Waiting for Maxima

A life Lived

"Hannah was dear to many, a friend, a girlfriend, a daughter, she will missed. She was a light in what has become a very dark world" a voice speaks in a tone that is harrowing. Hermione looks around, a headache grinding into her temples. Gravestones and people mourning surround her, most of them are order members. Oliver wood is sobbing into Fred Weasley's shoulder, but the sound carries in the still air. The pain in her head flashes hard and hot. If only her head would stop pounding. The casket is being lowered into the earth, she smells the soil and the whiskey Sirius who stands a head taller than she, reeks of- firewiskey his poison of choice. She closed her eyes, fighting off nausea. Luna speaks, delicately and lovely about Hannah's wonderful aura, and the way she had the most gentle soul and an exquisite smile. Hermione is trying to focus but her mind was elsewhere. Instead trying, through the pain, to remember how she had arrived in this place, a week from the last thing she remembers. Panic bubbles up towards the surface.

Sirius nudges her, all eyes look at her, waiting, expecting. Hermione struggles to remain above the fog. She supposes she meant to speak. Her hands shake, she would only get one chance to say things right. She clears her throat.

"Hannah was bright and wonderful and funny these are true. But Hannah was more than just a great friend, she was the fiercest of warriors. She would stand up in anyone's defense if she felt they were suffering injustice. No matter who they were. She wanted to heal, others, and the world. The world is now a much darker place without her, she was light, and this is a gave loss."

Hermione pauses the back of her skull pounding, her eye weld up some combination of both grief and pain.

"Hannah would not have liked to see us so sad at her- "She sinks her teeth into her bottom lip. A shaky breath. "-death. So, we use this, become the warriors we need to be, that she would like us to be, that the light does not suffer any more losses." Hermione voice trembles, her hands shake. Tears slip out of her eyes. "Hannah was one of my greatest friends, she will be irrevocably missed. Hannah, may we meet again." Hermione bends down to touch the earth. She conjures a single daffodil, a private joke between the friends. Her shoulders shake, silent sobs escaping. She places the flower on the grave. A deep breath. Others follows suit and a series of flowers follow.

Sirius had been to too many funerals, had seen most of his friends the good kind of people, fighting for the right side, die. This one, stung particularly deep despite his lack of a real friendship with her, she was a young girl, the same age as her. It was too close, too familiar. This is why he had stalked out into the sun, only after consuming the better half of a bottle of Ogdens firewiskey and taking the rest with him. It was surreal he could almost hear the words of her funeral, see her casket, their friends most that had died in the years since, mourning her.

He was nineteen, an age that would've been full of life and adventure but on that rainy Saturday he had buried the only woman he had loved and would ever love. He hadn't even gotten a chance to say goodbye one moment they were riding his motorbike away from a muggle concert the air smelling like summer and cheap spirits. A week later all that was left of her could fit into a matchbox. His raven-haired beauty, a laugh like the rainstorm, and a smile that was a promise of danger. Her- Maxima halley potter was gone.

"Here we stand, to bid farewell, Maxima Potter, daughter of Dorthea sister of James. She will be greatly missed by all those who knew her." A man, the ministry official spoke speaking of a girl he had never met.

Sirius stood next to Remus, he had yet to discover the numbing effect of whiskey if drunken in copious amounts, had had been devastatingly sober. James and lily huddled close together, Alice, Mary, sobbing. Dorthea had asked him to speak, years later, Sirius supposed it was a kindness, a way for him to get a goodbye he never had, but it had been the hardest thing he'd ever had to do.