A year ago today, I took Ron's hand in mine and with our family and friends around us, we promised each other our forever. His only sister and my best friend, Ginny held the flowers, infront of her swelling baby bump, while he lifted my veil to kiss me for the first time as his wife. Our mutual best friend, Harry had presented our rings abd was giving the thumbs up as Ron and I snogged. Tears threatened to fall from his eyes as the hint of a smile formed on his lips.
A shadow of sadness crossed his face and I knew he was thinking of the fallen who would have been there with us had they not been taken by the death-eaters. That same sadness, crossed Ron's face at that same moment and the pang threatened to rip my heart out and spoil the happiness of the moment. In the bottom of my heart I had known that, in spirit, Fred, Lupin, Tonks, Sirius, Snape, Creevey, Cedric, Lily and James, and Dumbledore were there with us, smiling down at Ron and me, proud that we finally put stubborn-ness aside and found our way towards what everybody thought was right - everybody but me.
Too scared to let my mind process the vows we had exchanged, I shut my mind down and refused to feel, for I knew if I did I would surely run. I stood like a woman possessed by another, who was speaking through me guiding me slowly, with each word and every motion towards a lifetime of doom as the wife of a man I didn't love, because I was too stubborn to admit my feelings for another.
There was too much at stake, starting with the embarrassment of losing it in front of everyone there, watching me break Ron's heart and shatter the world our best friends were beginning to build for themselves. Everyone would blame me, I knew that with everything in me, so with each step measured, I followed the path expected of me and became Mrs Ronald Weazley.
Molly Weazley beamed happily at us and when it was time to greet our guests, formally as Husband and Wife, she enveloped me in her reknowned motherly hug and poured the love in her heart through me as she welcomed me to the family - a formality, really, for even as we were all growing up, the Weazleys had taken us in during the Summer and Christmas holidays, as if we were part of the family. For me they had been second parents, but for Harry, Molly and Arthur had been the parents he wished he had since his own had been taken long ago when he was a baby, by the wizard who had threatened our own very existances, that same man who many had fallen in the pursuit to defeat. Molly Weazley wasn every girl's dream mother in-law, a sentiment echoed by Fleur, who married Ron's brother Bill.
Everyone knew Molly wasn fiercely protective of her children, even as adults, navigating their way through this often cruel world. It was her wrath more than Ron's that I feared the mostl should I give in to my mixed feelings of fear and a deep-seated affection for the man standing beside Ron, the feelings of whom I was unsure of.
I had no knowledge that He even felt the same way ånd that made what I was goung through all the more crazy and rediculous in its defiance of all logic and reason.
The road has not been easy for Ron and me since that day, with his minimum wage from helping George run the Joke shop, and my own barely minimal income from working at the Hogshead for Aberforth, while I furthered my studies in the hope of becoming a healer, we struggled to pay the bills that piled up. We fought daily about the stress of watching every penny and not being able to save for our own little corner of the world - we lived with Molly and Arthur in the room that was once shared by Ron, Fred and George, while Ginny's room became my study.
Don't get me wrong, the Burrow was my favourite place in the world, growing up, it was just that I craved my own space, a little place that was mine, to fill with books and potions, instead of cramming them all away in boxes in my shoe-box study.
I tried my best to hide my unhappiness from Ron, but each day I felt myself slowly fading away, my powers weakening and when I knew Ron was asleep, I rolled away from him, hugging my pillow tight and let my tears fall.
Harry had always been there, even when I thought it was Ron, who I wanted and he didn't seem to know I existed, and it was his shoulder I cried on and his arms that held me. Harry who had no one to love, loved freely, while Ron, who had everything, played hard to get, only to let himself be wooed by girls like Fleur and Lavender Brown.
Harry and I laughed together, studied together, practiced spells hatched plans to rid the school of evil doing together. It was he who taught me that some school rules were meant to be broken and some teachers were not to be trusted. He was there for me when Viktor Krum broke up with me by owl and he kept me company at Slug Club parties.
By that time though, he was developing a closeness with Ginny. When Dumbledore was killed and Harry broke things off with Ginny to save her from danger, it was me he turned to and we each nursed our heartbreak until we returned to the arms of the ones we loved, or in my case, thought I loved.
The electricity between Harry and me was undeniable and each day my feelings were growing stronger, but he was married and still madly in love with his wife with their second child on the way, by the time our wedding anniversary loomed.
By that time, he was a Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher, a role he accepted humbly and took quite seriously. In the evenings he would sit at the bar of the Hogshead and we would chat about our day, giggle and reminisc our days as students, before everything went bad. He would stay until I closed the pub, to make sure I was safe and then we'd apparate our separate ways until the next time. Each hug hello and goodbye was like Heaven and the electricity was uncontrollable and I could tell that like me, he never wanted to let go. It is these moments I think about as I lay beside my snoring husband in our quarters at the Burrow and once again my sadness and confusion soaks the pillow untill I fall into an exhausted and discintented sleep, my only comfort is knowing that Harry will be there waiting for me in my secret dreams.