For what it's worth, it was worth all the while;
It's something unpredictable, but in the end is right--
I hope you have the time of your life.
Laughing. He was always laughing. I remembered when that trait made me want to hex him into next week, but right now, it simply made me want to cry. Cry for all the times that I would never see his deep brown eyes light up again as he found more mischief to laugh at, cry for all the times that I would never hear his deep, shouting laughter that still held a hint of boyhood as it cracked. But of course, I didn't cry. The one time it probably would have been appropriate to cry, and yet, I couldn't. I knew that's not what he would have wanted.
Well, he went out true to form. I really should not have expected anything different. As I went to the side of his casket and looked in at his still, white form with the flaming shock of hair that seemed to make a mockery of the sobering black funeral, I noticed that whoever had prepared him did not try to erase Fred's laughing face. I quietly thanked whoever it was. It would have been cruel to send him off with a frown that he had never worn in life.
Sitting back down next to George, I still did not succumb to tears. Instead, I looked at the twin that had been mercifully spared and took his hand. He looked at me, the same, yet different, and smiled, a hint of the mischievous smirk returning. I offered a tentative smile in return, and then remembered the sound of Fred's last laugh, and how not even death could mar the beauty of it. He would go on to wherever Dumbledore, and Remus, and Sirius, and Harry's parents were, and, while the people left behind would always mourn him, that was okay. I knew that someone, somewhere, would know the sound of Fred's laugh.
I squeezed George's hand. "He's going to have fun with this; this whole death thing, y'know."
He laughed through the tears that would never spill. "Good Lord, Hermione, I already knew that. Just think of the horrible puns he'll think of."
I smiled as I turned in time to see Fred's tomb burst into flames. And though everyone would think us crazy, both George and I laughed quietly, our final tribute to him; and one other voice joined us.
Call it the wind, call it whatever you want, but Fred laughed with us that day.