✞ - Our characters attend a funeral or visit a tombstone
He was eighteen. Barely a man. Warped by the those around him, his heart was long dead.
She was seven. Already using magic her peers didn’t dare to understand, she had only just started her descent to depravity.
His tears fell silently, falling down his face with speed. He didn’t bother to wipe them away.
His father had been respected in the pureblood community. A symbol for all that was right in the world, he had been the gravity in Walden’s life, holding everything together. Everything Walden had learnt, everything he knew, everything he thought was from the man.
and all it had taken was a muggle.
A muggle who wouldn't live to see the morning.
His father would never see him marry, never meet his grandson who would carry on his legacy. He would never drink with Walden, never joke again. He would never hear his booming laugh, hear his frighteningly clever wit. He’d never take him back to Dublin, never see him drink and dance and drink and dance a little more again.
She stood beside him, her small hand clasped in his. The grave was swarmed with flowers; each of the twenty eight had paid their respect, even the blood traitors. Yet, the guests had all left. The Black family had taken his mother, whose grieving took form in spells of fainting, and wide, broken eyes. She hadn’t cried, not in public (she was too proud for that) but she had the support of the community.
They had thought it best to leave Walden alone.
Only Bella had been brave enough to stay. She ignored her mother’s warnings, ignored the tales of bruises and bodies and bones. If anything, she wanted to hear the stories. But, after setting down a small bunch of black orchids, she had settled for his hand and a moment of his silence.
He didn’t know how long they had been there. She was a small thing, her small hand enclosed entirely by his. If it hadn’t been for the tumble of curls he could see out of the corner of his eye, he wouldn’t have remembered she was there.
“You see the damage they do?”
His voice was low, hoarse from all the tears. Amongst the wind, it was difficult to hear, but he made sure she did.
“They fight so feckin’ hard for equality, so feckin’ hard and they go and do something like this. They want to ruin us. This is only the start. They’re trying to tear us down from the inside. This wasn’t an accident. This was murder.”
His grip around her wrist tightened, but she said nothing.
“We can’t let them get away with this. We can’t.”
He could see it, the bodies of the witches and wizards piling up. The ghosts had told him all about it, the witch hunts across the countries. Wizards being burn, boiled, hung drawn and quartered just for being the species that evolved, just for being the better species. He had seen their guns, their missiles, their chemical warfare. They had to win.
“We’ll get them. We have, Bells. We have to.”