Once More Unto The Breach // DHr

e i g h t e e n

Hot wind blew across the campsite despite a good spattering of clouds in the sky. Summer has been passing by quickly - too quickly - right before Ron Weasley's eyes, and he tried not to think about how another month has come and gone without the rest of his family by his side.

He has never told anyone how much it broke him when he agreed it would be best for them to leave. His mother's wrecked sobs, his father's glassy eyes filled with unshed tears and the grip that left marks on his skin before ushering his other brothers and Ginny onto the thestrals that took them away. Ginny running back towards him and hugging him one last time.

All of it. Now nothing but white-noise he's just learned to live with.

He's never admitted his fear, his own wavering resolution when the realisation that Harry will never come back again finally sank in his bones. How he himself almost jumped in the bank of George's thestral and leave the fighting to those who still had the strength to continue. Not even to Hermione. For all his talk that she doesn't open up to him anymore, he hasn't really been speaking much to her either.

No one knew, except for the only other brother he has who remained in British soil with him. And he didn't need to explain it to Charlie, because he's been missing them the exact same way as he was even though neither of them has shown it to each other.

"They're doing just fine."

He looked up from his desk to see Charlie coming through the flaps of the HQ tent. He looked back down. "And you know this how?"

The older man turned the chair in front of him around, holding onto the back of it as he looked at his little brother who was not so little anymore. A lifetime of childhood memories of growing up together flashes before his eyes as he continued to take him in.

"You think I don't listen in every time Percy sends you back a Patronus?" He tilted his head to the side as he asked. It was rhetorical. Ron knew he did. "I know they're alright, and they know we are too."

Are we?

Ron made a noise in the back of his throat. "Right," He took another parchment. "Philip is gone because he might be having tea with the Death Eaters right now and might've been playing mole all along but sure, we're alright. Bloody spiffy."

Charlie's eyes softened. "Awful lot of might you're spewing off there, don't you think? We don't know his side yet."

Something snapped in Ron.

"Well, he's sure as hell not here to tell it, is he?"

The two brothers locked in a gaze. The sweltering afternoon heat has caused sweat to gather around the creases of their foreheads, dripping down the sides of their necks and staining the collars of their shirts. Ron broke away first, wiping his brow with an unsteady hand. He moved back to the meaningless task of reorganising the unused parchment papers in front of him but took a hesitant pause, "What do you think is the full story?"

Charlie rose from his seat and extended to his full height, stretching in the process, the scars all over his long arms highlighted as he did so. Some of them from his dragon-taming days but most of them, the fresher ones, were from battling with worse. Before disappearing outside, he responded. "We'll do anything for our family, right? I'd like to believe he will too."