Journey's of the Dead
There was a big lake from which everything else sprung, the tidy little houses and the rolling green fields. Everything in the perfect little world centered around that lake and its inhabitants found themselves drawn to it day after day.
There were no televisions in this perfect world, they didn't need them. The lake provided a show they much preferred to watch. It molded to each persons needs so that even when they watched together they all saw different things.
Tonks had called it a looking glass once, and it had fit so now it was known as the Lake of the Looking Glass. Fred and Lupin had erected a little sign that had sprung from the sky next to it that state such.
He watched it more than they did. They had let go of their son long ago and preferred to enjoy the little heaven they had carved out around the lake. They weren't alone in the endless expanse of heaven. He was.
He watched George mostly, watched him board up the shop and move back to the Burrow. That had hurt; it had taken his twin years to open it up again and then he had renamed it: Fred's Fantasyland. A bit of a soft name in Fred's opinion but it inexplicably brought tears to his eyes. Ron, once his bratty little brother, now a mature young man, helped George with it. He kept his twin going in this months and Fred owed the younger Weasley a debt that death would not let him pay.
He checked in on the rest of them too of course, but when he wasn't preoccupied with George he mostly watched her. She was interesting to him, had been since the moment the sorting hat touched her head and nothing, not even his own untimely demise had changed that.
She bore a sadness the rest did not. They mourned for the lost, but they lived too. The Weasley's were a hardy bunch and they valued life far too much to not celebrate it. If they had done otherwise his own life would have been in vain.
She tried dating Ron for a bit, it had been expected, but like he always expected, it eventually faded away. Ron got married young and she bounced around a bit, even giving his twin a go for a month or two. No one ever stuck.
It was seven years to the day when their heaven expanded. Fred had not been able to see it, but one minute he was watching her and the next she was by his elbow, smiling that brilliant smile she hadn't worn since sixth year.
"Fred Weasley, it's been ages." She said with a grin; they had never been particularly close but she toppled him with a hug.
He was speechless. She was not supposed to be here. She was too young. Besides, he expected her to join a heaven a bit more like Dumbledore's over the hill, more scholarly than his jokesters paradise. But here she was, as radiant in death as in life, all the trouble gone from her face.
"Hermione?"
She nodded, eager, "I've been trying to get back to you for years Fred."
Then with stunning clarity he realized what had happened. He had watched her over the past few weeks and found her behavior strange. She had drawn up a will, sold her little cottage and begun, preparing, for what he wasn't sure. There had been rope coiled in her basement and she had brought it upstairs. He wasn't sure what he had expected, but it wasn't this, never this.
"He'll be here soon I expect." She said, the fact that Fred had yet to speak clearly lost on her.
Finding his voice he finally asked, his voice a scared whisper, "Who?"
"George of course. We planned together you see, it's just... We missed you too much Fred."
She reached for him but he pushed her away violently shaking his head, "No, not George. Not my brother, he can't be dead. You're lying Hermione. Tell me you're lying."
A peculiar sadness crossed her face, just the ghost of it for it was hard to be sad in heaven after all, "I'm sorry Fred, but we came together. At least I had thought we did. I'm not sure where he is though."
Fred raced to the Lake of the Looking Glass, begging it to procure his twins image. What he saw shocked him.
They had cut him down from beside her, and were frantically reviving him. It seemed like a lost cause and then once, twice, his eyes flickered and opened. He was a live, Fred let out a cry of relief but was instantly brought back to the image. The next part nearly floored him.
A platinum haired man, dressed in all black, slowly cut down Hermione's body from the rafters. He shrugged off help from the others as he gently laid her onto the table. He looked skyward as if he realized someone was watching and then Fred saw the unexpected, Draco Malfoy was crying.
From the pocket of his pants he procured a little velvet box, he removed its contents and slipped the ring onto her cold lifeless finger.
Fred walked away then, he didn't want to see the rest. He didn't envy Malfoy the pain and he didn't understand.
Hermione had joined him unexpectedly and must have seen the same for she began crying, muttering again and again, "No... no... He left me, oh gods, no."
Fred had not watched close enough he realized, he had only seen her sadness and her failures, he had never seen Malfoy's presence.
He turned to her, "Why Hermione?"
She was rocking back and forth slowly, "I've always loved you Fred. I picked you."
If either of them had been watching the lake still they would have seen what came next, they would have seen a flash of green light and than the loss of life; their heaven grew just a little bit bigger.