A/N: Song 4 – If Today Was Your Last Day by Nickelback
Fred Weasley II was a true Gryffindor, and that meant that he had fears and that he admitted them.
He feared spiders, like his Uncle Ron. He had never really understood that fear, but it was there all the same.
He feared the things that could hide in the dark. He understood that fearing the dark itself was childish, but fearing the things within was only honest.
His greatest fear, however, was dying. Not so much dying, though, as dying without making some kind of imprint on the earth.
He had been named after a dead man. He was never really sure when he had known that; it was just a fact that had always been there, hovering on the edge of everyone's consciousness. He could tell that some of the time when his dad was looking at him that he wasn't seeing his son. He was seeing his brother, his twin, who had died during the war.
Death was always among them. Reminders of those who had died during the war never left anyone's head for very long. Some of those stories were scary – not because they were frightening, but because they were the only stories of some of those people.
Fred had always wanted to do something big. Something that would make people remember that he wasn't just another member of the Weasley family, that he wasn't just the reincarnation of his father's fallen brother.
And then, one day, the summer before his sixth year, he woke up wondering what would happen if he died that day. He wouldn't have done anything that would leave him remembered by anyone other than his friends and immediate family.
And so he thought. He needed to do something big. And with a grin, he thought of it. It was bigger than anything he'd ever done before, and that was saying something, considering the pranks he'd pulled in his past Hogwarts life.
Let it suffice to say that this huge plan involved a broomstick, an apple tree, a few simple charms, and a jar of mayonnaise, and that it resulted in Fred being grounded for the rest of the month.
It was worth it.