"There are moments that the words don't reach, there is a grace too powerful to name. You push away what you can never understand, you push away the unimaginable" - It's Quiet Uptown, Hamilton
When I wake the following morning it is several seconds before I remember what happened. For a moment, I hope childishly that it was a dream, that Ron is still here and never left. Yet, by turning my head on my pillow I can see Ron's deserted bunk. It is like a dead body in the way it seems to draw my eyes. I jump down from my own bed, keeping my eyes averted from Ron's. Hermione, who is already busy in the kitchen, does not wish my good morning, but turns her face away quickly as I go by. Harry manages a smile, but I can tell he too is struggling with the fact.
He's gone, I tell myself. He's gone. I have to keep thinking it as I wash and dress, as though repetition will dull the shock of it. He's gone and he's not coming back. And that is the simple truth of it, I know, because our protective enchantments mean that it will be impossible, once we vacate this spot, for Ron to find us again.
We eat breakfast in silence. Hermione's eyes are puffy and red; she looks as thought she has not slept. We pack up our things, Hermione dawdling. Harry and I know why she wants to spin out our time on the riverbank; several times I see her look up eagerly, and I'm sure she has deluded herself into thinking that she's heard footsteps through the heavy ran, but no red-haired figure appears, and she sees nothing but rain-swept woods. Another little parcel of fury explodes within me, and I can hear Ron saying, "We thought you two knew what you were doing!", and I resume packing with a hard knot in the pit of my stomach.
The muddy river beside us is rising rapidly and will soon spill onto the banks. We've lingered a good hour after we would have usually departed camp. Finally having entirely repacked her beaded bag three times, Hermione seems unable to find any more reasons to delay: the three of us grasp hands and Disapparate, reappearing on a windswept heather-covered hillside.
The instant we arrive, Hermione drops our hands and walks away from us, finally sitting down on a large rock, her face on her knees, shaking with what I know are sobs. We watch her, supposing that we should go and comfort her, but something keeps me rooted on the spot. Everything inside me feels cold and right: again I see the contemptuous expression on Ron's face. Harry and I stride off through the heather, casting the spells she usually preformed to ensure our protection.
We do not discuss Ron at all over the next few days. Harry and I are determined to never mention his name again, and Hermione seems to know that there is no use forcing the issue, although sometimes at night I can hear her crying. Meanwhile, I've taken to examining the Phoenix locket by wand light. I'm waiting for the moment everything in my mind clicks, and I'm able to figure out who the Thief in the photograph is, proving that I knew more about Dumbledore than I thought, proving he had some grand plan for us. I continue to dream of young Dumbledore and the boy, too, often finding them locked in a tight embrace, or laughing carelessly as they are in the photograph. It's excruciating not knowing who he is, or why Dumbledore wished for me to know about him. When no recognition comes to me, I find myself simply taking it out to stare at the boy, who, be it due to my mind playing tricks on me or actual resemblance, looks very much so like Draco.
By day, we devote ourselves to trying to determine the possible locations of Gryffindor's sword, but the more we talk about the places in which Dumbledore might have hidden it, the more desperate and far-fetched our speculation becomes. Cudgel my brains thought I might, I can't remember Dumbledore ever mentioning a place in which he might hide something. There are moments when I don't know whether I'm angrier with Ron or with Dumbledore. We thought you knew what you were doing...We thought Dumbledore had told you what to do...We thought you had a real plan!
I can't hide it from myself: Ron had been right. Dumbledore has left us with virtually nothing. We have discovered one Horcrux, but we have no means of destroying it: The others are as unattainable as they've ever been. Hopelessness threatens to engulf me. I'm staggered now to think of our own presumption in accepting our friends' offers to accompany us on this meaningless journey. We know nothing, we have no ideas, and we are constantly, painfully on the alert for any indication that Hermione too is about to tell us that she's had enough, that she's leaving.
We're spending many evenings in silence, and Hermione has taken to bringing out Phineas Nigellus's portrait and propping it up in a chair, as thought he might fill part of the gaping hole left by Ron's departure. Despite his previous assertion that he would never visit us again, Phineas Nigellus does not seem able to resist the urge to find our more about what Harry and I are up to, and consents to reappear, blindfolded, every few days or so. I'm glad to see him, because he is company, albeit of a snide and taunting kind. We relish any news about what is happening at Hogwarts, though Phineas Nigellus is not an ideal informer. He venerates Snape, the first Slytherin headmaster since he himself controlled the school, and we have to be extra careful not to criticise or ask impertinent questions about Snape, otherwise he will instantly leave his painting.
However, he does let drop certain snippets. Snape seems to be facing a constant, low level of mutiny from a hard core of students. Ginny has been banned from going into Hogsmeade. Snape has reinstated Umbridge's old decree forbidding gatherings of three or more students or any unofficial student societies.
From all of these things, I've deduced that Ginny, and probably Neville and Luna along with her, have been doing their best to continue Dumbledore's Army. This scant news makes me incredibly proud of our friends, but it also makes me think of Ron, and Dumbledore, and of Hogwarts itself, and the way things were just a short year ago. Indeed, as Phineas Nigellus talks about Snape's crackdown, I experience a spilt second of madness when I imagine simply going back to school to join the destabilisation of Snape's regime: Being fed, and having a soft bed, and other people being in charge, seems the most wonderful prospect in the world in that moment. But then I remember that we are Undesirable Number One and Two, and there is a ten-thousand Galleon price on our head, and that to walk into Hogwarts these days is just as dangerous as walking into the Ministry of Magic. Indeed, Phineas Nigellus inadvertently emphasised this fact by slipping in leading questions about our whereabouts. Hermione shoves him back inside the beaded bag every time he does this, and Phineas Nigellus invariably refuses to reappear for several days after these unceremonious good-byes.
The weather grows colder and colder. We don't dare remain in any one area too long, so rather than staying in the south of of England, where a hard ground frost is the worst of our worries, we continue to meander up and down the country, braving a mountainside where sleet pounds the tent; a wide, flat marsh, where the tent is flooded with chill water; and a tiny island in the middle of a Scottish loch, where snow half buries the tent in the night.
We've already spotted Christmas trees twinkling from several sitting room windows before there comes an evening when Harry and I resort to suggest, again, what seems to be the only unexplored avenue left to us. We've just eaten an unusually good mean: Hermione had been to a supermarket under the Invisibility Cloak (scrupulously dropping the money into an open till as she left), we think that she might be more persuadable on a stomach full of spaghetti Bolognese and tinned pears. We've also had the foresight to suggest that we all take a few hours' break from wearing the Horcrux, which is hanging over the end of the bunk beside us.
"Hermione?"
"Hmm?" She is curled up in one of the sagging armchairs with The Tales of Beedle the Bard. I can't imagine how much more she can get out of the book, which is not, after all, very long; but evidently she is still deciphering something in it, because Spellman's Syllabary lays open on the arm of the chair.
Harry clears his throat. "Hermione, Haylee and I have been thinking, and --"
"You could you two help me with something?"
Apparently she has not been listening to us. She leans forward and holds out The Tales of Beedle the Bard.
"Look at that symbol," she says, pointing to the top of a page. Above what I assume is the title of the story, there is a picture of what looks like a triangular eye, its pupil crossed with a vertical line.
"We never took Ancient Runes, Hermione."
"I know, but that isn't a rune and it's not in the syllabary, either. All along I thought it was a picture of an eye, but I don't think it is! It's been inked in, look, somebody's drawn it there, it isn't really part of the book. Think, have you ever seen it before?"
"No...No, wait a moment." Harry looks closer. "Isn't the same symbol Luna's dad was wearing round his neck?"
"It is, too!" I exclaim, moving closer.
"Then it's Grindelwald's mark."
We stare at Harry, openmouthed.
"What?"
"Krum told me..."
Harry recounts a story from a story from Bill and Fleur's wedding, wherein Krum wanted to duel Mr Lovegood for wearing such an offensive symbol.
"Grindelwald's mark?"
I look from Harry to the weird symbol and back again. "I've never heard about him having a mark."
"Well, like I say, Krum reckoned that symbol was carved on a wall at Durmstrang, and Grindelwald put it there.'
Hermione falls back into the old armchair, frowning.
"That's very odd. If it's a symbol of Dark Magic, what's it doing in a book of children's stories?"
"Yeah, it is weird," I say. "And you'd think Scrimgeour would have recognised it. He was Minister, surely he'd know all about Dark stuff."
"I know...Perhaps he thought it was an eye, just like I did. All the other stories have little pictures over the littles."
She does not speak again, but continues to pore over the strange mark. Harry tries again.
"Hermione?"
"Hmm?"
"We've been thinking. We -- we want to go to Godric's Hollow."
She looks up at us, but her eyes are unfocused, and I'm sure she's still thinking about the mysterious mark on the book.
"Yes, he says. "Yes, I've been wondering that too. I really think we'll have to."
"Did you hear him right?" I ask.
"Of course I did. You want to go to Godric's Hollow. I agree, I think we should. I mean, I can't think of anywhere else it could be either. It'll be dangerous, but the more I think about it, the more likely it seems it's there.'
"Er -- what's there?" asks Harry.
At that, she looks just as bewildered as I feel.
"Well, the sword, Harry! Dumbledore must have known you'd want to go back there, and I mean, Godric's Hollow is Godric Gryffindor's birthplace -"
"Really? Gryffindor came from Godric's Hollow?"
"Harry, did you ever open A History of Magic?"
"Forget that, Harry, do you have common sense?" I question, laughing for what feels like the first time in months. "Of course bloody Godric Gryffindor is from Godric's Hollow."
"Erm," Harry says, smiling. "I might've opened it, you know, when I bought it...just the once..."
"Well, like Haylee said, as the village is named after him, I'd have thought you might have made the connotation," says Hermione. She sounds much more like her old self than she has done of late.; I half expect her to announce that she's off to the library. "There's a bit about the village in A History of Magic, wait..."
She opens her beaded bag and rummages for a while, finally extracting her copy of our old school textbook, A History of Magic by Bathilda Bagshot, which she thumbs through until finding the page she wants.
"'Upon the signature of the International Statute of Secrecy in 1689, wizards went into hiding for good. It was natural, perhaps, that they formed their own small communities within a community. Many small villages and hamlets attracted several magical families, who banned together for mutual support and protection. The villages of Tinworth in Cornwall, Upper Flagley in Yorkshire, and Ottery in St. Catchpole were notable homes to knots of Wizarding families who lived alongside tolerant and sometimes Confunded Muggles. Most celebrated of these half-magical dwelling places is, perhaps, Godric's Hollow, the West Country village where the great wizard Godric Gryffindor was born, and where Bowman Wright, Wizarding smith, forged the first Golden Snitch. The graveyard is full of the names of ancient magical families, and this accounts, no doubt, for the stories that have dogged the little church beside it for many centuries.'
"You and your parents aren't mentioned," says Hermione, closing the book, "because Professor Bagshot doesn't cover anything later than the end of the nineteenth century. But you see? Godric' Hollow, Godric Gryffindor, Gryffindor's sword: don't you think Dumbledore would have expected you to make the connection?"
"Oh yeah..."
I don't want to admit that when we had not been thinking about the sword at all when we suggested we go to Godric's Hollow. For us, the lure of the village lay in our mother's grave, the house where we narrowly escaped death, and in the person Bathilda Bagshot.
"Remember what Muriel said?" I ask eventually.
"Who?"
"You know," I hesitate: I don't want to say Ron's name. "George's great-aunt. At the wedding. The one who said you had skinny ankles.
"Oh," says Hermione. It was a sticky moment: I know that she has sensed Ron's name in the offing. I rush on:
"She said Bathilda Bagshot still lives in Godric's Hollow."
"Bathilda Bagshot," murmurs Hermione, running her index finger over Bathilda's embossed name on the front cover of the book. "Well, I suppose --"
She gasps so dramatically that my insides turn over; Harry and I draw our wands, lookning around at the entrance, half expecting to see a hand forcing its way through the entrance flap, but there's nothing there.
"What?" Harry says, half angry, half relieved. "What did you do that for? I thought you'd seen a Death Eater unzipping the tent, at least --"
"Harry, Haylee, what if Bathilda's got the sword? What if Dumbledore entrusted it to her?"
I consider this possibility. Bathilda would be an extremely old woman by now, and according to Muriel, she's 'gaga'. Is it likely that Dumbledore would have hidden the sword of Gryffindor with her? If so, I feel like Dumbledore has left a great deal to chance: Dumbledore has never revealed that he had replaced the sword with a fake, nor had he so much as mentioned a friendship with Bathilda. Now, however, is not the moment to cast doubt on Hermione's theory, not when she is so surprisingly willing to fall in with our dearest wish.
"Yeah, he might have done! So, are we going to Godric's Hollow?"
"Yes, but we'll have to think it through carefully." She's sitting up now, and I can tell that the prospect of having a plan again has lifted her mood. "We'll need to practise Disapparating together under the Invisibility Cloak for a start, and perhaps Disillusionment Charms would be sensible too, unless you think we should go the whole hog and use Polyjuice Potion? In that case, we'll need to collect hair from somebody. I actually think we'd better do that, the thicker our disguises the better..."
Harry and I let her talk, nodding and agreeing whenever there is a pause, but our minds have left the conversation. For the first time since we've discovered that the sword in Gringotts was a fake, I feel excited.
We're about to go home, about to return to the place where we had a family. It is in Godric's hollow that, but for Voldemort, we would have grown up and spent every school holiday. We could of invited our friends to our house...We might even have had brothers and sisters...It would have been our mother who had made our seventeenth birthday cake. The life we have lost has hardly ever seemed so real to me as in this moment, when I know we're about to see the place where it had been taken from us. After Hermione goes to bed, Harry and I quietly extract my rucksack from Hermione's bag, and from inside it, the photograph album Hagrid had given us so long ago. For the first time in months, we purées the old pictures of us and our parents, smiling and waving up at us from the images.
"What do you think happened to Dad and Sirius?" I whisper, stopping on our parents' wedding photo. "You don't think they --?"
"No," he says quickly. "They're smart. As soon as they realised Grimmauld Place wasn't safe they'd have left. I guess they're just in hiding."
"You sound very sure of yourself."
"Thinking about the alternative is too hard," he says with a frown. He goes silent, and continues flicking through our book of memories, but I can tell that his mind is plagued by the same question as mine. "Do you think we missed something during our lessons with Dumbledore?" he asks finally, barely audible. "I mean, do you think we was dropping hints the entire time and we were just too thick to pick up on them?"
I stare at him for a few seconds, struggling to find the words. Even after everything we've lost in the past few months, it's comforting to know that we're in this together, and that nothing will change that. I think I'd have gone insane if I had to go through all of this alone.
"I don't know," I say finally. "Part of me thinks we missed something; the other part thinks Dumbledore screwed us over. He sends us out on this massive quest, but doesn't leave us any clues? The snitch, the locket, none of it makes any sense." I give a dry laugh, and feel tears sting in the corners of my eyes. "Maybe he put too much confidence in us, maybe he didn't trust us enough...I don't know. All I know is that Godric's Hollow is the first thing I've felt confident about in a long time, I guess we've just gotta hope Dumbledore hasn't led us totally astray."
He breathes a sigh of relief, and even manages a smile. "I feel like we haven't just talked in a million years. I can't believe I'm saying this, but I even miss your drama with Malfoy."
"If it gives you some sense of normalcy," I say, grinning, "technically there's still drama with Malfoy."
Talking about him gives me a dull ache in my heart. The fact that he is out there somewhere, living a somewhat normal life, studying at Hogwarts, seems impossible. I find myself wondering if he notices my absent at school: our empty spot at the Gryffindor table, my face in the corridors. With these thoughts comes a sharp and painful guilt; after everything he did, why he is still occupying my thoughts, especially when there's someone like George now in the picture.
"Yeah." It is silent for a few moments, in which Harry closes the photo album. "You know, I think this goes without saying, but I'm really happy you didn't switch sides for Malfoy."
I give another teary laugh. "Me, too."
*~*
Harry and I would gladly have set out for Godric's Hollow the next day, but Hermione has other days. Convinced as she is that Voldemort will expect Harry and I to return to the scene of our parent's murder, she is determined that we will set off only after we've ensured we have the best disguises possible. It is therefore a full week later - once we have surreptitiously obtained hairs from innocent Muggles who were Christmas shopping, and had practised Apparating and Disapparating while underneath the Invisibility Cloak together -- that Hermione agrees to make the journey.
We're to Apparate to the village under cover of darkness, so it is late afternoon when we finally swallow Polyjuice Potion, Harry transforming into a balding, middle-aged Muggle man, Hermione into his small and rather mousy wife, and I into their teenage daughter. The beaded bag containing all of your possessions (apart from the Horcrux, which Harry is wearing around his neck) is tucked into an inside pocket of Hermione's buttoned-up coat. Harry lowers the Invisibility Cloak over us, and we turn into the suffocating darkness once again.
Heart beating in my throat, I open my eyes. We're standing hand in hand in a snowy lane under a dark blue sky, in which the night's first stars are already glimmering feebly. Cottages stand on either side of the narrow road, Christmas decorations twinkling in their windows. A short way ahead of us, a glow of golden streetlights indicate the centre of the village.
"All this snow!" Hermione whispers beneath the cloak. "Why didn't we think of snow? After all our precautions, we'll leave prints! We'll just have to get rid of them -- you two go in front, I'll do it --"
I do not want to enter the village like a pantomime horse, trying to keep ourselves concealed while magically covering our traces.
"Let's just take the Cloak off," I say, and when she looks frightened, "Oh, come on, we don't look like us and there's no one around."
Harry stows the Cloak under his jacket and we make our way forward unhampered, the city air stinging ur faces as we pass more cottages: Any one of them might have been the one in which our friends had once lived or where Bathilda lives now. I gaze at the front doors, their snow-burdened roofs, and their front porches, wondering whether I remember any of them, knowing deep inside that it is impossible, that we were a little more than a year old when we left this place forever. I'm not even sure whether we'll be able to see the cottage at all: I don't know what happens when the subjects of a Fidelius charm die. Then the little lang along which we're walking curves to the left and the heart of the village, a small square, is revealed to us.
Strung all around with coloured lights, there is what looks like a war memorial in the middle, partly obscured by a windblown Christmas tree. There are several shops, a post office, a pub, and a little church whose stained-glass windows are glowing jewel-bright across the square.
The snow here has become impacted: It is hard and slippery where people have trodden on it all day. Villagers are crisscrossing in front of us, their figures briefly illuminated by streetlamp. We hear a snatch of laughter, and pop music as the pub door opens and closes; then we hear a carol start up inside the little church.
"Harry, Haylee, I think it's Christmas Eve!" says Hermione.
"It is?"
I've lost track of the date; we've not seen a newspaper for weeks.
"I'm sure it is," says Hermione, her eyes upon the church. "She...she'll be in there, won't she? Your mum? I can see the graveyard behind it."
I feel a thrill of something that is beyond excitement, more like fear. Now that we're so near, I wonder whether I want to see at all. Perhaps Hermione knows how we feel, because she reaches for our hands and takes the lead for the first times, pulling us forward. Halfway across the square, however, she stops dead.
"Look!"
She is pointing at the war memorial. As we pass it, it has transformed. Instead of an obelisk covered in names, there is a statue of three people: a man with untidy hair and glasses, a woman with long hair and a kind, pretty face, and babies in both their arms. Snow lays upon all their heads, like fluffy white caps.
Harry and I draw closer, gazing up into our parents' faces. I never imagined there would be a statue...How strange it is to see ourselves represented in stone, happy babies without scars on our foreheads...
"C'mon," I say, once we've looked our fill, and we turn again towards the church. As we cross the road, I glance over my shoulder; the statue has turned back into the war memorial.
The singing grows louder as we approach the church. It makes my throat construct, it reminds me so forcefully of Hogwarts, of Peeve's bellowing rude versions of carols from inside suits of arbor, of the Great Hall's twelve Christmas trees, of Dumbledore wearing a bonnet he had won in a cracker, of snowflakes melting in Draco's hair, of Ron in a hand knitted sweater...
There is a kissing gate at the entrance to the graveyard. Hermione pushes it open as quietly as possible and we edge through it. On either side of the slippery path to the church doors, the snow lays deep and untouched. W e move off through the snow, carving deep trenches behind us as we walk around the building, keeping to the shadows beneath the brilliant windows.
Behind the church, row upon row of snowy tombstones protrude from a blanket of pale blue that is flecked with dazzling red, gold, and green wherever the reflections from the stained glass hit the snow. Keeping my hand closed tightly on the wand in my jacket pocket, Harry and I move towards the nearest grave.
"Look at this, it's an Abbott, could be some long-lost relation of Hannah's!"
"Keep your voices down," Hermione begs us.
We wade deeper and deeper into the graveyard, gouging dark tracks into the snow behind us, stooping to peer at the words on old headstones, every now and then squinting into the surrounding darkness to make sure that we are unaccompanied.
"Harry, Haylee, here!"
Hermione is two rows of tombstones away; we have to wade back to her, my heart positively banging in my chest.
"Is it -?"
"No, but look!"
She points to the dark stone. We stoop down and see, upon the frozen, lichen-spotted granite, the words KENDRA DUMBLEDORE and, a short way below her dates of birth and death, AND HER DAUGHTER ARIANA. There is also a quotation:
Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
So Rita Skeeter and Muriel had got some of their facts right. The Dumbledore family had indeed lived here, and part of it had died here.
Seeing the grave is worse than hearing about it. I can't not help thinking that we and Dumbledore both have deep roots in this graveyard, and that Dumbledore ought to have told us so, yet he had never thought to share the connection. We could have visited this place together; for a moment I imagine coming here with Harry and Dumbledore, of what a bong that would have been, of how much it would have meant to us. But it seems that to Dumbledore, the fact that our families lay side by side in the same graveyard had been an unimportant coincidence, irrelevant, perhaps, to the job he wanted Harry and I to do.
Hermione is looking at us, and I'm glad my face is hidden by shadow. I read the words on the tombstone again. Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. I do not understand what these words mean. Surely Dumbledore had chosen them, as the eldest of the family once his mother died.
"Are you sure he never mentioned --" Harry begins.
"No," we say in unison. "Let's keep looking."
We turn away, wishing we had not seen the tombstone: I do not want my excited trepidation tainted with resentment.
"Here!" cries Hermione again a few moments later from out of the darkness. "Oh no, sorry! I thought it said Potter!"
She is rubbing at a crumbling, mossy stone, gazing down at it, a little frown on her face.
"Harry, Haylee, come back here a moment."
I don't want to be sidetracked again, and only grudgingly do we make our way back through the snow towards her.
"What?"
"Look at this!"
The grave is extremely old, weathered so that I can hardly make out the name. Hermione points out the symbol beneath it.
"That's the mark in the book!"
We peer at the place she indicated: The stone is so worn that it is hard to make out what is engraved here, though there does seem to be a triangular mark beneath the nearly illegible name.
"It could be..."
Hermione lights her wand and points it at the name on the headstone.
"It says Ig -- Ignotus, I think..."
"We're going to keep looking for our parents, all right?" Harry tells her, a slight edge to his voice, and we set off again, leaving her crouched beside the old grave.
Every now and then we recognise a surname that, like Abbott, we've met at Hogwarts. Sometimes there is several generations of the same Wizarding family represented in the graveyard : I can tell from the dates that they have either died out, or the current members have moved away from Godric's Hollow. Deeper and deeper amongst the graves we go, and every time we reach a new headstone I feel a little lurch of apprehension and anticipation.
The darkness and silence seems to become, all of a sudden, much deeper. I look around, worried, thinking of Dementors, then realise that the carols have finished, that the chatter and flurry of churchgoers is fading away as they make their way back into the square. Somebody inside the church has just turned off the lights.
Then Hermione's voice comes out of the blackness for the third time, sharp and clear from a few years away.
"Harry, Haylee, she's here...right here."
And I know by her tone that it is our mother this time: We move towards her, feeling as if something heavy is pressing on my chest, the same sensation I had right after Dumbledore had died, a grief that actually weighs on my heart and lungs.
The headstone is only two rows behind Kendra and Ariana's. It is made of white marble, just like Dumbledore's tomb, and this makes it easy to read, as it seems to shine in the dark. We do not need to kneel or even approach very close to it to make out the words engraved upon it.
James Potter - BORN 27 MARCH 1960 - DIED 31 OCTOBER 1981
Lily Potter - BORN 30 JANUARY 1960 - DIED 31 OCTOBER 1981
"The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death"
I read the words slowly, as though I will have only one chance to take in their meaning, and I read the last of them aloud.
"'The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death'..." A horrible thought comes to me, and with it a kind of panic. "Isn't that a Death Eater idea? Why is that there?"
"It doesn't mean defeating death in the way the Death Eaters mean it, Haylee," says Hermione, her voice gentle. "It means...you know...living beyond death. Living after death."
But she is not living, I think: She's gone. Whatever magic brought Dad back seems to have forsaken our mother. The empty words can not disguise the fact that her mouldering remains lay beneath the snow and stone, indifferent, unknowing. And tears come before I can stop them, boiling hot then instantly freezing on my face, and what is the point in wiping them off or pretending. And suddenly Harry's arm is around my shoulders, and mine is around his waist, tears streaming down his cheeks also. Together, we look down at the thick snow hiding from our eyes the place where the last of Lily Potter lays, bones now, surely, or dust, now knowing or caring their her living son and daughter stand so near, our hearts still beating, alive because of her sacrifice and close to wishing, in this moment, that I was sleeping under the snow with her.
"Harry," I say weakly, my voice breaking, "I love you."
He wipes his face with his sleeve, the tears coming faster now, and clears his throat. "I love you too, Haylee."
Hermione has taken my hand again and is gripping it tightly. I can't look at her, but return the pressure, now taking deep, sharp gulps of the night air, trying to steady myself, trying to regain control. We should have brought something for her, but every plant in the graveyard is dead and frozen. Hermione raises her wand, moves it in a circle through the air, and a wreath of Christmas roses blossomed before us. Harry and I catch it up and lay it on her grave, together.
As soon as we stand, I want to leave: I don't think I can stand another minute here. We turn in silence, still gripping each other as if our lives depend on it, and walk through the snow, past Dumbledore's mother and sister, back toward the dark church and out of sight kissing gate.