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Saying Goodbye | ||||
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Category: Post-DH/AB Characters:All Genres: Angst, Fluff Warnings: None Story is Complete Rating: PG Reviews: 30 Summary: Moving on means being able to say goodbye. Hitcount: Story Total: 5506 Disclaimer: Harry Potter Publishing Rights © J.K.R. Note the opinions in this story are my own and in no way represent the owners of this site. This story subject to copyright law under transformative use. No compensation is made for this work. |
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She’s crying again. Harry looks down at the redhead curled up and asleep on the couch next to him, her head lying on his leg, looking to all the world to be dreaming a peaceful sleep. But she’s not sleeping peacefully, as the tears streaming down her face and onto his pants attest. He knows what is hurting her and it’s not the healing curse scars from the battle. The wound that’s hurting her is inside. It’s the same wound that’s been hurting all of them for the past two weeks. Fred… Lupin… Tonks… And everyone else, all the others that were lowered into the ground, that had tearful words spoken on their behalf, that are now only stones set in the earth with a pair of carved dates and a carved epitaph and an embedded Order of Merlin, First Class, set in the stone. So many… He bends down, careful not to wake her as her chest starts to heave in silent sobs in her sleep, and holds her tightly, rocking her back and forth and whispering in her ears, knowing that his voice will help. After a few moments, she calms down; the silent sobbing stops, the tears cease streaming down her face, leaving wet tracks behind them. When she wakes, she won’t remember this; she hasn’t, not yet, not any of the many times that this has happened in the past few weeks. But she’ll wake up tired and puffy-eyed, the little sleep that she does get these days disrupted and unsettled… and avoided. He shifts slightly, absently tracing a pattern of freckles next to her ear with his finger. Hermione says the same thing happens with Ron; many times, she has had to hold him in his sleep until he stops crying. Of course, anyone, aside from those closest to them, spotting an unconscious Weasley lately has been a rare thing; they’ve all been active in the rebuilding. Excessively so. Harry knows that they’ve all become workaholics because spending their hours and days rebuilding is a far sight better than thinking about those that they’ll never see again. Ginny has been going constantly, more than once staying awake for more than a day or two straight before crashing in his arms. Percy had reportedly been using a stimulant potion past the point of abuse for the first week; he’d been afraid to go to sleep. If Madam Pomfrey hadn’t ambushed him with a dreamless sleep potion that had put him out for two days, he’d probably still be going. George… George had gone right back to Weasley Wizard Wheezes, which had been closed for the past few months, and reopened it, putting every waking moment, and many of the moments that he should have spent sleeping, into the business that he and his other half had spent the last few years building. A steady and increasing stream of goods has been coming from that shop, all priced far below what they should be; George wants people to smile again, and now he has to do twice as much work at it than before… The fact that Harry has yet to see a genuine smile on George’s own face has not escaped him. He hasn’t seen much of Bill lately; the eldest Weasley sibling has been spending a great deal of time liaising with Gringotts, helping them repair the damage that the retrieval of the Horcrux had caused (they still haven’t found the dragon, though). The return of Gryffindor’s sword helped though, even if Griphook, who had been holding it at the time when Neville had pulled it from the Hat, had been most upset when the blade had simply vanished from his arms. Still, Bill had taken Harry aside at one point and had berated him for not following his advice; this had been followed by a wistful statement that he dearly wished that he could have seen the expression on Griphook’s face when the sword had been called by a true Gryffindor. Charlie… he hadn’t seen Charlie since the funerals, but his clock hand has been stuck on “Work” for the last week and change. Harry had wondered at one point if he was taking after Percy’s example. And the elder Weasleys… Harry sighed. Arthur has been so busy with paperwork and running around organizing, which was no surprise; the man was obviously trying to keep as busy as he could. Harry had seen him in the Great Hall a week earlier, standing there, with nothing to do. The look on his face had been heartbreaking. Strangely, Molly was the least emotional of the lot; he supposed that Hermione was right, that she had had some degree of catharsis (Harry had had to look up the word later) when she had toasted Bellatrix. Even so, she was still driving herself spare with taking care of everyone–except for herself. And as for himself… he had been dividing his time between helping with the rebuilding, giving comfort where he could, and helping Andromeda with his godson; he had vowed that the other second-generation Marauder was going to have a better life than his own, even if it wasn’t starting out much better–or so similarly. Still, at least he wasn’t being accused of mass murder like Sirius had been. And his godson also had his grandmother, who had accepted the deaths of her husband, daughter and son-in-law as well as she could, her personality as stable and even-keeled as her older sister's had been insane. Of course, they had the same temper, which an unfortunate reporter had learned when he had been a little too aggressive when trying to find out more about the Chosen One’s godson. And Harry’s own dreams have been peaceful. He has woken with a dry face and non-puffy eyes. He mourns, yes, but he’s been to the other side, he’s spoken to those that he lost, he knows that there’s nothing to fear over there. He’d spoken to those that he’d lost… and said goodbye. That thought hung in his mind for several moments. I’m a bloody moron, Harry thought. He was going to have to break a promise of sorts, but if it helped the Weasleys move on and say goodbye… then he would gladly do so. ~*~ Harry stood at the edge of the Forest; this was where he had seen his parents, Sirius and Lupin thanks to the Resurrection Stone. Now he just had to find Aragog’s clearing… where he had dropped the ring… He moved along the edge of the forest and quickly spotted what he had been looking for; a path, trodden by many feet, the trees uprooted by giants, heading towards the castle. He darted down the path, avoiding the splintered remains of the trees easily, levitating the larger trunks out of his way. He had been debating on doing this with himself ever since the thought had struck him back in the castle. The ring was dangerous; the story about the three brothers and the Deathly Hallows was more than enough to explain why. But the way some of the Weasleys were going, it was only a matter of time before one of them followed Fred into the afterlife anyway. And once they had the chance to say goodbye… then the ring was going to put in a place safer than a spot on the ground in a clearing that had a path literally beaten to it, even if he was the only one who knew that it was there. Maybe the Potter vault in Gringotts… or perhaps the middle of the English Channel. He paused for a moment. The Potter vault, at least at first, or maybe the highest security vault he could get from the goblins. At least for the next few years. Teddy deserved to meet his parents one day, and to get to shout and rail at them and cry and laugh with them… and then move on. He reached the clearing and looked around; the Acromantula were long gone; those that had been found after the battle had been carted off… somewhere. He wasn’t sure where, and he was reasonably sure that he didn’t want to know. As for the rest, they were either dead, or scattered throughout the forest. He moved slowly, comparing his memories of those few moments that night against the sunlit branches around him. The pit where the fire that had lit the clearing had burned was over there… but he needed another landmark to figure out where he had been standing… There. There was the tree that Hagrid had been tied against. Harry could see the places where his struggles had made the ropes score and dig into the bark. Harry walked towards it; he could see the impressions in the soft ground where Hagrid’s boots had walked away from the tree, and a short distance away, near where the footprints stopped and turned, the gold band was there, clearly visible as it glinted in the sunlight. Harry stooped, picked it up, and walked back to the path, back to Hogwarts. He might be the master of the Three Deathly Hallows, but he was still scared of what he was about to do. But the alternative was to wait until one of his new family killed themselves in their grief, either on purpose or by accident or neglect. And he wasn’t going to let that happen. He turned the Stone over three times and waited, knowing who he needed to talk to at the moment. “Hello, Harry.” He turned. “Hello, Fred.” The shade of Fred Weasley was walking alongside him. “I didn't get to finish my comment to Perce,” he groused. “I hadn’t heard him make a joke since second year, when one of our pranks backfired on us.” “What was the prank?” Fred grinned. “Let’s just say it involved about a dozen Dungbombs, a few pounds of uncooked peas, a very large rubber chicken, and a large number of wizarding crackers.” Harry considered that for a moment. “Do I want to know how it backfired?” “No, probably not.” “What was Percy’s joke?” “Well, he took one look at us, standing there in the corridor, covered in feathers and… well… covered, and makes the comment that ‘I guess your pranks aren’t as egg-cellent as you say they are; perhaps you two should stop before any more of your yolks end up on you.’” Harry stopped. “You’re kidding.” “Nope. And then he turned around and started walking away, clucking all the while.” Harry tried to imagine the scene, and honestly couldn’t. Fred looked at him, beaming. “I know; hard to imagine, isn’t it?” “’Impossible’ is more the word that I’m thinking of, honestly.” “Yeah, well, it wasn’t until he got his prefect badge that he really got that stick up his arse, even though he was still a pain before that.” Harry sighed. “You know why you’re here, why I brought you back, right?” “Hmm… let’s see…” Fred started ticking off on his insubstantial fingers. “My twin brother is going to kill himself through overwork at the rate he’s going and hasn’t smiled in weeks, Bill and Charlie haven’t stopped going since they stuck me in an box and put me in the ground, Perce is going to kill himself through overdosing on waking potions because he’s afraid I’m going to haunt his dreams, Ginny’s been crying in your arms each time she falls asleep, and I do mean ‘falls,’ Ron’s been doing the same into Hermione’s arms, and, oh, Mum and Dad are going to cut their lives short by a decade or three if they don’t stop trying to burn themselves out.” He looked at Harry. “Did I miss anyone?” Harry shook his head. “So you want me to tell them that I’ll be very cross at them if they continue going like this because of me–which is quite true–and if they don’t take as long of a time as they can before they join me, I’ll refuse to speak to them for the rest of eternity?” Harry grinned. “Something like that.” “Done and done. Let’s get going; I have some shouting to do at my jugless brother.” ~*~ It was very odd, Harry mused, to see someone conversing with the air, and to know that the air was answering back. George had greeted him with the fake smile that he’d been wearing for the last two weeks when he had walked into the shop; Harry had heard Fred snort in disgust behind him. Harry had then told George that he had someone that he had to see, and could they go someplace private? George, confused, had pointed him to the stairs up to the flat above the shop and followed him as they walked up the staircase. Harry hadn’t needed to look back to know that Fred was mirroring his brother’s movements exactly, walking literally in step, all the while making as many ridiculous expressions as he could. Once they reached the flat and closed the door, George had turned to Harry and said, “Alright, who’s hiding under your Invisibility Cloak, Harry? You said that there’s someone I have to see, and I don’t see anyone.” Harry had smiled, partly because he was about to help George relieve some of the guilt in his eyes… and partly because Fred was making ridiculous gestures around George’s head. “Wrong Hallow, George.” “What do you mean?” “You were there; Elder Wand… Invisibility Cloak… and…” He proffered the ring to George, who had suddenly gone very pale. His brother gave Harry a thumbs up right before he vanished as the ring dropped into George’s hands, “Resurrection Stone.” George had stared at the ring in his hands for a few moments, a stunned and awed look on his face, before he had looked up at Harry, who had nodded. “Turn the Stone over three times.” George had done so and had immediately cowered as the anger of his brother’s shade, now invisible to Harry, had broken over him. All told, it took about ten, maybe fifteen minutes. George had cowered, recovered, argued (ineffectively), hung his head in shame, cried, laughed, nodded and then handed the ring back to Harry, a real and true smile decorating his face once again. “Thank you.” “Well, if you weren’t going to listen to me about not slowly killing yourself,” Harry said, turning the Stone over once more, “who would you listen to?” Fred appeared behind his brother and walked through him, a wide grin on his face. “So, who’s next?” ~*~ That night, Harry stood in the vaults of Gringotts, a scowling goblin next to him. The goblins didn’t know what he was depositing in his vault; all they knew was that he was placing something important there… and that he was one of the plotters that had managed the second break-in into the vaults in living memory. To say that they weren’t happy with him at the moment would be a bit of an understatement. Still, Bill had helped him talk with them, and once he had explained everything to them–including why he had tried to keep the sword–they had understood. They hadn’t been pleased, not in the slightest, but they had understood. Harry walked into the vault, placing a large box in the far corner and heaped coins onto it, and then placed a small ring-sized box near the doorway. If anyone ever managed to break in and steal the ring-sized box, they were going to be mightily surprised when they opened it; Harry hadn’t asked George for details about what was in there, but the mad grin on his face had given him some idea of what the hapless thief would be in for. As the goblin sealed the vault behind him as he walked back to the carts, Harry ruminated; he would be back sometime in the next few years, at least as soon as Teddy was old enough to understand. The Weasleys, for their part, had thanked Harry with all their hearts for the chance to say goodbye to Fred. Bill had wept, and Harry had watched the tension in his body slowly leave with the tears. Percy had been cornered in his apartment, and, as he and Fred had left, Percy was laying down on his bed, about to get the first natural sleep that he had had in two weeks, a smile on his tear-streaked face. Molly had hugged him hard enough that he had felt that he had been in danger of rib fracture and Arthur had had a peaceful and happy expression on his face for the first time in nearly a year. Ron had all but fallen down… and then had blushed as red as a tomato. Harry hadn’t needed to ask Fred what he had said to his younger brother; he knew what had been said, and what the smug look on his face had meant. Before they had gone to see Ginny, Fred had turned to him and, with a warning expression on his face, had said, “Now Harry, if you don’t make her as happy as you can for the rest of her life, I’ll…” Harry had grinned at him. “You’ll do what?” “Um… I’ll think of something!” Harry had smiled. “I don’t think they’ll be any worries on that front, Fred. Do you know what I thought about, right before Voldemort hit me with the Killing Curse? Her. Hell, if I don’t make her as happy as I can, then I give you full permission to make my life and afterlife as miserable as possible.” And Ginny had cried when she saw her brother… and then had blushed to about the same color as her hair, which had then been followed by a Bat-Bogey Hex at Fred. Unfortunately, Harry had been standing behind the shade–which undoubtedly had been planned–and ended up being on the receiving end of his girlfriend’s signature hex for the first time. As they had left to meet Charlie, who had been tracked down by Bill after several hours, Harry, still blowing his nose, had turned to Fred, who had responded with a shrug of his immaterial shoulders. “Older brother’s prerogative, old boy; I get to tease the sibling and torment the boyfriend. Also, this way you know what’ll happen to you if you get her angry.” And Charlie… Charlie had been the hardest to see. The solid, stocky man had wept, much like his older brother had, but he had then apologized, his chest wracked with sobs, for not being there… when his younger brother had died. He had been the only one in the family that hadn’t been there. And then he had broken down completely, falling into a sobbing wreck on the floor. At this, Harry had decided that it would be the better part of valor to silence his hearing for a bit and turn his back for a while. And now the ring was safe, hidden in the back corner of a vault that had nothing exceptional to it except for the family that it belonged to, and there it would stay. It would come out again occasionally, though, for his eventual wedding… and he wanted his parents to see their grandchildren, the children that would be named for them. Tears filled his eyes, and they weren’t from the windburn as the cart sped its way back to the surface. But aside from those special moments, the ring would be kept locked away, only to be used for those times when someone was unable to get past a death, to say goodbye, and to move on with their lives. But the ring would stay in the vault otherwise; it was far too dangerous to keep around a home, much less wear; much like the Mirror of Erised, it was best used only for a single, planned purpose (in its case, a means for therapy and healing) and for much the same reason. And Harry had learned the lessons of the Deathly Hallows and the three brothers, one of whom was among his ancestors, and was determined not to repeat the mistakes of the other two. ~*~ Later, as they laid nestled together on his bed in Grimmauld Place, Harry smiled, his arms wrapped around Ginny’s flannel-encased form as she slumbered. She was breathing deeply and sleeping soundly, a smile on her lips for the first night since the battle; no tears, no sobs, no nightmares were plaguing her, not this night, and hopefully never again. She was also wearing her pajamas for the first time in weeks, instead of simply falling asleep in whatever clothes she happened to be wearing at the time when her body simply ran out of energy; she was finally ready to put herself back on track; she wasn’t afraid to sleep anymore. Finally she could start moving forward again, instead of only looking back, and being afraid of doing both. And a large part of that moving forward would be with him; he knows that her mother knows that she is here–and doesn’t care. He knows that, when she turns seventeen in a little over five weeks, that his coming-of-age birthday present to her will be a ring and a question. And he already knows what the answer will be. But, for now, she’s not crying anymore. She’s said goodbye to one of her siblings and has managed to move on past the past. She sleeps like a babe in his arms, her sweet hair tangled between their pajamas as he holds her tight, savoring the moment. He has helped her heal today, and enjoys the results of his handiwork; a peaceful sleep in his arms, not one racked by tears and sobs. There will be more nights for them together, many more, so for now he simply lies there, nestled with her like a pair of spoons, and simply enjoys this first of what will hopefully be many peaceful nights to come. And with that, Harry drifted off to sleep, Ginny in his arms, a smile on his face, knowing that he had achieved another victory, this one over Death itself, and by using one of its own weapons against it. And that irony made him smile all the more as he drifted away into his dreams. His ancestor must be proud. ~*~ A/N: Eight months ago I lost a dear friend, someone that was the closest to being a brother that I ever had, to a stupid accident that was entirely his fault. Each time I think of him, the pain is still there. I never got to say goodbye, not truly; they even had to cremate him, because they didn’t find him for three days. And, as I and others frequently expressed in the days afterwards, we would love to see him again for five minutes… just to yell at him for being so stupid. But we can’t. And so the hole in my heart that appeared when I heard about Jim’s death will never go away, will never heal… So when I saw all these fics about the Weasleys and others being unable to move on past the senseless deaths… and the fact that Harry was able to say goodbye to his own loved ones… something just clicked. And that something became the story above. I hope you enjoyed it. |
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