Title: The Funeral
Author: fairytalemanipulator
Summary: "If Harry could have looked into Ginny's heart at that moment, he would have found the most debilitating form of anguish."
A/N: Sorry for the angst. A friend of mine passed away a few days ago in a car accident and I needed to get it out somehow, I'm sorry if it sucks but I'm in a bit of an emotional state. I have a few other chapters written up but I also have huge exams this week…so stay tuned until this weekend and hopefully this doesn't turn you all off to my story.
-------------------
"Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us when we live."- Norman Cousins
--------------------
Some people simply enjoyed being audiences to grief.
Perhaps they had good intentions, and maybe they felt the loss on a personal level themselves—but Ginny didn't care.
This was supposed to be Fred's private funeral.
And it was anything but.
-----
There must have been at least a thousand uninvited witches and wizards crammed right inside the Hogwarts grounds, not to count the staff, students, Order and Ministry members who had shown up as well. They were not even those involved in the Battle of Hogwarts—perhaps they felt involved because they too had feared for their lives under Voldemort's reign.
Ginny, however, felt different about their presence.
They were all present to see Ginny Weasley's meltdown and the strong, violent hexes she began throwing at the gaping crowd before her wand was ripped out of her grasp by none other than Harry Potter. He grabbed her around the waist, hauling her to the archway leading to the castle. Ginny struggled violently as Molly Weasley's tears came harder and faster as she watched her sobbing child.
They all heard her screams, as well.
"This is not for the world to see!"
Yet they stayed, and they stared, but somewhere deep down perhaps they felt that they shouldn't.
-----
She cried.
Ginny shed more tears right then, in that dark archway with Harry, than she had ever before in her short and tumultuous years of life. She wailed, she shouted and she pounded on his chest with furious fists and he let her.
Harry held her to him, letting his robes become filthy with tears. He did not resist her violent beating, because he knew the rage she kept inside. He held onto her like there was nothing else to hold on to, and for a moment, he was her ground. She could not feel the cobbled floor beneath her feet and it was only him that was keeping her from flying up and away, leaving forever.
But he was there.
Her tears wouldn't stop, but they watched the funeral nonetheless from their vantage point right inside the school.
Ginny didn't look at the others, the ones that didn't matter. Her eyes were only on her family, on Hermione, the new Minister of Magic Kingsley Shacklebolt, Andromeda and Teddy, Seamus, Dean, Lavender, Parvati, McGonagall—the ones that mattered. The ones who had also felt the pain of loss.
They were not here to spectate. They came to grieve.
-----
Soon enough it was over, and Ginny's wracking sobs quieted into sniffles. They waited there, watching as the sun set over the gloomy day. Neither felt like greeting the dignitaries who had come in support, or even talking at all.
So they sat in their silence with only tight grasps on each other to keep from falling apart. Harry would stroke her hair, the sharp red softened over the years to a darker colour, as she would lean into his touch, her black funeral robes rustling against her body. She would lay her head on his shoulder, that beautiful red head of hers, and close her eyes, just listening to the speakers on the hilltop below them. The tears dripped through her long brown eyelashes, filtering slowly down her cheeks and onto her neck, where Harry would catch them up with a finger and kiss her gently on the cheek.
If Harry could have looked into Ginny's heart at that moment, he would have found the most debilitating form of anguish. He would have seen that she was not only crying for her lost brother, but for the rest of those fallen in the war. He would have seen that she was also crying for the young boys and girls on the other side, the losing side, who would now spend their lives being punished for their life-altering decisions.
And he would have also found, in the cracks and crevices that were slowly being healed, that he was the one holding her together.
Harry was the glue that kept her heart from falling apart at the moments where it felt that nothing was right and it could never be again. And she knew, without vocalizing it, that he would always be there for her.
But for now, they nestled together, each other's only comfort on a day where sadness glittered in the tears falling from eyes caught in the last beams of the day's sun.
The end.
------------
Please review, it would definitely make me feel better right now…I need your support! (not to guilt trip you or anything, I love you whether you review or not)
