In the Melancholy Moonlight

Chapter CLI: Healing Magic

GEORGE:

I'd had a number of long days in my lifetime.

Sitting through Bill's graduation was excruciating. Charlie's was a tad easier, since I knew more people in that class, but Percy's was the worst — how he managed to find something nice to say about every single person in his class during his Head Boy speech would have impressed me if it hadn't been so dreadfully long as a result.

Our first detention with Filch was truthfully the worst of all of our (many) detentions. He'd (correctly) pinpointed us as troublemakers from the beginning and was thus determined to try to stamp every bit of mischief out of us (unsuccessfully). We'd never told a soul the truth about the faint scars around our thumbs, but we had sworn to each other that we'd never let ourselves be that helpless again. So far, so good, at least as far as the two of us were concerned.

We'd felt rather helpless that night we found Neville on the couch, then checked the Map only to find that there were four Gryffindor first-years missing. A couple minutes later, three dots appeared in the forbidden corridor. Finding all three worse for wear, one being our brother, was another blow. Harry, our brother's best friend and our Quidditch teammate and adopted brother, turning up later the worst off of the lot made it even worse.

Even worse than that night was the night Ginny disappeared. I'd never forget the way it felt like everything in me was being slowly turned to stone when we heard the news. Cold, hard, unforgiving. Not human. Humans were warm and fragile and forgiving, but if being human had to hurt that much, I didn't want it.

I'd felt similarly around the dementors the next year. Every time one was around, I heard McGonagall's voice in my head saying Ginny had been taken into the Chamber of Secrets and that we would be on the train home the next morning. I didn't hate the dementors nearly as much as Harry and Lucy did, but I hated the way they reminded me of the most helpless hour of my life up to that point.

I felt helpless the night of the Quidditch World Cup too. Losing Harry and Ron and Hermione, finding Lucy and Cedric with the former coughing up both lungs and covered in soot, hiding in the forest with Fred and Ginny as terror raged around us. That had been the scariest night of my life, and I thought it could ever get worse. I was wrong.

The helplessness I'd felt the night Cedric was killed hurt like a physical pain. As long as I lived, I'd never forget the sound of Lucy's agonized scream on the shores of the Black Lake. I'd never forget the sight of the Dark Mark over her house just over a month later, and the fear that plagued us for the days before she was found. For all of my long days, those had been the longest. I couldn't help Lucy. I couldn't help the other people who loved her, either. That kind of compounded helplessness was something I would never forget.

The newest long day, however, the most recent in a long line of long days, began with Hermione Granger stumbling through the portrait hole twenty minutes after the full moon had ended.

My bouncing leg froze at the look on her face. "What happened?"

"I-I'm not sure," she managed, breathing hard as if she'd run the entire way to Gryffindor tower, "but she's hurt. Where are the others?"

"Ginny's up waiting in your dormitory already, Ron's getting Harry's bag together, and Angelina was in our dorm last night so Fred's there so she doesn't wake up to find him gone and come to investigate," I explained as I jumped to my feet. "I'll get Fred and Ron while you get Ginny, we'll go see her."

Hermione grabbed me by the arm as I turned to get my brothers. "Wait, we have to think about this. We don't want to draw unnecessary attention to her, with the way Umbridge is about... you know."