We Were Soldiers

We Were Soldiers

By Argentues Draco

Part Two

    It’s been three years now since the war ended. Three long years filled with both heartache and joy, pain and healing. I’ve felt pain at loosing loved ones, but joy in healing others. Because in the process, I’ve healed slightly. But I know I’ll never heal completely, some wounds just never close.

    I lost so many people in that war: Harry, who was never the same afterwards; Pansy, who became more of a friend to me in three months of war than five years of peace; Parvati, who committed suicide upon hearing of her sister, Padma’s, death; Lavender, who was an auror; my parents, who were killed in one of the first muggle attacks, and Ron, who meant more to me than any other single person.

    We had been married only eight days when he was called off to fight. I remember it like it just happened yesterday, when in reality it’s been seven years since I saw him last. Seven years since his face lit up in a grin, and his eyes danced above a spotting of freckles that seemed almost childlike. And I’ll never see that again. But Ron died protecting others; his death was not wasted.

    I miss him so much. There was so much he never got to witness: the birth of his daughter, his best friends wedding - at which he was supposed to be best man, the winning of the war... So many things he never saw. He was so young, only nineteen when the called him to the battle.

    He was dead at age twenty-two.

    While the years after have all been blurred together, there are several days that stand out all too clearly in my mind. The day I received an owl from the ministry stating simply that Ron had died, the day my daughter - Ronda, after Ron - was born without her father to give his blessing, and the day Harry finally came home, and told me what had really happened to Ron.

    I often wonder now if I’d have preferred not to know what really happened, how he really died. Harry was by his side when breath left him, and he told me that last words on Ron’s lips had been “Tell Hermione I love her.” But I knew that. He told me that when he left, and I never forgot. I never will.

    The only thing that really bothers me is that I don’t think Ron really knew how much I loved him. I regret that know, and I just wish I had said it one more time. Just once more, even though I probably said it twenty times that day alone. Because that’s how much I truly loved him. And now I know I can never say it again.

    There are hundreds of things I wish I’d done differently, telling Ron “I love you,” one more time is just one of them. I know that I can’t change those things, no matter how hard I wish I could. All I can do is try not to make the same mistake again. So now, every night when my daughter goes to sleep, I kiss her and tell her I love her. She probably finds it annoying, to hear the same thing so many times in one day, but that’s because she doesn’t understand yet. She’s too young to understand, only six. One day, I’ll tell her everything. One day I’ll tell her why she has such red hair, and why she has no father or siblings. And one day I’ll tell her what really happened to her father, and how we all grew up. But there’s one thing above all that I’ll tell her that day, about her father, my friends, and even me.

    We were soldiers.