George Weasley wanted to hate Harry Potter. It was midway through the summer after the Battle of Hogwarts and the heat was starting to stifle him. He spent long afternoons laying in a hammock under the trees off a ways from the Burrow, trying to figure out how to survive in a world where someone named Fred Weasley did not exist. It was like a critical part of his identity had been removed, who was George with the words "Fred and" to go before his name? The bond between twins was something that anyone who was not a twin could not understand. Perhaps someone with a very close sibling, perhaps someone who knew what it was like to share a life with another for 19 years... maybe they could come a little close to understanding.
He wouldn't admit it to the rest of his family but the two of them always knew that the other was the most important person in their lives, that the death of his twin would be the most devastating thing to happen, worse than the loss of parent, girlfriend, or sibling. While some twins purposely expanded on their differences, worked hard to become their own separate individuals, Fred and George had embraced their identical existence. Not only embraced it, but took advantage of it. Who better to critique your ideas than someone with a brain identical to yours, someone whose brain knows exactly what you're thinking and understands you perfectly but is not quite inside your head and is there always able to examine your actions from an outside perspective? This was an advantage that he and Fred were both well aware of, they couldn't imagine having to slog through life alone without a clone of your brain to bounce inventions, jokes, and homework papers off. In fact, George still caught himself thinking and speaking 'we' instead of 'I'.
Was it possible to feel more alone? Was this how normal people always felt? Always alone in your mind, the only one who existed in your head, only ever able to touch others through external communication...
George wanted to hate Harry, the boy who lived, the boy who defeated the dark lord, the boy who was for a short period of time, the Master of Death. Harry who had possessed the Ressurection Stone.
The stone that had let Harry find a few last words for the loved ones in his life that had passed away, loved ones he had hardly known. Loved ones that he hadn't spent 19 years being close to.
George sighed and once again moved his hand up to the empty hole where his ear had used to be feeling the frustration burn through him; all he really wanted was a chance to say goodbye.
"You know, he's not gone, not really," Luna's voice rose up quietly, a faint tinkling that almost blended in with the whisper of the wind through the leaves.
"How did you know I was thinking of him?" George asked turning his head to look at the girl who was sitting with her knees pulled up to her chest as she leaned back against a tree a short distance away from the hammock.
"You always touch your ear when you're feeling his loss," Luna explained simply.
"I was thinking of Harry Potter," George told her, furrowing his eyebrows and letting his hand drop to touch the ground beneath the hammock.
"He's not gone the way your ear is," Luna pressed tucking a strand of her whispy blonde hair back behind an ear.
George huffed, trying to decide whether or not to be annoyed by her presence. They'd taken to bumping into each other in this stretch of woods that ran between their houses. He'd never realized that their wizarding neighbors were quite that close. Then again he'd never really known Luna until that final battle.
"I just wish Harry would have thought that maybe there were other people who lost something, other people who could have benefitted from that stone," George said, "I wouldn't have lost myself to it, all I wanted was to say goodbye."
"Mmm," Luna agreed half-heartedly.
"I just want to say good-bye!" George had yelled, half drunk from the fire whiskey shots he'd shared with Ginny and his brothers during the festivities that lasted a full day, beginning the dawn after Voldemort's death and proceeding all through the night until everyone one by one lost themselves to sleep in the woods and meadows surrounding Hogwarts.
Harry had looked at him awkwardly and sympathetically and George felt wretched at himself for being so drunk, for losing it like this to the hero, Harry Potter, who didn't even have the sympathy to be drunk as well.
"Just tell me where it is! TELL ME!" he'd cried out, pleaded, collapsing to his knees onto the ground before Harry. Hermione and Ginny had been sitting on the log behind Harry, but their glasses of wine were untouched as they'd watched, unspeaking. Perhaps they hadn't known how to react.
George had managed to celebrate at first, he'd spent the first night crying with his family wrapped around him, with his parents and the rest of his siblings, with the rest of the students and families of Britain as they'd one by one buried the dead and put them to rest alongside Dumbledore. The next morning they'd all pulled themselves together and lost themselves in the celebrations, the House Elves were providing an endless supply of wines and Firewhiskey, plates of fruit, crackers, and cheese floated about, and a group of fifth years that had apparently started a band had summoned their instruments and struck up some lively renaissance jigs. But then, with the sun setting, with the wine swirling his thoughts the only thing he could feel was the loss of his twin brother, who should have been celebrating by his side.
"I'm sorry," Harry kept saying, "It wasn't mine to keep, I'm sorry. I obliviated my memory of its location to stop anyone from finding it."
"Well think harder!" George's words had become irrational as the tears coursed down his cheeks, blinding him, and finally someone had pulled him away and cast a light sleeping spell on him, letting him sink against the ground into the bed of moss that he had woken up in the following morning.
"Sometimes if you go back to the same spot where you obliviated yourself, you can restore the memories," Luna was saying, "But regardless, people aren't like limbs or ears... they live on through others. And I know that Fred exists in you now, how can he not? And he wouldn't want to laze around for the rest of his life..."
"What?" George sat upright to look at the younger girl.
"He'd want to keep following his dreams, he wouldn't want to keep hurting. Your memories of him must be so close to a complete set of all of his memories that I'm sure he's with you right now," Luna held out her hands, tracing the shape of a person. She squinted her eyes, "In fact I'm sure I can see two auras around you, even right now."
"No, about oblivation," George said, swinging his feet over the edge of the hammock.
"Oh, when you lose a memory it doesn't just disappear, most times it floats around," Luna explained, "Like a bit of dust on the wind, you can catch them on occasion. Haven't you ever had your thoughts interrupted by an odd bit of information that pops into your head, or an odd sense that you've seen something before?"
"Er, yeah," George admitted.
"Those are memories that people have left just drift out their ears. People do that quite a lot actually," Luna told him earnestly, "Harry's memories might still be drifting around in the woods somewhere."
A/N: So for this chapter the main characters are George and Luna but I'll update the story info as the chapters go along. Each is going to be written from a new character's POV. Full list includes George, Luna, Harry, Ron, Hermione, Ginny, Malfoy, and Neville. Somehow almost everyone ends being gay... it just seemed to fit the storyline, though I'm not usually one to write 'everyone is gay' HP fics.