Nobody understands what it's like, losing a twin. People who've actually experienced it shut up into themselves and never tell anyone how they feel. Other people say it's like losing a part of yourself. It isn't.
George sits in front of the mirror. He sits because he cannot stand. He is weak, exhausted from the whirlwind of emotion that rips through him day after day, week after week, leaving him empty. He has not lost a part of himself. He has lost all of himself, and now his only strength can be found in the mirror, where he stares and takes solace from the mirage of his lost self.
Once upon a dream he would wake up in the morning and confuse his own reflection in the mirror with his twin's warm, living face. Once upon a dream he would turn away from the cold glass and find another self still sleeping. They were one person, not two. They had to be together forever, because parting from one's own self is impossible.
Twins you read about in Muggle books sometimes say that they wish they could have a moment by themselves, a moment to just be their own person. George never felt that, even then. He was nothing without Fred. Nothing.
Angelina had said so, that one time he had wanted anything other than Fred. "Who do you really love? Me or him?" he had asked. She had smiled at him, her hair falling across her collarbone as despair welled up in him at the certainty that Fred was the favorite.
"I hardly know you as one person. It's never Fred, and George," she had replied softly, the names sounding weak as they stood by themselves. "It's always Fred-and-George. Like you're one person. Like you can't be separated. Him without you, you without him... I can't imagine it." And George had known, then, that he wouldn't have it any other way.
Fred-and-George. Gred-and-Forge. The Weasley Twins. Those two!
Perhaps that's why he feels so violently undone. Fred-and-George. Never George-and-Fred; the new pairing of the names sounding strange to even his maimed, lopsided ears. Was it always Fred who had had the ideas, who had made the decisions and followed them up with actions?
Maybe that's why he feels so lost without him.
George sits and stares at the mirage of his face. Whose face is it, really? Not his. He looks again, and all he can see is what he's always seen in his bedroom mirror: Fred's face.
There is no hole inside him. No empty space that Fred used to occupy. He is not consumed by emptiness, not drowning in sorrow.
Pain engulfs him again, a whirlwind of pain tearing up everything in its path, destroying him in the cruellest, most violent way possible. He opens his mouth and the sound of his pain, his terror at the thought of a life alone rips out of him in a scream that startles his owl in its cage and stirrs voices from downstairs; he screams and screams as loss gnaws at his insides, because Fred is gone, gone forever, and all the clever pranks in the world can't bring him back.
People burst through the closed door in response to his screams, his mother, his sister, and Ron – Ron, who has hardly left his side for an instant since it happened. Ron, who despite his best efforts, can never be what George needs him to be. Ron, who isn't Fred.
They hold him as tight as they can, his mother pressing her bosom against her son's shaking chest. They hold him because there is nothing else they can do; the only one who could ever cheer George up was Fred. And Fred isn't there, to crack a stupid, pathetic joke and make the world all right again. They hold him, but the pain only worsens, building and building, tearing him up and destroying him until there's nothing left but exhaustion.
Nothing left but pain.
He slumps inhis mother's arms as the screaming stops and the weakness comes. Now all she can do is fold him into bed, to sleep and prepare himself for the long, hard slog tomorrow will bring, because tomorrow the pain will start again.
And Ron will watch him while he sleeps, like always.
They suggested, once, that he visit the shop again. That he go back to stroll among fond memories of a time when everything in life was a big joke; when You-Know-Who became U-No-Poo and vomiting became an art form; when Fred was there beside him and they laughed their way through a broken world.
Now it's him that is broken, broken into a thousand pieces flying everywhere at once, with him helpless to call himself back, because he isn't himself anymore. Not without Fred.
It can't be Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes anymore. Not without Fred. He can't go back there, not when he's struggling so hard to live in this very room, in this one place packed so full of memories that he could hardly breathe. Another place, the shop, their shop, his shop, would be far too much to bear.
He can't stop calling it their shop. It was something that they had always shared, always and forever, forever and for always. Sharing the shop with Fred had been his whole life, and now it's gone, for as long a forever as they once believed it would last.
The world seems empty of laughter now thay Fred's gone. Gone, with the ghost of his last laugh fading from his face, as it faded from his twin's.
George closes his eyes as Ron settles down on a chair next to the bed.
He wakes up when sunlight streams through a gap in the closed curtains. In the chair by the bed sits his brother, fast asleep with tightly-curled red hair clinging to a face bearing horn-rimmed glasses: not Ron, but Percy.
"Percy?" he says blearily, sitting up of his own accord as the sleeping man jerks awake. George watches hollowly as he looks around.
"George – it's morning," he says, getting up and throwing open the curtains to let light stream into the room; light that isn't welcome in the darkness of George's pain. He cowers on the bed, tears pushing through his closed eyelids.
"No!" George croaks hoarsely, curling up into a ball against the flood of bright morning. There can be no light without Fred, because Fred always made light of everything.
"Oh! I'm sorry – shall I turn it off?" Percy blusters, tugging at the curtain, but it sticks. Then George realises the blundering mistake in his brother's words.
"Turn it off, Percy? You can turn off the sun? I knew you were ambitious, but really, this is big-headed even for you..." The words come freely to his mind, teasing, joking words like he hasn't used since Percy's first joke.
Percy chuckles embarrassedly, glancing at George. "Oops." George starts to laugh too, and once he starts he cannot stop, the familiar sensation filling him up and making him laugh even harder.
It was always Fred's lamest jokes that had made George laugh hardest, he remembers through the fog of mirth. His laughter subsides, leaving a smile back on George's face.
Suddenly it doesn't seem like Fred really is gone. They were almost one person anyway, not two. They had to be together forever, because parting from one's own self is impossible.
They shared everything, one face, one name. Fred-and-George. Now he just has to be both of them. Together, forever. George stands up. "Have they had breakfast?" he asks. Percy seems to wipe something from his eye. He nods slowly.
"Mum saved you something, just in case," he says shakily. George grins and walks away from the room he once shared with Fred. Fred, who isn't really gone as long as George is still there. Fred, who would have considered the world a waste of time if nobody laughed.
At the door he stops and looks back. "Thanks, Perce," he says gruffly. Percy smiles up at him, his cheeks flushed.
"I owed you one."
On the tiny, cramped landing, George throws a glance at the mirror and sees the face that they once shared look back at him. His face and Fred's face. Together now.
"I'll be your twin forever," he tells it. The mirage grins, in time with the expression on George's face as he starts down the stairs.
It's not perfect. Most likely I will revise it, rewrite it, or start a reflection piece completely anew, tomorrow. But it's been haunting me for ages now and I had to get it out of my system. Black Thoughts will be continuing now, to those who are hating me for starting something new without finishing the old.
It just annoyed me how presumptuous (I know I can't spell, that's not a word I use often) people can be about how you feel when you lose somebody that close. I just wanted to show some authors that they could, possibly, be wrong about the whole gaping hole theory. No, I've never lost anyone like that. I know, I know. Sorry. But I imagine that you don't feel empty. You feel fuller; full of emotion that struggles to get out of you like a dragon in a cage.
If I'm wrong, and you know from experience, tell me - it's a learning curve thing. So you all know how it goes. Now it's your turn to act. Press that review button. Ready? Go!
-For you.