Work Text:
Die letzte Schlacht ist geschlagen
Bleigrauer Dunst zieht über ödes Land
Schon liegst du da auf einer Bare
Neben dir grinst der Sensenmann
Er spricht zu dir, fragt nach der Wahrheit
Wie's dir so geht und ob du glücklich bist
Feuerschwanz - Das Elfte Gebot
He floated through swirls of shadow and light, incapable of making out any shapes in the colours that went in and out of existence around him.
He floated, aimless, until warmth enclosed him and chased away the cold emptiness he felt deep in his soul. He heard a soft whisper in his ear, calming him. Guiding him.
Until-
He was at Hogwarts again.
But also not. It was too empty.
Empty but for him and the young woman who held his head securely in her lap, cradling through the strands of his hair with gentle fingers while humming the lullaby of his childhood.
“Welcome, Fred.” The woman whispered eventually with a strained, faintly hissing voice. She spoke carefully and deliberate as if she had trouble forming the words. “The worst is over. You did well.”
“Why am I here?” His eyes darted around, taking in Hogwarts’ undamaged walls. It wasn’t right. Hadn’t there been an-
Fred winced as his head started to hurt again, a pain he had already forgotten about under the woman’s soothing touch. It was worse than when he was thrown through the air against a cushioned wall by an experiment had gone wrong.
“Shhhh,” the woman comforted as she laid a cool hand at the side of his face, and Fred felt the pain flowing away as if it had never been there in the first place. Sighing in relief, he dared to open his eyes again, peering up to the woman who helped him. “Who are you?”
She blinked in surprise before she tentatively smiled. It looked fragile and somehow out of place on her face. As if she wasn’t used to the gesture in the slightest.
“My name is Merope. And this,” she continued quietly with her smile taking on a sad edge, “is the in-between.”
Fred paused.
He knew of the in-between. How could he not, with how often he and George accidentally toed the line during their experiments. But they’d only ever caught a glance, they’d never been there. Never been here. And now that he was, Fred could only be thankful that Geroge wasn’t here too. That he was alone.
Well, almost.
“How are you here? With me?”
On reflex, Fred caught Merope’s hand when she snatched it away from his head as if burnt. Her fingers were knobbly, the skin calloused- but they were ever so gentle when they cautiously returned to stroking his hair. It was soothing, calming. It helped Fred to stay in the present and not lose himself in the sorrow that he could feel welling up from the dept of his soul. The place where he had always felt George.
“I've been watching over you for some time now, and tried to keep you out of the in-between for as long as I could. You have such a bright, loving soul.” Fred went still without Merope noticing his sudden discomfort. “Ever since you helped my son, risked yourself to rescue him, I looked out for you and your twin. You made him smile, granted him access to the legacy of his father. Stood by his side without fail… How could I not watch over you when you were the only ones who brought my son joy just for the sake of it? For the sake of him?”
Fred relaxed again. A stalking spirit would have been disconcerting, but the gratitude of a mother, he could accept. It only left one question, though-
“Who is he?”
“Sweet Harry, of course,” Merope said with a gentle smile blossoming on her thin lips. The apparent love lit up her face, burning away all prominent imperfections while her disparate eyes glowed with warmth. Fred was thrown, if only for a moment, before her words registered.
“Harry Potter, son of James and Lily ?” Only after the words blurted out of his mouth, Fred noticed what he had said. How his incredulous tone could be taken badly by a possibly delusional woman. But thankfully Merope only sighed sadly and patted Fred’s hair a final time before she gestured for him to sit up.
“Lily was a formidable woman. But she left sweet Harry alone, even more permanently than I had to leave my poor Tom behind,” Merope’s dull eyes grew distant, lost in memory.
“When she died, she did so to save Harry- at the cost of her essence being burned away and my Tom almost vanishing. A trace of her soul lingered on Harry, a last layer of protection, until Voldemort used his blood to ascend. Now there is truly nothing left of Lily, just like there is almost nothing left of my Tom.” A tear ran down her face, its path repeatedly disturbed by the pockmarks on her sickly pale skin. But then she smiled again, a fragile little thing that made Fred’s heart ache.
“But sweet Harry held onto my Tom! Enough for me to be able to claim him as my own. Enough for me to be able and step up to fill the place that Lily vacated. I watched over him when no one else did. And I saw what you did for him, and more than anything else I wanted to thank you for being there when a mother couldn’t be.”
Something about her words was significant, and it made Fred’s head spin, his brain itch. But he let it go. Somehow, in this place, it didn’t feel important.
Time flew by and it stood still, it was hard to grasp.
Merope kept to his side, helped Fred to navigate his new state of being. Sometimes, other souls stopped by, faces that Fred vaguely recognised, but they vanished almost as soon as they appeared.
“They move on. One cannot linger if nothing tethers them to the living,” Merope had explained, her eyes mirroring the pain that Fred knew his own held whenever he felt the empty place in his soul that George’s presence used to fill.
When he first processed what happened to him, that he truly had died, the first thing Fred wanted to learn was how to watch like Merope did. Wanted to see his brother again. Maybe reach out somehow and assure him that it was alright. But Merope stopped him.
“Only a few moments have passed for the living. It’s too dangerous to see your brother now, his despair would damage your soul more than you could currently handle.”
It was the hardest thing, but eventually Fred agreed to wait. Merope tried to be helpful and gentle, explained to Fred about his choices of moving on or staying behind to wait for his loved ones, how some could even go back and linger as ghosts. And she explained about the dangers of losing his tether to the living but refusing to move on, of losing his sanity and becoming a malicious spirit.
The more time they spent together, the more Fred noticed how morose Merope was when she didn’t speak about Harry or her Tom, when she didn’t focus on helping him. It was oddly charming in a way he couldn’t explain, even though it made him sad.
She had at least been alone for longer than Harry was orphaned, for more than a decade. And with how agonizingly slow the time in the in-between seemed to pass… it must have felt like centuries to her. So Fred did what he was best at: He tried to make her laugh.
It took some trial and error - pranks weren’t possible and lighthearted humour didn’t seem to register to Merope - but when Fred reached deeply in his previously rarely used reservoir of morbid jokes, and a belllike laugh fell from her lips that seemed to surprise herself more than him, Fred’s heart swelled in pride over his accomplishment and a sudden warmth settled in his bones.
Afterlife, or whatever it was they shared, was good.
Naturally, it couldn’t last.
“HARRY!” Merope’s scream startled Fred out of his own lazy thoughts. He had been drifting in peaceful silence, braiding Merope’s surprisingly soft hair while she used a rare moment of aligned time with the mortal realm to watch over Harry, and to look out for George on Fred’s behest.
Around them, Hogwarts vanished. It blurred and stretched until it settled itself as… Kings Cross? What-
Merope sprung to her feet and sprinted to the shadow of a new soul forming itself but before she could reach it, she was suddenly flung back into Fred, crashing them both into a wall that hadn’t been there before.
Fred caught her around her waist when she tried to get up and run again, suspiciously eying the translucent sheen that was spreading between them and the middle of King’s Cross. He opened his mouth to speak, to ask what had happened but-
His heart ached. True enough, the soul that had crossed over into the in-between was no other than Harry who watched around curiously but didn’t seem to see or hear them. Instead, he took a few steps to the side and kneeled down to… pick up a bundle of some sorts?
“ Tom! ” Fred’s eyes darted down to Merope, her face distorted in anguish, half hidden behind her hands as she tried to hold back the sobs rocking through her body while her eyes were zoned in on the bundle cradled in Harry’s arms. That was her Tom, her baby? Before Fred could dwell on the implications, another soul formed out of nowhere. Dumbledore this time.
Other than Harry, though, he seemed to be aware of them. His eyes flickered over briefly, with furrowed brows, and the barrier between them abruptly thickened until Fred was barely able to make anything out. Then again, he didn’t have the time to watch either way, having his hands full with Merope, trashing in his hold and trying to reach through the barrier that strongly lit up all of Fred’s instincts for danger.
It felt like a moment, an eternity, until the barrier fell and they were alone again.
It felt like a moment, an eternity, until Merope had all but cried a river and was able to speak again. Meanwhile, Fred did everything he could think of to soothe her misery, petted her hair like she had done for him when he first arrived and whenever the longing for his brother became too much.
But he couldn’t help but worry when he noticed Merope slowly growing thin and willow-like, her sickly pale skin becoming even more white, almost translucent. When her warm dark eyes turned darker and darker until they were almost black.
He knew what was happening, Merope had warned him about giving in to his despair, after all. Had warned him about malicious spirits, of souls that lingered only to lose their sanity when they lost their tether to the living.
“He’s gone. My baby is gone.”
It was the first thing Merope had said in a long while, and Fred was concerned by the echoing quality of her voice. This place felt timeless, in a way, but Fred knew Merope’s time was running out fast.
“What happened?” Fred took her hollowing face carefully between his hands, forcing her to meet his eyes before she could lose herself even further.
“Sweet Harry was tricked. Now my Tom is gone, and Harry is trapped without anyone to watch over him.” Her shoulders shook violently. “Without Tom, I have no claim on Harry.”
The words didn’t make sense for Fred but even so, he felt bile rising and had to swallow it down. Although he couldn’t fully grasp what Merope was saying, the implications were clear. And they were frightening.
“What do you mean, Harry is trapped?” His thumb stroked Merope’s now grotesquely sharp cheekbones to keep her attention on him, to slow down her transformation. If she lost herself, there was no going back.
“When Voldemort came for Harry, he left Tom behind. Harry died but Tom stayed and together they lived. But now, Harry died and Tom is gone. There wasn’t enough left of him to cross over, he vanished like Lily.” Blood-red tears swelled from her blackening eyes. “But without Tom, Harry isn’t complete anymore. He had been here and Dumbledore made him choose to go back instead of moving on. It’s a choice that cannot be changed, he’s trapped there. And without Tom there too, he can’t truly live… and I can’t watch over him anymore.”
Merope’s voice became more echoing, her words barely coherent.
“I cannot move on, there is nothing for me. My sons are lost to me, I’m alone. I-”
“You’re not alone. You have me.”
Merope paused, as did Fred. He had no idea where the words were coming from, but they felt right either way.
“You still have a family. If you want to, that is.” He felt his aching soul reaching out to the impossible woman in front of him, felt her stretched-thin soul carefully responding, both soothing the other’s torn edges.
“We can watch together if you’d like. Watch over George,” Fred continued with a soft voice, mindful to keep the relief out of his voice when the darkness slowly faded from Merope’s soul, the warmth returned to her eyes and her body’s sharp edges softened to her previous human form.
“And, you know… Even without your Tom, Harry will always be my brother, too. We can watch out for him. Together.”