A/N: I know it isn't strictly canon but I think it could almost be real. Maybe.

Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.

17. "I'm sorry, but she's not going to pull through."
Percy x Penelope

The war had torn people apart. People went into hiding or on the run. People switched sides or went undercover. People were fighting or joining the resistance. Families, friends, couples – they'd all been split up.

Penny and he had been split up during the war. Penny, his beloved Penny, was Muggleborn. She'd been in danger. He'd seen her one afternoon, on a rare afternoon off just before the war really hit, and he'd begged her to go into hiding. He'd kissed her goodbye and told her he loved her and to stay safe. He'd made her promise to keep in touch.

She hadn't.

He later found out that she had taken his advice and gone on the run with a group of other Muggleborns. They'd been caught by a group of Snatchers, greedy for money and short of compassion, and delivered to the Ministry. He wasn't exactly sure what had happened next, but she would have been interrogated, under Dementor guard, by a panel. They would have humiliated her and tortured her before deciding that she had gotten magic unlawfully. She was sentenced to die in Azkaban. They didn't give the Dementor's Kiss. Not yet. They just left her in there to die.

Azkaban was dark and cold and dangerous. She would have been completely alone in a freezing cell, wandless and surrounded by soul leeching Dementors. Every single day would have been a struggle. Hundreds died there, succumbing to the darkness.

She'd been there for five months before the war was won. A party was sent to free the Muggleborns within moments of the final battle being won. He'd been part of the group sent to free them. It had been made up of over fifty family and friends of those imprisoned. He'd been the one to find her.

She was laying in a cell, on the floor, deathly pale, eyes closed. He'd rushed forwards, already anticipating the worst. She'd been alive though, there was the faintest trace of a pulse. She was just about clinging on to life.

They'd Apparated straight to St. Mungo's. There had been others, like her, who had been similarly ill and taken to hospital but Penny had been the first.

They'd taken her straight into recovery. He'd sat in the waiting room, head in hands, waiting just waiting. A Healer emerged and made a beeline for him, Percy looked up instantly, straightening up in his chair.

"Mr Weasley..." The Healer said apologetically. "Are you here for Penelope Clearwater?"

"Yes." Percy said eagerly. He was the only one there for her. Her parents were gone, killed when the Death Eaters raided her home trying to find her. "Is she going to be okay?"

"I'm sorry, but she's not going to pull through." The Healer said quietly. "She's been through too much to recover."

"No...no! You're wrong! She's a fighter, she'll make it. She has to." She had to make it. She had to.

The Healer had said nothing.

Three days. Three whole days she'd continued to cling desperately onto life. Three whole days she'd fallen deeper and deeper into a coma from which she would never recover. Three whole days he had sat by her bedside, holding her tiny hands in his and praying she would recover.

On the fourth day, she left him forever.