Hell Heart ❤️‍🔥 Harry Potter [1]

xxxii ⟶ Here Lies

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xxxii. Here Lies
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THE FUNERAL IS short and sweet, just like the lives it's...celebrating? Remembering? and the grounds of Hogwarts are thick with people.

The service sheet in his hand quivers. The rustling of the paper breaks through the air while Jude Lestrange cries into a white handkerchief, his heart raging in his chest. How could this have happened?

Harry Potter is silent, refusing to cry because that would mean accepting that it's real. His hand is loosely tangled in Hermione Granger's, loosely because he wants the last hand he held to be Thea's. Hermione hasn't once glanced to the two coffins at the front of the proceedings, and is trying so hard to tell Harry he can cry if he needs to, but her lip is trembling too violently. Ron Weasley stares at nothing, his entire body numb and so still he could be a statue. 

Dean Thomas is crumbled in his chair, not hiding his sobs and struggling to accept that Thea's gone. Forever. And there is nothing he can do.

A tall, thin boy with blinding platinum hair scrambles up to a podium at the front, and gestures behind him.

"Thea Cindercroft was... a wonder." He pauses. The wind whistles gently through the trees. "She was talented, she was caring to a fault. I just wish I could've stopped her from fading away like she did for me. I will always miss her...she was the only light I had for a while, and now everything will be just that little bit darker, with her being gone." Draco Malfoy sounds unnatural...so unlike himself. But no one moves.

Another lean, hollow boy replaces Draco. "Thea Vincent was..." the boy chokes on his words, but not his mistake. "...she ignited a fire within me and...she carried herself with such regard that everyone could feel the power she had. She made me feel like I was Jude, and not just a Lestrange." Still, no one moves. "I loved her – I love her so much that I feel like I have gone with her. She was...mad for literature. Shakespeare, especially." The boy looks up to the still sky and inhales. "More light and light...more dark and dark..."

"Our woes," Hermione says with Jude under her breath.

The burial is long and gruelling. The coffins go into the ground, and the headstones are heaved into place, their titles stark in the grey stone.

HERE LIES THEABEL CHARLOTTE CINDERCROFT

A LIGHT TO MANY BUT A DARKNESS TO HERSELF.

ALWAYS ALIVE.

The other is just as startling.

HERE LIES THEABEL CHARLOTTE VINCENT

EXTINGUISHED.

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A scream suddenly breaks through the scene and the few gathered around her bed jump.

"Merlin, you frightened the life out of me!" Ron almost squeaks, but Thea has barely sat up before the boy's arms are around her. It's so unlike Ron, that she still thinks she's in her dream, or whatever that was.

"What happened?" her voice is hoarse and strained.

"Well..." Ron glances at Harry, who looks up.

His glasses don't hide the red rims of his eyes, or the grey tinge in his face.

"I don't know. But...Snape got away. Dumbledore's dead. And...um...Lyra is too."

Thea's eyebrows raise. Her eyes don't fill with tears, and her chest doesn't ignite with fiery agony. Then, she frowns. She's surprised by how OK she is with that.