Sweet Sixteen: Surrounded By The Word

By the time she died, I was gone too. Something had changed in those moments before her death, something we had yet to detect. After those years of hoping she would tell me, I was so ready. And after our troubles were over, I promised myself I would sweep her off her feet. True, we were young, but maybe our adventures made us feel older.

That night we had known what was coming. It was obvious that Harry would do something, and being his best friends, we knew what he would do. It had really started a year ago when Harry had witnessed the rebirth of the Dark Lord. He had tired himself with thoughts of what had happened, I knew I would have also if I were in his shoes. Still, that night, something had gone through his head, some crazy idea. I had awakened at 10:30 PM, moving slowly towards the girls’ dorm to wake Hermione. When I got there, she was looking for me, her infamous blue flame in her palm. With a simple nod we rushed down the stairs, and into the Forbidden Forest. Hermione quenched the flame and instead took out her wand, lighting it. Her whispered "Lumos" was so soft I barely heard, and I knew we were hiding from Harry in truth. If he saw us he would run, but at that time we all had more of a mutual respect for each other than any one person, and even though I felt my heart melting for Hermione, Harry was just as important.

The darkness seemed to surround the small light on her wand, and I did not bother to light mine. I felt more like the ground was moving me forward than my legs were, and the exertion of running so far didn’t bother me. Yet; as we got closer to Harry I began to worry, not for my safety, but for Harry’s slowly deteriorating luck. It was beginning to look as though we were running towards our doom, and most likely, our destiny.

It took us ten minutes, through all of which we ran, to catch up to Harry. At first he tried to convince us to go back, but we refused to return the castle and see Harry dead in the end. Maybe his luck of getting out of danger would rub off on us. Maybe. Yet, nothing began to settle until I noticed my sister and Colin following us. I vowed, in my mind, to get her to safety as soon as possible without putting the others in jeopardy. The minutes passed slower as we ran towards out certain doom. I yelled for Harry to stop, knowing that if we went any farther I would lose my mind in the agony of Ginny’s relentless trailing of us. Hermione seemed to understand how I felt, and ended their travels by putting them both asleep under a thick conifer tree.

I took no more then four steps away from my sleeping sister before we were surrounded. It felt as though we were in a cell as the black-robed men closed in. They acted like wolves waiting for their prey. If they said a spell, it wouldn’t surprise me, because all I could hear was a voice in my head methodically repeating: "Tell her that you love her."

I never got the chance.

I miss you Ginny, Colin, Harry Mom, Dad, and my brothers. But the one thing I regret most is: I never told her how I felt, and now that can never change. They could have killed me a second later, and I would have died in peace.

"Hermione I…"

That was how I died, my mouth surrounding the word "love."