You Just Keep on Drinking:
Chapter Three: Close your Eyes.
Twelve green bottles, laying haphazard on the floor... Thirteen green bottles...When my brothers turned my teddy bear into a spider, the first thing I did was to close my eyes. Because I believed, in my naivete, that what I couldn't see didn't exist, and what didn't exist couldn't hurt me.
Some things never change.
The spider bit me. I never told anyone that part of the story. If you looked up my hospital records at St. Mungo's, you would see that I have been in hospital twice: once for my birth, and the second time to recover from a poisonous bit from a teddy bear. Because that's what the spider truly was, a teddy bear, no matter how it had been changed or how it was presented.
And she was just a girl, no matter how she came across. I think that is why we ended up so close, because I knew that no matter how she appeared, behind the books and multi-syllable words was just a girl. Like the bear.
There are some things that a girl shouldn't see, shouldn't feel. Shouldn't know.
Close your eyes, for your eyes will only tell the truth...I loved her. I have loved her since second year, when she lay so still, barely breathing. There was a time when I am sure she loved me back, but what appeal does a best friend have when she could have a repentant enemy? She believed in giving him a second chance.
Where was mine?
A lighting scar could not have hurt more than the agony she put me through, yet somehow a boy with the lighting scar was the only one to notice.
He was a good friend. The best I could ever have, and much more than I deserved. There were times when I knew he was the only one who was going to pull me through the dark times.
Yet he too believed in second chances.
Fourteen green bottles...He betrayed them, of course. And he laughed when he told her, laugh as she cried when she realised that she was wrong. Laughed as he told her how everything she had done for him was pointless. Laughed when he told her I had been right. He laughed as he mercilessly killed her.
Once again I closed my eyes, but this time I forgot to block my ears.
Fifteen green bottles...I killed the ferret, for her. It was something I should have done long ago, but for her sake, I had let him live.
Perhaps for her sake I should have killed him sooner.
Close you eyes, your dreams will be sweet...Maybe, just maybe, if I had lost only the two of them, I would not be sitting here, drinking on my own. Perhaps I could have pulled through if my family had still been around to pick me up and dust me off after I fell. But they died too. All of them, even Percy was killed heroically defending our little sister. And I was left alive, to spend my last few days in hiding, drinking and waiting for Voldemort to find and kill me.
Sixteen green bottles...I think it will be green eyes that will haunt me for my last few days, the look of hopelessness and failure in his eyes as he realised that he was about to die. In the second before that curse hit him, when he realised that Voldemort had won, and he was going to lose.
What can prepare a boy for that? What training could have prepared my best friend for the knowledge that the entire wizarding world was about to be destroyed, and it was entirely his fault? The he, our only hope, had lost? That look will haunt me all my life.
Somehow I managed to escape, I don't know how. But I sat, hidden amongst the trees, waiting for someone else to flee the building and come with me, but no one did. So I ran alone, like the coward I am.
Seventeen green bottles...I don't know how long I have left until he finds me. It could be a few days, or he could be sitting outside now watching me drink myself into a stupor. I no longer care. But here I sit, on a ripped up couch, staring outside through the window at the moon, just watching and waiting.
Close your eyes and surrender to your darkest dreams...
I close my eyes, and in my mind I can see them all waving and smiling at me. She is there, and she tells me that she never loved anyone but me. He's there too, but this time he didn't fail, and his green eyes are glowing with joy and pride. I'm a hero now, see how they pick me up and carry me around, calling "Weasley is our King!" I'm the hero this time.
Close your eyes.
A/N: Thank you again to all those who sent me such wonderful reviews, they truly make my day. I hope I can keep your support.
Thanks to Earelwen, Short-Stuff9, Devilishly Dreamy, Elwen Armir (twice!), Just Kate, Kay51, ZoeBaby and Daunting Darkness.
The songs in this chapter come from The Phantom of the Opera "Music of the Night" and the Whitlam's "Kate Kelly".