I watched as they lowered my other half into the ground. No tears sprung to my eyes, so bloodshot were they already. Not from crying, but from despair. A lump formed in my throat, but I forced it down. I hadn't cried before. I wouldn't cry now.
I had watched, disbelieving as they lowered the first of us to go. It hadn't been an open casket ceremony, because Ron's body was so grotesque. I remember the betrayal I felt when I had heard he was on the Dark Side. When he become a Death Eater. The whole family had refused to speak of him for two years. Two years, and then Mum read an article in the Daily Prophet. An article about him. We laughed for joy that day, knowing he hadn't betrayed us, that he hadn't really been a Death Eater. We laughed through our tears. Or rather, everyone else did. Fred and I had just laughed for joy. We knew he had found his purpose.
That was six months ago. It seems like a lifetime ago.
Then Bill went, only two weeks after Ron. It was by chance he died, one of Voldemort's random victims. The Unforgivable finished him off, singled out to make a crowd obey. At least he didn't suffer, not like Ron.
Fred and I, we didn't cry then either. Not that the tears didn't burn at the back of my eyes. It was at Bill's funeral that I first got hint of the horror to come, of the total destruction of our family. It was then that I began to feel despair.
It was fated to be, the next death. One couldn't be Minister of Magic during a time like this and not be on Voldemort's to do list. We knew it was inevitable, Percy knew it was inevitable. But when it came, no one was prepared. I remember picking through the ruins of Percy's flat, the Dark Mark floating in the sky above me. I remember seeing him, his cold white skin dead to the touch.
His ceremony was one of the state, but it didn't disguise what it was - a funeral. Even the bright sunlight seemed cold to me, even the wild flowers dotting the landscape were gray.
That was a month after Bill. Three of us dead within two months.
Six weeks later, Charlie was killed by dragon burn. That was closed casket too. The only consolation we felt in his death was that it hadn't been perpetrated by Voldemort.
Our family was falling apart, but only in numbers. Spiritually, we were closer than ever, Mum and Dad and Ginny and Fred and I. We were all that was left.
Ginny became an Auror, eager to avenge the deaths of her brothers. That was right after Charlie died. She didn't last very long. She was too weak, too despairing, too driven by vengeance. Heedless of the words of her superiors, the foolish girl attacked six known Death Eaters by herself one night. She killed five. The sixth blasted her to bits.
The largest part of her they could find, they sent to us. Her heel. That was it. Her casket is empty, because we cremated the heel and sprinkled the ashes on Hogwarts grounds. At this point, I was ready to cave in because of grief, but not once did a tear fall from my eye. Not once.
Dad went yet another three weeks after that, simply wasting away. Mum couldn't bear life without him, and simply ceased to live. Not suicide. Like her heart stopped beating when Dad died. They were buried next to each other on the same day.
It was just Fred and me left. Just the two of us! In a short five and a half months, our family had gone from complete to decimated. And not one of them had we gotten to say goodbye to.
So why should he have been any different?
And still I blame him for not taking me, or at least not writing a note, or something! But he just left me, sleeping fitfully, while he went out to seek revenge! He sought revenge and found death instead.
I stare down at his face. It holds the last expression he had in life. Despair. A mirror image to the one my face holds now. I was him, he was me, how could he do this to me? The bond we shared was one of more than love, it was of unity, of being one! And now it was gone. I would never be complete again.
I turned away as they began shoveling dirt onto the now closed casket. Someone offered me a shovel - I refused it. The rain began to fall, a dismal mid winter drizzle, chilling the skin. I didn't feel it. Now, now that the rain could hide my tears, now I could cry. I do so, all the tears from the past six months coursing down my cheeks, running through the stubble on my chin.
I walked aimlessly, blinded by my tears. Refusing help from strangers and friends alike, my wandering finally turned purposeful, as I realized where I wanted to be. Home, the Burrow, not the flat Fred and I had occupied since graduating. Home. It would never really be home, again, not without the hustle and bustle of nine people, but it was as close as I could get.
Without him, I was nothing, I was a shadow of my former self. I had no will to live left in me, no desire to succeed at something. Death. The word sounded sweet now, where it had sounded bitter before his death, something I had tasted too much of. I now knew I had not truly tasted it until now. I was the last Weasley, the only one in all the world. There was nothing to keep me here, nothing to keep me in the land of the living.
I was slumped beneath the willow tree in our backyard when day broke, the butterflies licking the dew from my lifeless eyelashes.