Numbing the pain for a while will make it all the worse when you finally feel it. Dumbledore
Chaos Theory
Neville went out into the yard to try to pick up the pieces, mostly because he didn't want Dean to do it first. He couldn't imagine anything worse than stumbling upon your best friend and finding him dead. So he went, slipped out before the head count had really been taken, and got into step alongside Harry.
"I'm surprised you're not inside." Neville said. He knew, or sensed at the very least, that the Weasley parents had been important people in Harry's life. Their deaths must have been as great a blow to him as it was to their blood children.
"Don't want to get in the way. This is their family." Harry stared straight at the ground, probably because he didn't want Neville to notice the tear that slipped past those glasses onto the ground. Neville did notice, and didn't comment. "Guess we're just adding more people to the list of orphans these wars have created."
Neville swallowed hard. His parents weren't dead, but sometimes he thought of them that way. Sometimes (and he felt awful for these times) he almost wished they were, because he had a feeling that their continued existence was just making these once powerful and proud people miserable.
Instead of commenting on that, though, he snatched another piece from that sentence. "You think this is going to be another war?"
Harry shrugged. "Not like Voldemort, maybe, I don't think it's organized enough for that, but is the animosity boiling up again? Yeah, I think so, Nev."
That's when they happened to walk far enough out into the field to peer around the side of the house, when Neville saw the heap of blood and clothes that turned out to be Seamus. He gasped, Harry ran, and eventually they were on either side of their old roommate. Neville could almost hear their hearts thundering in unison.
"Is he…?"
"He's breathing!" But Neville couldn't tell if this was a fact or a wish. When he gathered Seamus's head from off the ground and put it on his own blood and mud spattered robes. He gave the whole body a little shake.
"Seamus? Shay, come on, old sod, Ron's going to be pissed you're taking all the thunder out of his wedding day."
The hand that shot out and caught Harry's wrist surprised all of them, Seamus included. He opened his eyes wide, mouth moving even as blood spilled over his teeth. Neville shot a glance at Harry – this was bad. They needed some real healers, and fast.
But words were coming out now, and Neville leaned close to hear them. "I didn't…didn't tell them anything." His eyes started to roll towards the back of his head when they snapped back, focused again for a heartbeat. "Harry. They want…H-Harry."
And then Seamus went limp, and frighteningly quiet.
Ron just clutched Hermione's hand, holding onto it like a lifeline as he stared down at his parents, laid out on the living room floor like discarded things. He was swaying slightly, unable to actually process what had happened. There had been a battle, and Death Eaters, and he remembered fighting them off while trying to keep Hermione in sight…Hermione.
He kissed her hair, unaware of the tears that flowed into it. The voices around him were strange, hazy, and no one was making any sense until Bill roared, his face desperate, his words pleading. "Fleur! Did anyone see Fleur?"
"And the babies!" That was Ginny, Ginny who wouldn't walk down the aisle with Harry, like any of that mattered now. "Teddy! Victoir!"
And there was something important about that, if only Ron could get his mouth unstuck, if only the words would come (but his parents were dead, dead on his wedding day, and how could words change that?) "Bill…" but his voice wasn't loud enough and he sagged against Hermione. Suddenly, he was very, very tired.
A hand gripped his arm and Ron turned to George. Somehow, this brother managed to steady him. "C'mon, Ronnie, what are you saying?"
"Fleur left with the babies." Ron whispered. "I…I made her disapperate."
The hand around his arm tightened. "Good boy." This gentle praise, coupled with Hermione's hand in his, made Ron smile, just a bit.
And then he collapsed into George's arms, and Fred's high voice rang out above the hubbub of the house, and Hermione's face was pressing against his, her hands clutched his face, and the last thing Ron thought was that she was the most beautiful woman in the whole world.
Percy went into the room where Harry and the other Gryffindor boys were sitting around Seamus. He didn't like this job, didn't want it at all. "Harry…"
The Boy Who Lived Twice looked up, and his scar stood out stark against his pale, pale face. He didn't say anything, just stared at Percy for a heartbeat, two, before saying, quietly, low, "Who is it, Perce?"
"Ron." And his parents, and so many others who had come to attend a wedding, like that bar boy that Charlie was working over feverishly, like Lee, his partner for a year, who had broken his arm and collarbone and wouldn't even tell anyone for fear of taking the attention off of those who need it more.
Harry was on his feet already, brushing past Percy, and he let him go. What can you say to make this better? It was his youngest brother, it was his wedding day, it was his parents, it was his partner.
It was a mess, and amongst all the boys clustered around another young man desperately clinging to life, Percy Weasley, who always had it together, felt tears dripping silently down his cheeks.
Bill tried to calm his brothers, but he was making no headway, not through his own overwhelming grief.
All the others had each other. There was this unspoken rule among them that the oldest had to mentor the one below, and so on. So Bill had Charlie to teach about exactly when it was best to hex Slytherins, and Charlie had Percy, admittedly the most difficult, but if anyone could bring out the good parts in Percy's often uptight personality it was charismatic, jovial Charlie Weasley, and Percy had the twins, a surprising combination that at least partly tempered the twins too-big personalities, and the twins had Ron, an easy relationship with much ribbing and biting remarks but so much love it was palpable, Ron had little Ginny, who was the pet of all of them, and it seemed to Bill at least that somewhere along the way they'd stopped being sibling and started being real friends.
But the point is that Bill had nobody above him to show him the ropes. He'd had to stumble along as best he could, being the oldest of a large family, and he'd only had his parent's gentle neglect to lead him into adulthood. Which made him close to them in ways that the younger ones could never be.
Still, it was his responsibility, and knowing that Fleur and the babies were safe made it easier for him to skip between his brothers and offer whatever comfort he could.
…There was Charlie, working with Kingsley, the two best healers they had, kneeling over that boy that Charlie had brought to the wedding, the boy who'd taken sectumsempra to the chest.
…There was the twins, Percy, Hermione, Harry, Lee, all crowded into one room around Ron, who was bleeding, but there was also something wrong inside, something that they couldn't see, and he needed a healer but one of the other party guests had said that St. Mungo's was being overrun by Death Eaters. The twins were yelling at Lee for not telling them about his arm, but the black boy just shrugged, held his arm close. "I can get healed later." He said, then turned to Harry. "How's Seamus?"
"No idea. It was crucio, and I don't know…it could have been less than a minute, or ten minutes, his mind could be completely gone."
Bill then had the singular experience of watching the savior of the wizarding world look over at his best friend, Bill's youngest brother, and suddenly burst into tears. It was George who put an arm around him, who let him sob and sob for lives lost on a day that should have been amazing.
Then Hermione went over, reaching out the hand that wasn't already clutching Ron's to her other friend, and the three, the three that Lee had called on that radio show of his "The Golden Trio" were connected again.
"It'll be okay, Harry." She said, leaning her head against his shoulder.
Bill had to leave then, putting a hand up to his mouth to literally catch the thing he'd been about to say, which was that it wasn't going to be okay. It wasn't going to be okay at all.
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