Parvati

Tell me why I am alone.

See? I don't even have anyone to talk to. Anyone to ask. No one to call out to in the middle of fever-delusions. It's not the memories, so much, it's the big gaping hole that's worse than only a mother's death.

No one.

I try to hold off the self-pity, because no one ever likes that. But who am I trying to impress? They're all dead, gone, into wisps of smoke that tear and tug at my heart in the lonely hours of the night and come back all the stronger whenever they seemed to have abated. All gone, farther than the stars, un-mappable except for the shadows they left in my soul.

So alone.

Padma. Mother. Father.

How do I live?

I'd rather have lost both my legs, all my arms, cut off my hair, blind me, deafen, mutilate. I'd rather...regret. Rather...die. Rather...wish. Rather...hope.

Lavender. Where is she, under full-moon light, human or taken by blood-lust I will never understand?

Neville and Hannah are laughing now, under full-moon light. Loving now, when...

Harry and Ginny are loving now. Laughing, under full-moon glow. When...

Padma. Mother. Father.

Love? What, it's just death. Nothing permanent. I'm soon to join. But something wants to hold on and I hate this thing that lets me hold on.

What, it's just life. Live a little, with so much loss. But I feel dead already, with a body that frustrates me with its strength and flexibility and strong hold on life.

Colin's face is etched forever in my memory. Stark-white, brave to the last. Look where this Gryffindor bravery has gotten me. Is it different than Colin's?

How can they forget the loss? Laugh when our comrades and friends, brothers and sisters, everyone who will ever mean anything are still, are eternally lying bloody and broken on cold stone floors and all you want to do is scream and cry and wail and grieve. How can they feel their hearts full and content, when lives are empty and when so many are immobile and torn apart - battered and broken and cut and tortured and writhing in fiery agony, burning in everlasting fire, her screams echoing through high-ceilinged corridors mingling eerily with the clanking of the suits of armor, dented and in pieces, shells of the castle's last protectors. While rivers of blood flow around boots, when you see fingers flung to impossible heights and recognize Mandy's rings and don't feel the cold dread of recognition until later, until bodies are lined up and sorrows counted and those who survived are white as the dead and tears pour down their cheeks easier than anything they've ever done.

And at memorials and celebrations the sentences of remembrance go on and on and mean nothing because they weren't there, they didn't see shattered hearts and shattered bones and murdered children. Eventually grieving gives way to celebration and there's alcohol and people lose themselves in laughter and bodies and insatiable need. I find Dean, because I'm not the only one who can't cope with this raucous, raw joy - Dean who's lost and scared and willing to give anything with trembling fingers and lips and I let him pretend I'm Padma because I miss her too. And he's willing to give anything and I need all he has to give. I let him say her name instead of mine, sometimes, and he lets me cry, sometimes. I let him tell me I'm beautiful because that's all I need, someone to love unconditionally as only a mother can, as only a sister can. And he's beautiful, as is grief, in ways I still don't understand and sometimes think is sick. His hot tears are beautiful and tug at my heart, and it's nice to not feel completely alone.
But that illusion shatters the moment after it is realized, like the Great Hall's stained glass windows caved in and poured like a sparkling waterfall of destruction.

And now I understand when they say war is beautiful. The grief is raging and gentle and hideous and beautiful.

How?