In the Melancholy Moonlight

Chapter CXLVII: An Astronaut on the Ocean Floor

The Great Hall was missing seven children at dinner on November 7, 1995.

Ron Weasley was on the Quidditch Pitch. Angelina had announced at lunch that the team would practice on Saturday, after the Hufflepuff-Ravenclaw match, and he needed to try to salvage what scraps of his confidence existed before then.

The sky was darkening, but night had not yet fallen.

Hermione Granger was sitting on her bed. She clutched a silver pocket watch in the same hand that had a mood ring, both halves of which were the same violent shade of blue-purple of a bruise, so severe it was almost black.

The bed to her left was empty, and it would remain that way all night long.

Fred Weasley was pacing back and forth in the common room. He cast occasional glances at the windows, at the pocket watch he was spinning in a circle by its chain, at his sister who was in the common room as well, at the fire roaring in the fireplace.

Ginny Weasley was standing in front of a window. She was completely still, completely silent, the way she'd learned to cope with every other horrible, unspeakable fact of her life from her family's poverty to her experiences in the Chamber of Secrets, because although she was a fire, a raging, roaring fire, even fires could be tamed to cinders from time to time.

The third fire in the group would not make an appearance until morning, but even then, she wouldn't be the same for a couple of days, and that weighed heavily on both children. Because they were all only children, after all.

George Weasley was bent over sketches and notes. His pocket watch was the paperweight holding one side of the roll of parchment down, and he checked it occasionally, but he was focused first and foremost on the Fever Fudge description before him, sprawled on the floor of his dormitory.

The morning would come, and it would bring her back perfectly fine, he had to believe that, but he wanted to see if he could figure out a way to take away the sting of the cold that plagued her for a couple of days after the moon had come and gone. Without the boils, of course.

Harry Potter was doing his best to breathe. He was a hypocrite, and he knew that, but it was just so hard to breathe not knowing what the night would bring, not knowing what the morning would bring, not knowing how she would emerge, when she would emerge, if she would emerge.

The night would be a long one, the same way the other two nights of knowing had been, but it was only the third. The third night he knew, the third night of utter sleeplessness, the third night of tossing and turning and trying to breathe. He was a hypocrite and he knew that, but it was just so hard to breathe sometimes.

Lucy was crying. The second she closed the door behind her, the door that separated her from everything and everyone else, she felt it. She felt the water tugging her under again. She felt the water fill her lungs again. Her last little flicker of joy from her flight the day before was swept out to sea. She wondered in the back of her mind if there was magic in the world strong enough to keep a fire burning underwater. She wondered in the back of her mind if she would be capable of that type of magic, if it did exist. She laughed, the sound bitter and harsh and broken and hopeless. Of course she wasn't.

A moment passed in silence, on all fronts.

All hands pointed to midnight. A soft tone, a single melancholy piano note, was emitted from the enchanted pocket watches.

One on the Quidditch Pitch.

One in the fifth-year girls' dormitories.

Two in the Gryffindor common room.