In the Melancholy Moonlight

Chapter XXVI: Darkness Will Be Rewritten

And darkness will be rewritten
Into a work of fiction, you'll see
As you pull on every ribbon
You'll find every secret it keeps
The sound of the branches breaking under your feet
The smell of the falling and burning leaves
The bitterness of winter or the sweetness of spring
You are an artist
And your heart is your masterpiece
And I'll keep it safe

"I'll Keep You Safe"
Sleeping At Last

LUCY:

After Halloween, I found myself longing to be more like Cedric. A natural healer, someone who always knew exactly what to say and do to make everything right again.

When Percy approached me Sunday afternoon, I immediately knew something was wrong. Percy wasn't a happy person, necessarily, but I had never seen such concern on his face before.

"Lucy?" he asked, his voice cracking slightly. He cleared his throat and tried again. "Lucy? May I have a moment?"

I glanced toward Hermione, who seemed to have taken no notice of his presence. Her eyes flitted back and forth across the page as she read at the pace of a million words a minute. She'd been reading all day and showed no signs of slowing down or stopping any time soon. "I'll be back, Mione," I said, resting my hand on top of hers briefly to get her attention. I caught a glimpse of our rings as I did so; hers was the same bright purple as it had been since the second we saw Mrs. Norris. I hadn't factored concern into the range of emotions, somehow, but I knew that fear was the closest thing to concern so my half was purple as well. She nodded, so I rose to my feet and followed Percy out of the common room.

"Are you alright after the events of last night, Lucy?"

I blinked, caught off guard by the question. "Oh, yes. I'm alright. Thank you. Is that what you wanted to talk about?"

"Not exactly," he said slowly, pushing his glasses up on his nose. "I just can't imagine being in your shoes. What did happen? As the prefect of the four students most closely related to the incident, I'd like to know."

"Well..." I rubbed my temples, willing away the headache that was knocking around the inside of my skull. "We attended Nearly Headless Nick's deathday party. And by we, I mean Harry and Ron and Hermione and myself." I paused, trying to think of the words to say that most closely matched the words spoken the night prior. "We were tired, so we decided to leave, but we headed up a different way than we normally do. We had only been there for a minute, maybe less, when everybody else showed up there. Nothing else happened."

He pursed his lips. "It sounds like you were all just in the wrong place at the wrong time."

I felt some of the tension in my shoulders release. "That's exactly what Professor Snape said."

He nodded, seemingly satisfied having drawn the same conclusion as a professor. He cleared his throat again. "Well, I'm glad to hear that it was nothing more than that." A twinge of guilt rippled through me because it was most certainly not nothing more than that, but I forced it away. Harry hadn't mentioned the voice, and it wasn't my information to share. "And I'm glad you're handling it well. But, well, the reason I asked to talk to you was that... well, it would seem my sister is not handling it as well as you. I've tried to speak to her already today, but she just cried and cried and cried no matter what I said. And... well, would you mind trying to help her? Reassure her?"

"Of course," I replied immediately, though I found a good deal of humor in trying to imagine what Percy had said to try to comfort her. I could hear it now. The statistical probability of you being attacked is extremely low! Not zero, but extremely low! It's far more likely that someone like Hermione Granger or Colin Creevey would be attacked rather than you or any of your dear brothers- wait, why are you crying even harder? Was it something I said?