In Ashes

After the din, after the thoughtless, mindless madness that was the first of November, the second of November, the third, the fourth…it's December now, the autumn of victory passed into the winter that had to come.

The merriment of glittering victory has died, the enchantment fallen away and their world is broken still beneath the illusion. The group sits—on settees and mismatched armchairs and on the plush of the carpet, for the younger and more agile—stands against walls, lounges in doorways…they all just exist in quiet for a few moments after their gradual assembly, one or two or three at a time into the small parlor, clean and dust-free and carefully kept but with the sad, echoing aura of the uninhabited, in Benjy Fenwick's abandoned home.

It's quiet, they're waiting. You can't begin a meeting without the rest of them, there are holes in the fabric, seats still saved.

And there's no one coming to fill them. Marlene isn't skulking by the door, chewing on the filter end of one of her menthols and near-to-vibrating with contained impatience. Peter's not plastering a smile on his face and wanly, half-heartedly attempting to bolster some spirits. Benjy isn't fussing about the state of his wife's favorite carpet, Dorcas isn't administering a quick, lethal whap to the back of Fabian's head with her wand in rebuke for some off-color comment. Lily isn't there to grin and talk about trivialities and make a few minutes normal for all these people whose lives are anything but. James isn't. Alice isn't. Caradoc isn't.

There are holes.

A few shift restlessly, and the understanding eventually weaves through the room. They're waiting for nothing; if there's something to be said, some conclusion to find, go on and have done...they won't find completion, there's none to be had in this broken room.

This is the farewell, one they all thought they'd be deliriously happy to say. The Order is finished, and up until now they'd felt like the victors.

In a dead man's house, surrounded by carefully preserved measures of space for the lost (you can almost count them, each conspicuous vacancy), it occurs to them all that, really, they're not.

The (Order of the) Phoenix has dwindled, simply falling to ash with none of the brazen, sulphuric glory. (It's a Phoenix, it will rise, is a thought that will cross everyone's mind in eventuality, almost a horror but a truth, a faith in the inevitable machinations of fortune, but for now they're content in the ashes.)

They, the remainder, don't speak much. What is there to say now, anyway? Really, they're not friends. In a hundred other worlds, these people have gone on without each other to no detriment. They won't owl casually, won't stop for a drink at the Leaky after a day at work, might not even acknowledge one another alone in a lift.

Maybe they're something deeper than friends. This isn't any of those other hundred worlds, it's not even the one they've always known, and though this new existence they're building up from the ashes is no place for such ties, they really won't ever die.

Someone gets up to leave and no one really notices who. It doesn't matter, they're not really the first to go, are they? The room's already half-empty with specters and outlines.

When the last goes (it takes a while, some drift, some cling, some leave in their groups of two and three and four, but the last to leave goes alone), they seal up Benjy Fenwick's house.

I can't lie, I am terribly proud of this. I haven't cried while writing in quite a long time, but I cried writing this.