Oh my friend, my friend, don't ask me what your sacrifice was for!

[sightlesswolf]

Date: June 9, 2001
Time: 4:30 PM
Place: Spinner's End, upstairs in Mandy's room
Character(s) Involved: June, OPEN to any Spinner's End residents OR visitors (well-meaning or otherwise) who'd like to come find her up there.
Rating: PG to start

Comments

[beautesolitaire]

Charlotte couldn't just sit there and think all day. She couldn’t just turn it over and over in her head. They’d murdered an innocent person for the death of another innocent person. It made her sick inside. It made her remember all the horrid things of the past. It made her remember the death of Gabrielle Delacour. It reminded her of the sight, the smell. The acrid taste in her mouth that was the taste of blood on the air. She remembered the smell of fresh dirt and the thud of it as it covered the casket of another innocent girl, striped of her life before her time

[sightlesswolf]

Neither the knock nor the quiet greeting registered through the haze of June's misery. When Charlotte touched her hands, she jerked back to herself and hastily swiped the back of her hand across her cheeks. Not that it did a great deal of good; the events of the last few days had ravaged her face beyond what a brief brush of fingers was going to be able to fix.

"Charlotte..." Her voice was heavy, and her automatic attempt at a smile fell flat. It was too hard to dredge one up. Drawing the pages a little closer to herself, she shook her head slightly. "No, it's all right. I'll... I'll do it. Thanks..."

An awkward silence fell. June stared at the words she'd written, not seeing them, unable to raise her eyes to her friend's. What else was there to say? Mandy was dead. The world had stopped in its tracks. Spinner's End was steeped in shock and grief. And Charlotte was newly married and expecting a baby. She shouldn't be here - it couldn't be good for the baby to be around so much sadness

[beautesolitaire]

Charlotte pulled back a little when June jumped. She didn't expect smiles or hugs. She wanted to be there for her friend. That was what friends did. She understood what June was feeling, she had been there. Too many times.

She tucked Mandy's blanket in closer to June for a moment, thinking about when she had made it, sunny bright colors for a young person. "It won't be the last thing you can do for her, June." she said, quietly, not wanting to minimize her grief.

"This is just the first of many things you will do for her." she assured her, "This is just the first thing that you will do in her honor."

She moved to touch June's hand, "She's still with you."

[subtle_simmer]

Severus had never experienced anything like this in his life. Death and destruction he had witnessed and even participated in with varying degrees of motivation ranging from reluctance to outright enthusiasm.

Never had he witnessed or experienced a death in a situation where he was not only allowed to grieve, but actually expected to do so.

He neither wanted nor welcomed this 'permission'. He didn't want anyone to see him in a state of weakness. He hated that he had come to such a place that the weakness existedFrom the moment the house-elves arrived, yesterday, Severus had been avoiding all unnecessary sentient-being-contact as much as possible. Remus, he clung to with desperate, miserable intensity in the dark solitude of their own room, late at night, though he hadn't experienced anything which felt like 'restful' slumber or even a few hours of blessed oblivion. What sleep did overtake him was invariably haunted by the continual replay of Mandy's last moments, only his subconscious repeated, over and over, in a voice

[subtle_simmer]

For the better part of two hours, he carefully searched his memories, extracting recollections of Mandy, carefully duplicating them, replacing the original back in his own head (thank you very much!) and then depositing the copy into the viewer.

Her shy, blushing uncertainty and embarrassment when he'd grilled McLaggen like an over-protective father and then gave her a robe to take for a cover-up since she was going swimming - complete with a contraceptive potion in the pocket. He'd been alarmingly relieved when he'd found it later, when she returned his dressing-gown, completely unused.

Giggles pealed forth from his memory, clear and crisp like a bubbling mountain stream as she pointed with June to the ridiculously purple bow she'd pulled from a package and stuck to the top of his head

[sightlesswolf]

Normally June fought against being fussed over, but she scarcely noticed as Charlotte adjusted the blanket. Her eyes - aching from salt water and weariness, she really ought to take them out and lubricate them - remained focused vaguely through the parchment in her hands.

"I know. I know, but... what good is any of it? I couldn't..." The words caught in her throat. I couldn't save her. She needed me and all I could do was... watch. No matter that they had done everything they could. No matter that, regardless of how she wracked her brain now, she still couldn't think of a single other thing they could have tried that might have prevented Mandy's death. June believed in the essential fairness of the universe. She believed that there was very little a person couldn't accomplish if they were willing to do whatever it took. No setback that couldn't be overcome with determination.

It wasn't fair that, with so many people doing everything in their power to save Mandy, they should have been so helpless. It wasn't right. She

[subtle_simmer]

Wordlessly, Severus shook his head, casting his eyes about the room as though it was painful to look at June, painful to look at any particular object in this room