Written for Hogwarts' Writing Club - Showtime: One Last Time: (action) Saying goodbye, the Comic Book Day Event - (character) Molly Weasley, and the Roald Dahl Day Event: Volcano suppression - Write about Molly Weasley.

Word count: 800

I would crawl underground to sleep next to you

Molly names Fred and George after her brothers—after these men she loved and lost, these men too brave to back off from a fight they judged righteous.

"Don't worry, little Molly," Gideon would laugh, putting his arm around her shoulders and pulling her into a warm, warm hug, "we'll come back."

"Yeah, little sis', we'll always be there for you—who's going to teach your kids to behave like proper Prewetts if we're not around, huh?" Fabian would finish, eyes creasing with laughter left unvoiced.

And Molly would say, "Don't you dare teach my sons to be hooligans like the two of you, Fabian!", and she'd swat at them with whatever object she could find, until they left, their laughter echoing after them.

And every time they left, they had come back, like they promised—until the time where they didn't.

She had known before they told her, she thinks. There had been an ache in her chest, a hole in her heart, before she got the visit, the stern faces coming out of her chimney and telling her 'We're so sorry for your loss," before they handed her two slightly battered wands.

And the twins—her twins, Fred and George—take after these uncles they've never met, and only know through the few stories Molly can stomach to tell, in a way that is terrifying.

Fred has Gideon's laugh, sometimes; and when George smiles when he's just succeeded at something, that's her brothers' smile.

It hurts, but it shows that something of her brothers lived on, so it's not a bad kind of hurt at all.

But then, the war starts again, and her sons want to join, want to fight, and she's terrified she's going to lose them.

(did she curse them, by naming them after the dead? does history truly wants to repeat itself? is there no other fate for her children than the one her brothers faced?

she can't believe that—she refuses to believe that)

"They're too much like my brothers," she whispers against Arthur's skin at night, and she sobs until his skin tastes like salt under her lips.

Arthur runs a hand against her back, tracing soothing circles on her bare skin, but he doesn't say anything.

There is nothing he can say that will let her forget those two wands, and the bitter comfort of knowing that her brothers had fought to their last breaths.

She doesn't want the same fate for her sons, but as the war worsens, it feels like she won't get a vote.

George loses an ear, but oh Morgana, if only that had been the worst of it.

If only.

George isn't himself without his twin by his side, and there is an instant—a terrible, horrible instant that she hates herself for—where Molly is glad that her brothers died together. She doesn't know how they'd have lived on, if only one of them had survived.

Molly had thought she had known loss before, but this is different. This is deeper, the kind of pain that wrenches at your insides and leaves you raw and bleeding, and yes, alive.

She leans on Arthur for the entire funeral, gripping his hand so tightly she's not sure she didn't break it. But Arthur—her sweet, loving husband—doesn't complain, not even once.

The coffin looks drab, is her first thought when she sees it. Fred had been so vibrant in life, but now, in death, he's duller. It is both fitting and heart-wrenching, and Molly sobs so hard she cannot get a single word of her eulogy out.

Arthur holds her, silent in his grief, until everyone (even George) has left.

"Come on," he says, "let's say goodbye."

We've already said goodbye, Molly wants to yell. We shouldn't have, but we did, please don't ask me to do it again.

"Alright," she says instead, her throat too tight for more.

Standing in front of Fred's grave, this feels like a bad joke. Like the ground will open and Fred will crawl out, laughing with the boyish grin Molly loves so much (and that she fears she'll never see again, now), saying 'Wasn't that a good one?'.

But the ground doesn't open up, and nobody crawls out of that grave. The dead stay buried, and they don't get second chances.

There's a million thing she wants to say, a million thing she never got the chance to tell her son and now never will, and none of them will come out.

Goodbye, Arthur had said, and yes, it's as good of a word as anything.

"Goodbye," she tells the dirt and the boy sleeping underneath it, because it's all she can say.

It's not enough—nothing ever will be—but it's something.

And right now? Something is all she can give.