was something he was going to be excited about telling his father over the summer. According to his mother, when Draco Malfoy was a student at Hogwarts, he was an excellent Seeker—he could have played professionally. But when Voldemort was using him, he lost interest . . . until years later, with his own son on the very team Draco had been so happy to be part off.
Quidditch is the strongest connection Scorpius has with his father. It's something safe they can both speak openly about, because Lucius has approved it on both sides. Scorpius often feared that if he were to have ever left Quidditch, he would have lost his opportunity to spend any time with his father. His father . . . It makes an odd thought pop into his mind: He thinks, I am dying, and my last thoughts are of my father. Will he have to mourn alone?
Then he thinks, Why do I reckon I'm dying? Isn't that a bit dramatic? Why, I've never died before. Why would I be dying now? Scorpius has always thought that in his final moments he would bravely face the end and walk into the light with his head held high. But . . . he always pictured being old. The average lifespan of a wizard is well over an hundred, after all. This moment feels off. Something isn't quite . . . right. But what?
He never considered that he would be so relaxed upon his death. Not a single negative thought crosses his mind as he falls from the sky. In fact, as he tumbles through the air it's almost as though the grass is waving at him from below. The blades encourage him to come lie down and nap. Actually, now that he thinks about it, he does feel rather exhausted. His ears are ringing terribly, and his clothes are soaked through.
Is this . . . blood? he asks himself. It makes him feel a bit faint . . . because if it's blood, it's an awful lot of it. Suddenly the idea of a nap sounds extra appealing. Scorpius looks down to the ground again as his body twists. The grass is waving. It seems it's made a nice soft bed for him to drift upon. There seems to be a pillow made of rocks for him, too.
Time slows down. He sees the grandfather clock, with its melting hands and peeling numbers, flying up in pieces beside him. Usually this hallucination is a sure sign that he is having another psychotic episode; when thinking becomes unbearable, so his brain just altogether stops.
But there isn't anything bad about this. He feels rather peaceful, with the breeze washing over his skin and coaxing him into a soft sleep. Maybe he'll never wake up. For some reason, the thought makes him smile.
There's an awful racket. Distantly, he can hear someone who sounds like Albus shouting something over and over, and it gets louder and louder. It sounds like a name. But whose?
Why is Albus in my dream? I'm OK, he tells him. But his lips don't move. Scorpius looks up to the heavens, and there is Albus.
All around them fireworks are going off—one after the other. The sky lights up.
He cannot hear his thoughts anymore. The explosions are deafening.
And they're beautiful, too. The way they glance off each other.
What a lovely moment. Eyes cast upward. And weightless.
There is no pain. No misery. No conflict. Nothing.
He wonders what the others think of it all.
He wonders what others think of him.
He wonders if anyone will cry.
Scorpius loves fireworks.
If nothing else, he
knows how he
feels about
fireworks.
-o-o-o-
Kiara goes numb while she watches it happen.
Despite the mass confusion, hysteria, and relentless screaming, Kiara is mesmerized by the lights display going off in the darkening sky. There's something in the pit of her stomach that makes her want to vomit, but she shuts this part of herself off. If she instead focuses on the fireworks that Callie was so excited for, she can shut out the idea that she's about to witness Scorpius Malfoy die.
It surprises her to discover that she moves with the crowd. The very crowd she has just ridiculed moments ago, for mimicking each other. She becomes part of it, flowing down the stands as everyone scrambles. There is so much fear, Kiara practically floats upon it. Explosions keep going off. Everyone is rushing to get off the stands. Someone screams that it's Deatheaters. She hears shouts about terrorists.
Kiara looks up to the sky, peering between the fireworks. She sees Albus. She wants to tell him he looks like an angel, soaring above them, but he's too far away to hear her. She'll have to tell him later.
Albus dives down toward Scorpius, whom is simply floating to the ground like an autumn lead with his arms outstretched. She tells herself that he's flying without a broom, and that the trails of blood coming from every part of his body are only part of the show.
She turns suddenly and pukes on the stairs.
Kiara stumbles onward, breaking from the stream of people. Her eyes find Albus again, but suddenly he is falling, too. A stray Bludger, in all the chaos, has slammed into his ribs. At the last moment, Albus rears up on his broom and slows his descent, then rockets back up. Kiara trips and falls to her knees on the grassy pitch. She can't move any further.
Albus catches Scorpius around the waist. The momentum of Scorpius's fall knocks them down to the ground, but much slower than before. It seems Albus takes the brunt of it all, as he wraps his arms around the other Slytherin boy and holds on as tightly as he can. Somewhere along the ground, as they slam across it, Albus loses him.
Something cracks in her brain as she watches Albus crawling along the pitch, blood flowing in his wake, then taking up Scorpius's limp, pale head in his lap.
There is so much red, it doesn't even look like a color anymore.
"Kiara!" she hears Rose shout in her ear, and she's yanked up by her arm. Suddenly they are running toward the fallen angels. She thinks maybe she is gliding, because she doesn't know how she could even stand upon her own two feet right now, much less run.
Rose lets her hand go as they come upon the two boys. There are tears streaming down the girl's sweet, round cheeks, and Kiara vaguely wonders if she should be crying right now, too. For a moment, she tries—but the tickle in the backs of her eyes feels foreign. The tinkling charms on Rose's earrings just barely keep Kiara present, who feels that she may pass out.
She remembers how Scorpius had kissed her when they were arguing, to shut her up.
With the Gryffindor girl, Kiara contemplates if she were to press her mouth against Rose's soft lips, would it stop her crying?
"Oh, my god, he's dead," Rose sobs into Scorpius's body. "He's dead, oh, my god. Cory, my god. He's dead. Oh, my god. He's dead."
"Rose, please stop," Albus gasps, while clutching his ribs and bleeding all over the dead boy. She can't tell whose blood is whose, though she still tries as Albus begs the girl, "Please stop, please, Rosie, please."
She wants to ask Rose why she's hurting. Death is a part of life, she wants to tell her. There is no reason to mourn the dead. One day, the sun will obliterate them all at the same time. Why do the dead now get to have special treatment?
Who will grieve for us when the sun dies, Rosie?
It's OK. You already know.
No one will.