Red~A George Weasley Love Story

Chapter 31- The Wolf in the Rubble

CHAPTER  THIRTY ONE: THE WOLF IN THE RUBBLE

 ~George POV ~

 You always hear about death and war in the movies, or in the news about some far off country.  You can read the obituaries and maybe a pang of empathy will hit you for the suffering families.  But do you ever feel more than that?

I had always passed the time with pranks and jokes and what not.  Idle things in the scheme of it all. Because now I can see it.  I can see everything.  Because I'm standing in the middle of one of those wars someone might read about.  One of the wars some kid a century from now might have to write a paper about. 

And here I am.  In the remnants of my school and amongst the charred bodies of my friends.  And I am alone.  Iris was gone, and she had been for ages, quite honestly I had come to accept the fact that I would never see her again.  That was okay... in light of the fact that everyone lost someone today. 

I walked for a ways through bits of stone.  Everything smelled of charred flesh, or every now and again you could catch the iron sent of blood spattered across rock.  There were wands scattered, ownerless.  Unseeing eyes gazing up into eternal nothingness.  And all I could hear was the sound of wind rustling through the grass.

I stopped, the broken body of a Gryffindor lying in ash and half buried in dust. 

"Go bravely to the next world. You've earned it."

It felt wrong to say. A child, and also a fallen soldier.  How does that work?  It seemed so wrong, and it was.

When you first walk through the doors to the great hall, the thought of walking out for a last time never crosses your mind.  But it's inevitable.  There will be one last time you leave those doors.  You walk back down the hall.  Gather your things, and leave and most likely never return.  That also seems wrong.  To have some place be your home and have these people be your family and then all in one day it's no longer true.  You don't live there and most of those people, you'll never see again.  Never stop in a hallway to say hello.  Or in worst case scenarios, be pranked by anyone (guilty as charged) again.  But after you've all left for the last time, you've most likely parted ways for good.  Maybe one day you see their name in the obituary and you recall some distant memory of something funny that happened with them (or to them) in potions class.

 Then it was a drag, all you wanted was for it to be over.  No more school.  No more classes.  No more professors.  But once you leave, hell you even miss the toilet seats. 

Right now. Standing here:

I would give anything to be back in Snape's class.  Or getting yelled at with Freddie by my side for blowing up a toilet. 

Or even to see Iris's face again.  I sighed.  She was gone.  I had been over this.  She wasn't coming back. 

I looked down at my hands, caked with cracking dried blood.  It was disgusting to me.  The fact that I even had to use the killing curse.  Had to kill something.  Stop a heart.  Break a family.  Even if it was a Death Eater.  But they took Iris from me... so it was only fair.  An eye for an eye. 

...Right?

I felt emotionless.  But at the same time I could feel the hot wet tears stinging my skin as they slid down my face.  No expression.  But tears.  How are you supposed to react when something like this happens? 

I could only the faces of the families sitting at home, hearing their loved one's name come up on the radio on the list of the day's dead. 

I frowned, imagining the faces twisted with grief.  Families just like mine. 

I had been listening to the radio for awhile, listening for Iris's name to come up on the list.  I only listened when a radio was around, I didn't do it noticeably because the last thing anyone needed was to worry about me.  So, I kept my problems to myself.  I hadn't even talked about Iris with Freddie, especially because I didn't want to do anything to ruin his relationship with Angelina. 

I continued on again past the body, the mounds of ruins seemingly climbing higher and higher towards the sky in twisted broken spirals.  Old towers barely standing, but standing nonetheless.

I turned my wand over in my hand, trying to soothe away all the thoughts.  I wished so desperately that I could be anywhere else.  Just not here.  Just not now. 

And it wasn't helping that I was still so worried about Iris. 

I shouldn't be.  It had been a few years.  Most people would have moved on... But she was different. 

...And she was gone.

Keep it together, George.  There are worse things to worry about right now.

This whole side of the school was abandoned and deadly silent, except for the sound of the rubble shifting suddenly as if someone had stepped on it.  

I whirled around to look towards where the sound had come from.  I was hoping to see a student. or maybe a familiar face.  But I saw nothing at all.  I breathed out slowly.

Keep it together.

I would just stop moping and head back to the others. 

Well, I wanted to, but deep down I was scared to see who was left and who was gone. What if Freddie wasn't there? Or Ron or Ginny or...

I stopped myself.

Something was silhouetted in the smoke, the form standing on a great slab of stone. 

The shape came closer until it was clear that it was a small wolf, limping forward. 

It couldn't be....

It wasn't just any wolf.

It was my wolf.

I ran forward, scooping her gently into my arms.