"You better get going."
Audra jumps at Bill's voice. Without anywhere else to go, she had spent the night in the Hospital Wing. She had wanted to get a room in Hogsmeade, but Rosmerta was still getting over being confunded and she didn't think it was right to go knocking on the door of the Hog's Head when Aberforth's brother had just been killed. So she stayed.
"I'm not going." She had meant to. Audra had gotten dressed for it, even, borrowing a dress from one of the Slytherin fifth years that used to try and hang out with her and Emmeline all the time. Before, that girl had worshipped the ground she walked on. Now, she looked at her like she was something that had gotten stuck on the bottom of her shoe. "I wanted to, but.." She shook her head and winces at the pain that starts shooting down her spine. "Can't."
She had been able to do a lot of things over these past months, but being able to watch a man she should have been able to protect get laid to rest was not one of them. Audra never wanted to be a coward, but it seems that when it comes to the more important things, that's all she is.
"I get it." Bill settles back down onto the cushions with a wince. Audra brings over the bottle of potion that Madam Pomfrey had left and pours him a glass, but he just waves it away. "I don't want that."
"It'll help with the pain."
"Doesn't hurt that bad."
"You're a liar." She sets the glass down and throws herself into one of the chairs by his bedside. Audra thinks it is the one that Mrs. Weasley set vigil in the whole night before. "But I guess it's your choice."
"Yes." He watches her for a moment and then let's his eyes close. He had done nothing but sleep since they first brought him up here. Audra couldn't tell if he was really that tired or if the medicine keeps dragging him back under. "I suppose it is."
She goes to the Astronomy Tower instead.
It had been Hermione's idea, that she and Harry go back there at least once, to look where it happened straight in the face. Prove to themselves that they were not afraid, make it seem a little less evil. Audra's not sure that she meant so soon, but she never did do things at the pace of normal people.
His wand had been laying right here after Draco threw it to the floor, She thinks, tracing through the night with her mind. Draco came first, and Bellatrix second, and I was standing right here beside Emmeline when Snape burst through those doors. Remember, you thought he was here to make everything better?
She can see it, like it was happening right in front of her all over again. The way that Dumbledore had slumped against the wall and slid a few inches downwards because his legs could not hold him up anymore. How pale Draco's face had been in the moonlight, the way that Fenrir's breath was hot on the back of Audra's neck. How terrified Emmeline had been even though she tried to hide it. And then the way that Snape had blasted the doors open, illuminated there by the dying light of his own spells, dark eyes flashing at the scene in front of him.
Severus, please, he had said, and Audra can hear those words ringing in her head, does not think that she can get rid of them for as long as she lives, but then there's another voice, much louder and a lot more real.
"Hey." It makes her whirl around, reaching automatically for a wand that would not be there. Fred raises both his hands in the air, a sign of surrender, and smiles at her. "Hermione told me that I might find you here."
Audra turns away from him and goes back to the balcony instead, looking down at the spot where Dumbledore had fallen. "How was the funeral?"
"Weird. But they always are." Fred takes his place beside her, taking the hint from her and staring out at the Forbidden Forest instead of looking at her. "You didn't go?"
"No." It was easier to admit that to him instead of Bill. She does not think that there would be many people that she would be able to explain that to, but Fred never asks for a reason. "That's not how I wanted to remember him."
"And how are you going to remember him?" As an old man, wandless, begging for his life from a man that he had thought was his friend. "Ron told me that you were going to run away."
Audra drew in a sharp breath. "I have to go somewhere. You don't get to just walk away from You-Know-Who."
Fred's mouth twitches up into a smile. "I call him by his name now."
"Do you?"
"Yeah. Seemed silly not to, when me and George started making all those jokes about him."
"I'm sorry, by the way." She is watching him out of the corner of her eye. "For what I did to the shop."
If she had thought she was going to get a reaction, Audra was wrong. He only nodded, an acknowledgement of her apology, and then gave a small, pained smile, like he had known it all along. "We thought that it was you."
"Are you mad at me?"
Her voice came out too small, and he waited too long before replying. "No."
"I don't believe you."
"You don't have to. I'm deciding it, right now." He pulls something out of his pocket, and there, dangling between his fingers, is the locket that she had thought had been lost in the middle of the woods. "I love you."
"Fred." There were so many reasons not to do this. "Don't."
"Why?" He tried to fasten it around her neck but she didn't let him, not yet. "Why shouldn't we do this?"
"You don't know me anymore."
"I do."
"You don't. What I did to Draco in the woods?" Does he even know what I did to Draco? Did George even tell him? We're so wrapped up in trying to protect each other that it's hard to tell where the lies stop and the truth starts. "That's just the beginning."
"I don't care."
"I've done so many terrible things. I've hurt people. I've tortured people." She didn't need to tell him, not really. They could live the rest of their lives and Fred would never find a clue, because Audra was just that good of a liar and everyone loved them both too much to ever tell him. "I've walked away from people as they bled out at my feet, I've killed children, I've burned things down just because it was fun. Because I was angry, and wanted to make other people hurt, and because I was good at it. That's what I've turned into."
"No." He pulls her into him, and Audra buries her face into the dip of his neck, digs her too long nails into the leather of his jacket and bites down on her lip hard enough to make it bleed. "That's who you had to be."
"I don't really know the difference anymore." It was a hard confession to make, and the most glaring truth she had ever told about herself. She had been lost for a while, long before the Dark Lord started sending her out to kill people just because they were in his way. She might have been lost the night she killed Vance, or the night she took the Mark, or maybe from the very night Cedric got killed in that graveyard and she looked around the common room and knew it was time for everyone to pick sides.
"It doesn't matter." He's holding her so tight it hurts, like she might slip away from him again if he gives her half a chance. "You don't have to tell me what you've done. It doesn't make a difference. I love you, Audra. I'm never going to stop loving you."
"You should."
"Don't you love me?"
"Merlin," She said, just a breath, and that's the moment where she breaks, where she can no longer hold herself back from loving him. Audra goes up on tiptoes to kiss him, wondering if he can taste the blood that still fills her mouth, and they don't pull away from a long time. "Of course I love you."
"Then it's fine." It's not fine. A man died in the place where they are standing, a man she had spent the whole year trying to protect, all because he believed a man when he said that he still loved someone. It's not fine, because she had torn herself open to keep up a lie and does not know if she can patch herself together. It's not fine, because she had done what she needed to do to survive, but at some point even that stops being a good enough excuse. "We'll figure it out together."
"Fred," She said, her heart breaking, dyeing over his naivety. "I don't even have a wand."
"Then we'll get you one. Don't worry." He steps back, taking her with him, away from the ledge. She hadn't realize how close she had been to falling before he came to find her. "Whatever it is, we'll figure it out."
"I sort of hate you, you know. You weren't supposed to die." It's early morning, sunrise, the light reflecting of the lake so brightly that she has to squint, and Audra is sitting cross legged in front of the marble tomb that Dumbledore's body is sealed up in. "You weren't supposed to leave us alone."
Leave me alone, she wants to say, but it seems selfish to admit even to a tomb, and anyways, he had always cared more about Harry than about her. Though she imagines at least a part of him must have felt guilty at the things he had asked her to go through.
"I tried. I really, really thought we were all going to make it through. But so many things happened." It's the things that might have happened that are driving her crazy. Like, if she had never gone to the twin's shop that night, Wormtail would never had had those pictures and none of this would have happened. Or if her mother hadn't gone looking for that scrap of parchment, Audra would have been able to get a warning to the twins and the Order could have stopped them all at the Room of Requirement. Or if Dumbledore had picked his friends just a little better. "I'm sorry that I couldn't save you."
"I just thought he would. You must have, too. Or maybe you didn't. I saw your face when Snape came up there. You must have known that he was going to turn on you in the end." She's been making daisies sprout from the dust this whole time, and hadn't even noticed it. Audra doesn't think that Dumbledore would have minded. "I didn't think to step in because I trusted him to. I'm trying to figure out whose fault that is."
"I want it to be yours, you know? I want all of this to be your fault. But you're dead." The words are like ground glass in her throat. "And now we have to figure this all out on our own."
"It's all going to start for real now, isn't it? The war." She does not know why she keeps coming to talk to tombstones. Audra has long since gotten past the point where she thinks there is anyone listening, and yet. "I'm going to keep fighting. But I hope it's fast. I don't know how much more of this I have in me."
"It's just really tiring, you know, to keep telling yourself that you're the good guy when you know that isn't true." Is that why you did it? Why you let him kill you and didn't ask for my help? Had you given all that you could take, too? "But I'm going to keep fighting. And not for the greater good, but just for the sake of being good, for once. I think in order to survive a fight, you have to be able to walk away thinking you deserve it. I don't think that yet."
She stands up, squints over at the lake, up into the sun, and tries not to think of what is lying underneath all this marble.
"But I will." Audra lets her fingers trail against the cool stone for a moment and then yanks them back. "Someday, I will."