Aftermath

Aftermath

His wife lies beside him in bed and all he can understand is her pain - its sounds, its silence. Every night it's the same, a crescendo of sobbing and sniffling and finally, noiseless shudders. He holds her close until the morning, and she goes off to work and they pretend nothing happened.

Even when she smiles at suppertime and laughs as she fiddles with the dials on the stove - even then, all he can anticipate is dawn.

He can't really blame her, but at least he saves his tears for noon.

-

He was sitting upstairs and writing his name on the dusty floor, over and over again, like it meant something. He knew it didn't, not really, but he wrote anyway. There was nothing else.

She opened the door, and a sliver of light played on the lines of his name. The light played in her hair, too, and swam in her eyes, and it was mesmerizing. He was so used to the dark, and the dust.

A newspaper clipping. She smiled through her tears and he knew it must be something good so he crossed the room and stood before her and tried unsuccessfully to smile. She held out that fresh piece of paper and he took it, but it wasn't words in dust so the squiggles just swam in front of his eyes.

And she said, It doesn't feel like we won; and she stumbled on the words as her lower lip trembled.

We won? he said without meeting her eyes.

-

Most of the time he looks out the window towards the sky, where it always seems to be grey. Even when his wife comes home and tells him how sunny it is and says that they should take a walk he stubbornly and swiftly says no. For him, it's always raining.

He can swear it is - but even when he holds his hands outside and feels the water wet against them his brother's blood doesn't wash away. He can't understand.

Still, he pretends to be normal, even if it doesn't really help.

-

They were married upstairs in the little room above the shop because he couldn't go downstairs. She swore they had scrubbed the floorboards but he still remembered seeing his brother lying there and the blood on the walls. He still remembered touching the cold skin and he couldn't face that again.

She understood. She sat there in her simple white dress and simple white pearls and her hair was carelessly curly, and she held his hand. He played with her ring while she said, I can't handle seeing anyone die again....

He spoke without thinking: Your twin didn't die.

And after a long pause she said, No. Ron did.

So they spent their wedding night side by side beneath the sheets; she tried not to cry but couldn't stop herself when dawn came around. And he held her close.

-

Now he wonders how it all happened.

Because Ron has been dead for years and Fred has been dead longer than that, and he hasn't left his room because he can't. He's married to a girl who tries to forget the past but still loves his brother, and when she cries he can't tell her everything will be all right because he doesn't believe it himself. And it's always raining.

-

It was cold that morning. A white dress swayed like a ghost as it hung from the mirror. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Hermione sit up in bed, and then she came close and wrapped a comforter around him and said, It's raining and I'm going to shut the window. You'll get pneumonia and die.

And he shivered and said, How can I die? I don't even know if I'm alive.

-

He still doesn't know.