Postbellum
CHAPTER 1
How do I begin?
How far back do I go? Do you need me to start from the beginning, from my first hazy memories of strange words, or the warmth of being held, or getting sparked when I chewed on a wand someone set next to me?
Or can I start from the end, from the soundless screams and the unfeeling cold and the pain, the unimaginable pain in the air forever lit by green streams of light?
Whenever I begin my story, from either end or anywhere in between, it will be about him. For the rest of my life, my story will always be about him, never me. No one will look at me and see me, will look at me without pity, will smile at me except out of compassion.
You probably don't even recognize me without him, do you? Don't worry, I don't recognize myself either.
But despite that, how do you think I feel now that I'm only half of what many saw as a single person? Bet you don't think I'm so funny now, do you?
I still run the shop, selling our staples to Hogwarts kids, keeping up appearances and coming out with a new product every six months or so. Might have to stop that soon, though – I'm running out of usable material from our brainstorming sessions. I just haven't had the touch since the incident.
Oh, don't look at me like that. I know what you're thinking – poor thing, he was left behind to deal with the aftermath, all alone, however does he face his reflection in the morning, that kind of thing. Don't. Just don't. It's painful enough to get it from your own mother, let alone every stranger on the street.
Yes, everyone around here knows me now, even if it's only that they notice something's "off" about me. It's not the bandage I still have to wear looping around my forehead, though. Many have those now, or better yet, scars that will never heal – some clearly visible, some not.
No, something else is more obviously missing, although no one ever says it out loud. As if I don't hear the concerned whispers as I pass. I do still have one good ear, you know.
But you know what? I think they miss him more than I do. They miss the comfort of a good laugh, of someone who mocks death even as he, as well as the rest of us, is and are forced to stare it in the face. He was always the funny one, you know. Even when we were little, he always got more laughs, although we seemed to come as a package deal.
Yes, a package of mischief and hilarity and good-heartedness and casual disrespect for authority. That's what everyone saw you know, even what we saw in ourselves sometimes. They never called us noble or brave or fierce while he was alive. But now, somehow, we both are – him in dying in the slaughter, and me for surviving without him, I guess.
Honestly, I'm a coward, and I don't deserve the compliments. But I take them without arguing in order to comfort those who give them. It's how we all go on, us guilty ones, the survivors. We show our respect for the dead, as if everyone who died is a symbol of the triumph of good over evil.
But they're not. My brother isn't, Lavender isn't, Colin isn't, Dobby isn't. They're not symbols. They're people, people who were destroyed by a fight that wasn't even theirs. And no, before you say so, it wasn't everyone's fight. It was the fight of a few over ultimate power, one that sucked in thousands on both sides, decimating our entire world in the process.
That's how I look at it now. It's how I looked at it then, too; I've never been much of an incendiary, actually. It was him who got us involved in all the pranks. Don't even ask me how many points we lost because of him or how many detentions he got us in, though somehow no one remembers those after everything.
And it was him who wanted to start PotterWatch and bust out under Umbridge and join the battle. It was him because despite everything, he had such a sense of justice, something that I never had. I'm a coward, as I said before. I was going to be in Hufflepuff, can you imagine that? The hat said it was a good choice for me, though the entire bloody family has been Gryffindor through and through. The only reason I begged for it is because of the look he gave me from where he already sat at the table next to Percy. I didn't want to let him down.
But I did, you see. I should have been standing right next to him like always. I could have warned him, or pulled him out of the way or told him to pay better attention, not get distracted like he always did and get himself hurt. The first year we played Quidditch he got hit by a bludger a few times every practice because he kept watching the game. He even fell off his broom once, and I almost killed myself catching him. He was three hundred feet in the air, what was I supposed to do? Let him fall? We both had broken legs after that, but I didn't mind. I would've felt like mine was broken anyway.
I bet that sounds real sweet, right? Oh he saved his twin from falling, how kind! How brotherly! How absolutely precious, now that he's passed on, you know. I bet memories like this just help him through the day. No.
They don't. They just fill my mind and I can't get rid of them no matter how much I try. I couldn't get them to stop when I walked out of the Great Hall after I said goodbye to him for the last time, and I haven't been able to since. The first time it happened, in the quiet while, as we learned later, Harry was in the Forbidden Forest, I walked onto the bridge, picked my way over bodies made of stone and many different kinds of flesh. I stepped on the hair of a Death Eater – dead, unconscious, I didn't check. The hair at least seemed alive, getting tangled up with my foot. I didn't pause to look back when I stepped forward and heard a ripping sound. I just made my way to the edge of the Bridge and looked out over the chasm, looked down into it and saw my life, me, just floating gently down into the nothing. How would it feel, to let go, like he did?
Something tickled my ankle, and I reached down to pull it away. Strands of hair connected to a Death Eater mask and hood, ghoulish-looking but harmless as it shimmered in the lights of fires and fading spells. I detached it from my shoelaces and pants and held it for a moment, then…
Oh, I bet you think I dropped it into the abyss, right? Let it go, banishing evil instead of killing myself in my grief. Establishing myself as a survivor, devoting myself to the rebuilding of our lives after everything passed and creating a world where good flourished. Well, no, I didn't, I threw it back onto the Bridge and walked away from it.
It didn't change my mind, you know. It was my own fears, me being a coward again, that stopped me. I fear Death, unlike him. And I saw no reason to drop the mask, to pretend like I was making a difference or making a statement – something like "that evil would be destroyed forever after this battle was over" or "that all of our sacrifices would mean something in the end." No, I put it back on the Bridge because no matter if I got rid of it or not, there were hundreds more just like it, all over the castle, on live bodies and dead ones. There will always be more just like it, no matter how many of our bodies pile up.