It had been a few years, yes. But a few years couldn't give the punchline to a joke, it couldn't help you open a door with a bobby pin, a few years couldn't bring back your other half. He may be missing an ear, but sometimes George swore he could still hear Fred laughing at one of their spectacular pranks. He had just been another casualty of war to some, but to George, he was his brother. His twin brother. They had looked identical since birth and shared special jokes. They had graduated together and helped break Harry out of his house for his second year at Hogwarts together and faced Voldemort together, laughing all the while. Laughing in the face of danger, because that's what the twins did. They laughed. They had opened up their shop of pranks before Fred had died, smiling. George hadn't the heart to go back, even as he saw the kids checking back for new pranks every week. It couldn't be done with just George running it. It had to be whole, and that couldn't be so, if even Geroge himself wasn't.
He wished he could have died with Fred. It would have been so much less unsettling. They would both be dead, or both be alive. Not split between the two. And even in jokes he had heard, told by all kinds of people, he had never met someone with such cruel a sense of humor as fate.