Nothing happens here, I think it was just an excuse to mention that they got tattoos. More interesting chapter on Wednesday.
The Funeral
July 1st 1997
Post-Hogwarts
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A white table sat in the shade of trees on the grass near the lake. A few feet away sat rows and rows of white chairs. Chairs that were slowly, mournfully, filled with people—teachers, students, old friends—all wearing various shades of mourning black. Hagrid wept loudly front the last seats in the front row. Mersong floated in on the breeze, haunting and sad.
Jo and Leili sat a few rows back on the other side from the trio. Jo and Leili both wore knee-length black dresses. Jo's was a halter with a low back designed to show off her tattoo. Leili wore similar, but with fluttering ruffles that passed for cap sleeves.
The girls clasped hands and the twin Occamy tattoos they'd gotten the night before twined together across their wrists like the scars of an unbreakable vow. A little tufty-haired man in plain black robes stood and took more or less center stage. The odd word floated back to them over the hundreds of heads.
"Nobility of spirit" . . . "intellectual contribution" . . . "greatness of heart" . . . It didn't mean very much. It was all true, no doubt of that; but it just didn't sum up Albus Percival Wulfric Brain Dumbledore. Dumbledore's name said more about his personality than the speaker did. Dumbledore's idea of a few words, "nitwit," "oddment," "blubber," and "tweak," said more about him than anything said so far.
The girls hadn't known Dumbledore well, very few people had, but they had liked him a great deal. They hurt for Harry, who had, of all of Dumbledore's students, known and loved him the best. The poor kid had lost almost every parental figure he'd ever had, except for Molly and Arthur Weasley, but knowing him as they sort've did, he wasn't going to stand by and let them die to protect him. So the girls would have to do it in their stead, though preferably without the dying bit.
The little tuft-haired man in black had stopped speaking at last and retaken his seat. After a minute several people screamed. Bright white flames had erupted around Dumbledore's body, rising higher and higher. White smoke spiraled into a cloudless blue sky, Fawkes soared over-head, singing a mournful tune as the phoenix bid goodbye to his best friend. When the fire vanished, in its place was a marble tomb, hiding Dumbledore from sight. There were a few more cries of shock as a shower of arrows soared through the air, but they fell far short of the crowd. Fawkes, the centaurs and the merfolk had said goodbye and everyone got up one at a time to do the same.
The girls got up—giving everyone an eyeful of the tawny and golden-feathered Thunderbird across her shoulders. It flapped its many wings and created little storms at the nape of her neck, she'd gotten it as a graduation present near the end of June. Instead of leaving flowers or a pair of nicely knitted socks, they left samples of the various candies that had been used as password to the headmasters office in the seven years they'd been there, sherbet lemons, acid pops, licorice snaps and more.
As they walked away, Fred trotted up alongside and scooped up Leili's free hand. Her Occamy disengaged itself from Jo's and spiraled up her arm, circled her neck once before spiraling down her other arm to look at Fred with big amber eyes. He chuckled at it; it had grown to stretch from her shoulder to rest its chin on her knuckles. He gave her a swift kiss and stroked the top of her Occamy's head with his thumb before trotting away.
"You two give me cavities," Jo grinned.