Written for Magical Objects & Their Uses Assignment #7: Cameras.
That day, the harsh reflection from the glossy surface of the picture immediately caught her attention as she walked into her home office. Posted up on a bulletin board by her desk, she spent her days trying not to look at it.
Memories of happy times that can never be repeated sometimes have that effect.
Even if only in her mind, she wanted to be able to say that she hadn't thought about him in months. This, however, would have been the saddest of lies, and she absolutely could not lie to herself any longer. In truth, there wasn't a moment that passed without some image of him burned inside her brain. Somehow, she felt that if she accepted this fact, she could perhaps work to change it.
When the sun was shining onto bright green grass and she was enjoying herself on summer days, she saw his laughing smile, the freckles sprinkled across his cheeks, and the lanky but still graceful gait he walked with. When she closed her eyes at the end of the night, things took a different turn. Those dark and starry skies brought memories of dust billowing up from a stone wall knocked to pieces. She saw the undeniable signs of an explosion, and heard the very loud cries of a family devastated by loss. Down to her stripped-bare soul, she was haunted by these thoughts.
Of course, the Weasleys didn't know why Hermione Granger of all people was so grief stricken over the death of their son. To them, she seemed to be nothing more than a mourning friend, and Hermione wasn't eager to correct them. To let them know that she was hurting the same as they were almost seemed to take away from their grief, and she didn't want to become a burden to a family already making their way through that particular hell.
She was certain that she could do it; could hold in her sorrow, her memories, and everything she wanted to say about him. Except for when the picture pinned to the board on her desk caught her eye. And so often it did, that she was now used to the constricting feeling it triggered deep in her chest. Again, it was no unhappy memory—and that was the problem.
It was the picture of a perfect couple—though they were certainly an unlikely couple as well. The boy—a tall, gangly ginger with the most wonderful eyes—was smiling like a lunatic, lips stretched so wide they could span the Earth. The girl, for her part, seemed to be trying to hide behind her bushy hair as the actions of the scene unfolded.
It was a quick thing, the wizard picture. Everything happened very fast, just as it had in real life. Fred Weasley, the prankster and Gryffindor Quidditch star himself, slung his arm around the bookish girl in the picture, and planted a sloppy kiss on her cheek. Immediately turning red, the girl covered her face with her hands and the scene restarted. George had been the one behind the camera, urging them on.
Hermione could remember that night acutely, even without the constant reminder. Gryffindor had won their Quidditch match against Slytherin, and all seemed well in the world. The fire whiskey was flowing freely—though of course Hermione took no part, concerned about her exams the next day—and the kiss had seemed harmless enough at the time, merely the result of drunkenness. When that simple action blossomed into something more, neither of them really saw it coming. And so that summer had stretched into a winter and the years had started to fly by, when everything came to a sudden, grinding halt.
The Battle of Hogwarts. The couple swore to Godric that after the war…after the war, they would come clean about their relationship. Get married, have kids, send them off to school someday. They agreed on the whole domestic scene, even though Fred mockingly abhorred the idea of commitment and settling down. The idea they had painted of the future comforted them in times of struggle—when Hermione was off in the woods with Ron and Harry, and Fred was on Potterwatch—and that was enough.
But that prospect of a beautiful life together had been shattered like the stone wall on that fateful day. Hermione, the wretched survivor in a couple that had once held so much life, was stuck holding onto a mere memory. The picture, however seemingly insignificant, was all she had left.
There it would stay on her bulletin board, making her at once happy and sad, and giving her something to strive for once more.