#25 Breakfast

Kassia had woken up as usual that day. Gotten out of bed, sat in front of the mirror. Did her skin care routine, arranged her hair. The only different step was concealer- carefully dabbed on her face, to hide where the blood vessels had broken when she'd stopped breathing last night. She also dressed in formal robes, unadorned and unchanged in any way.

Kassia had gone to the funeral, and had not approached anyone but had not turned away people who walked towards her. She'd given Amelia a hug at some point, but she needed her family most now. She had stood quietly at the funeral with a neutral expression. Calm and unbothered.

She was still shocked at the loss of Dumbledore, but it was an oddly distant feeling too. That was the thing with death. Kassia never felt sorry for the ones who died. It was the ones left behind who took the brunt of it. That was what all this pomp and ceremony was for, anyway- the living.

She resisted giving the side-eye to those who wailed and wept openly. This was what those dark wizards had wanted, to cause misery. Showing it off was just giving them what they wanted. Grief was meant for closed doors. It was why she wouldn't speak to anyone about that night. No one needed to know. Not their business.

Kassia ate quietly on her own, and barely looked up when the owls came. A letter plopped down in front of her- she recognized it as from her family. She tucked it into her pocket, unwilling to read it now. She took a copy of the Daily Prophet and began to read.

It was very strange, reading something that she had personally witnessed it. The person who wrote this had not been there or seen what it was like. As Kassia scanned the paper, she recognized the A at the bottom. Her eyebrows shot up, the first facial expression she'd made that day. She recognized that symbol- and the other fifth-years probably did, too.