Promises

For two young men who'd made a name for themselves as life's own comic relief, seeing their younger brother and sister laid up in hospital was sobering, to say the least. It had been strange enough to be back at Hogwarts; rather like an ill-advised encore after such a brilliant final number, but being in the hospital wing, with their 16 year old brother and 14 year old sister recovering from what were essentially battle wounds, was surreal.

"We must assume, dear brother, that this is war," Fred Weasley remarked to his twin, George, in hushed tones as they milled about the corridors after seeing Ron and Ginny.

"Quite," George replied. "To arms, then?"

"It would only seem natural."

"Fitting."

"Appropriate."

"And an all-around good show on our part, I suppose, given our namesakes."

Fred and George thought about their Uncle Fabian and Uncle Gideon a moment. Fierce warriors, the both of them; the kind of men they could look up to, and the kind of men who made their mother proud. They had battled together and fallen together, and as the twins looked up from their reverie, they chorused the two words that captured the solemnity of their decision to take up their wands against the forces of dark:

"Bagsy Dohlov!"

Two weeks later, Fred and George found themselves at Headquarters having just attended their first meeting of the Order of the Phoenix as members, rather than Extendable Ear-aided eavesdroppers. It was an uneventful meeting by Order standards, but the mood was tense, their fellow members were on edge, and Dumbledore was direct and no-nonsense. If they hadn't previously understood that "War" was not a euphemism and "killed" was not an exaggeration, they did at that point.

George pulled Fred aside from the post-meeting refreshments. His insides were in knots, and for the first time in his life, he was honestly afraid. He could neither laugh nor joke his way out of this, and it was a dreadfully uncomfortable feeling.

"Ho there, brother-of-mine. Quite the ponderous palaver, wouldn't you say?"

"Quite, dear brother," Fred replied.

"It has become increasingly clear to me that we might not make it out of these bellicose times alive. It would truly be a shame for the world to be deprived of our wondrous pranks and jinxes simply because we have shuffled off this mortal coil."

"Bought the farm"

"Ended our Earthly career"

"Joined the choir celestial"

"Gone past our sell-by date"

"Been stamped 'Return to Sender'"

"Yes, yes. Snuffed it. Died," George ended. "But the world should not suffer the ignominy of life without Wheezes. Should I cross over and you go on, dear brother. I want you to see our dream through. I want you to promise me that you will provide this poor, benighted world with the best Wheezes anyone has ever seen. Better even than Zonkos could dream up in their most fevered dreams."

"Zonkos. Ha! Amateurs"

"Hucksters"

"Charlatans"

"Manufacturers without merit"

"I shall, dear brother," Fred replied. "This I promise you." Fred then paused for a moment, and contemplated the scenario George illustrated. He imagined their workbench with only his cauldron bubbling and his wand waving. Fred could feel at that moment the palpable silence of a world without his twin. Tears began to leak from the corners of his eyes, which left both he and George in a stunned silence.

"My dear, dear brother," George said, wrapping Fred up in his arms to comfort him. George wanted to tell him that none of that would happen, that there would never be a time where the two of them were separated so permanently. But he loved and respected his brother too much to placate him with such empty platitudes. Rather, he simply held Fred for a moment, and placed a kiss on his brother's forehead.

"Should I go before you, dear brother," Fred said, after he'd composed himself, "whether in this war or 90 years hence, there's something you need to do for me, as well."

"Name it, and it shall be done."

"Take care of Angie. She means the world to me."

"Of course, brother. I promise."

The next two years were the shortest, happiest, scariest and most thrilling in Gred and Forge's lives. Weasleys' Wizarding Wheezes opened to acclaim and profit, surpassing their wildest hopes. The war waxed and waned, they were assigned occasional intelligence-gathering missions, and always came out unscathed and unseen. They fought admirably in the Battle of the Seven Potters, and Fred had never been more scared than when George returned minus one ear. They buoyed the spirits of the Light through Potterwatch, and on May Day 1998, when the call came in that Voldemort was attacking Hogwarts, there was not a moment of either hesitation or fear between them. Then Percy told a joke, there was an explosion, and George's world went tumbling down about him.

Angelina clung to George, and George to Angelina for support nearly immediately. She wrapped her arms around him as he and his extended family stood over Fred's strangely lifeless body. She stood with him at Fred's funeral, holding his hand, and George was grateful for the feel of it – feeling anything had become no small effort on his part. Angelina offered her wand in the reconstruction of Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes, and stood next to Ron and Verity as George faked his way through a bravado and humor-peppered grand re-opening speech. She pulled George out of the pubs at night and floated him up to his flat above the store when he was particularly legless. On his few sober nights, or when the grief became too much for one or the other or (usually) both of them, they gave each other their bodies for comfort. George, for his part, chose to ignore his dead brother's name when it was called out in the throes of passion, rationalizing that since Fred's picture on his nightstand was waving to them at the time, there was some humor there.

A wedding was hastily planned two years later, after a trip to St. Mungo's. Three weeks after the hospital visit, (as Molly didn't think it appropriate to have a wedding with a visibly pregnant bride) in the orchard only a few hundred yards from where Fred was buried, George and Angelina Weasley were married in a small, quiet ceremony, surrounded by family and a few friends. His brother Ron and Lee Jordan stood up for George, while Alicia Spinnet and Katie Bell stood up for the bride. Seven months after that, George and Angelina had Fred Weasley, II in their lives.

The birth of his son brought an end to the pub-crawling for George. And for a while, Angelina appreciated this. A drunk George could never have woken up at 3 to feed Fred. A drunk George would mean she could never have a night out with the girls. But the change in their relationship was noticeable almost as soon as a routine around the baby was formed. A sober George felt years of grief and pain that he'd been anaesthetizing himself against all at once. And when he reached out for Angelina more often, to bury himself in physical comfort, he was rebuffed more often than not. Because an Angelina with a Fred has precious little need or time for a George, drunk or sober. George, however, would get his comfort somewhere.

Verity Murton had had a crush on the Misters Weasley since she began work at WWW as a 16-year-old squib. There weren't many opportunities available for her in the Wizarding world, and when the Weasleys hired her, they had rescued her from a miserable existence, and allowed her to be a member of, in small part, a wondrous world that her Pureblood parents had made clear was closed to her because of her lack of magic. They were brash, self-confident to the point of cockiness, and simply adorable in their own gangly ginger sort of way. The Order had provided a safehouse for her (along with those horrible Muggle relations of Harry Potter) during the low point of the war, and the Weasley Clan had adopted her as one of their own shortly afterwards. All of this cemented the image in her mind of Fred and George Weasley in shining armor on a white horse picking her up and carrying her away. So one day, when she and a particularly emotionally needy George were packing Owl orders, sharing memories of Fred (I), and George leaned over to kiss her, she didn't stop him. And she floated home that evening with a silly grin plastered to her face.

It was just this once, they said. Then it was just until Roxanne was born. Then they tried to stop half a dozen times over the next decade. Verity was under no illusions that their relationship was anything more than what it was. But she also knew George needed her, and she needed that. There were no presents, no fancy dinners, just sweaty, grasping, utilitarian sex in the owl order warehouse.

Then, on September 2nd 2014, the day after Roxanne sent a note saying how happy she was to have been sorted Gryffindor, George came home to find a different note in place of Angelina's belongings.

"I know about Verity, but I don't blame you," the note began, and George crumpled it into a ball and collapsed on the sofa. He opened it again and read further. The kids would be staying with him, as Angelina couldn't bear to tear them apart from their cousins. They'd sit down for a conversation with them around Hallowe'en, and things would be as cordial and painless as they could manage.

"You're gone. You're all gone," it continued. "First Fred, then you, now the kids. I can't keep living like this. I can't lose anymore."

George pulled a bottle of Firewhiskey from the cupboard, uncorked it and drank it down. The burn in his esophagus and ear did nothing but magnify the guilt and shame he was feeling. Pictures of his brother around the sitting room waved at him mockingly, accusingly. Nearly unconscious, he apparated to the Burrow, minus his left eyebrow, and stumbled to his brother's grave.

"Hello, dear brother of mine," he slurred.

His response was the silence of the Devon night air. George fell to his knees in front of the headstone.

"I'm sorry," he continued. "I'm so sorry."