Obsidian & Bronze {Fred Weasley}

38. It's been a while

4 Months later...

Four months is a long time. It doesn't sound like it, but it is. In actuality, it's sixteen weeks which makes it sound even longer. Saying one hundred and twelve days, now that makes it sound extortionate.

They say when you lose somebody, regardless in which form this loss takes, you are taken through five stages, denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance, and then proceeding this, you move on.

Simple right? Wrong.

These stages reflected superbly into my life the months that followed after the day Fred and I broke up, or at least I thought they did. The denial came easier than expected, the days I spent scanning over the notes he had written me, the sketches he slipped in my textbooks, all of it did not seem as though he could have disappeared as quickly as it did.

The anger was the easiest. It was there, boiling on the surface, I didn't have to search for it. And once I let it seep through, that first time I lost my composure, it bled out of me like a wound, and no amount of pressure was halting its rapid speed. Although I was angry at Fred, and god was I irrevocably angry at that boy, I was rather more angry at myself, that I had fallen for someone so fast. I suppose I was just tired of feeling alone. I never felt alone with him.

The bargaining was one I wasn't sure I had fulfilled until further reflection later on. But realising the suggestion of changing my name, altering my appearance and moving into the muggle world where I could be anyone I wanted, rid of the troubles my past brought in order to be with Fred, definitely completed the bargaining sector of these stages.

Then there was the depression. Not much of which I can actually recall. Each day melted into the next and the means of ordinary time had stretched beyond my understanding. Remus bringing me cups of tea, Sirius replacing them with whiskey, Harry holding me until I ran out of tears, the way the slither of light peaked out from below my closed blind and disappeared again the same time each day. It was all rather bleak. I was glad to be rid of it.

The acceptance was one I was thankful for. It took an inappropriately long time, but it came nonetheless, and I needed it. The pitiful state of the blue sky after the storm, but it was a blue sky regardless, despite the state mother nature had left it in.

I think it's important, however, to note that there was one very key stage over the past four months that was not officially factored in. Guilt.

At first I wasn't even sure who it was directed at, I just knew it was festering inside me, sumberging my brain and pushing it beyond coherency. Whether it came from the piles of unopened letters from George and Hermione that I had been neglecting, or the endless nights spent awake, with Harry, crying until I forgot how to function unless streams of burning tears were violently dragging down my cheeks, I knew the guilt was there.

It became easier to manage over time, and now it was virtually effortless, or so I told myself. Summer had practically passed, a mere week until September 1st, and it was becoming harder to conceal the ever growing fear of entering back into the wizarding world, something I had managed to avoid for sixteen weeks.

"Morning" Harry greeted, proceeding a knock on my bedroom door before he entered, a cup of tea in each hand and six chocolate digestives balancing their weight across the rim of the mug and his wrist.

"Morning, how did you sleep?" I smiled, grabbing three of the chocolate biscuits and one of the mugs, placing it on my mahogany desk where I was sat, pulling at my face, debating the notion of applying makeup.

"Yeah, alright" Harry shrugged monotonously, he was always rather dysfunctional before nine in the morning, "Where are we heading today? What are we crossing off our list?"