How can you see into my eyes like open doors?
Leading you down into my core where I've become so numb
Without a soul, my spirit sleeping somewhere cold

Frozen inside without your touch
Without your love, darling

All this time, I can't believe I couldn't see
Kept in the dark but you were there in front of me

Without thought, without voice, without a soul
Don't let me die here
There must be something more

Wake me up

Save me

Bring me to life

[Bring Me To Life by Evanescence]

The few weeks left in the semester had blurred together from one night into the next. Classes had been limited to free time in order for the teachers to figure out the matter of the new headmaster, the many concerned parents, and improving the security.

The morning after the battle, students buzzed about what happened, chattering in the Great Hall, in classrooms, the corridors, the common room and bathrooms. And even though the four of them, along with the new constant presence of Ginny, could not avoid coming across these conversations and questions, they passed through the castle in their own separate world.

Aside from Neville and Luna, they created a closely knit group, however Brooke felt double encased upon noticing when they split into pairs.

Ginny's arm would be around Harry's, and Hermione and Ron would sit next to each other on the couch.

Brooke would be alone.

It might have been better if she let herself miss him.

But she didn't.

Brooke numbed up her senses, well avoiding joy, boredom, anger, sadness and all, however she didn't realize that the isolation would stick around no matter what. Wake up, eat, and sleep is all she felt like doing, and only because she had to do it.

"Brooke?"

"Mm," she raised her eyes off the Divination table. That became her favorite utterance lately.

"You alright? Seems like you're spacing out," said Anthony, setting his things down at the foot of his chair.

"Oh, I'm fine," she replied, moving only her lips and eyes. Although she hadn't even spoken to Anthony about things besides academics, the unfortunate event seemed to break the silence suddenly and almost without notice.

"He's an idiot," he said after a long pause.

Brooke stared and cracked her head to the crooked floorboard. "I know."

"And that doesn't make you one," he continued.

She opened her mouth, forming the same phrase, but her lips pursed and she narrowed her eyes.

"It's true."

"You don't know the whole story," she mumbled to the ground.

"So you helped them. It's understandable- Luna told me," he explained to her mildly affronted surprise. "But it's reasonable-"

"There is nothing reasonable about me betraying everyone who's cared about me to help someone who couldn't care less," she snapped at him.

It shut him up for a couple seconds, but he leaned forward on the table once again.

"I just don't want you to beat yourself up because you cared about someone."

The day of the funeral, people were pouring into the castle grounds, so much that the mob became a blurry black mass sitting before a single glimmering white marble tomb. Brooke, Harry, Ginny, Hermione and Ron sat on the very edge of one of the more middle rows.

Brooke felt odd, separated once again as she sat between Hermione and Ginny, not because she was the only one between the three that was not crying, but because of the way they were angled. Yet again, the couples surrounded her.

Hermione clutched onto Ron's arm and Harry and Ginny had their hands still intertwined. It didn't make her angry. She was quite content that her best friends were happy.

The service began after the crowd slowly grew silent from the front to the back. Seeing Dumbledore's lifeless body didn't break her heart as much as watching Hagrid having to carry it to the tomb. He cried loudly and openly. She appreciated that; the purest form of a human being.

Brooke, on the other hand, felt frozen. In every inch, she was frozen. She had to be, since the heat in her eyes and breath seemed to shoot up another thirty degrees. She didn't even bother to swipe the fallen teardrop now running roughly, slowly down her sun beaten cheek.

It was getting hot. Her breathing deepened, but much unlike that of a deep sleep. On the contrary, she used most of her concentration to restrain the human being from bursting out of her. The funeral service was triggering a second wave of terror as it did the night she sat curled on the common room, telling Ron, Hermione and herself exactly what had happened. Only now, it seemed even more real.

The past couple weeks had been dreams, a deep sleep to distance herself, but now the millions of people that gathered for Dumbledore woke her up. There were so many of them. Almost each one with a wet eye and from each tear fallen onto their lap, Brooke took the blame for at least one of them.

One million tears.

With the back of her hand, she caught the tear at the last second before it fell to her lap.

But knowingly, she bowed her head slightly, to make them fall faster because there was no way of stopping them now. Brooke cried silently and openly.

After the service, she found herself at the edges of the lake. It hadn't been a far walk, since the tomb was within sight.

The last time she'd been there, the lake had turned into a thrashing ocean. Her eyes swiped over the entire scenery. Like always, the trees gently waved at her, occasionally sending a bird or two out from the forest's insides.

She took her usual seat among the cream colored sand, near the small couple of flat rocks, near the two branches' entrance.

Closing her eyes in an attempt to bat away the memory failed. She had been sitting in this exact spot two years ago and regrettably, her lips reminded her of what his felt like.

Soft. Miles from what she expected out of someone with a hard face, with a cruel personality and rigid arrogance. Who was he anyway?

"Brooke?" someone said.

Still focused on him, she turned so quickly her neck might have snapped.

"Oh, hey," she said, recoiling back to her lake.

The three of them sat next to her, almost mirrors of each other. They took in the lake and the forest, something that people at Hogwarts rarely ever do when things like this happen; when things are shook up into turmoil.

The lake made Brooke feel more nostalgic than the actual service.

It seemed to hold more than the single white tomb. Less answers than the man in the tomb could have provided them, but it still seemed to hold more.

"I'm not coming back her next year," said Harry with his eyes set on the forest.

"I knew you'd say that," said Hermione sadly. "But what will you do?"

"I'm going back to the Dursleys' once more because Dumbledore wanted me to," said Harry. "But then, I'll be gone for good. I've to track down the rest of the Horcruxes."

The way they all spoke, they faced the lake.

"I guess that's one good thing that came out of all this mess," said Brooke. "There's one less you have to go after."

Harry's eyes dropped to the sand and he reached into his pocket. Tangled in his fingers was a golden chain. "It's a fake," he said, tossing her Slytherin's locket.

It was much lighter. It was a replica. Fake.

"R.A.B.?" she asked, scanning the note inside it.

Harry shrugged. "Dunno."

The locket winked at her in the light. One more thing to drop onto her. No, she really had to stop blaming herself. How in the world was the Horcrux being a fake have anything to do with her? It didn't.

But, Brooke still thought, feeling better with a more reasonable head, however feeling worse with a depressing thought. Nothing came out of this. It was simply a mess.

"We're going with you," said Ron suddenly.

"What?"

"To wherever you're going. We're coming along."

"No, you're not," Harry replied bleakly.

"You said we could have left at any point because you knew it would be dangerous," said Hermione quietly. "Well, we're still here, aren't we?"

"This is different," he said without looking at them.

"Of course it's different," said Brooke, weaving her fingers through the chain of the locket. "This time its not just about surviving, is it? You have to do something- to go after and maybe fight instead of defend. You need us."

Harry looked at the lake in thought.

"You know you can't get rid of us," chuckled Ron.

Harry's doubt of them only pushed her motivation. If there was one thing she would do with her time, it wasn't sitting around Hogwarts while cowards like the Malfoys were slithering about, breaking people from the inside out.

Each time a mere reference to Draco Malfoy was mentioned, Brooke no longer felt the isolating drape burden her down, but it had been replaced with a swooping, sickening disgust and anger. Everything wrong seemed to trace back to him.

And Brooke wouldn't settle until she had him dangling from her claws. It shouldn't be her fault because it wasn't. Draco Malfoy had ruined everything and she couldn't take it anymore.

The three friends sat next to each other, staring at the lake for one last time.

A/N: & There is the last chapter of the sixth book. :) Short, I know, and I have to apologize. But please please please review! Tell me any comments about the chapter itself, or even any sort of response to the story as a whole.

The reviews, besides me loving to read them all and hear your thoughts, are also quite crucial for this chapter because I'm going to begin writing up the storyline for the last story of the series. It would mean LOADS if you reviewed. :)

Thanks again, especially those who've been reading since the first of the series & of course to those who happen to stumble on the story and have read, reviewed, or added. :)

Can't say exactly when I will be starting up again with posts, but it may be a while (perhaps a bit more than a month) seeing as June is a huge month for me.

I don't know what else to say, except for REVIEW and THANKS!