It had been nearly six months since the Battle of Hogwarts, but there was still an air of celebration in the Burrow. Molly Weasley hummed as she served bowls of hot butternut squash soup, and conversation was loud, cheerful, and interspersed with a lot of laughter. Ginny was seated in between Harry and Charlie, who was entertaining everyone with a story about one of his colleagues, a frequently drunk fellow who called everyone Mo.
Ginny laughed along with everyone else, enjoying the presence of her family and friends, but she kept her eyes on George. He had been a mess after Fred died, but he got over it soon enough, going back to working in the joke shop and kidding around with everyone like he used to. Now, though, George looked. . . wrong. His spoon lay in his untouched soup, and his face was sickly pale and slack, eyes deep and vacant at the same time. He didn't laugh or participate in any of the conversation like he usually did. He just stared straight ahead. Ginny sighed and turned back to her soup.
Bill and Charlie rounded on Percy, making fun of his new haircut, and there was a scraping of chairs. Ginny looked up. George had stood up and was retreating from the kitchen. The talking got a little quieter, more subdued, but it didn't stop. Molly sighed, and Arthur put his arm around her. Conversation went back to normal, but Ginny stood up and slipped outside.
She found George sitting on the front steps of the house, his head in his hand. She sat down next to him, and he glanced up at her briefly.
They sat quietly for a few minutes before George spoke. "When I first lost my ear," he said, reaching up to touch the dark cavity on the side of his face, "I still felt it, sometimes."
Ginny smiled, but George shook his head, serious. "Like. . . its memory. I knew it wasn't there, but it still. . . it would itch sometimes. I'd reach up and scratch it, and. . . there'd be nothing there. Like. . . like a phantom."
He let his hand drop from his ear. Ginny reached over and took it. George said, "It's like that with Fred sometimes, too."
She waited almost desperately for him to crack a joke, but he didn't. He sighed, a long, slow sigh. "I'll make a joke, or I'll make fun of Perce, or. . . or anything, and I'll hear Fred laughing with me, and I'll look over at him, and he just. . . he just isn't there."
His voice cracked on the last syllable. Ginny squeezed his hand, which was limp in hers. George was crying now, and that scared her. She'd seen him cry before, at the various funerals of their friends after the Battle of Hogwarts, but never like this. Not raw tears from the heavy absence he felt in his everyday life.
George drew in a deep, shuddering breath. "He was. . . he was my twin brother, Ginny. That's not. . . that's not. . . he wasn't just -"
He stopped and sighed, his grief weighing too hard on his throat for him to get all his words out. Ginny put her free arm around him and rested her head against his arm. He leaned his head on top of hers. She thought she felt his tears in her hair, but she couldn't be sure.