Disclaimer: It's not mine. Regrettably.
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Friend, why don´t you come with me,
to where we used to be, on our childhood fields of clover.
Share some of those magic spells,
and all those wishing wells,
on our childhood fields of clover...
-Fields of Clover, Espen Lind
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She sat out there on the grassy mound beside the old apple orchard, her head bowed, her mouth sloping sadly. His mother stood inside the kitchen, banging pots and pans angrily, not bothering to use magic, so great was her fury.
"Just babies," she muttered to herself. "They were just babies, the lot of them, and look what it's done to her."
He stirred his coffee – swirling, milky, warm – and sipped at it tentatively, leaning back against the wall, one hand casually in his pocket, observing her. He marveled at the way the world spun…he was half gone, and yet still sane. She was fully there, and yet mostly gone.
When his mother moved upstairs – muttering about laundry but really, he knew, going to sit on Fred's bed and cry – he slipped outdoors.
As he drew closer to her, he saw that her fingers were occupied. She was plucking those soft, round clover-flowers, attempting to weave a chain…a crown, perhaps. Her hands were trembling. He folded himself gently in front of her, plucking clovers of his own, his hands moving more confidently, more rapidly, weaving, knotting, tying, weaving.
She ceased her work to watch him silently. Her soft, round brown eyes were lusterless, her chestnut mane shorter, jaggedly cut, and yet considerably tamer than it had been a year ago. She was pale, and thinner than he had ever seen her…he could nearly see her ribs showing beneath her t-shirt. A thin scar, pale pink and perfect, wound itself around the base of her neck and angry red burn blisters marked her arms…her hands were still trembling.
He finished his clover chain, tied the ends together in a ring, and laid it gently on her head. She smiled brokenly.
"Merlin, I must seem so foolish," she said, and her voice was so small that the words hung like a whisper on the air between them.
"Why?"
"You're so strong, even now. You're so sure and calm, even when…"
Even when. The weight of the world suddenly pressed in on him. He cleared his throat.
"And why would that make you foolish?"
She laughed softly, but it was horribly wrong – all broken and mangled and breathless, like she didn't have enough air.
"I've lost nothing. I can't sleep at night, and I've lost nothing. You can continue on with your life, even though I know you're breaking inside…you've lost everything, and you can still keep going."
Everything. He had lost everything. "Seven years of your life isn't 'nothing'," he pointed out quietly.
"It's nothing by comparison," she replied, just as quietly.
They sat there, each lost to their own thoughts, each wanting to speak but knowing it would be at once too much and not nearly enough, and the world was spinning, and her fingers were twisting and clenching and knotting desperately and her hands still trembled…
"I can't drink black coffee anymore," he admitted, his eyes flashing up to hers. She held his gaze solemnly, her eyes wide and desperate and pleading. "He used to drink his coffee black…I add loads and loads of cream, now." Her gaze slid away, shifting to the dead orchard, where the barren trees stood like petrified sacrifices, bearing their burdens with deadened grey arms.
"I'm always so cold now. I drink my tea directly when it comes of the kettle, I pile mountains of blankets on my bed at night, I take scalding hot showers…and I'm always freezing."
He picked up one of her cold, shaking hands, toying idly with her fingers. "I haven't laughed in over a month."
She swallowed a lump in her throat. "I hear them at night…I see them standing around me…they're not faceless, like the stories say. They always have faces. Perfect, detailed faces…There are so many…" Her voice broke at the end. "How do you do it?" she whispered.
Silently, he kept running his fingertips along her palm, gently bending a tiny finger here or there in an experimental sort of way. Silently, she let him.
"I haven't even cried, you know," he said suddenly, his eyes glancing towards hers again. They were wide and afraid, like a little boys'. "Not one tear. I've tried, and I've tried, and I just…can't."
Silently, she used her empty hand to gently scoop his unoccupied hand up, softly threading her fingers through his larger ones. Silently, slowly, he leaned forward and pressed his lips to her forehead, his eyes closed in grief, in penance. Her own eyes closed as well as a solitary tear leaked out and forged a slow, gentle path down her pale cheek.
Upstairs, in a little bedroom high up in a crooked, wayward house, Molly Weasley sobbed quietly to herself. "Just babies," she murmured. "Just babies…"
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