Whatever Happens
by cjan5

I had was silent for about five minutes. My hands were cupped around my face and for the past while I hadn’t opened my mouth for anything for fear I would start sobbing.

Dead. Dead. What was going to happen? Up until now I thought we had a chance, but now I didn’t know what to think. My mind was too muddled up by unshed tears, unspoken thoughts and unhealed wounds for me to think clearly.

I was having trouble processing the information. Snape killed Dumbledore. Snape killed Dumbledore. Snape killed Dumbledore. I didn’t want to believe it, I didn’t want to believe it at all.

I felt a hand on my shoulder. Oh no, I thought, Cormac. I looked up to tell him to please go away, and that I was fine, but it wasn’t Cormac. It was Ron.

“Are you… okay?” he said awkwardly.

I didn’t know what to say. He apparently didn’t either. I sat their dazedly, losing myself momentarily in his eyes.

I sighed. He looked at though he were groping for words. He kept opening and closing his mouth as though racking his brain for something he could say that would make me feel any better. But he, like I, realized that there was nothing to say. He could not guarantee anything. So he said nothing.

This realization pushed me over the edge. Dumbledore is gone. Really gone. I finally was finally accepting that it was true. The next thing I knew I had thrown my arms around Ron and was crying onto his shoulder. He patted me awkwardly. I sniffed and took a deep breath and my sobs subsided.

“It can’t be real, Ron, it can’t, it just can’t.”

“Shhh.” He said quietly, and somewhere in the back of my mind I registered he was hugging me back. I felt him shake. He was crying, too.

“You said to us once before,” I whispered, glancing from Harry to Ron and back to Harry, “that there was time to turn back if we wanted to.”

My mind flashed back to everything that had happened over the years, from the first time he’d told us to go back, to right now.

“We’ve had time, haven’t we?”

“We’re with you,” said Ron, “whatever happens.”

I felt him take hold of my hand, and I knew what he said was true.