He stood, looking at the billowing veil. It was mesmerizing, in a way. Forever billowing…..
He heard whispers. Faint, dead whispers. At one point, he could've sworn he heard Hermione's whispers. The veil called to him. It was tempting, oh so tempting to just walk through. Join Hermione, join Fred, join George, join mum, join Harry, the list went on and on.
For the life of him, he couldn't. Why? He couldn't answer if he tried, and he didn't.
'It's been a good life,' he thought. A good life, but oh so many regrets.
Ron Weasley was approaching the tender age of two-hundred and twenty-six. He didn't look it, though. Red hair as vivid as ever. Freckles still prominent, eyes still a piercing blue. He didn't look a day older than seventeen.
In fact, he had not changed appearance since that fateful day, in which dark battled light. It came down to Harry and Voldemort. Harry won.
At first, no one had noticed anything wrong. Celebrations were had, although dampened from all the death that had occurred. Ron's own brother, Fred, had died in battle.
But then, years passed. Slowly but surely, his friends aged. Hermione's face slowly wrinkled, still beautiful in his eyes, but old. Harry's hair became stark white. The fiery Weasley hair became a dull orange, and then faded to gray. All around him, people aged. For some reason, he didn't.
Hermione was the first one to notice. Of course she was. It was on his twenty-third birthday. He had had a small gathering with close friends and family, and they were reminiscing by looking through some old photo albums. One picture depicted him and Hermione dancing at Bill's wedding.
"Ron," Hermione had said frowning "you looked exactly the same back then as you do now!"
He had thought nothing of it. Hermione had. She spent days and days throwing strange glances at him. On one particular day, she asked him to extract his memory of the Battle of Hogwarts.
Reluctantly, he had given it to her. Every day for the next week, she revisited the memory in her own personal pensieve. About a week later, she found out.
He had been hit with a curse. "non aetatis!". Hermione, the bookworm she was, spent days looking up what it was. She eventually found it. It was a spell that caused the recipient to never age. Pretty straight forward.
"Why is that a curse?" Ron had asked.
"I don't know," sighed Hermione.
As the years came and passed, Ron began to figure out why. Everyone around him began to die. First it was Harry. Dragon Pox at the age of one hundred and two, not an unexpected death. Then Ginny died of old age, probably a combination of grieving over her husband, Harry, and her age. After that, it seemed that everyone he loved started dropping dead left and right. The greatest blow came when Hermione died.
That was when Ron realized just how cruel a curse it was.
And so here he was, two hundred and twenty-nine, or was it twenty-four? Did it even matter at this point? Utterly lonely. No one to love, no one to be loved by. Still, it was a good life. He had stopped being afraid of death for a while now, or so he thought. Why did his feet seem to be frozen, unmoving in front of the veil?
He didn't know. Hermione would. 'It would be great if I could ask Hermione. Too bad she's hiding behind the veil' he thought wryly.
And so he stood there.
A/N: So, what do you think? I know it's not the best story, but meh. Inspiration struck so I had to write it.