𝐌𝐀𝐃 𝐖𝐎𝐑𝐋𝐃 → 𝒸. 𝓌𝑒𝒶𝓈𝓁𝑒𝓎

⤷ 20| AFTERMATH

CHAPTER TWENTY
aftermath

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     JUNIPER BLACK FOUND GEORGE WEASLEY HIDING IN HIS ROOM. 

It had been a week since the Battle of Hogwarts. A week since the world had ended and kept going anyway. And today, they were going to bury Fred.

George didn't hear her open the door. He sat on the floor with his back against the bed, knees drawn up, head bowed. Shards of broken mirror were scattered across the carpet like fallen stars, catching the light in sharp, merciless angles.

June stopped just inside the doorway.

Fred's bed was untouched.

She swallowed hard and stepped carefully into the room, closing the door behind her as quietly as she could, as if noise alone might shatter what was left of him.

"George?" she whispered.

He didn't look up.

June eased herself down beside him, ignoring the sting as a sliver of glass bit into her palm. Pain felt easier than this. She let it stay.

"George," she tried again, softer.

His voice came out hollow. "I kept thinking he was here."

June's chest tightened.

George stared straight ahead, eyes unfocused, like he was looking at something only he could see. "Every time I looked in the mirror," he continued quietly, "I thought he was going to be there. Grinning. About to say something stupid." His breath hitched. "I kept waiting for him to complain about my hair. Or tell me I looked tragic without him."

June closed her eyes. She reached for his hand, carefully threading her fingers through his, grounding him the only way she knew how.

"I miss him," she said. The words felt too small. Useless. But they were all she had.

George finally looked down at their hands. Then he looked at her. There was something in his eyes then — not anger, not accusation — just a deep, exhausted sorrow that had nowhere left to go.

"He loved you," George said quietly.

June's breath caught. The room seemed to still around them, as if it were holding its breath too.

"He really did."

June smiled — a small, broken thing. "I loved him too," she said.

George nodded once. His mouth opened, like there was something else — something heavier — pressing against his ribs, desperate to be said. But he closed it again. Instead, his grip on her hand tightened, just for a moment, like letting go of something he didn't have the right to give away.

They sat there in silence after that.

Minutes passed. Or hours. June couldn't tell.

The light shifted across the broken mirrors, turning them dull and colorless.

Neither of them moved.

Neither of them wanted to stand up.

Because standing meant leaving this room. And leaving meant the funeral. And the funeral meant admitting that Fred Weasley — loud, impossible, endlessly alive — was never coming back.

June rested her head lightly against George's shoulder. He didn't flinch. He leaned into her instead, just a fraction, like they were two halves of something that had been shattered and were trying, desperately, to remember how to fit together.