Falling For

Madam Pomfrey was too busy fiddling around with Noël to notice me crying in the corner of the room. A blonde girl, one that I had never really spoken to, was rubbing circles on my back. Boy, was I mentally exhausted. As soon as I got Noël through those hospital doors, I began to cry tiredly. Everything that I had to block out to get the job done had suddenly piled onto my shoulders like an angry demon. I nearly died out there.

I was led to a chair, sitting to close my eyes for only a moment, trying to figure out why my brain wouldn’t stop whirring with the horrible thoughts of what could have happened.

"You have fought valiantly.” A voice echoed around the room, so close like someone had burst through the doors. I jumped feebly, finding no source to the culprit. “Lord Voldemort knows how to value bravery…” my skin prickled with horror. “Yet you have sustained heavy losses. If you continue to resist me, you will all die, one by one. I do not wish this to happen. Every drop of magical blood spilled is a loss and a waste." 
The tears stopped dripping and I sat up to listen. My stomach was like a blender and my head throbbed with every pulse of blood seeping through my veins. "Lord Voldemort is merciful. I command my forces to retreat immediately. You have one hour. Dispose of your dead with dignity. Treat your injured." 
I stood up, shakily reaching for my wand. Noël watched me hobble towards the entrance to the room, leaning on the doorframe to peer out into the now eerily quiet castle.

"I speak now, Harry Potter, directly to you. You have permitted your friends to die for you rather than face me yourself. I shall wait for one hour in the Forbidden Forest. If, at the end of that hour, you have not come to me, have not given yourself up, then battle recommences. This time, I shall enter the fray myself, Harry Potter, and I shall find you, and I shall punish every last man, woman, and child who has tried to conceal you from me. One hour."

His voice echoed for what seemed like minutes after that. The girl that was with me took my hand and led me out into the halls, knowing that I needed to clear my mind away from Noël. Away from his hurt eyes. We walked for what seemed like hours but was only, in reality, a minute or so.

I had to find George, had to take him into my arms and touch his beautiful face. He was all I could think about, all I could really conjure into my brain. The way his eyes would close when he thought I had said something funny. The way he mumbled for the final minute of sleep for the morning…

Something caught my eye. A leather shoe was peeking out from a dip in the wall. It just stood out to me – that shoe. Where had I seen that shoe before? I felt stupider with each step I took. No, no it definitely wasn’t George. It couldn’t be.

It was his shoe size, though. He had the exact same pair. In fact, he was wearing it when I last saw him. I scrabbled over to the body, pulling off a velvet curtain that had fallen from the wall next to him. It was his face, and it was his eyes, and it was that same, although ghosted, smile I had been waking up to every day for the past five years.

“George?” I asked, reaching out to brush the hair off of his face. “Sweetie, hey?” I tucked the hair behind his ear. “This isn’t funny, George. It also isn’t the time.” I snapped my hand back, realising that that ear technically shouldn’t have been there. A few split seconds later I was nudging him, waiting for him to suddenly guffaw with his stupid laugh.

“Fred! Fred, I’m sorry, I’m horrible, I’m sorry I can’t tell you two apart!” I hissed at him. The girl, who was standing beside me the entire time, held her hands to her mouth as I continued to shake some sense into that silly twin who always pulled the meanest pranks. He was pranking me, I knew it. Obviously he was. There was no reason for Fred Weasley to be dead. I had only seen him half an hour ago. “I’m sorry I can’t tell you two apart! Don’t be a prat, Fred Weasley! This is not the time to be messing with me!”

I sat back and my hands snaked up to my face, choking on whatever was building up in my throat at that time. Whatever I had thought this moment to be was nothing compared to how it actually felt. It was like the world had stopped, the castle completely quiet but aching from the pieces it had lost, the people it had lost… but my heart felt like someone had dug their nails into it, trying their hardest to stop it beating by squeezing harder. All I could manage was a sob before another body fluttered onto me, a red-head from what I could tell, pulling me away from Fred.

“No, Fred, no…” I breathed out, my muscles clenching and unclenching in a fit of pain “Fred… Oh, Fred’s dead...” Bill fitted me into his wife’s arms. She smelt of flowers and the crispness of the night air, throwing my senses off, like the feeling of waking up from a terrible dream. But the moment still continued on, watching as Bill knelt down to his younger brothers face, his steady hands trailing the rest of his hair behind his ears. “Where’s George, where is he?”

“In the Great Hall, Mignon.” Fleur whispered quietly, probably more concentrated on her husband’s sudden tears. “He’s okay… Everyone else is okay.” I felt Fleur’s tears slip through my hair.

Fred Weasley was dead. He was dead, and I was alive. It should have been me, I thought, if he didn’t come save me he wouldn’t have been on this side of the castle.

I watched Percy Weasley’s face streak wet and all I could do was let the pathetic sobs finally escape my chest. Fleur held me tighter than I have ever been held before.

I tried to escape my vision by shutting my eyes, but there was his face, grinning at me. “I’m sure he knows…” he chuckled.




The only thing I could hear was Molly Weasley crying. The only thing I could see was my lap. I had melted into the wall, packed up with my hands on my knees. My mind didn’t register anything but the hurried numbness of ‘Fred is dead. Fred is dead. Fred is long, long dead.’

I forced myself to my feet, long enough to stagger away into the hallway so I could sit in peace, away from Molly and away from George – I ripped off Fleur’s flowery jacket. My hands found my forehead and I gasped for air, letting the carbon push through my teeth. I swallowed, rubbing the dried blood all over my face as I tried to get my mind to stop moving.

Fred Weasley was dead. Everything he had told me, everything he had forced onto me – like the promise of his brother’s safety and the worry of his impending doom, had come true. He knew he was going to die. He had to have known. Why else would he have done this? What the hell was he thinking when he was alone?

George had finally found me. He didn’t say much; in fact, he said nothing at all as he slid down to sit beside me. I wouldn’t have thought he would have excused himself from his family, but I didn’t bother thinking about it. I didn’t want to face them at all. He caught my stare.

“I couldn’t look at him anymore. Not for now anyway.”

“I thought it was you when I found him.” I mumbled at George.

“I feel like it’s my fault. He was only on that side of the castle because he was helping me.”

“It’s not your fault.”

We stayed silent as I watched him pick the balls of rubber off of the print of his shoe.

“He was helping you with what?”

“Noël got hurt, and I went to find him and got apprehended by a death eater. Fred saved me… cut off the hand of the guy who had a hold of me.” I was looking at his eyes, mirroring his twins with the dead brown irides. “Fred saved my life.” His face, which already seemed like it could fall no further, dropped suddenly before he started to whine, covering his mouth with his big hands.

I’d never seen George cry so hard before. All I could manage to do was pull my arms around him and take him into my chest, stroking his hair with my shaky hands.

Every little bad thing I had thought about that man whisked itself away. Noël was no longer a part of the far-off desire that plagued me, and my loneliness finally collapsed into a pile of deserted rubble. George Weasley was crying like a child in my lap and all I could think to do was to run my fingers in lazy circles, my tears drying.

Any emotion I had felt melted into a beautiful numbness. I had to suck up whatever angst I had felt, every inch of pain that surged through my brain and evolve from this broken shell of the human I used to be. I could no longer be weak like I used to be. George would have no use for me if all I did was cry like I had done so many times before. When things become dire, it is time to care for those who cared for us. And I knew I had to care for George.

I watched through the cobblestone windows, eying off each star to pass the time. It wasn’t long, though, before Bill came back to reclaim George. He left me outside to myself, obviously not too sure what exactly to do with me. Instead, I ached all over but my brain would not register the slightest amount of pain. My eyes twinkled.

The sky was so clear that night, but Fred Weasley was dead.