It was only natural that he should be breathing, but he could not feel the air entering or leaving his lungs. Perhaps he wasn’t breathing. Perhaps his heart wasn’t beating. Perhaps he had died and gone to Heaven. If so, he had been kneeling there in Heaven for quite some time, staring at her.
Even as he convinced himself it was a dream, he had moved forward. He had stood up from the ground and taken three little steps toward her. She was still there, looking at him with those eyes. He reached out a hand, barely knowing what he was doing, and pressed it to her cheek.
Her skin was warm against his cold fingers. It was soft.
“Are you real?” he asked in a croaky, dry whisper. His voice sounded like he had just learned to speak, and still could not do it very well. His fingers didn’t feel like they belonged to his body, and neither did his eyes, taking her in as they were. He felt like he had fallen into a book. He would wake up any time now, to find the clearing empty again. Her cheek would show its self as being nothing more than the brush of the grass against his fingers.
To his utter astonishment, fear, joy, she nodded her head. He noticed her eyes seemed too bright, a little confused, and the corner of her mouth twitched. He knew not if up or down.
Then suddenly the graceful surreal atmosphere of this place, no doubt Heaven, vanished as he gave a strangled little cry and yanked her into his arms, holding her so tightly he almost felt her ribs break.
For a while as he held her he did not know what to think. If he were going mad he would certainly not feel her as he did, so close and so fierce. It must not have been a dream.
Time had stopped four years ago when he stared in to her night-sky-eyes for the last time, and this time, as he looked into them again, it sped up. Feeling so weak from disbelieving joy that he could not manage a word, he felt her hug him back just as tightly. She squealed in a watery way and she let her hand fly up from his shoulder to his vibrant hair. As the joy overwhelmed him so completely tears streamed down his face he picked her up and spun her in circles. She laughed and the sound rang through the empty clearing.
He pulled back to look at her and noticed there were tears in her eyes too. She was there, right there! He was holding her in his arms! The world was good. There was mercy. He felt so alive he seemed no longer to live. Why was life any more real than a dream?
“You really are here, aren’t you?” he asked again. Any word at all that he’d said would have fit.
She let another cry leave her trembling lips and her head nodded again before she had pressed her mouth against his.
It was too short; even though Ron had no idea how long it lasted. What did that matter? Forever wasn’t long at all. They were together now, and life was perfect! What did he care if he’d wasted four years in mourning, running from acceptance? Here they were, and they would soon be going to St. Mungo’s where the happiness would probably become so thick they would choke on it. They would be married, and they’d have kids to look after, cousins for James, Sirius and Lucy. They’d live there with his parents so they could help out, and they’d say ‘Good morning’ every morning and ‘Good night’ every night. Even the now dead-looking clearing, to which he spared no thought, was beautiful to him.
“Ron,” she finally whispered, resting her forehead against his, unable to wipe the confused smile from her face, “what happened?”
“I wished you back and you came,” he answered in a whisper. His voice hadn’t truly recovered yet.
She seemed slightly more confused. “What about the battle…? The last thing I remember is running in front of Harry and then I looked at you and I was…gone…” She stared off for a while, as she saw something there. “It was very…strange…like I was hanging somewhere between two places. Like I was just waiting for something…it was…strange.”
He watched her intently, unable to bring himself to be alarmed or keep the smile from his face. He doubted he would ever be able to wipe it off.
“You threw yourself in front of Harry, and Voldemort killed you,” Ron stated, not minding at all the look of shock on her face. “Then Harry killed him, and all the Death Eaters panicked, and we got almost all of them that same day. And now you’re here! You’re…”
Before he could complete his own sentence, he was overwhelmed by the need to hold her again, and he did. “I’ve missed you so much,” he whispered into her hair, and he didn’t mind at all when his voice broke pathetically, for she was sighing into his shoulder.
She tensed in his arms when they heard a sound, like a twig snapping, from the other side of the dark wood. He pulled away and took out his wand, shielding her protectively.
“Who’s there?” he called. His voice had lost its watery quality very quickly.
Whoever it was answered by sending a curse toward them that barely missed Hermione, hitting the tree behind her.
She screamed and put her arms over her head as bits of bark fell upon her. As other curses were sent their way, Ron took her hand and yanked her away, blocking the curses. His first impulse would have been to stand and fight, but the only thing that mattered now was Hermione, and that she stay with him. No one would dare take her away from him now, after he’d finally gotten her back.
They ran along that path, once imprinted into his mind by horror. He could hear Hermione panting behind him, and he knew she was still confused. He didn’t understand the situation himself, he still thought that it was a dream that was slowly distancing from bliss, but his mind seemed to disregard this fact. Who cared how, anyway?
“Ron, what happened here?” Hermione gasped, looking around.
If he had been paying more attention he would have noticed that the trees around them were fewer, that the weeds rose much higher than they should have, that there was an eerie, oppressing quality to the silence. He would have noticed that the surroundings seemed uncared for, and forsaken.
He slowed down his pace. She was looking around in a dull sort of horror and confusion at the neglect so obviously present.
“I thought you told me the war was over. Hasn’t anyone had the chance to nurse things back?” she asked quietly.
Something was beginning to grow inside of him, but he did his best to ignore it, tugging her along more insistently through the dark, shadowed wood that led them home. He could hear vaguely, somewhere in the distance, angry voices and cautious footfalls, but it was nothing more than a whisper against the increasing pounding of his heart as they made their way out of the wood and into the unkempt field.
“Ron, who were those people trying to attack us? Does someone own that property now?”
He could have told her, no, that land was owned only by the dead, but he just stared ahead of him, completely bewildered for the first time that night: The Burrow was gone. In its place was a large expanse of dead, yellowing grass, and above it, in vibrant green colours, The Dark Mark.
Ron could only stare. He felt Hermione gasping beside him.
“Ron, where are we?” she asked in a confused and pained little voice.
He ran forward, unconsciously taking her along, until he was standing right where the kitchen table should have been. Nothing changed; it was not an illusion, not a trick of some sort. He glanced down and almost felt bad for running upon such miserable-looking grass.
His blissful joy was vanishing, as cold, stifling dread set in. He forced himself to breathe and he ran away, back up to the road. He stood there, not knowing what to do, where to go, what to think. Hermione followed him and reached for his face forcefully.
“Ron!” she hissed firmly. “What happened?”
He stared into her eyes for a while, meaning himself to find a flicker of reason in them, but there was nothing there. Even so, he could not bring himself to look away. “I don’t know…they all left for St. Mungo’s a while ago, because Harry and Ginny just had a baby again, and I was going to go later…but then I went for a walk and…”
The look on her face told him that wasn’t exactly the kind of answer she wanted, but she didn’t say a word and continued to watch him as he whispered, “I was sitting there in front of…in front of your grave. I was feeling so helpless; I started whispering, I think, wishing you hadn’t left my-” he stopped speaking as he hear the sounds of arguing voices coming closer.
“This way,” Hermione whispered, taking his hand and silently heading toward an overgrown cluster of bushes toward the bend in the road to the left. The voices became more distant as they crouched there in thorns quietly. She turned back to him again, an unreadable expression in her eyes, saying, “And what next?”
“Next thing I know, you’re standing right in front of me, back from the dead after four years.”
He saw her shiver, though the air was quite humid and warm. She looked up at the sky, and the sheer black seemed to reflect itself in them.
“Look,” she whispered, “there’s no moon tonight. It’s a lunar eclipse. It’ll happen sometimes, but it’s really rare.” She turned to stare at him, breathing heavily. Ron saw a familiar glint in her eye, only a little obscured. It amazed him, even comforted him slightly that she could still light up with that glow she always got when she was explaining something particularly interesting.
“I think I understand how…I can be here at all. There’s this ancient Celtic myth about the day the moon disappears. It says fairies come out, and they grant people’s wishes. A long time ago there was a huge fuss about this, because people thought they could get anything they wanted. But according to the myth, the fairies only grant wishes to the people that think they can’t live without what they wish for. So, not many people would get their wishes…”
Ron’s head was spinning. It was almost too much to take in. He rubbed his sweating hands across the grass beneath him and took a deep breath. Hermione was looking at him strangely. Perhaps the words ‘can’t live without’ were running through her head too.
“But,” Ron whispered, clearing his throat as he did, “that doesn’t explain why, why the Burrow’s gone, or why all the tombs disappeared…”
Hermione continued to watch him, that glow still present, as if she were trying hard to solve a difficult, unpleasant, question in class. “I think…you might have changed something with your wish. If you change the past, you change the future…”
A chill ran through Ron, a chill that had nothing to do with the weather and frightened away the blinding joy he’d experienced not even an hour ago. He stared at her intently, knowing that she was thinking along the same lines. He took a deep breath and looked away quickly. She put a hand over his, in what was meant to be a comforting way. It only served to chill him further. It would soon be nothing more than the trace of a lost affection, again.
“My darling.” She inched herself softly toward him, until she was holding his face in her hands gently, though slightly shaken. “You haven’t been well, have you?”
He knew she was not asking about his health.
Before he could release his grief upon her, as he was dangerously close to doing, a figure came before them, and stood there over them, having parted a way through the bushes, unnoticed.
Hermione’s stifled scream made his flesh crawl, as they both pushed themselves away further into the thorny growth, reaching for wands in terrified haste, staring with eyes painfully wide at the black-hooded, fogged spectacle before them. Before they could utter a single word, the figure had lowered its hood.
The face was so pale it could have been a ghost. Her long hair was so thin it blew, even though the wind had stopped. It was almost as colourless as her face. Her lips seemed painfully chapped. She had very large eyes. They were very large, and very empty. There was a lingering mistiness to them that gave her a haunted sort of look. She seemed not surprised, not angry, and not concerned as she looked at them on the dead ground.
“Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley,” she said impassively. “I thought you were both dead.”
They looked on transfixed as the woman moved toward them, lowering her wand, and just stood there, staring at them with her unnervingly lacking eyes.
“It’s been four years since anyone’s seen you,” the woman went on, as if she couldn’t see the panic, the confusion on their poor faces. She didn’t seem to see much of anything. “The world can still surprise me.”
Hermione and Ron shivered. She did not sound surprised; she sounded exhausted, apathetic, defeated. It was not pleasant to listen to. It was almost nauseating.
“Who are you?” Hermione asked in a quiet, terrified voice, holding Ron’s hand very hard in her own.
The girl sighed. “I suppose I’m not much of anyone anymore. I haven’t been for years… I’m just a person doing what she’s ordered, because she has no other choice. I am no one, but I was once Luna Lovegood.”
“Luna?” they gasped after a moment of silence.
She smiled mirthlessly. “I don’t look it, do I?”
Ron could not bring himself to even shake his head. He stared in horror. There was something truly grotesque about the once dreamy girl’s transfiguration into an emotionless ghost. Nothing of their old friend lingered in that face.
“What happened to you?” Hermione whimpered.
“Nothing. Life. Death. War. All of them at once, I guess.”
They could only gape at her, repulsed.
“You’ve been gone for a long time,” she murmured unnecessarily. “Things aren’t the same.”
Ron swallowed against the rising bile and fear in his throat. A shiver past through the couple, as they sat there trying to understand. The wind began to blow again, horribly warm and teasing.
“Luna…” Hermione moaned by his ear, gazing up at her, “who won the war?”
Luna looked at her face, at the tears that threatened to spill, and quite simply she stated, “They did. He is master to everyone now.”
“No! No, it’s not true. We won!” Ron protested angrily as Hermione leaned on him silently. Was this all a joke? Why had it started out so beautiful, just to end like this? It was truly an unfair, sick game.
“You’ve been gone very long,” Luna repeated, and Ron fancied for a moment that he saw a flicker of pity in her eyes. But then, as she continued to watch him apathetically, he was certain he had imagined it. “Where were you? You must have hidden very well, if they could never find you.”
They ignored her question. “Luna,” Hermione demanded, terrified, “what about Harry? Where is he?”
Luna lowered her eyes to the ground. Then she pointed up toward the moonless sky. “He’s up there.”
Hermione let out one heart wrenching moan and buried her face in Ron’s shirt. He felt as if someone had knocked all the air out of his lungs. It was all a lie…a very horrible and realistic lie.
“No,” he said in a quiet, dangerous voice.
“Yes. They all are.”
“No!” Ron lunged forward and grabbed Luna by the shoulders, shaking her furiously, gripping her cold, limp arms very hard. He looked into her amazingly, disgustingly tranquil face, in a maddened way. His eyes stung and watered but he didn’t notice. “He’s not dead! Stop LYING!”
He continued to shake her, shouting crazily. She continued to do nothing. Once more she mumbled and pointed, “He’s up there.”
Ron pushed her away, onto the road. Then he dropped to his knees in anguish so deep he couldn’t feel it hurting; it took over completely. He shouted into his hands until he felt as if his throat were bleeding. The tears leaked out unnoticed until he was most likely dry. Luna had lifted herself from the ground and stood there, watching for the longest time. She had not averted her eyes. There seemed to be nothing in the least painful about the scene to her.
Distantly, Ron felt a warm and wet hand upon his shoulder, and he clutched at it. With her other, Hermione wiped at his face. He could hear her sniffling and watery breathing as well. When he looked up, her eyes were no longer filled with joy, confusion, or even dread and horror. They were full of determination. It did not make him feel any better.
“Luna,” she said, turning to the ghost girl, “can you bring us back to the clearing.”
She nodded, glancing around as she did. “I’m alone now. We won’t be found,” she said, already moving toward the little path through the field, which had once been neat and cute. It was a lifetime away now.
“Found by whom?” Hermione asked, as she dragged Ron along with her.
“By the Death Eaters.” Luna blasted the weeds away, unceremoniously.
“Are they here?” Hermione gasped, looking around wildly.
“No, I told them to go on. They have more pressing matters to attend to. Besides, I wasn’t too fond of watching it either…” Luna’s voice grew too quiet for once.
“Wait…you’re with them?” Ron stopped in his tracks and stared in acute disgust at the back of Luna’s head, as she continued to weave her way through the brambles.
“Everyone is with them. Those who refuse, or fight, go to join the angels. None of the strong or brave are left.”
“And you chose to live in his service, rather than die?” Ron demanded loudly, as the anger boiled away inside him.
Luna had no answer for a while. She had stopped her walking, but she had not turned to look into his revolted, murderous face. A light breeze blew, but it brought with it warmth that managed to heat no more than their bare necks.
“I didn’t. But they took my father. They keep him captive, because they find it amusing to see me subject myself to this for his sake. They did the same with your father, keeping your brother Charlie for a few years…they’re both gone now.”
If Ron had thought he could hurt no more, that further pain was impossible, he found that he was wrong. A fresh wave of grief rolled over him and threatened to wash him away. Hermione slipped her shaking hand into his and kept him moving, as he tried his hardest not to picture his family’s eternally lost faces. She had no words to say, though. Her words could do nothing to heal the wounds Luna’s were carving.
“They do that to most everyone they know who ever helped Harry. Somehow, they find it funny.”
“Luna, who’s left?” he could not keep himself from asking, as they retook to walking, and made it out of the field, into the wood.
“Bill hasn’t been found yet. And neither have George, or Ginny, or Professor Lupin…Neville died last week. He took with him what was left of my heart.” Luna actually shivered through the warmth, as they wound their way through trees with empty branches.
“I’m so sorry,” Hermione whispered. It seemed an odd thing to say. Ron realized for the first time how entirely useless those words were.
“They’re going to burn his body tonight. I’m glad they didn’t force me to see it.”
Horror gripped Ron’s throat tightly, and he could not fight it back. He swore quietly, with such venom he almost heard a similar anger provoked into Luna’s breathing. But once again, after a few moments, he realized he had not.
Silence led them to the empty, depressing clearing. He could still see the place where he had knelt upon the grass, as it seemed particularly weak and smothered there.
“I could maybe help you hide somewhere,” Luna offered numbly as she turned to look at them finally. “They would find me out, of course. They would kill my father and me. But I’m beginning to think that would have been the best all along. Nothing’s left for me to live for anyway.”
Suddenly Ron didn’t feel so fearful and disgusted by Luna. He suddenly realized that was the sort of thing that happened to someone when they had truly lost it all, and even through the grief that would not release him, he felt sympathy for her.
“There’s no need, Luna,” whispered Hermione. She was staring directly at him. “We won’t be staying here.”
He shivered worse than ever. He suddenly had an idea where she was planning to go to, and of all the things he’d witnessed and heard that night, it was what horrified him the most.
Luna did not ask where they were going. She looked at them long and hard, then glanced at the sky. She sighed. “I will follow.”
Without another word, she was gone with a pop. But Ron understood her parting words; soon she would be profoundly gone, never to return.
They were alone as Hermione’s eyes pierced his. He looked away. He could not bear it. He would not.
He watched a crinkled brown leaf resisting against the warm wind to remain attached to the old branch of a miserable-looking bent tree. It turned over and over, and every moment it looked as if it might be torn away by the relentless, merciless wind, but the branch did not let it go, no matter how hard the wind blew.
He did not know how long he stood there watching the tree, until he noticed her hand against his face. He closed his eyes tightly.
“I could never live with myself,” Hermione began in a brittle, fragile voice, taking a step closer to him, “knowing that one day I had the chance to save you, and didn’t.”
He made a jerking motion with his head, to show he understood, even if he was unwilling to admit it.
Hermione took another deep breath. “I…I could never survive with the knowledge that everything, and everyone, is doomed, because I’m still here.
“And I can’t last in this place another second, thinking that I’m being watched from Heaven by people that aren’t supposed to be up there this soon.”
Her breathing hitched and he felt the warmth of tears starting to form behind his shut eyes, as his throat grew painfully tight, his hands shook, and something in his chest heaved.
“Oh, Ron,” Hermione whimpered pathetically, “I…I’m sorry. If I could, I would wish for nothing more than to stay here with you.”
Ron swallowed the tightening in his throat and blinked back the pressure on his eyes. When he opened them he noticed that the leaf was still hanging onto the branch, somehow. The wind mockingly intensified.
“It’s not fair. I never wanted to choose…why couldn’t I just have you all? It’s…it isn’t fair.”
She moved closer to him. “Was life fair to Harry when his parents, and Sirius, were taken so early on? Was life fair to Sirius when he was sentenced to Azkaban for Pettigrew’s crime? What about Remus: was it fair when Fenrir bit him? It wasn’t fair to your parents when Percy turned his back on them.”
Her hands gently caressed his cheeks, but he didn’t want to feel their softness. He wanted to feel bitter wind lashing at his skin without mercy. But it didn’t come; only the wind came to blow his hair into his eyes, and then her fingers brushed the strands away.
“Sometimes,” Hermione went on, as lovingly as ever, “life isn’t fair. But even so, we manage to be happy. Did Harry and Sirius, Remus and your parents, did they all quit living just because the world wasn’t just to them? You’ll still have happy moments, Ron.”
“You don’t understand,” Ron whispered against her forearm, looking determinedly to the ground. “I can’t be happy without you.”
She sounded as if she’s swallowed a cry. She breathed in very deeply, as if there weren’t enough air in the clearing. “You won’t be without me. I would never leave you completely.”
“Yes you will,” he insisted miserably. “You’re going to be gone. I’ll never see you again.”
She grabbed his face firmly in her hands and ordered quietly, “Look at me.”
He did. Her eyes swam in tears, her skin had become much paler, and her lips trembled. The sight made him want to scream, cry, throw himself upon the ground and beg. But all he did was stand there, breathing in her scent, gazing into her endlessly black eyes.
“No, you won’t ever see me again. But that doesn’t mean that I’ll be leaving you.” She rubbed the bridge of his nose tenderly, smiling sadly. Then she turned her eyes toward the equally lightless sky. “Look up there.”
He tore his eyes away from hers, feeling the light tickle of a tear creeping stealthily from his lashes, and turned them skyward. All he saw was a vast black infinity and a veiled sort of redness where the moon should have been.
“Can you see the moon, Ron?” Hermione barely whispered.
He shook his head, shivering in the warmth of the summer breeze.
“But is it there?” Her voice shook tremulously.
Ron was silent for a long time, gazing up. His throat had clenched so tightly he felt as if were about to choke. His chest rose quickly up and down and his heart beat pounded against his ribs. Her hands felt as warm as ever as he finally nodded, letting more tears escape helplessly.
Hermione sobbed quietly once, and she let her hands fall down to his shoulders, clutching him tightly. “I’m like the moon. Death is just a shadow I’m hiding behind. If you really love me, you’ll know: I’m always there, even when you can’t see me.”
Ron nodded his head roughly before sobbing loudly and grabbing her into his arms, holding her there, desperately. He held her so tightly he almost left off feeling, as her tears soaked into his shirt unnoticed. The wind blew fiercer than ever and the leaf finally gave up its battle, giving into weakness gracefully.
“I love you, Ron,” Hermione moaned in a high voice into his shoulder. “I wish I’d saved you when I had the chance.”
A creature, like a sphere of veiled light, rose into the air and aligned itself with the hidden satellite, just as he whispered through his tears, “I love you, too. And I’ll miss you.”
Hermione sucked in a little breath and clutched him even tighter as his hand rose to hold her head, as she slowly began to fade. The wind swirled leaves that were forming in thin air around the clearing and the forms of great stones began to be distinguishable from the emptiness. The trees grew back from their relented positions and the grass gained new life.
Ron knew that the feel of her in his arms was slowly fading, that the sound of her sobs was growing fainter, slowly being replaced by the wind. He knew it when his arms fell limply to his side, clutching at air, when the drops ceased to fall upon his shoulder, when his ears were void of everything but that wind. When, after a lingering moment in which he thought he could hear her whisper in his ear one last time, as he thought something brushed against his lips softly, she had glided from his arms, far away into the sky. She had gone to be with all the other angels.
As he took a deep breath and cast his eyes toward the sky, he still could not see the moon. But he knew it hadn’t gone anywhere at all.
*””*””*””*””*””*””*””*””*””*””*””*””*””*””*””*””*””*””*””*””*””*””*””*””*””*
The years went by. Ron became an uncle several other times. He was the godfather to Harry and Ginny’s beautiful little red-haired, green-eyed girl, Hermione. He spoiled her with candy and toys behind her parents back. He took her flying, and camping. He told her stories about the woman she was named after.
Ron could never say he had become whole again. He couldn’t say that he no longer hurt, or cried alone at night. The pain never left him, but he learned to deal with it. He liked to think she helped him deal with it, in some way too.
When he watched his family laughing, he managed to laugh with them. When they reminisced together easily and longed for the ones that were gone, he didn’t despair. He listened.
He never went back to visit that clearing. He didn’t need to; he knew that wasn’t where she rested. Whenever there was a lunar eclipse he smiled at the sky through his window, and her words played in his head. He knew it was more than stars watching him when he slept and when he woke.
He learned to live by one rule. It isn’t called sadness, not being whole. It isn’t sadness having said more ‘goodbyes’ than ‘hellos’. Sadness is a refusal to see the moonlight that shines on every night, no matter what. Sadness is an absence of joy.
And happiness isn’t about waking up with a smile on your face every morning, knowing everything will be right at the end. Happy isn’t someone who has never suffered and houses an intact soul. Happiness is nothing more, nothing less, than the knowledge we are and have been loved, even if we really are nothing more than what we are.
If Ron lived by that rule, he knew: he was the happiest man on earth.
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I hope I did that ending justice. It's not something I think can easily be put into words, but I did my best. Thanks so, so much to my wonderful beta, Hermione_Rocks for helping me so much! And I hope you liked my story, however sad it may be!