The Other Black - Book 7

Chapter 24 - Shell Cottage

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 Aurora 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.

It kept her from talking, and if she didn't talk, she didn't have to think. If she didn't have to think, she didn't have to process. To grieve. She didn't want to come face to face with the fact that she'd lost another friend. Her sleeping was hardly any better, and there were days that she could barely stand.

Whenever Ron was around Harry, Ron would always voice doubts of Harry's decision.

"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-KnowWho?"

When Ron wasn't doubting, Hermione was supporting.

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

Aurora never gave any indication which way she leaned. She didn't really know herself. After all, she had been trying really hard to think about much. But if she let herself, just to focus on the Hallows vs. Horcrux debate...

No, scolded a tiny voice. No thoughts. You'll lose sight of where you are.

"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 Ron and Hermione had found him; he wished they had not, having no wish to join in with their argument. Aurora had been there physically, but only sort of there mentally.

"Yes, he is. Ron, please don't start that again!"

"Look at the facts, Hermione," said Ron, speaking across Harry, who continued to gaze at the horizon. "The solve doe. The sword. The eye Harry saw in the mirror -- "

"Harry admits he could have imagined the eye! Don't you, Harry?"

"I could have," said Harry without looking at her.

"But you don't think you did, do you?" asked Ron.

"No, I don't," said Harry.

"There you go!" said Ron quickly, before Hermione could carry on. "If it wasn't Dumbledore, explain how Dobby knew we were in the cellar, Hermione?"

"I can't -- but can you explain how Dumbledore sent him to us if he's lying in a tomb at Hogwarts?"

"I dunno, it could've been his ghost!"

"Dumbledore wouldn't come back as a ghost," said Harry. "He would have gone on."

"What d'you mean, 'gone on'?" asked Ron, but before Harry could say any more, a voice behind them said, "'Arry?"

Fleur had come out of the cottage, her long silver hair flying in the breeze.

"'Arry, Grip'ook would like to speak to you. 'E eez in ze smallest bedroom, 'e says 'e does not want to be over'eard."

Her dislike of the goblin sending her to deliver messages was clear; she looked irritable as she walked back around the house. Griphook was waiting for them, as Fleur had said, in the tiniest of the cottage's three bedrooms, in which Hermione, Aurora, and Luna slept by night. He had drawn the red cotton curtains against the bright, cloudy sky, which gave the room a fiery glow at odds with the rest of the airy, light cottage.