Suffocating In Darkness

Chapter 32

All lessons were suspended, all examinations postponed. Some students were hurried away from Hogwarts by their parents over the next couple of days - the Patil twins were gone before breakfast on the morning following Dumbledore's death and Zacharias Smith was escorted from the castle by his haughty-looking father. Seamus, on the other hand, refused point-blank to accompany his mother home; they had a shouting match in the Entrance Hall which was resolved when she agreed that he could remain behind for the funeral. She had difficulty in finding a bed in Hogsmeade, Seamus told us, for wizards and witches were pouring into the village, preparing to pay their last respects to Dumbledore.

Some excitement was caused among the younger students, who had never seen it before, when a powder-blue carriage the size of a house, pulled by a dozen giant winged palominos, came soaring out of the sky in the late afternoon before the funeral and landed on the edge of the Forest. I watched from a window as a gigantic and handsome olive-skinned, black-haired woman descended the carriage steps and threw herself into the waiting Hagrid's arms. Meanwhile a delegation of Ministry officials, including the Minister for Magic himself, was being accommodated within the castle. I was diligently avoiding contact with any of them; I was sure that, sooner or later, we would be asked again to account for Dumbledore's last excursion from Hogwarts.

The six of us, Ginny, Fred and George were spending all of our time together. The beautiful weather seemed to mock us; I could imagine how it would have been if Dumbledore had not died, and we had had this time together at the very end of the year, Ginny's examinations finished, the pressure of homework lifted, Lyra and I actually writing letters to the twins instead of them being next to us ... and hour by hour, I put off saying the thing that I knew I must say, doing what I knew it was right to do, because it was too hard to forgo my best source of comfort.

We visited the hospital wing twice a day: Neville had been discharged, Oliver left the hospital the morning after, but Bill was under Madam Pomfrey's care. His scars were as bad as ever; in truth, he now bore a distinct resemblance to Mad-Eye Moody, though thankfully with both eyes and legs, but in personality he seemed just the same as ever. All that appeared to have changed was that he now had a great liking for very rare steaks.

'... so eet ees lucky 'e is marrying me,' said Fleur happily, plumping up Bill's pillows, 'because ze British overcook their meat, I 'ave always said this.'

'I suppose I'm just going to have to accept that he really is going to marry her,' sighed Ginny later that evening, as we sat beside the open window of the Gryffindor common room, looking out over the twilit grounds,

'She's not that bad,' said Harry. 'Ugly, though,' he added hastily, as Ginny raised her eyebrows, and she let out a reluctant giggle.

'Well, I suppose if Mum can stand it, I can.'

'Anyone else we know died?' Ron asked Lyra, who was perusing the Evening Prophet.

Lyra winced at the forced toughness in his voice.

'No,' she said reprovingly, folding up ihe newspaper. 'They're still looking for Snape, but no sign ...'

'Of course there isn't,' said Harry, who became angry every lime this subject cropped up. 'They won't find Snape till they find Voldemort, and seeing as they've never managed to do that in all this time ...'

'I'm going to go to bed,' yawned Ginny. 'I haven't been sleeping that well since ... well ... I could do with some sleep.'

She kissed Harry (Ron looked away pointedly), waved at the other two and departed for the girls' dormitories. Fred and George had left to stay in their beds in the hospital wing a while ago. The moment the door had closed behind her, Hermione leaned forwards towards us with a most Hermione-ish look on her face.