𝐌𝐎𝐑𝐎𝐒 | "Doom; fate" the personified spirit of impending doom, who drives mortals to their deadly fate.
Esmerelda thought she had left all those feelings of pain and suffering behind once the Second Titan War ended, but another war was brewing...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
▬▬▬ CHAPTER THIRTY ▬▬▬
Happy Fourth of July to my American readers!
THERE WAS A BUZZ IN Harry's ears as he stood in Dumbledore's office. His hands were shaking and he couldn't get them to stop, not like he wanted to. He was too scared to even look at them. They were still covered in blood—Esmerelda's blood.
He could barely recall how he even ended up here. He remembered Esmerelda's death though, he had that memory locked up in his head in full detail and he was almost tempted to Obliviate himself from where he stood.
He remembered trying to stop the blood, but there was already too much. The knife—her knife—must have stabbed into a vital organ to cause it to bleed so so much. Sirius was beside him, healing spells spilling from his lips as he tried desperately to save her. He could recall the spells never working, but he didn't know why. Didn't care why because all he could really focus on was the blood pouring out from her body and the way the light left her once bright green eyes.
After that... everything else was blurry. He was pretty sure he heard Bellatrix Lestrange curse at him and Sirius before fleeing the building with Voldemort.
(Voldemort had escaped once again, but for once he didn't care because his friend was dead.)
Ministry officials had entered the building... There was a lot of screaming after that, or maybe it came from him, he didn't know. He remembered watching them drag Sirius away from his niece's body and him trying to reach for him, but Dumbledore held him back. And then... Dumbledore sent him here through a portkey.
The last thing he saw before being transported were the people surrounding Esmerelda's dead body, gawking at it like she was some sort of fucking display on a museum.
And then he ended up here, and he still didn't know why.
Suddenly the fireplace burst into emerald green flames. Harry flinched away from it, reminded too strongly of what Esmerelda's eyes used to be before he watched the life fade away from them.
Dumbledore stepped out of the fire, and the wizards and witches on the surrounding walls jerked awake. Many of them gave cries of welcome.
"Thank you," Dumbledore said softly.
He did not look at Harry at first, but walked over to the perch beside the door and withdrew, from an inside pocket of his robes, the tiny, ugly, featherless Fawkes, whom he placed gently on the tray of soft ashes beneath the golden post where the full-grown Fawkes usually stood.
"Well, Harry," he said, finally turning away from the baby bird. "You will be pleased to hear that none of your fellow students are going to suffer lasting damage from the night's events."
Essie's my 'fellow student', he wanted to say. And she's dead because of me.
Because it was the truth. Her death was all his fault. The woman—that mysterious, powerful, terrifying woman—had even said it herself.
