Her eyes were blue, but not Dumbledore's deep, wintry-lake blue. They were the pale blue of the early spring sky, bright and clear, like two glass beads freshly fished from a stream before the sun had dried them.
Those eyes were empty now. Not empty with sorrow, nor empty with despair, but in that way where she looked at the world, yet the world was only a painting in her eyes. In the painting were trees, grass, the moon, and a white-haired old man.
She saw them, but she did not care. She merely kept her eyes open, letting the light fall upon her retinas and then fade away, never caught by any emotion.
Her lips were slightly parted, like a flower half-open and half-closed.
The corners of her mouth neither rose nor fell, merely forming a straight line without a curve. She drifted in a circle over the lawn, from beneath the apple tree to the wall, then from the wall to the rosebush that was nearly dead.
Her hands hung at her sides. From time to time, her fingertips brushed the rose thorns. The thorns pierced her fingertips, but no blood seeped out, and she did not frown. She simply withdrew her hand, looked at it before her eyes, then lowered it and continued drifting.
"Albus, this is—" McGonagall's voice caught. She recognized that face: the face of the girl she had seen in the framed photographs on Dumbledore's desk, in those yellowed old pictures, and in the moments when he occasionally lost himself.
Ariana. Dumbledore's sister.
But the girl before them was not alive.
Dumbledore stood motionless at the center of the lawn. His hands hung at his sides, his fingers slightly spread, like someone waiting for another person to take his hand but too afraid to