Written for the Reviews Lounge Summer Project. A Percy Weasley story.
Summer was the hardest time.
Winter was Christmas and snow and firewhiskey and family. You could forget yourself for hours at a time in winter, when people crowded around you and laughed and teased and tried not to remember.
Autumn was falling leaves and piles of work and writing letters to nephews and nieces and cousins and second cousins at Hogwarts. You could force yourself to do other things in autumn, when people were back from holidays and nobody talked about anything except how much work there was to do.
Spring was budding flowers and romance and garden parties and planning. You could book your calendar up in spring and fall asleep from exhaustion at the end of the day and sleep without dreaming and wake up the next morning and do it all again.
Summer was the hardest. Summer was long days with nothing to do except remember. Summer was holidays and heat and that feeling of I can't be bothered doing anything except lying in this chair. Summer was crowded with children and get-togethers where adults looked at each other and raised their eyebrows and shook their heads and said We were never as bad as that.
Summer was remembering.
And he couldn't stand it. Sometimes, he would hear one of the boys laugh and he would think for a moment that maybe maybe maybe maybe it had all been a dream. Another one of their pranks. A hallucination. A spell of madness. But it never was. And it always seemed worse afterwards because just for a moment he had imagined that the world was right again.
After the funerals, they tried to pretend to get on with life. But in summer, the walls broke down and he would catch Ginny crying in the orchard, or see Bill staring blankly at a wall. And everything came back and he remembered why he'd tried to forget in the first place and even though it was almost too hot to be wearing clothes the world felt colder and greyer and he had to hang onto something to stop the world from spinning.
He knew it was his fault. Even though everybody told him that of course it wasn't and Don't be silly dear and There was nothing you could have done, he knew it was his fault. He was the traitor. He was the coward. He was the one that should have died. He wasn't a half of anybody and life could have gone on easily without him. He watched that moment over and over and over and over in his mind and changed it minutely every time. Just one sidestep. Just saying the punch line a moment earlier or a moment later. Just one tiny detail that would have made a difference between life and death.
Summer was a dead time. Even though the world seemed full of children again, he saw the grass growing browner with every passing day, and the leaves that couldn't be bothered moving without a breeze. And it seemed somehow fitting that this deadness reflected itself in every single thing he thought and every single memory that flashed through his mind.
Summer was punishment.
You could learn to sidestep away from pain with practice. And he had had plenty of practice. But in summer he forced himself to remember. He was the guilty one and he knew that he deserved the three months of heart crushing throat constricting lung tightening head hurting stomach churning knee weakening pain. He was suffocating in fresh air. He was pain and punishment all rolled into one neat bundle tied with a mischievous grin and a freckled nose.
Summer was the hardest time.