Requiem

I kneel and feel the dirt beneath my hands. I want to cry, but I can’t. The tears don’t come anymore.
I am such a fool.
I should have seen it coming. But I didn’t. And now she’s dead. They’re all dead.
I should have known.
It all started...
Well, I suppose you could say it started the day Harry’s parents died, because that night made him a hero. A hero who was worshipped.
But it’s better to start at first year. That’s when she first met him. She was so shy, so nervous. Hero-worship. Nothing more. Nothing more...
And second year, she sent him that silly card, and then he saved her life... Well, say one thing about Harry, he did live up to the hero label.
Just a school-girl crush, nothing more.
And then fourth year, she went to the Yule Ball with Neville, so I thought she wasn’t really interested anymore. I was wrong.
It all seemed so normal… Nothing’s ever normal.
They dated. Harry and my sister. Around the end of our fifth year. For several months actually, I didn’t expect it to last so long. I knew Harry didn’t love her, he just thought of her as a friend. I don’t know why he kept it going, stringing her along like that. Maybe he was trying to keep the rabid groupies away.
I’ll never know.
And Ginny... She acted like it was no big deal, but I knew she really cared about him. And I was worried. She would get hurt eventually. I tried to talk to Harry, but he didn’t listen. It was just a few dates, he said. Nothing serious, he said. Just fun, hanging around. God, I wish he had been right.
When they finally broke up right before summer started, I made sure to check on Ginny. She said she was fine. She acted fine. I knew she wasn’t fine. But I believed her anyway.
Ginny started seeing Neville over the summer. I don’t know who pushed her to do it, but she did. They had always been friends, and I knew Neville liked her, but I never thought Ginny returned his affections. Everyone had been encouraging her to get over Harry, so maybe she thought Neville would be an easy rebound. I don’t know.
Then sixth year, the unbelievable happened. Cho asked Harry out. He looked like he’d just won the Quidditch World Cup and defeated Voldemort in the same day. God, he was happy.
I was happy too. After all, he was my best friend. Everyone was happy for them. After Harry got over the ‘Cho is a surreal goddess’ phase, they seemed perfect for each other. Two bona-fide Quidditch obsessies.
Even Ginny seemed happy for them.
I think, deep down, I knew she was angry. Or at least hurt. She wanted to be the one on Harry’s arm.
When they got married a year after Harry graduated, Ginny snapped. That had been the last straw for her.
She killed herself a week after the wedding, on New Year’s Eve.
Neville found the body.
She had shot herself with a Muggle gun she found among Dad’s toys. He never forgave himself for that.
She had had a date with Neville that night. She died in her best dress, brand-new. She was only seventeen.
Things changed so much after that. I stopped talking to Harry. We lived in different parts of the country, worked in different fields; there was no reason to communicate. I knew Hermione still wrote to him, but we never talked about it.
Neville... I’m not sure what happened to him. He’d come over for dinner once in a while, but there was something about him that scared me. Eventually, he stopped coming, and I didn’t go out of my way to invite him.
Maybe I should have.
Maybe if I had, none of this would have ever happened.
Because Harry’s dead. Cho’s dead. So is Neville.
They’re all dead.
They say that on New Year’s Eve, Neville broke into the Potters' home. He killed Cho when she opened the door. He tried to kill Harry, then killed Hermione when she got in the way. I don’t know what she was doing there. Maybe trying to make amends with Harry. But I don’t think Neville meant to kill her. She was just in the wrong place. He and Harry dueled. Neville was never much a dueler, but he was fueled by madness. And he killed Harry, bringing the entire house down.
I don’t remember much about that night, even though I was there. Hermione had told me to pick her up before dinner. We were supposed to go out, a nice little French place in Diagon Alley. I was going to propose.
The house exploded just before I had a chance to ring the doorbell. All I remember after that was fire. And heat.
They told me later they dragged me from the flames. They thought I had died.
But I didn’t die. I just lost everything there was to live for.
The flames had burned most of my body. They kept me alive, but they couldn’t repair the damage. My entire body, my face, is scarred, but I couldn’t tell you how badly. I can’t see it. That fire made me blind.
They say the flames burned for days without end. Magically enhanced fire, the investigator said.
They never found the bodies.
And I wonder if that was the way Neville planned it, down to the dinners and mad ravings. Because Neville was a lot of things, but he wasn’t insane. He was patient.
I run my fingers over the headstone. I can feel the name. Virginia Charlene Weasley. I can’t see it. I’m blind, in more ways than one. I can’t see what’s in front of me, and I can’t see what’s underneath.
I can feel his presence behind me. I know he’s there, standing just over my shoulder.
"Hello, Neville."
"Hi, Ron." He shuffles, nervous.
"You think I could come over for dinner tonight?"
I stand. "Sure."
Why not? I could turn him in, but who would believe me? A mad blind man who had lost his sister and four close friends? Besides, I couldn’t blame him. Ginny had been my sister, after all.
"Come on, Neville," I say. "Let’s go before someone sees you."
So we walk away, leaving behind the row of five graves; four fresh, one a year old.
And tomorrow, there will be two more graves to fill.









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