![]() Soothingly, she stroked his hair, her fingers running through the red tufts, his arms tight around her waist, unable to let go. " Oh, Ronald…" breathless, her own strangled sob stuck in her throat, she pulled him to her, his face pressed against her blood stained shirt. She took another step, and then another, but it wasn't until she reached for him, touched his face and felt the wetness there that he realized he was crying. After that, he couldn't begin to imagine. He knew she would stay until the funeral and then leave to find her parents. Hermione took a step closer, her face pale and drawn, the months, the battle having taken their own painful chunk of her life. Some part of him knew she would be the one to find him. He didn't hear the knock, or the scrape of the door, but he knew when she walked into the room. Too tired to go on, too exhausted to rest, he was caught in some mid-level hell, unable to move one way or another. He wanted to cry, but everything felt drained, as if the very marrow in his bones has been sucked clean, leaving him empty. 'Slipped behind the veil' was a pleasant euphemism, but it did nothing to erase the memory, the blinding clarity of his brother's death and the vast hole it had created deep, deep inside him. ![]() Ron found he had the entire tower bedroom all to himself.Īfter months of living out of a tent, sharing meager food and portions, showering in cold water, the lush beds, the deep carpets, all seemed to be extravagances he didn't understand or thought he deserved. Seamus had been spirited away by his mother. Neville had left with his grandmother, Godrick Gryffendor's sword slung over his shoulder in a make shift scabbard, a hero and celebrity in his own right. Harry had been given a room of his own, a snatch of privacy to get him through the next few days, weeks, and months when he would finally understand the furor that had accompanied his first defeat of Voldemort sixteen years before. For those that had called Hogwarts home, they merely trudged up the moving staircases to portraits that respectfully slid open without questioning their credentials. Their loved ones, unwilling to leave the dead until they had been seen into a peaceful internment, were given guest rooms to wait out the time. Remus, Tonks, Fred… all who had been chosen to be buried on the school grounds, adjacent to Dumbledore's memorial, were placed in one of the larger classrooms, their bodies lying in state until the funerals. But others, those who had always felt more of a connection to the school than the world outside it, chose to bury their dead in the place that held the most precious memories of their lives.Īnd so it was, as the survivors of the last stand left to mourn and grieve for their loved ones, or lift a pint in celebration of the victory, that one by one, person by person, the grand school of Hogwarts slowly emptied out until only those left with unfinished business remained. Some chose to take their loved ones, their children, home to be buried in family plots along side parents and grandparents who had also died fighting Voldemort in the first war. It was decided, without much need for discussion, that the dead would be buried at Hogwarts.
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