It Happened Like This

IT HAPPENEND LIKE THIS

You were always there for me...except for that one time. I don't blame you, I knew that you had no choice...it was your destiny. You had to fight the man that killed your parents. You didn't know how I felt about you anyway. You thought of me as a good friend and nothing more, which is understandable, I never even tried to tell you, just basked in your friendship, being pleased with what I had.

When you left that last time, I was the most frightened I'd ever been. Each time you left, I was terrified that it would be the last time I would see you heading out a door to fight Voldemort. Each time that you left, my fright grew worse. That night I lay awake...imagining every move that you might make...imagining your lip twitching like it does when you're angry or determined, or your thoughts..."This will be the last time," you might have told yourself, "This time he'll die."

When there was rumor of Voldemort's final and complete death, I was happier and more joyful than anyone...not just because Voldemort was finally gone, but because that meant you had won. Soon, I would not have to watch you leave again to fight him...fearing that you would never know of my feelings, fearing your death.

I waited for you, but you never came.

I searched frantically for an answer. Where were you? Why hadn't you returned? I became so frantic that I searched everywhere, anywhere, from Mr. Weasley's department all the way up to Fudge. I wanted the answer so badly that I could taste it and I knew that if I didn't get it my life would not be worth anything.

Even though I feared the answer and I wanted to know it, it still came as a shock when I learned it. The ministry had been keeping it, not wanting the wizarding world to know, and thinking (correctly) that your death would upset the joy that everyone had for the defeat of Voldemort.

I wasn't just upset. Everywhere I went I saw memorials for you: The Boy Who Lived Still Lives In Our Heart, or You Saved Our Lives How We Wish We Could Have Saved Yours. I walked along, unbelievingly, you couldn't be dead...There was absolutely no way, not the boy who had saved me from the troll, not the boy that was the youngest Seeker in a century! It couldn't be!

I started to deny everything that I saw, pictures of you from school, graduation, jobs, just any picture of you that they could find. Ron gave them a few to use, and they asked me for some too, but I hoarded your pictures. I couldn't bear the thought of losing them. They were precious to me.

I think I was in such denial that I was losing pieces of my mind. If any of my memories reminded me of you, I tried to forget them. That meant that I forgot many of the spells I had learned at Hogwarts...mostly all of them in fact; so many of my memories had to do with you that I was using hardly any of my brain. Unfortunately, while I was forgetting my memories of you that meant that I was forgetting not only the bad times, but also the good times.

Years after your death, people decided that I had been in mourning long enough; they tried to free me from my grief. They took me away from my house and took me to a clinic. I told them that it was pointless, that I would never get over your death, which is true. They didn't listen. I sat pointlessly in the clinic, my depression only deepening.

Ron was the worst. He tried to deal with my depression in a way he shouldn't have, with force. I know that he meant well, but Ron was not doing well. I tried to tell Ron not to try and help me this way, but Ron scared me. Once when he was visiting he had such a crazed look in his eyes. I don't think that he ever quite got over your death either. He shook me so hard and he gripped my arms so tightly that it felt like my arms were going to fall off. I started to cry and Ron suddenly snapped. He got up and left, muttering apologies to me and I barely ever saw him again.

The clinic finally discharged me, though I had no one to take me in. My parents wouldn't. I think I scared them in my depression.

I thought that I would be stuck in the clinic with no friends and that was when I tried to commit suicide. I felt so alone. After my suicide attempt I was taken to a Muggle hospital where they saved me. When I opened my eyes again, I wasn't sure if I was happy for surviving, or upset because without you the world is cold, cruel and unwelcoming.

That was when Sirius came. He offered to take me and I was sent with him to the house that he had bought when Peter Pettigrew was found and proved and guilty and he was set free. It was hard with Sirius at first. He reminded me so much of you it was almost unbearable, not only in appearance but character also. But, in the end, that turned out to help me.

Seeing Sirius everyday, alive, free and well, and still happy at times even though you weren't around to celebrate his freedom with him, helped me. All it took for me to realize that it was okay if I tried to be happy, even without you, was to see Sirius being himself.

Gradually, I began to remember you. I started with spells and charms that I had learned with you. Though it hurt me to remember practicing them with you or helping you with them, I continued. Later I began to remember happy memories with you like when we became friends or seeing you survive the third task in the Triwizard Tournament. Then I remembered the worse things.

Sirius helped me all along, urged me along with encouragements, until I reached my memory of your death. It seemed like I couldn't remember what it was or how it was that you had died. Sirius refused to tell me...he wanted me to remember for myself. I tried every day since I had nothing else to do, I would sit in the lounge chair with the sun falling on my body, and think. But I never could, until one night, as I was asleep in bed. When I woke up in the middle of the night, it hit me; almost perfectly clear, as if I were watching a movie. I saw your back leaving my door after you were called away, I saw people rejoicing Voldemort's death, and then I saw the same people mourning your death. I saw the banners and the posters and the slogans.

When I saw all of my hidden memories I could barely breathe. I had to get out of the walls so I threw off the covers and I headed down the stairs and ran out of the back door. I sat down on the grass, and I looked up at the moon. And I breathed the best I could. In.....out....in....out.

As I was sitting on the grass, I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was Sirius and he knew that I had remembered, but he didn't say anything. He stood there for a few minutes just to know that he felt for me but then he left.

I stared up at the sky and I finally felt at peace with the world.