WHO: Jasper Williamson, Amethyst Williamson (NPC). WHAT: The Williamsons pay their respects to Luke Skywalker Octavian Williamson. WHEN: 12 Feb, 2018. WHERE: Some graveyard near Edinburgh. WARNINGS: Just sads and creative swearing.
“No Luca?” Amethyst asked as she ducked under Jasper’s larger umbrella and found him sans child. She pulled the hood of her raincoat back, revealing a lightly made-up face with smudged eyeliner and mascara beneath her dry eyes.
She pulled a spliff out of a small silver case and tucked it back into her pocket.
Jasper raised an eyebrow as they walked slowly past the rows and rows of headstones, from the truly aged and unkempt towards the newer, fresher plots. He didn't know which was more depressing, the reminder that eventually people would stop giving a fuck about your death and even the marker of your burial would decay, or the sight of so many new headstones abound in the graveyard. "Really?"
“Like you can talk. You smell hungover, forget look it.” Amethyst tapped the end of her spliff with her wand and inhaled. “What a piss poor start to the day.”
Jasper’s face darkened as he thought about Noelle Zabini’s insult to the injury this morning. “To be fair, we should’ve expected February to be like a torrid hurricane of shit after a visit to a bad curry house.” He paused, glancing at the headstones about them and then made a decisive step to his left. “Where the fuck is it?”
“I think we missed it.” Amethyst hung back, letting the umbrella pass over her and droplets of rain fall onto her head. She lifted her wand to relight her spliff, calmly watching as her brother walked further up the row.
“We can’t have missed it, it’s right—“ Jasper turned, searching the names; Lennox, Murdoch, Tortorella. None of them looked like the row mates of his father.
“Just Accio Dad, who knows, might work.”
“I like you better when you’re not high,” Jasper snapped as he turned back and headed back the other way. Discovering his mistake was in turning the wrong direction, he led them up the correct path this time and stopped before Octavian’s grave.
Amethyst slipped her hand into Jasper’s and leaned into her brother, extinguishing her blunt and putting it away for the meantime.
Jasper laid the flowers he’d brought for Octavian on the grave and then stepped back. “You want to start or—?”
Amethyst inhaled deeply, then let it all out, a puff of water-vapour blowing from her mouth as she did. “He was such an idiot. Lonely, sure, but. God, Dad, you couldn’t have found a hooker for your needs?”
“Amy.”
“Don’t Amy me, Jasper. You get to be mad and yell at Death Eaters and drink and have all your fucking man pain. I get to smoke pot and tell my dad he’s an idiot in private. One of those things is less likely to end in me murdered too, honestly.” She brushed back the tears roughly, letting him squeeze her hand reassuringly. “Why can’t people in this family just... Go see a fucking mind healer or some shit?”
She shook her head and turned her gaze back to the headstone. “Your turn, by the way.”
Jasper squatted, as though he was trying to get closer to the man who was already 6 feet under the ground and deaf to all of this anyway. “I'm sorry if I disappointed you."
"You didn't disappoint him, you cock," Amethyst burst out, kneeing him suddenly in the shoulder. "If you keep up with this shit though, you're going to disappoint me."
"Do you mind? I'm trying to have a moment here!"
She sat down beside him and rest her head against his shoulder. "He was proud of you. Both of us. Maybe slightly more than you than me, I think. And don't say he was equally proud, it's just part and parcel of being older. You've had more time to do more things."
Jasper wrapped his arm around her. "I'm not a cock."
"You're the biggest cock I know, Jasper. I just happen to love you too," Amethyst added, drawing a smile out of him. "I miss you, Dad."
For the first time in about a year, Jasper started to cry.