the last verse ; harry potter [2]

one ; the aftermath

Sometimes, the silence of the dormant village of Hogsmeade was deafening.

They all mourned here. What was once a vibrant and lively village, it was now one of sorrow, darkened by the looming shadow of death and war. This was no longer a village; this was funeral, lasting until the shock of Albus Dumbledore's death was no more.

It would never go away, Diana Riddle thought. This pain will never end.

Aberforth Dumbledore, the estranged brother of the fallen headmaster and the current barman of the Hog's Head, was no exception. Aberforth, eternally determined to despise his brother for things long left in the past, mourned with everyone else. Diana saw him once in his dingy bedroom below hers, his face tear-stained and his eyes staring at a portrait of a young girl. Ariana Dumbledore, encased in the portrait, sniffed along with her last living brother. Diana couldn't help but think of how many people Aberforth had lost; his parents, his sister, his brother. Even Vera Beauregard, who he had come to love like a daughter, disappeared without a trace.

Most thought she was dead. Now, Diana wasn't so sure. In the memory she had watched with Harry and Dumbledore shortly before the latter died, Tom asked if it was possible to create a Horcrux for another being.

Diana could not think about those possibilities now. There was only so many secrets she could hold.

Being alone was not new to Diana, nor was it bad. In fact, she preferred being alone, but this was different. This pain was not just loneliness: it was emptiness. She had been reduced to only a shell of her former self, torn to shreds by the wicked talons of darkness. Her heart did not beat anymore, nor did her blood rush in her veins. She was dead in the cruelest of senses, for this was so much worse. Death would've been preferable to this state of emptiness.

But death, she knew, would be coming soon, and she couldn't quite find it in herself to try to stop it.

A light knock on her door, thumping dully against the aged wood of the door, echoed through her room like church bells. Sound was not something she had been conscious of for awhile now; she had been living in a perpetual state of melancholy, blanketed in the deafening silence that tried to suffocate her.

Without invitation, the door swing open. The rhythmic thumping of something hard against wood echoed in her head, and the scarred, broken, and disturbing body of Mad-Eye Moody appeared through the door. His magical eye whizzed around in his socket before finally settling on Diana, intermittently twitching between her and her different areas of her room.

Immediately, she pointed her wand at his throat, and he did the same to her.

"When I tried taking you to St. Mungo's to visit Arthur after the snake attack, what did you do?" asked Mad-Eye firmly.

Diana could not suppress a small smile from gracing her lips.

"I panicked, Disapparated back to headquarters, and then we proceeded to scream at eachother."

"Come on, kid, let's get a move on, then," he grunted, a slight grin on his face. He thumped to her dresser and leaned on it idly, his eyes trained hardly on the girl. "Molly and Arthur are expecting you tonight. Granger is already there, along with the rest of the Weasleys, and we'll be traveling to get Potter soon."

She did not speak when she clutched the strap of her bag and put it around her shoulders, all of her belongings tucked safely inside. Her wand was in the left sleeve of her sweater, which was where she had taken to keeping it.

This was what war did to a person. It eroded them like stone until they were nothing more than bitterness and hatred and foreboding.

"You look like hell," he muttered to her as they stomped down the creaky stairs. Aberforth was tending to the grimy glasses at the bar, his face worn and tired.