A/N: This piece was inspired by my recent re-reading of Deathly Hallows and by the characters' respective incarnations in Innocence Lost; their muns make the two brothers' relationship heartbreaking in a way I'd never seen before.
I want to say I'm sorry that we never understood
Each other in the living world, although we knew we should.
You were wild and free and untamed, went your way unchecked
I was the family's golden boy, and paid them all respect.
Your choice led you to run away, to fight the dark outside,
I stayed and watched it from within, to keep the family pride.
But it was more than I could bear, the hatred and the lies,
At last I thought that I could help… and that was why I died.
I thought you were a silly kid, a hopeless little fool,
Jumping at our parents' word and keeping all their rules
But Slytherin or Gryffindor, I tried to just not care
You were my little brother, for whom everything I'd dare.
I stood with my best friends as we took arms up in this war
But still I feared you'd forgotten all that we had before
I hoped to Merlin that the storm would pass over your head
It nearly killed me too to hear the news that you were dead.
My body lay beneath a lake, but my soul was now free
And in Death's world I wondered that you still could cry for me
I wished I could have told you what I had tried to do
But I had feared that it might put you in worse danger too.
I watched as you were turned upon by your disloyal friend
I begged of anyone who'd listen for your pain to end
Your second brother joined me in the land beyond the veil
And with his wife we raged at how injustice had prevailed.
They say war has a brutal price, and so I found; the cost
Was not just one or two things - no - it's /everything/ I lost
My brothers and my hope, and last of all my freedom too
Alone, I wondered if the price had been enough for you.
And still I never learned the truth of your lonely crusade,
I called you foolish and I hoped the pain of loss would fade
For fifteen years it gnawed my soul that it was far too late
To turn the clock back and help you to change your final fate.
But now, here in this quiet land beyond the deathly veil,
I know the truth and those old arguments begin to pale.
All the pain's behind us, and I can accept the cost,
Because I have the brother back whom I thought I had lost.