Author: Sazmuffin
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Title: Smile
Rating: K
Ship: Fred/Harry
A/N: Everyone seems to love these :P Sorry it's sad :(
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Harry's got this smile, you know? I've only ever seen it a few times, because I'm sure that it's reserved solely for Fred. I can understand why. Laced with happiness, with sly upturned corners, teeth bared as if they'll be sinking down into Fred's skin and he wouldn't mind it one bit; that's how they've always been.
It'd be a miracle if I saw anything other than creases and tear tracks on Harry's face nowadays.
He's been surrounded by death his entire life, since he was a year old. You'd think that he'd get used to it eventually, right? No, because every time someone Harry cares about is ripped from him, every other wound burns like fire; those wounds, deaths of mothers, brothers, or lovers, never really heal. They're not meant to.
Fred was the only person I ever knew to burn bright in the dark. You could sense him from a mile away. The connection that you made with Fred you never forgot; you would never want to. He was alive in every sense of the word, personality like white lightning piercing through every cell in your body within moments.
It's happened once or twice, when George came home to seek refuge with his family, that Harry, in a misery-induced hysteria, burrowed into George's arms, only to find the smaller, stockier twin was not his former lover. George, not being of the homosexual type, didn't completely welcome these circumstances, but being that he was the exact carbon copy of Harry's husband, he understood.
There have been times when the two of them disappeared for hours together. Gits like Dean and Seamus have made cracks at their possible relationship, but they are met with hard glances and a curt request to leave if they continue. The truth of the matter is, Harry and George are the only two people on this earth that had ensnared Fred truly and completely. He was a hard one to catch.
Fred's funeral is a memory that Harry refuses to block from his memory. It wasn't the grand scale funeral as the Daily Prophet had it rumored to be. Harry much preferred a smaller, more intimate ceremony where all those who loved Fred could come together, not to mourn, but to relish and reminisce about the days that were graced with Fred's presence.
"I'm no minister," Harry said at the podium, "No man of God that can prove what I say to be true before Him. All I know is that Fred is here, and he's laughing and smiling and calling me a tosser because I'm crying over him. He was the only person I knew that loved the wind chill," I remember Harry didn't wear winter robes despite the near freezing temperatures. "He used to say that everything is more beautiful in the winter; rosy cheeks and lips and the bravest of plants that could survive the winter." At this point, certain words have a difficulty of leaving his mouth not accompanied by heart-wrenching sobs. He manages to gain a hold on himself, facing the crowd as tears dashed down his cheeks. "Thank you for coming."
He is my best friend, we've felt the same pains for years, but until now I've never understood what it feels like to be completely vulnerable, unarmed, without protection from all that hopes to harm you. That was what Fred was to Harry; the unabashed warrior for Harry Potter, the Savior, the one that could save him from anything, be it a heckling bastard or a paper cut on a scandalizing article or even the fear and insecurities that resurface from when you were a child about what kind of man you wanted to be.
It's hard for me to imagine how one smile can define a relationship, but that's Fred and Harry. Their bond taught me that a relationship isn't the idea that two people trying to see if something can work out in the end. It's Fred and Harry, taking and giving when one is anything other than what they should be.