A/N: For Cheeky's Weekly Drabbles Competition.
Disclaimer: If I were JK Rowling, I wouldn't need to write fanfiction, would I? Alas, I have not written a best-seller series, I have not changed countless millions of lives for the better, and I am not one of the richest women in the world. I have a cat, though.
Prompt Word: listen
Color/Mood: Sky Blue/Impatient
Old and Grey
Ronald Weasley is old.
He can feel it in his bones— today is his one-hundred and eleventh birthday, and he hates it. Hates being without her, here on this Earth.
Ron is tired, and it shows.
His thinning hair is streaked with grey— it's more silver than red, now—and his eyes are clouded. Spectacles sit neatly on the edge of his nose; he can't see too well these days.
He grows irritated, gets impatient faster than he used to, and he finds himself scowling for days on end.
He envisions his late wife often, standing in the kitchen, her arms crossed, scowling, telling him to listen while she tells him something important that he will surely forget later.
Most days he is angry— at her, at the world— because she had promised him that they would grow old and grey together. In the end, he is old and grey and alone.
And it kills him— it bothers him that he is reminded of her every day, that her pillow still holds the last traces of her rose-scented perfume, that he hasn't packed away her things. He knows he won't— can't— bring himself to pack away those last reminders of her, because living without them is somehow worse than living with the memories.
Their wedding photo sits on the mantle in a gilded frame, and most days, he likes to sit in his rocking chair (the one that he rocked his precious Rose in all those years ago) and stare at it— he imagines (or maybe he remembers?) her spinning, round and round and round again, the sky blue wedding dress she wore flowing out around her. And maybe he smiles— he doesn't really know anymore.
The grandchildren are grown, and their children are older now, too. Sometimes he mixes up their names, sometimes he forgets them altogether.
He is tired to the bone.
He finds himself getting slower these days, wishing he could stay in bed— instead he forces himself to putter around the kitchen and make two cups of tea, as if nothing has changed, as if he is young again.
But it has changed, and he is old now.
But still, he sees her, her laughter echoes through the halls of their home, and he thinks that perhaps he is not so alone after all.
A/N: So… good? Bad?