the seven devils [completed]

chapter fifty-five

CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

The funeral had been odd.

They had brought her a silver coffin, and had even placed emerald gemstones along the edges and in intricate ornaments on the top, designing some peculiar serpent form that did not truly fit Ivy Trouche. It was an open-casket ceremony, and they placed her in a small chapel down in Hogdsemade, because Hogwarts did not have a proper burial ground.

Her parents had come fastly, and they had arranged the school ceremony for her friends to say goodbye before they would take the body back to Yorkshire and have a proper funeral for her close family. Varya felt queasiness spread through her whole being at the thought of the Trouche family having to travel with the deceased body of their only daughter.

Ivy's mother was a wonderful woman, regardless of her fine lines near her eyebrows that had accumulated from one too many stern frowns, and she had light hair that fell in soft waves just like her daughter. Her father was an authoritative man, with a small beard and blazing eyes, and he marched around stiffly as his eyes darted around the little chapel, clearly deeming it below his daughter's worth.

Even so, he held his wife affectionately as she wept over their child's casket, grasping at the edge as she sunk to her knees and lowered her head until it touched the edge of the coffin. She wailed Ivy's name in the stone-built chamber, and it echoed through every attendees' soul— the cry of a mother that was burying her only child.

Varya stood in the back, hands trembling as she fought back unphantomable anxiety, and through her ears, the mother's cry played on repeat, reminding her that her decisions had killed one of her closest friends. Her black dress fell around her figure like an unfitting pillowcase, and her skin had turned gray from lack of sleep and malnourishment. The guilt was devouring her from inside out, and there was an abyss of desolation in her stomach that she could not entirely fill.

The only other person in the room that seemed to be as devastated as Varya was Della Beauchamp, who also stood near one of the walls, gripping on a chair until her knuckles turned white, and her skin had blanched as she stared at Ivy's mother crying. Felix was by her side, and they seemed to have rekindled their friendship in a moment of weakness, although Varya could tell from the affectionate expression on his face that he still cared for the Beauchamp girl.