6. Funeral
I can't see the coffin from here. Despite being Lavender's best friend through Hogwarts, my embroilment with her death and my low social status profile pushed me out to the periphery where Hannah, Dennis and Blaise were, namely the curb. Literally the curb. I think it's Hermione Granger's voice making the speech, but I can't hear what' she's saying from here. There is a throng of reporters, celebrities - even some Muggle celebrities, ministry officials and other who pack the inner court of her funeral.
I am depressed and I have been smoking endlessly for the past hour, as though I were breathing air. Blaise hovers about me, obviously wanting to crumple my open packet, but thinks the wiser and just helps himself for a smoke.
"Incendio," I mutter, holding up my wand for him.
"Thanks," he mumbles back.
"This stinks," Hannah scowls. "What are we doing here? What are you doing here? You should be right up there with her family."
"'s okay," I shrug. My eyes are watering up all of a sudden. Blaise strokes my hair, but I don't stop him. It feels nice.
I never really processed Lavender's death properly. The few moments of me being tied up and facing her empty expressionless face kept creeping into my dreams. Some days I dream of those eyes suddenly glaring at me, as though alive, despite knowing that she is dead. Some days I dream of various killers who had cursed her, then apparated away. Some days I am the killer myself, and I can't stop myself from murdering her.
Seamus stopped by the Leaky the other day and confessed he was confounded by the clues. There was no trace of the killer. No sign of anyone having been there. He was having trouble covering my ass, since he knew in his heart that I would never do such a thing. But the young girl, Giselle, was pulling public opinion against me, calling in reporters, making interviews, putting pressure on the investigation, that Seamus wasn't sure whether or not I would have to appear at the Auror station, again.
"Lavender was having a lot of trouble recently," Hannah looks at the dispersing crowd.
"Trouble?" I scratch my head. I hadn't seen Lavender for ... let me get my facts straight. I think the last time I saw her was during the semester break. The Wizarding university teaches higher professional jobs based on NEWTs. After Hogwarts half burned to the ground by the Death Eaters in '97, and then the remnant Death Eaters attacked in '98, Slughorn gave up on Hogwarts and asked favours around until an old student of his, as always. One of the students happened to be the Dean of Advanced Charms. I returned to school in '03. Not because I wanted to study, but because Blaise.
huh?
Yeah, because Blaise suddenly waltzed into my life.
"Yeah," Dennis takes on, his messy dirty blonde hair is ruffling in the wind. "Malfoy, or Weasley. I'm not sure, but the rumour on the street was that some big corporation wanted to come in as a distributing partner. I'm not sure which one. I saw both of them across the street enter the Leaky. Draco Malfoy and George Weasley, and then one time, even Ginny Weasley."
"The funny thing," Blaise picks it up, "is that Ginny almost never comes out to represent her family. She's too protective of Potter to do something. I guess there's some real pressure between the two."
Blaise stubs out his cigarette. His collar is overturned in the back of his neck, and I suppress an urge to straighten it for him. He hasn't shaved this morning. He always shaves clean. Something tells me that he has had some difficulty these past few days. Or had he been like this for several months? No, he's unshaven this morning because he's been distraught lately. Sometimes I think I understand him, but he places so many barriers around him.
Blaise scratches his stubble with his long dark slender fingers. He catches me watching him and offers his small smile. It's reassuring.
"We should celebrate ourselves," Blaise suggests suddenly, "not this press rubbish. No, this isn't Lavender. I think we should do her justice. Have a party for her. Not a press junket."
"That is bloody amazing," I find myself gasping.
"So, cool, man," Dennis cackles madly. "For Lavender."
"We do it at the Leaky," Hannah states sharply.
"Where else?" Blaise cracks a genuine smile.
Dennis is a wizard at decorations and I don't know how Hannah would survive without him. Hannah is generally messy and haphazard. She has great taste and a sense of artfulness, but she is definitely messy.
The drapes are lavender and brown and the candles burn red and gold. I see a large picture of Lavender when she graduated, smiling and waving her hands. Other pictures of her dancing, one of them with me, practicing for the Yule Ball. A picture of her with glasses at her drawing board, a picture of her sewing, a picture of her wearing the first dress she sold.
There is a part of me that lingers in those pasts with her. A part that I desperately cling to, perhaps because the future of those pasts were less rewarding. If they were less rewarding, it was because they were painful, and disappointing, and I have grown for those long years to fear what tomorrow holds.
Hannah is holding the guitar, and sings about those Lavender had left behind. How despite the fact that Lavender had gone up in the world, she had not flown but simply grew with her roots firmly in the ground, like a great blossoming tree. But once the angels picked up to take her to the heavens, she became uprooted and withered and died.
A few others came along. Fey Dunbar closed shop, posting a sign commemorating "Lavender Brown Day", and that naturally attracted a whole bunch of others. There's Tracy Davis. I used to be so jealous of Tracy Davis. Tracy is a Healer at St. Mungo's, grew up Slytherin with Blaise, and like Blaise kept away from the Draco group. Smart life decisions, it seems, considering where Draco left Pansy Parkinson. Blaise used to tell me that they were just good friends. I think they're more than that now. Perhaps I'm imagining things. He lives his life, he must have evolved beyond our relationship.
Penelope Clearwater, who works as an editor at Obscurus Books, came as a friend of Hannah, and I hear she used to be real close with Katie Bell. But not even she knows where Katie Bell's disappeared to. There are a bunch of others. We are mulling about, and soon we begin to deconstruct into a haphazard party, chatting up on each other. I didn't think I'd ever enjoy myself like this, talking about the past, but it's sweet.
I try not to think about the past, at least not the recent past. The old past is fine with me. The old past is save, like the thick walls of Hogwarts before You-Know-Who tore them down. The old past is bright and delicious like chocolate frogs. Before I know it I feel like I'm back in the common room, around a rug and a fireplace, talking Quidditch, talking classes, talking about boys.
"You never talk," Hannah says after she empties a bottle, "about the Wizarding university."
"Yes," I refuse to cave in. That is one place I do not want to return to.
"What happened?"
It's a mixed bag of disgusting and heartbreak. I don't want to talk about it. I don't want to talk about it. I don't want to think about it.
"Nothing," It's Blaise. Suddenly he's at my side. "Nothing happened, Hannah. Leave it at that."
Not nothing.
I went to the Wizarding University, after I folded up my shop. Padma had just been engaged to Roger and they needed our place. For a while I lived at the Leaky, and I worked as a waitress with Hannah. But I didn't want to just serve drinks. I got in a row with Hannah, not because of anything in particular but because I was dissatisfied with my life.
Then Blaise came in one day. It had been years since I'd seen him. I never really talked to him at Hogwarts but he wasn't distant. He was excited to go to Wizarding University, having apprenticed under the Healers at St. Mungos, he wanted to become a Healer himself. Blaise frequented the Leaky a couple of times after that. I knew he had come to see me. We talked and talked way into closing hours. He talked of going away, getting far away from the mundane life at Hogsmeade. He was fed up with his mother and her constantly changing husbands.
And then one day he asked me to come with him.
No, I didn't follow him that day. I said goodbye to him. I said I wanted to but couldn't leave my life here. I said that, unlike him, I had nothing particularly interesting to chase in life, that I was still finding things out.
"Can't I be enough for you?" he asked suddenly.
"No, Blaise," I stammered, knowing that this was a confession of his feelings, but resenting that it was also a request for me to abandon what I wanted. And despite still not knowing what I wanted in life, I didn't want to end up just looking at a man.
Blaise was naturally disappointed. And he often tells me that he took that first rejection rather badly. I meandered a bit after he left, but eventually I searched over and over for what I wanted, at least an inkling, at least something.
When I arrived in London, I avoided Blaise for some time, embroiling myself in my work, trying to get into the moment. I mostly worked as Slughorn's teaching assistant. My mind blanks out when I reach Slughorn.
No, it was nothing vile. He is Slughorn, and whatever one may have an opinion of him, he was not improper with me.
Rather the opposite. I was nothing to him. I imagined a close relationship, like Dumbledore and Harry Potter, like Old Tom and Hannah. But I was simply his errand girl. And while I stuck by him for so many years, in the end he kept forgetting my name.
"Girl!" he would call me. "I thought I told you to have those owls sent last week!"
"I sent them, Professor."
"Stop making excuses, girl." Slughorn doesn't even look at me when he scolds me. "This is the Slug Club party invitation, girl. I am expecting the likes of Harry Potter and Hermione Granger to be there. If you haven't received a reply to the RSVP you should have sent another owl, not just sit at your desk like a mindless monkey!"
That was the general gist of life under the Slug. Demeaning, demoralising and sad. Just like Hogsmeade I had left, and Hogsmeade I had returned to.