A/N: Hello there. Read this.
The silence that proceeded battle lay heavy; the air felt thick and every unstirring corridor seemed smothered and empty.
A lone figure stood among the dead, hands in his pockets and his head tilted slightly to one side. His eyes were upon the girl at his feet.
Last he had saw her, she had been stirring feebly. Now she lay on the floor, amidst all the others. Though she had been positioned with dignity, he could tell it had been done hastily; her head lolled to one side and her hair lay splayed in blood-matted tangles.
Ron sat cross-legged beside her, numbness and disbelief breaking upon him like waves. Though Fred, Lupin, Tonks and countless other familiar faces stared, unseeing, all around him, it hadn't really seemed real until he had spotted his ex- his first- girlfriend. Perhaps it was seeing someone so connected, and yet so disconnected with him that had finally made it hit home. He could not tell precisely.
Ron's relationship with Lavender was a feature of his past self, a self who felt just as disconnected from the man now wearing the maroon jumper. In a single stroke, a flash of silver and rubies and the clash of metal upon metal, Ron Weasley had grown from a boy to a man. Gone was the Ron who would go out with a girl just to make Hermione jealous, gone was the Ron whose only wish was to step from the shadows and shine forth, the best of all of his brothers. In that single stroke, Ron realised that all he wanted, that the only thing worth wanting, had been waiting for him since the age of eleven, bouncing up and down in her seat in eagerness to answer a teacher's question.
Without really thinking about it, he reached out and took Lavender's hand, caressing her fingers with his thumb. She was still warm. A sobbing Parvati had told him that she had hung on almost until dawn.
He watched as a trickle of blood seeped from her hairline and into her staring eye, finally mingling with the tear-tracks still glistening on her wan cheek. He remembered cupping that cheek. He remembered its delicate blush, like oil paint upon silk.
Then, swimming hazily to the forefront of his mind, came the 'my sweetheart' necklace, the many clumsy and unrefined snogging sessions, the way she would corner him and ask him about his feelings, her calling him 'Won Won'...
A tumult of emotions seemed to bubble in Ron's chest. Affection, sadness, exasperation, embarrassment and a mad desire to laugh combined, untill they burst from him, manifesting themselves in a rasping noise from his throat, part-way between a laugh and a sob.
He looked down at her again. Greyback's attack had been frenzied and hungry. He had concentrated, it seemed, upon her throat, though her face still bore signs of injury. Blood, though now clotting, still leaked glutinously from her hairline. Her wounds had been bandaged clumsily by Madam Pomfrey, who, though had risen to the occasion fearlessly and expertly, had been somewhat busy that night. Blood was beginning to blossom there too, staining the white material. Ron did not wonder why Madam Pomfrey had not healed her wounds by magic; he knew from bitter experience that werewolf bites were different, how long they took to stop bleeding as well as their resistance to magical healing methods.
Silently, Ron pulled out his wand. The blood vanished at once, the material now clean. Moving it then to her hair, he managed to remove the worst of the blood from that too. He positioned it more neatly behind her head before wiping the blood, tears and dirt from her face with the sleeve of his robe. Finally, he placed a finger over each of her eyelids and closed them. Taking hold of her hand again, he raised it gently to his lips.
He felt a hand on his shoulder. He didn't have to look round. Ron tilted his head to one side, resting a cheek on the smooth skin
How long they stayed like that, with himself looking down at Lavender, Ron did not know. At last, however, he placed her hand neatly back at her side and stood up.
He placed an arm around Hermione's shoulders, as she wrapped one around his waist. Together, her head upon his shoulder, they walked away.
A/N: Goodbye. Review.
-QOTR Xx