Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter and will never make any money out of this WHATSOEVER!
A/N: After the War the Weasley family are reeling from Fred's death, from the point of view of George, Ron and Percy – following the twists and turns of their life as they learn to live without. NOT SLASH! Rated M for some explicit language and dark themes. Will contain references to self-harm and suicide, so could be triggering. Keep yourself safe and I hope you enjoy :)
I wouldn't mind a review (or 20) ;)
This Chapter is in George's POV.
'Fred's gone. Fred's dead. He's never coming back. It's all my fault.'
"It's not my fault, it can't be my fault." I whispered so quietly that I wasn't actually sure whether I made any noise, it felt like my lips just moved. There was no one around to hear, but it was the action of what I was trying to say that counted. "It's not my fault, it's not my fault." Healer Tabslett was currently with the other patient in the ward, but I saw him throw a worried look at me – I hadn't spoken to him, or anyone else, since Ron had left over five hours ago. I knew I must speak to him eventually, but before I did that I wanted to figure out what I was going to say. "It's not my fault. It can't be my fault." I could hear myself now, my voice was weak and raspy like I hadn't used it in ages. Healer Tabslett was coming in my direction now, he had left the one other patient and turned his focus onto me – and I had to say something…
"Good evening Percy." He greeted me when he finally arrived at the side of my bed; I opened my mouth to speak but no sound came out, so I closed it quickly. I didn't want to look like a goldfish. "Did you have a nice time talking to your brother this afternoon?" I nodded mutely, my brain working at a thousand miles an hour trying to think of what I was going to say to him. "Your dressing needs changed…. I thought we should do that now before it gets too late and you go to sleep. Are you alright with that?"
"Uh…" My brain still wasn't connecting with my mouth and I had to mentally scold myself and say: "Yes."
"I'll be back in a moment." Healer Tabslett told me and disappeared off, most likely to get clean dressings. I looked down at my arms, they were still very heavily bandaged; Healer Tabslett was right, the bandages really did need a change – the cloth material of the bandages was beginning to get a bit stained and grubby from having them on all day and all night for over a week. When Healer Tabslett came back he was carrying long lengths of bandages and a bottle of potion that he would apply to my wounds, in an attempt to make them heal quicker. He placed them down on the little table that I used to eat my meals off of.
"Alright Percy, let's have a look…" He held out his hand and I obliged by lifting my left arm, which was closest to him, up to meet his hand. He began, very slowly, to unpick the tags that were holding the bandages together. For some reason I suddenly felt like a very small child having a plaster taken off.
"Ron said that you want to send me home." I instantly knew the moment the words had left my lips, that I had sounded like a petulant whining child, so I focussed on the Healer's hands so I wouldn't have to look up at him.
"No, we don't want to send you home Percy – but we're not progressing any further. So we have to think whether we're of any use – is staying here of any use to you?" Healer Tabslett replied. "If the answer to that is no, then maybe something else will help you better."
"But I don't understand. How – what do I have to do to show progression?" I asked, watching layer and layer of cloth being unwound gently. The top couple of layers were slightly dirty from the general every day wear and tear, then there was a couple of layers that were still white and clean. As the bandage got closer to the skin of my arm I saw a difference though – there was a horribly red stain permeating the bandage. My arm had clearly been bleeding and had dried brick solid. It looked disgusting. The arm that was now unbandaged had a long wound running from my elbow right down to my wrist. I could hardly bear to look at it.
"Well Percy, we want to understand why you did this. What led you to do it?" Healer Tabslett replied picking up his wand, holding the used bandage over a metal dish and incinerating it. I swallowed – that would mean I would have to talk about it; about the war, about him. "I know that's difficult Percy. I understand there are probably things you'd prefer not to talk about, but there must be some serious stuff going on in your head for you to try this." He took hold of my arm – his hands were warm – and pressed gently around the sides of the long cut, I winced. It wasn't sore, but tender where the cut was knitting itself back together. "This is good." Healer Tabslett was nodding as he looked over my arm. "It's healing well – that's always a good sign."
"Will it scar?" I questioned, half glancing at it then averting my eyes very swiftly.
"Yes." He answered. "There's no point in me sugar coating it – it was a really deep cut Percy, and although it's healing nicely now it will leave a scar. In time it will fade, but it'll never disappear completely." I sighed – not only was I going to know what I had wanted to do, I was going to be left with a lasting reminder of how I had failed to succeed.
"When you say, you want me to explain why I did it…" I started slowly, "Do you not already know? Has my dad not told you?" Healer Tabslett paused in the action of dousing a gauze with a measure of peach coloured potion.
"No, we haven't been told anything Percy. All we know is what you did and how your father found you." He said I searched for any note of dishonesty in his voice, but I couldn't hear any. "From the way your father spoke to us when you were first admitted it sounded like he didn't understand it either." He took hold of my arm and began to dab at the wound with the potion covered gauze.
"But… but you know about my brother, right?" I fumbled over the words as I didn't really want to think about Fred.
"I know you have quite a few brothers." He told me, dropping the used gauze into the metal dish and picking up a length of bandage and beginning to wind it carefully around my arm. "I know one of your brothers died during the war, if that's what you're talking about." I looked at my lap as he finished bandaging my arm and tapped it with the end of his wand, where he touched the bandage a tag magically formed and sealed up the end of it.
"Do you know that it was my fault?" My voice was weak again, and so quiet that I wasn't sure that he had heard me at first.
"What was your fault?" He asked placidly, moving round to the other side of the bed and picking up my other arm to take its bandage.
"Him dying." I answered eventually, still not looking up at him.
"How could it be your fault?" He asked me, although he sounded as though he wasn't really paying attention.
"It just is." I replied dully, "He didn't deserve it." Healer Tabslett was unwinding the third layer of bandages on my right arm.
"And you did deserve it?" He asked lightly, neither of us were looking at the other. "Many people die who 'deserve' life, and some people live who 'deserve' death." Healer Tabslett said rather philosophically. "That is something that we have no control over – and we shouldn't have control over. Who are we to decide who should live or die." I sat in silence, pondering over what he had just said.
"He really didn't deserve it though, he hadn't betrayed his family, or been so sucked into ambition that he lost sight of what is important…" I murmured.
"And you think that he would want you to throw away the life that you still have, just because you made mistakes?" He posed this statement as a question to me; it hurt my brain too much to get my head around, so I remained silent. "Hmmm… this doesn't look good." He was inspecting my right arm now; I chanced a glance at it and then wished I hadn't looked. There was an almost identical wound to the one on my left arm running down my right, but it didn't look so clean. The skin wasn't knitting itself back together; there was a crusted yellow layer around the sides of the cut. And under the scab there were pools of pus. "Oh dear… I can tell this is infected just by looking at it." My stomach turned over inside me, so I squeezed my eyes shut to try and avoid even seeing it out of the corner of my eye. But even with my eyes completely closed I was reminded by a sour, rotting smell that invaded my nostrils, but I wasn't sure whether I was imagining it.
"Please do something about it." I pleaded, still with my eyes shut, and attempting not to gag from the smell. "Please? Can you just try and fix it?"
"I'm not going to leave it like this Percy, I'll have to clean it up and it will probably sting quite a bit as I try and clean away all of the dead cells." Healer Tabslett replied.
"Yeah, alright… do whatever, please." I said without having listened to what he had said. I could feel his hand on my wrist, and then a gentle scraping sensation around the cut. It made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end and a shiver ran down my spine. I didn't know how long I held my eyes closed for, or how long it took for Healer Tabslett to clean the cut, but I only opened my eyes when I felt him wrapping a length of bandage around my arm.
"We'll have to keep an eye on that arm." He told me, "We don't want that getting any worse."
"Mmmm." I hummed, not sure of what to say and not necessarily inclined to restart the previous conversation.
"Right, I'll let you get some rest." He said finally, picking up the metal dish with the ashes of the incinerated bandages and used gauze in it and moved away from the edge of my bed. I thought about what Healer Tabslett had said:
'And you think he would want you to throw away the life that you still have, just because you made mistakes?' I hadn't ever thought about it from that angle, mainly because I had been sure that it had all been my fault.
'Fred is gone. He is dead… but is it really all my fault?'
A/N: Yet again, I apologise for the long gap between updating – but university work has been almost killing me!