Chapter 2! The order of the characters will not be "logical" but it makes sense to me...
I adore Ron, but I find him incredibly difficult to write.
Please read and review.
Aftermath – Before the Funeral
Ron
It was not supposed to be like this.
You Know Who is finished. The War is over. They should be going back to a normal life, celebrating with the rest of the wizarding world, making plans for the future. As it is, life seems to have come to a halt.
They are home at The Burrow, home after so long, but it does not seem like home. It is too quiet. Far too quiet – even when someone starts crying, or when Charlie yells at someone, it is only a temporary break in the unnatural silence that has descended. When they do talk, it is in low voices, as if they might wake someone sleeping. They seem to have forgotten how to be a normal family.
He and Hermione should be planning a trip to Australia to find her parents and restore their memories, but there is no way they can go now. Ron could not leave his family, even if he wanted to. And he does not want to. Hard as it is to be here, it would be harder not to be here. And Hermione will not leave him, for which he is grateful. He knows that she and Harry, and maybe even Fleur, feel like intruders on the family's grief, but he could not carry on without her. Not now. Her presence, and the memory of that kiss in the midst of chaos that assured him that she was finally and unequivocally his are all that is keeping him going.
He understands why Charlie is so angry, and feels that he might be too, if only he had the energy. He sees and pities Percy's guilt. He does not understand how Bill can seem so calm and in control – until he catches Fleur's worried eyes upon her husband, and realises that Bill might not be keeping things together as well as he would like his family to believe. He does not want to even think about what George must be feeling. He knows somehow that Ginny feels the same as he does – grief for Fred of course, but also an overwhelming feeling that this is so bloody unfair after all they have gone through already.
Part of him still thinks that this might be a bad dream. Even though he knows what happened. Even though he was there. (He is, in an obscure way, grateful that he was. He saw Fred die. He knew he was dead, knew straight away that he was. That was hard – bloody hell, what an understatement - but he feels it would have been harder not to be there, to have someone tell him, to have to imagine what happened.)
For some reason, he keeps going over in his head what happened at Hogwarts last year, when Bill was injured. He sees his brother lying in a pool of blood, his face ripped to shreds. He thought he was dead, that he must be dead with injuries like that. He feels Ginny's hand cold in his, hears her whisper, "He's dead, isn't he?" He feels himself nodding. Then he sees Remus Lupin, blessedly sensible and matter-of-fact, kneeling by Bill, saying he is not dead, that they have to get him to the hospital wing right away.
Why could that not have happened this time? Why couldn't this have been a mistake too?
How can Fred be dead? He will not cry, because to do so would be to acknowledge that he is.
But if, for a minute, he tries to forget or pretend that it is a dream or a mistake, all he has to do is to look at his mother, or at Ginny – or worst of all, at George – to know that it is true.
Coming home was never meant to be like this.
