Disclaimer: Nope, none of them are mine, sadly.
He didn't believe her when she said she was a human whirlwind, knocking over everything in her path and breaking anything breakable that had the unfortunate fate of landing in her hands. How could someone who barely reached up to his shoulder cause such devastating destruction? He was twice her size and between the both of them, would definitely be the proverbial dragon in a crystal ball emporium.
But there she was, her tiny form lying underneath the enchanted ceiling, surrounded by the dead and debris of battle, the moon and starlight casting an ethereal glow on her too-pale heart-shaped face. Delicate chin, delicate hands. Deceptive. Destructive. Just..lying there, quiet and spent like the calm after a storm had run its course. Granted, the chaos and calamity was not her doing, but still. There it was. In her presence, surrounding her, following her even in death.
He looked at her again from his vantage point, by his -dead- brother's side. Dead. It was an awful word, really. Short, curt. Devoid of any life or emotion. Not what he would associate his brother with. Or her, for that matter.
She was lying just beside his brother, in that familiar hall underneath the twinkling stars. Yet once again, she was out of his reach. It did not seem appropriate to turn his body at the slightest angle, to face her, to move his arms the slightest just so he could caress her face once more, to cup his palm under that delicate chin, to place his fingertips to her lips for one last time. It was not because of his brother's body lying there beside her. It was not because of the six-year gap since the last he's done so. He was, as it is, made painfully aware of his illegitimacy to grief her, by the body lying on her other side.
Her husband.
As he sat there surrounded by death, destruction, chaos, and all other sense of disorder and sorrow that could be, his mind went back in time, space and memory, right back to this very hall almost a decade ago. Where it all started for him, really.
"I warn you though, Weasley, I tend to knock
over everything in my path, and break everything that has the sorry
luck of landing in my hands."And with a wink and a grin, she turned
around and hurried back to her waiting group of friends, disappearing
out of the great hall. He stared at the space she had occupied just a
moment before, and would have gone on staring longer, had his friends
not start making kissing noises and laughing at the dopey smile on
his face. He couldn't care less, he did it! He gathered his balls in a bunch, and asked Nymphadora -"I mean Tonks"- our for a date, for Valentine's Day,
and she'd said yes!
As he stared at the broken pieces of what could have been his life, Charlie Weasley knew what that odd Percy-looking feeling at the back of his head was back then. He should have heeded her advice there and then, and not place his heart in her deceptively safe hands so readily.