From a Shell

From A Shell


‘It's not like you killed someone
It's not like you drove a hateful spear into his side
Praise the one who left you
Broken down and paralyzed
He did it all for you’
~Judith, A Perfect Circle

Hermione watched the procession move slowly along the cold, hard ground. The coffin that was levitated between the four people - two on each side - was ornate, polished wood. Wood of a mixed origin; ceder, cypress, spruce, larch. On it was a wreath of flowers of every color and design; boneset, nightshade, buttefly weed, myrrh, aloe, lilly, chrysanthemum. Not one rose amid them.

A blue, white, and purple flag with the wizarding insignia woven into was below the flowers; a hand and a wand crossing each other. Just below that on a different piece of gold cloth was woven a large bat with its wings spread wide over a cobra twined harmoniously around a falcon. It was made with such an intenseness that if Harry had been alive, he would have been astounded by the amount of detail and love that went into the creation of such a piece of work.

They were walking along the acres that the Potters had owned, the trees seemed desolate in the late winter, their white limbs speaking of death. The air was cold and harsh, and the dull gray clouds that passed overhead never once let the sun sneak around them. The ground crunched from that mornings frozen dew.

Beside her stood Ginny, she was sniffling into her lace handkerchief and everything down the the very bow that tied her hair back was black. It seemed that the group of people following the coffin was merely a murder of crows. She wondered suddely at her calmness, why it was that her face was pink in the cold, that her eyes weren’t glistening. Each of the others had a pale and ashen face, each walked along with at a sluggish rate, and each gazed at the wood coffin with such somber grief that it seemed to affect nature itself.

The only man that walked with precision, with a stern look on his face, and no tears residing on his cheeks was on her other side.

She wondered why he had come, for Harry hadn’t exactly liked him. Professor Severus Snape was staring at the coffin with such a thoughtful look on his face that Hermione briefly considered nudging him in the ribs. The thought of even pondering such a thing at that time knawed at Hermione. Where was her desperate sadness? Where were her hysterical cries of longing and regret? Of loss and forgiveness?

She remember only vague shapes and colors and smells the day she found out Harry died. Maybe that was her day of sorrow.

Snape wore his usual black robes, only the silver twined along the edges of his cloak was the only clue that he was wearing his nicer set. Hermione regarded him for a few more seconds before sighing softly.

“Miss Granger,” Snape said quietly, his voice nothing but a whisper in the air. Hermione glanced warily up at him, her hands fidgeting by her sides. Her strange urge to fling herself at him and cry, tear at his clothing and blame him baffled her.

“Professor,” she replied, he glanced briefly down at her, and she found his dark eyes hiding any emotion he may have been feeling.

He didn’t say anything after that, Ginny stopped sniffling minutes before and the soft shuffle of feet was lulling. But the burnished coffin that was in front of her kept her awake, the smoothness of it’s polished hide, the gleam it had even in the sunless sky. It seemed to reflect the very faces of the people that stood around it. Ron, Remus, Dumbledore, and Moody. They all walked in silence, their wands raised at a perpendicular angle, each supporting the body inside.

“I’m sorry,” The words were so soft Hermione briefly entertained that it may have been the wind.

She looked up at the dark man beside her and found that his eyes were glistening, but not with unshed tears. She found that that was beyond him at this moment.

“Why did you come?” she asked suddenly, her voice soft and vulnerable. He shifted his eyes to look at her.

“Mr. Potter may not have liked me or preferred my company, but I still have a life-debt to his father. There is nothing more that I can do but attend his funeral.” he responded, though his voice was lacking in his normal acid tone, there was an undercurrent of guilt and annoyance.

“In respect, then,” Hermione concluded softly to herself, but Severus heard her, as he was wont to do when people speak softly in a time of silence.

“Certainly,” he replied in a stony voice, but Hermione picked up on the nearly undetectable quaver in his voice. The way his adam’s apple bobbed uncertainly, the way his hands clenched at his sides.

“I understand professor,” she said quietly, taking his hand silently and subtly. He glanced down at their intertwined hands in surprise, but when he looked at her she had turned her face towards the floating procession. She looked as though nothing had gone on between them moments before.

He let her hand squeeze his for comfort; just as much for him as for her.

From a Shell
Lisa Germano

‘And the Earth Spins Round
While the people fall down.
And the world stands still
not a sound, not a sound.

There is love
to be found.
In the worst way,
in the worst way.

From a little shell at the bottom of the sea
with the earth and moon and sun
above me.

Both the world fell down
with the people still around.

There is love
to be found.

With the Gods all gone,
and the souls making sounds.

In the worst way.’