I'm just writing a lot of angst lately...I don't even know why. Ah, well, enjoy this kinda depressing oneshot.

Written for various HPFC challenges, listed at bottom.

Emily.


It brought back a lot of things; mostly memories, of course.

Maybe that's why George had a little tiny aversion to pictures – they brought back too many memories. Smiling, laughing, arms linking together and broomsticks by their side like two halves of a whole, which was what they were, essentially.

Was. In past tense. Gone. Dead, and gone.

Every time he'd pass by the mantle in the sitting room of the Burrow, it would be there; a picture from when the duo were ten, grinning happily and sneaking not-so-innocent looks over at an eight year old Ron who had stepped into the frame.

George had to remind himself every single time that it wasn't real, and in fact was a thin, soulless piece of paper with moving pictures on it. He – he wasn't there, George couldn't reach out and grab him and bring him back to life, as much as he was dying to.

What an irionic metaphor. As much as he was dying to.

George was dying a little inside, too, though, wasn't he? And Fred… just gone. Like there was only half of George and none of Fred left and that made a quarter of a hole, almost an empty shell with nothing in it.

That's what he felt a little like – numb and empty. He didn't break down into hysterical, over-dramatic sobs, but instead the silent, shaking ones that would twist your heart and make you unable to think and he knew that if he looked at this picture much longer that's what he'd be doing and George would have to excuse himself from the Sunday Burrow dinner again.

He couldn't tear his eyes away.

There was another picture there too, but instead a Muggle one. It was about ten years' ago; the twins had to be no older than twelve, but wore mismatched grins, and their freckles stood out brightly in the sun as they stood underneath one of the old oak trees on the property.

It was the perfect definition of content, a little piece of happiness frozen in time.

He reminsced and remembered feeling a little like he was invincible back then – like he could do anything, he had the whole entire world ahead of him. Naturally, that world included Fred, too.

Fred was always there. He was gone, but he was always there. George could almost hear Fred sometimes, bending over one of the experimental cauldrons in the back of the Wheezes' shop, muttering and shaking his head. But then George would shake his own head, and the hallucination-slash-dream would be gone again and it would be stony silence as George bent over his own cauldron, lost in thought – George never muttered, only Fred did that.

Fred was on the mantleplace, preserved only in a frame, on the old Weasley jumpers, his name was still carved into the cash register at Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes. He was literally everywhere.

It would be so much easier if he was actually there in physical form than being there in everything but his own body.


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