Sorrow - 4/50 for the Character Diversity Boot Camp Challenge
Pain. Ginny Potter was in pain. Horrible, mind-shattering, soul-aching pain. And it wasn't at all physical.
The woman with the fire-red hair turned onto her side, leaving behind a wet spot on the pillow. Her broken sobs filled the room, echoing off of the walls. The sobs were dry and quiet, as her wails and moans had long since faded to groans and whimpers, but the pain had not done likewise. Actually, it had only intensified as time passed.
And pass, it did. Time. It was such a curious thing, trickling away swiftly and without notice. And it didn't always make sense.
It couldn't make sense, because how was it that exactly two years had passed since her brother had been killed?
Fred Weasley: young man, lucky, successful. Young being the operative word; he had been too young. he would never be married. He would never experience fatherhood - not that it would have been recommended for a person such as him to father any children.
He hadn't been there to see her on her wedding day, and it had left the hole in her heart with frayed edges.
It used to be said that the Weasley twins had all the luck in the world; they had avoided trouble without breaking a sweat, even withstanding McGonagall's severe stare with no worries. They'd sailed through school, and their prosperous business had just been starting up.
But when push had come to shove, it had shown that they hadn't been quite so lucky after all.
Ginny despaired, mind twisting and tumbling and going down all manner of dark passages. On days such as these - bad ones - she wished with all her might that it could have been her killed that night. The battle had been raging, and it could just as easily have been her instead of him.
He hadn't deserved it, not in the least. He'd been on the brink of something great, with the Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes franchise. He'd had held everything in the palm of his hand, only to have it snatched away in less than a second. In half a heartbeat, he'd been struck down.
Ironically, he'd been killed with a smile on his face.
She remembered clearly the first time she had seen him smile. She had been about four years old, eagerly waiting to be shown how to mount a broom. With her mother berating the twins' method of teaching coupled with the annoyance she made them feel, being so young and understanding so little, the twins had shared a look and hopped into to the air. Their laughs - especially Fred's - had bounced around the space, filling her head with a warm, uplifting sound that she had to laugh along to…
But those memories were... just memories. And she could never make more, because Fred was gone. Dead. Killed.
A small part of her knew she had to stop crying, because her head was beginning to ache and tears had stopped forming. Still, she shook, trying to figure out why the cosmos had decided on such a cruel fate for a soul so caring and uplifting...
But he was dead, and there was no turning back the clock.