A/N: So this is definitely not what I'm supposed to be doing with my time, but it showed up in my head and wouldn't go away. So anyways, here. My take on how the George/Angelina thing happened.
Hollow.
That's all he felt was hollow. Someone had clearly stepped into his insides and siphoned them out, lit them on fire, and scattered the remaining ashes on the wind. It couldn't even be classified as pain, because for it to be pain, he'd still have to feel something. At best, it might be classified as numb, the utter lack of sensory perception. He couldn't smell the flowers everyone had insisted on sending. He couldn't taste the Firewhiskey he shot back with alarming regularity. He couldn't hear his mother's insistence that he eat something, anything, without 60% alcohol content. He couldn't feel the sympathetic hugs people kept pressing on him whether he wanted them or not (short answer – he didn't). He could see, but not in colour. Everything was a varied shade of grey.
"Are you scared, Georgie?" Fred had asked.
"No," George had replied. Because had hadn't been. After all, they had the home field advantage, they had been preparing for the eventuality for months, they had Harry back from wherever the lot of them had been. They were Fred and George Weasley, and they would have each other's backs until the day they died, old, wrinkled, surrounded by a roving herd of grandkids and a joke shop empire that would make them rich beyond comprehension.
He'd fucked up. That's all it was. He had let him run off and hadn't gone after him because Percy of all people was with him. Why had he trusted Percy to make sure Fred was okay? Why had he thought that was a good idea?
Rather than answer himself, George just took another drink.
It had been a month and he wasn't entirely sure he'd been sober since Fred's funeral. Ron had prevented him from lighting the shop on fire, but only just.
"George, you have to move," Verity said, brushing at him with a broom.
"Why?" George slurred, staring up at her. He was sitting in the middle of the sales floor in the same robes he'd been wearing for the past week and reeked like a distillery, not that he could smell himself.
"Because the shop is opening in half an hour and I can't have you out here in that state," Verity informed him, hitting his leg with the bristles of the broom.
Verity had been shagging him. Not with any sort of regularity, but it had certainly been more than once. George couldn't fathom why she still seemed functional. He was a completely broken individual these days.
He staggered up the stairs to his flat, which stank like dead flowers and the awful French cologne Fred had insisted on wearing whenever he had a girl over. George knew that it smelled that way, and was distinctly glad he couldn't smell anything.
He fell face first onto his bed and pulled the pillow over his head. There was no point. That's all there was to it. No point at all. He could leave the shop to Ron and Ginny and have Verity run it. He was not necessary for the operation and would very happily jump head first into the grave next to his twin's if he didn't think his mother would resurrect him only to murder him for trying to kill himself and then resurrect him again so he couldn't do it.
He could almost hear Fred's voice in his head. "Are you mourning me, Georgie? Come on, you know any funeral celebrations regarding my death are supposed to be better than the best party we ever threw at Hogwarts. Also, shave. Shower. You don't even look like me anymore."
"That was the point," George wanted to croak, but he knew the voice he was hearing was only in his head. What kind of sick hell was it to look in the mirror and think you were seeing the face of your loved one, the one person you wanted back more than anyone else, only to realise you were staring at yourself? George had had enough of that, thank you very much, and had failed to shave since the battle. As a result, his rather impressive beard now obscured most of his face. It was something they had never done. Never once in twenty years had either of them allowed the unruly orange facial hair to take hold. The result was he no longer looked like Fred when he looked in the mirror.
"Come on, Georgie," the Fred in his head said. "Don't mourn my death, celebrate my life! Remember Umbridge's face when we flew out of the school? Or Peeves saluting us?"
George remembered, but he didn't want to because it made him feel like smiling.
"Remember when we gave Harry the Marauder's Map? Just one step closer to corrupting the kid," Fred continued. "Or, hey, what about when we nicked the Map from Filch's office? How did we even figure that out in the end?"
"The Map told us," George said. "It asked us. 'Are you up to no good?' 'Yes.' 'Do you solemnly swear it?' 'Yes.' 'Say it.' 'Say what? I solemnly swear that I'm up to no good?'"
He knew he was talking to himself, alone in his empty flat, but he figured he was okay with going mad if it meant he got to keep Fred for a while longer.
"Fred, do you remember when we turned Ron's teddy bear into a spider?" George asked, pulling the pillow off his head and sitting up, half-expecting his brother to be lounging on the bed next to him. He wasn't.
"Come on, Georgie," Fred said inside his head. "Shower. Shave. Go out. Stop being scared of your own damn face, you prat."
"I'm not scared of my face," George insisted.
"Then prove it," Fred goaded. George was sure that had Fred actually been there, they would've been having almost the exact same conversation.
Except that if Fred were there, there would be no need for the conversation in the first place.
George staggered to the bathroom and stared at himself in the mirror. His face in grayscale stared back. He didn't look like Fred anymore, it was true. But he didn't look like George either. He looked like a ghost had invaded his body, turned his skin to wax, and etched pain into his eyes.
George sighed and reached for his razor before he realised he was going to need scissors first. The thought of actually putting effort into it wasn't one that thrilled him, but he shuffled into the office/den/dining room and dug through his desk for a pair. He hadn't touched Fred's desk once, hadn't even looked at it. Fred had been in charge of implementation, rather than the ideas, and since George hadn't exactly come up with anything since May, there had been no need to bother Fred's workstation.
George returned to the bathroom and started cutting off the wiry hair that clung to his jaw stubbornly.
"Look!" Fred insisted, crowding George out of the bathroom mirror and pointing at the single red hair above his lip. "I'm a man now."
"Would you piss off? I'm trying to brush my teeth," Percy insisted from the corner he had been shunted to the moment the thirteen year old twins had burst into the bathroom.
"No we shan't, Percy the Perfect Prefect," George replied, investigating his own upper lip for signs of hair. A single scraggly and, if he was honest, rather gross, hair was lurking below his nose.
"You realise this means we can shave now," Fred said, eyes twinkling with enthusiasm. George's face matched his exactly.
"Hey Dad! Can we borrow your razor?" George bellowed down the stairs.
Arthur's response was less than enthusiastic, clearly dreading whatever mischief it was the twins could get up to if they were allowed razors.
George washed the memory away with the last of his beard, rubbing his pink and smooth face in confusion. His face felt wrong. Then he realised it also looked pink. Not grey. His hair was still grey, his eyes were still grey, his neck was still grey, the hole of what had once been his ear was still grey, but the skin on his face had returned to the standard Weasley pallor.
"Good job, Georgie," Fred commented. "How about a shower so you can smell less like Great Uncle Albert when he's having a good day?"
George grumbled and turned on the hot water, not bothering to adjust it. He rid himself of his disgusting clothes and stepped into the shower. It was hot enough to burn his skin, but he didn't touch the controls. He let the water burn him and realised quickly that he was out of soap. All he had was the fancy girl shampoo that Verity had left there the last time she and Fred had exchanged sweat and various other body fluids. The rather nauseating thought that they had probably shagged there in that very shower presented itself, and to his shock, George actually felt mildly disgusted. He had thrown up several times his body weight over the past month, but he had never actually felt the nausea. It was like he was coming back to life.
He used Verity's shampoo and stepped out of the shower smelling like lilacs and something called honeydew rather than a distillery. He dried himself off and found the cleanest clothes he owned.
"You could do with some food," Fred suggested. "Or coffee. Or both. And soap."
George grumbled at the fact Fred was right even though he was gone and stumbled down the stairs and out through the shop. It was open now and full of laughing children poking at toys. The entire shop was grey, even the WonderWitch display, which he knew to be violently pink under normal circumstances.
He sighed and walked out into the Alley. It was raining, which he had half expected since it was Britain and any given day of the year, but he didn't bother to pull up the hood on his jacket. Before too long, he was soaked through, effectively negating the point of drying off after his shower. He found his way to the closest café and ducked inside. The windows were covered in steam from the drying occupants and small bundles of people were piled up against the walls of the café, talking, laughing, drinking their tea and their coffee. They were all grey. Every single one of them.
Except.
Except there was a girl a few places ahead of him in the queue. Her hair was still grey, her clothes were grey, but where her hair was pulled up in a ponytail, he could see her chocolate skin and the red and gold phoenix tattooed on the back of her neck. He couldn't stop staring.
There was colour. Real, honest to Merlin colour.
"Why do you think I wanted you to get out of the damn flat so bad?" Fred asked. George could almost see him roll his eyes.
Ahead of him, the girl ordered her coffee and paid and stepped aside to wait for it.
George gaped at her. Her lips were painted dark red. Her eyes were a beautiful dark brown, framed with long black eyelashes. The longer he stared, the more her hair shifted from grey to dark brown.
"What can I get you, love?" the woman behind the counter asked.
It took George a full minute to realise she was talking to him. The woman glanced between George and the girl in colour with a knowing smirk.
"It's okay, love, everyone's got a thing for Quidditch players," she said. "Get her floo address. And coffee."
"Erm…right," George said. "Quidditch players?"
The woman raised her eyebrow like he couldn't be serious. "I know the War did things to people, but it should never impede the purchase of the British and Irish League Swimsuit Calendar," the woman said. She nodded at the girl in colour. "That would be Miss October, Angelina Johnson of the Montrose Magpies."
George choked on his tongue.
He had failed to recognise one of his best friends from school.
"That's sad, mate," Fred commented.
George ordered a coffee and edged through the crowd towards Angelina, who was in colour. He couldn't get over the fact.
"George," she said when he ran into her. She steadied him by putting her hands on the tops of his arms and stared into his eyes. "I heard that you haven't left your flat since…"
"I haven't really," George replied, hoping she wasn't going to let go of him. He could actually feel her hands and didn't want it to end.
"Well, it's good to see you out," she said with a small smile, letting go of his arms. She grabbed her coffee and waited next to him expectantly. He wasn't sure what she was waiting for until she said, "Isn't that your coffee?"
He glanced at the cup on the pick-up counter and realised it was, in fact, his coffee. He grabbed it and resumed staring at Angelina.
"Do you want to sit down?" she asked.
He glanced around at the crowded café. "No," he said. "There are a few too many people here for my tastes."
"What ever happened to the George Weasley who was the life of the party?" Angelina asked.
George shrugged one shoulder and tried to come up with a solution to the problem. He desperately wanted to be near Angelina, if only because she was in colour and he could feel her hands, and smell her rich vanilla and jasmine perfume.
"I'd really like to catch up with you, if that's okay," he said, the words tasting funny in his mouth. He hadn't voluntarily sought company in a month.
"Sure," Angelina said. "But if not here then where? Your flat's just around the corner, isn't it?"
"Yeah," George agreed, following her outside into the rain.
"I would ask how you've been, but I can't imagine that being a good start to a conversation just now," she said.
"I like your tattoo," George replied.
Angelina's hand drifted to the back of her neck and she smiled softly. "Thanks," she said. "I got it in December."
"Why a phoenix?" George asked.
Angelina shrugged. "Sort of as a reminder that sometimes good things can come from the ashes," she said.
George nodded and led the way through the shop to the stairs. Angelina followed him into the flat and thankfully didn't comment about the mess. She calmly removed a cat from the sofa and sat down, folding her leg under her. George stared at the cat in confusion, as he couldn't remember having a cat. It seemed right at home however and instead curled up on his desk chair. He shrugged it off and sat at the opposite end of the sofa from Angelina, coffee in hand.
"You play Quidditch," he said, drinking in the sharp contrast of her colours to his grey apartment.
"Yeah," she agreed. "I got moved up from reserve in March. I'm just glad I'm not captain anymore. That was a nightmare."
"You were a great captain," George said.
"For the whole entire game you played on my team before you got yourself banned?" Angelina asked, looking mildly amused.
"I just don't understand why it was so bloody important that you had to get yourselves banned from Quidditch for life!" Angelina shouted, glaring daggers at the twins while they lounged on a sofa in the common room.
"Any git insults your mother, and we promise we'll beat him up the same we did Malfoy," Fred promised.
"Great," Angelina said. "That still leaves me short two Beaters."
"Well, we beat something," George replied with an easy shrug.
Angelina groaned in exasperation and flopped onto the sofa opposite them. Instantaneously, they jumped up and sat on either side of her with their arms around her shoulders.
"Come on, Angie," Fred coaxed.
"Don't be mad at us," George continued. "We're us!"
Angelina groaned and hid her face in her hands. "You know, just one day, I'd like to actually stay mad at the two of you."
Angelina was still talking about something. George couldn't really tell what, but it sounded like it involved Quidditch and jobs and working and things George hadn't done since May.
"The War fucked everyone up, George," she said suddenly. "We're all so much more broken than we were before. I don't know that Alicia's gone a night without nightmares, and Katie and Oliver ran off to the continent and no one's heard from them since. Lee's about the only functional one left."
"You seem functional," George replied.
"Thanks," she said, looking sad. "I'm not though. Just sort of…numb, you know?"
George did know. He knew exactly.
"Like all the colour's gone and isn't coming back," she continued. "Well, mostly. I can see you properly, but that's sort of a first-"
She didn't manage to finish her sentence because George kissed her. If it had surprised her, it shocked the hell out of him.
There weren't sparks. An instant burning desire didn't spring up. But he could feel her. The warmth of her lips and the wetness of her tongue. He could smell her vanilla perfume and taste the coffee in her mouth.
They broke apart and he searched her face for some indication that what he had just done was okay, and that maybe he was allowed to repeat his actions. He got his answer when she kissed him, her hands on the tops of his arms again, holding him tightly like she was afraid he was going to disappear.
She trailed her hands down his arms and grasped his hands in hers before she stood up and pulled him off the sofa. George didn't protest – didn't want to protest – as she steered him into his bedroom and kept kissing him.
It was the need to touch someone, to actually feel them, that drove him. He hadn't even realised he missed human contact until he got it back. He had a sense she was in it for the same reasons because a while later as they lay there, breathing heavily, her head on his chest, his arms tight around her, neither of them made any pretence of moving.
In the morning she left, but only because she had to go to practice. George, surprising himself and Verity, dressed himself in his magenta work robes and presented himself in the shop shortly after Angelina left.
"Good job, Georgie," Fred said inside his head.
OOooOOooOOooOO
"George Weasley, you live in squalor," Angelina informed him in August. She had become an almost immediate fixture in his life, despite the fact they hadn't slept together since the day they re-met in June.
The colour hadn't come back entirely yet, but the brightest ones shown through. His hair, his work robes, the WonderWitch display which he was sorely tempted to remove because it was so bright in contrast to everything else grey around it that it hurt to look at.
He could feel his mother's hugs now, and got a sense of flavour when he ate the casseroles and pasta bakes she left at his flat.
"I'm sorry," George replied, shuffling some of the papers off his desk and pretending it was a dining table. The actual dining table was buried four deep in empty Skiving Snackboxes and books denoting the legal codes for patents.
The cat was still there, and George had taken to feeding it out of curiosity. Angelina had wanted to call it Gryffin, but George had insisted on calling it Phoenix.
"We're going to clean," Angelina announced, raising her eyebrow at him in a challenge, daring him to contradict her.
"We are?" George asked. He glanced at the cartons of take-out Chinese food sitting on his desk. "Can we eat first?"
Angelina sighed and made a show of rolling her eyes, but nodded all the same, accepting the chow mien he offered her.
"So why are we going to clean?" he asked.
Angelina looked pointedly around the disgusting flat. "Because I will stop being your friend if this place isn't at least slightly habitable by someone other than you or Phoenix."
The cat purred happily from where it was curled up in an empty pasta bowl in the shambles passing for a kitchen.
"At least I shave now," George replied. "And shower on a regular basis."
"Well that's a relief," Angelina said, shaking her head at him.
They finished their food and stared around at the potentially insurmountable task in front of them.
"I wish I knew Mum's cleaning spells," George said.
"Wait, your mother has seen this place and it still looks like this?" Angelina asked incredulously.
"She gave up on trying to remedy the messes we made when we were sixteen," George explained. "She hates it, but she lets it alone."
Angelina shook her head in dismay and flicked her wand at the kitchen. The sink turned on and some of the dishes made a mad scramble for the sponge. Phoenix jumped out of the pasta dish with a disgruntled hiss as it dropped into the sink.
"Unfortunately, that's the only cleaning spell I know," Angelina said.
"Well, it helps," George replied, levitating the empty boxes off the table and vanishing them. Angelina smiled at him and started stacking the books into the bookshelf that took up most of the wall. They had never been studious exactly, but over the years the twins had managed to acquire several books that they had even enjoyed reading. Fred had been rather fond of a Muggle series called the Lord of the Rings, but George had never been able to get into it. Besides the fact the magic was all wrong, the main character had reminded him a bit too much of Harry and it creeped him out.
Most of the shelf was full of unfinished projects and ideas that would now never be finished because they had been Fred's.
"George," Angelina called, sounding like she was about to burst out laughing.
George turned to see Phoenix stalking a rogue pygmy puff across the floor of the apartment. Completely unaware, the pygmy puff would roll sideways squeaking whenever Phoenix would pounce and it would get away unharmed.
They went on like this for a while, George and Angelina watching the two with amused expressions on their faces, until finally Angelina took pity on the purple puff and picked it up. It purred and nestled against her chest. Angelina looked up at George and smiled brightly at him. It was like a knife to the heart. He managed to keep himself from gasping aloud, but he was suddenly not numb. The colour was still gone from everything in the apartment besides Angelina and the pygmy puff, but he could feel his heart beating angrily against his ribs, and it hurt. Part of the reason it hurt, he reasoned, was because the numbness had kept him from realising he had been falling in love with her. Now he could feel it all. The love, the pain, the loss, the desperate longing.
Did he even get to fall in love now that Fred was gone? He wasn't a real person, he was only half of something, so shouldn't that mean he didn't get to fall in love?
It took them until three in the morning to finish cleaning the flat. When they finished, Angelina fell onto the sofa in exhaustion. Phoenix jumped onto her stomach and curled up in a ball, purring.
"Do you mind if I stay here tonight?" Angelina asked, her eyes fluttering shut.
"No," George managed to reply. Angelina smiled and drifted to sleep almost instantly. George returned to his room and tried to sleep, but it didn't work.
His brain kept reminding him that she was just there, just thirty feet down the hall.
"You get to be happy, Georgie," Fred's voice said. "You don't really think I want you to just wallow in misery, do you?"
"But how am I supposed to be happy if you're gone?" George asked.
Fred didn't reply, and George wasn't sure he ever would.
OOooOOooOOooOO
"You've got to come to my first game," Angelina enthused, gently tossing the pygmy puff on to the sofa. It landed next to Phoenix, who opened one green eye, reached out a paw, and pulled the puff closer. Phoenix curled around the trembling puff and went back to sleep, purring.
"Of course," George replied, clearing the sketch of the latest idea off his desk. He pinned it to the wall, and glanced over at Fred's still messy desk. In their cleaning spree two months prior, they hadn't touched Fred's desk or his room. "What's the date?"
"Wednesday," Angelina said, almost bouncing with excitement.
"But the date," George repeated.
"I don't remember," she said. "Don't you have a calendar?"
"Erm…"
He dug through the drawers of his desk for a calendar and eventually found the British and Irish League Swimsuit Calendar. He flipped through it to October and was greeted with a picture of Angelina in a scarlet bikini holding a Quaffle.
"I have something that I think might be a calendar, but I can't be sure because it's very challenging to look beyond the picture," he said, supressing a smile.
Angelina rolled her eyes and snatched it out of his hands. Then she paused and blushed bright red.
"I never meant to pose for that," she mumbled, looking embarrassed. George burst out laughing.
She dropped the calendar in shock. "You just – I haven't heard you laugh since-"
Wondering at his own sanity, George shrugged with a long-lost twinkle in his eye. "You've always brought out the best in me, Angie. Especially with that picture. It's quite a lovely picture. I was thinking of having it framed, maybe blown up to life size and put it in the hallway-"
She swatted him in the arm with the calendar and he snickered.
"The game is on the twenty-first," she said. "I'll have them send round tickets."
She started for the door.
"Hey Angie," George called after her. "Isn't that your birthday?"
"Yeah, it is," she agreed. "It's why we're going to win."
She grinned at him and disappeared out the door.
They did win, as it turned out. They won by a lot and much of it was due to their youngest Chaser, one Angelina Johnson. After the game, George talked his way into the changing rooms with the highly convincing argument of "I'm George Weasley."
Angelina grabbed him in a bear hug the moment she saw him and squeezed him tightly.
"We won!" she shouted.
"I know! I saw!" George shouted back.
"Good game, Johnson," one of her team mates said from nearby. "Who's your friend?"
"George Weasley," George replied, shaking his hand.
"No shit?" the guy asked. "No wonder she keeps turning me down."
George blinked. It hadn't occurred to him that someone else might ask Angelina out before he got around to it. A snarling monster of jealousy coiled around his stomach and growled darkly in the direction of Angelina's team mate.
"Honestly, Sean," Angelina replied, rolling her eyes. "There's a huge policy against inter-team fraternization."
"I know, but still," Sean said, giving George a scoping look. George narrowed his eyes and waited while Angelina grabbed her things.
"Are we going out for your birthday, Angie?" one of the girls on the team asked, bouncing into the changing room with too much energy for having just won a Quidditch match.
"Erm…" Angelina replied, glancing at George. They had made plans to go out for food that would eventually culminate in a Mrs Weasley-made cake in George's flat.
"Sure," George said, smiling at Angelina. She glanced at him in confusion.
"You don't mind?" she asked.
"As long as you don't leave me here all by my onesie, then not at all," George replied.
The whole team turned out for Angelina's birthday and crowded into a small pub quite happily. By two in the morning, they were all royally smashed, even George, who hadn't touched alcohol since Angelina had reappeared in his life.
"How are you getting home, Angie?" one of the players asked.
"George lives just down the Alley," she replied. "I'll just crash at his flat."
"Good," George said, draping his arm around her shoulders. She wrapped her arm around his waist and they stumbled out of the pub together and into Diagon Alley. "Happy birthday."
"Thanks," Angelina replied, grinning up at him.
"You know for the longest time, you were the only colour I could see," he said, wondering what he was saying.
"Sorry?" Angelina asked
"Everything was in black and white like an old Muggle film, except for you," George continued. "And I would probably never have got around to telling you this except that I'm rather pissed."
"I hadn't noticed," she replied, much quieter than she had been.
"And now I can't really imagine my life without you, but I haven't been able to tell you because I didn't want to ruin anything," he continued. Why couldn't he stop talking? The burning taste of the Firewhiskey in his mouth reminded him of exactly why he couldn't be quiet. Whoever first coined the phrase that Gryffindor courage came out of a bottle called "Firewhiskey" was a smug, smarmy, and unnecessarily right bastard.
"George," Angelina said softly, steering him up the stairs to his flat. He was incapable of deciphering her tone and instead kissed her.
Unlike the previous time he had done so, there were sparks. He could see fireworks exploding behind his eyes and a warm burning sensation that started in the middle of his chest and quickly spread everywhere. Angelina wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him back with the same desperation. They stumbled into George's bedroom, clothes flying off and landing in piles around the flat. Fingers traced patterns in newly exposed skin and tangled themselves in hair. Lips pressed desperately against necks and shoulders and breasts. Hands touched everything they could reach and held each other close. Breath escaped in gasps and moans and hearts beat erratically against their ribbed cages.
They woke up tangled in the bed sheets, stuck together by dried sweat. Angelina yawned and closed her hand around George's arm. George waited for the hangover to hit him, but it didn't. He kissed the top of her head softly and ran his hand along her back. She smiled against his chest without opening her eyes.
"You know I'd kind of like you to make a habit of that," she mumbled.
"Of what?" he asked, kissing her temple.
"I'm sort of in love with you," she mumbled, her lips brushing over the skin on his chest.
George's heart leapt. "Good," he said. "Because I'm sort of in love with you, too."
"Good," Angelina echoed.
George smiled and let his eyes fall shut again, holding Angelina close.
In the back of his head, he could almost hear Fred whisper, "Good job, Georgie."
Review!
Written in loving memory of Fred Weasley, 1 April 1978 - 2 May 1998.