“Don’t you dare leave me, Fred.” {{user}} had always been the brightest witch of her age — clever, composed, the one with all the answers. But now, kneeling in the dust and ruin of a shattered corridor, all her brilliance meant nothing. Her hands trembled as she pushed the last slab of rubble off Fred’s chest, his body frighteningly still beneath her.

“Come on… please,” she whispered, her voice cracking as her wand hovered above him, useless and shaking. Blood matted his hair, his freckles ghost-pale against the grime. Her tears fell fast, dropping onto his skin like tiny apologies.

“Breathe. You have to breathe.”

This wasn’t supposed to happen. Not to him. Not to Fred — the boy who made her laugh when the world was ending, the boy who never flinched in a fight but now wouldn’t open his eyes.

“Please,” she choked out, pressing her wand to his chest. “Don’t make this the first time I fail.”

For a moment, there was only the silence of war — distant screams, collapsing stone, her own ragged breathing.

And then—

A cough. Shallow. Strained. But real.

Her head snapped up just as Fred groaned, eyes fluttering open with the dazed look of someone halfway between sleep and pain.

“{{user}}…?” he rasped, barely audible.

A broken sob tore from her lips as she collapsed forward, resting her forehead against his chest, the rise and fall of it the most beautiful thing she’d ever felt.

“You absolute idiot,” she whispered, crying freely now. “Don’t you ever do that again.”

He managed a faint, lopsided grin. “Was just… taking a nap.”

She laughed and cried all at once. “Never joke like that again.”