Disclaimer: JKR is an incredibly gifted and brilliant writer...and I write fanfiction. It's most definitely not mine.

A/N: So out of the multiple deaths in Deathly Hallows, the most heart-breaking (to me) was Fred Weasley, which is why I had to write this.

A little bit of back-story for you: the title's taken from some graffiti I saw on a wall in Beijing; it felt appropriate. The quote comes from the Rolling Stones' "Moonlight Mile" which is quite possibly my favourite song. If you're the kind of person who can listen to music while they read (like me), then I really encourage you to listen to that song when you read this.

Don't forget to review!

Forever Waiting

I am just living to be dying by your side, but I'm just about a moonlight mile on down the road. –The Rolling Stones

You've never been alone Before—not really. When you're one of seven children and have a twin brother—well, you've never been really alone. Not like now, not After.

It's almost cruelly funny how your life can now be split into Before and After. The first nineteen years are Before; the rest of your life will be After. And you're sure that every single day of After, you'll positively ache for Before. Before this numbing, hollow emptiness; you can't even look in the mirror anymore—you hate your own reflection.

Percy moved in with you right After. The flat over Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes had always seemed too small for you and—well, it just seemed too small Before. You think Percy might be as broken as you because he only stayed for a fortnight and the entire time, he couldn't bring himself to look at you. You understand. You can't even look at yourself.

You know Percy feels guilty, that he thinks that if he hadn't been yelling out sarcastic quips at the Minister for Magic, Fred—you're pretty sure that's your very soul hurting when you think about him—wouldn't have been distracted. But you're too wrapped up in your unbearable pain to think about relieving Percy's.

Lee moved a week after Percy moved out, and he stayed for a while; but there was a big gaping hole in your friendship that hadn't been there Before. There was always another laugh missing, another joke that went untold and you both felt the absence weighing down heavily on you like boulders. There are too many memories between you and Lee, too many memories from Before, of pranks pulled, dares made, and jokes cracked.

You feel like a part of you has been ripped away—messily torn apart, the edges hopelessly frayed and fluttering in the wind. Maybe that's the source of all this agony. You remember when Harry—sitting at the kitchen table in the Burrow and holding Ginny's hand tight as though it was his tether to the earth—told you about the Horcruxes and about how You-Know-Who had split his soul into a bunch of little pieces. You think you know how You-Know-Who must feel, then, because surely half of your soul is gone now.

Hermione Granger corners you after a month has passed by, telling you that Ron's really worried about you and she wants to know how you are. You blink at her, and she looks at you, really looks at you, and seems to understand. She tells you, voice soft and worried, that Muggle doctors have a theory that twins—your throat constricts painfully—have a sort of connection that simple siblings don't have, something that can't be explained. She gives you an odd look of understanding and doesn't approach you again.

The first time you cry After—really cry with deep, painful sobs—is when you overhear your mum refer to you as "George". Not "Fred and George", like it always was Before. Just "George". And the grim, horrible realness of After stares at you full in the face. Before, you were practically one person in two bodies—FredandGeorge.

And you think maybe that's why you feel broken—because half of you is gone, gone to where you can't follow. Which in and of itself is loony because FredandGeorge never went anywhere where the other couldn't come. You doubt there even is such a person as George Weasley—you'd never met him Before.

You're always waiting, always expecting him to walk in as though he's merely been on holiday. Every time the door opens, every time the bell at the entrance of Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes rings, hell, every time you catch your own reflection out of the corner of your eye—you always think that maybe that night at Hogwarts was a terrible nightmare and that you've finally woken up. The disappointment that floods your veins afterwards is very nearly as unbearable as the pain.

Your twentieth birthday comes and your mum cries and you wish you hadn't come home because all there is for you at the Burrow is misery. Your old room is the worst because over there by the bookcase, Fred perfected the first fake wand of Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes and by the door is where he convinced Ron to try the Unbreakable Vow, and there are too many memories here. You can barely stand it and you almost leave—your coat is in your hands—but then Ron gives you a birthday card in the shape of an ear, and it's so—Fred-like. And you laugh and somehow, you know Fred, wherever he is, is laughing too.

Years later, when Ron's son is born, you ask him—because you can say Fred's name now—why he didn't name the little boy after Fred. Ron, holding the tiny blue bundle in his arms, frowns at you and says the he thought that would be obvious. When you shake your head, he tells you that there could only ever be one Fred Weasley and you find yourself unable to swallow because of the extraordinary lump in your throat. Ron hands you little Hugo and as you look down into his small sleeping face, you think maybe you're not just half a person without Fred.

A/N: I miss Fred...