Dawn Rivera

The Phoenix Lament

Neville lies, apparently asleep, in a bed near the door. Ron, Hermione, Luna, Tonks, Lupin and I are gathered around another bed near the far end of the ward. At the sound of doors opening, we all look up. Hermione and I run to Harry and Danny and hug them; Lupin moves forwards too, looking anxious.

"Are you all right, Harry and Danny?"

"We're fine...how's Bill?" Danny says.

Nobody answers. I look back over my shoulder and see an unrecognisable face lying on Bill's pillow, so badly slashed and ripped that it looks grotesque. Madam Pomfrey is dabbing at his wounds with some harsh-smelling ointment.

"Can't you fix them with a charm or something?" Harry asks the matron.

"No charm will work on these," says Madam Pomfrey. "I've tried everything I know, but there is no cure for werewolf bites."

"But he wasn't bitten at the full moon," says Ron, who is gazing down into his brother's face as though he can somehow force him to mend by just staring. "Greyback hadn't transformed, so surely Bill won't be a real - a real - ?"

He looks uncertainly at Lupin.

"No, I don't think that Bill will be a true werewolf," says Lupin, "but that does not mean that there won't be some contamination. Those are cursed wounds. They are unlikely to ever heal fully - and - and Bill might have some wolfish characteristics from now on."

"Dumbledore might know something that'd work, though," Ron says. "Where is he? Bill fought those maniacs on Dumbledore's orders, Dumbledore owes him, he can't leave him in this state - "

"Ron - Dumbledore's dead," says Misty.

"No!" Lupin looks wildly from Ginny and Misty to Harry and Danny, as though hoping the latter might contradict her, but when Harry and Danny do not, Lupin collapses into a chair beside Bill's bed, his hands over his face. I have never seen Lupin lose control before; I feel as though I am intruding upon something private, indecent; I turn away and see Harry and Danny catching Ron's eye instead, exchanging a look that confirms what Ginny and Misty said.

"How did he die?" whispers Tonks. "How did it happen?"

"Snape killed him," says Danny. "We were there, we saw it. We arrived back on the Astronomy Tower because that's where the Mark was...Dumbledore was ill, he was weak, but I think he realised it was a trap when we heard footsteps running up the stairs. He immobilised me, I couldn't do anything, I was under the Invisibility Cloak - and then Malfoy came through the door and Disarmed him - "

Hermione and I clap our hands to our mouths, and Ron groans. Luna's mouth trembles.

" - more Death Eaters arrived - and then Snape - and Snape did it. The Avada Kedavra." Harry looks as if he can't go on.

Madam Pomfrey bursts into tears. Nobody pays her any attention except Ginny, who whispers, "Shh! Listen!"

Gulping, Madam Pomfrey presses her fingers to her mouth, her eyes wide. Somewhere out in the darkness, a phoenix is singing in a way I have never heard before: a stricken lament of terrible beauty. And I feel, as I have felt about a phoenix song before, that the music is inside me, not without: it is my own grief turned magically into a song that echoes across the grounds and through the castle windows.

How long we all stand there, listening, I do not know, nor why it seems to ease our pain a little to listen to the sound of our mourning, but it feels like a long time later that the hospital door opens again and Professor McGonagall enters the ward. Like all the rest, she bears marks of the recent battle: there are grazes on her face and her robes are ripped.