disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter nor Mumford & Sons.
notes: I'm not exactly sure how I feel about this piece. It's my first try writing any of this characters, so, yeah. For the Fanfiction Idol Competition! which I now question joining because I honestly have no idea what made me join in the first place and I'll probably be 'voted off' in this round but whatever. Too late now. Alright I'm rambling. I'll shut up now.
summary: And sometimes, it's almost as if he's back. -—George, moving on and climbing up.
down the rabbit hole
George(Angelina)
weep, little lion man,
you're not as brave as you were at the start.
-Little Lion Man, Mumford & Sons
There is a time when he feels like nothing – when he is nothing but emptiness and stray tears and the source of their whispering – and stuck in-between an empty space of despair and the chance of moving on as much as he can, where he feels like he's falling into an endless spiral. There is a time when he wonders: Will I ever be able to climb out of this hole?
If he's honest with himself, he isn't really sure if he'll be able to.
:-:
Sometimes the loneliness is more than he can take, but he puts on a smile and fakes it. And sometimes he wishes he were Oliver, where nothing mattered except Quidditch, or Alicia, already happily married and all (real) smiles and laughter and butterfly kisses.
And no one ever talks of it, but he thinks that Fred is up there with smiles and laughter, raising Hell in a place that's supposed to be peaceful and quiet and heavenly.
He thinks it's a perfect contradiction.
:-:
"Do you ever think of him?" Angelina asks him on day. Her voice is quiet and tentative, as if afraid of his answer. It's then that he notices how much she's changed; how the girl he once knew who as all fire-fire-fire has disappeared for this skeleton of a girl, instead. Silently, he wonders when that transformation happened.
"Everyday," he replies, his voice hoarse and just as quiet. (He isn't lying.)
And his mind roams to when he they were children, happy and innocent, to the first day of first year, where they met all of their friends, to the day they opened up the joke shop, proud and smiling, to their Mother scolding them, screaming yet smiling at them the same time.
And sometimes, it's almost as if he's back.
:-:
There are moments where it's all colorcolorcolor – where nothing else matters except for Ginny's and Harry's hands held together and how he'll kill the Boy Who Lived if he hurts his little sister or how Ron is still as awkward as ever despite being a war hero or that Charlie comes home more often.
But the moments quickly fade back to black and white, plain and simple and underestimated.
Sometimes, he wonders if it'll ever just be all colorcolorcolor all the time.
(Because he thinks he likes those the best.)
:-:
Angelina moves in to the extra room above the joke shop, and he knows that it's probably a bad idea, but he offered without really thinking and she accepted and what else can he do?
The essence of Fred is still in every corner of every room of the shop, of the flat, even of the Burrow, if you look close enough. He hasn't cleaned out his brother's stuff, it's just lurking where he last put it. He knows that she won't touch them.
"Welcome home, Ange," she murmurs to herself as she stares in front of the empty room. He says nothing and hovers behind her like a ghost stuck between two worlds. Eventually, she sighs and walks in, and he goes back downstairs to do work.
She living with him doesn't change much, if he's being honest with himself.
:-:
She says they started the day she moved in. He says they started on the first anniversary of the War (because he still thinks of it in capital letters, because it was that day where he lost the person closest to him and the day all the other causalities became causalities).
He says they started on the anniversary because that was when they first kissed, both tasting like Muggle beer and wine and both trying to drown their sorrows with it. She says they started on the day she moved in because she knew how he felt about her. (He doesn't know what she's talking about, but says nothing.)
Either way, they began, and he wonders if she feels as if she's somehow betraying Fred, too.
:-:
But today is both April Fools Day and his second birthday after the war and for now, he pulls some pranks and ignores his Mother yelling at him and sees Ginny and Harry kiss happily and Ron and Hermione hold hands awkwardly. He sees Bill's hand on Fleur's very pregnant belly and Percy talking to a women he brought home from work and hears the kettle blow.
And right now, it's not perfect.
But he thinks it's close enough that he ought to start climbing out of that hole that he fell in ohso very long ago.
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