If you've never experienced such an unexpected loss of someone so close, it's hard to understand how a person would feel in that situation, and therefore it would be challenging to write it. We know that there are various ways of showing grief; this story describes an extreme reaction for Ginny and George. The author puts this in perspective by saying "Slowly each person in the family manages to return to living. I can't. George can't." It is good for the author to point out that most others recover functionality much more quickly.

Except for George, no other character is explored in depth. Ginny makes short-sentence bald statements of what the others are doing, almost as if they are mere acquaintances, not family members. Ginny is pulling back from the very people who could help her integrate this loss into her life experience. She makes scant mention of Harry. At first "Harry is alive," as if that mattered to her, but quickly she pushes him away from her psychologically, and he becomes a focus of blame. It is common for a wounded person to want to pin blame on another person; "fate" is too impersonal to blame, and God is too far away. There is no more mention of Harry except "Harry travels across the country, repairing lives" (but not her life), and by Christmas he is no longer mentioned at all.

The staccato sentences in which this chapter is written sound the way a grief-stricken person would talk. The sentences could be combined to make longer sentences, one idea flowing into another, but that would change the tone of the piece

The timeline of the chapter is notable. It begins with a long section describing Ginny's and George's ascent from the depths of grief over a period of about four months. Then follows a very quick synopsis, only a few paragraphs covering a span of time of at least two years, Ginny's last year of school and at least one year with the Holyhead Harpies. This section feels like a bridge between the four month period after Fred's death to some new episode which the reader expects to be explored at some length again.

The implication is that something important is going to happen involving the game with the Montrose Magpies or during the timespan of the game. Ginny says "The dreaded day comes." Why is the day dreaded? Is it just a game like all the previous games, or is there something special about this game?

Ginny speaks in short sentences to the very end of this chapter, giving the impression that, despite her assertions to the contrary, she still has a large reservoir of grief under her facade of moving on and resuming a normal life. Her recovery feels stuck.

This first chapter sets us up for further developments in Chapter 2, but it's hard to guess where this story is going. We shall see.