Warning! Deathly Hallows Spoilers!

-sniffs- Well, I know that everyone’s been writing these, but I couldn’t help. I had to do something to get my frustration out over Fred’s death. He was my favorite character; how could Rowling just off him like that? And then, not even putting George in the epilogue? Unforgivable.

Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, for if I did, Fred would have never died, and I wouldn’t be writing this.

Summary: Because there in the casket, there was nothing remotely ‘restful’ about Fred. Frankly, he just looked…dead.

Ephemeral

Ephemeral

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Something short lived or brief in its nature: transient, fleeting, evanescent

Not a soul had ever known George to be as detached as he was in the weeks following the fall of Voldemort.

He’d sit stock still on his bed, slumped listlessly against the wall of his bedroom. George shook his head rapidly, uselessly attempting to usher away the grim thoughts that plagued his mind. His bedroom. The phrase left a bitter taste in his mouth. Somehow, it just felt…wrong. It had always been their bedroom. It was filled with their things, their experiments…their memories. The word mine simply felt awkward coming off George’s tongue; the voice in the back of his head kept insisting upon ours, ours!

To George, to say the room was only his would be a betrayal to Fred’s memory.

Of course, he wouldn’t dare voice this thought to anyone else, Weasley or otherwise. He hated the expression on their faces when he entered a room; that empathetic look of pity, when in reality they couldn’t even come to fathom what George was going through. After three or so months, the Weasley family had started to pick up the pieces and put themselves back together again. No more sitting at the kitchen table, sobbing into their drinks. No more flipping lifelessly through old photo albums, wistfully remembering better times.

No, they’d realized that Fred wouldn’t have wanted them to cry for so long. They were trying to move on, and wished that George could do the same.

But for George, there was just no ‘moving on’. Not without Fred.

Of course no one else could fully sympathize with him. They’d only lost a son, or a brother, or a friend. But George had lost more than that; he’d lost his twin, his best friend, his co-conspirator…his other half. A part of George’s soul was gone, taken to the grave with Fred.

They were two parts of a whole. Identical in looks as they may have been, their personalities differed ever so slightly. Fred was the talker- the idea person; he always spoke first, acted first. George was the thinker- putting their schemes into action; he’d follow Fred’s lead, hold him back when he’d gone too far.

They completed more than each other’s sentences; they completed one another, and always had. So Fred hadn’t really died; only half of him had. And half of George died right along with him.

So there George would lay, staring insipidly at Fred’s abandoned bed, half a person. Fred had abandoned him, too. George had been marooned in the land of the living while Fred had ventured beyond the veil. He was the twin left behind, being forced to cope with the death of his other half, losing the only person to truly ever understand him.

And just who was George without Fred? Who would finish his sentences? Who would joke around with him? Who would wreak havoc with him? Who would pretend to be him, despite the fact that George was missing an ear? He gave a wry smile at his last thought. Of course there could be no more Gred-and-Forge when there was no more Fred-and-George.

Fred had died, leaving George…alone.

Going to the funeral had been the hardest for George. Seeing the grave, the mourners…the coffin; it all meant coming to terms with the fact that his twin…was dead. It all meant that he’d finally have to say goodbye, for the last time. The finality of the entire gathering loomed over George’s head. But as much as he didn’t want to be there, he went.

After all, it would have been wrong not to.

George marched solemnly up to the grave, dutifully dropping a flower into it. His chest constricting with anguish, he wanted nothing more than to jump into the coffin with him. Because even if it wasn’t his body, lying pallid and stone cold in the casket, it very well should have been. Because Fred was a part of George, and vice versa. Only together did they make a whole.

Rest in peace…

He stared sullenly into the coffin, his tightly pursed lips quivering at the sight that met him. Because there in the casket, static smile still plastered onto his pasty alabaster face, there was nothing remotely ‘restful’ about Fred. Frankly, he just looked…well, dead.

Wrenching his tear brimmed eyes away from Fred’s glassy, lifeless ones forcefully, George stalked over to his family, pulling up a folding chair beside Ginny. And here he sat, half listening to the eulogy, about the ephemeral nature of Fred’s life.

But George was compelled to disagree with that. To say that Fred’s life was ephemeral would be to say that he was transient, that his impact on the world was brief, fleeting, evanescent, even. But Fred was anything but that.

He lived to make people laugh, and the happiness people received from him could last a lifetime.

He died fighting for a better world, one that would hopefully remain intact for centuries.

And although Fred’s presence may have only graced this earth for twenty fleeting years, as short as his life may have been, he could never ever die.

Because George just wouldn’t let him.

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End