The Mudblood

Chapter 126 : Year 6

This amazing fanart of Melody was drawn by https://www.quotev.com/27049345

Harper was a ghost.

Not literally, but the spark had left his eyes, the passion and the zeal that had made him him.

After watching him kneel there in sorrow for what felt like an eternity, the rest of us caught up in our own remorse, Harmony and I finally managed to haul him to his feet and lead him from the crystalized room. The blood from his knees didn't stain the purple gems that Melody had left behind; in fact, there was no trace that Harper had even bled at all, not on the gems or on his knees. The skin, which should have been raw, was completely healed, and only the rips in his pants remained.

"How...?" Harmony began, her voice high with the remnants of a cry. The two of us stared down at Harper's knees, but Harper's expression was so blank that I didn't think he would have noticed even if his organs had been bleeding out onto the corridor floor. He probably felt like they were.

"I...I dunno," I managed, sniffling as I strained to recompose myself. The image of Melody's last moments kept flashing in my mind, but I had to be strong, not just for myself but for my friends. For poor Harper. "He can't stay here, though... Not with what's coming. We need to get him away from the castle."

"I'll take him," Ashley volunteered, wiping her snotty nose with her sleeve. I'd never thought she'd cared much for Melody—I hadn't thought any of them cared much for Melody, except Harper—but everyone's eyes were bloodshot, and each one of them harbored some kind of bluish aura of sadness.

"How do you plan to take him?" Anderson asked skeptically, his eyes blinking rapidly as he suppressed his tears.

"We'll fly off on my broom. It's the way Melody would have wanted him to leave the scene of her death," Ashley insisted, nodding her head ardently. "Melody loved Quidditch."

"No, I'm pretty sure that's you—"

"DON'T TRY TO TELL ME WHAT MELODY DID AND DIDN'T LOVE!" Ashley bellowed as a fresh set of tears streamed down her cheeks. "SHE IS DEAD!"

Astoria sucked in a sharp breath, closing her eyes as she kept her head high. "None of us can speak for Melody or for Ryan. What does he want?"

All heads pivoted toward Harper, who was staring at a random point on the wall. When he spoke, his voice was so coarse and rough that it was unrecognizable.

"I want to throw Blagden into an eternal furnace. Then I want to find the Death Eater that killed my mother and drown him in the lake. And then, most importantly, I want to slit Pansy Parkinson's throat."

"That's—graphic," I coughed, unsettled by the violent gleam to Harper's eyes. He had always been the calm one, the rational one, but the deaths of the two women he loved most in the world seemed to have broken his innocence and morphed it into something vengefully grotesque. It should have terrified me, but his situation was so akin to mine that his hatred fueled my own.

"True, but that's what Melody would have wanted," Anderson conceded, raising his eyebrows at Ashley. "She would not have wanted Harper to fly away on a broomstick."

Ashley crossed her arms and huffed an agitated breath. "Well, she probably would have wanted Harper to kill people while on a broomstick. Ever thought of that?"

"If you can find us six broomsticks, Ashley, we will gladly fly around the school killing people—and by people I mean bad people, like vampires and Death Eaters and Pansy Parkinson—"

"Well, I never thought I'd find myself being equated to a girl named Pansy Parkinson, but if she's anything like the rest of the Parkinson family, perhaps she's close to my league."