Bill remembers the First War; he's the only one old enough to.
Charlie has bits and pieces that mush together. On the rare occasion they get time together—and rarer still, when they devote that time to talks of Dark Lords—Charlie recalls emotion over detail. He speaks of anxiety and fear. No details. No specifics.
Bill too remembers anxiety. And panic. And mayhem. He remembers hushed conversations and protective runes etched in doors—the ever-present sound of weeping.
He also remembers his mother, rotund with the girl she always wanted, donning her cloak in the dead of night. He dreams of her feigned smile and cheery tone. As if Bill didn't recognize by then that a silver animal meant his mother had a mission to carry out. He remembers Molly laying a pudgy months-old Ron in his hands, cupping his cheek, and ruffling his red crown. She promises to come back soon, while handing over her wand. Arthur spends days teaching him Protego—"protect". He remembers realizing his parents can't do that, anymore.
Bill does not berate Harry and Ron because he knows what it is to lose innocence too early.
Some nights at The Burrow, and often at Shell Cottage, he sits up by the door wand in hand. The sense of duty never leaves him.
He remembers all this, pacing back and forth in the St. Mungos waiting room. He knows he looks strange and unhinged, fidgeting all over in his most elegant of dress robes. Mangled and menacing face worrying its other occupants who'll never know the irony of his wounds.
He is entirely unconcerned.
His wife, whom he had to fly to hospital because her water burst two weeks early in the middle of a bloody War memorial, is giving birth somewhere behind the room's double doors and this is the only reaction he can manage. He remembers because he'd thought he'd known what panic was.
How could literal fear of certain death for you and all your baby brothers, whom you're entrusted to protect, when you're nine, be better than this?
Thankfully, a healer calls his last name, and so focuses instead on sprinting down the hallway. In the background, he hears someone saying "fine" and "healthy". But they are just words until he sees them.
Fleur turns to him, smiles. She's blotty and sweaty and would be livid if she could see herself. His breath catches because she might be the most beautiful she's ever been. He leans into her side, kisses her cheek.
The bundle with a tuft of blonde hair opens her blue eyes-Ron's, he notes. She blotty and wet and helplessly pure, and Bill remembers everything.
He remembers there is nothing to fear anymore.
"Let's name her, Victorie," he whispers. Fleur repeats him, tests the name on her tongue.
"Hello, Victorie," she coos, finally. "Welcome to ze world."