Vault 712:
A Harry Potter Treasury
PenPatronus
Chapter / List Ten:
10 Times Fred Weasley Cried
1) Long after the rest of the Weasleys went to bed, Fred sat on his bedroom floor with George and wiped the blood off of his twin's skin. George fussed at him at first but then resigned himself to holding still. The throbbing hole where his ear used to be hurt less if he didn't move. They sat in complete silence. It took almost an hour to get all of the blood out of George's hair, off his neck and shoulder, his arm and hands. There was so much of it that it soaked through his clothing and stained his chest and stomach. When George was all cleaned up, Fred helped him change into pajamas and crawl into bed. George was out instantly but Fred barely slept all night. He just sat on the floor, leaning back against George's bed, listening to his brother breathe and staring at the blood-soaked washcloths through waterlogged eyes.
2) Fred's very first memory was of seeing his mother cry. He was too young to understand that she was weeping for joy that the Dark Lord was gone and the Wizarding World was finally safe. Fred tried to cheer her up in his own way by pinching her toes and making funny faces but eventually he just cried along with her because he didn't know what else to do.
3) His little brother was a pain in the ass. He got attacked by a chess piece in his first year, bitten by a dog in his third, strangled by a brain in his fifth and now he was poisoned. Fred wasn't sure what to expect when he and George took the Floo Network to the Hogwarts Hospital Wing, but he never imagined that anyone's face could look as pale as Ron's did.
Fred had to leave the room after Harry described what a close call it had been.
4) The Nosebleed Nougat was Fred's idea but George volunteered to be their first test subject. Nothing happened for a whole hour after he ate the candy, so Fred figured that the experiment was a failure. But then George's nose started gushing blood. He lost so much in so little time that he actually fell off the common room couch. He fainted right when Fred and Lee got him to the Hospital Wing.
5) Cedric wasn't his best friend like Lee or George, but he was a great, standup guy. He was the type of guy Fred would let date his sister. Cedric's funeral was the first Fred ever attended. He managed not to break down in the middle of it, but did later on his four-poster.
6) He promised his mother that he would look out for Ginny, and he let them both down. Fred realized what it was like to cry for joy when Ginny got home safe from the Chamber of Secrets.
7) Fred didn't cry when the boggart in Defense Against the Dark Arts zeroed in on George and transformed into the depressing image of the Twins as ghosts. He teared up later that night when he remembered the look on George's face.
George had frozen. He couldn't summon a slice of his innate sense of humor to transform the boggart into something funny. Lupin had to step in to repel the boggart. Every Gryffindor in the classroom stared at Fred and George in shock. No one ever imagined that the Weasley twins had such depressing thoughts.
8) Fred took one look at the snake bite in his father's neck and ran to the lavatory to throw up. The tears on his cheeks felt hot and tasted salty.
9) Fred's tears were angry ones when Percy abandoned the family. He was furious. Not because of what Percy did to him but because of what he did to their mother. Fred couldn't bear to see her so upset at Christmas.
Sometimes he felt guilty. He wondered if he had teased Percy so much that he was single-handedly responsible for driving his brother away.
10) Fred didn't just die with a smile on his face.
He died with tears of laughter in his eyes.