We buried Fred in a nice little spot down by the river. Mum and Dad picked it. They didn't ask me, but if they had, I would have approved. I liked the fact that it was someplace he'd loved in life; we'd had many a pick-up game of Quidditch there, and tested no fewer than seventeen products for our joke shop just three feet from the spot where he would be forever laid to rest. The old tree stump was still there; I had wondered if Mum and Dad would uproot it to make more space, or if they would stick a grave marker on top of it. I couldn't decide if the fact that they hadn't was them being courteous, or them thinking it was too much effort to bother with.

I almost slept through his funeral. It wasn't deliberate, though it wouldn't have bothered me. He was already gone, so he wouldn't even notice and I would get to avoid all the stares and "Poor George"s. It was bad enough that Mum had taken to flinching whenever she laid eyes on me. I didn't think I could stand the rest of the family doing it.

Ron walked into our - well, mine, now - room while I was laying in bed, staring up at the ceiling and trying to motivate myself to move.

"Get out," I said.

"The funeral's starting in fifteen minutes, George."

"I know. Get out."

"But Mum said-"

"I don't care what she said! Get. Out!"

He muttered something to himself and left. I rolled over to stare at the wall instead. Maybe I just wouldn't get up. I didn't want to see him in that box; that wasn't Fred. Fred had already left us, back at Hogwarts.

Footsteps on the stairs told me Mum hadn't had the last word in yet.

"Get up, Georgie," she told me, coming over and pulling the covers off. I shrugged and just curled up into a ball. I didn't say a word. She hovered over me for a moment, then grabbed my arm. "Come on, I said." She tried to pull me up, but I just went limp. She tugged uselessly for a few moments, then humphed. "Georgie, we don't have time for this. Everyone else is out there-"

"Everyone else isn't his twin. Nobody else is going to have everyone staring at them pityingly; nobody else is going to have everyone wondering how they can stand to look in a mirror without it reminding them of Fred. Fred dying is bad enough; I don't want to be a freak show for the family to focus on instead on top of it."

"You're not going for them, George," she snapped. "You're going for Fred. Now get up, get dressed, and get over there or so help me-"

"Molly," Dad said from the hallway, "please calm down."

But it was too late. She'd already burst into tears again. Now that Dad had arrived, though, she Disapparated, leaving him to deal with me. Guilt settled over me like a shroud, but my soul was too heavy and lethargic to care.

"George," Dad began, but he didn't get much further than that. He sighed, and sat down next to me. The big clock downstairs chimed eleven. It's ticking marked the seconds so loudly, it seemed the floor should shake. But it wasn't that the clock was so loud, as that we were so quiet. "It gets better," he finally said.

I shrugged. What would he know about it?

"You don't have to come, but it would mean an awful lot to everyone else if you did. It would mean a lot to him, too, wherever he is. But I won't pressure you. I just think that you'll regret it terribly if you never get to say your last goodbye to him."

"It's not Fred in the casket. It's just a body, just a chunk of rotting meat. What made Fred Fred is gone. His soul's not there, nobody's home. Saying goodbye to the corpse isn't saying goodbye to him. Nobody got to do that."

"Yeah, maybe. But maybe not. His soul lived in that body for 20 years, and that leaves traces. Besides, you're not completely identical. Just because the rest of us can't tell the difference doesn't mean that you won't regret not being able to see his face once more." Dad stood up. "I just don't want you to make a choice to spite the rest of us. We all know how close you two were."

He Disapparated and I cursed under my breath before getting up to get dressed.