On a Perfect Day, In a Perfect World

Dear Ron,

Life goes on. Isn’t it funny? You left us and for a long time all I could think about was that outside of our family and friends, no one knew really knew or cared that a boy named Ron had gone missing – missing without a trace. I used to wonder how people could possibly keep on living, how they could go to work and do their jobs and return home and kiss their wives and hug their children, after you had gone. Funny… when you vanished, our lives stopped – but theirs just kept right on going.

It was only like that for a year or so – and then our lives slowly stared to move too. Like a train that’s stopped – slowly, slowly, it starts to move and then accelerates, until it reaches a constant speed. It took a while for all of us to reach that constant. Six years on, I think we have reached it, pretty much. But things still happen sometimes and we hit a bad place on the track and slow down for a while… I don’t think we’ll ever be able to just return to our normal lives. Normal was when you were here with us… without you, how can there be a “normal�?

Even though life will never be normal, it does move on. I finished Auror training yesterday. Passed the final test. I’m officially an Auror now. I just remembered though… six years ago yesterday was the day you went missing. Six years ago yesterday, I could never imagine ever even taking the Auror test, or doing anything at all, ever again. I just wanted to lie down and die. But yesterday, after I got home, we had a party. The first party since you had disappeared… Mum and Dad wanted to celebrate my becoming an Auror, after so much work, and so they invited everyone. Absolutely everyone. I don’t think any of us remembered that it was the anniversary of the day you left us, until the party had ended and we were all in bed.

Maybe it would have been better if we had realized it during the party – at least we’d have had each other… but alone in bed, remembering by yourself, just swimming and drowning in your own memories…

You never got the chance to finish your Auror training. You never got the chance to make your dreams come true. Somehow, it felt like I was insulting you by becoming an Auror and celebrating.

I think about you everyday. Every hour. Everyone does. It just doesn’t go away, the pain. Especially when we don’t have any answers.

Did you have any idea of what you were doing when you left like that? Did you ever think about what it would do to us? Or did it surprise you as well?

Everyone says it wasn’t your fault, that it couldn’t have been, but they’re wrong. Whatever happened, some of it must have been your fault. Maybe most of it – maybe even all of it. Maybe some Muggle was driving past and shouted at you to get off the road and you showed him the finger or something. You always did like doing that. Maybe you made him so angry he just got out of his car and – did something to you. It’s possible isn’t it? Or maybe you just lost control, decided to end it all. Maybe you just didn’t think, use your head, stop and wonder what it would do to us.

I want to hate you, Ron. I want to hate you with all my heart and soul, with ever inch of my being. I want to hate you all the more because I can’t hate you. Because it’s not possible. Because every time I try, all I can think about is that it might not have been your fault at all.

What happened to you Ron?

The Ministry people keep coming by. Not so much now as they did before, but they still drop in now and then. I wish they wouldn’t. They keep reopening the wound. Like scratching at a scab until it peels away. Every time they visit, come to “check up� on us, they rip away the scab. They came by three days ago.

They sat down with us, and Mum made tea, and they started telling us again, that we shouldn’t hope too much. That they were still doing their best, but maybe their best just wasn’t good enough. That there are so many things that could have happened to you. So many things someone could have done to you. Not just witches and wizards, but Muggles too. Because, they kept reminding us, as if it weren’t already branded into our memories: you hadn’t taken your wand with you. So even if you hadn’t run into a witch or wizard who had killed you, you could have been assaulted by a Muggle, with only your fists to protect you. You could have been raped, they said, or beaten, or stabbed to death or mutilated or kidnapped. They could have stuffed you into a dustbin and tossed you into a river – you could have drowned. Maybe they had beaten you so badly that you couldn’t even walk or crawl home and you had died somewhere on the ground, without anybody to hold your hand.

And then, after the tea had all gone, they left. Dad went upstairs and locked himself in the bathroom. He was there a long time. When I finally went up, I heard him sobbing in the shower.

Mum was worse. She just sat there after they left and said nothing. Just sat and stared. She didn’t cry. She didn’t do anything. It looked like she was dying on the inside. How do you make things better Ron, when people keep making them worse… even if they mean well? How am I supposed to help Mum and Dad? How are any of us supposed to help them? Only you can help them… by coming back.

People tell us worse things you know; things that hurt more that hearing about the possibility of you having bled to death or raped. They say, maybe you killed yourself. Did you kill yourself Ron? Wouldn’t they have found your body if you had? Or did you go somewhere far away and do it? But why would you kill yourself? Why? You had everything Ron. A family, a girlfriend… you were a hero. You had helped win the war…

It makes even less sense and hurts even more, because you didn’t disappear while fighting with Death Eaters or anything… there was nothing heroic about it that we could comfort ourselves with afterwards. We couldn’t think “He died a noble death,� – you just went out, one day, while we were staying at Grimmauld Place, after the end of the war. You said you wanted some fresh air and that you’d be back in ten minutes. But we never saw you again. And it had been such a bright day – a beautiful day. A perfect day – days like that don’t come often… and we all thought, that after the war, our world, would be perfect… after Voldemort’s death, how could anything go wrong? We were stupid.

How can a person just disappear? You went out for a walk before lunchtime – Muggles must have been out on the streets, people must have seen you walking. So how could you just vanish?

And why didn’t you take your wand, Ron? No wizard ever leaves his home without a wand, so why did you?

Did you kill yourself because of Harry? Because he had died? Because you missed him so much? We all missed him, but we were all moving on… even you… We were moving on because we knew that Harry had died. We had his funeral. We cried and grieved… but we got over it, eventually.

Now? Now we can’t move on, because even after six, long, drawn-out years, we still hope, that maybe, just maybe, you are alive and trying to get back home to us. We still hope. And wonder, what could have happened to you. And the worst thing, Ron? The worst thing about hoping and wondering? The thought that, to someone out there, your disappearance might not be a mystery at all… someone out there might know what happened to you…

Neville’s grandmother said something about you two days ago – that you must have run off with some girl, that that was always the case when someone went missing.

I was so angry, I could have punched her. My fist was clenched and everything. I hated her in that moment.

Maybe she didn’t mean to hurt me, or any of us… she probably didn’t think her words could still hurt, after six years.

Hermione had been sitting there with us too – she had just nodded politely at Mrs. Longbottom, but later, I heard her crying in her bedroom.

How dare she imply such a thing! How dare she? Stupid, stupid, stupid woman… doesn’t she realize? You never really forget – you never really heal…

But did you run away with someone Ron? Did you? If you didn’t then why did you break things off with Hermione? We knew you loved her and that she loved you, we had known for ages, and when you two finally decided to get on with it, no one was surprised. So why would you break it off with her, Ron? And why did you break it off on that day, the day you disappeared? Why not a week earlier? Why not a week later? Why on that very day?

I want to hit you sometimes. Hurt you as much as I can. Make you scream with pain. You hurt Mum and Dad and Hermione and all of us so much. Do you even know what that hurt feels like, Ron? Do you? Do you know what it feels like to have a hole in your heart that never really closes up, because things keep happening and people keep coming forwards to say things, things that make that hole open again and again and again? And each time something happens, it takes longer for that hole to close up.

They found your jacket, a year ago. Five years after you had disappeared. The jacket you had snatched off a hook the day you went to out “get some fresh air�. It was in a dumpster, not even near Grimmauld Place, but two cities away in some huge garbage dump. Seeing that jacket had been horrible. It brought back memories. I heard your voice more clearly in my head that day, than ever before. I could almost, almost see your face.

Every single day, for the rest of my life, I will be looking for you Ron. Whenever I’m in a crowd, I’ll listen for your voice.

Sometimes I hear it, from far away, but every time I push through the crowd to get to the place where I heard your voice, I find out that it’s not yours at all. It’s happened so many times, but I still can’t stop looking. Every time I see a flash of red hair, that sits like yours did, I’ll rush forward, my heart hammering in my chest, to see if maybe, maybe, maybe, this time, it’ll be you. It never is. But it doesn’t stop happening. I’ll be gazing vaguely at a crowd and I’ll see a splash of freckles like yours and I’ll jump up… but of course it’ll never be you. Mum, Dad, Hermione, Fred, George… everyone. None of them talk about it, but I know they search too. Sometimes I’ll be walking with Hermione and she’ll stop outside a shop and I’ll go back and see her staring at a poster with a red-haired boy on it… how am I supposed to make things better for her? How? All I can do is take her hand and walk on… walk on…

Scabs form and are peeled away and even when you think they’ve finally healed and all that’s left is a scar – even then it still hurts. Even when the scar fades, you know it’s always there, waiting for a trigger.

You know what scares me most? What scares Hermione most? What makes all of us, everyone who knew you, really knew you, on some days, sob long into the night? That if you ever do come back and if we ever do find you and if you are alive, you’ll have changed. Six years is a long time. You could look different, sound different – most of all, you’ll act different. And maybe, one of us will see you from a distance, and not recognize you at all. Maybe one of us already has.

The Ron I knew has gone forever. Even if a twenty-four year old man named Ronald Weasley still exits in the world, he won’t be the Ron I knew. That Ron is dead. And that’s why all of us still cry some days. I’m crying now. Even as we hope that you are still alive, it’s useless hoping, because you won’t be that Ron anymore. You won’t be our Ron. And… we won’t be your family… it’ll always be different if you came back now… sometimes I hope that you are dead… it’s just easier that way. I better stop crying, or Fred and George will come in and see… I don’t cry.

I want to blame you… but I can’t. Because I don’t know: were you the victim? Or not?

I want to hear your voice, Ron, your real voice, because now, after six years, I can only hear what I imagine is your voice. I want to see your face, because now, all that I see when I picture you is a blurred figure. We took down all our pictures of you. I guess, to make it easier. It never did, but none of us wants to go up into the attic and fetch the photos back. We don’t go into your room anymore either. We took down our clock too. Remember the clock?

Your hand was stuck on “Lost�. But lost can mean so many things. It can mean missing or dead… or just lost. It couldn’t be just lost… you couldn’t have gotten lost. We knew that – but it was what we didn’t know that, again, hurt most. We had all been at Grimmauld Place when you disappeared. None of us were looking at the clock. Maybe, for a second, after you left home your hand on the clock switched to “Mortal Peril� and then – just “Lost�.

Most of all, more than wanting to hear your voice and see your face, I want to know that you’re happy Ron. I want to know that you’re safe.

I miss you so much Ron. I wish I could tell you how much.

I love you,

Ginny