Ternion || Oliver Wood

Chapter 131

Freedom

I sat up from the bed I was laying on, I glanced around the room and saw Hermione and Fleur. Hermione was sleeping soundly while Fleur was wiping her arms. The sun was shining, although it was almost dawn, it was still bright. It was like mocking us or was it giving us something that we can be happy on such an awful day?

I informed Lilith on what happened, and how Dobby was dead for Bellatrix's knife had hit him. Draco and her were close to Dobby, since the Malfoys were Dobby's masters in the past. They must've a lot of memories.

"Ah, how are you feeling, Valerie?" asked Fleur as she looked over to me with a visible concerned expression.

"Better, the headache is getting better." I answered her, she gave me a smile. "Where's Harry and the others?"

"He insisted on burying his dear friend properly, so Bill showed him where he can." she answered as she continued to wipe Hermione's arms.

Oh...Dobby...

He's a great friend, he has helped us a lot of times and I will always be grateful for meeting him and to everything he has done for us.

I went out of the Shell Cottage, wrapping myself in the cardigan that Fleur lent me.

"How's Hermione?" asked Harry when I joined them. He was with Ron, Dean and Luna.

"Better," I answered him. "Fleur's looking after her."

I looked down at the hole that he had dug, Ron and Dean were helping him make the hole deeper. After they were done, Harry wrapped the elf more snugly in his jacket. Ron sat on the edge of the grave and stripped off his shoes and socks, which he placed upon the elf's bare feet. Dean produced a woolen hat, which Harry placed carefully upon Dobby's head, muffling his batlike ears. I picked some flowers that grew around the cottage and gave it to them.

"We should close his eyes." uttered Luna.

The others joined us too. Bill was wearing a traveling cloak, Fleur a large white apron, from the pocket of which protruded a bottle of what I recognized to be Skele-Go. Hermione was wrapped in a borrowed dressing gown, pale and unsteady on her feet; Ron put an arm around her when she reached him. Luna, who was huddled in one of Fleur's coats, crouched down and placed her fingers tenderly upon each of the elf's eyelids, sliding them over his glassy stare.

Harry placed the elf into the grave, arranged his tiny limbs so that he might have been resting, then climbed out and gazed for the last time upon the little body.

"I think we ought to say something," piped up Luna. "I'll go first, shall I?"

And as everybody looked at her, she addressed the dead elf at the bottom of the grave.

"Thank you so much, Sir Dobby, for rescuing me from that cellar. It's so unfair that you had to die, when you were so good and brave, I'll always remember what you did for us. I hope you're happy now."

She turned and looked expectantly at Ron, who cleared his throat and said in a thick voice, "Yeah....thanks, Dobby."

"Thanks," muttered Dean.

"To our savior, our friend, thank you....Goodbye and have your freedom." I uttered, tears forming up in the rim of my eyes once again.

Harry swallowed.

"Goodbye, Dobby." said Harry, he looked like he was going to have a break down any second now.

We placed the flowers one by one on Dobby's body. Bill raised his wand, and the pile of earth beside the grave rose up into the air and fell neatly upon it, a small, reddish mound.