𝐑𝐄𝐖𝐑𝐈𝐓𝐄 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐑𝐒-ℍ𝕒𝕣𝕣𝕪 ℙ𝕠𝕥𝕥𝕖𝕣❥

𝐃𝐇 𝟐𝟑

Bill and Fleur's cottage stood alone on a cliff overlooking the sea, its walls embedded with shells and whitewashed. It was a lonely and beautiful place. Wherever Emily went inside the tiny cottage or its garden, she could hear the constant ebb and flow of the sea, like the breathing of some great, slumbering creature.

She spent much of the next few days making excuses to escape the crowded cottage, craving the cliff-top view of open sky and wide, empty sea, and the feel of cold, salty wind on her face.

Emily sat on the cliff, staring into the sky numbly. During this alone time, she reflected on her whole life, what decisions led her to this point, what choices did she make that cost her a whole different path of life.

Knowing that Ethan's dead corpse was lying on one of the spare bedrooms in the cottage, concealed with a spell, made Emily's stomach turn. She bent brought herself to go and see her brother's body since the night he died in her arms, she couldn't face that.

But even though his son had died, Remus still hadn't came to the cottage, he had still not come to comfort his daughter and make sure that she was alright.

Emily was all alone. No family left. She had her friends, but she didn't want to trouble them, they were best off without her.

Emily had came to the conclusion that if she distanced herself from everybody, then no one would die for her. Everyone could live, and she could fight her own battles and face the consequences.

But deep down, she was just a girl who had gone through too much too young, just a girl who needed support.

Harry hadn't noticed any of this, he had been too involved in his own plans and Emily could not blame him, she knew the enormity of his decision not to race Voldemort to the wand still scared Harry.

He could not remember, ever before, choosing not to act. He was full of doubts, doubts that Ron could not help voicing whenever they were together.

"What if Dumbledore wanted us to work out the symbol in time to get the wand?"

"What if working out what the symbol meant made you 'worthy' to get the Hallows?"

"Harry, if that really is the Elder Wand, how the hell are we supposed to finish off You-Know-Who?"

Harry had no answers: There were moments when he wondered whether it had been outright madness not to try to prevent Voldemort breaking open the tomb. He could not even explain satisfactorily why he had decided against it: Every time he tried to reconstruct the internal arguments that had led to his decision, they sounded feebler to him.

The odd thing was that Hermione's support made him feel just as confused as Ron's doubts. Now forced to accept that the Elder Wand was real, she maintained that it was an evil object, and that the way Voldemort had taken possession of it was repellent, not to be considered.

"You could never have done that, Harry," she said again and again. "You couldn't have broken into Dumbledore's grave."

But the idea of Dumbledore's corpse frightened Harry much less than the possibility that he might have misunderstood the living Dumbledore's intentions. He felt that he was still groping in the dark; he had chosen his path but kept looking back, wondering whether he had misread the signs, whether he should not have taken the other way.

From time to time, anger at Dumbledore crashed over him again, powerful as the waves slamming themselves against the cliff beneath the cottage, anger that Dumbledore had not explained before he died.

"But is he dead?" said Ron, three days after they had arrived at the cottage. Harry had been staring out over the wall that separated the cottage garden from the cliff when Emily, Ron and Hermione had found him; he wished they had not, having no wish to join in with their argument.