Disclaimer: I own an enormous eighth edition biology textbook, several pairs of old sneakers, and an electric tea kettle. This, however, is not mine.
Shatterbox
She doesn't cry at the funeral.
She's remarkably stoic, in fact. She sits, stone-faced, with her arms tight around a sobbing Ginny, in front of those two identical things (he can't say the name; he can't) that he knows she hates. He can hardly see through his tears, and she hasn't even shed one.
Moony breaks down as the coffins are simultaneously lowered into the earth and she removes one arm from Ginny to grasp his hand tightly, before turning back to watch, her jaw set and her face pale. And she watches, never flinching, never blinking, as the two body-boxes of the two boys so much younger than their time are covered over with soft wet dirt.
She gives no eulogy, delivers no heart-felt speech (he knows she was asked to). She simply looks on, her gaze intense, as two gleaming white headstones appear and a fresh outcry of grief is heard around the graveyard. And when it's all over and no one's quite sure what to do next, she gently releases Ginny and quietly stands, walking up to the fresh mounds of dirt. She kneels and conjures two flowers (a lily for Harry, he notices dimly) and sets one over each of the piles that are all that's left of the boys she loved so well. And then she leans forward and brushes her lips against their names, and everything is utterly silent because none of them are quite sure what to say of their grief to this girl who knew them better than anyone (because she did; they all know she did).
And after a moment she stands and returns to Ginny and gathers the younger girl in her arms. And she tucks the red-headed witchling into her side (Ginny clings to her tightly, silent tears running down her pale little face) and walks away without saying a word.
Not once does she look back at the identical white stones, sitting there calmly, side-by-side.
When they return to Grimmauld Place (the Burrow's long since been destroyed and he's always glad to have company), she tucks Ginny into bed and sits with her until the little girl who hasn't stopped crying for days hiccups herself to sleep. She puts on a pot of tea for Molly and hugs Percy tightly and doesn't protest when George pulls her down to sit on his lap so that he can hold her and cry into her shoulder as his twin sits next to them and rests his head tiredly against her back.
One by one, she lets them draw their comfort from her, pulling whatever solace they can from her dry eyes and her calm face. She's still the clever little witch he met that night six years ago; she still has all the answers.
She knows that she's all they have left of those two boys they all loved, now lying cold in the damp, grey spring earth. She knows that it lessens their grief somewhat, seeing her; seeing that she is still around. She knows that it lets them reassure themselves that someday it will be okay. That not all is lost.
That the cost of winning wasn't infinitely more than any of them were willing to pay.
He sees the knowledge weighing heavily in her dark eyes, eyes that have been listless since the final battle. He sees the way it settles deep inside her core, keeping her hands sure and her routine normal while theirs all shake from the grief that makes them unsure of how quite to carry on. For a week, she soothes and shushes their grieving wails, gently brushes tears from their pale faces, offers embrace after embrace during which she pulls them to her tenderly and allows them to bury their wracking sobs in the comfort of her familiarity. Bit by bit, she absorbs their grief into herself, leaving them after each encounter tired and shaken but perhaps just a little bit healed.
Two weeks she does this, until Molly stops bursting into tears whenever she sets the table and Charlie stops wandering around the house with a lost expression on his face. Until Ginny can calmly sleep through the night and Percy can speak without his voice catching on his grief, and Arthur regains just a hint of his usual bounce and Bill and Fleur return to Shell Cottage and he stops shaking every time he passes the room the two always shared when they came to visit. Until Remus starts doing the morning crossword again in the Daily and Fred can make a small, weak joke and George can let out a breathless, but genuine, laugh. Until she can see that they're beginning to learn to move on; until she's convinced that they've started to heal. Until she knows that they're all going to be alright.
And then she abruptly disappears.
Molly is the one who discovers her absence.
Breakfast that morning is the first meal she's missed since the funeral, but no one's too worried. Not initially, anyway. They're all recovered enough to understand that even she isn't indestructible.
Sooner or later, grief has a way of catching everyone.
At noon, when she still hasn't come down stairs, Molly piles a tray high with food and carries it gingerly up the molding steps to her room. When she doesn't answer the knock on her door, the Weasley matron, almost uncharacteristically, merely leaves the tray on the landing and murmurs something comforting through the wood. There's no answer, and the tray is still sitting there hours later when Fred climbs the steps to alert her to the fact that dinner is ready.
He returns a few moments later and informs his mother that she hadn't acknowledged him. Molly sighs heavily and insists that they all begin the meal as she goes upstairs.
…In the terrible silence that has descended on them since the final battle, every occupant of the house is acutely aware of how sharply the shriek cuts through the stillness.
Her room is empty, her bed hasn't been slept in, and she hasn't been seen for nearly an entire day. It's enough to send Molly into watery hysterics.
For once, the rest of them aren't far behind her.
Charlie whirls away immediately to the graveyard where the identical two-week-old mounds reside; the twins hurriedly call out that they're checking the site of the Burrow's ruins. Percy, wide-eyed, unkempt, and looking slightly mad, shouts that he's going to Hogwarts. He and Remus leave Arthur comforting his wife and daughter and trying to contact Bill, and disappear into the heart of Muggle London.
The flat is small and old, but clean and homey. The wards still accept them, even though the apartment has been empty for over a year, and Remus rushes over the threshold, calling out her name desperately. He, however, lingers on the doorstep, transfixed, unable to dispel the image unfolding before him in the room his friend has just run through. It's a scene from another age; a different world.
He sees himself as he is carefully maneuvered through the doorway, his godson's hands covering his eyes tightly as he attempts to bat them away. Ron leads an exasperated Moony in, in much the same manner, laughing at the werewolf's frustration. She traipses in after them, shaking her head amusedly. Dramatically, the two boys unmask their mentors and move to the center of the room, grinning proudly, arms around each other as they survey their surroundings.
"So? What d'you think?" Ron asks, his jovial voice demanding their approval. The two older men glance at each other, exchanging a look as they smile and assure the two lads that the flat is perfect. Harry and Ron bask in the building's praise, all wide smiles and gleaming eyes full of the glory of their new-found independence and freedom as Ron embarks on an odd sort of victory chant around the small sitting area and his raven-haired friend lets out a loud whoop of accomplishment. Their brunette flat-mate rolls her eyes good-naturedly at their antics, the patronizing shaking of her head belied by her shining eyes and her fond smile as the two boys pick her up and begin to dance her around and around the room and laugh and laugh and laugh .
His breath catches in his throat, and the vision fades as tears steal his sight. He knows, without needing to see Moony's dejected expression as he returns from the hallway, that she hasn't come back here.
He sure as hell wouldn't.
For three days, they remain alert; constantly searching and asking and silently begging. For three days, they are disappointed.
On the fourth day, when the twins fall asleep on the sofa in the library due to exhaustion from searching until dawn the night before, and he sees the distraught frown on George's face, hears Fred – light-hearted Fred; always the liveliest of the six Weasley brothers (no, not six: five – gods, that number kills him) – release a pained whimper in his sleep, he realizes that he needs to escape it all.
He climbs the dark, rotting stairs that snake their way through the stories, his tread as heavy as his heart. By now it is her room, not theirs, that makes him quiver with fear and grief, so he quickly bypasses that floor and continues on towards the attic that was always his hideout as a child. But when he reaches the nondescript door at the very top of the house, he realizes that his stronghold has been breached (and by someone who is decidedly not him, since he hasn't been up here since he was fifteen and deciding to run away to James).
Cautiously he pushes the door open and enters, ducking his head to fit through the doorway. The small space is dimly lit by the flame of a jarful of pale blue fire, and he realizes suddenly that their missing witch is sitting huddled against the opposite wall, looking tiny even amongst the low-looming rafters. Her knees are pulled up tight against her chest, her arms wrapped around them as though she's trying to make herself as small as possible (less of a target; poor, darling girl), and she's thin and pale and she hasn't eaten in three days, but she is there and safe and there.
She looks up as he sags against the nearest wall, the sudden, warm relief stealing the strength from his legs (she's not dead; she's there: she's not dead), and the relief is immediately overpowered by despair, because her eyes are wide and dark and rimmed with shadows, and she's shaking so terribly that he can hear her teeth chattering from all the way across the room. And this sort of grief is so much harder to watch than Ginny's or Molly's or Charlie's, because her face is frightened and the expression painted across it is broken in the worst kinds of ways, and even though her eyes are dry he can feel her wails echoing inside his own chest, without her even making a sound. And gods, he knows this grieving; it's been reflected back at him in the mirror most every morning for the past eighteen years.
"Hey." Her voice is quiet and small.
"Hey." His gets stuck in his throat. "You, uh," he coughs, "you gave us quite a scare, there."
"Sorry." He shakes his head.
"Don't apologize."
It's silent for a moment, as she stares at her knees and he stares at her, trying to see her past the enormity of her grief, but the two are so intertwined that he's not sure it's possible to see them as distinct entities anymore. Then she looks up at him, and even through the pain, he can see the faint (so dim; Christ, it's almost gone) glimmer of familiar determination in her eyes.
"I resented you," she told him, her voice still quiet. "Back in fifth year, when you were upset that Harry wasn't expelled. That he didn't get to stay with you. That you didn't get to keep him." He didn't get to keep him. Oh, God... "I thought you were terribly selfish, you know." Once again she looks down, contemplating the thin hands clasped listlessly around her legs. "I understand now, Sirius. I know why you acted the way you did. Why you wanted what you did." Her gaze shifts to the jar of pale, dancing flames, and when she speaks again, her voice is little more than a whisper and he can see the wetness gathering in her eyes. "I think…I think that if Harry or Ron had a child…if I had that reminder of them like you had Harry, I'd never want to let him go, either."
He doesn't know how to respond to that – can't respond to that – but it's okay; she doesn't need him to, and the attic is silent only for a moment before she forges ahead, choosing her doom bravely (still shaking), as her chin quivers almost imperceptibly.
"Does it ever get better?" she asks quietly, not looking away from the fire. "Does it ever stop hurting?"
He wants so much to tell her that yes, yes it does; after awhile it gets better and facing the world gets easier and you learn to breathe around the pain in your throat. But he doesn't want to lie to her, so he doesn't say anything.
She knows anyway, though, clever little witch. "I thought not," she whispers. And just like that, her last hope is gone, and with it the last reserve of her strength. He realizes, as he sinks to the ground beside her and pulls her heaving, shuddering body onto his lap and buries her wracking sobs in his chest, that he is probably the first person to ever see her utterly desperate and pleading and broken. Dimly, he hopes he'll be the last.
Her arms are tight around him, clinging with a desperation that belies the pallor of her face. He sits there and rocks her for what seems like hours as she grieves and gasps for breath and clutches at her chest as though she's been torn into pieces and is trying desperately to hold herself together before she falls apart entirely.
He knows the feeling, and as she chokes and grabs at the wound that her loss has left (futilely, he knows, because no amount of healing ever makes this okay, despite how acutely, physically painful the ache is), he buries his face in her hair and keens for all they've lost until she cries herself hoarse and merely sits there, shivering and struggling to catch her breath, and everything grows quiet again.
"How do you do it?" she finally asks his neck, and something inside of him breaks all over again, because her voice is dead, devoid of the passion and curiosity that has always characterized her. "How do you keep going, knowing it will never be okay again?"
His eyes close momentarily as lusterless brown orbs carrying the weight of the world glance up at him, and the words catch in his throat, rough and painful.
"The truth?" She nods, and the last bit of strength (hopewillpowernerveeaselife) inside him dies as the innocence leaves her eyes forever (she's learned the cost of truth). "You go mad."
(Sooner or later, grief has a way of catching everyone.)