The first thing Hermione was aware of was light snoring coming from directly behind her right ear. Her eyebrows drew together, because she was somewhat annoyed, but mostly perplexed, and her closed eyelids attempted to ward off the incoming sunlight. And then, suddenly, everything clicked into place, and she remembered that she was laying in Ron's bed in the Gryffindor boys' dormitory, and this was his arm draped around her and his legs that were touching hers.
In an instant her mind made that great leap from sleep to wakefulness, and in that same instant everything that had happened the day before seemingly materialized in her memory. Voldemort: dead for good. Harry: alive. Ron: alive. Ginny: alive. And yet there had been deaths….
She still did not bother to open her eyes—why should she, when she had all the time in the world? No plans to go over, no food to prepare, not a bit of worrying to be going on with. All she had now—all they had now—was the aftermath of this long and winding journey. It was really too much to take in; images flickered in her mind, battling each other for dominance: the Basilisk in the chamber, Harry's body in Hagrid's arms, Tonks and Lupin laying dead side-by-side, Neville cutting off the snake's head, Malfoy burning in the fire, the entire Weasley family mourning over Fred's still body, Ron's lips on hers at last.
She opened her eyes.
Harry wasn't in his bed, but he had left them a note. She twisted her body away from Ron's so that she could grab the piece of parchment on the nightstand. She read it quickly and let out a small breath of laughter at Harry's "Boy Who Lived Twice" joke. She then detached herself from Ron's grip and sat up on the bed, rubbing her eyes.
Her movements caused Ron to stir. He made a noise of protest but kept his eyes shut, letting his arm fall on the bed next to him. Hermione got to her feet and headed to the bathroom.
When she came out a few minutes later, Ron was, unsurprisingly, still laying in bed, half-asleep.
"Ron," she said softly, sitting on the bed next to his sleeping form, "wake up."
"'Time is it," he grunted.
She grabbed her watch from the nightstand. "Almost ten. Come on, Sleepyhead, you've had a good thirteen hours' rest."
"Still tired."
She rubbed his back. "Come on, Ron," she said, drawing out his name. "Harry's left us a funny note—he wants us to meet him for breakfast."
"I've been taking orders from that scrawny git for a year now," said Ron, still trying to sleep, "'M trying to break the habit."
She laughed. "Ron, seriously, get up! It's a beautiful day outside. We could play Quidditch…" she said tantalizingly.
"You're so full of it," he mumbled. "You have no intention of playing Quidditch."
Before she could respond, the door opened, and Neville stood there.
"Oh, hi!" he said brightly. "What are you doing here, Hermione?"
"Um…." She knew her cheeks were getting warm and tried to make up a lie very quickly, but there she was sitting on Ron's bed, and she was still wearing her pajamas. Neville merely chuckled.
"So are you finally—?" he gestured vaguely at Ron.
Hermione smiled in spite of herself. "Yes," she said.
"Well that's some more great news," said Neville cheerfully. "'Bout time you plucked up the nerve, Ron."
Ron grunted noncommittally.
"I'm trying to get him out of bed, actually," Hermione explained.
Ron sighed in frustration. "Alright, alright," he said, opening his eyes. "I'm getting up—are you bloody happy now?"
Hermione nodded triumphantly. "Come on, let's get changed and we can go down to the Great Hall—"
"Don't bother changing," said Neville. "Everyone's in their pajamas…actually, some people are in swimming trunks! I reckon no one cares how they look right now, do they? It's like one big party down there."
"Oh, excellent," Ron said enthusiastically as he bounded out of bed.
"Why did you come up here then?" asked Hermione.
"I was getting tired," Neville replied. "Barely slept a wink last night—never even made it past the Common Room. I woke up on the couch this morning surrounded by a whole bunch of Butterbeer and sweets."
"Sounds like a good way to wake up to me," said Ron, putting on his slippers. "Better than waking up to this crazy girl trying to pry me away from my covers."
"Oh shut up," said Hermione. "Let's go get breakfast."
Ron and Hermione were treated to a great surprise when they entered the Hall a few minutes later. The tables were still laid out just like the night before, but there were everlasting fireworks exploding in the air, and the House-Elves seemed to have outdone themselves in terms of food. It was like stepping into a dream feast: There were chocolate fountains, stacks and stacks of pancakes and waffles, a bathtub-sized bucket full of thirty different flavors of ice cream, strings of candy that dangled from the ceiling, and ice sculptures that resembled Harry (Kreacher's work, surely).
Harry himself was sitting over in a corner, talking to Luna and Ginny, while people stopped to congratulate him every few moments for his defeat of Voldemort. He glanced embarrassingly at the ice sculptures, but Ginny's presence seemed to work wonders on his temperament—or perhaps it was simply the fact that for the first time in his life, he was not a marked man.
Ron and Hermione made their way over to him, stopped every few feet by people patting them on the backs or shouting things like, "It's over!" and "I really can't believe it!" They finally reached Harry, Ginny, and Luna, who smiled happily up at them and scooted over to make room.
"Hello, Hermione! Hello, Ron!" Luna looked simply radiant. Her wide eyes were sparkling happily, her face was not as pale as it had been—and she looked simply overjoyed just to be sitting there with her friends, where she rightfully belonged.
"Hi, Luna," Ron and Hermione chorused.
"Sleep well?" asked Ginny.
"Yeah," said Ron, pushing thoughts of Fred to the back of his mind.
"All this food is amazing!" said Hermione.
"What, no objections from the spew queen?" asked Ron.
"Not today," said Hermione. "Because I know they'll have done this of their own accord."
"I think he's only asking because spew seemed to work favorably for him yesterday—" said Harry.
"Shut up, you," said Ron. "Let's go get some food, Hermione."
But before they could rise from their chairs, Kreacher appeared out of nowhere. "No, no, mister and miss!" he said in his bullfrog voice. "Kreacher can serve you once more, for after all, the Dark Lord has fallen, and Kreacher's master Regulus has been avenged!"
Hermione looked utterly surprised for a moment but then smiled benignly. "That's so very sweet of you, Kreacher. Um…could I just have some pancakes?"
Kreacher nodded. "And for sir?"
"Can you just get me a little bit of everything, Kreacher?" Ron asked him.
"Oh yes, sir, oh certainly, Kreacher can get samples of everything for the noble friend of Harry Potter!"
And he scurried away.
"Wow," said Ron. "You know, I reckon he's channeling Dobby, Harry."
Harry smiled sadly.
The day passed in a blur of surreal celebration, but as it changed from morning to afternoon to evening, the utter ecstasy and disbelief that accompanied Voldemort's defeat seemed to simmer as other realities sunk in. Death hung over the castle like a rain cloud that was threatening to ruin a party, and while the inhabitants of Hogwarts numbly acknowledged its presence, it was hard to fully absorb the shocking losses they had suffered.
The Weasley's, for their part, were completely torn between unprecedented joy and an all-consuming grief. Ginny and Ron changed moods so frequently that it was hard to know what to say to them; one minute, they were their usual funny selves, and the next minute hollow looks would come over their faces.
Shortly before dinner, Harry, Ron, and Hermione found themselves sitting before the entire Weasley family in a chamber off of the Entrance Hall. Arthur and Molly had called a family meeting to discuss plans to return to The Burrow, but there also seemed to be an understated reason for the gathering: everyone wanted to hear about the Horcrux Hunt and Voldemort's defeat in more detail. Harry, Ron, and Hermione therefore found themselves conducting some sort of bizarre, twisted story time in which they relayed everything that had happened to them in the past year.
It took hours. They began with the night of Bill and Fleur's wedding: how they had Disapparated to Tottenham Court Road, how Death Eaters had found them there because of the jinx on Voldemort's name, how they had wound up spending the night in Grimmauld Place and turning it into their home for a month's time.
And then they told the Weasley's about their infiltration into the Ministry of Magic. Arthur and Percy were outraged; Molly started panicking even though the event had happened months ago; Charlie, George, and Ginny looked shocked and baffled; Bill and Fleur looked weary but didn't say anything. These outbursts of emotion continued on with everything that Harry, Ron, and Hermione explained: their months of camping in remote locations; the visit to Godric's Hollow and the horror of Bathilda Bagshot; Harry's discovery of the sword of Gryffindor and Ron's destruction of the locket Horcrux, which had to be extrapolated upon in great detail since the Weasley's knew nothing of Voldemort's Horcruxes; their visit to Xeno Lovegood and the ensuing narrow escape; Hermione's torture at Malfoy Manor, Dobby's death, and their stay at Shell Cottage.
It was this last sequence of events, more than anything, that roused the passions of the entire family.
"So she was tortured!" Bill yelled, looking disgusted.
Arthur could not speak: he was quivering with rage. Ginny and Fleur looked devastated. Charlie, Percy, and George sat gaping wordlessly. And Molly rose from her chair, moved towards Hermione, and hugged her so tightly and for so long that it started to hurt.
"I'm fine," Hermione told the group at large, once Molly had settled down again. "I'm really fine."
Ginny was staring at the thin scar on Hermione's neck—the incontrovertible evidence that Bellatrix had really done what they said she had done. "Ginny, stop it," Hermione said quietly. She was uncomfortable with the entire family staring at her like that. She had done her best to move forward from everything that had happened at Malfoy Manor, but if they started treating her differently, she was bound to lapse back into a horrible kind of post-traumatic stress syndrome.
Ron reached for her hand under the table. She took it and held on tightly, waiting for the moment to pass.
Harry cleared his throat. "Would you like to hear about what we did at Shell Cottage? About how we planned to break into Gringotts?"
Ginny tore her eyes away from Hermione's. "Yes," she told Harry, "but first I have a question. How did you know to escape to Bill and Fleur's?"
Harry looked at Ron. Ron felt a slight panic building in his chest and caught Bill's eye for a second before he answered the question. "I'd been there before," he told Ginny.
"But when? I thought you were off camping the whole time?"
All of Ron's family looked confused. Ron felt heat spreading throughout his face. Should he tell them? How could he tell them? Would they think differently of him?
"We asked Ron to go there," said Harry. "I suspected there might be a Horcrux hidden in Gringotts, so we thought we should pay a visit to Bill and find out as much information about Gringotts as we could. You know, do a bit of research." He looked at Hermione.
"Yes," said Hermione, going along with the story immediately, "and Harry and I had to make more Polyjuice Potion so we could visit Godric's Hollow as Muggles, so we didn't have time to go. So Ron went."
The Weasley's seemed to buy it. Bill and Fleur nodded like that had been exactly what happened. Ron felt relieved but hollow. He looked at Hermione but she avoided his gaze.
It took another full hour to finish the story. They had to explain all about Griphook and Ollivander, about breaking into Gringotts and finding Hufflepuff's Cup, about escaping on the dragon and then winding up in Aberforth's bar in Hogsmeade. And then Harry discussed, in great detail, everything about the Elder Wand, about how Snape had been killed, how he had seen Snape's memories in the Pensieve (including how the severing of George's ear had been meant for a Death Eater—George looked aghast at this), and how he had marched to his death in the forest. The Weasley's had nearly the same reaction to this last piece of information as they did to the news of Hermione's torture, but Harry was somewhat more successful at dodging the attention they tried to shed on him.
"Well," said Arthur, "just one more thing before we all break for a rather late dinner. We want to head back to The Burrow tomorrow."
He looked around at his family, but no one commented on this decision, so Arthur continued on. "Your mother and I are going to go to Muriel's first to collect everything we left behind before we came to Hogwarts for the battle. If we can't get everything all at once, it's alright; we can make more trips back there."
"Yeah, because the more we see of that old bat, the better," said George dryly.
Arthur merely flicked his eyes at George before continuing. "We'll then Floo to the Burrow, and the rest of you can join us whenever you see fit. That mainly applies to you four—" he glanced at Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Ginny—"since the others all have their own places."
"You will be coming to stay with us, won't you?" Molly asked Harry and Hermione. "At least for a little while?"
"Definitely," said Harry.
"There's nothing I would love more, Mrs. Weasley," said Hermione.
"Wonderful," Molly said with a kind smile. "And we'll be sure to bring Crookshanks there for you, Hermione. Ginny took good care of him while you were away."
Hermione glanced at Ginny and beamed.
"Well then, family meeting adjourned," said Arthur. "Let's eat."
One by one, the Weasley's rose from their seats and trickled out the door until only Harry, Ron, and Hermione remained behind.
"Ron," said Harry uncertainly, "your parents didn't say anything about what's to be done for Fred."
"Reckon they didn't want to," Ron muttered. "But they talked to each one of us in private. We're going to bury him at the Burrow."
Harry and Hermione nodded somberly.
"You didn't have to do that, by the way," Ron told Harry.
"Do what?" Harry asked.
"Make up that story about me going to Shell Cottage. You didn't have to save face for me. I don't deserve it."
"Don't be stupid," said Harry. "I know they're your family, but the three of us are our own family too, and there are some things we shouldn't have to tell anyone."
Ron hung his head and mumbled his thanks as his ears burned bright red.
"Forget about it," said Harry. "That was a long time ago and none of it matters anymore. Seriously, Ron."
Ron gave Harry a half-smile and then turned his attention to Hermione. "You didn't have to go along with it either," he said, "but I appreciate it."
Hermione's smile didn't quite reach her eyes, but she squeezed Ron's hand nonetheless. "Harry's right, Ron. There are certain things only the three of us need to know. Now come on, let's go eat."
Harry wasn't sure where the time went. All he knew was that before he even realized it, the sun had set on his last day at Hogwarts, and next morning he found himself standing in a crooked lane on the outskirts of Ottery St. Catchpole.
"Looks the same, doesn't it?" said Ron, staring up at the tall structure of the Burrow in the distance.
"Same as always," said Hermione, and there was a definite note of affection in her voice.
"Yeah," Harry agreed.
In silence they began to walk in the direction of the Weasley's home. The late-morning sunshine beat down upon their necks. Harry glanced sideways at Ginny and noticed the apprehensive look on her face; he reached for her hand and took it in his own.
They walked on, Ron in the lead, and finally stopped when they reached the Burrow's front yard. Harry noticed that the house had retreated back into its previous state, the way it had been before the wedding. Everything looked perfectly normal, from the Wellington boots to the cluster of chickens. The house didn't seem to realize that anything significant had happened to its inhabitants. It made Harry sick.
Ron appeared to be feeling the same way. His face paled as he stared through the window of his house. Hermione watched him anxiously. "Go on," she said gently. "It will be okay."
Ron nodded and walked to the door, then opened it and entered cautiously.
Harry had expected the usual welcoming shriek from Mrs. Weasley; he had automatically softened his hearing so that her high-pitched words of delight wouldn't hurt his ears. What he was not prepared for was the dreadful silence that permeated the kitchen and the den.
"Hello?" Ron asked, breaking the quiet.
No answer.
"Mum?" Ginny called. "Dad?"
"They must not be back from Muriel's yet," Ron said when no one answered again. "But I thought some of the others might be here already."
And then Harry could hear the soft footfalls of a person entering the kitchen. He, Ron, Hermione, and Ginny looked around as Percy appeared in the doorway, looking wholly unsurprised to see them.
"Hi," he said softly. "Did you just get here?"
"Yeah," said Ron. "Where are Mum and Dad? Still at Muriel's?"
Percy blinked and shuffled uncomfortably. "No, they finished up there about an hour ago."
"Okay..." said Ron, wondering why Percy was being so coy. "So then where are they?"
"They went out."
"Why?" asked Ginny.
Percy avoided their gaze as he answered. "They had to go choose a coffin," he replied quietly.
Harry wasn't prepared for the lump that rose in his throat. They had to choose a coffin, he repeated in his mind. Because their son died. Because Fred is really gone forever, and he has to go in the ground, just like my parents…
Hermione had tears in her eyes, Ron was staring determinedly at a spot on the floor, and Ginny's stony-faced expression did not cover the anguished look on her face.
"George went with them," Percy continued. "He says—he says Mum and Dad would choose one that's too boring. He says Fred needs to be sent off in style."
Ron looked up, and a half-smile crossed his features. It was enough to break the tension, and they all sat down at the kitchen table, Percy included, and did their best to console each other.
The next few days were the worst Harry had ever spent at the Burrow. He couldn't remember ever having felt more miserable. The weird thing about it was that at times, he would forget the present circumstances, and he and Ron would lapse back into one of their familiar jokes. Then they would both suddenly remember themselves and Harry would feel guilty for having forgotten about Fred.
Mrs. Weasley was a shell of her old self. She went about with her usual cooking and cleaning and nagging, but her daily activities were punctuated by long breaks in which she would retreat to her room and come out hours later with swollen eyes and a vacant expression on her face. Mr. Weasley didn't ask Harry or Hermione anything about Muggles; he looked like he hadn't slept for days. George, for his part, was hardly seen at all. He spent all of his time shut up in his old room, which was unusual in itself because he had his own flat in London, and Harry saw him only once during his first three days at the Burrow.
Many different people seemed to drift in and out of the Burrow, coming to comfort the Weasley family and express their condolences. Ron always insisted that they go outside when people came over; he had no desire to be told "I'm so sorry" over and over again. Mrs. Weasley was very gracious to everyone who visited, but Harry could tell that they weren't helping matters. Of everyone who came to call, only Amos Diggory seemed to soothe Mr. and Mrs. Weasley's troubles, and that was only in the slightest bit.
The day of Fred's funeral dawned bright and beautiful. It seemed completely rude and ludicrous to Harry, who rather felt that the weather should have been storming, raining, hurricaning at the very least. And yet the sun shone high over the trees and the air was warm. It was exactly the type of weather they had had on the day of Dumbledore's funeral.
Harry and Ron washed and dressed in silence. Harry couldn't think of anything to say to his best friend; he tried to communicate with reassuring pats on the back instead.
"Is this real, Harry?" Ron asked at one point as they were pulling on black dress robes.
Harry took a minute to respond. He thought about how he'd felt when Sirius had died, when Dumbledore had died, when Lupin had died. He thought about his parents and about death in general.
"Yeah, it's real," he said finally. "But all that stuff I told you about the Resurrection Stone and about meeting Dumbledore in King's Cross—that kind of stuff—that's real, too."
It was a roundabout way of reassurance, but Ron seemed to accept it. He nodded and the two of them left the room.
Hermione was waiting for them when they reached the second landing. She took Ron's hand as soon as he reached her, and together the three of them walked out into the yard and assembled for the funeral.
The little man who had presided over Bill and Fleur's wedding was present again, standing up there at the podium. Harry tried hard to listen to him but he was distracted by Mrs. Weasley's sobs, Ginny's silent crying on his right, and Ron's ragged breathing on his left. He couldn't help but let his own memories of Fred float back to him as he sat there under the scorching sun, surrounded by Weasleys. Idly he wondered what Dumbledore would have thought about Fred's death.
Almost involuntarily he saw Dumbledore's face in his mind and heard the man's voice in his head. "I believe your friends Misters Fred and George Weasley are responsible for trying to send you a Hogwarts toilet seat…"
Dumbledore had certainly understood Fred's humor. Harry entertained an image in his head—one in which Dumbledore and Fred were talking in King's Cross—wait, no, King's Cross had been Harry's "party," and certainly Fred's would be in the Gryffindor Common Room or something—and Fred was sitting there, shaking his head at all of them, and Dumbledore was reassuring Fred that his family would be alright….
A loud sniff from Ron jolted Harry back to his senses. He blinked and looked around. He could see, he could feel, the presence of all the Hogwarts students around him. Lee Jordan and Angelina Johnson, Oliver Wood and Katie Bell and Alicia Spinnet, Neville and Luna and Seamus and Dean, nearly all of the members of Dumbledore's Army had turned up to celebrate Fred's life.
And Hagrid was there, and so were McGonagall and Flitwick and Sprout, and Kingsley and Aberforth Dumbledore, and, astonishingly enough, so was Ludo Bagman, who was sitting quite silently with a pained look on his face.
But Harry knew that the person Fred would have cared about most was George. George sat several seats down from Harry, in the middle of the front row, and he had an inscrutable expression on his face. It was almost as if he didn't know what to say or to think if he didn't have his twin there to talk and think with him.
You'll be alright, George, Harry thought. Then he dwelled once again on all the people he had lost, and he felt that they owed him something. Take care of him, he pleaded silently, focusing his thoughts on his mother and father, on Sirius and Lupin and Tonks and Dumbledore, and especially on Fred. I'm okay now…take care of George.
And suddenly the service seemed to be over, because all around him people were getting to their feet. Harry jerked his thoughts back to his present reality and got up too.
This is really bloody ridiculous, she thought. What was the point of setting out food at a funeral? Who in their right mind felt that it would be a good thing to let people wander around and stuff their faces after paying their respects? Was that honestly all that respectful?
Then again, it seemed to be helping Ron.
"Chocolate Frogs!" he exclaimed in a whisper. "Excellent, haven't had one in a while. Fred would have liked this."
"Actually, I think he might have hit you for enjoying the food so much when you should be focusing on him," said Hermione.
Ron shrugged. "Like I've really been thinking about anything else."
They wandered over to a spare corner of the yard and sat down in some white chairs. Hermione hadn't touched the food, but Ron had loaded up his plate.
"Are you honestly okay?" Hermione asked him.
"I'm as good as I could be, all things considered," he replied. "Why?"
"Because you're eating so much! A lot of times you'll eat a whole lot if you're upset about something."
Ron looked at her incredulously. "Hermione," he said, "I always eat this much."
She let out a small laugh. "This is true."
They sat in silence for a few minutes while Ron munched on his food. They were both staring around the yard at the hushed mourners, watching the people who were trying to talk to Mr. and Mrs. Weasley. George had disappeared right after the funeral, and Lee Jordan wasn't anywhere in sight either.
"I really miss him, Hermione," Ron said suddenly.
Hermione reached for his hand. "I know you do. I feel it, too. There's all this emptiness and it just doesn't seem right because Fred always had the ability to fill a room with happiness and laughter."
Ron nodded. Hermione felt a lump rise in her throat as she watched the gathering tears in his eyes. "I don't even understand what I'm feeling," Ron told her quietly. "Now that he's gone all I can think about is that I should have had more laughs with him, I shouldn't have been so resentful sometimes. All the stuff he did when we were kids—turning my teddy bear into a spider, charming my fingernails so that they had pink polish on them—well, before it was okay to call him a git for that stuff, and now it's like—it's like I'd give anything for him to give me pink fingernails again."
Hermione cupped his face. "He'd want you to remember that stuff. Do you honestly think he'd prefer for you to remember him as a perfect little angel?"
Ron laughed. "You're right," he said, wiping his eyes. Then he paused. "My heart just hurts a lot right now," he mumbled.
"Hey," she said quietly. "Hey, listen. It's not always going to be like this."
He looked at her desperately. "I feel like it is."
"It's not," she assured him. "Look, right now everything is horrible, I know. Fred just died, and Lupin and Tonks are dead, and it seems like the world has ended—"
"Yeah, it does seem like that—"
"But that's not regular life, Ron. It hurts right now, but our happiness will come. It will come, okay? It's just going to take a little while."
"I feel like there isn't anything to be happy about."
"Can you honestly think that?" Hermione asked him. "Can you honestly say something like that when your best friend just defeated Voldemort for good, and said best friend has a godson whom we get to help raise?"
Ron half-shrugged in response.
"Besides," she continued, "we have another thing to be happy about. My greatest happiness is that you are alive and you're with me here now, and I'd be kidding myself if I said otherwise."
For the first time, a serene smile made its way onto Ron's face. "You're right," he said in a low voice. "If there's one person I absolutely needed to survive this, it's you." He placed his hand affectionately on the side of her face, looking her straight on in the eye.
She leaned into his hand. "And I did survive, and better still, I've finally admitted that I'm in love with you, haven't I?"
"Oh, stop getting all cheesy on me," said Ron. "Fred would barf if he heard all of this—"
But Hermione just giggled and gave him a soft kiss on the lips. "I think he'd like it—it would give him one more reason to make fun of you."
Ron laughed. "See, this is why I keep you around, Hermione. You cheer me up when I'm sad."
"Yeah? Even though you think I'm mental?"
"Well, I reckon everyone's a bit mental in their own way…" said Ron. "You just take it to the next level, what with your habit of setting canaries on people and the like."
She raised her eyebrows at him, daring him, in her teasing sort of way, to try and argue that he hadn't deserved the canaries.
Ron seemed to have realized his idiocy. He smiled in that very cute Ron kind of way, the way he indicated that he was wrong but that he was aware of it and that hopefully she would see this as endearing. Hermione was all too used to that smile.
"Look, for what it's worth," said Ron, "I like mental." And he tucked her hair behind her ear and gave her a quick kiss.
Hermione had thought they were being discreet, so she was altogether very surprised when she noticed Mrs. Weasley watching them over the shoulder of a guest. The look on Molly's face was hard to read: Hermione hadn't seen her look happy in a very long time, and yet—
BANG.
Hermione tore her eyes away from Mrs. Weasley's face, looking around for the source of that loud noise. She and Ron seemed to realize it at the same time and they both let out soft sighs of delight and fulfillment.
BANG. CRACK.
There were fireworks filling the air; fireworks of all shapes and sizes, of every color imaginable. They illuminated the sky, even with the sun reigning down upon them, and most of them were bright red and fiery, like the trademark Weasley hair.
And there were George and Lee, crouched in the grass in an isolated part of the garden, gazing up at the fireworks with glee etched all over their faces, taking it in turns to set off more. Hermione tapped Ron on the shoulder and directed his attention to the two boys too, and as his eyes trained on his brother and his brother's friend, Ron grinned.
"We should have known," he said.
They were celebrating Fred, celebrating his life the way Fred would have wanted it to be celebrated, and for minutes that stretched into hours all of the Burrow's inhabitants and their guests stood staring at the fireworks, mesmerized by the display. They all watched as Catherine wheels went spinning, dragons danced across the sky, and Gryffindor lions roared and sparkled. There was one firework that shot high into the air, then exploded into the shapes of two beater's bats and two bludgers that engaged in an animated, sparkly game of Quidditch. There was another firework that went off with a bang and zoomed all around the garden, quoting Mrs. Weasley and some of the funnier scoldings she had given the twins. People couldn't help but laugh, Mrs. Weasley included.
The final firework shot into the air in a blaze of bright orange, and they all stared breathlessly as it assumed the image of Fred's face, which winked down at them all with a jovial expression. Three words formed beneath the image: Keep On Laughing.
And they all smiled, and they all laughed, and Ron and Hermione beamed as the shouts and cheers of people rose into the air all around the Burrow, celebrating a person who was truly worth remembering.
