Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter. Can't think of anything witty, either.
A/N: This popped into my head while reading a really confusing fanfic. I entertain the idea that this is not confusing beyond what I meant it to be, so please review and just tell me what you think.
There was the coffin, plopped down on its pedestal like a wooden shoebox that you keep for a place for bits of old souvenirs. You may take them out and look at them once more in your life but never again. This would be the last time that she saw him, before that box was buried under layers of soil and burned.
The sky was blue and the grass blindingly green. Puffs of purple smoke shot up from reporters' cameras, and all Ginny wanted to do was smash them against the ground and break them for the blasphemy they committed at Harry's funeral.
"Don't do that, love," Harry whispered in her ear, and wrapped his wire-strong arms around her waist. "Would be rude…"
Ginny was reminded of the time when Harry had said and done the same thing when she had mentioned her desire to throw dried rice at her mother at Ron and Hermione's wedding two years ago.
"How do you feel, Mrs. Potter?" some woman in the row in front of her with shockingly blonde hair asked Ginny, evidently feeling that the quieter she spoke the less angry Ginny would be at the insensitive question. Not so; Ginny whipped around on her, flaring.
"I'm fine," she spat sarcastically. "Fine. It's my husband's funeral; why wouldn't I be fine?"
She heard Harry chuckle a bit behind her, and cracked a smile at her own bitterness. The woman with the hair looked a tad shell-shocked and got into the line of well-wishers to the coffin, mumbling polite excuses. Good, Ginny thought savagely. If that witch had hung around a moment longer then Ginny would have had an excuse to turn cannibal.
"I see that bloody-teeth look on your face," Harry whispered. "Calm down. He was annoying, but…"
"I know," Ginny muttered back, and Ron and Hermione looked at her sharply through their tears.
"Who were you talking to?" Ron asked, more subdued than normal, but still characteristically aggressive.
"Captain Nemo – Captain No Man," Harry laughed in her ear. She remembered another time when he'd said that: they had been reading the muggle adventure novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, and Harry had found the submarine captain's name quite amusing.
"No one," she replied. "No one talked to me."
"Very well," Ron said and turned back to his little daughter on Hermione's lap, not realizing what had happened to her beloved Uncle Harry-Bear.
"I can't believe that Eleanor calls me 'Harry-Bear'," Harry said, still behind her. Ginny wished that he would come in front of her; she wanted to see that adorable blush on his face, real, and not artificially magicked color on his corpse. She glanced at the coffin and shuddered. She would have to lift that closed lid and look at him, sometime soon. Too soon. The line of those saying goodbye was rapidly shortening.
Out of the corner of her eye, Ginny saw Hermione sobbing into little Eleanor's hair and Ron hastily wiping away his own tears. Eleanor was not crying and neither was Ginny, but tears might come soon to both pairs of Weasley eyes.
"Don't cry, I won't be gone for long," Harry said, just like he had the day he left for a business trip from Hogwarts. The same trip he had been caught at the wrong place at the wrong time.
"Can Uncle Harry-Bear breathe from in there?" Eleanor asked, deep in naïveté, when Hermione stood and carried her to the coffin. No one was left in the room but those closest to Harry; the result of the long vigil of watching and waiting for people to get bored and leave. It had paid off in the way that the three generations of Weasleys, and Neville, and Luna's spirit, and Draco, and Blaise gathered around the coffin in total silence, and Ginny walked slowly to join them.
"I'm fine," Harry insisted, walking along behind her. "I'm fine. It's okay, I'll be better in no time."
That was like when Harry had been in St. Mungo's being treated for the muggle gunshot wound that turned out to have been cursed. Harry was dead five hours later. If only the entrance to the New York City Academy of Magic #5 hadn't been in such a violent neighborhood, in such a violent state of near-civil-war…
"You're not fine, Harry," Ginny murmured to him over her shoulder. She did not turn to look at him. "You're not." She squeezed herself in between Blaise and Draco and the two men each gave her a hug. And once again she felt wire-strong arms hold her tightly against a wire-strong chest.
"You looked like you needed a hug," Harry said from behind her and blew softly on her head.
"Don't ruffle my hair, jerk," she muttered automatically and raised her hand to smooth her ponytail back. Draco stared at her; Blaise hadn't noticed she had said anything.
Ginny's daddy tapped the coffin with his wand, and it opened with nary a creak. There he was, his shell, his vessel, once so full of life but now –
She couldn't help it. She shrieked and turned backwards to Harry's waiting arms but he wasn't there, she couldn't ever remember a time like this, and when her memory failed her she had to invent – she couldn't think of anything comforting but then her family was around her and her mommy was hugging her and her friends were holding on to her and then – she wasn't imagining or remembering now – there was a flash of Harry moving towards his coffin and he passed through Ginny and hovered over his empty shell.
"I love you Ginny," he said, "I love you everybody. I love you, son." And Ginny swore he looked toward her.
Ginny was surprised. She had no son. Harry had no son. Harry had never been unfaithful – she put a hand on her stomach and imagined she could feel a heartbeat as the coffin whoomphed into blue flame without being buried beneath the damp heavy earth, and a phoenix spiraled up with ruffled feathers and Avada Kedavra eyes.
And she realized that Harry wasn't standing behind her anymore, because she didn't have to remember to have a piece of him still with her. That piece lay cradled in her womb.
"I love you, Harry," she whispered, and he was gone.