This one's really short, but I think more would be overkill. I know I told several people Fleur was next, but I had a rethink. She might be next, but she might not! I've upped the rating to T because of bad language.
Please read and review.
(Oh, and if you're waiting on the next chapter of "Birthdays", it is nearly done, honest.)
Aftermath – Before the Funeral
Charlie
He knows that being angry isn't helping. It's not helping him, and it's making things worse for everyone else. (Scratch that – how can things be any worse?)
But he is frightened to let go of the anger. If he does, he'll have to replace it with something else, and the thought scares him.
So he welcomes his anger, even nurses it.
He is angry with Percy because he was a coward and a traitor, and yet he came back in time for the battle, in time to be with Fred when…
He is angry with Harry, because if he had gone to You Know Who sooner, Fred might not have…
He is angry with Bill for pretending to cope with all this. (He knows his elder brother well enough to realise that he is not coping, whatever the rest of the family might think.)
He is angry with everyone else for not coping, and for showing that they are not.
He cannot be angry with George, but he cannot look at him because he looks like…
He is angry with Fred for…
Most of all, he is angry with himself. For not coming back in time for the battle. For not being there when… For letting his family down. For not being able to react normally to this. His brother is dead. His brother is dead. Why can't he cry like the rest of them? Why does he have to be so bloody angry?
Finally, when he has managed to reduce Fleur, Percy and his mother to tears all within a half hour period, Bill confronts him and tells him that enough is enough. If he wants to be so fucking self-indulgent in his feelings, he can go elsewhere, because they do not need him here right now. He comes closer to hitting Bill than he has since he was fifteen.
But then, something cracks inside him, and he collapses in tears in Bill's arms.
It is a relief.
