Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Late January 1978
Potter Manor
It was a rare moment of peace.
Fleamont and Euphemia had gone to sleep early and the healer had said that Thea could take a break.
She had a run a bath for herself an hour ago, but she couldn't bring herself to leave.
Her father had tinkered with the faucets in the house, making the bath water always warm.
She moved her hand back and forth in the water, listening to the sound it made as her hands picked up some drops, causing them to fall the short distance back into the bath.
She felt her hands and feet becoming pruney from the water. The wrinkles of skin that she could flatten with a press and enhance with the squeeze.
She smelled the lavender bath salts that she had put in as they rose with the steam.
She heard her voice in her head as she hummed the tune of Swan Song by Franz Schubert, her voice slightly distorted as the voice in our head sounds oh so different from the one we speak with.
She felt the water caress her naked body, making it feel like silk and weightless. If she relaxed her muscles, she was sure she'd float to the top.
But at the same time, she felt it pressing on her chest, making it slightly hard to breath.
She could only hear her humming and the swishing water.
The rest was silence.
She wasn't used to the silence that enveloped the Potter Manor.
It took away a bit of the soul, because a big part of what made the Manor, the Manor, is that there was always something going on.
Whether it be James practicing quidditch or Euphemia cooking or Fleamont explaining the types of the flowers that he kept in his botanical garden.
There was always the breath of life.
Now, slowly, but surely, Thea felt air leaving the house.
She felt it gasping, fading, succumbing to the inevitable end of what once was.
