A/N: I haven't decided if I'm going to make this a oneshot or continue it. It seems rather cruel to leave it on it's own, which you'll find out why at the end. I'll let y'all decide if I should continue this or not, so let me know in a review if you're interested in more. If I do add to this, it won't always be so depressing. Because things have to get better, yeah?

I've been getting a lot of questions about fics with this pairing and let me tell you...I have the HARDEST time finding anything. I'm pretty picky though. I don't like reading the series basically being hashed out but with a female protagonist and just a few spare bits of Harry/George throughout.

And I like my Harry to not be totally OC because she's a girl.

If anyone happens to know of any good fem Harry/George, let me know and maybe I can put a fic rec together on my tumblr.

Straight and Narrow

Later - much later- she would think back to the funeral and think of how her new beginnings, every turning point for her, began at someone else's ending.

But in that moment, she's attending Fred's funeral and he's being buried under a big oak tree at the Burrow and Harry thinks it's the right sort of place for him. He's forever young and would seem out of place buried in a family graveyard next to people who had gone at a proper time. Here, at the Burrow, he's with his childhood and always, always within reach.

The day is too pretty for a funeral. It's bright and sunny and Harry feels awkward in her black muggle dress among the sea of wizarding robes, but she is used to being out of place so it hardly bothers her now.

She's been misplaced all her life, and now she's just waiting for whatever comes next to pick her up.

Kingsley's voice is deep and soothing and Harry lets it guide her as she carries the little pile of dirt that she's clutching and drops it into the ground where Fred is. And she think it's strange- that he's inside that small, narrow box- and how someone so full of life can be contained between the walls of the wood.

And she's wiping the dirt off of her pretty dress when she feels a pair of eyes on her and she lifts her red-rimmed emerald eyes to meet his hazel in question. There's so much red and he's right there in the middle of it all and his hazel eyes stand out.

And she thinks of her parents and knows what happens when emerald green meets hazel.

And she wonders if she's ready for it.

The walls of Number 93 Diagon Alley were bare. They - he and Fred - had taken everything they could when they had to leave. They had been upset at the time but they thought that they both would return after the war and start over.

But now it's just him and George is staring around the shop listlessly.

He shouldn't have come here, he thinks. It's too much too soon but he can't stay at the Burrow where Fred is both there and not there all at once. Where his family looks at him and then quickly look away because he looks like Fred who is in the ground and Fred looks like him who is above it.

And he finds himself wishing for the first time in his life that he wasn't a twin and then maybe he wouldn't have had to shatter the mirror upstairs in his flat. He's thinking of burning down the shop when he hears a tap on the glass outside and he turns to see Harry.

He raises an eyebrow at her and she mouths to ask if she can come in and George does let her in and she brings with her the smell on honey and cinnamon and it floods his senses.

"Are you going to reopen?"

She's not looking at him as she asks. Instead her eyes are on the empty shelves, but he knows they're really miles away. Stuck in some long ago memory.

He knows that glazed over look, because he wears it himself.

"I don't know."

It's an honest answer.

He doesn't know who he is without Fred and he's not sure how to function as one person when he used to be two. He's not sure how he can come here everyday and live out their dream when standing in it now makes him feel like he can't breathe.

"I think you should," she says. "The world still needs a laugh."

And she looks at him then and he watches her eyes come back to this moment with him and he wonders not for the first time how her eyes could be so very green.

She's looking at him as though she sees him for the first time. Her head is tilted as though she's confused by what she sees and she crosses the distance between them slowly; each step echoing softly against the hardwood floors and even George thinks that is deafening. She pauses when she reaches him and she's having to look up at him - always, always six inches below him - and her lips are parted slightly.

"Maybe," he swallows.

A week goes by since Harry last saw George that day in his shop and she think she may be in love with him. Which is awfully inconvenient because she's a complete and utter mess from the war.

And so is George.

She feels like she's missing part of herself after the war. As though the part of Voldemort that was inside of her took some of her with it. Her magic doesn't feel like her own anymore and she's finding herself having more accidental outbursts than she did as a child.

And she doesn't think she should be in love with part of her so messed up.

But she is and she doesn't know what to do with it all.

George knows he's in love and positively cannot deal with it right now.

His heart, that feels dead every other time, shouldn't beat so wildly whenever he sees her. But he's been in love since he was sixteen and there's not much he can do about it now, he's learned. Fred used to tease him back when they were at Hogwarts and he would explain his deep affection to him and Lee.

"I'd take a killing curse for her," he said one afternoon while he was laying in his old school bed. "I'd jump in front of one for her."

"Why are you always dying in your fantasies of her?" teased Fred. "There are loads of better things you could be imagining."

"I don't die of course," he says. "She'd save me. She's good at that."

"You've lost it," Lee had told him.

He'd argue now that they were right.

He's in love and doesn't know how to handle it when he's half a man.

"Has anyone seen Harry?"

It's Ron who asks while everyone is seated around the dinner table at the Burrow. Everyone except for Harry.

And Fred, George thinks lamely.

He's not entirely sure why he's come back, but his mother begged him to at least come for dinner once a week so he does. It's hard to be at his flat but it's harder still to be at the Burrow. There are memories in both places. Happy memories in both places.

And they suffocate him.

"Harry's at Grimmauld Place," says Charlie and George wonders how he knows.

"But why is she there?" asks Ginny. "Of all places?"

"Harry's having a difficult time right now," his father says. "We've all suffered losses. Harry included."

"But we're all Harry has!" shouts Ron. "She's all alone in that house sulking when she could be here with us."

"Maybe what Harry needs right now is to be alone," says Hermione.

George clears his throat, his voice coming out hoarse from lack of use. "She came to see me at the shop about a week and a half ago."

"Harry came to see you-"

"You went to the shop-"

Ron and their mother speak at the same time as every pair of eyes turn to look at him before quickly looking away again. He wonders if they realize that they're doing it.

Looking away that is.

But he can't bring himself to look at any of them either when he speaks.

"She came to see me," he says louder this time. "She told me I ought to open the shop again."

"And are you?" asks his mother. "Going to open the shop again?"

"I don't know."

A few more days pass and George is back at his flat nursing a bottle of Firewhiskey when there's a knock on his door. No one aside from his mother comes to visit him and so he's surprised when he opens the door and Harry's on the other side.

"Harry," he greets and he wonders if she can smell the Firewhiskey on him.

"I brought food," she says lifting a small bag and shrugging. "I was wondering if you'd want to share a meal together?"

He doesn't necessarily want to eat but he doesn't want to be rude so he lets her in and wonders how cinnamon and honey can smell stronger than Firewhiskey. She sits down on his couch and looks at him expectantly and so he joins her.

"What is this?" he says looking at the food she's brought.

"Muggle food," she says. "From a place called McDonalds."

"Muggle food?"

"It's been awhile since I had it."

She offers him something long and yellow and it's hot to the touch and almost greasy, but it's the best thing he's tasted in a long time when he puts it in his mouth.

"What are these?" he asks taking another. "They're good."

"French fries," she says. "I got a couple burgers too."

They sit there on his couch eating in silence and though George has been used to long bouts of silence with Harry it's almost deafening. He wants her to move, to be alive in this moment.

"What are you doing here?" he asks unable to help himself.

She starts. "I didn't want to be alone."

"So you came to me?"

"Yeah," she shrugs. "Please don't ask me why."

And so he doesn't and she in turn closes her eyes slightly and leans back and looks positively dead to the world. He shutters thinking of Harry's lifeless body being carried by Hagrid.

But she's not dead. She didn't die. Or at least- he doesn't think so.

She's here now anyway.

And suddenly he's angry with her for being so beautiful and full of life and making him feel something when he himself ought to be dead.

"Get out," he spits.

"What?"

Her eyes blink open and she's looking at him as though he's burned her.

"Get out!"

He's standing and grabbing her by the arm and pulling her up towards him. And he sees that spark of life he was looking for earlier in her eyes and it's fierce.

"Let go of me!" she shouts. "What's your problem?"

"My problem? My problem is you! It's you coming here expecting something from me when I can't give it-"

"I don't expect anything from you!"

"Bullshit!"

"I don't! I'm here because I want to be!"

"Well, I don't want you here! I look at you and how alive you are and all I can think of is Fred!"

"And you think I don't?" She's yelling now, her fists are clenched, and she's rounding on him. "You think I don't see him- see everyone - when I close my eyes? When I look in the mirror in the morning and see these bloody scars?"

"You don't know what it's like-"

"I don't know what it's like? You're not the only one who has lost someone, George! In case you're forgetting I don't exactly have a family!"

"It's- that's different!"

"Yes, entirely different! Stupid little orphan girl. Doesn't know what it's like to lose anyone. Doesn't know what it's like to grow up in a world without someone."

And she's a force and he thinks she may strike him down in that moment and he almost wishes that she would. She could easily do it now for there's no space between them. He's apparently backed her into a wall at some point and he knows she does best when she's backed into corners. She doesn't back down when she's got her back against a wall.

She always, always comes out on the other side taking down whatever is in her path.

And maybe that's the reason he does it - the fact that he knows she won't back down - or maybe it's the fact that she's slapped him across the face just this instant; but either way he's grabbing her wrists and shoving her into the wall and then his lips crash onto hers.

"Fuck," he whispers against her lips which are fighting his for dominance. "Fuck, fuck, fuck."

And then she relaxes in his arms and her wrists - which were hoisted above her head by his own hands- go limp and she's whimpering and crying.

"Fuck," he says again but this time he pulls away to take her in, he's moving his arms from her wrists to cup her face, and her hands drop between them. "Fuck, Harry. I'm sorry. I - I didn't mean any of that."

"You're right though," she says through sobs. "I don't know what it's like, and I feel so stupid for feeling like part of me is missing that I never really knew."

"You're not," he says. "You're not stupid."

"Then what am I then?"

"You're six inches below me."

"What?"

"I said," he swallows, his adam's apple bobbing. "You're six inches shorter than me."

"Oh," she says. "Well, I guess that explains why I have to crane my head up to kiss you."

"It might be easier if you stand on your toes."

"Or if you bent down more."

"We could compromise."

"Meet in the middle?"

And they do - meet in the middle that is - and it's not intense like it was before. It's slow and soft and right in the middle of everything that's wrong. And he knows exactly where it's heading and doesn't think he wants to stop it this time. He wants to feel and more than anything he wants to feel her so when her hands start undoing the buttons of his shirt his own start dragging the zipper of her dress down.

"You're so fucking gorgeous," he whispers against her lips which taste like salt from her tears. And her dress hits the ground and he sees what the war has done to her. She's thinner than before and she looks beaten down and she has wounds that are on their way to scaring. But she's beautiful and she's his in that moment.

And six inches isn't really that big of a deal.

Especially when she's underneath him and he has inches to spare.

George wakes up with a hangover the next day and in bed - alone. Harry is gone and he's left with memories of last night that no amount of Firewhiskey could drown out. She was there when he fell asleep. They drifted off clinging to one another -her head under his chin, his fingers grazing her bare back- and he remembers her telling him that he smelled like vanilla before passing out.

He wonders briefly about going to find her, but then decides he needs to get himself together before he does.

She doesn't deserve half a man.

And so he sends an owl to Lee Jordan and walks down to the shop.

It ends for Harry at the beginning.

Or maybe its beginning is also hers as well.

She isn't sure just yet.

What she does know is she hasn't seen George in over a month but now she has to.

What she does know is that she's been more sick than she's ever been in her life and when she doesn't get better she knows why.

But it takes ten little muggle test sticks to allow her mind to catch up with her gut feeling.

And when it does, what she does know is, "I'm pregnant."

And maybe it's not the end, maybe it's a start.

She isn't sure, but she's going to find out.