A/N:
I'm in an HP mood for some reason.
I don't own any of the characters or Hogwarts or anything mentioned in this story that you have heard of.
George Weasley liked to talk to his brother sometimes, when he was sad or feeling particularly lonely. Occassionally, when he was feeling a bit too sad or a bit too lonely, his brother liked to talk back.
The conversations went something like this: greeting, joking, sighing, begging, joking, and repeat.
Repeat, repeat, repeat until his mind was numb with the task of laughing and retaliating and seeing what wasn't really there.
He lived alone above the joke shop, now boarded up and useless. He lived off of his parent's money and his parent's will and his parent's precarious position on a cliff of sorrow. He couldn't die now, not when everyone needed him. So, he lived and he talked and every night he cried.
He never used to cry, not when Fred was around. They were jokers at heart and jokers never take anything too personal, too close, because sorrow beats laughter always. It kills it with wet tears and shaky breaths, breaths too shallow for a good laugh to escape. Laughing when crying results in death, something rather ironic. The combined force of the two emotions takes over and chokes, strangles, until all emotions are gone.
He never laughed, not anymore. Laughter wasn't something he knew, not since Fred had left. Fred had left him in a dangerous positon where laughing was deadly.
Laughing could make him ok.
It wasn't being ok that scared him, but being ok without Fred that did. Fred was his life, his brother, his friend. Fred was the light and the dark and all the shades inbetween. When Fred was sick, George was sick, just from worry.
Maybe that was why, now that Fred was gone, George was gone too.
Going, going, gone off the deep end.
Going, going, gone for good.
Everyone was convinced the pain would dull, the sense of loss would ebb, a fresh beginning would come. Everyone was convinced that the loss of a brother was just like any other, painful at first, but overcome at the end.
No.
There was no overcoming a pain like this, no new beginning for the final end.
The end of all he knew, the end of all he was, the end of all he wanted to be.
Fred was disappointed in him, Ron was scared of him, Ginny couldn't look him in the eye.
His mum cried over him, his dad sighed over him, his friends left and never came back.
Fred was gone, George was gone, life was gone.
Sometimes, when he was feeling lonely, he talked to his brother. Sometimes, when he was feeling lonely, his brother talked back.
He cried at night and he knew Fred heard him, knew Fred saw him, but he was never saved. He was starting to think, as the nights grew endless and the days grew short, that Fred didn't really care.
He was starting to think, as the days grew endless and the nights grew short, that neither did he.