Rose Thorn ❖ (Draco Malfoy - Harry Potter Series)

4.13

The Darkness was coming.

     Camille's own heart held some of it too.

     The stands had emptied, the students sent back to their dorms.

     Violent storms cloaked the skies, mourning for the fallen one.

     Cedric Diggory was dead.

     Cedric Diggory was dead..

     "I think its best if she returns home right away," Professor McGonagall stated to her father, overwhelmed by the grief of his favourite child's death.

     Camille said nothing. She felt nothing.

     She didn't know how it had happened. One moment she'd been cheering for her brother, the next...she didn't remember. There were screams, but were they her own? There were cries and shouts, none that she recalled being from her mouth. Her father was there, kneeling beside his son, kneeling before his hope.

      Draco...He was there too. He had been beside Camille until...

      "Miss Diggory?" Professor Dumbledore broke her thoughts.

     She had been staring at the crystal ball on Professor Dumbledore's desk. It was dark charcoal, swirling with that of the void's temptation, yet as she lifted her empty eyes at the teachers that watched her, the ball returned to a sweet, charming turquoise, marbling in calmness.

     "Yes?" Camille's voice was low, hoarse, broken.

      Professor Dumbledore gave a sincere, sad smile. "I was saying that you'd do best to finish the year early, we'll give you your marks on your past averages. We'll send you your belongings."

     Camille cleared her throat. All eyes were on her, the only composed one between her and her father. She remembered now. The screams had belonged to her father, the cries belonging to Harry Potter who had apparated back with her brother.

     Her dead brother.

     Without a final word, without a goodbye, a hug, nothing, Camille went home with her father. They'd disapparated into their living room, the home hollow now.

     Amos spent most of his time sobbing in Cedric's room, leading up to the funeral. Camille, like a ghost, lay in their hammock on the front porch. She never got up, least it be for toilet necessities. She did not eat, did not sleep in her own bed. Her father was absent from her, his mind preoccupied with the heavy loss of Cedric.

     Cedric.

     He was there, clad in the yellow of Hufflepuff. He'd entered that maze with a grin...and left without the essence of life. He was gone. Like their mother, Cedric had been taken from her.

     Harry focused on Voldemort. He'd claimed it was Voldemort, but after recounting what had happened, Camille had overheard that it was Peter Pettigrew who'd cast the killing curse. Peter Pettigrew had killed her brother...and he'd killed a part of her too.

     The funeral was long and held in their backyard. The Head of the Houses attended, as did Dumbledore. Some of the Ministry that worked with Camille's father came and the Weasley's were all in attendance too. Camille, quiet and vacant, stood off to the side, refusing to talk to anyone, not even Tom Ravenhood, nor Brooklyn...not even Ron Weasley who had gently placed a yellow rose on Cedric's grave.

     Night had fallen, the guests had left. Camille slept beside the mound in their backyard. She slept beside her brother's body that lay six feet beneath. The night was cold, but her heart was colder.

     She awoke to a blanket draped over her body, a fresh wreath of white roses lay on top of the grave. She plucked one of the roses from the wreath and held it in her hand. It was cold, on the verge of yellowing in decay. It seemed that everything was dying.

     She looked up at the horizon, the sun peeking up over the yellow cornfields behind their house. A large sea of cornstalks waved gently in the breeze, the sky a rich pink and orange. A crow landed on her brothers grave and croaked a haunting melody. Camille crumpled the rose in her hand, casting away the fallen petals in the carrying breeze.

     The world was moving on without her brother. The skies would see a thousand sunrises and sunsets, the moon would rise and fall with it, and not a day would go by where her brother would breathe again.

     She was cursed. She had to be.

     In the garden of her family tree, Death had claimed the two sweetest ones. She understood it now. The game of life and the game of death. While her mother and brother had died, Peter Pettigrew, Bellatrix Lestrange and Barty Crouch Jnr still lived. Perhaps that was the point...death was the winning endpoint, not life.

     The crow cawed again and she looked directly in its small black eye and said. "Tell Death, tell the Darkness, tell whatever damned hell there is, that Camille Diggory is coming." —she looked back up to the pink sky and watched the crow fluttered away, so she mumbled to herself— "Let them tremble before me."