The Godmother || Sirius Black

━ 12. A glimpse of the past & a bad news

Again her mother pressed a hand in her mouth in horror and her father looked appalled. Apparently the little girl didn't understand how much terrible gravity her words held for having never seen a death before in her short life; she didn't quite understand what death is.

"Wh-why did you say-- how do you even know such a thing? No one knows when one would die. No one can tell when a person is going to die." Her father asked in a grave tone.

Diana shrugged- she didn't know. "I just know."

"Diana, my love," Her mother held her small shoulder with shaky hands and sudden desperation. "Y-you can't say things like that... they're not funny. Do you know how much grandma was hurt hearing your words?"

'I didn't say it because it was funny. I said it because it was the truth.' No matter how much Diana wanted to say that out loud, something in her mother's voice stopped her. She nodded obediently instead like she always did.

"Now, you'll go to grandma's room and apologize to her and say that you didn't mean it. Okay, darling?" Her mother said, her voice was still a bit shaky.

Never the type to question her parents, she nodded her head again and jumped off the bed to go to her grandma's room.

_

Diana finally realized what death really was when her grandmother passed away at the age of 63, in that same year, at the end of spring. Just like she predicted, or more like stated as a fact. The old woman didn't have any disease or anything. Her heart just stopped beating one day and she was no more.

Death meant that the person would go away forever. They would never see that person ever again, no matter how much they wanted to. No matter how they missed that person or cried for them to come back, they'd never come back.

Death was that cruel and absolute.

Diana stopped talking. She stopped talking altogether after coming back from her grandma's funeral where all of her relatives looked at her strangely, especially her aunt Sharon. Whispers and murmurs surrounded the little girl the whole time there and no one had spoken a single word to her.

Again and again she remembered her last visit to her grandparents and she felt like vomiting. This sick feeling inside her heart didn't efface no matter how much she wanted it to be gone.

'Am I the reason grandma's gone?' Six years old Diana thought. 'Everyone is looking at me weirdly. Then I must be the reason. Did it hurt when grandma died? Did she blame me too?... Did I kill her?...'

Her own dark, abysmal thoughts and guilt wrapped their skeletal fingers around her throat, its razor-sharp claws dug deep into her skin. She thrashed around, screamed for help, struggled to get out of its grip but no one came.

She kept seeing those glowing lights over everyone's head she met as a reminder of her dreadful curse. 

Suddenly she was not the kid she was a year ago. Everything changed.

Her own parents gave her mixed reactions. They gave her sympathetic looks but didn't approach her, didn't console her. She saw her parents giving her looks of fear but they said nothing to her. They talked to her every once in a while when it was absolutely necessary but they no longer happily converse with her after she came back from school or after supper while having desserts.

Slowly she became isolated in her house.

She stopped going outside except for school because the more she went outside, the more she saw people. And the more she saw people, the more she saw those numbers above them and somehow knew when they're going to...