She missed Fred a lot.
She thought about him a lot. Six months had gone by so quickly, and it felt like literally minutes since she'd seen her brother fall to the floor, the grin still in place, as if Death was nothing but a big joke. But he hadn't gotten up again.
She couldn't help it. Everyone else seemed to be dealing so well. Everybody seemed to be getting on with it. And everybody seemed to have lost so much and yet be able to pick themselves up so easily.
She followed their lead. Ginny was good at following. A few people commented on how she'd gotten a little bit more quieter than she had been. She felt a little but more like the Ginny of before – the quiet, meeker Ginny before all the boyfriends and the adventures.
She never let it show though. She smiled when they smiled. And sometimes she was happy. It wasn't like her life was all doom and gloom. It had been, for the first while, there'd been so much hollow pain and empty burning, so much confusion…but now there was happy days and there was times when she thought about him only a little bit. But his memory was always there, and it always seemed to twinge a little bit, no matter where she was or who she was with.
She couldn't understand how everybody else was being so strong. Especially Harry. He'd lost so much, and she couldn't understand how he could smile and laugh and be Harry again. When she didn't feel like she could be Ginny again.
And she was so terrified that she was going to lose somebody else. So many people had died, and part of her was just waiting for more death to appear. Another war, perhaps. Or just a tragic accident. Somebody to take away more loved ones. Sometimes when she was on her own, she got gripped by such a terror that all she could do was grip on to herself and try not to panic.
Did nobody else feel like this?
Was she the only one that was so weak?
Why couldn't she move on?
It was only one night, when Harry came in to talk to her in her bedroom, that she had a sudden realisation. He just sat near her, not touching, as nothing had been properly specified between them and they hadn't really had time to sort everything out, pre-war. He came in, and his eyes seemed darker in the shadows, and his smile seemed a little sadder.
"It's been six month tonight since the war," he said, in a low whisper.
"I know," she said, face turned away from him, against her pillow.
"It seems like only six minutes ago, doesn't it?"
Something in his voice caused her to stir. She moved to sit up and properly look at him, and there it was – the pain on his face, identical to the pain inside of her.
She wasn't the only one suffering, she saw then. They were just pretending, just like she was pretending. Everybody was still in pain.
She scooted over to make room for him, and he lay next to her. His arms surrounded her and pulled her close – and she felt closer to him than she had to anybody in the last six months.
They stayed like that for the night – they didn't talk anymore, nor did they kiss or anything. But neither did either of them sleep.
The panic inside her chest seemed to have eased a little by morning.
She knew now she wasn't alone.
And although the pain didn't go away, it seemed a little bit easier, knowing that she had others on her side too.
Six months on now, and the war was still far from really over.
Six months feels like six minutes ago Ian, and the pain never really ends. Love you and miss you so much xxx
Always tell the people you love that you love them. You never know when you might not be able to.
Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realise they were big things