Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.
For the best person I'll ever know. I miss you everyday.
Ashes
—
He gets on the train and everyone seems to know him, but he has nobody.
There are so many expectations. Their eyes follow him and they're all thinking the same thing. But what if they're all wrong?
He finds another boy, one different in so many ways, but who's in the same boat as him for the time being.
And they are inseparable from that day forth.
—
He's gone.
That's what everyone tells him.
But that isn't possible.
It isn't allowed.
—
It's raining. The kind of rain that makes him feel wet from the inside out.
He stands with his hands out and his head back until someone drags him inside, muttering that he'll catch his death out there.
They don't catch their slip, but he does, and his heart aches in response.
He goes back outside, the rain beating against his face like an old friend.
At least the weather seems to understand.
—
They weren't family, but they might as well have been.
He sits in the front row and can't take his eyes off of the casket.
Is the body really in there? He wants to open it and see.
But that's morbid. And everyone will think he's lost his marbles.
Does he even care?
And are they wrong?
—
He feels hollow inside. Empty. Like a giant piece of him died.
Because it did.
—
Ginny and Hermione hurt, but not the way he does.
His suffering is incomparable, which nobody seems to understand.
And probably the hardest part of all of this is knowing that if he was here, he would understand perfectly.
He always did.
Did – past tense.
—
He needs to talk to someone so badly.
The only person he wants to talk to is dead.
And he is so fucking tired of having one-sided conversations with his ceiling.
—
Some days, he wants to lie there with Ginny and Hermione and never stop talking about all the memories.
Other times, he wants to be alone with his thoughts.
He hates that the only person who could ever get him out of these awful moods is the reason he's in these moods to begin with.
—
Six months later, he can still remember the feeling of finding out.
The cold, uncontrolled panic. The way he could literally feel the life drain out of the room. The fact that his heart was beating too fast, yet he could barely understand how it was still beating at all.
The absolutely earth-shattering feeling of incompletion. Of never having another laugh or argument or game of Quidditch. Of being surrounded by dozens of loved ones and never feeling more alone.
—
Sometimes, he can close his eyes and still hear his friend's voice.
He can still remember the last thing they said to each other. The last thing they disagreed over.
He remembers Quidditch practices in the absolute worst conditions. And Potions classes where they could do nothing right. And laughs that seemed to last forever.
He remembers all of the things that mean nothing to anyone but him now.
Other times, he can stare at a picture of the two of them and not be able to remember every molecule of the person standing beside him.
It's unacceptable. And scary as all hell.
—
Can't he come back? Even just for a visit?
He wants one more day. One more minute.
Since when is that too much to ask?
—
He thinks a lot about tomorrow. If things will feel different tomorrow. And if he'll even be here tomorrow.
It hurts to go on without him.
To laugh and smile and live, when his friend can do none of these things.
But he vows that they'll be together again one day.
—