"I'll join you when hell freezes over! Dumbledore's Army!" Neville Longbottom
Beginnings and Endings
Bill paced nervously outside the door to Fleur's room, after being banished by the lithe veela cousins who said that his scarred visage was scaring his wife.
"She's going to be fine." Charlie muttered from the chair he'd taken up hours ago. "Stop pacing, Bill, you're making me dizzy."
He collapsed into the seat next to his brother's, head in hands. He'd only called Charlie for this one, because if he called all of his siblings they would have taken up the entire ward and because Charlie was the only one he would ever allow to see him this vulnerable. For the others, he had to be the oldest Weasley, had to be the big brother. And he never resented that. It was just that sometimes he really, really didn't need that kind of responsibility.
Like when a whole new responsibility was coming into his life.
He thought, and told to Charlie, who was trying to ignore him, of every worst-case scenario that could happen to a woman in labor, all ending with his wife's death. "Bill, you're going to make yourself crazy…" but even Charlie couldn't ignore the fact that the pregnancy had been a difficult one for tiny Fleur, that, sometimes, magic couldn't heal everything.
And then Gabriella came floating out of the delivery room, her smile, so like her sister's, lighting up the room. "Et is a girl." She pronounced, and Bill nearly mowed her down trying to get to his wife. Trying to get to his new daughter.
Ron gaped at Harry. "What do you mean you're breaking it off?"
"Ron…" Harry began, flopping down on the grass. They were waiting for the train to take them away from Hogwarts for the last time, and he and Ron had moved far away from the rest. Ron said that he had something to ask Harry. Harry said he had something to tell Ron.
"She's the one who broke up with me." Harry said, eyes looking up at the sun so that he could blame the drops of moisture that leaked from his brilliant green eyes (so like this mother's...) on the harsh rays. "Ginny's the one…" But he didn't get much past that. Her name stuck in his throat.
Ron flopped onto the grass next to his best friend. They were old now. Ron had just turned nineteen, and Harry would catch up to him in a month. They seemed to have finally stopped growing, and though Ron still had an inch and a half on the Boy Who Lived, Harry, at six-foot-two, was no shrimp. Though they would never say it out loud, both knew that their striking good looks made them the most drooled-over pair in school. Add the fact that they had saved the Wizarding World, and forget it. They were irresistible.
Apparently to everyone but Ron's kid sister.
"I'm sorry, mate." He said finally. "I never thought…she's been after you since Second Year. You know that."
"Yeah." Harry said, hand curling into a fist. "Well, she says it's over now. She wants to play Quidditch for a couple of years, and then become an Auror or something. Says she doesn't want to be tied to my name forever. She wants to do stuff on her own. And she's definitely not ready to settle down." Harry barked out a laugh that sounded very much like Sirius's. "Like any of us are ready to 'settle down.'"
"Umm…" Now Ron was stuck. He'd asked Hermione already, but had sworn her to secrecy. He had to be the one to tell Harry. He knew this. "Mate, that's not quite true."
Harry sat up suddenly, an incredulous eyebrow raised in expectation. "Don't tell me…"
"I asked Hermione to marry me." Ron said, the words coming out in a rush. "And she said yes."
Harry's whoop could be heard down by the other students waiting to board the train, and they all looked in time to see Harry tackle Ron in his excitement. "I can't believe it!" He said, "You guys have the most dysfunctional relationship in history!"
"Don't I know it." Ron said, looking immensely relieved at Harry's reaction. "Anyway, I wanted to ask if you would be best man."
Harry stopped short, holding Ron at arm's length. "Shouldn't one of your brothers? George, or Bill?" Ron had so many brothers, who all loved him to pieces. Why should he chose someone outside of his family?
Ron rolled his eyes. "Has anyone ever told you that, for the Boy Who Lived –twice – you can be quite thick?"
"You have." Harry said happily, still looking confused.
"Harry," Ron began, quite serious. "I've…I've risked my life for you. I would have died for you. You are at least as much a brother to me as those other blokes I've got."
He was so off-balanced by this open revelation that it took Harry a few moments to process it. When he did, he embraced Ron again, and the sound of the Hogwarts Steam Engine's whistle blew in the background when he told Ron that he wouldn't miss this opportunity for the world.
Charlie, who routinely wrestled with dragons, walked into a bar.
It's not the beginning of some really lame joke. Charlie Weasley actually did walk into the Leaky Cauldron a week after his oldest brother became a father, a day after he learned that his youngest brother was due to be married.
"Married!" He exclaimed to the boy behind the counter, a boy who couldn't have been much older than the one he was ranting about. "Just out of school and wants to be married!"
"A lot of people were doing it last year." The boy, who'd introduced himself as Ben, pointed out magnanimously. "Everyone was so afraid of the war that they just went out and got hitched."
"But he's just a kid." Charlie groaned, taking the drink in one hand. That wasn't right, though. Ron was anything but a kid. He had helped defeat the greatest threat of their time, had acted on nothing more than recklessness and whatever Weasley ingenuity had been passed along. And, Charlie realized right at that moment, he was very proud of him.
"So," The bartender, who was really only a boy, said, cleaning a cup with a bit of cloth. "You on your way to get married, too?"
Charlie shrugged. He'd never had a girlfriend, not really. In Hogwarts, he'd been popular – Quidditch captain, decent grades, and a big, Weasley personality had made him a lot of friends - but he'd only dated girls half-heartedly, and never for any length of time.
Now, looking at this dark, mysterious boy, Charlie felt something new and dangerous flip in his stomach, and he gulped, looking down in his tankard as if that could give him an answer to why his heart was beating so fast while looking into this boy's eyes.
"Lee Jordan, this is Lee Jordan coming to you with your morning broadcast on New World Radio.
"A year ago today was the devastating Battle of Hogwarts. One for the history books, folks, but that doesn't make up for the brave men and women who laid down their lives to create a world free of the Dark Lord. Now I'm a pretty smart guy, and I know that in the future this is going to be a day to remember, a day when little witches and wizards around the globe are going to be told the story of what happened at the best school of magic in the world. Of how noble, intelligent, good people went against pure evil and won. It sounds like an amazing story. I'm so thankful I'm around to tell it.
"And there is a lot to celebrate. But I think that we should take a couple of minutes today, right now, to remember the sixty-four good people who died that night so that we could keep our right to live free, no matter what our blood is made of.
"When I started this radio show, it was called Potter Watch. Remember that old thing? I was chasing after a bloke I'd gone to school with, carrying around some radio equipment and broadcasting every time I had a chance, hoping someone out there was listening. I was with my two best friends: Fred and George Weasley. Now it seems like everyone I run into has met a Weasley at one point or another, and I am the first to admit that there always seems to be a couple of them at any given event. But these two were – are – my dearest friends. Perhaps you have a couple yourself.
"We were on the run. We knew Harry Potter, for one. I'm a muggle-born, and they weren't quiet about the fact that they thought the Ministry was a load of garbage back then. We spent the whole year on the run, in a tent, broadcasting any news we could get our hands on. It was the hardest year of my life. Looking back on it, I think it was also the most rewarding.
"I was at the Battle of Hogwarts. I was with George Weasley when his brother – his twin – died. I walked into the Great Hall, the place I'd spent so many holidays and birthdays, the place I'd always felt safe in growing up at Hogwarts, and I saw people I'd known for years on the ground, bleeding and screaming and dying. And war was still raging around us.
"This isn't supposed to be a downer, folks, but I know that this day will go down in history. I just think that, while we should celebrate the fact that we rid our world of a great evil, we should also celebrate those sixty-four lives lost. My friend Fred Weasley was one of them. I'm opening up the lines now to hear about your loved ones. Honor them today, in any way you can."
.***.
One year gone. So much can change in a year.
Anyways, please review.
