One Sunny Day

One Sunny Day

She walked into the Leaky Cauldron, and I stood to meet her. It might have seemed strange to an outsider, our meeting; we had never been friends at Hogwarts, and had had virtually no contact with each other since. It had been a hard decision to make, asking her to meet me in an attempt to create the friendship that could, and maybe should, have existed between us all along. But it had been the right decision, I was sure of that. We were, after all, in the same boat now, with both our husbands at war, and probably on the front lines. So I had sent her an owl to arrange this meeting, and to my surprise, she had agreed. It seemed she was as sick of the whole situation as I was.

She walked over to me and sat down. We exchanged the usual pleasantries, and then began the most awkward conversation I have ever had in my life. She asked after my family, and I was forced to tell her that several of them were at the front, before asking about hers in turn. It seemed that in that, too, our situations were the same. Our husbands were not alone among our loved ones fighting in the war. Fortunately, our children were safe for the time being - too young yet to be conscripted, and neither of us would allow them to volunteer. We talked about this for a time, finding the first point in common of many that I was sure we shared. Then she glanced down at my hands and remarked, casually, "I see you're not wearing your ring."

That took me by surprise for a moment, and I caught myself also glancing down, momentarily convinced that it had been stolen or lost, before I remembered.

"No. It's not safe to walk around with jewellery on display, in these dark times. There's a lot of desperate people about, and their number grows every day. It's so precious, I wouldn't want to lose it."

She nodded at that, looking oddly satisfied, and commented, "Mine is spelled. It won't come off until either he dies - we put in that part so I would know before the owl came - or we both sign the divorce papers. Any thief would have to kill me to even get to touch it, and even then it's charmed to self-destruct in their hand".

By way of demonstration, she tugged at the beautiful diamond ring on her wedding finger...and it moved, and came off easily in her hand. Her face froze, and then crumpled, and she dissolved into, for her, entirely unexpected, sobs. Unexpected, because I had never believed her capable of showing such public emotion, and also because I had always supposed her marriage to have been arranged by her parents, and her to be no more than a trophy wife, with no real feeling between her and her husband. Clearly, I had been wrong. No trophy bimbo wife could ever have displayed such wrenching grief in public, or even, probably, in private, at the fact we both now knew to be true. Her husband was dead.

I reached out and put a hand on her shoulder, not daring to actually hug her without her consent, because as I said, this was our first meeting since Hogwarts, and even then we were not friends. But, in her darkest hour, she must have needed comfort no matter where it came from, because she turned towards me and collapsed into my arms, to cry on my shoulder, literally. I held her close, then. And, oh, how I wanted to say something comforting, anything at all, but I couldn't find the words. What could I, of all people, possibly say? There was nothing I *could* say to console this woman in her terrible grief, when we both knew it was entirely possible that it was my husband who had killed hers...

A/N: In case you're wondering who the two women are, I personally imagine them as Ginny and Pansy, or, just possibly, an AU Molly and Narcissa. But feel free to interpret them as being whoever you want!