Yue Sung is not a pushover (quiet_moon) wrote in thispurgatory, @ 2011-01-27 19:01:00 |
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Entry tags: | ! 1997-november, ! complete, ! log, yue sung |
WHO: Yue Sung
WHERE: London, home of a family friend
WHEN: around 10pm, Thursday night
WHAT: What happened to Yue and his sister, and mourning
Rating: PG
Stand-alone, complete
Minnie had finally fallen asleep, thanks to a dreamless sleep potion, and was now sprawled on the bed with a swollen face and tear tracks on her cheeks, limbs all over the place. Yue, however, was not asleep. He sat on the window seat in the bedroom, leaning against the window so his cheek was against the cold pane, staring into the dark street outside but actually seeing nothing. There were no tears on his cheeks and his eyes weren't swollen, but his face was pale, mouth set in a hard line.
Reality was only now sinking in now he was no longer being bombarded with information and having to stay calm because Minnie was making herself sick from hysterical crying. However, Yue still felt as if he was in some sort of sick nightmare and he was struggling to come to grips with what had happened.
Just this morning he’d been in Arithmancy, sitting next to Cal, Molly also nearby. There was still a subdued atmosphere due to the event in the Dark Arts class the previous day, but Yue’s thoughts were turning to more positive things, such as the class ahead and meeting up with Nathan for lunch, and also the sudden appearance of the DA posters about Kevin and Jillian Entwhistle.
Then Declan McLaggen came in with instructions from Professor McGonagall, calling Yue out of class. His initial thought was that someone saw him putting down the pamphlets a couple of days ago, despite all the care he’d taken not to be seen. From the looks on Molly and Cal’s faces, they were thinking the same thing. Tight-lipped, worried about what awaited him but with no way to escape, Yue gathered his books and bag to follow Declan out of the classroom. The other Gryffindor seemed just as baffled as Yue was, certainly he said he didn’t know the reason Professor McGonagall wanted him - and his sister.
It was learning that Minnie was being brought in as well that really worried Yue, and started him wondering whether this was just about the pamphlets. If it were the Carrows bringing him in then he wouldn’t be surprised at Minnie’s involvement in his punishment, since they already used the same tactics with Moira. But Professor McGonagall wasn’t the sort to do that and Yue thought she disliked the new teachers, she certainly seemed sympathetic- or as sympathetic as a lady like her got.
So it was a very mystified and rather worried Yue that arrived at Professor McGonagall’s office and went inside while Declan was dispatched to collect Minnie.
The moment he saw the Professor’s face, Yue knew that something was really wrong. There was emotion there, sorrow, not accusation or anger, and she very gently asked him to sit down and pushed some tea before him before she started to explain why he was there. The words dragging out of her as she was clearly unhappy to give him the news.
Five minutes later, Yue knew why she was reluctant as his world crashed around him. McGonagall's words fell like hard stones - His parents were dead. Murdered.
Numbly he stared at Professor McGonagall and then shakily denied her words. She was joking. She had to be. This was some poor trick. But there was no ‘aha! Gotcha!’ forthcoming. His mind threw up images of his parents, and what had happened to Chase's cat. The images mingled and he saw his parents fall dead under a flash of green light.
Minnie arrived with Declan then, just before Yue gave way to the pain bubbling up inside, perhaps Declan got a glimpse of Yue’s face as the eleven year old girl entered the office, but Yue didn’t notice him and Professor McGonagall shooed him away quickly. Minnie was already sniffling, scared of a punishment and not liking the look on Yue's face.
The sniffs stifled Yue's reaction, pushing him to move out of his seat and over to his sister's side, embracing her tightly, his voice cracking as he told her quietly in Korean that something bad had happened to their parents. He couldn't say they were murdered, couldn't even get the word 'dead' out. Professor McGonagall answered that question and Minnie promptly went into hystericals, screaming and crying, expressing the loud denials that were roaring inside of Yue.
The next few hours were a blur. After allowing them time to deal with the initial shock and grief, Professor McGonagall herded the siblings away to return to London, having requested the house elves to pack up some of their belongings. The next thing Yue knew, he and Minnie were stumbling out of the floo into the home of his father’s best friend and one of the managers of Sung Trading - Peter Kim.
It was from Manager Kim that Yue learned the full story. He was reluctant to tell it, certainly wouldn’t say anything while Minnie was there and waited until his wife and daughter Nancy had taken Minnie away to try and calm the girl down. Then, when it was clear Yue wouldn’t be fobbed off with some vague story, Kim explained how when he'd arrived at the house for a morning he'd found found John and Mei lying dead, blood everywhere, the signs point to a stabbing, not a magical death by the killing curse. The horror of the scene was written on his face and Yue knew then that his parents had suffered awfully before they’d died.
Manager Kim had obviously expected Yue to break down then, but Yue remained numb, unable to fully absorb the truth and react. He went through the motions of asking questions, finding out what was going on, whether he could see his parents and when that was denied, what to do next. The funeral would need to be soon, there were things to do, make sure it was right. He was the only son, he had to take charge.
Only now, after being sent to sleep with a dreamless sleep potion in hand, and now Minnie was in a deep sleep, could Yue let himself feel. As the numbness wore off, the pain of loss slashed at his gut and a sob wrenched its way up.
He shifted on the window seat, drawing his legs up to his chest and hugging them tightly, tucking his face down on his knees to muffle his cries. He didn’t want to wake Minnie and her to see him like this. He cried like that for a while, until his eyes were swollen and his throat raw, until desperate thirst prompted him to move and creep to the other bed in the room, where his things were laid out and a glass of water on the bed side table. The Kims had insisted the siblings stay with them, rather than an impersonal hotel, and of course they couldn’t stay in a home that was now a crime scene.
After gulping down the water, Yue sank down onto the floor, his back against the bed. It was dark on this side, since the only light came from the streetlights outside and the nightlight by Minnie’s bed. He sniffed, rubbing his nose that was blocked after all the crying, and then his hand scrabbled for the chain around his neck, drawing out the key hung there. The key Nathan had given him.
His fist closed around it, gripping tightly so the edges dug painfully into his palm. He hadn't thought about his boyfriend or friends since this morning, and they were probably wondering what had happened to him.
Swallowing, Yue hauled himself onto the bed and reached for the journal laying on the bedside table. Fingers stroked the leather cover, his teeth worrying at his bottom lip, eyes welling with tears again and breath catching. He didn’t know what to write. Or even if he could. To actually write what had happened just made it more real. His parents were dead. His mother would never again anxiously straighten his hair before an important event, and his father wouldn’t ever again crack his bad jokes. His mother wouldn’t be taking him to any more archaeological sites and getting girlishly excited over history. His father wouldn’t jam with him anymore during the holidays. Minnie would go into her teens without her mother to explain the mysteries of turning from girl to young woman, and would never have her father giving her away at her wedding.
Tears rolled down Yue’s cheeks, gathering at his chin and the end of his nose to drip onto the journal. He bit down on his hand, rocking back and forth as the pain of loss really started to slash at his insides. He should have been a better son, told them he loved them more, spent more time with them over summer, obeyed his father’s wishes to be good.
“Yongseo haejwo...” he whispered brokenly, hugging the journal to his chest. “Please forgive me... I’m sorry, I’m sorry...”
But nothing was going to bring them back now.
Finally, blurry eyed with his chest hurting, Yue opened his journal. He saw the messages from Nathan and clutched at the key around his neck again. Yes, he had to tell Nathan, and some of the others at least. It took a while to ward an entry, but then with a shaking hand Yue wrote an entry, just four short words:
My parents are dead.
The letters stared back at him. Stark black on white. Real. Tears splotched and blurred some of the letters as Yue touched the pages, as if reaching for some human contact through the book. Not that he could picture ever being able to smile again right now.