For Fabian is hearing the strangled sounds of Gideon's breaths and knowing he can't do anything to save him, because their wands are close by, but broken into four neat pieces. It's hearing his twin’s last, gurgling exhalations and then knowing that he is dead and gone. It's the feeling of his own blood slowly tickling out of his body, killing him, while being unable to do anything about it, just like he wasn’t able to do anything for Gideon. It's being able to barely move his own neck and see his own insides partially spilled onto his hands. It's knowing that red is such a pretty, pretty color on his skin, because he has had Red Spider Lilies tattooed on his lower stomach since he was seventeen. It's looking at those flowers, redder still for the blood that dirties them, and looking at that name.
It's knowing that, even if he thought he had more time, time to talk to her, time to know her, time (maybe) to love her, he doesn't, not really, not anymore.
It's knowing his life will end in a barely lit hallway beside his twin's corpse, without having ever spoken a word to Lucretia Flint, the one that fate deemed as his other half.
~
For Alice is the scorching heat of her soulmate's name burning on her skin and leaving behind its traditional black for the mourning of red. It's knowing she has lost Gideon, her best friend, and that nothing will ever be alright again.
~
For Marcus Flint Senior it is like drowning. Sometimes he drowns in his own tears, sometimes in yet another bottle of Firewhisky.
If he drinks enough, on the bottom of his bottle, he can still see his Lucretia.
Sometimes she is so little he can hold her in his arms and her joyous cries make his heart melt.
Sometimes she is a teen with sad eyes and he would like to soothe her, to make her laugh as she once did, but he can't, because she is too-adult for him to do so, especially because he already did everything he could to protect her (her arms still bare, void of a dark mark, her ring finger adorned with the diamond of a boy who adores her and who would never hurt her are only two examples of all the ways he protected her).
When he wakes up, alone, in his study, with his head pounding like crazy and not even an invigorating potion at hand he doesn't regret his choices.
He doesn't regret them because the rancid taste of his own vomit after a hangover is a little price to pay to see his little girl one last time (and he and Lucretia had a lot of last times, but he never manages to keep them that way, because the illusion of her is still better than the reality of her absence).
Seeing her, even if only when his brain is inebriated, is still better than not seeing her at all, still better than the acre aftertaste of his own grief.
One day, after two wars, after years of loneliness in a barren cell, a guard will pass him a little square of photo paper.
That day he will see Marcus, his son, the one who resembles him the most, holding hands with a girl who looks like his daughter. And the photo doesn't really make sense because his little girl looks the same as he remembers her, eternally stuck at eighteen. She looks the same as he remembers her, but she should be over forty years old. It doesn't really matter, because that day, all his grief will make sense, but he doesn't know it yet, so he drowns yet another glass of his Whisky and he mourns for the only love his life has ever known.
~
For Kirs is looking into Mistress Lucretia's (her baby, hers and hers alone, just one more kid in the long, long list of Flint babies she held in her too tired arms, but who become more, so so much more) eyes and knowing that she’ll never see her again. It’s knowing that the girl she held in the night, the girl she fed, the girl she played with, the girl who treated her as an equal, as a friend, the girl who freed her from her slavery is gonna die and she can’t do anything to prevent it. It’s seeing her baby’s desperation, her visceral need of knowing Kirs will stay back, to protect little Master Marcus. It’s not being able to put herself in between her child and her demise. It’s trying to soothe the little Master’s tears while crying herself. It's knowing that little, sweet Lucretia is gone, forever, and the enormity of that thought alone makes her lose breath for many, many years. Until one wonderful, wonderful day Mistress Lucretia, her child, is alive once more and Kirs can breathe again.
~
For Sirius is knowing that he left Regulus and Lucretia, his youngest siblings, right in the hands of their murderers. It hurts so much that he doesn't even know how to articolate it with mere words.
Eventually his pain only makes him angrier.
After all, the only thing that raised him and his siblings was fear and the only thing left in him to feel, after all the pain, is anger.
~
For Gaspard is knowing that Lucretia doesn't love him. It's knowing that, even not loving him, she would have liked to run away with him. It's the feeling of emptiness at seeing the photos of her wedding in the newspaper and finding nothing behind her tearless eyes. It's knowing that she is dead and gone and that last kiss they shared was really their last. It's loving her long after she is gone. It's creating a potion that will make him relive his happiest memories before killing him. It's waiting for his mother's funeral before drinking it. It's dying with Lucretia's eyes still looking into his own, her hands still in his.
~
For Marlene it's the memory of her granny, more distant as the days pass, but nothing else, bar maybe the anxiety she feels every time Dorcas is assigned a new high-risk mission. One night she goes to sleep and then she doesn't wake up, so she doesn't really know grief all that well.
~
For Dorcas is the fact that she could remember every single freckle on Marlene's skin and being tasked with recognising her body. It's the knowledge that the love of her life, her soulmate, didn't suffer, in the end. It's the awareness that, as powerful as she might be, she is no match for Lord Voldemort.
It's dying a painless death and only wishing to see Marlene's smile again.
~
For James it's the bitter awareness of having forgotten his parents' voices and the sound of the laughter of his friends.
It's wondering what happened to Pete, what will happen to Lily and Harry if he doesn't do something, anything really.
It's a flash of green light, and then nothing at all.
~
For Lily is the knowledge that she will never see wrinkles on James’ face (she will also never see them on Remus’ face but that's a can of worms not worth opening, not with James’ corpse still warm downstairs, not with her own end so close by) and that she will never see her son grow.
~
For Sirius is knowing that it was his fault, only his fault, always his fault.
~
For Remus is like an old scar who keeps hurting long after the wound that caused it has healed. Remus knows a lot of things about scars and he knows far too well that that kind of pain will always accompany him through his life.
It's discovering that (a part of) that pain was a lie, and that his soulmate is innocent. It's watching Sirius falling through the veil and feeling his soulmate mark burning and knowing he will never see him again. It's falling in love again and wondering if it means betraying Sirius. It's the idea of leaving his child without a father, even one as abysmal as he is.
~
For Tonks is being in love with her favorite cousin's soulmate. It's loving him from afar, full of childish hope. It's seeing him struggling with his own grief, time and time again, still in love with the man who destroyed the family he created for himself. It's discovering that Sirius was blameless and having to accept that it elates her as much it destroys her. It's watching Remus falling back in love with her cousin. It's looking at him crumbling to pieces when his soulmate dies. It's seeing her patronus changing shape from rabbit to wolf just to match his, knowing perfectly well that he could never do the same.
It's marrying Remus and knowing that all the times he imagined his own wedding he never saw her as his spouse. It's fearing for his life and following him to the Hogwarts battle. It's seeing Remus body crumpling to the ground and hearing the dull thud it causes into her very bones. It's knowing that she has been in love with him since forever and that he is now gone and she has just become a widow and her son an orphan.
~
For Marcus is like an ich he never manages to scratch, because his grief is something that is inextricably part of himself. His sister follows him through his life in a way that's in equal parts wonderful and hurtful. It's knowing that he is alone, but not completely, never completely, because his memories of her always keep him company and will never not hurt him.
It's discovering how she died and not wanting it to be true because she has been gone for a long, long time, but until that moment she could still come back to sing him lullabies, even if he is twenty-one and a little too grown for them. It's realizing that he is twenty-one and barely more than a child while the bold, indestructible, strong older sister he remembers was a eighteen years old scared little girl that died for a better tomorrow and who was forgotten.
~
For Fred is realizing that his soulmarks, while not red, link him to a girl long dead. It's knowing that he will never even meet her. It's knowing that Sirius Black knew her better than he ever will.
~
For George it is like missing a limb. Like re-learning how to walk after an amputation, while knowing that that strange, new limp in his step will always accompany him.
~
For Regulus is living a life that is nothing but a charade.
It's knowing that Sirius considers James Potter more of a brother than him.
It's knowing that Sirius and Lucy love each other more than they love him.
It's knowing that his brother will always see him as a coward, because he will never see everything he did.
It's knowing that Lucy (beautiful, intelligent, sweet, perfect Lucy), his wife, will always see his brother behind every single one of his smiles. It's having to die just when Lucy had started to really see him.
It's waking up and discovering that the world has changed, because twenty-five years have gone by since he fell asleep under the dark lake.
It's discovering that Sirius is dead, his body lost, just like his own was for a quarter of a century.
It's discovering that even his illusions of having some sort of chance with Lucy were just that, illusions, because her soulmark was nothing more than a trick of Maman Flint.
It's discovering that while Lucy is his soulmate he isn't hers and knowing that, in the end, even with Sirius gone, even with Fred Weasley, her soulmate, gone as well, he still has no chance.
~
For Lucretia grief doesn't exist, not until she wakes up after her twenty-five year long nap and she discovers that her emotions are important enough to be given a name too.
For Lucretia grief is like constantly being followed around by a shadow. The shadow never tries to hurt her, but in the end it does so anyway, because hers is a story written in every single one of her regrets.
She tries to hold their hands made of smoke. Most of the time it's fruitless but, sometimes, a hand searches for her in the dark and for a while, they are still there, still real, still alive.
She holds hands made out of smoke and, sometimes, they are hands she knows, hands of people she loved in a way or another.
Sometimes Gaspard holds her hand, but he isn't real because she feels like she might love him.
Sometimes Marcus holds her hand, but he isn't real, because he still is a starry eyed child.
Sometimes Sirius holds her hand, but he isn't real, because he looks at her like she is the center of his whole universe.
Sometimes her dad holds her hand, but he isn't real because he is young, far younger than what he should be and also sweeter than she ever remembers him being.
Sometimes it's different.
Sometimes she holds the hands of a boy she could never really meet and they dance and they kiss and everything becomes perfect, for a few fleeting moments. Then mornings come and the red of her soulmate's hair (so, so similar to the too-red color of her markings) fades into nothing and she is once again alone.