It's Like Losing Your Wand Arm
The celebrations in Diagon Alley are in full swing. Merry lights twinkle in all the shop windows, fireworks illuminate the sky, and even Knockturn Alley looks a little brighter. It is a beautiful night and every witch and wizard in the world is celebrating Harry Potter's final defeat of the Dark Lord. The ultimate triumph of Light over Dark.
Everyone is celebrating. Every shop is brightly lit and crowded, except for one. There are no lights on in Weasley's Wizard Wheezes. There are no customers crowding the aisles and oohing over the displays.
The shop is empty, save for one man. He sits on the floor in front of the door dealing Exploding Snap cards to himself and another, invisible player. When he has dealt the whole deck he looks up at the door expectantly, clearly waiting for someone. People pass by the door, shouting and laughing, but not the man he's looking for.
He sighs and collects the cards up again, shuffling halfheartedly.
There is a hole in him deeper and more painful than the one in the side of his head. A longer haircut and bad jokes could conceal a missing ear. But there is nothing he can do to disguise the pain of a missing twin.
There had once been two of them; two inseparable, identical brothers. A single two-headed entity that shared everything: every experience, every idea, every joke. They were luckier than their other brothers; their brothers could never understand how it felt to be so close to someone, to share the same mind, to so completely understand a person that you know exactly what they are going to say and do next.
He is unaccustomed to completing his own sentences.
Sometimes it was frustrating to be seen and addressed as one single, combined being. In those rare fits of independence George had believed that it might be nice to not be a twin. Might be nice to be just one person, just George instead of always being grouped together with Fred. The Twins.
George now realizes just how foolish he was, wishing that he didn't have a twin, because now there is really only him. And he has never felt so completely out of his depth. It's like flying along quite happily only to discover that your broom has been pulled from under you and there's nothing to keep you in the air anymore.
It's like losing your wand arm.
It used to be that everyone got the twins mixed up; their own mother couldn't tell them apart. But now, everyone knows exactly which one is George.
George doesn't talk much now; Fred isn't around to finish his sentences.
A/N- This little fic was written very quickly, and maybe it shows, but it wouldn't let me rest until it was written. It was a terrible shock, losing Fred. I never would have expected it.