Bye
She sits alone in the silence of her room, staring into the dull gleam of the mirror and seeing nothing. Even the fire of her hair seems subdued, threaded with grey as it is. The skin around her emptied eyes is an indelible maze of lines; the deep circles beneath them betray the fact that she has not slept properly in weeks, though her voice, falsely bright, would endeavour to convince her family otherwise.
Sleep has now been denied her for so long that she does not even pursue it. At night she simply lies there, praying for an oblivion she knows in her heart she will not be granted, and she watches the sun rise slowly. Sometimes she lays there, her mind empty, numbed, and barely feels the hours as they slip silkily around her. Sometimes she gets up and sits by the window, staring up at the night sky and trying just to remember the way he looked when he smiled, the shade his eyes flashed when anger filled them, how many freckles dotted the back of his left hand.
Last night she had dozed fitfully, snatching brief instances of sleep, before waking bathed in sweat and tears, terrified that she had forgotten his face. And then she had felt around on the bedside table for the photo she refused to hide away and felt as though the pain of remembering would crack her in two.
Now she sits, dressing in silence. For the first time in weeks, her attention is focussed fully on herself; she must look immaculate this morning. She pulls her tights on with almost obsessive care, determined not to snag them. Her robes are as black as her mind and ironed to perfection. Her hair is carefully pulled back and twisted into a neat bun at the nape of her neck. She decides against make-up – he had not known her to wear it, and she does not want to appear different for him.
"Mum?" She hears the voice but she does not register it. "Mum?"
This time she turns, achingly slow, to the boy standing in the doorway. Though all of her sons are tall, he seems to have shrunk, diminished by the weight of the grief and guilt that suppresses them all now. He says only three words, so softly it feels as though she only imagined them.
"The car's here."
The churchyard is filled with an eerie calm, and everyone around her speaks in hushed whispers, as if it is impolite to speak normally. The weak sunlight of the morning strains through the silt of the clouds above and she grips her husband's hand for support as she treads carefully between the gravestones. Her sons, ahead of them, are there already; they stand, silhouetted against the sky, five tall straight backs, but there is a slight gap between the fourth and fifth, marking the place where the sixth should stand beside his brothers. Beside the last of the brothers stands the youngest of all, tiny in her black dress, gripping the hand of the tall dark-haired boy beside her as if her life depends on it.
She takes her place beside the eldest of her children, her first born, at the front of the line. He doesn't turn to look at her, his gaze fixed on the mound of earth beside them, and so she looks at his face in profile, his poor scarred face, and bites her lip to stop the tears. She doesn't need to see the rest of her children's faces to know that they all bear scars of their own, visible or not.
Slowly, the little huddle around the grave grows and swells to a crowd, until the throng is three deep. She feels around for her husband's hand but finds only empty air; her sons are missing too. Frantic, she searches through the crowd with her eyes, finally discerning a break in the huddles of people as they step aside to clear a path for the six red-haired men walking solemnly towards the grave, bearing the weight of their fallen son and brother upon their shoulders as surely as they wear it on their hearts.
She looks away as her son, her fourth-born, is placed into the ground, unable to watch. She closes her eyes tightly and forces herself to recall how her heart had leapt at his first gummy smile, his chubby starfish hands wrapped around her finger, a ring circling the bone. She thinks of how often she had finished shouting herself hoarse at him only to hug him roughly when she was done, feeling the solid beat of his heart against her chest. She thinks of how, even though she always muddled their names, she could still tell him from his twin in her sleep by the freckles on their identical noses, the patch of skin on his left elbow that was always dry, the way the right corner of his mouth always lifted a second after the left when he smiled. She forces herself to remember these things even as the tears come, even as the face of his twin, left behind, alone for the first time in his life, swims before her eyes, a silent reminder of the son who isn't there.
She does not throw dirt upon the grave when her sons do. She cannot bear to. She has been trying so hard to convince herself that the coffin is empty, that it does not hold her son, her child, that to throw the dirt would be like an admission far too painful to contemplate. So she remains in silence, the tears squeezed agonisingly from between tightly-closed lids. There she stands, long after everyone has filed slowly away, though her family try to move her away. When everyone is gone and she is alone with her son, she smoothes the fresh dirt as best she can, arranging the flowers and bouquets around him carefully, and she whispers to him, words of love meant only for him.
Finally, her husband returns to her. He does not say a word, but extends his hand to her, pulling her gently up and hugging her to him. Hand in hand, they walk in silence from the grave, knowing no words need be spoken.
She stops and turns, just once. She whispers a final word to her son.
"Bye."
And then she is gone.
A/N This, in case I didn't make it clear, is Fred's funeral from Molly's perspective, written because I was reading Deathly Hallows again and it was all the worse when Fred died because I was expecting it and hoping, stupidly, that somehow he'd survive – it was like Phoenix and Sirius all over again. Anyway, I hope whoever reads this enjoyed it and it wasn't too mawkish – just let me know your thoughts.