Chapter Text
In the Battle of Hogwarts, Angelina had seen people killed right in front of her, others tortured and maimed; she had seen grieving friends, mothers crying over the bodies of their children and the other way around, survivors clinging to each other in agony.
She wanted to forget it all, forget the pain and the tears, the sound of violence and the smell of death. She wanted to forget the body of the red-haired boy lying on the floor of the Great Hall, surrounded by his family. Her red-haired boy who would never joke again, never smile at her again. Her stomach felt ice-cold. She wanted to forget it all.
It was cowardly, and she knew it—maybe the hat had made a mistake when it had sorted her into Gryffindor all those years ago. She hadn't shied away from fighting, but she was shying away from her own feelings now. She wanted to bury the memories deep inside herself, even considered placing a Memory Charm on herself on one of the many nights she was lying in bed, shivering despite her several warm blankets, unable to sleep. She was disgusted with herself, with her desire for an easy way out. She'd always been so strong, and now? Now she couldn't even look at herself in the mirror some days.
During the days, she drowned herself in work. Her Quidditch team held training sessions five times a week, but she was on the pitch every day, trying to make herself move on, trying to stop remembering. Sometimes it worked and she fell into bed as soon as she came home, utterly exhausted. Other times she came home with tears in her eyes which didn't blur the images of her red-haired boy she kept seeing, and unable to sleep at all. On those days she used firewhiskey to numb her thoughts.
She had danced with him at the Yule Ball. They had both been sixteen then, young and care-free, not even seriously considering that they could be having feelings for each other. It was fun, and he had been an expert when it came to fun—a sob escaped her at that thought. That his life had ended like that, on a battlefield, it wasn't right. The world was wrong, so very wrong, had it always been like that? Had the world already been wrong when they made out in the deserted classroom she remembered so well, that evening after the Ball? Or had she just been too blind to see life for what it truly was? Life was cruel, she knew that now, cruel and ironic, but everything had seemed so bright when she had been sixteen. The way he had kissed her—not very experienced, perhaps, but his confidence had made up for that. There had been a kind of seriousness to it, subtle but unmistakable. She had never asked him if that had been his first kiss.
The days went by and Angelina had the strange feeling that time had lost its meaning. Waking up, Quidditch pitch, going to sleep. Every day, over and over. Sometimes there was firewhiskey, other times an owl from Alicia or Katie. She hadn't visited them. Nobody tried to visit her any more, she had made it clear to everyone that she didn't want to see them. She convinced herself she liked it better that way, but sometimes, lying in her bed, staring out the window into the endless black of night, she wondered if life was still meaningful like this. Everything seemed so distant. Even Quidditch... She was still flying very well, of course, but something was missing. She just barely remembered that feeling she'd had in her stomach before matches at Hogwarts. The excitement, her beating heart, her passion and joy. She couldn't feel any of those now. If there was a match, there was a match. If there wasn't there wasn't. Winning and losing had become so inconsequential. There had been a time when she had loved her broom dearly, when her fingers had prickled every time she touched it; when her heart had been racing those first seconds after she got into the air, and nothing could compare to the feeling of freedom. She wondered if she would ever feel like that again.
They had stolen away sometimes, her red-haired boy and her, to make out in empty rooms and deserted corridors. It had always felt so light, they had never quite made a habit or a standing appointment out of it. He had insisted that that would stand in the way of fun, and she had found it exciting. Sometimes they had met before the Room of Requirement and he had thought up the most ridiculous things for the room to turn into. He had told her of his and his brother's plan to leave the school, and when they met in the Room for the last time a few days afterwards, she told him she wanted more than just kisses. It had been strange and gentle and less awkward than she'd imagined due to his ability to joke about anything. According to the conversations of the girls in her dormitory, most people didn't have half as much fun the first time they had sex.
They had snuck back into the Gryffindor common room afterwards, holding hands on the whole way back, and he had kissed her before climbing through the portrait hole. Not much had changed, but he had seemed more sincere in that moment, so serious, like he wanted her to know how much that evening meant to him.
Sometimes Angelina was amazed she even bothered to buy food. Deep inside her there seemed to be a part of her that didn't want to starve, and just as well. She ate and drank and did her laundry and washed her dishes. She sometimes remembered to water the potted plant her father had given her. She became quite good at cleaning spells, so that her flat looked sparkling clean every time she bothered to use them. She didn't stop taking care of herself, but while she used to enjoy playing around with make-up and trying new hair styles, brushing her hair was now a chore, using eyeliner a routine. Everything seemed so cold, so empty. Outside her window the leaves on the trees were turning red and yellow, the wind on the pitch was cold and relentless, but she hardly took any notice.
After she'd made it into the Appleby Arrows' reserve team and gotten her own flat, she had gone to Diagon Alley in order to shop for home supplies and furniture. There had been banners everywhere with Ministry warnings on them, the faces of Death Eaters snarling at her as she walked past them. Only one shop had defied the trend, and she couldn't help but smile as she'd entered. It had been loud and bright and light-hearted and so much like him. She hadn't seen her red-haired boy at first, there had been so many customers. She had marvelled at many of the inventions displayed on the shelves; she had always known that he and his twin were creative, just not on that kind of scale. Just when she had been standing in front of a shelf full of Bedazzling Brooms—Eat one and start hovering! there had been a hand on her shoulder, and a melodic voice, and a smile on his face, the widest smile.
The storms got worse and the training harder. Angelina was glad of it, coming home freezing and exhausted meant that she didn't have a lot of time or energy to think about the past. During the training sessions themselves she said very little. Even though before the Battle Angelina used to be assertive and sometimes downright rude, none of her teammates found anything odd about her new-found reclusive behaviour. Many of them had lost loved ones at the hands of the Death Eaters, and all of them had developed their own coping methods in order to get by. Gabby hadn't talked to anyone for two whole months, her daughter had been killed in the Battle of Hogwarts. Harrison was still carrying a bottle of vodka with him wherever he went, his sister and her family had been brutally murdered after Voldemort had taken over the Ministry. William had long scars on his wrists, he had been forced to watch his Muggle parents being tortured for fun and had been sent to Azkaban afterwards on account of being Muggleborn. All things considered, she had been lucky, Angelina thought. Neither herself nor her family had been harmed.
She had invited him to her flat not long after their meeting in his shop. Angelina had told the mirror to behave himself but even so he had yelled "Iron your clothes, you smelly git!" as soon as he saw her visitor. Her red-haired boy had found it hilarious. He had brought her a red rose and a box full of Bedazzling Brooms. They had taken a walk in the nearby park and talked and laughed, and then she'd taken him to her bed and he had kissed her and caressed her and made her moan and scream, and she had dozed off in his arms afterwards. It had all felt so easy back then. There had been no confessions, no promises or commitments, just two friends having fun. It had seemed so harmless. Now she saw his broken body in her dreams, woke up with the sound of the battlefield in her ears. In those moments she was sure that she would never be able to smile again.
Alicia was standing at her door one day, two bottles of butterbeer in her hands. She was smiling but her eyes were sad and her cheeks were hollow. They sat before Angelina's fireplace and listened to the howling wind outside, a comforting silence between them. Angelina found that she had missed this—the presence of a friend who didn't expect her to be something she wasn't, who accepted that the war had changed her.
"You were in love with him, weren't you?"
Such a simple question, yet she couldn't answer. She didn't want to think about him, didn't want to think about all that could have been and would never be. Alicia's warm hand was pressing into her shoulder; a moment later Angelina found herself in her friend's arms, tears spilling out of her eyes, a lump of ice where her stomach used to be. Her hands were clinging to her friend's robes and Alicia was patting her head.
Back then, Angelina had never seen it as love, her and her red-haired boy had never called it love. Maybe they had been wrong, she thought as she sobbed into Alicia's shoulder. Maybe it had been love.
He had come by one rainy afternoon in March, telling her that he and his brother were about to go into hiding. There had been a feeling of dread in her stomach then, a strange sense of foreboding; knowing that the Death Eaters considered the Weasleys blood traitors and would love to have a reason to hunt them down. He had promised her that they would be careful, and for once he hadn't had a smile on his lips. She had hugged him as tightly as she could, wishing he could stay with her, wishing the world were different, not even daring to think about the future.
"Don't worry," he had said, his smile back on his face. "Nothing will happen to us."