Consign to Thee, and Come to Dust

Author's Notes: This story is a direct sequel to a previous story, "As All the Heavens Were a Bell". Thank you to everyone who has read and/or reviewed these stories. You're more fun than my college classes.

Thanks also to powerof3 for the excellent feedback.

*****

Ronald Bilius Weasley is laid to rest on a rainy Friday in February, two days before the end of the month. The past eight days have been the worst of Hermione Granger's life, eclipsing and engulfing all the other days she once felt were "the worst of her life." They let her see the body, once, after she asked. She remembers nothing after Remus pulled the sheet down to reveal Ron's broken and bloodied corpse, but Harry told her she screamed hysterically for half an hour and eventually had to be hit with three Calming Charms.

She asked the Weasleys if Ron could be buried in church, with an Anglican ceremony, and they agreed -- wizarding ceremonies are held graveside, they told her. Hermione has never been particularly religious, only going to church growing up at Christmas and Easter, but something about the ritual and the tradition just feel right. For the last week she has been making arrangements that she doesn't remember after they are agreed upon, meeting with the minister and telling him about Ron in carefully edited summaries of the past seven years. The Weasleys are coached on what will be expected of them, and if they think these Muggle rituals strange, they don't say so.

Ron's brothers -- save Percy -- bear him into church the morning of the funeral, Harry, Hermione, and Mr. and Mrs. Weasley following behind. Ginny trails behind them, her face as stormy as the clouds above. It starts to rain, droplets beading up and running down the wood, so they hurry into the building. The minister meets them at the door, rushing through the words of the reception. Charlie shifts his grip on the coffin as they carry it down the nave of the church. "Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted," the minister intones. Hermione feels like she is dying inside.

Carefully, Ron is settled into place at the front of the church. The minister prays, but Hermione doesn't hear it; she desperately, fervently wants the day to be over. The murmurs of "Amen" and the shuffling of prayer books startle her from her fugue state. She looks over Ginny's shoulder and mouths her way through the responses.

With a final "Amen," the minister nods: the family is dismissed until the funeral that afternoon. Molly Weasley, dabbing at her eyes and leaning heavily on Arthur Weasley, walks back down the nave, and one by one the surviving Weasley brothers shuffle out. Harry, Hermione, and Ginny are left alone with the coffin. Harry, standing next to Hermione, makes a fist. "When I find the Death Eaters that did this," he says, quietly and fiercely, "I'm going to kill them."

Once, Hermione knows, she might have protested, might have told Harry that he didn't have to kill anyone -- besides Voldemort, of course. She doesn't feel that way anymore.

Ginny, on Hermione's other side, looks over at Harry, and an electric bolt passes between them. Hermione smothers a smile; unless she's mistaken, and she isn't mistaken very often, their relationship is about to go back on. "When you do," Ginny says, every bit as fiercely as Harry, "I'm going to be there with you."

Hermione opens her mouth, tries to speak, but her mouth is dry and woolly. She licks her lips, trying again, and all that comes out is a keening moan. Her knees buckle and she starts to collapse; Harry and Ginny both grab for her. "Let's get you out of here, Hermione," Harry says. He looks over her head to Ginny and says, "The Black Eagle. You remember?"

"Of course I remember," Ginny says. "I'll take her. You go ahead."

"All right," says Harry. He drops Hermione's arm off his shoulder and she slumps against Ginny, having entirely lost the will to stand upright, or do much of anything, really. Looking around to make sure no one is in sight, he Disapparates.

"Come on, Hermione," Ginny says, elbowing her in the side. "You've got to stand up. We're Apparating."

Hermione manages to get her feet underneath her as Ginny grabs her around the waist. The familiar stomach-churning squeeze of Apparition overtakes them, and Hermione closes her eyes. She reopens them in the weak, grey daylight that surrounds them, to discover that they are standing in front of a Muggle pub. "The Black Eagle," Ginny says. "Harry's local. I've been in a few times."

Hermione registers dull surprise that Harry has a local, but doesn't say anything. Ginny gives her a shove in the small of the back. "Go on, get inside," she says. "Don't stand here gawping, you're blocking traffic."

Obligingly, Hermione shuffles forward. The pub is busy with the lunch rush on, and Harry has to wave for a few moments before he catches their attention. Ginny more or less frog-marches Hermione over to the table he has staked out. Hermione thinks briefly that she has no idea what she's doing in a Muggle pub.

Harry stands when they approach. "I'll get the drinks," he says. "Ginny, do you want anything?"

"A Coke," she says, pushing Hermione into the booth. "With a cherry."

Hermione slides all the way across the vinyl seat to the wall and lowers her head to the table, only looking up at the dull thunk of glasses on the table. Harry has set a tumbler half-full of an amber liquid in front of her, which she recognizes: scotch. She stares mutely at it.

"Drink it, Hermione," Harry says. "It'll help. We'll do a Sobriety Charm if you need it before the funeral."

She does, grimacing at the taste of it, not fond of alcohol, and when she has drunk that one, Harry makes her drink another. He and Ginny talk around her, a stupid conversation about the Gryffindor team's chances at the Quidditch Cup this year. Hermione hunches miserably into herself in the corner of the booth, thinking that Harry was at least right that the scotch would help: she feels the black hole in her chest where Ron was going grey, sealing over. The pieces of herself that were falling into the void are holding on, momentarily.

A moment's all she needs.

***

The time of Ron's service arrives, soon enough. Hermione stands in the front pew with her parents on one side and Mr. and Mrs. Weasley on the other, and carefully does not look at the coffin draped with flowers. She is stone sober, and regretting it.

The turnout for the service surprises her. Most of their classmates, save the Slytherins, are in attendance, as are a goodly number of the last fifteen years of Gryffindors. Several Hogwarts professors have come, as have Order members, Ministry bureaucrats, Weasley relatives she never met and Granger relatives she didn't even know she had. They have all come to honor Ron for his life, and for his death.

She feels like she should cry, scream, weep, anything, but she can't quite gather up enough emotion to do so. She wants to find the nearest river and throw herself in it.

At the front of the church, the minister is speaking. Hermione lets the words wash over her. "Look with compassion on your children in their loss," he recites; "give to troubled hearts the light of hope and strengthen in us the gift of faith, in Jesus Christ our Lord." The words should be comforting, but they're not. Ron's murder was a message to her and to Harry, saying that for them, there is no compassion, no help.

Hermione gazes around her at the congregated mourners, the Muggles in various somber colors and the wizards in the customary mourning gray, and muses that they should have been called together for a celebration, not to grieve. This, she thinks, is Voldemort's true power: that he can turn a wedding into a funeral.