Title: Dust in His Eyes
Author: Morien Alexander
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Spoilers for Deathly Hallows, character death, suicide
Pairings: Conflicting ones if you look closely.
Notes: Sorry. You can't just kill one.
Harry woke to screaming.
He and Ron stumbled out of their beds and nearly slammed into each other, drunk with sleep. A narrow miss and they pounded down the Burrow's rickety stairs.
The screaming was coming from the kitchen.
Ron's hip smashed into the door frame, but he didn't cry out.
Molly Weasley stood over a body that slumped on the floor, fingers curled, eyes open. Her fraying pink bathrobe brushed the corpse's side and then enveloped it as she dropped to her knees and wrapped her arms around it, mouth still gaping in a shriek. Her husband stood, numb, his hands dangling limply. His eyes were blank.
It was George.
Ron let out a wail and the dishes in the cabinets began to rattle furiously.
The mediwizard who examined the body knew what had happened almost immediately. He took Molly and Arthur to the side and whispered the findings to them. From where Harry and Ron sat in the waiting room, they could see the play of expressions over all three faces. Ron hardly paid attention; he was overwhelmed with the thought of both twins being gone. Fred was tragic. Heroic. George was dead in the kitchen with dust in his eyes.
"Do it again. Do it again-- that's not right!" Arthur was saying.
Harry watched the door. Ginny was coming. She had been with Hermione for the past week, but they had summoned both girls, and they should have been in the examining office by now. Bill was there with Fleur, his eyes closed, rocking back and forth like a cradle. Charlie was outside with Percy. Harry could see constant streaming puffs of smoke drift by the window in the morning light.
They had called the authorities as fast as they could, but the wizarding police turned them over to a mediwizard with the expertise to determine cause of death. They were sitting in what was supposed to be a hospital. The officer had disappeared.
"Do it again!" Arthur said loudly. "That's not my son!"
"Please calm down, sir," the mediwizard said unconsciously touching the pocket in his robe where Harry assumed his wand was.
Molly said something in her husband's ear and then the three of them left into the room where the body was laid out. Harry could see George's arm through the door -- cold.
Ginny and Hermione appeared through the fireplace in a flash of brilliant green. They looked as though they'd been awake all night and had managed to still sleep in their clothes. Ginny's face was as white as a wall.
Hermione ran to Ron and they collapsed together like wilting flowers. Harry looked up and the only Weasley girl fell against him. He hugged her to him and felt her trembling against his neck. Bill stood and then put his arms around his sister's waist, his face against her back. Fleur stroked Ginny's shoulder.
Molly exited the cold door where Arthur still stood watch over the second son they had lost.
Everyone stood and looked at her, faces bleached of joy and stained with need. She went to the door to the outside and reached out her right hand. Her left was clutched to her heart, holding something small as a bird. Percy and Charlie came inside, hands touching hers and smelling of smoke. Percy looked ill. Charlie looked insane.
They gathered around her, eyes like fireflies, blinking uncertainly.
"Suicide."
Like a huge brass bell.
Ginny began to keen softly and Harry put his hand on the top of her head. She leaned into his collarbone.
"It was wandless magic," Molly explained, her tone flat and despairing. "He just lay there and stopped everything."
Be still oh traitorous beating heart.
"He lay down on the kitchen floor and just stopped breathing."
"On purpose?" Percy asked incredulously, dizzily.
"Fred." Hermione said softly and there were soft sounds of pained agreement.
Molly pressed her forehead to Charlie's shoulder. "It was sometime last night. After we went to bed. I knew he was... with Fred: I knew he was depressed, but we just don't do this. We just don't." Her eyes appealed to Harry. "This is not what we do."
Ginny cried against his neck.
"Sometimes this happens by accident." Percy, explaining things away, denying. "We've known depressed children to accidentally just... stop working. It's an accident. A risk of being a wizard. Magic can just.. stop..." His eyes shot to the door beyond which lay his brother. One of them.
"It wasn't an accident," Molly said. "There was a note."
"Oh god," someone groaned and Harry thought it may have been himself.
"What did it say?" someone asked, and this time Harry thought it was Charlie, though his lips hadn't moved.
And Molly began to cry, to wail. They gathered around her, pressing against her, holding her in. She was holding it in her left hand. Harry took it from her and unfolded it for the eyes that so needed to see it. But everyone guessed. Everyone knew what it was going to say. The word was written on top of itself six times. Enigmatic, short, clear as anything:
Fred
And Harry saw the scene in his mind.
They had gone upstairs after dinner, still sad, limp. How long had it been since the end? Weeks? Harry thought three. Maybe less. Ron had his hand on Harry's shoulder. Arthur had his hand on Molly's waist. The house seemed empty with Charlie and Bill at their respective homes and Percy in his new flat. Even Ginny had left with Hermione, saying she needed to get away, get away, get away from that awful house.
"You'll come up soon?" Molly asked George, who was still sitting at the kitchen table, holding a now-cold cup of tea.
George said nothing.
"Good night," Arthur said, not looking at his son.
" 'night George." Ron's voice was deeper than Harry remembered ever hearing it before.
George was like this now. Silent. Stunned. Losing his ear was nothing. Losing his twin was everything. He walked around like a husk, like a basket. He had cried, had been getting better. He had been talking about the shop. And then one morning, nothing. Hollow.
"It's like seeing half a person," Ron had said and Harry understood. He could see it, too.
No one fully understood. That was impossible.
And when the kitchen was empty, George sat down on the floor next to the fire that was kept more for comfort than actual usefulness. The heat dried his eyes, warmed his face, but the tiles under his legs were cool if not cold. He looked like he was dead already.
And then his face changed. He relaxed, euphoric.
"Accio pen, accio paper."
He wrote the name of the twin who knew his every thought. The name of the twin who shoved their beds together. The name of the twin who abandoned Hogwarts with him. The name of the twin who had kissed the fresh pink scar where his ear had been. The name of the twin who said he'd be the other ear. The name of the twin whose death was heroic, tragic.
And George curled up on the floor, clutching the name of the twin he loved to his stomach.
He slowed his heartbeat with intense, natural, wandless magic. He slowed his breath.
He let everything go and then... was brilliant.
"Only the good die young."
"We were never quite that."
"You, especially."
"We are the same."
"We are different."
"I know."
"I know."