Written for the 'Title Challenge' at the HPFC forum.
George sat in the far corner of the room, watching his family and friends gather around Fred's coffin. They kept sparing him pityingly glances and he hated it. He hated their glances, he hated their stares, and most of all he hated them. He hated them for caring, he hated them for pitying him, and most of all he hated wanting to move on. Oh he knew that they didn't want to move on quite yet, but they were already on the road. George would walk into a room and find everyone laughing, sometimes with an empty bottle of firewhiskey nearby, about some antic that Fred, and he, had done. The only one who never was was Percy.
Percy. Ironically, Percy was the only one George didn't hate. He didn't know why. It might have something to do with the fact that Percy seemed like the only other one that didn't want to move on. But if George had to guess what it was, he would probably say when Percy got drunk and started talking about how George should have been with Fred, not Percy. And even with Mum and Ginny and Ron coming up to Percy and telling him that that was not true, that Percy was just as much right to have been there. George said what they had all been thinking. He should have been there. He should have been the one whose joke was the last that Fred heard. He should have been the last thing that Fred had seen. And he should have been with Fred because they had always done everything together. If Fred was going to die, George should have been there. George should have seen it. And George should have been there because if he had been, maybe he would have been able to follow Fred. After all, hadn't they done everything together since they were kids?
But there would be no more of that. Fred would never be able to see everyone else get married and make the obligatory jokes. Fred would never get to be married himself. Fred would never get to meet any of his nieces and nephews, and coo over them and give them prank ideas and frankly, just be there. Fred would never have children of his own.
George sat in the far corner of the room, watching his family and friends gather around Fred's coffin. He heard Percy sit next to him. He heard Percy when Percy said, "Life without Fred is sort of like life without magic, isn't it?" He agreed with Percy when he said that. But he didn't realize, nor did Percy, was that they had finally started moving on.
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