George lay awake in his bed, listening to the sounds of outside silence press down on his ears in a sickening ring. The room was so quiet, so dark, so...dead. There he lay, alone and tucked under the covers, the bed beside his completely made and untouched for the last six years. George frowned at the memories he still held to so dearly from exactly six years ago this very night, the night poor Fred had met his end. It hit him now and again in the last few years, exactly how heavy the loss of his brother had been to him. Fred had been George's best friend since the day he was born, always there to hear his tragic tales of dating woe, always around to giggle at the scent of a dung-bomb driving people out of houses and shops, always everything to him no one else could be. The had been inseparable their entire lives from birth to their final year at Hogwarts. Secretly, he blamed himself for all of it. It was the first time they had been separated, TRULY separated, in their lives. George had insisted on going with dad, fearing the ramparts would be too dangerous for their elderly father, and sent Fred with Percy. Percy was a more than capable wizard, Fred would be perfectly safe...right? Months after the Battle for Hogwarts George lay awake, second-guessing his instinctive decision and hating himself more and more for it. He glanced towards his night stand and reached for his wand, hesitating when he remembered it was not there and trading the wand for a pound of his fist on the aged maplewood surface. The table flipped, spilling a lantern and a number of matches on the cracked hardwood floor.
Mum had taken the wand when she found him atoning for is wrongs in his own flesh, the wand tip had served as his knife well enough. He lifted a pale arm into the glare of the moonlight through the slit window set horizontally over the two headboards resting leisurely against the wall and examined the various marring. Each line grinned back at him in a sadistic smile of raised, pinkish flesh that had never properly healed. He had been insistent on leaving the marks "to remind himself how stupid it was" when Ginny approached him with a bottle of Rejuvenation Potion, rolling his sleeve back down over his bony arm. George had played his cards right when the interrogation happened, fed them every excuse and remorseful word they wished to hear, and was allowed his regular freedoms: minus his wand. Molly kept that in a locked drawer in the master bedroom, giving it to him only when she needed him to help her with something. The supervision might as well have been left to dementors given the way Harry and Ron had hovered over him as he shot streamers and sculpted tiny cakes in preparation for the union of dear Ginny and the Boy Who Lived. By the way, the wedding was fantastic. Everyone had been there, Charlie from Romania with his girlfriend Lena, Bill and Fleur with their baby Victoire, Percy and his "co-worker" Jasmine, Ron and his darling Hermione, Auntie Muriel who refused to pass on, Dean, Seamus, Lee, Luna, and Neville among hundreds and hundreds of others. The carefully chosen rose garden deep in the heart of Wales had just barely managed to swell itself up large enough to hold the mammoth amount of people, both invited and uninvited alike.
He felt himself lose his cool then, a few tears sliding down his cheeks as he turned his head and imagined his brother laying sound asleep at this very moment. He imagined waking him up on the day of the wedding, shoving an exploding poppy into his jacket collar and laughing, standing next to him as Ginny walked up the aisle looking nothing short of angelic in her long, flowing white dress with the glittering goblin-made tiara resting on her head. George rolled onto his stomach and shoved his face into his pillow, shuddering violently with sobs as he realized it was never real.
The door creaked open, a harsh ray of sunlight slicing into the dusty midday shadow creeping through that same slit window. Someone trod on the squeakiest floorboards as loud as they could, no effort to respect the docile peace of the sleeping redhead. George grabbed his second pillow and slammed it pointedly over his good ear, letting out an irritated groan. A hand grabbed the pillow and ripped it from his grasp, tossing it into a shadowy corner with a loud puff, "Wake up." Charlie's voice demanded. George didn't move. Charlie got to his feet and gripped the end of the deep blue blanket emblazoned with a crescent moon, "George, I swear I'll do it if you don't get the hell out of bed right now." Another groan answered. Charlie pulled. George yelled.
"Hey! I said I was getting up!" George shouted, curling up into a ball and glaring down at his second-to-oldest brother, "What on earth could you want at this hour of the bloody morning? No respect." He was impatient and irritable, his grouchy insomniac self getting the better of his groggy nature.
"Mum, Dad, the rest of the family, and myself are tired of watching you lounge around and mope. You need to get out into the wizarding world and do something already," Charlie lifted a hand to cut off any interjection that could have been made, "Ron's doing the Auror thing, Bill's got Gringott's, Percy has the Department of Magical Security, Dad has his Muggle Studies, I'm researching dragons, and you're ruddy well laying in bed being a bump on a log." George retained his irritable scowl, reaching for the pillow underneath his head and slamming it over his good ear. No use, that pillow was tossed, too, " I'll remove these pajamas even if it's with my dying breath, get out of bed and get downstairs. I'm giving you ten minutes and I don't care if you're clean."
George watched Charlie's back as he left the room, leaving no more room for argument. The door creaked and swung shut being him, footsteps disappearing downstairs into the kitchen where he assumed his parents lay in wait. He muttered ungratefully at the rude awakening he had been given, climbing out of bed and storming over to the aging dresser. He pulled a white undershirt on over his head, dragging on a pair of worn-in whitewashed jeans and a wrinkled white and green striped overshirt he had recovered from a pile of clothing stuffed into the wardrobe in the corner. The buttons didn't quite match up, but he didn't seem to care when he sat back on the bed and angrily shoved his feet into a pair of clean white socks. His heart stopped when he realized the one on the left had an "F" on it, not a "G". George went on.
He made his way downstairs and hesitated in the doorway of the kitchen. Ron and Hermione had been in the house for a few days, popping in to visit, and now sat around the long family table with Mum and Dad, Charlie and the stunning Lena, and Percy himself. The conversation died instantly and everyone looked up to smile at him cheerily in a silent united "Good Morning" manner. George rewarded them with a half-hearted wave and walked towards the coffee pot that had already lifted itself in the air and begun pouring him a glass. Eggs leaped from a warm pan on the stove, canadian-style bacon crawled up to nest beside the scrambled mess. The breakfast plate lay in wait until George scooped it up and made a seat for himself at the end of the row, right beside Ron, "Good morning everyone." He didn't move his eyes from his plate as he forcibly shoveled food into his mouth, the occasional swig of coffee refreshing him for more. Breakfast never seemed to last long enough, especially with several pairs of eyes watching you through the whole event.
It was Hermione who spoke first, a nice release from the pressure of the aching morning tension, "So Charlie, tell us again where you and Lena are off to next?" she was speaking strangely, louder than normal and more direct. Hermione was never this direct. Ron patted her leg gently, shooting her a winning grin that she returned cheerfully. George's eyes furrowed and he sipped the rest of his coffee disdainfully, determined to ignore the conversation.
"We're off to Croatia next, there is a cave housing a next of new-born Greenlandish Icetails buried in one of the glaciers to the west. They're sending a team of researchers over there for Departments all over the world. Icetails were rumored to be rare to extinct, but some old scientist fell through the snow and discovered the nest of those little buggers. Mum had been gone before they were born, dunno what happened to her." Charlie beamed at his whole family and craned over towards George, "Doesn't that sound incredible, Georgey?"
Ah yes, he had discovered their horribly concealed plan, "Not really," he retorted curtly," don't much care for dragons." He didn't really think this was the end of it.
"Well," Molly Weasley piped up, "isn't that just too bad." She wasn't trying to hide the irritation in her voice, "I feel so horrible to be the one to tell you, Ungrateful George," not trying to hide the sarcasm either, "but you, Charlie, and Lena are going to go see these dragons you have no interest in. I want you out of the house. You're making it hard on the rest of us with your negative attitude."
Selfishly, he considered yelling at her, reminding her it was his twin who died that day, his best friend he had lost. She hardly even knew him an inch as well as George had. He tightened his grip on the cup handle, the biting pain on the flat edge dragged him back to reason. Fred had been as much her son as he had his brother. It must have been just as difficult to look down on the pale, vacant face of someone you had bore of your own flesh and blood and know they would never look back at you again. He held his peace and sighed, "I'm twenty-five years old, mum. I can make my own decisions."
"Not if you decide to live in this house, George Weasley, I will simply not have this a moment longer." she grabbed the cup from his hand and with a wave of her wand set to work on the dishes. Mrs. Weasley's "That-was-that" attitude filled the air with another uncomfortable quiet, causing the remaining guests to shift uncomfortable and look to each other for some sort of silent comfort from the horrible situation they had put themselves in.
Mr. Weasley cleared his throat to break the awkward feeling that had rested to accustomed on their shoulders once again, "Well that was indeed a lovely breakfast, indeed. Thank you, Mollsey." he grinned at her encouragingly, she merely shot him a look and kept cleaning dishes, "I'm off to gnome the garden, anyone care to join me?"
George thought about raising his hand urgently, dying to remove himself from the feeling of deliberate awkwardness, when Charlie spoke up for him and crushed his dreams of escape, "Lena and I have to help George pack, but I'm sure Ron and Percy are more than willing to-"
"Oops, look at the time. I'll be late for work!" Percy half leaped from the table and ran for the chimney, vanishing in a puff of green flames. Ron opened his mouth to say something to similar effect, silenced by Hermione's tug on his hand as she volunteered him again for the job. She excused herself with some knitting appointment with Mrs. Weasley she had making a jumper for the little bulge under her robes that was starting to grow by the day. George was silent, the look on his face betrayed him and Molly nudged him roughly between the shoulders.
She leaned over and whispered harshly in his ear, "You get up there and get packed."
George swatted her away as if she were a fruit fly, jerking out of his chair. Charlie and Lena followed quickly as he marched himself upstairs, a suitcase was already open and waiting on his bed, his want laid neatly inside of it. So this was it, huh, they were kicking him off to Croatia to spend a summer staring at dragons. He could think of nothing in the world more exciting, nothing at all, as he resisted the urge to toss himself down the rickety flight of aging stairs and claim injury.