Rating:
PG
House:
The Dark Arts
Genres:
Drama
Era:
Multiple Eras
Spoilers:
Philosopher's Stone Chamber of Secrets Prizoner of Azkaban Goblet of Fire Order of the Phoenix Quidditch Through the Ages Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
Stats:
Published: 12/12/2004
Updated: 12/12/2004
Words: 1,169
Chapters: 1
Hits: 246

Day's Motions Begin

Morbid Fascination

Story Summary:
They call them 'freak accidents', and they are. They are all the more horrible because the person who dies woke up that morning. Told from the POV of an OC, post-war.

Posted:
12/12/2004
Hits:
246
Author's Note:
This is for the students of both Blue Springs high schools, north and south, they know what happened and you don't need to. This is my response to our accident and it's okay if you don't like it, and it's okay if you don't understand, and it's actually okay if you think this is the worst piece of fic on the internt because this isn't about you, and this isn't about reviews. This one is about learning how to deal.


Day's Motions Begin

I did not leave Hogwarts for Christmas, I never do, I don't have reason enough to leave. It doesn't really bother me; there are always people to talk to, decorated corridors to explore, and tons of food to eat. So I never really get lonely except in my sleep.

The snow fell the day the train was supposed to bring everyone back from their holiday at home. Bundled up as tightly as I could I went outside to wait for my best friend's return. Professors Potter and Granger were there waiting too, arguing something awful in heated whispers, looking over their shoulders to make sure none of us could hear.

Megan came to stand with me, I hardly know her, but we have History of Magic together under the oblivious eyes of Binns. We are fair-weather friends I suppose. Megan and I made small talk about the snow, the giant squid, and the latest tidbits of gossip that didn't concern anyone we actually knew. Checking my watch I turned to Megan saying worriedly, "They're late."

Her eyebrows knitted together and she checked her watch too, as if doubting mine, maybe she thought mine had frozen. "They must have gotten caught on and icy spot in the carriages, they'll be here soon."

"Yeah that's it."

But it wasn't it. They did not come soon. More students trickled out of the school, grouping themselves in tight knit huddles of speculation. Professor Granger was flitting around with jam jars of her blue bell flame no one can seem to duplicate. Professor Potter held a hurried conference with more of the staff and after much nodding of heads and stroking of beards he strode out the gates and down the road, not minding his step.

The snow may have muffled the noise of what was happening at the station, and now I'm almost positive that must be it, for surely there must have been screams and swooning girls, whistling smoke stacks, and thundering spells. Megan was just speculating at the probability of the train departing London late when Professor Snape hobbled over and pushed us back inside the school. Protesting Megan said hotly, "But sir, we want to wait for our friends."

"That sounds like a personal problem, go inside, go to your common room, go to the library, go to the Great Hall, but do not wait out here."

And some people say the war took away from his wrath. Bogus.

I trudged back inside to the cherry sounds of music piped from unknown sources, and the smell of a promising meal wafting from the kitchens. "Want to come to the library with me?" asked Megan politely, but she didn't really want me to accept, we were, after all, fair weather friends.

"Nah," I replied dutifully, ignoring the relief etched in her face.

"Well, I'll see you around," she chirped, walking in the opposite direction of her destination.

"Bye," I called wandering away.

The first signs of a problem were truly apparent when I reached dinner late, having dozed off by the fire in my common room and the teachers' table was three-fourths of the way empty. Nervously I bit my lip and grabbed a plate, filling it with warm potatoes and meat pie, but having no intention in my anxious mind to eat a thing.

Worry was thick in the air in a way that hadn't been thought possible in the past two years. First years were casting glances every few seconds at the door, and us upperclassmen were doing no better. The first group of snowflake spattered students came in, Ginny Weasley and the Creevy brothers drifting toward the Gryffindor table their faces stiff and lips puckered blue.

Loony sat at the table several seats down from me, but I didn't go near her as she was a year above me and had a rather bizarre reputation that I hoped wasn't contagious. Another seventh year sat next to her though and I noted the caution in their tones, the way the puddles gathered in eyes.

More groups of people clambered into the room and I began to piece together a weave of what had happened, though I didn't know how. I was carefully sorting fact from rumor while trying to tell myself that my friends would be all right. They were just in the next group, and when that one was short of their presence they were in the one after that. It worked too. Stephen and Samantha came in hair blown haphazard, eyes solemn, faces grim, and hems soaked. "What happened?" I asked urgently. "Are you okay?"

They exchanged looks over steaming cups of soup. Samantha spoke first, quietly and respectful, "We're fine..."

"But..." I extended.

Sam's lips trembled, "The Express crashed." It wasn't an exclamation of shock, it wasn't a scream, it was just a statement of the truth.

"How?" I gasped, feeling the delicate walls around me shuddering.

"Ice," Stephen answered sternly, his voice measured not to crack.

Fragments of the fiction I'd heard crashed into place with a roar of sound and a rush of reality. "Who?" I hissed urgently, my eyes boring holes in Sam's.

I could feel her leg twitching under the table. "A first year. Seventy-nine kids and only one first year."

"He never got to live," stated Stephen, and did we all know it.

One first year, one, and that seemed to make it all the worse. We had all been hoping and praying that something wasn't going to break us, that this utopia we'd been experiencing was as impenetrable as the papers made it sound. But what's peace is objective and it only took a freak accident in the dead of winter to end it.

One life. A boy who didn't understand what we'd all been running from, we didn't even know his name, hadn't known he existed, but we should have. The fact that we were all mourning a stranger was a lie. We weren't mourning a death. We were mourning a beginning. The beginning of a real world's invasion, and how we'd been trying vainly to escape it.

I cried for myself and images raced through my head. I saw the crash the next day in the paper, I heard the toast said at dinner, I knew why classes were canceled the next day, and it was all so wrong. Sure, those who knew the boy were sad, but those of us whose judgement wasn't clotted by loss were sad for selfish reasons.

His death meant it could happen to any of us. It meant there wasn't immortality just because we'd one the war. It showed us that evil has so many faces.

His death was a stained glass window we were looking through, seeing ourselves in the coffin, and there was nothing surreal about the refraction.

It was brutally real because he'd woken up that morning said good-bye to his stepmother and little sister, climbed on a train and died.

He'd woken up that morning.


Author notes: I didn't know the guy I wrote this about.