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It’d been ten years and yet it still felt like yesterday. He could hear the cracks of hexes, smell the acrid smoke in his nostrils, feel the tremors under his feet. He opened his mouth and could almost taste the ash and the horrors of that singular minute. And when he opened his eyes a flash of ginger hair and heart wrenching smile greeted him.
“Why did you have to be heroic?” he whispered to the small photo. “Why the bloody hell did you have to do that?” A sob like a bullet train burst from his chest, the tightness agonizing, the pressure in his head exorbitant. His breathing hissed through his teeth, drying up his tongue and leaving it like desert sand. His eyes seemed to absorb every last drop from his mouth and pour down his face like the rainstorm rumbling in the distance.
A soft voice echoed from inside the house, “George, it’s going to rain, are you coming inside?”
He forced his throat to clear and blotted at the tears streaking his cheeks. “Just a mo’.” He stepped off the porch and walked far into the grass, looking up into the sky.
“Can you see me, Fred?” He lifted the photo up to his face and the sight wrenched his heart anew. “It should have been me.” The words fell from his lips and his heart squeezed in his chest. “It should have been me.”
A flash of lightning streaked down not far off and the thunder that accompanied it beat against his eardrums. When the slew of rain came George yelped, remembering the photo in his hands. He pulled his wand and attempted to cast an impervius charm, but his hands were trembling too much. The photo became soaked through in an instant. He fell to his knees, muddying his trousers. Flecks flying up to greet his sodden cheeks.
When the soft voice from inside was over him, he opened his eyes and found that he was lying in fetal position, rocking himself in the mud. The photo seemed to laugh at him from his fist, tattered and streaked.
“Oh, George.” Hermione sank down onto her knees next to him.
“I miss him so much, I can’t take it anymore.”
Hermione combed her fingers through his damp hair and hummed. George wasn’t sure if tears were still falling or if it was the rain that ran down his cheeks and lips.
Hermione leaned down over him, gripping him tightly in a fierce embrace. “I know, my love, I know.” She rocked their bodies together, soothing him through the intense ache that never seemed to fully dull. “I know.”