My Cold Grave

Did you ever know that it hurts not to cry?

It does, really. The pain starts out as a little throb in the back of your throat, and it only gets worse as you listen to speech after speech telling everyone what a great person your brother was.

I'm sorry--did I say brother? I meant me, of course. George was--is me, and I am him. I don't understand how one of us can be dead while the other is still alive, and I know he must be dead--why else would we be having this funeral?--so it seems to me that I must be dead, too.

But I don't feel dead. What, do dead people hurt this much? Not just the emotional pain, but the aching of my throat, begging me to just break down and cry.

I won't. Everyone expects it, but George and I have always done the opposite of what everyone expected us to and I'll be damned if I stop that now, just because he's gone.

Nobody expects him to jump out of the coffin right now and yell, "Just kidding," either. That'd be a pretty good trick. A lot better than trying to take on a group of the most powerful Death Eaters in the world alone. The stupid, stupid git.

Anyway, we don't cry. George and I. I remember him crying once, when we were really young--three or four or so. I had bitten him on the neck, and he let out the loudest howl, then started to wail. But I just laughed, and then he laughed, and neither of us cried again. Ever.

The buzzing noise stops, and I realize that the eulogies are over. I really should have listened to them. Lee made one, and Harry made one, and Dumbledore made one, and they could barely make through them. I can only imagine what it would have been like had one of us tried to do it. I would never have been able to. The pain in my throat would have become so intense that I wouldn't have been able to speak, and nobody wants to listen to some idiot at a podium not talk.

I don't pay attention through much of the procession, either. Mostly, I focus on the weather and how it looks like it's going to rain and how it'd better not, because George will be cold. I will be cold. And we hate when it's cold.

The next part of the funeral I watch, then, is the actual burial. I watch my friends and family cover the wooden box in dirt. Not regular, gray-brown dirt, but the beautiful, rich, red mud-dirt that you get from digging deep underground.

Six feet underground.

I hear the scratching as Ron shoves the shovel into the dirt, and I almost envy him, because it gives him somewhere to channel his anger. Indeed, this is what he, as well as everyone else out there, is doing, slamming shovels into dirt as if George will come back if they do it hard enough.

An image of George's--of my--lifeless body lying in the casket flashes in my head, and I gasp, the image having shocked all the oxygen out of me.

Somebody hands me a shovel, and I stare dumbly at it. I'm not supposed to dig, am I? Isn't there some kind of...I don't know, rule about twins not having to do anything but stand there in shock, trying to bear the immense pain in the back of his or her throat, at their twin's funeral?

Somebody bumps into me, and, in auto-mode, I start to dig, trying not to picture the body that looks exactly like mine, lying still in the casket. I'm not digging with the same venom that Charlie is attacking the dirt pile with, rather with an air of defeat. As in, 'All right, you win--you succeeded in making me the most miserable I ever could be,' defeat, of course. As in, 'Okay, I give up, you killed me,' kind of defeat.

A drop of water falls onto my hand, and I stop digging in my tracks and look up. 'Can't you wait?' I want to shout. 'Holy bloody hell, you took my twin away from me and now you don't even have the decency and respect to wait until after the burial to start the rain?'

But I can't yell; I can't even speak, because if I do, my throat will crack, and my throat is the one thing holding my body together at this point. I can't crumble; not here, not like this.

To my surprise, the drizzle lets up, but the sky is getting darker, and my throat is hurting so much that I'm afraid it'll break off, so we have to finish soon.

I hand off the shovel to Percy, who immediately starts to dig. He's pounding the dirt just as angrily as Ron was a few minutes ago. Who knew Perce had it in him?

Finally, the hole in the earth is filled, and the diggers step back. The guests disperse into their groups. Bill, Charlie, Percy, and Ginny stand in a circle, Ginny's head resting on Charlie's shoulder. Ron is over by Harry and Hermione, leaning on Hermione. Usually, I would be teasing him about his affections for her, I think. But I'm not exactly in the mood, considering the fact that the person I care about most in the world was just put in a box and dragged about a mile before being lowered underground, and then had dirt thrown on him.

Everyone starts to leave as soon as my throat is about to explode, but Mum can tell that I want to stay here for a while. She says something that I don't hear and gives me a small hug, and I'm torn between shrugging out of her grip and collapsing in tears into her arms. So I do neither.

I wait, and then I watch them all walk away--it's a tradition for everyone to walk to the house of the departed and apparate home from there. Eventually, they're all gone, and I'm left there alone, staring at the grave that holds my body.

The rain, having held itself off for so long, starts to fall heavily. Thunder cracks above, and it's so loud that I can barely hear the sound of my heart cracking at the same time.

I fall to my knees as I screw up my face and start to cry, self control be damned. The torrent of raindrops envelop me, and my anger fades. My throat no longer hurts--every tear that falls down my face eases the throbbing a little more. Just as every raindrop that falls onto my face eases the throbbing in my mind.

And I cry.

I cry for George, for the twin brother that I thought I would always have, for my other half who made me the charming boy whom everyone loved, for his death and for his life and for his leaving me, for my loneliness. I cry for my family, for their first casualty of the war, the empty spot in our house, the vacant bed across the room from mine. For everything that won't be missed about George if I don't let his death affect me--because who can tell the difference between the Weasley twins, anyway? If even I can't, it must not exist.

And then, when I am all out of tears, and when the rain lets up, and when I have whispered a sobered good-bye in the direction of my brother's grave; then I stand up. And I turn around.

"Ready to go home?" Ginny asks softly.

I don't know why she stayed for me and I have a vague feeling that I should be angry at her for watching me at my most vulnerable, but I really don't give a damn.

So I just nod.

And she slips her small hand into mine, and we start to walk home.