The morning after the Battle of Hogwarts, Hermione woke in her bed alone, unaware of when Ron had left in the night. She looked over to see Ginny asleep in her bed and for a moment, she wondered if she'd dreamed the whole thing. She looked at the clock. It was six-thirty. She pulled on her dressing gown and padded downstairs in her bare feet expecting to find Mrs. Weasley in the kitchen, but the house was unnaturally quiet and the kitchen was empty. She filled the enormous kettle and used Bellatrix's wand to light the stove and set the kettle on to boil. She knew she should try and think of it as her wand, but it just didn't feel right. She dug around in the cabinets until she found the large pot Mrs. Weasley used to make porridge and set it on the counter. She went to the pantry to get oatmeal. When she came out Fleur was standing in the kitchen.
"I thought I'd make breakfast," Hermione explained.
"Good idea," Fleur said. "I don't know if we'll see Molly today or not."
Hermione filled the pot with the wand and lit the stove.
Fleur got milk and butter out of the icebox and then went to get cinnamon, nutmeg, vanilla, and sugar out of the spice cabinet. Hermione looked at all the other ingredients and smiled sadly. "You're going to have to add all that. I've been making it with just oats and water."
Fleur gave her a warm smile back. "I'll show you. It's quite good this way."
"I know," Hermione said. "I love the way you make porridge. I don't know why I didn't have you show me at the cottage."
Fleur looked at her. "You had a lot on your plate then."
Hermione nodded.
They made the porridge and by the time it was almost done, Bill and Ron had come downstairs. Bill hugged Fleur and kissed her good morning. Ron hung back in the kitchen door.
"Morning," he said to the floor. His ears were very red.
Hermione poured tea into four cups and set the pot on the table. Everyone took a cup and sat down. Bill sat next to Fleur and Ron sat next to Hermione.
"What time did you get up," Bill asked Fleur. Hermione noticed they sat very close together, but Ron had left a significant gap between her and him. He still hadn't looked at her. She had a sinking feeling that he regretted last night and it made her feel sick. She had hoped last night was the beginning of something, but now, in the cold light of morning, she wasn't so sure.
Bill and Fleur continued to talk quietly. Percy came in and got himself a cup of tea. Hermione got up and served porridge. Charlie came in and she gave him a bowl. When Ginny came in, Hermione got up and served her too. She didn't know what else to do with herself and Ron's silence was unnerving. She hadn't exactly expected him to talk about last night as such, but she'd expected some acknowledgement, a touch, a whisper, something. Harry came down then and Ginny got up and fixed his bowl of porridge. She set it in front of him and kissed the top of his head. That, Hermione thought, was all she wanted, just a small gesture of affection. Mr. and Mrs. Weasley came down then and when Mrs. Weasley saw them all eating breakfast together, she sobbed, and then George came in and they all started crying. The whole family ended up in a giant hug around George and his mother, leaving Harry, Hermione, and Fleur to stand awkwardly to the side. When the family settled down enough to resume their seats, Hermione got Mr. and Mrs. Weasley and George each a bowl of porridge, because that apparently was her new role, Porridge Master. She supposed it beat having no role at all. No one ate very much. Even Ron, notorious for being able to eat through any crisis, didn't finish his breakfast. Reluctantly, talk turned to Fred's funeral. The whole family walked up the hill to the Weasley family cemetery behind the field where they played Quidditch. Harry went back to bed. Hermione and Fleur cleaned up breakfast and started taking stock of the food situation so they could plan lunch. Fred's body, was enshrouded in a simple wooden casket in the parlor.
When the family returned from the hill, Bill told Fleur and Hermione that they'd chosen a spot and the funeral would be in the morning. The Ministry had actually determined the date of the funeral, all the funerals. All fifty-six of them would be held, four a day, over the next two weeks. Harry had already decided he would attend all of them. Ron and Hermione didn't feel like he should do that alone, so they would be going too. Ginny had also decided to go, because she didn't ever intend to be left behind again. After lunch, Hermione and Fleur went to Diagon Alley to buy funeral robes for Hermione. Fleur had to take Muggle money from Hermione and exchange it for Galleons at Gringott's because Hermione wasn't allowed in the bank. The Goblins were still arguing that she, Harry, and Ron should be prosecuted for breaking and entering, along with a host of other crimes, but the Ministry held fast that it wouldn't be doing that. Negotiations were on-going. In the meantime, Harry and Hermione's accounts were frozen. Ron didn't have an account.
Madam Malkin's Robes for All Occasions was busy but Hermione and Fleur didn't linger to shop. Hermione picked out a simple set of traditional high-collared robes in black and two long thin silk scarves, one in black and the other blue. She'd been wearing a winter scarf all the time to cover the wound on her neck, but it was too warm to wear in May. They took her purchases and Disapparated back to the Burrow. It was weird to Disapparate alone. For months, she'd had Ron or Harry and usually both of them with her every time she Disapparated.
xXx
Ron felt like a complete berk trying to dress for his brother's funeral. His brother was dead. Tonks and Lupin were dead. Loads of people were dead. Teddy was an orphan now. Hermione might as well be an orphan. And what had he done? He'd rubbed up against her in the night like some bloody wanker and then cried. He'd cried! At least he'd remembered to tell her he loved her first. She'd said it back but then he'd cried. Cried! He shook his head at how bloody pathetic he was. She'd been there in his arms, warm and inviting. He'd had his mouth on her breast. He'd been so close to getting it right and then he'd failed. Everything he'd read in the book he'd gotten from Bill after Christmas before last went right out of his head and he'd botched it. She'd been perfect and he'd been a prat. Fred would so take the mickey if he knew about last night, but Fred would never take the mickey out of him again, because Fred was dead, and that was final. In an hour, they were going to put him in the ground and then what? Life would go on with eight instead of nine. With just George, not Fred and George, not Forge. He didn't know how George was even getting out of bed. Ever since the battle, his chest had felt tight like there was a cauldron sitting on it weighing him down. The only time he hadn't felt that was for those brief wonderous moments in bed with Hermione. She'd felt so good in his hands, she'd smelled so good, the taste of her skin was so good. There was so much he'd wanted to do that he hadn't done, because he'd been too bloody busy crying all over her like a giant baby. He'd wanted to say something to her at breakfast, but everyone was there and now they had to go bury Fred in a little while and then go to three more funerals. Why did Harry want to attend every bloody funeral? He sighed. He didn't want to bury Fred. He didn't want to stand there next to George and watch them put Fred in the ground. He couldn't bear the anguish on the faces of his parents and siblings. It was too much.
He looked in the mirror. He couldn't even tie his bloody tie right.
"Hey," Hermione said, from the doorway to his room. "It's time."
He looked at her and wanted to weep all over again. She stood there in full-length funeral robes, buttoned up to the top of her neck and all he wanted to do was rip them off, to carry her to bed and pretend none of this was happening, but instead he said, "I can't get this."
"Let me," she said and stepped into the room. She reached up with thin fingers and deftly fixed his tie as though she tied men's ties all the time, like she'd done this a million times before for a million other lovers, and he despaired that he'd ever be good enough for her. "Thanks," he said, hating himself for the way his voice caught. He followed her downstairs where he looked at the floor, knowing that if he looked at anyone's face, he'd lose it and spend the rest of the day sobbing.
His father cast the spell to levitate the casket and the family walked behind it up the hill. They walked in pairs in birth order: Bill and Charlie directly behind their parents, then Percy and George followed by Ron and Ginny. They could walk in pairs now that they were a family of eight instead of nine. Fleur, Harry, and Hermione, walked three abreast behind the family followed by Lee Jordan and Angelina Johnson and a hundred other people.
Many people spoke. People loved Fred, but of course, he knew that. As everyone spoke about Fred's enthusiasm for life, his generous nature, his sense of humor, Ron had the desperate urge to stand up and say "he cursed me with a lifelong fear of spiders because he turned my teddy bear into one when I was really little," but he didn't. It just seemed easier to be annoyed or angry than it was to be so profoundly sad. His mother's soft weeping was killing him. When the family stood to place white roses on the grave, Ron's eyes skimmed the crowd looking for Hermione. She was there, holding Harry's arm, her eyes downcast. He sighed and dropped the rose onto Fred's grave. Like Fred gave a toss about flowers, but it was traditional, so it was done. He resumed his place next to Ginny and the family retraced its steps back to the garden where there would be a reception.
xXx
They actually stood in a line, again in birth order, to shake people's hands and thank them for coming. Everyone brought food. He couldn't help thinking that there was more food piled on that one overflowing table than he'd seen in the last year. He wondered if Harry and Hermione were thinking that too. When the crowd finally started to thin out, Ron found himself actually grateful to have another funeral to go to so he could get out of there. His family's collective grief was suffocating. He kissed his mother's damp cheek and hugged his father and brother's and then took Hermione's arm as Ginny took Harry's and they Disapparated to the Midland's for Colin Creevy's funeral. They'd been to the Midland's while they were on the lam, but none of them had been to Colin Creevy's house before, so once they'd Apparated to Sherwood, they had to take the Knight Bus to his house.
Since Ron didn't know Colin that well, he expected the funeral to be easier, but the agony on Colin's parents' and brother's faces mirrored the agony on Ron's family's faces and it wasn't easier at all. It was a Muggle funeral with men lifting the casket. They'd asked Harry to be one of those men and he'd agreed. Worse, after the funeral, Dennis introduced his parents to the three of them and they had to stand there while the Creevy's thanked them and that somehow made it all so much worse. They were getting ready to leave, when Dennis approached Hermione.
"I just wanted to tell you as a Muggleborn, how much your role in all this mattered to us. You really were our champion, Hermione, none of us Muggleborns will ever forget that."
Hermione was clearly stunned by the statement, but managed to thank him for his kind words and to again offer her condolences for his loss. Ron could tell it cost her. The last thing he wanted to do was attend another funeral, but that's what they did. The next two funerals were for people none of them had ever met. The first was for an employee of the Knight Bus and the next was for a pastry chef at Madam Puddifoot's. Ron couldn't focus on anything said about either one of them. All he could feel was Hermione's shoulder pressed against his as they sat in folding chairs while Madam Puddifoot gave the eulogy for her erstwhile pastry chef. He wanted to take her hand. He wanted her to hold on to his arm as she'd held on to Harry's at Fred's funeral, but she kept her hands clasped together in her lap. She sat perfectly still with a blank stare through both funerals. Next to them sat Harry and Ginny. She had her arm around his and their hands were clasped as they listened to the speakers. Ron wanted not to be such a prat. He wanted to go home, but he didn't want to see his family. In a weird way, he found himself missing the tent. It would be nice to retreat somewhere.
