Funerals were never easy. They were a cruel reminder of how fragile everything truly was, how quickly a life could slip through one's fingers and leave behind a hollow space that could never be filled. As he stood among the crowd of mourners, each one wrapped in black and weighed down by grief, he felt that old heaviness settle on his chest again. It pressed against him with a familiar quiet force, steady and suffocating. The world around him seemed muted, as if sound itself had lowered its head in sorrow.
He had been here before. He recognised the numbness that crept in at the edges of his awareness, the ache that settled low in his ribs, the way every breath felt like it carried too much.
He had felt the same ache the day he buried his grandmother. Even now, years later, the memory had not softened. The wound had dulled, but the scar remained tender whenever he touched it in his mind.
She had been more than a guardian. She had been his compass. She had shaped the steel in his spine and the hope in his chest, often without raising her voice. There had been discipline in her guidance, but always a warmth beneath it, a belief in him that had anchored him when nothing else did.
He could still hear her voice, crisp and steady, telling him stories about heroes who faced the impossible. She had planted the seeds of courage in him long before he learned to name it.
Her lessons had stayed with him long after she was gone. He carried them like quiet echoes, reminders of the person she had believed he could become. Losing her had felt like losing his footing on solid ground. The world had tilted the day she left it, and some part of him had not found its balance since.
Now, standing in the presence of grief once more, that old ache stirred again, as if waking from a restless sleep. It nudged at him, reminding him of the fragile nature of every bond he held dear. I
t struck him how easy it was to assume there would always be more time, more chances to say what mattered. Life had a way of proving otherwise. His grandmother had told him once that regret was heavier than any stone a person might carry. Tell them you love them, she had whispered in the last days of her life. Tell them before the world takes the chance from you.
Those words followed him now, curling around his thoughts with quiet insistence.
His gaze drifted across the sea of mourners until he found her. She was standing alone near the edge of the gathering, her arms wrapped tightly around herself as though she were holding her ribs together.
From a distance, she looked composed, almost serene, but he knew better. He could see the strain in the tilt of her shoulders, in the way her jaw was set, in the stillness that clung to her like a too-heavy coat.
She fought her own emotions with a ferocity that broke his heart. She always had. She hid her pain with skill honed over a lifetime, but he had learned how to read her. He saw every crack she tried to cover.
That sight gripped him with a protectiveness so fierce it nearly stole the air from his lungs. It rose in him like a tide, a swelling certainty that he could not stand back and hope everything would be all right. He had never been that kind of man, and she deserved so much more than quiet hope. She deserved someone willing to walk straight into the storm with her.
He drew in a breath, slow and steady, letting the air settle his thoughts. The sky had thickened with grey above them, the wind threading through the trees with a low, restless hum. He felt the shift in the air, the strange stillness that followed tragedy, the sense of a world pausing as if unsure of what should come next.
Something was moving beneath the surface of their lives. He could feel it in the way people whispered, in the way their eyes darted toward shadows, in the way the very air felt braced for another blow.
He turned his gaze back to her. To the woman who had become the center of his life so quietly he had not even realised it until the thought of losing her felt unbearable. In that moment, he made a silent promise. He would be her anchor. He would be her calm in the storm, even if he had to walk through fire to reach her. Whatever danger crept toward them, whatever darkness twisted beneath the surface of this new tragedy, he would face it.
For her.
For the life they were building.
For the future that still felt possible when she was beside him.
He let his grandmother's memory rise in him again. The sharpness of her words. The steadiness of her hand. The belief she had carried in him like a lantern through the dark. She would tell him now to stand tall. She would tell him that courage was not a feeling but a choice a person made again and again, even when their hands trembled. She would tell him that love was worth every risk.
He straightened slightly, his breath finally settling into something steadier.
He would carry her wisdom forward. He would be the man she believed he could be. He would hold on to what mattered and protect it with every part of himself.
For the life they had yet to live. A life that felt painfully fragile now, as if it were suspended on the thinnest thread, pulled taut between two forces that never stopped tugging.
Love on one side, chaos on the other. Hope reaching upward while destruction gathered at their feet. It made his breath catch, seeing her alone like that, slightly apart from the crowd, wrapped in the kind of silence that only the grieving know. Her arms crossed tightly over her ribs, her jaw clenched, her eyes fixed on nothing and everything at once. She looked like a fortress under siege, still standing, but cracked in ways she would never admit.
His instinct was to go to her. To close the useless space between them and pull her against his chest, to fold his arms around her and press his cheek to her hair until she believed, even for a moment, that she was safe. He wanted to hold her until the shaking stopped. He wanted to whisper comfort against her temple, to reassure her with softness she rarely allowed herself to accept. He wanted to promise her that nothing would touch her, that nothing would take her from him.
Yet he could not force those words past his tongue. He could not offer comfort he was no longer sure he could guarantee. The world had always been cruel, but lately it felt as though its cruelty had sharpened. Fate had grown unpredictable again, merciless in its choices. He felt the truth of that in the pit of his stomach, twisting with a deep, cold dread.
Ron and Lavender were dead. Burned alive.
The thought alone turned his blood to ice. He had known death, had fought battles where it stood at his shoulder, had lost too many to name. But this was something different. This felt wrong in a way he struggled to articulate. It was not war. It was not an accident. This was something else. Something purposeful and deliberate. Something that carried a message.
And that was what unsettled him most.
He had spent so many years trying to carve out a peaceful life from the rubble of the past. He had wanted something gentle, something honest, something he could hold without fear of losing it. He had wanted a future where they could wake each morning without looking over their shoulders, without wondering when the next blow would come. He had wanted simplicity. He had wanted ordinary things like safety and routine.
And now, in the blink of an eye, those dreams felt threatened again.
Chaos had found them. It had slipped through the cracks of their carefully built world and wrapped itself around them. A silent coil tightening, waiting for the right moment to strike.
He looked down at his hands, the tension pulling at the tendons in his wrists. His nails pressed crescents into his palms. He forced his fingers to loosen, but the tremor remained. The weight of the situation pressed heavily on him, filling his ribs with a tight, breathless ache. He could not see the full shape of the danger yet, but he could sense it gathering, the same way one senses a storm long before the clouds darken.
His mind pulled suddenly toward a memory. A voice. Clear and steady. A voice that had guided him long before he had become a man.
"You must be brave, my boy."
His grandmother's tone seemed to lift through the air around him, warm and unwavering, as though she had stepped from the past to place a gentle hand on his shoulder. Courage is not the absence of fear. Courage is walking toward it.
He closed his eyes for a moment, letting the memory settle into him like a quiet anchor. The sting in his palms eased. His lungs filled more fully. When he opened his eyes again, his gaze went straight to her across the crowd.
She still looked like a fortress. Still looked like she was holding herself together with every ounce of strength she possessed. He knew she would not call for him. She never did. But her eyes flicked toward him in that moment, and he saw it. The smallest crack. The smallest plea.
He felt something settle inside him then, quiet and fierce. Whatever this darkness was, whatever had reached out today with fire and cruelty, whatever shadows were drifting closer to the edges of their lives, he would meet it head on.
He would protect her. He would protect what they had built. He would be the man she needed, not just in peaceful moments but in the moments that tested them both.
~~~~~~
The air around Ron and Lavender's graves was thick and unmoving, heavy with incense and damp earth and the strange hush that settled when too many people were trying not to fall apart at once.
Neville stood with his shoulders drawn slightly inward, hands clasped in front of him because he did not know what else to do with them. He felt older today. Not wiser.
He barely registered the words being spoken. Names. Dates. Reassurances that felt fragile in the open air. His attention kept drifting, unbidden, to Hermione.
Hermione sat a few rows ahead, rigid in her chair, spine straight as if she had decided that if she held herself together physically, nothing else could break through. Her hands were folded neatly in her lap. Too neatly. Her face was pale beneath the redness around her eyes, and she did not move when people shifted or leaned in to whisper. She stared forward, unfocused, like she was looking through the ceremony rather than at it.
Neville knew that look. He had worn it himself before. It was not calm. It was containment.
There was something wrong about how still she was. Like she had stepped a half pace away from the world and could not quite bring herself back. Grief moved differently in Hermione. It always had. It went quiet first. Sharp later.
He watched her blink slowly, once, twice, as if reminding herself to keep doing that. Her jaw was set, the muscles there tight enough to ache just from looking at them. She did not cry when others did. She did not lean into the murmured comforts offered around her. Each sound, each sniffle and broken breath from the crowd, seemed to pass her by without touching.
It frightened him more than tears would have.
Neville swallowed and shifted his weight, suddenly aware of how heavy his own body felt, how each breath sat thick in his lungs. He thought of Ron laughing too loudly. Lavender's hands always moving when she talked. He thought of how unfair it was that the world had learned to keep going without them so quickly. How cruel it felt to be standing here at all.
Beside him, Luna was very quiet. Her hand rested on his arm, light but steady, like she knew he needed the contact even if he did not say it. He was grateful for it in a way that surprised him. He did not look at her right away. He was afraid that if he did, whatever he was holding together might loosen.
When he did finally glance down, her face was soft with grief, her eyes bright with unshed tears that reflected everything without trying to shield themselves. Luna felt everything. Neville had always admired her for that, even when it scared him.
Her gaze lifted then, drifting past him, and Neville followed it without thinking.
Hermione looked back at them.
Just for a moment.
The look in her eyes made something twist painfully in his chest. There was recognition there and also distance. A quiet, unbearable loneliness that sat behind her gaze like a locked door. She looked as though she were drowning in plain sight, surrounded by people who loved her, and still utterly unreachable.
Luna's fingers tightened slightly around Neville's arm, just enough to ground him. When Hermione's eyes flicked to Luna, something softened there. Just acknowledgement. As if Hermione knew that Luna saw her. That someone did.
Neville exhaled slowly, the breath trembling despite his effort to steady it.
He wished he knew how to help. He wished standing there could mean something more than witness. But all he could do was remain. To hold his place in the crowd. To keep looking at Hermione so she did not disappear entirely into that numb, distant space.
The ceremony continued. Words were spoken. Earth was shifted.
And Neville stood there, anchored by Luna's quiet presence, carrying his own grief while watching Hermione carry hers alone, hoping with a kind of aching desperation that when this was over, she would let someone reach her again.
The world around them blurred into a haze of muted colors and indistinct voices as they all stood united in their grief. The air was heavy with whispered condolences and the quiet sobs of those who were struggling to accept the reality of what had happened.
As the brief ceremony ended, a smattering of condolences were exchanged, hollow words offering little comfort in the face of such a profound loss. One by one, the mourners drifted away, their hushed whispers fading into the rustling leaves of the surrounding trees. Hermione remained rooted to the spot, a statue carved from grief, alone with the ghosts of her memories.
Now, as Neville stood amongst the gathered mourners, the weight of the present moment pressed heavily upon him. He glanced around at the faces of those who had come to pay their respects to Ron and Lavender, their expressions a blend of shock, sadness, and disbelief.
The air was thick with unspoken words, a cacophony of emotions that swirled around him like a storm. It was a testament to the fact that life could change in an instant, that happiness could be snatched away without warning, leaving only echoes of laughter and memories in its wake.
As he looked back at the casket before him, he felt a mixture of sorrow and resolve. Ron and Lavender's lives had ended far too soon, their potential extinguished in an instant. It was a stark reminder of why he had to fight for those he loved. He would honor their memory by living fully and courageously, by holding tight to Pansy and making sure she knew she was cherished.
And so, as the service unfolded, Neville stood tall, his heart a mix of grief and hope. He would not shy away from the pain; he would embrace it, using it as fuel to protect the love he had fought so hard to cultivate. Life would continue, and he would be ready to face whatever came next, determined to honor those lost while cherishing the moments he had left with those still by his side.
~~~~~~
He stepped through the door of their home, the weight of the day crushing him with a force that felt almost physical. The funeral had drained him in ways he had not expected. It had pulled something from him that he did not know he still carried, something raw and unguarded.
His chest felt tight, his limbs heavy, his mind sluggish from the sheer effort of keeping himself upright in front of everyone. The moment the door clicked shut behind him, the quiet of the house settled over him like cold water.
He usually found peace here. The soft glow of the lamps, the faint scent of herbs lingering from the morning tea, the warmth of memories shared with her. All of it normally wrapped around him with a sense of safety.
Today it felt unfamiliar. The stillness seemed thick, as if the walls themselves were holding their breath, waiting for him to do something, say something, move. The silence was not gentle this time. It pressed against him, relentless and heavy, and he felt its weight settle on his shoulders.
He paused in the entryway, his hand still resting on the doorframe, as if he needed the support to keep himself from sinking. He had imagined a day like this only in the far future.
They would have been old by then, surrounded by family, surrounded by stories. He had pictured himself standing beside her, both of them with silver hair and softened voices, remembering the friends who had defined their youth. He had believed they would be able to speak of losses with a kind of wistful fondness, the kind that comes when enough time has passed to smooth the edges of pain.
He had not expected to bury Ron today.
He had not expected to watch Lavender lowered into the earth beside him.
The reality of it pressed against the inside of his ribs, sharp and unforgiving. Life had always been fragile, he knew that. He had seen too much in the war to pretend otherwise.
But somewhere along the way, he had convinced himself that the worst was behind them. He had allowed himself to believe that their circle had survived the fire, that they had earned the right to grow old, to argue about trivial things, to see their children grow, to toast to ordinary joys.
Standing by those graves, he realized how foolish that hope had been.
Ron's laughter drifted back to him now, unbidden. Loud and reckless. The kind that had once filled rooms and pulled smiles from even the quietest moments. Lavender had always been a soft contrast to him, bright and cheerful, the kind of warmth that reminded people of spring.
They had been flawed, yes, but they had been alive. So alive. And now there was nothing. No second chances. No apologies left to give. No moments left to share.
The unfairness of it twisted in his gut until he felt almost sick.
He let out a breath and pressed his palm against his eyes, trying to steady himself. The house remained still. No footsteps, no whispers from the next room, no sign that the world outside his grief was still turning. He was alone in the silence, and the silence felt entirely too big.
He thought of the vows he had made to himself only hours ago. He thought of how he had stood there, surrounded by grief, and promised silently to protect the ones he loved with every part of himself. Promises felt fragile now. So terribly fragile.
He took another breath, deeper this time, steadying. He needed her. He wanted to see her. To feel her hands in his, to hear her voice, to remind himself that not everything in his world had been taken today.
He pushed away from the door at last and moved further into the house, each step slow and deliberate. His boots felt too loud on the floorboards. His breath sounded rough in his own ears. He felt older than he had that morning. Worn down. Stripped bare by a kind of grief that reached into the past and the future all at once.
He turned toward the sitting room, hoping she would be there.
Hoping her presence would steady him the way it always did.
Hoping that today she would understand how deeply he needed her.
As he stepped into the living room, his eyes found her at once. She was waiting for him, standing near the fireplace where the glow from the embers warmed the edges of her dark dress.
The sight of her hit him with a force he had not braced for. She looked composed at first glance, elegant even, but the closer he looked, the more he saw the cracks beneath the surface. Her shoulders were drawn tight. Her fingers curled slightly into the fabric at her sides.
Her eyes were too still, too watchful, as if she had anchored herself there only by sheer will.
She had been beside him through the entire funeral, a quiet presence at his left, steady and immovable. Yet now, here in their home, she seemed smaller somehow. More fragile. More alone in whatever storm she had been wrestling with.
He stood there in the doorway for a long moment, unable to move. The room felt suspended in time, held in place by the quiet tension between them. When their eyes locked, everything inside him tugged toward her.
"My love," he said finally, though it came out hoarse, the words thick with everything he could not quite voice.
Her lips parted on a shaky breath. "I know," she whispered, almost to herself. "I… I could not find the right words either."
The admission cracked something open in him. Whatever he had been holding in his chest, whatever knot of grief and disbelief had been tightening since morning, loosened all at once. He crossed to her with a kind of urgency he could not disguise.
"Come here," he murmured, his voice low, almost pleading.
She stepped into him without a single moment of hesitation. Her arms slid around his waist as he pulled her close, burying his face against her shoulder. She held him with a steadiness that made him ache, her touch warm and sure, her presence a quiet balm to the chaos inside him.
For a long stretch of time, neither of them moved. They simply held on. His breathing grew uneven, his shoulders shaking as the grief he had tried to contain finally surged forward.
He had not cried at the funeral. He had not cried while they lowered the caskets. He had held himself together through the entire day, the weight of expectation pressed heavily against his spine. Now the sorrow slipped free, unrestrained and silent, soaking into the fabric of her dress.
She lifted a hand to the back of his head, her fingers weaving gently into his hair. Her other arm wrapped around him with a quiet firmness, as if she could take some of the weight from his body and carry it herself. "It is alright," she whispered, her words soft but steady. "You do not have to hold it in. I have you."
Her breath brushed his temple. Her voice wrapped around him with the kind of comfort he had not realized he needed until now. He let himself lean into her, allowed the tremors to work through him, allowed the kind of grief that belonged only to moments like this to finally loosen its grip.
The house, which had felt so unbearably quiet moments before, now seemed to shift around them. The silence felt softer somehow, warmer, as if the walls themselves were leaning closer in a gesture of sympathy.
He did not know how long they stood like that. Time had dissolved into something weightless, something unbound. The fire crackled softly, casting a slow glow across the room, and she kept her hands on him, grounding him each time his breath hitched.
When he finally lifted his head, his eyes were red and tired. She did not flinch. She reached up and pressed her thumb gently beneath one of his eyes, wiping away a tear that had not yet fallen.
"You are not alone," she said quietly.
Something inside him softened with the force of those words. He cupped the side of her face, his thumb brushing her cheek as if memorizing the shape of her. She leaned into the touch with a small, tired sigh, her eyes closing for a moment.
In the glow of the dying firelight, she looked like the axis of his world.
He drew her into him again, holding her close, breathing her in.
Vanilla. Warmth. Something familiar he could not name, something that had always felt like home.
For the first time since the morning, a sense of calm settled over him. Not complete peace, not yet, but the kind of fragile quiet that comes after a long storm. A moment of stillness he had not expected to find today.
Eventually, when the storm inside him began to quiet and the trembling in his chest eased, they drew apart just enough to see each other clearly. Her palms stayed on his arms, warm and steady, as if she were anchoring him in place. The fire behind her cast a soft glow around her silhouette, turning her into something gentle and heartbreakingly familiar.
"What do you need, Nevie?" she asked, her voice low and calm, even though he could see the emotions she was holding back for his sake. She was hurting too, but she had folded her pain away to make room for his.
He took a breath that felt heavier than the others. Then another. He shook his head slightly, his brows knitting together. "I don't know," he admitted, the words fragile and thick in his throat. "I just keep thinking about how young they were. How we all thought we had time. How we assumed the worst was behind us."
A shadow crossed her features, something achingly tender mixed with grief. She moved her thumb gently across his sleeve, a soft, rhythmic gesture meant to soothe him. "Life can be cruel," she murmured, her eyes holding his. "Cruel and unpredictable in ways we will never fully understand. It takes things from us without warning. It reminds us that nothing is promised."
He swallowed, his breath catching. The truth of it settled heavily inside him.
She stepped closer, her hand rising to touch his cheek, letting her fingers rest there in a way that steadied him. "But we have something that grief cannot take," she said softly. "We have the memories of who they were. We have the love they gave us while they were here. And we owe it to them to keep living. Not just surviving. Living."
Her voice softened even more, barely above a whisper. "They would not want their deaths to be the thing that stops us. They would want light to return to us, even if it comes slowly."
He felt the words sink into him, filling the hollow spaces left by the day. She was right. She always had a way of finding the small truth inside the bigger pain, pulling it forward with steady hands.
"You are right," he whispered, his voice still raw.
She offered him a sad smile, a fragile mix of love and resilience. "We will carry them with us. Always. They will stay in every story we tell, every laugh we manage to find again. But we have to allow ourselves to heal too, or we dishonor the people we lost."
His chest tightened at that. Her strength amazed him. Her softness amazed him even more. He reached for her hand, threading their fingers together, feeling the certainty of her touch. The warmth of her skin seeped into his own, calming the last remnants of the storm inside him.
"We will be alright," he murmured, speaking it even though he was not entirely sure yet. Saying it out loud made it feel more possible.
She squeezed his hand, grounding him with one simple, unwavering gesture. "Yes," she whispered, leaning her forehead against his. "We will."
They stayed like that, held in the quiet space between breath and heartbeat, finding their balance again. The fire crackled softly behind them, warming the shadows on the walls, lighting the room in gentle gold. And in that small circle of warmth, wrapped around each other, he felt something shift.
~~~~~~
He never forgot his parents. He doubted he ever would, not in this lifetime or any that might follow. Some memories were etched too deeply, carved into the marrow of a person until they became part of the rhythm of their heartbeat, impossible to erase or soften. His parents lived inside him like that, steady and painful, a familiar ache that never quite faded, no matter how many years passed.
Alice and Frank Longbottom had once been forces of nature. He had grown up listening to stories of their bravery whispered in the corners of the Order, stories that painted them as unstoppable, as fierce protectors, as people who ran into danger while others stood frozen in fear.
Those stories were bright and vivid to him, soaked in reverence, shaping the idea of who he wanted to be. But the war had carved them down to something fragile, leaving them trapped in bodies that no longer remembered courage or laughter or even their own son.
He still came. Always.
The long ward had not changed since he was a child. The same muted walls. The same scent of lavender disinfectant. The same distant shuffle of healers moving like ghosts down the corridor. Nothing shifted, nothing grew, nothing healed. Stasis clung to the place like frost.
He paused at the doorway to their room, the way he always did. A small ritual. A moment to gather himself before opening the door and stepping back into a grief that never aged.
His mother sat by the window, her eyes fixed on a patch of sunlight on the floor. She blinked occasionally, but there was no awareness in the gesture. His father sat in his usual chair, posture slightly slumped, his hands folded neatly in his lap. Neither looked up when Neville entered.
They never did.
"Hi, Mum. Hi, Dad," he said softly, closing the door behind him. His voice slipped into the room with practiced gentleness, smoothing the sharp edges of the silence.
He moved closer, taking the seat between them, as he always did. It was the only position that felt right, as if he could anchor himself between who they had once been.
"I brought the biscuits you used to like," he said, placing a small tin on the tray beside him. "The bakery changed owners, but they still do them well."
His mother did not respond. His father did not turn his head. But Neville liked to imagine that somewhere inside their quiet minds, the memory of that taste flickered faintly.
He talked. It was what he always did here. Words filled the room like a soft tide. He talked about Hogwarts, about the gardens he tended, about the students who were learning how to nurture things rather than destroy them. He told them about Luna, about Hermione, about Harry and Ginny and the strange, tangled family they had built together in the ashes of the war.
And then, slowly, he shifted to the topic he always knew he would.
Her.
"Well," he said, leaning back in his chair as though speaking casually, though he felt his heart thrum with warmth, "I suppose it is time I told you about my wife."
He paused, letting the word settle in the air. Wife. The reality of it still made him smile.
"Her name is Pansy Parkinson," he said, trying not to laugh at the imagined reaction his mother would have had to that revelation. "I know. I know you are both probably raising your eyebrows somewhere beyond the veil."
He chuckled quietly and continued.
"She is… hard to describe. Most days she walks into a room like she owns the entire world and expects everyone to agree. She is dramatic. She is stubborn. She gets annoyed when someone breathes too loudly in her direction." His smile softened. "But she has this softness too. Hidden. Tucked away where most people will never see it."
He glanced at his mother.
"She reminds me of you sometimes. The way you could silence a room with one raised brow. The way you always knew what someone was feeling before they said a word."
Then he looked at his father.
"And she pushes me. Makes me better. You would like that. Or maybe you would pretend not to and then tell Gran when I was not looking."
A faint tightness caught in his throat. He cleared it gently.
"She is good for me. Better than anyone ever expected. She has this fire that scares people, but somehow it feels safe to me."
He laughed quietly to himself.
"Last week she yelled at a plant. Actually smacked it. I wish you could have seen it, Dad. You would have lost your mind laughing."
There was silence. Only the soft hum of the ward could be heard.
He continued anyway.
"She gets furious over small things, but the big things? Those heavy, frightening, world-breaking things? She carries them with more strength than I have ever seen. But she never lets anyone see it. Not really. Except me."
His voice dropped, quiet and reverent.
"She lets me see her."
He told them about the way she cuddled Lady like a baby when she thought no one was watching.
He told them about how she rearranged the kitchen shelves every week and then forgot where she put everything.
He told them about the mornings when she wore his sweaters and pretended she was not doing it to be close to him.
He told them about the days she cried. The days she could not breathe under the weight of the things she had gone through. The days she curled into him and clung to him as if she was afraid to disappear.
"I love her," he said quietly, the words steady and true. "More than anything."
Something inside him always hurt when he said it here. Because they would never meet her. Because they would never look at him and say they were proud of the man he had become. Because the world had taken that from them too soon.
He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, speaking softly into the quiet space between their still forms.
"We lost two more people," he whispered. "Ron and Lavender. It was violent. It feels like a shadow fell over all of us. And I keep thinking about what you would have done. What you would have said. I keep wishing I could hear your voice, just once. Even if it was a scolding."
He looked at his father.
"You always told me to face fear head on."
He looked at his mother.
"You always told me to trust myself."
Then he looked at both of them, as though he were a boy again, waiting for approval.
"I hope I am making you proud," he said quietly. "I hope the man I am becoming is someone you would recognize. Someone you would have loved."
His voice wavered, just for a second.
"I miss you. Every day."
He reached out, taking his mother's hand in his own. Her fingers were cool, thin, unmoving. He lifted her hand gently and pressed a kiss to her knuckles. Then he did the same with his father's.
"I will come back soon," he whispered, giving them both a small nod as he rose to his feet. "I always will."
He stepped toward the door, pausing for one last look. Two parents who had loved him once. Two parents who, somewhere deep inside their minds, might still love him now.
Then he left the room and walked down the empty corridor, the sound of his footsteps echoing softly as the weight of another visit settled deeper into his chest.
And when he finally returned home, when he stepped through the threshold and saw Pansy curled on the couch waiting for him, he felt the ache of everything he had lost press against the warmth of everything he had gained.
Notes:
Thank you for walking with them through this storm.
There's more ahead. Always.
—Until the next chapter. ♡