32. Body

Dull sunlight eked through the thick wind and clouds by day, and crickets chirped in the rain by night. The earth was heaving itself out of winter, and it was a slow process. I felt my body mimicking it, struggling against its colder parts, yearning towards change.

The first week was the most difficult. I was lost inside of myself, a tiny figure in a maze I no longer knew how to navigate. I often found myself in a foggy grey dream, staring into space, and would come round to Molly looking at me worriedly, or squeezing my shoulder.

It was inevitable, confessing to her that I'd had a miscarriage. It came out more easily than I'd expected. I simply wanted her to know, and as I told it I realised it was a heavier part of my present sadness than I'd thought. Molly's face grew grim, but I saw behind her eyes that some part of her had suspected it. She held me. "You are still a woman," she said. "You are still my daughter. You are still loved."

For some time I didn't go up to my own room, sleeping on the couch instead. I knew it would be too easy to slip into depression again, to never open the door, and I didn't want that. I also was afraid to see the bed and be reminded of Christmas, when Remus and I had been so close.

I was still wearing the ring around my finger.

Arthur was very silent, and seemed a bit destroyed by what had happened when Molly first told him. But eventually he warmed to me, and I was relieved that he didn't treat me too differently. "Do you want anything?" he asked me one day, when he found me in one of my hazes. "Anything at all?"

He brought me a pile of muggle puzzles from the shed. We had them from the year when he'd been obsessed. I chose my favourite one, a painting of a beach with two people standing in the sea-spray in the distance. It also had the most pieces of any of the puzzles. When we had done it before it had taken the whole family a month to put it together.

Boring, Fred's voice said. Go get on my broom and fly around a bit.

Later, I thought, and opened the box.

I spent the rest of the afternoon sitting at the table putting together the edges. I did it knowing it was a kind of self deception; when the puzzle was complete, I would be well again.

I treated my body as a responsibility, eating what I needed to even when I wasn't hungry–Molly helped with that–bathing every morning, taking walks, getting sleep. Nothing I did made me feel much. It wasn't about satisfying myself in the present, but maintaining myself so that someday, if I ever got better, I wouldn't have to clean up my own mess.

It wasn't perfect. Sometimes something inside of me slipped, and I would lay on the couch all day, looking up at the window and the sky passing behind it. The important thing was standing up after the night had run its course, and it grew light again.

Fred spoke to me once or twice a day, his remarks usually urging me to get out of the house. I realised he was right. My episodes of hopelessness frightened me. I didn't want to sink into what had happened last time.

I took to cleaning the house, doing much of the work in the kitchen, and helping mum in the garden. Being down in the dirt made me feel good, and called up something pure in me from my childhood. Even when it rained hard I would go out and sit in the garden to smell the earth.

Often I spent whole mornings on long roaming walks, over the meadows or in the woods, up and down the river. I liked to take off my shoes and wade. The burning freezing feeling forced me to stay in the present.

I did eventually follow Fred's advice and get on a broom again. There was something exhausting about it, for I'd been using broomsticks only as a means of long-distance travel for the last month. But after a few slow cruises around the sunny sky, I began to enjoy it again. It was good to feel the air, to watch out for birds.

I still liked sitting and working on the puzzle in the evenings. Slowly the tall white spray of the waves began to form.

They were all different forms of escape, but at least they were healthier than sleeping.

In the second week, I climbed the stairs to my room. I closed the door and stood looking at the furniture for some time. I remembered packing my carpetbag to go and see Remus at Hogwarts after our first full moon as a couple. It seemed like ages ago.

It wasn't as painful seeing the bed as I'd anticipated. What had felt alive in my mind when I remembered Christmas seemed long-past now, like a history I struggled to connect to. I twisted the ring on my finger.

The biggest change that my return to the room brought around was that I started wearing Fred's clothes again. It wasn't a way of hiding this time, but a kind of coming back to life. I was worried at first, but Mum and Arthur didn't seem to mind. They were beginning finally to find joy in the memory of him, even though it still hurt. Molly saw me wearing one of his old button-ups, and touched it fondly. There were tears in her eyes, but she nodded silently, and I could see she was happy I was wearing it, rather than leaving it folded away in a dark dusty place.

Sometimes at night I walked out of the house quietly and into the nearby village, through the dark rustling wind. I wanted to lay by Fred's grave, and feel that unconditional love and warmth wrapping around me from the ground. He never spoke to me while I was there, but I felt his presence very strongly.

The wand was very quiet in my first days back to the Burrow, getting accustomed to the new place, and accepting it as safe, as home.

After it got warmed up, though, it became very interesting. Sometimes it was difficult to control, casting random spells that weren't dangerous at all, but that I hadn't even been thinking of. It seemed it was trying to get my attention, or to get me to use it more.

I decided to go out in the woods and practise some spells. I had been neglecting the magical part of my body, and lacked the same energy and dexterity that I'd previously had.

I remembered Ollivander warning me how difficult this wand would be to control, and he was right–to an extent. Once I dedicated myself to practising every day, it rewarded me with the most smooth charm work I'd ever experienced.

The family came to visit. Molly had been trying to gather everyone for weekly family dinners, and the first one was finally successful in my second week at home. I helped Molly to prepare everything, and found myself pacing a little as I waited for everyone to arrive.

Ginny and Harry came first, appearing in the field and walking up to the door to be embraced by Molly. They had their own place in Godric's Hollow now. Hermione and Ron were next, by Floo. Hermione looked stressed from her job in the ministry, but once you got her talking about it, it was clear she loved the work. Ron seemed to float around a bit, but I could tell he was glad to be at home. George also apparated, and it was clear that things hadn't been going so well–either with the shop, or with Angelina, or both. Percy was the penultimate arrival, his eyes tight and twisted from overwork. He, like George, didn't speak much, and sat in the corner looking rather judgmentally at my puzzle. Bill and Fleur were last, and they arrived by Floo, Bill first and Fleur second. She was visibly pregnant now, and Bill was very gentle with her, brushing off the ashes when she appeared.

The kitchen and the sitting room had slowly begun to fill up, and there was warmth and conversation that reminded me of the warmer moments of refuge before the war became darker. The house felt alive and full of love.

I realised, as the evening progressed, that they had all heard somehow of what had happened to me. I supposed it was Molly who had spread the word. I didn't mind it–nobody mentioned it, or looked at me too differently, for which I was grateful. But I did think I saw a vengeful anger buried deep behind some of their eyes–particularly Ginny's.

Fleur made an effort to connect with me, but Bill didn't even meet my gaze for the first hour. I tried to look at him every so often, but he was always looking at someone else, or at the table, or at Fleur. I could tell it wasn't accidental that he was avoiding my eyes. I could tell he was guilty.

It took away my appetite, knowing why. I didn't want him thinking that any of it was his fault.

I caught him after the meal was over and the dishes were clean. I was alone in the kitchen drying the last of the plates when he wandered in from the back garden, where everyone had congregated, in search of some ginger to settle Fleur's stomach. When he saw me a flare of panic cut through his eyes.

"Don't run away," I implored.

He stopped where he was, near the doorway. I could tell he wanted to go, but he didn't.

"Bill, I think we should–"

"Wilma–" he interrupted. "I must apologise."

"No." I shook my head. "It was my choice. It wasn't a good one, but it was mine. I didn't tell you everything. You had now way of knowing. And I know–" I saw him opening his mouth, but stopped him. "I know that if you'd known, you would have written to me differently. You're my brother, Bill. I would never hate you for this."

He nodded his head, and I thought I saw tears of shame and gratitude fill his eyes. "Thank you," he whispered. "And if there's anything I can do…"

I shook my head. "You owe me nothing."

I turned back to drying the dishes, unable to handle his emotions. He found his ginger in a drawer and silently went out.

My dreams had been vague, mere impressions of floating colours and shifting breezes. But late that night, when everyone had gone away and the Burrow was once again quiet under the starry sky, I had a different kind of dream.

I was in the hospital tent, and it seemed like a dark grey morning. The walls of the tent were swaying in a breeze. I stood up from my cot. My body felt strange.

I realised that I had to return to the Forbidden Forest. There was something I'd left there, which was important. Something I needed to get back.

Suddenly Severus was there, standing in my way. He was speaking, but I couldn't hear him. I could only hear the cold, soft sound of the breeze. He held out his hand, trying to stop me, but I walked through him like a ghost.

There was no sound but the faint breeze as I walked away from the tent, down the hill and into the forest. The canopy was still overhead. Everything was still. My feet seemed to almost push through the ground, to something else below.

I walked deeper. Deeper. And then I found what I had lost.

It was Remus, wearing his old tweed jacket. He was lying on the ground, his wand black and dead just out of reach of his limp hand. His chest was unmoving. His eyes were open and empty.

I stood there looking at him. I felt no shock or grief. I simply knew that this was what I had left behind.

The sound of the breeze ebbed. From behind me, I heard a voice saying my name. Then the dream distorted and with a gasp, I woke up.

A high sound of confusion caught in my throat as I sat up in bed and leaned over, holding my forehead. I realised that the voice I'd heard had been Tonks.

Without knowing it, I had been burying Remus's memory deep down, trying to protect myself from it. But now he flooded back to me in force. I pressed my hands to my heart, looking out the window at the dark clouds in the sky, holding back the moonlight. Where was he? Had he been harmed, as the dream seemed to imply?

I stayed awake for a long time, unable to fall back asleep. Eventually the clouds cleared to show the waning moon, and in its light I nodded off.

I feared another similar dream in the nights that followed, but no more came. On the face of it, this should have been a good sign. But I didn't know.

NOTE

The painting I was thinking of when I wrote about the puzzle is Monet's 'The Manneporte (Étretat),' in case anyone wanted to have a look.