Wedding Tears; Funeral Tears
Chapter Three
Part One: Madness
“White weddings are so boring.” I looked up from my breakfast in confusion. Morticia was sitting on her chair cross-legged, a shiny muggle book in her hands and a plate of scrambled eggs and toast sitting, forgotten, on the table. She showed me the page she was looking at “ a frozen picture of a traditional wedding. “If I wanted to look like a marshmallow, I’d transfigure myself into a marshmallow.”
“We don’t need to have a traditional wedding,” I told her reasonably. “I don’t suppose anyone would be surprised.” Tisha looked thoughtful.
“What about purple?”
“What about purple?” I asked back.
“Come on, can’t you see it? ‘Purple Wedding Shocks Nation’…”
“I doubt we’d make the papers,” I said honestly. “If you want to have an article written, try, ‘Eager Bride Transfigures Self into Marshmallow’.”
“Clever, Gideon. Really witty,” Tisha told me sarcastically. “I think I’ll wear blue. I look good in blue. And you’d look charming in purple.” I rolled my eyes.
“Convince me.”
“Alright,” agreed Tisha. “You wear purple, and I will personally see to it that Solum and Fabian turn up in forest green muggle suits, with lime green pinstripes and foot-high top hats.” I had to prevent myself from laughing into my breakfast.
“Seriously?” Morticia nodded enthusiastically. “Well, deal then.” We shook on it over the breakfast table. “But only if you eat your eggs. I didn’t curse them, you know.”
She was smiling at me when, from out of no where (or so it seemed), human-sized snakes suddenly appeared, shooting fire from their mouths. Tisha turned to face them, looking vaguely annoyed that they were in our house.
“Gideon, cover me!” she ordered, but didn’t have a chance. I took a bite out of my toast, as what seemed like half a dozen of the snakes hit her at the same time, felling her, before fading into what seemed like spectres, formless but deadly. I saw a hand clawing the table, as a pale image of Morticia pulled herself up to face me.
“Sir?” she asked, her voice sounding odd. “Sir, excuse me?”
I opened my eyes suddenly, awakening from my semi-conscious doze, and jumped at the sight of Tom, the barman, right in front of me. Hastily, I covered my exposed arm.
“Yes?” I asked, too quickly. “What?”
“I’m sorry, Sir,” apologised Tom, “But you’ve been here for several hours now. Would you like to take a room?”
“A room?” I asked.
“Yes, we have bedrooms out the back “ not much business; I can offer you a good discount…”
“Oh,” I replied absently. “Yes. Yes, I suppose so…” My dream image of Morticia was fixed firmly in my head.
“Very good, then. Would you like me to show you there now?” I blinked several times, looking around the bar. It would be dawn soon.
“Yes, thank you,” I told him.
Tom led me to a small room with a single bed huddled in the corner, and turned on the light.
“If you need anything,” he began kindly, but then paused, staring.
“What?” I asked, subconsciously clutching my marked arm.
“Prewett?” questioned Tom, looking alarmed. “Gideon Prewett?” I frowned.
“Yeah,” I told him. “But I’d really just like to sleep now.” Tom nodded, clearly concerned.
“You should,” he told me. “You look terrible. Would you like to get me a Healer, or“?” I shook my head hastily, and then wished I hadn’t. It tugged on my shoulder.
“No,” I told him. “No, definitely not. I’m alright.”
“Alright then,” Tom told me. “I won’t be here when you wake up, but the fellow at the bar“”
“Yes,” I interrupted. “I know. Thank you, Tom.”
Far too polite for a Death Eater, really.
Tom bowed, and worriedly tottered out into the hall, closing the door softly behind him. I turned to the room, and, slowly, limped over to stand in front of the mirror.
I looked like… well, death. The blood had dried on my skin and robes, and my face was dangerously pale.
Why? Why have you done this?
In my mind, I saw Morticia spinning around to face a horde of giant snakes.
“I think,” I told the mirror, “I think I didn’t want to be me anymore. I didn’t want my life.” The mirror version of me rolled its eyes.
“Fantastic choice of replacement,” it said sarcastically. “Really.”
I suppose it was a subconscious choice between anger and tears.
The dresser fell with an almighty crash, the base structure collapsing and shattered bits of mirror scattering all over the floor.
:oOo:
I stumbled back a few steps.
What’s wrong with you?
I ignored the voice.
You’ve lost it, you know.
“I lost it hours ago,” I muttered.
You’re talking to a voice in your head. You’ve gone insane.
“I know!” I snapped out loud, because the inside of my head was such a mess that nothing in there really counted anymore. “I’m mad!” I breathed in deeply.
What have you done, you psychotic moron?
“Stop it,” I told myself. “Stop thinking like that. You’ll only make it harder, you know. There’s no point in even being angry. There’s no point in throwing things around. I’m a different person to who I used to be.”
So over the course of half a month you’ve turned into someone who doesn’t care about anything?
I covered my ears with my hands, willing the voice to leave. The waves of guilt, so common over the past weeks since Morticia’s death, were starting to return. I had felt so bad, so useless, unable to protect my brother, or even my own wife.
“I’ve had enough guilt!” I moaned. It didn’t go away. It never went away.
Have you even thought of Molly? Of course not. You’ve run away to become a selfish bastard.
I was stunned into silence for a moment, my head full of fearful thoughts. What if something happened to her? What if I was off losing my mind and there was an attack? What if something happened to one of her children, one of my little nephews?
I could feel my hands shaking.
“That’s not fair,” I hissed at myself. “That’s not fair, you can’t do that.”
Selfish bastard.
“I am not!” Morticia’s lifeless body, Fabian’s empty house, Molly, undefended. The guilt within me made me think I might explode. “I’m “ I was the opposite! I’ve lived my life for people who aren’t me. Look where it got me! Just “ just…” With a groan, I got to my feet, and cast a levitation spell on the dresser so it would lift and reveal the bulk of the broken mirror. I picked up one of the larger shards, and let the dresser crash down again before falling back onto the bed.
I gazed at my reflection.
The man in the mirror was parchment-pale and battered, dirt riddled through his rusty brown hair and some kind of overtired madness lurked behind his eyes. I gingerly pulled off my robe, and then the already torn shirt beneath it to see the damage this night had done. Most of my shoulder was a deep shade of purple, and, having lived with a Trainee Healer I was sure it must be either sprained or fractured in the joint. I moved the shard of mirror around behind, to see where the skin was broken. It was a deep, wide scrape and the bruising told me that there was something wrong with the shoulder blade also. I sort of personified unhealthy grief, and I had no one to blame but me.
“I can’t even move my shoulder,” I told myself, “and I’m getting it used to throbbing, like the whole thing could easily have been ripped off. And I volunteered for this, in the foolish hope I might find my brother, who’s dead.” I felt itching behind my dry eyes, and snapped to myself, “I’m not crying anymore! I did all of this because I was stupid. But now I’m not that stupid person anymore.”
Sacrifice isn’t stupidity.
“I am stupid though,” I told myself angrily, and glared at my reflection in the mirror. “You are an idiot. A crazy, half-dead idiot with really bad hair.” I thought I could see what had happened to me. I thought I could see my mistakes. I blamed everything on the fact that I had wasted my entire life on other people. It was like a moment of even greater weakness than usual.
“I’ve always done everything for everyone else,” I told the shard of mirror, after a long period of silence. “That’s why this has happened. I’m too stupid to live for myself.” I sighed, momentarily calm, and lay down on the bed carefully, the cold sheets feeling good against my aching shoulder. “My father was a stony bastard, you know? So long as we behaved and didn’t embarrass him, he’d just stay out of the way. Before I went to school, the last thing he said to me was that I, as a Prewett and a pure-blood, had a reputation to uphold. The last thing he told Fabian and I before he died wasn’t any better.” Conversationally, I imitated my father.
“’You two “ you’re stupid, but you’ve got each other. Try and make something of yourselves, for your mother, will you?’ Stony bastard.”
I laughed weakly at my reflection. In many ways, I closely resembled my father, but only in looks, I hoped.
“And my mother herself?” I went on, because anger felt like life. “She’s never been much better, has she? Her idea of raising children was to tell us what to do, to not explain anything and keep her distance from the dirty children “ Merlin forbid we should get her gloves dirty, right?”
By now, I wasn’t even paying attention to the fact that I was talking to myself. I didn’t care that my voice was all that filled the silence. Everything else was a dull buzz “ I couldn’t see any more than that shard of mirror from which my reflection argued back at me. I couldn’t hear anything more than my own voice.
“I had nothing to say at my father’s funeral. But I spoke for the sake of everyone who wasn’t me.”
I paused, grinning at my reflection.
“I was pathetic. They never said it, but everyone must have known. What kind of young boy devotes his life to his family, his parents haven’t even done the same?” Again, I let the silence run for a few seconds. “Maybe I’ve always been insane.”
No, you’re good. There’s a difference between kindness and insanity.
“What is ‘good’ anyway?” I paused, as if expecting the voice in my head to answer. It wasn’t a person, though. It was a train of thoughts, inside my own head, and if I didn’t know the answer, why should it? “Failure,” I decided, after a moment, “Stupidity. A lack of power.”
No…
“This is pathetic.” I threw the shard of mirror across the room, and this time lifted my right arm without assistance from the other “ I ignored the pain. Pain was nothing.
The Dark Mark still burned in my skin although it looked just the same. It scared me, despite my ranting and raving. It was terrifying, although I wouldn’t admit such a thing at that point, determined to believe that this choice had given me power, the first real decision I’d ever made purely for myself. I’d rather be angry than scared.
“They’ll see though,” I explained. Just the fact that I was a Death Eater meant that they had all been wrong. Not one of them had a clue. “I can do anything now,” I explained to no one. It was comforting and disturbing, both at the same time. Voldemort had power, I was sure of it. Power almost absolute. When I died, I thought, I would be a powerful man, and then, wherever we were, my father would see. I was out of my mind.
Something inside me couldn’t bear to look at the Dark Mark any longer, and I dropped my arm back to the bed. It was imprinted though, on my mind, in my brain, like the brand had been burned into my eyes. I stared at the ceiling “ just… stared. After all this, the guilt still returned, the grief, and was drowning in confusion just as much as I had been before.
I wanted to escape “ that was the only reason why I was doing this, wallowing self-centredly in the woes of the past. I wasn’t even sure what I wanted to escape from.
You’re crazy.
“I’m crazy.”
:oOo:
Chapter Three
Part Two: The Mission
I don’t know how long I lay there for, semi-conscious out of both tiredness and an unwillingness to sleep. It must have been at least an hour or two though, because by the time I was jolted to attention, it was already light outside. I was warm from the sunlight pouring in, but all my drowsiness had disappeared because of a sensation I felt on my arm.
It wasn’t the same dull burning that I had felt since the Mark had been made, but a sharp sting like fire or acid on an open wound. I yelped and sat up, clutching my arm, but there was no change. The only difference was the colour of the Dark Mark, which had changed from black to a vivid blood red. I knew Voldemort was calling.
Not wanting to seem weak, I cast a quick succession of spells, and within half a minute or so, my wounds had healed a little; I wasn’t a Healer and couldn’t make the bruising go down, but at least no skin was broken (although I’d have a pretty impressive scar on my shoulder) and my bones weren’t either. Hastily, I pulled my robe back on over my bare torso and cast a cleaning spell on my hair, before apparating without hesitation.
When I arrived, it wasn’t the same place as last time. I don’t know how I knew where to go, but suspect it was part of the dark magic that made one a Death Eater. It was inside, dark and dank, like we were in a cellar or shelter and only Voldemort and one Death Eater were present, still robed, still anonymous. The intense burning on my arm had stopped, and when I looked down to it automatically, I saw that my skin and old robe were hidden “ I was clad in heavy, black robes also, but the hood didn’t hide my unmasked face.
“What’s“”
“I have a mission for you,” Voldemort told me. I blinked.
“A “ mission?”
“It will be simple, and easy, and fast,” informed Voldemort. “You must be quick, as I will be needing the object of your mission very soon “ a very large, ceramic pot and what’s inside it. Do you understand?”
“Y“”
“The portkey is at your feet.” Voldemort interrupted heedlessly. I summoned the half-brick from the ground, trying to make it look natural as, with my knee, picking it up from the floor would be nothing short of foolish. I hated being in Voldemort’s presence, so it was only moments later that he, the Death Eater and the cellar disappeared from sight.
Simple, easy and fast. It couldn’t be too bad, right? Perhaps if I pulled this all off, Voldemort would give me something resembling a break.
Subconsciously revelling in the fact that I had a simple, clean-cut task to complete, free of the problems and thoughts that plagued my mind, I arrived steadily at the destination.
It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the darkness, and I wondered where I could be that would be so black. There was no visible roof or walls, so wherever I was, it undoubtedly couldn’t be in England. After the darkness, the next thing to occur to me was how very warm this place was. Although it was night, it felt like a hot summer’s day to me “ warmer, even, and the air was thick and sultry.
“Lumos,” I whispered, just in case, and my wand lit up faintly. I was indeed outside, and directly in front of me, I could see a very large structure, ornate really, but at the same time completely dilapidated. A large building “ a mansion or hotel “ stood in ruins before me.
Quickly, I checked my surroundings to make sure the pot I was seeking was not out in the open. I couldn’t see anything, in any direction, save for large mounds like small hills. When I turned, I felt that the ground beneath me was sand, and when I looked up the atmosphere was so clear, I could see every star shining brightly in the sky.
Nothing remotely ceramic though.
I looked back towards the fallen structure, which must have been a masterpiece in its day, but now, it was as if it had collapsed, blackened by a fire of long ago.
Morticia would love this place.
“Shut up.”
Apprehensively, I approached the silent ruin. When I moved a plank of wood away from an opening that seemed to lead to whatever was left of the place, it broke at my touch, worrying me even more.
Never the less, I climbed into the opening, careful not to come into physical contact with anything, save for the crumbling floor. About ten feet away was what was left of a doorway, and I was about to make my way towards it when I heard a sound. It was as soft as can be, but I was sure I had heard it, something on top of the ruins. Cautiously, I used my wand to move aside several planks of what was once a balcony, and then, through thin and ornate charred iron bars, I saw it, looking directly at me.
Instantly, and instinctually, I dropped to the ground, hands firmly over my ears. I closed my eyes also, and pressed them against my knees as I scrunched up tightly into a ball.
I could feel the vibrations of the banshee’s cry, and pressed very hard against my ears. Thankfully, although my head, all of a sudden, lost most of its focus and began to throb, I was alive. One moment slower, and that wouldn’t be the case. Surely Voldemort should have warned me about a banshee?
When the vibrations stopped, I uncovered my eyes and ears. I couldn’t hear anything, although hopefully my hearing would come back shortly, and my eyes swum. The banshee would be on its way now, and I had to get it the second it arrived, or else it would scream again. I could apparate home, but there was no way I’d be able to get back to this place; the banshee would be crying, and I wouldn’t get a chance to find what I was here for.
I didn’t want to die.
A shadow, cast by the stars, approached, hunched over “ banshees tended to run on all fours when they were hungry. A set of long fingers with fingernails resembling talons closed around the opening, and the banshee’s face appeared, slightly green and completely inhuman.
It was comforting to meet something less in its right mind than me.
I couldn’t hear my own words when I cast the spell, and what appeared to be an orange fireball emitted from my wand, hitting the banshee square in the neck. She tried to scream at me again, but no sound came out. With her long fingered hands, she clasped at her burnt-out throat in anger and shock, and her eyes seemed to bore holes in me.
“Sorry,” I apologised, shrugging, although banshees don’t feel pain and her throat would grow back in a day or two. Obviously, she didn’t speak English (or perhaps didn’t speak at all), or maybe she was understandably still furious, because she pounced at me, clearly more animal than human. Not wanting to be on the brunt end of her claws, I cast an explosion spell, which sent her flying into, and through some of the rubble, but she probably wasn’t wounded in the slightest, so I hurried through the opening into the only room of the house that seemed to still be whole.
Thankfully, there was a huge ceramic jug in the centre, at least three feet taller than me but quite thin. I touched it experimentally, to make sure it wouldn’t attack. It didn’t, thank Merlin, but the banshee, who had just burst through the wall looking infuriated, wasn’t likely to be so harmless.
Clutching the giant jug like I was hugging it, I concentrated on apparating out of there immediately, bringing the room where I had last seen Voldemort clearly into my mind.
:oOo:
I felt the familiar sensation of apparation, pushing in from all directions, then after those few seconds, my vision came back into focus.
The banshee didn’t look the slightest bit more forgiving.
I swore; it must have been loud, but I still couldn’t hear anything. The world was silent. At the last moment, I managed to swing the pot in front of me. The banshee ran straight into it, knocking the surprisingly hard pot over and smashing me to the floor in the process. Luckily, I’d half expected this and simply got thoroughly winded, but not too much so to cast another explosion spell and get the silenced banshee away.
Again, I tried to apparate, this time to the place where I’d first met Voldemort.
Finally, slightly panicked, I tried to apparate home, the next place that came to mind.
Nothing.
I couldn’t help but wonder whether Voldemort expected me to get through this ‘simple’ mission alive.
The banshee clawed its way out of the rubble behind the wall, covered in charcoal and less than happy.
“Look, I’m sorry, okay?” I muttered to her, somehow maintaining a calm exterior. Really, I was terrified, exhausted and injured, trapped in a desert unable to apparate, with a furious banshee in a crumbling, burned out old mansion. I never thought my tomb stone would say ‘death by mauling’.
I hastily cast the conjunctivitis curse, the only spell I knew which would have a slightly lasting effect on a banshee, and blasted my way out the side of the building, dragging the huge, ceramic pot (which, it transpired, must have weighed at least as much as me) out onto the sand. I floated it after me as I staggered as far away from the old mansion as I could, before, gathering all the magical power in my scattered mind, I levitated one of the nearby sand hills onto the mansion, dropping it from above. What was left of the structure must have been completely crushed, but I knew the banshee wouldn’t be.
Finally, I cast a simple freezing charm on the large mound in front of me, to trap the banshee once and for all, but didn’t stick around to see if it had worked.
“Locomotor Voldemort’s big pot thing,” I pronounced absently, trying to get everything back into focus after the banshee’s cry had further befuddled my mind. Then, without any obvious other options, I proceeded to trudge through the dark sand.
I didn’t know how it could possibly be so hot at night. I was sticky with sweat all over, no matter what cooling charm I tried, and became so thirsty so quickly, it was necessary to conjure myself water to drink. At least I had my wand this time, unlike when I had been trapped in the hole. What was more, the silence all around me was so constricting, I felt short of breath.
Banshees. Not the most pleasant of creatures.
And yet still, I wasn’t happy to have left the mansion behind. Somewhere in my muddled mind, I had quite liked the banshee’s presence. She had no magic, she couldn’t read my mind and she wasn’t more intelligent than me, all of which was very refreshing.
Blinking into reality again, I mentally slapped myself in the face.
“I’m lonely,” I admitted out loud, “but I’m not so lonely as to desire the company of a barely controlled banshee.”
I couldn’t hear my words in my head, and the sound was sorely missed. I even missed the voice, which had fully and totally convinced me that I had driven myself crazy earlier that day. It wasn't my ears that had been stunned, but the part of my brain that registered noise. There was no sound at all.
It’s funny how very much you can miss the thumping of your own heartbeat; I did, almost as much as I missed the feeling of Morticia’s, right beside me. I wished for any sound “ my footsteps, my breath, the sound it made when I shouted at myself, but there was nothing. In the middle of a dark desert, messed up and completely soundless due to a banshee’s cry, it wouldn’t have taken long for me to be completely convinced that I didn’t even exist.
Something changed, though, which prevented this from happening. I had been standing near the top of one of the indistinguishable sand hills, when a light wind had begun to pick up, at first barely noticeable, but it wasn’t long before there was sand flying everywhere “ a dust storm “ and I found myself teetering blindly on a moving platform of sand, steadily giving way beneath my very feet.
I almost dropped my wand, but in the end held it in my mouth as I rolled off what was left of the sand hill, clinging to Voldemort’s giant pot. I arrived at the bottom with the pot on top of me, probably covered in hot sand and dust, evidently where the heat was stored. The pot was heavy, but I scrambled from underneath it, trying to cough out the sand which had, somehow, gotten itself stuck in my throat, and cast a banishing charm.
The wind died down, instantly. I batted the sand from my eyelids, and looked around to see nothing. The sand storm was gone. However, the jug of Voldemort’s lay open on the ground, and I hastily ran towards it, jamming the clay lid back on. I couldn’t see anything, and supposed that none of whatever was in the pot (if anything) had gotten out.
The sand added to the weight of my heavy robes, and I took off the Death Eater robes that covered my own and threw cast them down. Then, brushing dust from my face, I turned to keep walking, and, for the first time, saw a welcome sight on the horizon “ something, anything, which was not accursed sand. Lights. Even “ a village? Invigorated and desperate, I dragged the jug towards the horizon, just in case there were muggles there who wouldn’t appreciate a floating, ceramic object.
Slowly, step by step I got closer to the lights “ it was lightly populated, just as I had suspected. Various little cloth structures had been raised on the sand, like I’d turned up at a market, and the people wore brightly coloured muggle clothes, very large, baggy garments of presumably very thin material, to suit the heat of this place. It was strange, almost mystical, and the place was so lit up by flaming torches in the ground that, had I not been able to see the starry sky, it might have been day time.
Exhausted and grateful for company, I stumbled towards the strange village with Voldemort’s pot, wand concealed in my robes. Nobody payed any attention to me when I got closer, but I cautiously observed them. Despite the fogginess of my vision, from the sand and from the banshee, some of the villagers seemed oddly familiar…
:oOo:
Prewett’d: Wedding Tears, Funeral Tears by Mind_Over_Matter
Chapter Notes: And here we have the rest of drabble number six and the entirety of seven, eight and nine.