Remembering

Closing his eyes he took a deep breath and tried to steady himself. This just wasn't right, none of this was right. The last two weeks felt as though they belonged to someone else.

Two weeks, had fourteen days really passed since then? It already felt like a lifetime. What hurt most was the celebration. Over and over he heard the praises. People seemed to be neglecting the deaths. It was understandable in a sense. Finally You-Know-Who had been defeated; they were free from the terror. But so much had also been lost, but it had been forgotten amongst the joy.

He couldn't forget it though. That was just an impossible thought. Every time he closed his eyes he sae the rows of dead. Sure it was probably that only those that fought saw the war with the causalities in that way. Those that hadn't been in Hogwarts they wouldn't know what it was like to look at somebody who seemed asleep and yet would never draw breath again.

War had unquestionably been different to what he had thought it was going to be. He had known that there would be terror and fighting. He knew that it was going to be dangerous. Yet he had always imagined that final battle being epic. Which maybe it was, for those that hadn't been there. He had imagined that the final battle would be heroic. At night while in the stage just before sleep he had imagined fighting in it and getting a few scars. He could see himself going down the pub and showing the girls his war wounds and them all falling over him.

There had been one aspect though that had never crossed his mind in those dreamless states. He had never imagined the deaths. Alright truthfully he had known all along that people would die. But it had always been people, faceless, nameless, nobody that had a part in his life. Sure in the three years that You-Know-Who had been back he had seen people he knew fall. There had been Cedric, Sirius, Dumbledore, even Moody. But he had never expected it to come closer to him than that. He had never expected the deaths to affect him in the way that they had, he never expected it to be his family that was touched.

Oh but the world didn't care really. No he remembered the article that the prophet had seen fit to print. Yes they had listed the names of the dead, all those that had been killed by You-Know-Who and the Death Eaters before the battle at Hogwarts. And then finally they covered the battle. They had collected pictures of those that had been killed in happier times. To go with each picture they had printed a small caption. Captions about the lives that had been cut short, he had found it laughable.

What had ticked him though was that there was no hint of sorrow in it. No they were to busy posting the story of Harry Potter and the second defeat of You-Know-Who. He didn't begrudge Harry that, he deserved it for what he had done. But he hadn't done it alone. The prophet had mentioned Ron and Hermione in passing but not of the work of the Order. Not of any of them. No. And after that story the next important thing to cover was the trails that were taking place. Again he understood the importance but they needed to make space for the lost. Because that what the fallen were, they were the lost generation. And they were being overlooked by all those that hadn't been close to at least one of them. But there was nothing behind it.

The captions themselves were pitiful. All he had to do was look at the caption for Ralph Chrystall. The prophet had printed a picture of a young man of twenty. He had been laughing in the picture a huge smile on his face. But the prophet didn't see that in the picture, they didn't see that it was Ralph. No what they had seen was an up and coming photographer, son of two of England's greatest Quidditch players in the early seventies.

But that wasn't who Ralph had been, not really. That had just been an aspect of his life. Ralph had been the guy who had spent his teenage years sleepwalking around the Gryffindor common room. Ralph had been the only student that Binn's had ever called by the right name! Ralph had been the guy who was caught kissing Connie Gore behind the Greenhouses by Dumbledore himself. And yet the Prophet had stated that he was a photographer and son of Quidditch stars. There was no justice.

Closing his eyes he saw once more a married couple lying next to each other as though asleep. Yes he could see them as plan as day. Remus and Tonks lying there after having fought tooth and nail to help save the Wizarding World. Every time he remembered that he couldn't help but think back to his first meetings with them. He would never have thought back then that he would have been there at their end, that he would have witnessed their final acts.

His first meeting with Tonks would forever stand out in his memory. How could it not? He had been just a kid at the time and it was Christmas. Bill and Charlie were due to be coming home for the season and he had nagged and nagged his father to let him meet them off the train. In the end his father had given in to him and he had gone to the station to meet his eldest brothers. That was the first time he ever saw Tonks.

He couldn't help but chuckle at the memory. Tonks had been an individual even back then. She had certainly stood out from the crowd. He would always remember her hair. Throughout her twenties she had always worn it as either a bubblegum pink or a purple. But at Hogwarts she had always gone for Aquamarine. That wasn't the only difference with her hair; it had fallen in soft wispy curls reaching only to her shoulders.

He remembered staring at her as she got off the train. The nudge from his father and the whispered instructions that he wasn't to stare. But how could he not? She had stepped off of the train and it was at that moment that she had tripped and gone flying forward. She had been clumsy all her life. He had laughed as she had flown head first into Bill's chest as he had been passing. More laughter had spilled from his lips as his eldest brother steadied her. Charlie had then leaned over to her and said something while patting her shoulder in a friendly manner.

Yes that had been his first meeting with the girl and it was certainly destining not to be his last. She had been a close friend of Charlie's and would visit some times in the summer to go to Diagon Alley. She would sit with him during Quidditch games egging on Hufflepuff or supporting Charlie when he played. She had been a friend of the family for a very long time.

And then there had been her husband, Remus. Their first meeting couldn't have been anymore different to his meeting Tonks. He had been fifteen sitting in the Great Hall when he had first seen Remus Lupin. The bloke had looked so shabby and dare he even say it, old before his time. Yet Merlin he had been a fountain of knowledge. Nobody that he could remember had ever inspired him or impressed him in a school lesson in that way before Remus. But that had of course been a student teacher relationship.

No the first proper meeting that marked a sort of friendship had been the summer after he had turned seventeen. It was the summer that Dumbledore had re-formed the Order. Yes he remembered walking into the kitchen that first morning at Headquarters and Remus had Sirius in some sort of headlock. He could still remember the sound of their laughter as they had bounced on the balls of their feet. Between the laughter he had been sure that he had made out the word 'Prongs'. That had been another surprising twist in his relationship with the man, he could never believe that he was Moony of the Marauders Map!

Those memories always brought a smile to his face and made their passing seem in some ways less real. Because although there would be no new memories he still had the old ones. He was also very well aware that he wasn't the only living person to have memories like that of the pair. And yet the Prophet had let them down. They had simply written 'Remus Lupin. Werewolf, husband of Nymphodora Tonks and father of Ted Lupin.' Tonks hadn't faired much better mind. Hers had said 'Nymphodora Tonks, Auror, wife of Remus Lupin, mother of Ted Lupin.'

Slowly he rubbed at his eyes. He knew that he had other things to think of other than them. But it always became too much harder. Remus and Tonks were bad enough to remember. He couldn't face the other person that he had lost, the one that impacted him the worse. It was the small things that were to come that was proving hardest for him. Things were already hard but he knew it would get worse.

He couldn't help but remember the small caption that went below the photo of a man who had stood tall beside him for his entire life. 'Fred Weasley, co-creator to Weasley's Wizard Wheezes with twin brother George'. That was how his life had been summed up! That had been all they had seen fit to print.

There had been no mention of the pranks and the laughter that had been such a large part in his brother's life. Nothing had been mentioned of his skill at Quidditch and how he had been one of the best Beaters that Hogwarts had seen in a very long time. And it hurt George to know that no other aspect of his brother's life had been commented on, as though nothing else about it had mattered.

But he found it too difficult to think for long about that. He couldn't think of the pain running through his body at every moment of the day. He refused to acknowledge that half of him felt as if it was missing. It felt like he was suddenly living in a nightmare worse than the one of the last three years. And it pained him to know that no matter what he did he could never wake up from this particular nightmare. There would be no opening of the door and a comfort hug from his mother. No getting out of his bed and prodding the bed next to his and being told to sod off back to bed.

No matter how much he wished for those things to happen he knew deep down that it never could. He knew that he had lost more than anyone else could understand. Hell he'd give his other ear just to have Fred back. He'd give up any part of his anatomy to have his brother back from the dead. The worse was the sense of dread that he felt at the prospect of walking back into the Burrow and seeing the room they had shared throughout their childhood. He hated the thought of going back to the flat that they shared and he thought it almost impossible to return to the shop itself.

"We're going to head off when you're ready."

Bill rested his hand on George's back as together they stood and looked at the white headstone that marked their brother's final resting place.

FRED WEASLEY

FIGHTER FOR FREEDOM

George looked at his brother's grave and wished he was there. He hated the thought that he would be alone. Never again would he be complete in the same way that he had once been. Yes life was surely going to continue for him but it was also going to get unbelievably harder.

Hello my lovely dears. A one shot here for you all to tie you over until I get around to my next post. Originally this started off as something quite different. When I started writing it it was with the thought that he was going to be entering the shop for the first time after the battle. But I found that as I was sitting at the desk in Auckland (the night Carly was ill and went to bed early) it somehow transformed itself into this. But I actually quite like it, so I decided not to change it back and to leave it as it is. This is honestly only a one shot so there will no other views about how other memebers of the family feel. I think that George is really the focus point in the loss of Fred. So yeah that's all I have to say on this matter. So I hope that you like it, but I do so I don't really mind if you don't! But please review anyway.

Kris xx