And then she smiled.

She smiled at me, even though I just witnessed the death of her brother. Ginny smiled at me. The war had ended, and we could smile again.

So that is why I kissed her—because she smiled a smile that made me forget the pain searing almost every part of my body. It made me forget the hundreds and then some of dead bodies lying amongst the live, including her brother.

When we broke the kiss, I looked into her eyes. She ignored my gaze. A somber tear grew heavy in the pouch of her eyelid, and rolled dreadfully slow down the puff of her cheek. I couldn't stand her crying—she had just smiled, the very smile that made me kiss her, and forget the misery that inevitably came with battle.

And then she sobbed.

I asked her why she was crying, but she did not answer. She flung her head in my arms and squeezed me tight. I could tell she was hurting, and badly. I had to comfort her, because I loved her, and because she was crying. I don't like it when she feels she needs to cry.

"No tears, no tears," I begged her in the same voice I knew her brothers would use when she had cried as a child. In fact, the same voice invented by… Fred.

That was the wrong voice, wasn't it?

And then she smiled.

I thought for the second time in ten minutes, how could she possibly smile at the end of all that. Her brother was actually laying dead seven floors below us this very second.

And then I cried.

I cried for the dead, specifically Fred and Reamus and Tonks. I cried for Teddy, who would have his parents even shorter then me. And I cried for families, like the Weasleys, who would have lost an important fraction of their clan—F-f-fred. It hurt me to think about it, but they had died. That is why I was crying, and Ginny was smiling, and we kept kissing every time one of us switched emotions—Ginny crying and me smiling, or Ginny smiling and me crying. It didn't matter which.

And then she smiled.