Carry On My Wayward Son
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Summary: One-shot. Harry and George share a moment after the battle of Hogwarts.
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Carry on my wayward son
There'll be peace when you are done
Lay your weary head to rest
Don't you cry no more
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Sometimes it's hard being part of the crowd, a mourner in a sea of people who are going through exactly what he's going through.
His loss feels more significant, more devastating, but it's a selfish desire which crops up that tells him he wants nothing more than the world to see what is now missing from his world. He pretends the tears he witnesses are for Fred; he pretends the sobs echoing throughout the Great Hall are the sounds of people mourning the same person he is.
Mourning is a self-involved process. It involves a lot of working through a layer of emotions – some more complex than others – and trying to rebuild a broken heart with nothing but a few tools to guide you.
Try as he may, even after hours pass, he cannot find a place of peace. Knowing the world is robbed of another note of laughter, robbed of another joyful soul, kills him inside. Now and then, he touches his brother's face, almost hoping his twin powers will be enough to wake up him up, and then of course afterwards all they will do is joke about this moment, re-enacting it in the years to come, dubbing it solemnly as the day when the laughter almost dies.
He never wakes up.
And that, to George, is something he'll never get over.
….
There's supposed to be this endless cloud of relief which surrounds you after a great war has finished. You're supposed to sit up, wearing a relieved smile, and embrace the fact that all the darkness has been banished from your life, that it was nothing more than a nightmare which almost took over everything until you had the sense to wake up.
The darkness still remains with him, however. Grief claws at his heart, gushes through his bloodstream, envelopes him so that it feels like the darkness will never fades.
Given the fact it has now been a few hours since Harry ended Voldemort's reign of terror forever, he can forgive himself for holding on to the darkness for a little longer. It doesn't feel right to celebrate when death still lingers here, watching over the dead until they've been properly laid to rest. His family members one by one slowly leave to comfort other mourners, or to acquire some fresh air, some space to think.
He never leaves.
Given the fact that he and Fred had been together since before birth, he doesn't feel it's right to leave him just yet.
He knows if Fred had been given a choice, this is not the way they would've separated.
Leaving had never been an option with them. Where one had gone, the other had tagged along; it had been the natural way, and no one had argued because that was just what they'd always done. Even when they'd been grounded, forced into separate rooms with their wands stripped from them, they'd found ways to be together, to relish in the mischief they'd caused, and to remind each other, without speaking, that the whole point of getting into trouble together was to survive the fallout together.
Now, however, Fred has gone where he cannot follow, and he's not sure he can survive the fallout alone.
….
Time passes.
The minutes drag by – or maybe they fly, he no longer has the ability to grasp what time is, or how it passes.
All he knows is that this ache doesn't leave.
Like dark magic, it possesses him, changes him, takes anything good about him and shatters it, forcing him to remould himself into a new character, a character who has to find a way to survive without the sun.
Fred would've laughed at him, told him not to think so dramatically, that they'd be together soon because the whole point in saying goodbye to someone was to make the hello that much sweeter when it came around again.
But there's no good in goodbye. It's just a cruel way of softening the effects of having to utter such a harsh word.
He takes comfort in the fact, contrary to popular belief, Fred isn't up there watching over him, but is up there making mischief somehow.
Honestly, it's the only thought right now which is giving him even an ounce of comfort.
….
The mourners start to leave, carrying the deceased with them.
Fred has long since gone, shared between his other brothers and his father. He could've gone with them, but it helps to sit here, thinking about all the countless pranks played in this room.
None had ended disastrously – detention, they'd always laughed at because it seemed such an absurd punishment, keeping them in a room together and expecting them to write lines to show their (non-existent) remorse for what they'd done – and some had even emitted the odd chuckle from a teacher.
So lost is he in memories gone that he doesn't register another presence until he feels a hand clasp his shoulder, an affectionate gesture but one that does nothing to heal the aching gap inside him.
"Hey."
He looks at Harry, who wears a weary expression, like he's about to drop dead at any moment. It seems like an age ago when he and Fred had joyfully discovered his identity at the train station, both of them seizing his hand eagerly after he'd been sorted into Gryffindor, bellowing in unison 'We got Potter, we got Potter!'
Since then, Harry has been an unofficial member of the Weasley family, always present during special occasions, always given the same affection by his parents, and he's accepted that, because Harry is impossible to dislike.
Right now, however, he doesn't want company. He doesn't want to be given pity because he's lost someone, particularly by someone who, truthfully, should be in a far worse state than he is right now, given what he's done and who he's lost along the way.
"Hey," he returns, deciding not to be impolite. "How come you've still stuck around? Figured you'd be the first to get out of here."
Harry shakes his head, wears a tight lipped smile.
"One of the downsides to being the hero is having to get round to seeing everyone, making sure they're okay before you can even work out what you are."
"Must be tough."
"Not really." Harry laughs humourlessly. "Ironically, the hardest part in all of this is trying to figure out where to go from here. I keep thinking it's going to hit me, that Voldemort's gone, but it hasn't so far." He looks at him critically. "I guess I should ask you the same question you asked me – how come you've still stuck around?"
George looks down at his hands, at his wand, as if they'll conjure up an answer that'll satisfy both of them. The long winded answer is that he can't quite move from here, the spot where Fred's body was, because it feels like he's accepting it, he's accepting Fred is gone, and, honestly, he isn't ready for that realisation to sink in just yet.
The short answer, of course, is that his heart is too heavy for him to move just yet.
"I don't know," he says, shrugging his shoulders. "If I leave, I guess it'll feel real."
Harry absorbs this in silence, and the two sit in a companionable silence, thinking of all the million what-ifs floating around them. If even one of them had come true, would they still be here, standing at the crossroads, wondering which path to take?
"I'm sorry for Fred," Harry says eventually.
"How many times have you apologised for something you couldn't have changed even if you'd tried?" George asks, without a trace of bitterness.
"A lot," Harry confesses. "But I've meant every word."
"I don't doubt it." George bites his lip, wondering how to proceed with his next train of thought. "You shouldn't be apologising. You've lost people too."
"I lost my parents. I lost Sirius. I lost Remus and Hedwig and Dobby and so many other people," Harry agrees, before adding, "But you lost a brother. Your twin."
George stares at him, wondering what his point even is, suddenly aware he's never really had a serious conversation with Harry without Fred present. It's awkward, it's almost uncomfortable, and yet they are united in grief. It's what stops him from putting up his walls, from closing himself off from the world and just sinking into a depression he knows he'll never crawl out of.
"What's your point, Harry?" he asks, slightly wary.
"The point is, I didn't know my parents. Remus was a teacher, a friend for a short time. Hedwig was a faithful companion, my only one for a brief moment of my life. Sirius was my godfather, someone I cared about dearly, but we never got the chance to know each other properly. And Dobby... Dobby was someone who always found...unique ways of saving my life." A wry smile emerges that, bathed in nostalgia. "But Fred... Fred was with you from birth. You grew up together. I have no doubt you probably even uttered your first word together. You made millions of memories, made millions of pranks... Trying to weigh someone's loss against another's is wrong, but in this instance, I think it's safe to say you deserve to feel the way you do. I've had time to accept the deaths of all the people who'd died for me. You haven't."
George doesn't respond.
He feels numb, and in that respect, Harry is right.
He hasn't had enough time to accept Fred's death and, more importantly, the circumstances leading up to that moment.
He remembers seeing Fred's body, hearing his mother's hysterical sobs, the anguished yells of his father and brothers. He remembers throwing himself forward, begging Fred to wake up, yelling to the point where he felt like every emotion inside his body had just forced themselves out to the world.
In the end, it hadn't mattered that they'd won, that the bad guy was gone, because Fred was gone too.
"Does it ever stop hurting?" he asks, somewhat morbidly, but at this moment in time, he's allowed to be morbid. "Losing people you care about?"
"It stays with you," Harry says carefully. "And yes, it'll hurt from time to time. The grief will pop up when you least suspect it. But when that happens, there's only one thing you can do."
"And that is...?"
"Carry on," Harry says simply.
The simplicity of the words strikes a chord in George's heart.
Can it really be that simple?
But getting to that simple part is where the complexity lies. It's getting through the anger, the devastation, the angst, the tragedy of it all to reach that point where carrying on is the best way forward which is where the challenge is.
He can't see himself reaching that place any time soon.
Still, it's nice to know it exists, and that it can be reached.
He doesn't speak after that, and Harry soon leaves, and then and only then does it hit him that Fred is gone and he isn't.
Those are when the first tears blossom in the corners of his eyes.
….
Days pass.
The ache in his chest pulls and pushes, sometimes giving him a little leeway to breathe, other times crushing his lungs to the point where he can't breathe.
His mother hadn't the heart to change anything about their room, so he sometimes sits there, absorbing the quiet, gazing at the various possessions personal to his brother. He'll pick up something – a fake wand, one of their products they had in their joke shop, an item of clothing – and examine it like he's seeing it for the first time.
He soon sets it aside, trying to find a place inside him where seeing all of this doesn't hurt.
Sometimes he'll feel the weight of someone's stare on him, their gaze sympathetic, but he hasn't the heart to turn around and face them, knowing what'll follow is a brief conversation about how they all miss Fred.
Why bother repeating what they already know?
Truthfully, as morbid as it sounds, the death of a loved one should unite a family, but his has fallen by the wayside someone. They each try and pick up the pieces of the life they'd had in their own individual ways. Sometimes he'll try to finish a project they'd developed for their joke shop – which they'd fully intended to refurbish and reopen after all Voldemort's demise – but he'll end up destroying it, out of a crushing mixture of anger and devastation.
Turns out moving on is a harder task than he originally thought.
….
In the end, it's such a trivial little thing which brings him back to life.
At dinner, as they gather – Ginny and Harry cosying up together, looking ever the blissful couple – his mother brings out this beautiful chicken, but just as she's about to carve it, the knife in her hand disappears, only to be replaced by a wand.
It had been one of those silly pranks he and Fred had conjured up between them to alleviate the tension. They'd transfigured numerous fake wands into various household items, and had stashed them into various places. Though the ones which had been discovered had never done anything more than earn them a sharp telling off, tonight this prank has a rather different effect.
His mother blinks, startled, her eyes focused in on the wand in her hand, and that's when the ghost of a smile creeps on her face.
Ron snickers – reluctantly, albeit, but it's nonetheless the first domino which pushes down the rest with very little effort.
His mother is next to laugh, tears spilling down her cheeks, her hand clasping the wand like she's holding Fred's hand. His father is next to go, and he leans forward, probably to hide the mingled sadness and love in his eyes.
Then George does something he hasn't done in ages.
He makes a joke.
"I know our jokes could be rather cutting edge but I don't think that means you can use our merchandise to help you with dinner, Mum."
There's a pause. All eyes fall on him, and he knows they're expecting him to break (and he feels like breaking, just waiting for Fred to leap in with his own remark), but he grins, his eyes only slightly watery.
"Oh, George."
His mother rushes over to him, pressing her head to her bosom much to his embarrassment, her hands stroking the back of his head, and he knows she's silently telling him she knows how much he hurts over Fred, but it'll all be okay.
Someone – he doesn't hear who – then makes another joke from that, and soon the laughter they create doesn't feel forced, it doesn't feel like they're trying to recreate the atmosphere he and Fred just naturally emitted just by being who they were.
He leans back in his chair as his mother releases him, muttering something about how she'd never have believed there would've come a day when she would've been thankful to see one of her sons' blasted fake wands lying about, and smiles serenely, catching Harry's eye.
The two share a smile.
It's then he realises carrying on doesn't mean forgetting Fred entirely. It just means finding a way of moving forward with the memory of his twin still engraved in his heart.
A/n: Had to write this. Sure there are plenty of angsty George fics out there but this is my take on it. Hope you enjoy :) Trying to delve back into the Harry Potter fandom, so tell me if I've done a good job or not.