The Funeral
Putting it off had done nothing to ease the grief of the occasion. The day dawned all the same, the weather almost mirroring the souls of those in attendance.
Thick, dark clouds threatened rain high overhead, and turned the whole of the sky a dark shade of pastel ground. A body of people emerged from the small building by the graveyard, and six red-haired family members led the procession, shouldering the tall dark box.
A large man took up the end of the procession, his broad chest well above the heads of ever tallest in attendance. Occasionally he let out a sound like a foghorn, blowing his nose into a massive handkerchief proportionate only to his own enormous frame.
Finally the small ground arrived with the coffin. The six bearers lowered it gently to the ground and stood, one after the other, before a small podium. The man with the dark hole in his head, who stood at the head of the line to the podium, looked back at the coffin for a moment, as though with just a little effort he could stare through the wood and see his own face smiling back at him, the muscles locked in the rigors of death, the eyes seeing just as much with their lids now closed as they would have had they been open.
He took a deep breath, looked out over the men and women dressed in casual black dress, and began to speak. "You already know who I am, and you already know who he is," George Weasley started, gesturing to the box that enclosed his twin. "We were known, more often than not, as a pair; We were Fred and George, the inseparable. You didn't see one of us without the other, and we'd always pull your leg and say that we were one another for the longest time, just for the laughs.
"I won't pretend that this is the first time I thought about speaking at Fred's funeral. He- we, really- talked about what we'd do if we went, what we'd want to have happen. And you know what Fred and me decided was the most important thing? Do you? We decided that there were three things that really needed to happen.
"The first, and," he smiled as his eyes started to water, "probably the most important in Fred's mind, was that we should all be comfortable for the damn thing. No dress robes allowed. We said you'd only wear 'em to a wedding, and when we got married, there wouldn't be any. Fred…" his voice trailed off, and when George tried to speak again his voice cracked and he stopped. He took a moment to compose himself, and when he straightened again tears were rolling from his eyes, snaking down to his chin, where they dripped to the empty podium.
"Fred won't be having a wedding, now. He won't be doing much of anything at all. But he really wanted one thing at the wedding above all else, and that was for people to laugh. He wanted…" his voice started to fail him again, but George persevered for his late brother's sake. "He wanted to make people laugh, even after he was gone. He wanted there to still be laughter after he died, didn't want his funeral to be such a drab occasion. Hence the piñata," he said, indication the two large floating depictions of Delores Umbrage. "The smaller one is for the smaller kids who knew her, the larger one is for the older ones, and they both have some of the Weasleys' Wizarding Wheezes in them."
George stopped again and bowed his head, chuckling impossibly, not because he thought it was funny, but because he and his brother, his twin, had decided that someone would have to start laughing if anyone else would ever find it to be funny. And slowly everyone did start to laugh, Mrs. Weasley moaning loudly and sobbing harder as she couldn't help giggling and her son's last gesture to her from beyond the grave.
Finally George looked up and spoke one last time. "The last thing Fred decided should happen, was that we should have three things that he wanted at the funeral, because three is really a much more profound number than two."
There was a slight murmur of people wondering what had been the point of it, but from within it came another little chuckle. George vacated the podium, and the sky that had been threatening rain made good on the promise.
Percy Weasley now took his younger sibling's place and adjusted his glasses before speaking, not with the official tone of a ministry official, but with the voice of a man who had lost something he never realized he had. "When Fred died, he died laughing, as he always would have liked to. When he… when he went down, he went down with a wall of the castle, and he was talking about how he hadn't heard me joke in a long time.
"He never got out when the last time I'd joked was, but I think I remember back when the last time I tried to make someone laugh was. It was nearly three years ago, before I had the long, horrible rift with my family that went on for far longer than it should have.
"With Fred- and George- gone, laughter really had no place in my life. For the better part of three years, three horrible, awful, foolish years without Fred, my life was almost devoid of any laughter. That's why I'm glad to see that he can make one last joke to us all, even when he's nothing more than a body, now."
Percy fell silent, letting his fingers trail over the handsome wood that would go down with a piece of his family beneath the springy, damp grass.
And so it went. When Fred Weasley's brothers and sister had all spoken their fill, then came the rest who had known him; Harry Potter, telling of how he first met Fred when he was trying to find his way onto the Hogwarts express, and how he and his twin had been kind enough to help him with his trunk; Hermione Granger, speaking of how, no matter how hard she tried to disapprove of his antics, Fred never failed to bring a smile to her face; Lee Jordan, speaking of how he, Fred, and George had fancied themselves the best mischief-makers in the school, so great, in fact, that the school had to be all but destroyed before they could stop making trouble for the invaders; Oliver Wood, Katie Bell, Alicia Spinnet, all telling of their time on the Quidditch pitch with the joking beater; Kingsly Shacklebolt, the acting prime minister, telling how he'd enjoyed Fred's extra commentary while he spoke on the Potterwatch program during the dark days of Voldemort's return; Mr. Olivander, speaking of Fred purchasing his wand (Willow, eight and one quarter inches, unicorn tail) and causing half of his merchandise to fall to the floor rather than simply emitting sparks as most did; on and on, dozens of students, friends, family members, from those who had known Fred all his life to those who had only just met him the night he died. They all came forth, they all spoke, and through it all the rain fell.
It took the whole funeral for the mourning to see the rain for what it was. It was thick and heavy, yes, but behind the clouds shone a brilliant sun, shafts of light sparkling on each drop, making it shine beautifully as it descended from the heavens to the earth where it ended.
Beautiful, but ultimately it ended, reminiscent of the body they buried, fleeting. But somehow the rain was no less beautiful for its inconsequential existence. It was almost more beautiful, knowing that it had only seconds to shine before it would be gone, and shining all the brighter for it. Just as Fred had.
He'd lived a mere nineteen years, but in the end he shone brighter than almost anyone who'd stood beside him, been the clearest drop of rain, the best bit of water.
He wasn't quite certain what made him say it, but when Harry Potter walked forward to place a spade full of earth over Fred's casket, he spoke one last time to the Weasley twin who'd helped him onto the train, given him the Marauder's Map, ultimately accepted his galleons to start a joke shop, had listened to and learned from him in Dumbledore's Army, had repaid him tenfold for the start-up money years ago, had helped with his birthday. "Shine on, Fred. Shine on, and say hi to Dumbledore for me."
As he said it the clouds parted, but the rain kept going anyway, though there was no source for it to fall from. Light fell upon the disturbed patch of ground and rain glittered like diamonds as it fell as if to say, "I will."
FinisA/N: Fred's death probably hit me the worst of all of the deaths in all of the books, including Order of the Phoenix back when Sirius was still my favorite character, and even more than Dumbledore, since I always saw Dumbledore as in danger anyway for being so major. Since I didn't see any other fanfics like this in the couple of pages I looked back through on the site, I decided to go ahead and write this. I apologize if it's an overdone topic, and I know that the style isn't too similar to Rowling's; It isn't meant to be, because the story ultimately isn't from anyone's point of view. Please review this if you read it, even if it is just to yell at me for redoing an old topic.