Some Muggles believe in Heaven. Dad's talked about it before, when he's brought home certain "silly Muggle contraptions" as Mum likes to call them. Apart from that, we never really discussed the idea, or at least, we didn't until last year. Harry's the only person I know to have come back from the dead. He's the only one who could really tell us anything about what it's like where Fred's gone. But he doesn't like to talk about it, and I don't like to press him.
Harry doesn't deal with loss very well. None of us do, really. I think we take issue with the fact that there is some higher power that seems to determine the course of our lives. It's too close to what our reality was for too long. We lived in the shadow of You Know Who's regime. I lived through that terrible year at Hogwarts where, when I wasn't distracted by someone trying to make my life a living hell, I was terrified of what might be happening outside, to my family, to my friends, and to Harry perhaps most especially.
During the long sleepless nights at Hogwarts, when I was alone in spite of the presence of my sleeping roommates, I would gaze out the dormitory window, looking up at the night sky to remind myself that, no matter where we all were, we could still see the same night sky. The constellations wheeled overhead, comets streaking by. The cosmos went on, unheeding of the troubles on the earth below, a constant reminder of our smallness, our insignificance. In the grander scheme of things, we hardly mattered. It was a comfort to me then, but now, I don't know.
All too often, I am dragged back to that night when it all ended. I walk the grounds of the castle searching for wounded, finding people I had known for years, being too late to help most of them. I remember finding too many bodies that were mutilated beyond recognition. Their numbers hurt. But it was the bodies that I could identify laid out in the Great Hall that hurt the most. Professor Lupin and Tonks, their life taken away from them before it had even really begun. Colin Creevey, who shouldn't even have been there. And Fred. Why did that night have to take Fred too?
Each day dawns, and it is a new chance to live for them. A new chance to make their sacrifice worthwhile. They died for what they believed in, but I can live for my beliefs. Still, I try to avoid the sunrise. It paints the sky a brilliant red, and all I can think of is the blood spilled so that I can continue to live in a newfound freedom.
Nights blend into one, all becoming That Night. I can't escape it, even when I'm wrapped in Harry's arms. Neither of us can, and it is simply a matter of which of us is less haunted each night that determines who is the comforter and who is the comforted. Sometimes it seems it would have been easier if we had lost the fight, if we hadn't lived to see a "better world". How is it better if so many lives have been ruined? How is it fair that we should have to go on? Should have to move on? We do so only because we must. We cannot shut ourselves away forever. Harry's reputation won't allow it, and in choosing to bind myself to The Chosen One, I have accepted the same fate.
Slowly, we learn how to cope and life becomes easier. We allow ourselves dream. We find our true selves. We find what we were meant for. Who we were meant to be.
And tonight, as I lie here beside my Harry, I know everything will be all right. His hand lays atop my belly, where our child grows inside me. If this isn't Heaven exactly, it seems like the world has finally righted itself. I face the sunrise and the sunset, watch the progress of the moon across the sky, and I am content.