Fred and George were always together. Always. They'd grown up in the same room, taken all of the same classes at Hogwarts, opened a joke shop together, and even planned to own houses next to one another one day when they were older and married. And when their time to leave this earth finally came, though they hadn't really thought too much about it, they had assumed their exit would be just like their entrance: together.
But that's not what happened.
The twins had only ever been separated for more than a few minutes twice in their life. The first time was the night the Order moved Harry to the safe house - also known as the night Fred and George became actually distinguishable from one another. The second time was the night of the final duel – also known as the night Fred and George became just George.
None of the Weasleys knew how to handle the loss - the rather packed home felt empty without the ninth member of the family running around and creating mischief – but each coped as best they could.
Ron, with the aid of Bill and Charlie, threw himself into his auror training – determined to rid the world of people like the person who killed his brother. Arthur threw himself into his job at the ministry, locating and arresting any remaining Death Eaters and sending them off to Azkaban. Molly and Fleur threw themselves into house work, refusing to stop until everything surface was sparkling and every person was stuffed with food. Percy threw himself into family life – milling around from person to person, trying to make up for lost times. Ginny simply threw things.
George, on the other hand, did nothing. He just sat in his and Fred's bedroom and starred at the wall, refusing to do much of anything. His family knew that he was grieving the most out of all of them – they could occasionally hear muffled crying coming from behind his door – but they also knew that he wanted to mourn alone. And, at that point in time, anything that George wanted, anything that could make him feel even the tiniest bit better, they were going to make sure he got; so they let him be.
The only time anyone even set foot into the twins' room was at meal times when Ron or Ginny would try to coerce him into eating something and at night when Molly would give him a cup of tea with a heavy sleeping potion hidden in it. All alone in the bedroom, the potion was the only way George was able to fall asleep.
The potion turned out to be both a blessing and a curse. The blessing was that it helped George to sleep dreamlessly for 10 hours every night, which meant that for 10 hours of the day George was physically unable to think about anything related to Fred. The curse, though, was that when George awoke he was always completely disoriented for at least a few minutes, which led to one very unfortunate incident.
One night when George awoke from his potion-induced rest, he stumbled into the bathroom. In his sleepy-haze, he mistook his reflection in the mirror for Fred. George couldn't help but smile. For a brief moment he thought his brother was alive again. For a minute, the battle, the funeral, and all of the tears had seemed like just a terrible nightmare. For one far-too-short second, all of the dreams they had together and all of the plans they had made became real again.
Until he noticed that 'Fred' was missing an ear.
And then, just like that, his heart was crushed all over again. Fred was dead. Gone. Forever. The tiny piece of his soul that he so desperately tried to cling to had been ripped from his clutches for a second time.
It broke him.
He collapsed on the bathroom floor in tears. When his mother found him an hour or so later he was still completely inconsolable, lying in a heap on the floor and gasping out 'Freddie!' every so often between sobs.
Despite her best efforts, Molly couldn't calm her son. The sight of him in so much pain was worse than any boggart she could face. In fact, it was far worse than the boggart she had faced at Grimauld Place because at least in that nightmare, he hadn't been completely alone. He'd been with Fred.
Molly wasn't dumb. She could tell that she was no help to her son just sitting there, cooing comforting words that she was sure he couldn't hear over the sound of his own wails. She knew she had to do something, so she pulled a small vile from the cabinet.
It was the most potent sleeping potion she could brew. And though she had brewed it much earlier in the week, she had been hesitant to use it prior to that moment solely because the potion was so incredibly strong. She knew the potion would calm George down now though; it would throw him into a peaceful sleep in an instant. She just wasn't sure if she could stomach actually having to tranquilize her son into a less frenzied state.
As she contemplated what she was about to do, she recalled something she had read in her potions textbook years and years ago when she was still a Hogwarts student: there was a slight chance that the potion may cause relative amnesia in whoever drank it. Molly gazed at her son's head in her lap once more. His face was contorted in so much pain that at a glance a passerby might have thought he had just been seriously injured – perhaps that his missing ear had been physically chopped off or maybe an important bone had been broken. The only thing that was freshly broken in George though was his heart. Just as it had started to repair, it had been shattered again.
But maybe Molly could help him forget that setback. That was all the push she needed.
That same evening a silent plan was put into action. While no formal family meeting had been held and no mutual agreement had been reached, one by one the mirrors around the Burrow began to disappear. It was the least they could do, the rest of the family had surmised. Ron removed the one that hung above the mantel; Ginny, the mirror in the staircase. Percy and Charlie worked together to purge the bedrooms of their mirrors. Bill helped Fleur to destroy all ten cosmetic mirrors that she had brought with her. Arthur even worked on hexing the shine off of every slightly reflective surface he could find. Soon enough the only reflective object left was the mirror that had started the entire ordeal that morning – which Molly took a bit of pleasure in destroying the muggle way.
By the time George woke from his slumber three days later, every mirror was gone. George didn't ask why and they, assuming that he had no recollection of the night in question, didn't mention anything.
George remembered the night completely, though. He could recall every last moment. Molly, after all, had been banking on a long shot in hoping he'd forget. But he recognized all that his family had done for him. He appreciated how far they were willing to go to prevent him from getting hurt again. The realization of what they'd done, for the first time since that terrible night, made him feel not so completely alone.
So he pretended, for them, that he couldn't remember the morning that caused all of the mirrors to be removed from the Burrow. He thought it gave them some sort of comfort. They couldn't bring Fred back to him, but they could help George forget, at least a little.
He'd never forget, of course – whenever anything happened, his first instinct was to share it with his twin brother immediately. That wasn't a habit he'd be able to easily break. But, he supposed, he could pretend about that too, for their sake. That, he surmised, was the least he could do.
A/N: This started off as a headcanon that I posted on my tumblr, but I decided to expand it a bit more into a short fic. I know I'm not a very good writer, but I still hoped you enjoyed reading this! (Err, well as much as you can enjoy reading a fic that's about dealing with death.)