Obliviate My Rebellion {Book 3}

39. The one to change the fate

Our feet hit solid ground again, but my legs were shaking as the world was still titled onto its side. I dropped the head with a clunk and I realised that we were in Dumbledore's office.

Everything was repaired and in order; portraits sleeping in their frames, instruments in place, the small necklace Sam had pointed out glinting in the light. Even her phoenix was asleep on the perch, everything was silent.

I dropped Harry's hand, and sat on the floor against a pillar, hugging my legs to my chest. Harry began pacing, and I tried not to fall apart, to be strong for Harry's sake. There was still the rip in my heart, growing more every time I thought of Sirius. Why did it hurt this much?

It hurt losing Kayley, Cedric and Jenna, but I wished for that grief now to stop the aching inside my soul. Was is the enormity of the fact I'd lost somebody again, and that it was our fault? If only we'd kept going to occlumency...

The portraits were silent, and I wished that they were screaming. Maybe then it'd be more bearable for my pain to be realised, for others to feel how badly I was hurting. Everything was numb, and all I wanted was somebody to hold me close, tell me it was okay.

But Harry was silently pacing, seeming in a frenzy. "I should have listened." He announced. "It's all my fault. If I'd waited for you and Sam to come back... He would be alive."

"Harry--"

"I was so stupid. You saw through the dream, saw that it might be false. But no, I listened, went along with Voldemort expecting me to play the hero..."

"STOP!" I shouted, getting to my feet, and grabbing Harry's shoulders. "Don't you dare say it was your fault."

"But--"

"Harry!" I shouted, feeling the tears coming, but I ignored them. "The only people to blame are Voldemort and Bellatrix. Not me, not you. Please, don't let the guilt beat you. You know what I was like after Jenna, and I don't want you to feel the pain I felt."

 Harry looked at me, and the tortured look on his face was enough to induce tears. "But it hurts Rory, it hurts so damn much."

I reached into my pocket, pulling out the prophecy, the monsterous object that was the cause of Sirius leaving. "Smash this. Put all your anger, all your pain and guilt, and smash it, step on it. Just do it."

"But--" Harry hesitated. "It's about you, it's your future."

"I don't care." I declared, putting it into his hand. "That shit thing is the reason we were there tonight, and I can't bear to look at it."

Harry dropped it through his fingers, and it smashed to the floor in a thousand shards. A small weight lifted off my chest, allowing me to breath properly again. Harry and I exchanged a glance, before we both decided to destroy the sphere.

We stepped, we trodded, we threw and ground the damned thing under our feet until my legs ached and my throat was raw from the cries coming from my mouth. I stared at the shards with tear-blurred eyes, putting all my anger at the deaths tonight, the anger at Harry feeling my guilt and pain, and the thought of Sam suffering, all of my friends suffering just because of one stupid prophecy.

Breathing heavily, I removed my feet from the shards. Harry stared at me, shutting his eyes and placing his fists against them to stop himself from falling apart. I rose to my feet to comfort him, tell him the things Draco told me last year, in this very office--when something odd happened.

White smoke was still unfurling from the sphere's fragments, and it was whispering words, words that you couldn't hear unless you concentrated. And the words were spoken from the last person I'd expected to hear narrating a prophecy: Professor Trelawney.