The funeral was yesterday. Parvati came back late on – Padma with her. They shared her bed and cried themselves to sleep.

I feel like I should be trying to help: even though they’re not my closest friends and I’ve never been in that situation. But there’s nothing I can do. I hate feeling useless: and that’s what I am here.

And it’s my birthday.

It’s childish, I know, but I always wake up early on my birthday. There’s no point to it – no Granger family tradition of leaving presents at the end of the bed. I suppose it simply comes from excitement and anticipation.

I have trouble keeping track of my age. It’s very odd. It takes at least until New Year before it sinks in that my age has changed. That… whatever it is… it makes me feel younger and less mature than I am. I know birthdays and chronological ages have very little to do with maturity, but so many things depend on your age – films, voting, licences, marriage… Not that I’m old enough for those yet. I can’t imagine being married. Actually, I can barely imagine anything past the end of school, so I suppose it’s not surprising that I can’t imagine being married.

The wedding itself, of course, has been planned in detail for as long as I can remember. I don’t know how it’ll cope with my having male best friends, though – somehow I think they wouldn’t be too happy with the ball-gowns. Of course, there are ways to get round that – have them involved in a slightly different context.

I want my life to be perfect. But if I can’t have that… I don’t want to be alone. If it had been my parents – who would be holding me tonight?

We should let them sleep. I’ll wake the others, turn off all the alarm clocks, try to be as quiet as possible… I’m sure neither of them have slept well at all since that day. As if it wasn’t bad enough that they died, it had to be like that. It had to be splashed across the front page – “Latest Mysterious Attack” when we all know who was responsible, all the comments and opinions: because people are always going to talk about it, and not everyone keeps track of who’s standing three feet behind them, and not everyone cares. Slytherins…

Of course, it’s possible they’re awake behind the curtains; but they won’t want to hear us just going on as normal. Their parents were buried yesterday. I guess it must seem like the world should just stop. But it doesn’t. And we all go on.

Damn. I just love being the birthday girl.

I can’t celebrate today, not with all that’s happened. Maybe I should. But then I’ll see Parvati with the grief in her eyes, and the black band in her hair, and…

I suppose I could open a present now – the one Dad sent with me. And I should get one from Mum at breakfast, and the boys should give me something as well. Good grief. I’m worrying about how many birthday presents I’m going to get. No mention of the fact that the givers are all in grave danger – or, for that matter, so am I. No thoughts of the fact that we may not make it to my next birthday. Oh, you know what? I’m allowed.

This is my day. So it’s going to be a good day. I’m going to make it a good day. I’m not going to worry, I’m not going to think about any of those things, I’m just going to have a good day. OK, yes, I have work to do but I enjoy that, and apart from that I can spend time with my friends and do nice things and just generally have a good day. A happy birthday.

Something special about today… And don’t think I’ve forgotten. Never going to do that. Ever.

It’s her birthday. I would throw her a party if it didn’t seem so horrendously inappropriate. Wow, big words. But it would be wrong to have a party when they only buried the Patils yesterday. And anyway, we’d have to draft the house-elves and then she’d start babbling on about slavery and so forth. So, for once, a party is not a good idea. But we can have parties later. We’ll all be turning seventeen in a couple of years, that’s a big one. And Christmas is better because well be alone here, more or less, with all the people going home. Not that there as many people as there were. It’s totally understandable that the parents and such want their kids… oh damn. Parvati and Padma.

I took her to the Yule Ball. I was about the worst date there, and I managed to fight with Hermione as well: so that wasn’t the best night of my life. But I went on a date with her – my first date ever, come to think of it, though it hardly counts as one – and now her parents are dead and she can’t go home for Christmas. The last Christmas she could have spent with her parents, instead she spent being ignored by her date at a stupid Ball. I feel even worse about it than I did. She’s a nice girl. She deserved better than that. Better than me.

I was wondering when I’d get back to the self-pity.

I got her a nice present. I think. I hope. I mean, it’s not much, because… damn it, Weasley! But it’s pretty and practical, the number of books she has, and I think it works as an ornament even if she doesn’t need it as a bookend. Of course, Harry managed to find her yet another book, but it’s safe to say she’ll appreciate it. It’s part of who she is. I wouldn’t change her for anything. Except, maybe, I’d stop her being so sad. It’s wonderful, the way she feels so much for other people – when she pulls herself out of her books enough to notice – but it doesn’t do much for her, now, does it? But I’ll be damned if she doesn’t let it go today.

Speaking of people with the weight of the world on their shoulders… Harry’s worrying me. He’s pulling away from us again, for our own good, and I’m worried. It’s like every time it’s a little harder to get him back, and if this keeps going then maybe one day he’ll manage, one day we won’t have the energy to keep dragging him back and he’ll spiral away into a lonely pit of despair and there won’t be anyone to fight by his side when the day comes and he won’t even want to fight so he’ll just give up and that’ll be the end of him. I’m not letting that happen.

It’s good that there haven’t been any attacks since. I mean, obviously it’s good, and it hasn’t exactly been a long time, but it’s good for him. Because every time someone gets hurt or someone gets killed, he adds a little more to his guilt; and he’s still recovering from seeing Parvati stumble into the common room the next day, with her hair down trying to hide her red eyes. And she couldn’t even look at him. She hardly looked at any of us – didn’t look at me – she just ran right up to her dorm; but because she didn’t look at him, he thinks she blames him for it, because everyone blames Harry for everything because he invented the damn Killing Curse, don’t you know.

I just worry. About him, about my family, about what’s happening, about everybody and everything and I can ignore it most of the time, but every now and then I just can’t help thinking about it all.

Today, I can. Today is carefree day. Not a cloud on the horizon for my best girl’s birthday. Not if I can help it.

I’m surprised they didn’t attack the funeral party. That would have made a statement. But then, we all know they’re evil and heartless – they don’t need to prove themselves to anybody.

I can’t help but wonder if I’m better off, having lost my parents when I was a baby. How can I miss them when I didn’t even know them? I do, but…

It’s like I have this image of who they were, and what our family would have been like; but when it gets too bad I can tell myself that it isn’t real and it never was and it probably wouldn’t have worked out like that anyway. And the pain passes. But if you have memories of how it was, if you had a family and you grew up with that love, then suddenly it was ripped away? There’s no way of telling yourself that it doesn’t really matter, you can’t tell yourself it was a fantasy and try to forget about it. It was there. You had it in your grasp. You held it dear without even noticing. And then it was gone.

I’m not responsible for any of it. For their deaths, for helping the girls through it, for Voldemort, for… for anything. I’m not. I’m a teenage boy. There’s no way on earth I could be responsible for that.

It doesn’t stop me feeling it. I wish it did. Maybe that way I could sleep without help.

I’ve been trying a couple of different potions, but the only ones that work happen to be addictive, and I don’t need that on top of everything else. Besides, you never know when one of my dreams will turn into Technicolor inside information on the arch-enemy. And it’s OK if I only get two hours sleep a night because that gives me a whole six more hours to study. Well, five, but who cares? I just lie in bed working on silencing charms.

It would be most satisfactory if I could cast a silencing charm on somebody else. Malfoy, for example. There’s not much I can do to his sneering face without resorting to physical violence, but I could stop his sneering voice… But wait. I’m not allowed to.

Since when was Ron the leader of this little group?

Since he acquired some sense and started making better decisions than either Hermione or I did, that’s when. But I suppose we’re all leaders in our own way. We certainly have strong enough personalities. In fact, that goes for most of Gryffindor. I’m surprised the tower hasn’t exploded from the daily contests of wills. Bravery seems to tip into cocksure headstrong arrogance, more often than not, and that leads to confrontation. It’s been more subdued, lately, but it still happens. It seems so petty, though. Squabbling over whose fault it was that we lost ten house points, when one of our own has lost so much more.

Ah, who gives? It’s done. Nothing we can do to change it, so we might as well just go on with our lives. It’s not like we were the ones called out that day.

I think we all knew, right then. We didn’t know how bad it was – didn’t know they were dead – but we knew they’d been attacked. And every one of us thanked the Lord that it hadn’t been our family, that it hadn’t been us on our way to the Headmaster’s office. Though I hardly have any family left to lose. And honestly enough, most of my family is here. So if they get attacked, chances are I’ll see it happen. And I’ll be getting the same treatment.

That’s an oddly cheering thought.

Cheering… Oh damn. Nearly forgot again. It’s a good thing Ron took me on the present-shopping trip or it would have kept on slipping my mind. God, I’m useless. But then, I don’t have as much of a reason to remember as he does.