The Marauders: Year Six #Wattys2017

Will You?

Will You?

Frank Longbottom held his mother. Augusta clung onto him, her fingers wrapped about in his pressed black shirt, tangled up in his black silk tie, in his black robes. Frank's free hand wove through Alice Prewitt's, their fingers in a knot at his side. They were standing in a cemetery, the sun rising and turning the snow into diamonds around the cleared area, where they had magically dug the grave, where the casket that held Frank senior hovered. Frank's chin was level, his eyes sad and dark but determined and dry, his mouth a straight, stoic line. He could barely hear the ceremony, only knew it was time to place the wand when his Mother nudged him and held out his father's holly wand.

Frank walked slowly across the snow, his footsteps crunching the thin layer of ice on top. He leaned over the mouth of the casket and stared down into his father's face. It had been magically restored to its usual shape and colour, though he knew that when his mother had found his father, he had been disfigured quite badly. You could almost tell - there was an oddly stiff sort of look to the features now.

Then again, that could have been the death that had caused that.

Frank reached down and placed the wand upon his father's chest. "May your magic be ever recalled with a smile upon the face of the ones you loved, may the magic of memory keep you ever with us," he recited. Frank laid his father's hands upon the wand and backed away, hesitant to turn his eyes from his father for it would be the last time he would look upon him.

But he did, at last, and he heard the casket close and seal.

Alice was waiting for him, and when Frank reached her, she hugged him tight.

Frank Longbottom stared straight ahead, numb of mind and heart, as they lowered the casket to the ground and the people who had come slowly walked away, leaving footprints in the snow. He sat until Alice and Augusta tugged him to his feet, until they walked together, a cluster supporting one another, across the cemetery, and away from the grave.

They went back to the Longbottom house, though Frank wouldn't remember the trip, and while people were patting his shoulder and shaking his hand as they ate the spread Augusta had made and told him what a good man Frank senior had been, he just nodded and let the words roll off of him.

Suddenly a glass of pumpkin juice was held out before him.

He blinked and looked up. It was Alice.

"You have to drink something, Frank," she said and she stuck a bendy straw into the glass and turned it so it was at Frank's mouth, a gentle smile upon her face. He sipped the juice and stared up at her and she smoothed his hair back from his forehead. "There, isn't that better?" she asked.

Frank nodded and leaned forward, wrapping his arms around her waist and pulled her close so that his face pressed against her abdomen and she ran her fingers through his hair softly. "It'll be okay, baby," she said. "It'll be alright, you'll see."

Her voice was the first thing that had made him feel anything all day. It made him feel strong again - as though, as long as he could hear her voice, things would be alright... and it was weird, knowing that, with everything that was going on. It had sort of seemed like nothing would ever be alright again. When Frank had taken those shaking steps forward to uphold the tradition of the laying of the wand he'd thought for certain that he would never feel goodness again... like there had been a dementor in his very heart.

He looked up at her. "Alice," he said.

"Frank?" she stroked his face with her knuckles gently.