Embers of the Heart ; George Weasley

Twelve - 2.0

My ears were ringing. From where the explosion had blasted me, I woke up on my side, my head hurting and my ears ringing. I tried to sit up but I failed, so I tried again. My vision was blurry but I saw some red hair a few feet away from me, attached to a body that was still. Too still.

"Fred." I murmured, coughing through the dust. Another figure was hunched over the red-head, crying for a while before he started chasing whomever did this. I tried to sit up again, and this time it worked. All I could think about was that George was right. Fred and George were right. It was too dangerous for me to come here.

I leaned back against the wall, wincing as I felt a pain in my lower back. A very familiar pain that spread around to my stomach, but this kind of pain was more intense, but I couldn't bring myself to worry.

Not when my eyes landed on Fred, who lied completely still on the ground a few feet from me, his eyes staring up at a ceiling but seeing nothing. At first it didn't really register. I waited for him to blink, to get up and laugh it off, but it never happened, and that's when I allowed myself to cry.

"Fred." I cried, trying to reach for him, but everything was hurting. My stomach was hurting with what felt like labour pain, but I was only thirty weeks pregnant. I couldn't possibly be in labour already. "Freddie..."

Why wasn't he moving? Why wasn't he shutting his eyes to avoid the dust getting in them? Why wasn't he doing anything?

I managed to drag myself across the ground, until I reached him.

"Freddie, wake up." I coughed, shaking him, but he was weak. He didn't react and he didn't move. His body was weak. I shoved him and he still didn't react "Fred!" I found myself screaming in anger, growing restless.

"Please, wake up." I said as the first tears found their way down my cheeks. I fisted his shirt in my hand, beating his chest with my other. "No, no, no, no. Fred, you have to wake up. You can't do this to me! You can't do this to him!"

But he still didn't respond. I looked at his eyes and I noticed how eerily still they were. They didn't move. There was nothing behind them. They were staring at the ceiling, but there was nothing there.

"No." I cried weakly, clutching my stomach as a wave of pain rolled through me. "Please, Freddie. Don't leave, don't..."

I weakly summoned my wand and did a row of healing spells on him, but nothing worked. He stared where he was, his eyes staring without seeing, and I broke into full-on sobs, hugging his body while all my memories with him replayed through my mind. My head was resting on his chest, my tears streaming down my cheeks and soaking his shirt, when suddenly I felt like I needed to push. I screamed into the corridor, the pain blinding me and then I moved away from Fred so I could lean against a wall

I really was in labour, which meant I had to do this by myself. There was no way I could get all the way down seven flights of stairs to get to Madam Pomfrey in the Great Hall.

I breathed heavily as I looked at Fred, realising that I had to give birth right here, next to my brother-in-law's dead body. My daughter was going to have the same birthday as the day Fred died.

I cried at the thought, but my cries turned into yells at the insufferable pain and then I was pushing. There was nothing I could do to stop it. I took a deep breath, pushing my hands down my trousers to try and feel for the head. I could already feel it, and that only made me cry more.

Another push, and the head was out. I had never cried this much before, but I kept crying as I pushed and pushed and pushed, until I felt the whole body slide out of me. I pulled her out of my trousers and into my arms, the umbilical cord still attached.

I looked down at her as her cries filled the room. I grabbed my wand and pointed it at her, casting a quick spell that would give her the nutrition to catch up to the weight a baby at forty weeks should have. It was a spell we'd learned doing childbirth classes, in case something went wrong and we'd give birth early.

Immediately, she gained weight, her little body filling out until she was the perfect size. I dropped my head back against the wall, and this time when I cried, it was of relief.