Saw the body

[alt_neville]

My gran took me to see the traitor's body. The queue was huge, and we had to wait hours and hours. People were mostly quiet, talking a bit amongst themselves, but not too loudly. Solemn.

I expect most people will have seen it before we get back to school, so I don't need to describe it. I guess it's enough to say that it's a fitting lesson to see what happens to Enemies of the Protectorate.

Comments

I Solemnly Swear that I Am Up to No Good

[alt_neville]

We shuffled past the glass case, and I looked at Gran, and her face was like stone as she said in a loud voice, 'Look at him, Neville, and look well. That's what happens to traitors. Don't you forget it.' And I looked, but I didn't feel anything, not really. I'd read the descriptions and I knew it looked awful. So I just cast my eyes over it, as if it were nothing more than a plate or a cauldron or something, nothing that was human once, and we went past and then we left again. Neither of us said much after we Floo'd home.

Gran and I didn't bring Evelyn, because Gran thought she'd likely have nightmares. So I went for both of us.

It never occurred that it would give me a nightmare. But it did. A terrible one.

I dreamed about my parents and my little brother. They looked like that picture that was published in the Daily Prophet. They looked over at smiled at me, and everything was normal, but then it was as if time speeded up, and their skin cracked and split open and started sloughing up and I could see their teeth through the cracks. Their flesh shriveled up and they had this agonised look on their faces, just like they were burning up or something. And my brother started screaming as his flesh fell off, and then I started screaming myself, and then...and then I woke up.

Didn't get to sleep for the rest of the night.

[alt_amycus]

Used to put traitors heads on pikes on London Bridge, they did, for the pigeons to peck out their eyes.

Maybe they'll do that to the next ones they catch.

You know who.

[alt_hannah]

I noticed that, too, that the crowds are ever so quiet.