𝐄𝐍𝐃𝐋𝐄𝐒𝐒 | f. w

liii. dolorous

chapter fifty-three
DOLOROUS

(adjective : causing, marked by, or
expressing misery or grief)

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» » "NO YOU'RE NOT." Fred pulled his hands away from where they had been on top of Edith's. He swallowed, struggling to make sense of what the girl he had spent more than half his life being in love with—the love of his life—had just revealed to him.

"Fred—" Edith interjected, and now it was her turn to grasp at his hand.

"You're joking. Tell me you're joking."

He prayed she wasn't telling the truth, that this was some wicked way of getting back at him for not actively seeking her out in the last few months, for not fighting for her. But he hadn't known if she even wanted to see him, even less talk to him, so he had stayed away, despite how badly he wanted to make himself known to her whenever he'd see her.

He knew she was seeing someone. He had been browsing for a gift for Ginny's birthday in Diagon Alley one day when he stopped short in what he was doing, recognising her dark hair and faraway gaze from where he stood from across the street. She looked just as beautiful as she always did, if not more so because of the growing distance between them, her dark hair falling in waves over her shoulders and her eyes glistening as she smiled. She looked happy, and he found himself smiling at the idea of her finally finding happiness in life, even if that happiness meant he had to get used to the notion of being without her. Even if it meant having to accept that she was finding happiness with someone else. Someone who wasn't him.

Anton Yaxley was a tall, handsome young man with a soft exterior and a kind face. He had always seemed so different from the people with whom he shared blood, most of all his Death Eater father, Corban Yaxley. Fred wouldn't have pegged him as the type of guy to be interested in someone like Edith though, and he couldn't help but to feel a mixture of emotions at the look of him, a smile displayed across his face whenever he looked over at Edith. He was angry, jealous, frustrated. He felt defeated if anything.

The dominant feeling, however—was sadness. Grief. It had felt like a sharp knife through the heart, as if he had died only to come back as a ghost of his former self, and he couldn't help but to turn away and leave in a rush. He couldn't get away from that place fast enough.

"Then why? Why did you agree to have dinner with me? I thought you didn't want anything to do with me anymore. I thought you'd decided we weren't going to do this." He asked, after he finally took a breath to collect himself, returning to the conversation he was currently having with Edith. Or more so, the argument they were having.

"I don't know." Edith answered deadpanned, her breath hitching from the tears continuing to well up. "When I saw you, I guess I felt for a moment that—that no time had passed. I saw you and I wished for nothing to have changed. I wanted to get to know you again. For it to be simple."

Fred sighed, visually frustrated. "But it's not. Nothing about this is simple, Edith! You have to have known that once you saw me again, you would have to tell me. That I would eventually find out."

"I just wanted to see you. Had I known you'd say all those things to me, I'd—"

"What? You'd what? Pretended I wasn't in love with you anymore? Acted as if I didn't exist?"