James' POV
Mum was scolding us. Again. Apparently, sneaking off to play Luminous Midnight Quidditch was not a proper excuse for why we were out of our beds at three in the morning.
"Really! With everything that's going on, you might have the wits to be a little bit more careful!" my mother admonished, slapping down a plate of bacon on the breakfast or rather, lunch, table rather viciously.
"D'you think it was the 'quidditch' part or the 'midnight' part that ticked her off?" Sirius muttered to me under his breath as he reached for the bacon.
"No, mate, I think it was the 'luminous' part," I whispered back and we both snickered quietly as Mum came, carrying a pitcher of strawberry lemonade.
"We'll leave here tomorrow around nine. That should give us plenty of time to get there," she said as she poured us drinks.
"Er-where?" I asked, confused.
I expected her to give me that familiar scathing look and say in a clipped voice, "Bathilda's, James. Bathilda Bagshot's. Like we do every year."
But instead she said sorrowfully, "The funeral."
Sirius and I both looked up, startled.
"What? For who? Bathilda hasn't passed away, has she?" I said.
"No, it's not Bathilda. It's the Kingsley parents. I thought we should go pay our respects, seeing how, well, seeing how she lived with us last summer and all."
"Oh," I said, and a weight seemed to fall upon my shoulders. "Right."
"It'll be mostly Muggles. So dress appropriately, boys."
Sirius and I were quiet for the remainder of breakfast, lost in our own thoughts.
I thought back to the last couple months at Hogwarts. I'd seen Raylynx fade away before my very eyes. It was the first time in my life I had felt utterly helpless. Several times I would see her in the hallways and open my mouth to say something, but nothing ever came out. And as time passed, it became harder and harder to approach her as she became more and more of a stranger, more ghostly, more disconnected from Hogwarts and classes and people… It was strange. You expect time to somehow stop for these people who experience horrific events and yet...Life doesn't stop for anybody. If you stay too long in one spot, it starts to ebb and flow around you, until it's moving slowly but surely, by you.
"We still wear black, right?" Sirius asked me. "For the Muggle funeral."
"Hell if I know," I said, shrugging, my mind still elsewhere.
I watched my mother bustle around in the kitchen, readying lunch for my father, who was bound to be home from his night shift soon. He had been asked to negotiate policies with the Korean Ministry of Magic and their hours were vastly different than ours.
In the back of my mind, I had always known how good I had it. How spoiled I was and all that. It hardly ever seemed to matter. So what, I'd said to myself and anyone who questioned me, why not live the way I can? But knowing that parents and friends could all be lost in a single moment, like it happened to Raylynx, an uneasy feeling twisted in my stomach. For once, I couldn't justify 'acting like I could' because one day… one day I would find that I 'couldn't'.
Raylynx's POV
Autumn leaves rolled over the grounds of the cemetery, every so often they caught against a tombstone. One of these tombstones bore the names Thomas James Kingsley and Emily Astoria Kingsley.
The procession was over. People, mostly colleagues and friends of my parents murmured words of comfort I couldn't hear and graced me with gentle pats on the back that I couldn't feel before leaving.
In order to obey the Statute of Secrecy, everybody here had been told that my parents had died in an accidental fire that engulfed the whole house. Even my grandparents had been told that story. So it came to be that the sorrow of my parents' death was shared by all who came, but the misery and anger was only shared by the few members of the Wizarding people who had come to pay their respects.
Mrs. Potter had approached me after the ceremony and gently touched my face. "You'll be all right, my dear girl," she had said softly.
I had simply said, "Thank you."
I wasn't crying. Because I couldn't understand. How it had all come in such a short time.
My mind brought up a blurry memory of Riley Smith.
"How can I afford to feel numb in such a situation? Can you imagine how real it must have felt to my family? They're non-magical. Muggles. They don't even understand magic."
"I hope, for your sake, you never have to figure out how to feel."
I closed my eyes. I think I know how you feel now.
"Ray." My sister gently laid a hand on my shoulder. "Can I speak with you?"
I remained motionless, staring down at the bold engravings of my parents' names.
"Ray, I… I'm leaving. I'll still visit Jamie, of course, and you, but I'm going."
Only because I myself had spoken those words was I able to understand what she truly meant.
"Sola," my voice cracked. It was hard to speak, but this was something that had to be said. "Then you forfeit our parents' sacrifices."
Sola's eyes darkened and her eyes shimmered with tears. "I know that," she said heavily. "But I can't anymore."
She was leaving this world forever. She would never cast a spell again.
"Sola-"
"I can't!" Sola burst into tears. "I can't do magic anymore. I-It's gone!"
I stared at her, shell-shocked. "What do you mean you can't?"
"I don't know, I don't know! It doesn't work anymore!" Sola cried and sobbing, she fell to her knees, her hands desperately clutching the front of my jacket.
I stood there, unable to help her, unable to move, even as I felt Sola's hands shaking violently on my jacket. Salt and water blurred my eyes, but all I could manage with a small scoff. "Really, Sola," I heard myself saying. "Do you expect me to actually believe that? You're the best witch I know."
Sola's wrenching cry pierced through the heavy air of the cemetery, humid with so many tears having been shed today. Even the heavens were crying now, pelting the ground with their mournful tears.
A blurry figure stepped up. "Sola, it isn't safe. We must-"
Sola's hands were taken away from me and her cries faded.
Someone gripped my hand. "Ms. Kingsley. We must leave."
I nodded numbly and my mouth was moving, saying words that I had no intention of saying aloud.
Over and over again, I was repeating, "But it's not her fault. It's not her fault. It's not her fault."
Just like my fear of flying wasn't my fault, her inability to do magic wasn't her fault, and Jamie's life, hanging on the end of an abyss… it wasn't his fault, and my parents… my parents… what sin had they committed?
"It isn't our fault."
And Professor McGonagall, shivering from the cold rain pelting us as we walked towards the cemetery exit, kept replying to me, "I know, Ms. Kingsley. I know. I know."
Remus' POV
"If only, if only," the woodpecker sighs,
"The bark on the tree was as soft as the skies."
While the wolf waits below, hungry and lonely,
Crying to the moon,
"If only, If only."
It was a village on the moors, this time around.
Last time had been in the Wizarding Village of Upper Flagley and before that, a village tucked away in the edge of the mountains.
But every time, without fail, when the year had passed, the villages, magical and non-magical folk alike, would begin to notice that I was not entirely… human. Rumors would spread and people would forbid their children from playing outdoors, shun my parents from community activities, and shudder if they so much as looked at me. Four villages ago, I had been physically attacked by a group of teenage boys my age who were convinced I was planning to slaughter them.
And so here we were. I gazed out and watched the ferns and long grasses sway hypnotically in the hot summer breeze. The warmth here seemed to linger on everything, the soil, the trees, the sky… Only it passed over me. I always felt cold. But I had gotten used to it, now.
"Remus!"
My mother called from the doorway of our home. "Remus?"
I turned my back on the vast landscape of grass and rock and limped back home, feeling my wounds bleed in my bandages.
"Remus, love, I thought for dinner tonight we would have steak," my mother said, warmly putting her hand on my face. "How are you feeling?"
"Fine," I said reflexively, and looked away from her, determined not to see the pity that shone out of her eyes whenever she looked at me. Pity. Disgust. If it wasn't one, it was the other.
I would never know just happiness or just love or just health or just youth. Everything was tainted.
We sat down for dinner with my father, who enthusiastically struck up a conversation about how the Ministry had just released very exciting news about Hogwarts.
I bit into my steak, savoring its deliciousness. But even the things that I liked repulsed me. It reminded me of what I carried, what I was, what defined me.
I was a werewolf.
Raylynx's POV
I slept for the next few days. Though I often heard blurry voices whispering about how the days were passing without me waking, I stayed deep in my slumber, for it was the one place safe from reality.
But even so, on the fourth night, images of my bloody mother and father entered my head, their blood-caked hands reaching for me.
"Come, dear."
"Come, we miss you."
"I love you, I love you, I love you."
"Crucio!"
I woke up, my screaming piercing through the sultry night air like a shard of glass.
Footsteps rushed down the hall, coming closer, and then the door burst open.
"Ms. Kingsley!"
Trembling, sweating, crying, I grabbed my head with my hands, trying to force away those ghastly images.
A warm, firm hand grasped my arm. "Ms. Kingsley?"
I shook my head, trying to remind myself that it was a dream. Just a dream.
Only it wasn't.
I lived in a world where terrifying nightmares ran rampage.
"Raylynx, look at me," a voice said commandingly.
I lifted my head to see McGonagall gazing at me with concern. When she saw my face, her concern broke into one of great pity. "Oh, child," she murmured and sitting beside me, she gently rubbed my back.
"It's all right," she murmured softly as I took great heaving breaths. "It's all right now."
Dorcas' POV
I lay on my bed on my stomach with my legs crossed in the air behind me. On the wall behind me hung an uneven row of newspaper clippings and Potions and Transfiguration Awards.
"Seth, get off," I said to my younger brother, who had draped himself over the sheet music I was examining. I was to perform a piece at the upcoming concert my father hosted every year. The concert was an invitation to the world's best musicians and it was the first time my father was allowing me to play. The essential point was to not make a fool of myself in front of hundreds of guests with my father's reputation on the line. And a necessary requirement in order to perform such a performance was to pick a satisfactory piece. And my brother was very literally, in the way.
"Seth."
This time, my cat, Sully, came to my aid, lithely leaping onto Seth's back and digging in her claws.
"Ow!" Seth rolled off the bed and went crashing to the floor.
"Good Sully," I said, stroking my ginger cat. Sully purred happily.
"Say, Dorcas," Seth said, now making himself comfortable on my floor, "I was talking to Jace the other day and he was telling me all about Quidditch." Jace was Jay's younger brother and both Seth and Jace would be beginning Hogwarts this year.
"Yeah, so?" I said, my fingers tapping against my bed covers as I imagined the melody and harmony synchronizing in my head.
"It sounded amazing."
"It is amazing."
"Then how come you don't play it?" Seth asked me.
"Because I can't," I said shortly.
"What do you mean, you can't?" Seth asked and his curious eyes appeared over the edge of my bed.
"I mean I'm not athletically inclined," I told him. I sounded indifferent even to myself, but deep down, I felt that familiar insecurity open up. I've always wanted to be athletic. Always wanted to be good at Quidditch. But I wasn't. I never would be.
"Get out of my room, Seth. I have to focus on this music right now, and you're not helping."
"Are you being a moody teenager right now?" Seth asked me with genuine curiosity. His wide eyes blinked up at me innocently.
"Sure," I said, "so get out. I'll see you at dinner."
So the key changed on the third page from A major to…
"Can I take Sully with me?" Seth asked me halfway to my door.
"Yes, Seth."
"Okay, thanks."
Pause.
"See you at dinner."
"See you, Seth. Shut the door on the way out, please."
When he had finally left, I reached out and opened the drawer and dragged out today's Daily Prophet. I hadn't wanted to open it in front of my brother for the news had progressively become darker and darker and I didn't want Seth to be afraid of the magical world before he'd even stepped foot in it.
But sure enough, the headlines read "YET ANOTHER MUGGLE FAMILY FOUND SLAUGHTERED. STRANGE MARK OVER KILLING REAPPEARS."
And it wasn't just the Muggle families. The Muggle families hardly mattered to these Dark Wizards. The murders were nothing more than good sport. The real battle was being waged between the magical populations that were Muggle-borns and blood traitors against aristocratic Pure-bloods and Half-bloods pretending to be Pure-bloods.
Because somehow, blood had come to matter.
Somewhere along the line, your blood status, something you ultimately had no control over, became the difference between life and death.
Since when did this become the world I had lived in?
The time I was living in now… What would people say when they looked back on it fifty years later?
I couldn't say, but whatever it was, I was going to have my head on straight and play my part brilliantly, to whatever end.
