Disclaimer: Hogwarts etc belongs to JKR.
AN: I've posted this before. It's not exactly the best thing I've ever written but I've made it a little less melodramatic. I have writers block so I'm going through all my thrown away stories and attempting to revamp them.
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The air is rank with the taste of salt.
The ground underfoot crunches slightly with shifting pebbles and she steps again, onwards towards that horizon, more infinite than it had ever been before. Beyond, behind her, to the left or simply elsewhere, a seagull screams. It echoes in her head before falling into the oblivion of memories, tossed through her mind like that salty foam, riding the waves.
She raises her arms, soaked to the bone as the rain falls in sheets, each one crashing into her scant moments after the last. She turns, once, twice, spinning and smiling as rainwater mingles with the spray of the waves, running streaks of salt water down her face. She spins and spins until memories crash into her with the roar of the wind. She crumples then. Fallen to the floor and shaking. More alone than the last time. More empty.
There had been light then, she remembers. More light than there is now, though it had been stormy too. And there had been more colour. Red, she remembers. That far off horizon had glowed through the clouds and the waves foamed like spilling veins, surging and flickering and defying control. Morbid he'd called her. Perhaps.
Salt wash splatters her exposed arms, clinging like tears to the flesh and the roaring in her ears is all consuming, so great she can hear nothing else. It grows and grows until it crackles on the fraying edges of her consciousness. It grows and grows, pervading her senses until it is impossible to hold back the rush of memories. They hit her like glass.
He'd taken her hand. Grasped it in his own, almost roughly, like he'd made the decision to do it and no second thought was going to stop him. She'd raised an eyebrow and to that he'd smiled.
The clouds flickered ahead, distorted by rain, bloated and drifting. There is a howl on the wind and she wonders if it is her own (she's kept so much inside for so long).
It was absurd, rain pounding in from all angles, plastering impractical clothing to their skin, the waves roaring like caged beasts in the near distance and for some reason she could still hear the crunch of the beach under their booted feet (pebbles, they hadn't the time to go in search of sand).
Years and years had passed. Decades meaning less to her than that single evening. Times had changed. She had changed. Her face, now lined and careworn, smiled more, but she laughed less. That was something she'd always associate with him. Laughter. Her shoulders shook and her head rolled back to the sky.
Some would say romance was lost on him, dragging her to the middle of a storm-tossed beach in the hopes of seeing the sunset through torrents of rain. Some would say the evening was ridiculous, her favourite dress ruined as they dodged the ebb and flow of the waves. Some would say they should have stayed dry, that there should have been red wine and red roses, not a sea of surging red water, dyed by the last light of the sun, but she disagreed. To her it was perfect.
She kept a calendar, like so many Ministry workers did, recording dates for all members of the team, not just herself. She kept a calendar but there were days on which she refused to write on, regardless of team-building or Minister's orders. She wasn't selfish often, but in this matter she would not be swayed. The twenty-sixth of September was their day - it had been from that first night in the shadow of the castle and would continue to be so until the day she died.
Twenty-sixth of September. Late summer and they'd run through the rain, the wind and the waves. Late summer and they'd curled up on a rock, whispering promises and sighing contentment. Late summer and they hadn't been afraid.The twenty-sixth of September. She stood on the beach, as she'd stood in cemeteries so many times before, knowing she was not alone in her mourning. Knowing others shared her pain, knowing others lost people too, but all the same, selfishly hating life for letting it happen to her. To him.
The twenty-sixth of September. A date memorised by her nieces in textbooks, unknowing of the pain it caused her when they asked her 'What was it like, living during the war?' They'd bring it up over dinner, mention names of heroes she'd known only as school boys, asking her what Harry Potter had looked like, ('Was he really seven feet tall? Did he really out-fly dragons?') They wondered at the love of great heroines, Ginny Weasley and Hermione Granger, defying everything, even death, to be with their lovers in their hour of need. They'd sigh, starry eyed, waxing lyrical about 'true love' and how those girls had given up everything. They'd talk of tragedy like they knew what it meant. And it broke her heart sometimes. Because she wanted so badly to stand up and scream, 'I was there! I cried with Ginny! I went to their funerals! I watched him die!' But then they'd ask who 'he' was. And she wasn't ready to answer those questions yet.
Decades since the funeral passed she remembers the night. The waves, the wind in her hair, his hand in hers and how his breath tickled her ear when he said, 'We should probably be getting back.' She remembers arriving at the rendezvous point, dripping wet and clutching his hand. She remembers her smile falter. She remembers his hand leave hers in favour on his wand and she remembers a battle. She remembers the light of spells and quick glimpses of him through the crowd. And then she remembers that moment, that eternal second that lasted a lifetime and back again, that froze and echoed before her eyes before reaching out and breaking her heart in two. She remembers his death. His eyes wide and somehow dark. She remembers the mud in her fingernails against his empty face. Remembers water soaking through clothes, making her cold while his body lay, still warm, before her. She remembers crying and crying until she could cry no more.
And she hasn't cried since. Every tear shed from that day to this had been for him. A part of her died that night.
She'd asked for a sunset by the sea and that was what he gave her, a sunset by the sea in its most elemental of forms. Soggy and cold they settled on a rock and he passed her a bottle of water, like there wasn't enough to go around.
The twenty-sixth of September. The night she fell in love, so young in the shadow of Hogwarts' castle.
The twenty-sixth of September. The night they'd ran on the beach, soaked to the bone and loving life even in the midst of a war.
The twenty-sixth of September . The night of the final battle and the night of Seamus Finnegan's death.
Rolling her eyes and grinning she'd taken it, looking at the sea and not seeing blood, tasting salt on her lips and not thinking tears. It was a beautiful night.
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