Nearly jumping out of his skin from his restless slumber, his eyes flicked over to the opposite side of the room. The bed was still there, unmade and untouched other than the few times that he himself had crawled into it. The labored breathing he had heard wasn't real. He pulled his gaze away to close his eyes. Breathing deeply he tried to calm himself. It isn't real. He's not there. The thought both pained and relieved him. His fingers reached up to his neck for the familiar trinket he wore around his neck. The clock hand that had belonged to his brother on the family clock.
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is what they called it. If he could of laughed he would have. Post? There was nothing post about it. The war was still very much real for him, still raging on in his head. He still felt the sting and loss everyday. Time was basically standing still for him. Time heals all wounds, huh? Thats what plenty of people had told him. Well it was too damn bad that time wasn't moving. Not when you wore the clock hand. Not when it was no longer there to move.
He knew it wasn't fair. Others were hit hard too. Percy also had problems, seeing explosions when they weren't there. Seeing the body of their brother flung from the winds of that explosion that killed him. Ron had nightmares. His parents played the part of moving on from it, but he knew they also had difficulties doing so. But none were like him.
No one else felt like literally half of them was missing. He felt the same as those who had lost limbs in the war, but still could swear they felt pain in their missing hand or leg. Phantom pains. Phantom brother.
Out of bed he wandered to the bathroom. The mirror in the bathroom had been missing for a while. He had broken it when he caught his own reflection. He didn't want to himself, not when he was missing the real life, unmirrored reflection of him. Every mirror to him held wishes of what could have been. The only difference in the images was the missing ear he no longer had. His brother would still have that ear. But that was easy to overlook when everything else is identical. Down to the last freckle.
So identical that once his mother had a slip of the tongue, one that she had often about the two twins.
"Fred, would yo-" He heard her ragged breath catch. A hand coming up to her mouth and her eyes growing wide at her own mistake.
George felt that familiar pinch of pain run through his body. "Honestly, woman," he started, repeating a line his brother had once said, "You call yourself our mother." A strangled chuckle broke through the rough voice.
Sad eyes smiled back at him.
"Can't you tell I'm George?"
She brushed her hand across the place an ear had once been, "I'm sorry, George." "Me too."
He felt so unbalanced. Though the difference between the two twins were minute, they only existed in their personalities. George was the calmer one, while Fred...well he never stopped. Now George didn't know how to keep going on without him, without the extra push he had always counted on Fred for. The wit and humor of the twins just didn't exist anymore. George tried, he really tried to keep the joke shop up and running with new pranks and trinkets, but it was so hard now. Ron helped him as much as he could, but in the end the shop was shut down. You can't have Weasleys' Wizarding Wheezes without both of the Weasley jokesters. It just didn't work.
He felt restless tonight, like he often did. During the day he would use these moments to visit his brother. He visited his grave often, too often. But it just reminded him that he was missing his other half, and made him sightly more aware of his own mortality. The gravestone inscription was incomplete. The word etched on Fred's stone was as lonely as George was, waiting to be completed again. Under the name and dates, "Mischief." But it hadn't been managed yet. No, not yet. And though he hated the pain he was in, he didn't want it to managed anytime soon. He wanted to be able to make his brother proud and cause more chaos one day. He just hoped that one day he'd finally get the strength to.
George quietly walked over to the dresser on the other side of their, no... his, room. Pulling out a green, well worn sweater with the golden "F" on it. Down the rickety old stairs he went, a hand wrapped painfully tight around the object he wore around his neck. The sharp edges of the metal cutting into his skin. Sitting down at the kitchen table he placed his head in his hands. His own clock hand still said the same frightful thing it had since Fred's death. Lost.