Written for HP Slash Luv's Trio Era competition round 2. This round was your character asks someone for help and my character was George Weasley. I used the prompts confuse, scare, breakdown, tear and stress.
Help
The stress was killing me. Like literally, ripping me to pieces like a measly sheet of year-old, mouldy, used parchment. With holes and all. Big holes.
I sighed and realised that was what I was. A horrible unfamiliar laugh ripped from my throat. I was old and used. No use to anybody anymore. Nobody wanted me or cared for me. Nobody wanted to be around me.
I gritted my teeth. This was the very reason I was doing what I was doing. I was pretty darned sure that it wouldn't help – not even a little bit, but it was worth the try. At least trying would mean that I hadn't let myself have a breakdown with the pain.
That awful laugh burst out again as I realised I was in the middle of a breakdown. That ship had sailed long ago. I had once been the joker, and now I was the joke. People stared and people whispered. The more heartless people sniggered and pointed.
I knew I needed help. My family had told me time and time again in the nicest way possible. I had began to scare them.
"George, dear, I'm worried," mum had said one morning over breakfast. "Have you considered maybe talking to a professional?"
"George, you only lost one ear. Don't act like you can't hear us telling you that your are losing it big time," Ron had said.
Of course I was losing it. I had lost Fred. My twin, my brother, my self. I couldn't hear their worlds and their worries, no, of course not. Why would I? Did I confuse them? Surely they would know- I was dead. When he died, I died with him.
We were always a two-part deal. Lose him, lose me. We were nothing without one another. And he was gone, and so was I.
I let a single tear run down my face. I was afraid to knock on the door. Afraid that by asking for help, I would do what I feared the most.
I feared forgetting him. I feared living without asking myself 'what would Fred say or do in this situation?'. I feared the unknown – something I had never feared before Fred was gone.
I feared the person I would become without him.
But I stared into my reflection in the rain-stained window and I sighed at the pitiful sight in front of me. All I could see was a shadow. A worthless, lifeless shadow of the man I once was, and the look in his eyes resembled Fred's so perfectly that I knew what I had to do.
I wanted help. No, I needed help.
I took one shaky step forwards and lifted my knuckle up, preparing to knock on the door.
'You can do it. You're a Gryffindor. Do it for me.'
It was like he was standing there right next to me. I nodded, feeling insane, to the voice inside my head. I knocked, holding my breath.
The door opened and the counsellor smiled warmly at me.
Every part of me screamed run away, but that one voice in my head – his voice was what made me speak those dreaded words that would change my life forever in a scary way.
"I need help."
xXx