Recordame

…Recordame, and then it starts recording you onto the scroll, just like the accounting ones do. I'm doing mine first, yeah? Yeah so listen, you can name a son after me, but if you name one of your daughters Frederica I'll come back from the grave and kick you. And I'm not naming mine Georgina if you snuff it.

What, you'd name your daughter Fred? Merlin you're drunk.

Am not, I just took Sober-up. Wills aren't binding if you're pissed, y'know. That other glass is for you when it's your turn.

Seriously though, c'n you imagine, your daughter gets to Hogwarts and McGonagall reads out "Freddie Weasley" and says "Is that short for 'Frederica'" and she says "No, it's Fred. Fred Weas-"

Fred Brunhilda Weasley? Oi! Show some respect for the dead, wanker!

Bugger, it's been recording me this whole time. I'll go back and get rid of this shite later. Now shut up, let's get this over with.

All right, if I die, George gets everything, everybody else can come pick three things out of the shop, no price limit. Yeah, you heard right, Ron. If we've both kicked, and nobody thinks they can run the shop, either donate it to Zonko 'cause he can surely use the ideas, or sell it off and donate half the proceeds to - no, come on, mate, not the Squid.

Because they'll have to do it if I say it officially. A laugh's a laugh but we are talking Galleons here.

Donate to an orphanage. Not the Squid. And Harry gets to decide which orphanage, 'cause he's the orphan who gave us our start. Oops. Well, hopefully if Mum didn't know about that yet, she won't mind finding out like this. All right, what else?

Right, the funeral, well this is a bucket of cheer. Why'd we decide to do this again?

Yeah, I know, not your idea, you're going to live forever. Well the funeral, I dunno, have a party or something, don't go all depressing on me. And if anybody calls me Frederick in a eulogy, I'll haunt them. Also, no wearing black. Fuchsia is a lovely colour, goes smashingly with ginger, and if anybody's hung over it'll be especially painful and serve as a lesson on the dangers of overindulgin- oi! That hurt, you arse!

And that's it, Fred Weasley, sound mind and body, and all that.

George reached out to roll the parchment back up, and gave a start as Fred's voice began again.

No, it's not over, George, I'm just doing this part without you here to take the mickey out of me.

Any of my family that's still around, I'm glad you made it. I'll miss making your lives a little more interesting, and I'm sorry I won't get to see the next generation and tell them embarrassing stories from all your childhoods. Dunno what kind of dad I would've been, but I think I would've made a decent uncle. Might've learned how to pull roses out of my arse at parties, even.

Mum and Dad, thanks. We weren't the most grateful sorts, but I have to say you surviving to our adulthood without drowning either of us makes you pretty remarkable parents, even if you hadn't raised another five kids as well. Love you both.

George, if you're still alive and I'm not, I'm really sorry, mate. But I'm glad one of us made it through and I'm glad it was you, 'cause I think you'll do the surviving twin thing a lot better than me. Ask Lee about that sometime. Erm, preferably when you're both piss-drunk. And tell Lee to look out for you, all right?

I love you, Georgie. Make 'em all laugh again, all right? For me. And for you.

Cheers.

The parchment hung in the air before them all, silent, then George reached for it and rolled it up again.

ooo000ooo

Author's Note: This is actually part of a Fic That May Never See the Light of Day which is slowly growing on my hard drive. It's a George-centric genfic, no pairings, loosely related to Severance, with a definite plot and place where I want it to go. The ending is all written and everything. But it looks like it might take a while to get to said ending, and I have an absolute phobia about starting anything I can't finish, so I wasn't going to post any of it. Then I remembered that in my previous fandom I once had over 100 pages of bits and pieces of a fic that never went anywhere, and I never posted it and now I regret it because some of the pieces weren't so bad.

So I'll probably be posting random snippets of this fic here. So that even if it does die a lonely death, at least bits of it will have seen the light.

Think of it as a series of loosely-related vignettes for now. If I get my act together enough to make a go of it, the vignettes will end up fitting into an actual fic. Otherwise, they're (mostly) just glimpses into George's life, post-Fred.