Black.
The colour of today was black.
Jacob and Queenie had picked us up at home and then we had gone to the cemetery together.
Each of us wore black and each of us had our heads down.
It was dead quiet when we arrived and none of us broke the silence.
The only beautiful and colourful thing about our group was the flowers Queenie and Min held in their hands.
I was walking second to last, with only Draco behind me.
I knew where we were going but not how to get there.
I had never been here before.
That was a lie, I had been here many times before, at my parents' grave, but I had never been here for Grandma.
The grave we were standing in front of now was pretty. The lavender was in bloom, bathing everything around us in its fragrance.
The others formed a semicircle around the grave and I joined them.
I stood on the very outside and now looked at the grave at an angle.
Queenie was the first to put down her flowers and her lips were moving, so I assumed she was saying something but I heard nothing.
I also no longer heard our footsteps on the gravel floor.
Two bouquet of flowers were now lying there and no one was standing in front of me.
No one who could say words I didn't understand, no one who stood between me and my worst nightmare.
«When you read this letter it will be your seventeenth birthday and I will be dead.»
"Will you please leave me alone," I whispered in a trembling voice.
I had to do this alone.
I briefly heard the sound of shoes on gravel again before everything disappeared into a soundless haze.
Some bumblebees had settled on the lavender and were now trying to balance their weight on the stems of the flowers, which were not designed for this purpose.
It was somehow nice to see that life did not stop at a place like a grave but turned a desolate place into a living space.
I crouched down and observed the small, fluffy insects up close.
She would have liked this, the lavender, the bumblebees, simply everything. But she wasn't here and she would never see it.
The tears I had held back until now ran down my face.
Why?
That was all I thought at that moment.
Why her?
Why was she in that very place on the day the curse hit her?
Why didn't anyone realize what curse had hit her?
And why was it all happening to me?
Why did all the people who were family to me leave me?
Was their death my punishment for my existence?
Was it a sign to tell me that this world did not want me?
I loved these people. They had been my whole life.
Why me?
Why couldn't I have gone instead of her?
At that very moment, a bumblebee lost its balance, fell off the lavender and landed on its back.
I held out my finger for it to cling to and then put it back on the lavender.
This rescue operation made me raise my head.
For the first time since we had entered the cemetery and what I saw behind the fragrant lavender made me collapse.
Porpetina 'Tina' Esther Scamander née Goldstein
*19 August 1901 † 06 May 1998
Black.
The last thing I heard before everything went black was a scream.
