George didn’t hear Voldemort’s words at first. The world felt muted, like he was underwater, every sound distorted and distant. But then the words broke through, sharp and merciless, cutting straight to his soul.
“Harry Potter is dead!”
The laughter that followed was a grotesque symphony, a mockery of everything good, but George didn’t hear it. His eyes were locked on the figure staggering forward. Hagrid. The man was weeping openly, his enormous shoulders shaking with every step.
And then George saw what Hagrid carried.
At first, his mind clung to denial. It couldn’t be Harry—it couldn’t be. The body was too small, too fragile, too still. Harry wasn’t small. He wasn’t still. Harry was light in motion, a force that never faltered, never stopped fighting.
But then he saw the hair, the broken glasses, the familiar face slack and pale.
It was Harry.
A sound tore from George’s throat, a wretched, animalistic cry that silenced even the Death Eaters. His legs gave out beneath him, and he hit the ground hard, but he barely felt it. All he felt was the cavernous emptiness where his heart had been.
“No,” he gasped, shaking his head so violently it hurt. Tears blurred his vision, but he couldn’t look away. “No, no, no! This isn’t real—it can’t be real!”
But it was.
Hagrid sank to his knees, still cradling Harry’s lifeless body like a child, and George’s breath shattered. He wanted to run to him, to pull Harry from those arms and shake him, to scream at him to wake up. But his body wouldn’t move. He was frozen in place, paralyzed by grief so raw it felt like his soul was being ripped apart.
“Harry…” George’s voice cracked, the name barely more than a whisper. “Please, no. Please, not you.”
He clutched at his chest, as if he could physically hold in the pieces of his breaking heart. Memories surged through him, relentless and cruel. Harry’s laughter, bright and unrestrained, echoing through the halls of the Burrow. The way he’d kissed George that first time, hesitant and shy, but full of so much love it had made George’s head spin. The quiet moments in the chaos of war, when Harry had leaned his head on George’s shoulder and whispered promises of a future—one they would build together, once the fighting was over.
“You promised me,” George whispered, his voice shaking, his nails digging into his palms. “You promised we’d make it through this. We were going to—we were going to get married. You said we’d be free, that we’d have time. We were supposed to have time!”
His sobs broke free, ragged and uncontrolled, tearing through him like a storm. His body shook with the force of them, and he crumpled forward, his forehead pressing into the dirt. “I can’t do this without you,” he choked out. “I can’t… Harry, I can’t.”
The world around him blurred, the faces of the crowd nothing more than shadows. But Harry’s face was clear, too clear. George squeezed his eyes shut, but it was still there, burned into his mind: the slackness of his jaw, the stillness of his chest, the undeniable absence of the spark that made Harry Harry.
It felt like half of his soul had been ripped away. A part of him was missing now, a gaping hole where Harry had been. How was he supposed to breathe when every breath hurt this much? How was he supposed to go on when the only future he wanted had just been taken from him?
He looked up again, his tear-streaked face twisted with grief, his voice trembling as he whispered, “I love you. I love you so much.”
The words hung in the air, raw and fragile. They were the truth of his heart, the last thing he could give to Harry now.
But Harry didn’t hear him.
And as Voldemort’s laughter rang out again, George’s tears fell harder, pooling into the earth. The world spun around him, too loud, too quiet, too bright, too dark. But nothing could touch him now.
Nothing could reach him.
Because his heart, his love, his Harry, was gone.
And George was lost.