The Clincher
Deystar
With nothing to gain,
Here's the clincher:
This should be you
He couldn't stand it any longer, just sitting there and watching the priest pray over a beautiful golden coffin, white markings dancing beautifully across the smooth surface. It was hard to hear the choir sing the sorrowful hymn in the background, to look around and see the sad, dark faces of everyone who had grown to love the poor departed soul of his best friend. When he looked, he could even see the cloaked figure of their adversary of older times, the youngest Malfoy. It was probably hardest to sit next to her, to have Hermione's tears, though semi-silent, seem to drown all his senses in a great flood.
The wizard preacher spoke softly, melancholy, to the entire room of mourners, but he couldn't hear him. He knew they were all paying tribute to the brave soul that had helped so much in the end of the war. That bloody battle that he himself had been present at. What he wouldn't give to have known then all he knew now, so that he might have saved his best friend...
This teen had been replaying the Last Battle in his mind ever since it ended. The poor boy... he'd always been so brave, even if he was risking his neck out there for everyone. He'd put everything on the line out there, and lost it all. A fragile life had been taken in exchange for those of an entire people. It wasn't fair.
He couldn't stand any of it. It was too much for him to watch Hagrid crying in the back, see McGonagal in the front in her best black dress robes, even see Dumbledore looking somber in the front seat to the left. It wasn't right. It wasn't possible. How it could've happened was just too much to comprehend...
The boy stood, and gently walked outside, ignoring all the sympathetic stares and whispers. He had to leave. Now.
No one knew what he felt like. No one had to live with the pain he had, the simple yet complicated part of his life that would forever kill him inside.
What was killing him was the simple fact that it was supposed to be him, not nineteen-year-old Ronald Weasley, in that coffin.