Wounds – they all had them. Ron glanced at the scars on his wrists from brains, of all things, and felt slightly underneath his shirt for the cuts that had slashed at him during the final battle for Hogwarts. His stomach was hard and lean from Auror training, but that didn't make the scars go away.

It wasn't just him, of course. Bill with his tortured face, and George's missing ear… Ron saw them often, and thought of them even when he didn't see them. They were eternal blights on the broken landscapes of his brothers' faces; ugly monuments to events they all wished they could somehow forget.

But the scars and cuts and bruises, those were the easy ones. The harder things to deal with came in less obvious forms – deals you made, people you betrayed, and actions you wished you could take back. There was nothing harder than remembering a bad decision, made in a split second during chaotic times, that you knew would haunt you the rest of your life.

Of course, Ron knew that it wasn't just him. Hermione still cried in the night over Deatheaters she'd had to kill, and Ron held her tight while the sobs wracked her body, wishing he could say something to make her feel better. But he couldn't, because he had made actions just like hers that he regretted just as much. He just turned away during the night when Hermione finally fell asleep, exhausted with crying, and let the tears in his eyes fall down his freckled cheeks.

Horrible things they'd done in the name of war hurt to remember. But truthfully, what hurt even worse were the things that they couldn't claim in the name of that war; the things that they told themselves stress had pushed them to. And maybe it was true, what they told themselves; maybe it wasn't, but either way they would never truly believe it.

So when Ron held Hermione tight, and kissed her, and waved as she went to work, it wasn't the pain or the killing he tried not to remember. It was that one night of an awkward embrace, held close to Luna's chest; the way her tongue felt in his mouth, and the way she sounded when she moaned in pleasure.

The guilt was the hardest cross to bear.