The Wizarding World- One Shots

2nd May 1999

The war had ended a year ago.

365 whole days had passed since the 2nd May 1998 and yet a dismal gloom lay blanketed over The Burrow as though no time had passed at all.

George never smiled anymore; it had been so long that he had simply forgotten what it felt like to laugh. The ghostly image of his twin brother laying dead on a stretcher in the Great Hall on that fateful day haunted him daily, taking away any flicker of hope that he may be able to move on like Fred would have wanted. There was no escape. Every mirror was like the Mirror of Erised, although George didn't know what that was. He still had the flat above the shop in Diagon Alley but there were too many painful memories and it was empty of life and George simply despised being there. He could apparate to and from the shop easily. It was much better to go home to the Burrow to one of his mothers home cooked meals than to sit in his lonely and cold flat by himself. He had become a closed book. The most anyone could get from him was a head nod and even then, that was on a good day. It was as though all the life had been dragged out of him and away with Fred's body. Hermione had had many a whispered conversation with Mrs Weasley about getting George into therapy, a muggle treatment that she'd had to explain in great depth to the sceptical witch before she'd agreed, the motherly instinct to help her son overriding her doubt of non-magic remedies. There had been an explosion of emotion the night Mrs Weasley finally mentioned the proposal to George. He shouted, he cried, and he refused. He had been trying desperately to ignore the ghostly image of Fred, why would he want to talk about it?! In the end, Harry had been the only one who could get George to see the positives of accepting he needed help being pulled out of the dark treacherous hole he had fallen in and the next week, he'd taken George to the same person he'd been to see countless times. George's visits became a weekly occurrence, and eventually some of the spark started to return back in his eyes.

The Burrow was often full; Hermione and Harry never spent more than a weekend away from the place that had grown so much like a home to them. Hermione still hadn't been able to track her parents- a good sign really as it meant the Death Eaters hadn't managed to get them before the demise of their murderous Lord- and so she didn't have a home with a caring mother and father to go to when it all got a bit too much. Harry, on the other hand, hadn't had a proper home since the age of one when his whole world had been brutally torn apart. He'd been welcomed into the Weasley family from the moment they'd spotted him wandering around looking very lost on Platform 9 and 3/4s on the 1st September, 1991, a day that seemed a lifetime away from all the grief and misery. On his 18th birthday, Mrs Weasley had given him is own hand for her clock, an action that had had Harry crying into the older lady's shoulder almost immediately. He had a family who he loved, and who loved him back in equal amounts after all this time without one. It seemed that everything that had happened to him since Lord Voldemort returned in 1995 had finally broken him down and, as much as he didn't want to admit it, being able to cry in front of a group of people who loved him like family helped his healing process a great deal. They cried together, and laughed at the silly little memories they had of the dead, and they had all slept much better than night. It hadn't been long, however, before it all got too much for Harry and he'd taken himself to therapy, desperate to feel some relief from the ever-growing grief on his shoulders. He'd lost a lot of people in his short life. His parents, Cedric, Sirius, Remus, Fred. He could see their faces when he closed his eyes as though their images were branded on the inside of his eyelids. It was desperately unfair and the sadness he felt often threatened to completely overwhelm him, and when it did and he lapsed into a state of panicked breathing and scalding hot tears, Ginny was always there.

It hadn't been long after the war that Harry had asked Ginny out again. It wasn't really a necessary action as they been acting as they had when Harry had first kissed her in front of the whole of Gryffindor Tower, although with much less laughter. The passion was still there, but channelled differently. It was like they needed each other to keep going, like they both gave the other hope that, some day, the pain would start to heal and the huge gaping hole wouldn't seem so vast. Her response when Harry asked had simply been, 'knew you couldn't resist me for long,' accompanied by a suggestive wink that had Ron groaning in disgust and Harry turning a brilliant shade of magenta. If the members of the Burrow thought Harry and Ginny couldn't spend anymore time together, they were very quickly proven wrong. It appeared that they were each other's lifeline and it was a common occurrence to see them both sat outside at midnight, looking up at the stars as the moonlight reflected against the tear tracks on both of their cheeks, hands clasped so tightly their knuckles were white. At first, Harry had been resigned to sleeping on the floor in Ginny's bedroom; him and Hermione had swapped places and she was now bunked in Ron's room, no doubt doing the exact same as him. He was supposed to sleep on an old mattress that Mrs Weasley had somehow charmed to make it look and feel new but the separation hadn't lasted long.