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Ron muddled around after the war. Harry doesn't blame him. His brother was just killed, and many others who shouldn't have had to die.
George acted, still acts as though he's fine. Sometimes Harry wonders if somehow that twin telepathy - if it works beyond the grave. He thinks maybe George still talks to Fred, and that's why he's okay. Only he can't tell anyone cause they'll think he's crazy. Harry wouldn't, but if he says something to George and he's wrong, he might be the one who's crazy. And he certainly doesn't want to be the one that causes the meltdown that leads to a horribly late cycle of mourning. Ginny kept closer to George though. She's sort of become a substitute Fred. She steals looks at Harry whenever he's around the house, and he notices the way she licks at her lips and gets a lost sort of look in her eyes before turning her focus away. He kissed her. He kissed her really proper before he went off to fight The Fight, and he can understand why it'd get to her. It should get to him.
The older boys take it well. They've seen death before; Bill almost lived it. Sometimes he thinks, from the way Bill looks at Fleur now, that Bill thinks he did die. In one way or another, Harry thinks he could have. Maybe they all have.
Molly... can't look at a family photo without tearing up, but Arthur's excellent at keeping up with her "moments" and rubs her back gently and assures her that Fred's in some kind of painless state and he wouldn't want to see his mother crying. It was Molly who would tell Ron it was okay to cry, who'd hush and shoo Arthur away when he'd suggest Ron do something, work, owl Hermione, get his mind off things. Molly insisted that it would only prolong his hurt. But eventually Ron did start doing things again. In fact, Hermione is at the Burrow as if she's a permanent fixture now a days.
Harry smiles. Harry laughs. He eats, drinks, sleeps. Sometimes he sleeps. Sometimes sleeping is all he can do. He doesn't ring Ginny up, owl her, flew in just to see her. He only comes to the Burrow on Monday nights for family dinner, or when Ron and Hermione harass him enough.
The problem is, he's seen things no one else has seen, things he wants to keep forever, be the only one to ever see them. It makes his heart ache to know that he feels glad Dumbledore's dead in the moments he realizes Albus would have made him put the memories into his pensieve so that he could see. They aren't even his memories to keep, he knows. And he'll have to get rid of them eventually. Pass them off. Maybe. He feels like he will, and it keeps him up, turning in the night. But... Severus gave them to him. He understands it was because he was the only one there, close enough, but it - Severus. Harry can't get his mind on anything else for too long. He's been dwelling on his parents' death subconsciously since he was one. It was in every step he took, he thinks, and this whole war, if he didn't die, was supposed to be closure. Yet it still rips at him when he thinks about it. And this death... It's so much closer to him, so much more personal than any one-year-olds' witness could be. He's frightened it won't ever go away, and scared of what it'll mean if it does.
Ginny steals looks at him, but one night Neville's there for family dinner, and when Ginny looks at him this time, she doesn't lick her lips, but gives Harry a soft smile. Somehow it makes him feel safer. He decides to hold onto the memories gifted to him. If everyone can have someone, Harry can have these. He has to have something that's his, that's theirs. He's got to have Severus with him. Always.
