Chapter 10- The Grief Quotient
Cora’s grandmother had always insisted that Christmas was a time for family. Since none of her children was fool enough to argue with her and nearly all of her grandchildren were still too young to legally make their own decisions, the entire clan descended on the Burrow once a year. All told, there were about twenty-five of them, which made living quarters extremely cramped. So, when the seven-year-old twins Charlotte and Caroline were unable to contain their glee at five o’clock on Christmas morning, the rest of the family was consequently forced awake as well.
The adults gathered in the living room, all nursing cups of coffee and not speaking much. The youngest kids were all absorbed in present-opening, completely oblivious to the dismal lack of holiday cheer. The eldest cousins, however “ the ones who had started at Hogwarts already or were extremely close to their first year” barricaded themselves in the room Cora and Geena were sharing and refused to leave for a long while. There were seven of them all together, ranging from Callum, who at nineteen had already finished his schooling, to Matt and Ethan who hadn’t even begun. After about an hour, Cora suddenly realised why they were all sitting in a circle on the bedroom floor, not speaking. They were the ones who were old enough to remember, but too young to forget.
At about eight in the morning, the smells of breakfast began to permeate the air, and most of the cousins wandered off in search of food. Cora, however, locked the door behind them and sat on the edge of her bed with such force that several of her still unopened Christmas presents slid onto the floor. This didn’t bother Cora in the slightest, and she returned to her thoughts. Unfortunately, her thoughts were soon interrupted rather unpleasantly.
“Happy Christmas, Potter.”
Cora leapt off the bed, drawing her wand as she did so. “Who’s there?” she shouted at the voice, the same sinister, lurking voice she had heard on her birthday.
There was no answer.
“Show yourself!” Cora shouted, spinning around and brandishing her wand at random corners of the room.
There was still no answer.
“Fine!” yelled Cora, who had now entirely surpassed fear and become angry. “Leave! See if I care! I’m sure you’ll come back the next time I’m thoroughly miserable! You twisted, evil… thing! I don’t even know if you’re just a figment of my imagination or whatever but please just”leave me alone!”
Exhausted from her tirade, Cora fell back down on her bed, sobbing and dislodging the rest of her presents. Someone began knocking on the door, but Cora ignored them.
The knocking continued uninterrupted. “Cora? Cora! Open up!” Whoever it was rattle the doorknob, uttered a mild oath, and then murmured “ Alohomora. The door swung open, and the figure of Geena was framed in the doorway.
“Who are you shouting at?” Geena asked. Her voice was causal, but the look on her face was definitely not one of holiday cheer.
“Nobody,” replied Cora, as she threw a pillow at Geena and used the distraction to wipe her eyes on the back of her sleeve. Geena wasn’t put off by the sudden flying bedroom décor, however, and continued her interrogation.
“Oh, come on, Cora,” she said. “I could hear you shouting all the way down in the kitchen.”
“So what? That doesn’t mean I was shouting at anyone in particular,” retorted Cora, who had spotted the paltriest of loopholes in the question and used it as best she could. Oh, where was Drew when she needed him? If anyone was good at getting out of an awkward conversation, he was! But Drew was off in Essex somewhere, writing crosswords about wrackspurts and conspiracy theories and Merlin who-knew-what else.
Geena still wasn’t through, apparently. “Look, Cora, today’s hard on all of us, but that doesn’t’ “”
“That doesn’t mean I can randomly start shouting, huh?” Cora was getting mad again, but at least she was yelling at Geena instead of that weird ” whatever that voice thing was. “I’ll shout however the hell I want! This isn’t a happy Christmas anyway, so who cares if I shout? No one, Geena, that’s who! We’re all miserable anyway, so who cares about a bit of shouting to lighten the monotony?” Cora threw another pillow at Geena who caught it, being Geena, and walked away.
Unfortunately, Geena, still being Geena, arrived back in the room twenty minutes later with Olivia in tow. How Geena had somehow located Olivia was beyond Cora, but she didn’t worry about it too much. She was content to just lie on the floor forever and never speak to anyone again.
“Olivia, make her see reason,” commanded Geena. “I’m sick of listening to her shout.”
Cora would have thrown another pillow at Geena at this remark, but she couldn’t reach one and lie on the floor in complete apathy simultaneously. Geena winked wickedly at Cora and left the room.
“I’ll bet you anything she’s eavesdropping,” said Cora, who had randomly decided to forsake her vow of silence at the sight of her best friend. Olivia nodded, pulled out her wand, and pointed it at the door.
“ Muffliato,” she murmured, and sat back down on the floor. “Now anyone who tries to listen in will just hear a faint buzzing noise. Handy, no?” Without waiting for Cora to answer, Olivia pressed on.
“So, Cora. Pray tell why I was awakened this morning by none other than Geena Weasley, who burst out of my fireplace and demanded that I come and make you stop shouting.”
“Erm… because I was shouting?”
“Pray tell why you were shouting, then.”
“Because I wasn’t having a Happy Christmas.”
Olivia sighed. “Don’t make me force it out of you, Cora Potter. I’m not your mother and I don’t really want to start acting like I am. You’ve got a perfectly good real mother, at any rate, which is more than I can claim right now, so stop trying to make me feel sorry for you.”
At these words, Cora jumped up. Of course! The only person who could comprehend her feelings right now wasn’t Olivia. It was her mother, because they were probably feeling exactly the same way.
“Sorry, Liv,” said Cora, as she raced out of the room. “I have to go and talk to my mother!”
“Well,” mused Olivia, who was not quite sure what had just happened, or how she had even got there in the first place, “at least she’s stopped shouting.”
Drew stared forlornly at his crossword. After a week of intense work, he was literally still in square one. He decided to give it up as a bad job. None of the readers of The Quibbler actually did the crossword anyway. Most of the subscribers seemed to like discovering upside-down hexes instead. Perhaps he could persuade his mother to print one of those Japanese number puzzles, like the ones the Ravenclaws liked so much. Psuedo-coos, he thought they were called. Something like that, anyway.
The Burrow stairs were rough and cold. Why was that? Cora looked down, and realised she had left her slippers at home in London. Oh well, she was in mortal agony anyway. What difference did a splinter or two make?
The stairs ended abruptly, so Cora stopped walking and wondered why. Oh. She had reached the bottom of the staircase. She turned and hesitantly meandered her way into the parlor, where she knew she would find her mother, shrouded in half-darkness despite the cheery snow drifting slowly to the ground outside the window.
Cora had been right. Ginny Potter was indeed huddled on the sofa, wrapped in a patchwork quilt and staring into the fire. She looked old, and broken somehow, like a quill someone had accidentally stepped on.
Cora sat down next to her mother, who looked around at her, and suddenly they were both crying.
“Oh, Cora,” her mother whispered, in between sobs. “I miss them so much!” And Cora suddenly remembered everything she had been striving so hard to forget.
It was Christmas Day. The Potter family had spent several hours unwrapping presents and having a vicious snowball fight, and now all five of them sat around the fire. Seven-year-old Cora perched cross-legged on an armchair, unraveling a stray thread from her new jumper. Five-year-old Matt crawled around on the carpet, playing with his new miniature broomstick, while their two-year-old sister Ashley was being taught a patty-cake game by their mother. Harry Potter looked on, confusing Matt by making the broomstick hover a few inches off the ground with his wand and laughing when Ashley mistakenly whacked Ginny in the nose.
A shining silver mist suddenly materialised in their midst, which solidified into the shape of a parrot. Ashley giggled at the strange phenomenon, but the rest of the family automatically stopped making noise and listened to what the parrot had to say.
“Urgent call. Death Eater riot in the West End. Come at once. Happy Christmas.” The parrot’s voice belonged to Ophelia McHendrick, one of the interns in the Auror office. The Patronus dissolved into mist again and vanished.
The Christmas cheer evaporated on the spot. The toy broomstick thudded to the ground, but no one paid it the slightest attention. Ginny broke the silence.
“You’re not going.”
Harry sighed. “I have to, Gin. I’m the head of the office and they need me.”
“It’s Christmas, Harry! You’re not going!”
“They’re only Death Eaters, Ginny. I’ve gotten rid of plenty of them before.”
Ginny spluttered for a moment, but seemed unable to come up with another argument. Harry grabbed her hand and squeezed it. “I’ll be back by morning, love. I promise.” He smiled at his children. “C’mon, guys! Walk me out to the Boundary.”
The Boundary was the invisible line where the Fidelius Charm on the house stopped working. Cora and Matt wordlessly stood and followed their father, but Ashley didn’t seem to know what was going on.
“Where are you going, Daddy?” she asked. Harry picked her up and swung her around. Ashley squealed with laughter, her raven curls glinting red in the firelight.
“Daddy’s going to fight the bad guys, sweetie,” he said, as he opened the front door and strode out to the Boundary. Cora, Matt, and Ginny followed.
The Potters assembled on the Boundary, the crossed it as one as they always did. Instantly, they were surrounded by figures in cloaks and masks, which dropped from the sky and pointed their wands directly at Harry, who was still holding Ashley. Ginny shrieked and pushed Matt and Cora back across the Boundary, where they could still see everything but where the new arrivals couldn’t touch them. Common sense made Cora grab Matt and keep him from crossing back to his parent’s aide, even though she longed to do the same.
Harry remained considerably calm, considering there were a dozen-odd wands pointing directly at both him and his two-year-old daughter. “Ginny,” he muttered, out of the corner of his mouth, “it’s a trap. Get back over the Boundary.”
“Don’t move!” shouted one of the figures, which were obviously Death Eaters. “Cover all of them,” it said, and a few of the wands shifted off Harry and Ashley and onto Ginny.
“What do you want?” Harry addressed his attackers at large, still exuding calmness but somehow channelling hatred into every syllable.
“That’s obvious, though, isn’t it, Potter?” spoke up another of the Death Eaters. “We want you. Dead.”
Harry laughed. “You people have been trying to do me in for thirty years. Why should tonight be any different?”
“Because tonight we’ve got a foolproof plan, Potter,” said the first Death Eater, the one who had shouted at Ginny. “It’s a formula. It tears families apart, ends lives in more ways than one. We like to call it the Grief Quotient. It always works.
“Now!”
Multicolored jets of light flew from the ends of the Death Eaters’ wands, bouncing in every direction. An orange jet streaked over Ginny’s head so fast it whistled as it went by. A lilac jet ricocheted off the Boundary and into the night. And a green one hit two-year-old Ashley square in the chest.
Ginny screamed, Harry gasped, and Ashley went limp in her father’s arms. The Death Eater strode forward unmasking to reveal long, dark hair and heavy-lidded eyes.
“You see, Potter?” said Bellatrix Lestrange. “The Grief Quotient always works.”
“But you’re…you’re supposed to be dead!” spluttered Harry, still not relinquishing his hold on what had so recently been his two-year-old daughter.
“Well, I’m not, Potter. But your daughter is. And so are you.”
The multicolored jets of light rent the night apart again, and as the Death Eaters Disapparated, another jet of green light hit its mark.
A lingering echo of maniacal laughter was heard as Harry Potter slumped to the ground. Ginny, Cora, and Matt all rushed to him, but it was too late. Harry and Ashley were both already gone.
“Mum, don’t… don’t cry.” Cora emerged from her memory, vaguely aware that her mother was sobbing into her shoulder. She couldn’t help but feel that being sad was playing straight into the Death Eaters’ hands, even if the massacre had happened so long ago. They had named their torture method The Grief Quotient, after all.
Mrs Potter’s sobbing did not relent however, so Cora reached over to a side table in the hopes of finding her a tissue. As she did so, movement in a silver-framed photograph caught her eye. It showed three people huddled in front of a large tombstone, and Cora realised with a jolt that it was a picture of her father’s and her sister’s funeral.
Her mouth suddenly dry, Cora grabbed the picture to examine it more closely. It was black and white, and Cora’s grandmother had obviously ripped it out of an old Daily Prophet, because the edges were frayed, but if she stared at it hard enough Cora could read the epitaph.
Here Lies
Harry James Potter
31 July 1980- 25 December 2011
And His Daughter
Ashley Faith Potter
16 May 2009- 25 December 2011
Death Is But The Next Greatest Adventure.
“Mum, look at this!” exclaimed Cora, twisting around and shoving the photograph into her mother’s stunned hands. “Look at the last line.”
Mrs Potter looked, and her eyes widened in surprise. Then she set the photograph down and looked at Cora.
“You’re right. This picture’s right. Dumbledore was right, all those years ago. It’s no use being sad, that won’t bring them back. Either of them.”
Cora marveled at the sudden honesty, but she hugged her mother tightly, and in that instant, they both knew that everything could be all right again. They’d spent five years wallowing in grief and refusing to let old wounds heal, five years of sobbing into pillows at night when no one else could hear, five years of forced cheeriness and false laughter. It was over now, and the Potters would go on: incomplete, but whole nonetheless.
Drew had entirely run out of things to do, having spent nearly two weeks at home and also having thoroughly packed for his return to Hogwarts the next day. Utterly bored, he contented himself with counting all the plaster bumps on his ceiling.
It was immensely dull and pointless work, so he was rather glad when he received a memo summoning him to the editor-in-chief’s office. He set off at once, vaguely noticing that his mother had signed the note “Love and Hugs, Luna,” instead of the standard “Mum,” or “Luna Lovegood MacDounagh, Editor-In-Chief,” depending on her mood.
Drew found his mother in the kitchen, where she was evidently conducting some sort of experiment involving a watering can, some candle wax, and a rather large and menacing pair of tweezers. It took her several minutes to notice her son, but when she did she abandoned the experiment at once.
“Andrew!” she cried, pulling her wand from behind her left ear and vanishing most of the wax and the watering can. “How was your term?”
“It was fine, Mum. Shouldn’t you have asked about two weeks ago, though?”
Luna looked puzzled. “Have you been home that long?” Drew nodded, and Luna puzzled some more. “Amazing how time flies, isn’t it? Like a Heliopath on a wild rampage.”
Drew blinked. He had somewhat forgotten how odd his mother could get.
“Well,” Luna continued,” Have you got any friends? I’m surprised you didn’t invite them home for Christmas!”
“Yeah, I would’ve done, Mum, except Cora had to go to her grandmother’s and Olivia had to go deal with her parents, or lack thereof, so I didn’t want to make them feel bad by extending an invitation they couldn’t accept.”
Luna raised an eyebrow at Drew. “Cora? Olivia? Girls, Andrew?”
“Erm. Yeah?”
“How intriguing! So tell me about this Olivia’s parents, or lack thereof, as you so strangely put it.”
“Well, she just found out she’d adopted, see, and her mother doesn’t really know anything about who her real parents are, so Liv went home to get everything sorted out,” explained Drew happily. He liked talking about his friends. Especially the ones who actually existed.
“Fascinating, Andrew! Now what did you say this Olivia’s surname was? This would make an excellent short story feature, you know. Perhaps we could interview her!”
“I didn’t say, Mum, but it’s Abdiknot. Olivia Abdiknot.”
Luna gasped and dropped the massive tweezers, which she had been fiddling with. “Olivia Abdiknot? Who doesn’t know who her parents are?”
“Yeah, Mum,” said Drew. “Why?”
“Well,” said Luna, “I know.”
“You know who Olivia’s parents are?” asked Drew, shocked and surprised.
“I know who Olivia’s parents are,” repeated Luna.