It had been years since the Battle of Hogwarts. Everyone had sympathized after the fact, had understood. But all of them had assured him that this grief would lessen, that in time, things would get better, that he would learn to move on. That grief was normal when we lost loved ones.
But what happened when the person you lost was the other half of yourself. What happened when you were used to your sentences being finished, when you broke off halfway through telling a joke and waited for a ghost to finish it, only to realize… he never would. So few people understood why he would get halfway through a joke, stop and break into tears.
He would sit in the flat above the joke shop and stare at the empty second bed that he had never had the strength to remove and he would wonder. He both hated and loved that it was still there, that it still smelled of him, that this room was so full of memories and still echoed with spectral laughter. It hurt, to remember those joys he would never again have.
He would see something funny and think, I can't wait to tell Fr- and stop the thought there because he wouldn't get to. He would never get to. He would never have another confidante like that, never share all of his secrets with someone, never be able to simply look at someone and laugh because they knew they were both thinking exactly the same thing.
But by far the worst thing was mirrors.
He was sick of looking in mirrors. He was sick of bursting into tears every time he caught sight of himself in reflective surfaces. He was sick of the tears and the heartache and the pain. He was sick of seeing ghosts every morning when he shaved, sick of seeing ghosts as he straightened his tie, sick of seeing ghosts when he brushed his teeth at night. Ghosts haunted his dreams enough. He wanted them to stay in the nightmares and stop wandering into his waking hours.
George Weasley glanced again, hesitantly, reluctantly, hatefully, yearningly, lovingly at the mirror. It took the span of a half second for the tears to bead in his eyes. As usual. Fred stared back at him from the glass, blinked when he blinked, cried as he cried, synchronized. Because of course, it wasn't Fred. It was just a reflection.
The crushing weight fell back on him, pressed down on him, broke his heart again and again and again and stamped on the shards that were left until there was nothing left but dust and half-forgotten dreams.
Perhaps he could have gotten over the other things, the other little pains and stabs of everyday life, but how could you get over this? There was a ghost in the mirror. There was a dream on the other side.
He had tried dying his hair. His mother had yelled at him until he had whispered an explanation. She had cried with him that day. And for a moment, when he'd dared to look in the mirror, there had been nothing. And he had been so pleased with this success that he had grinned. And that was where it had broken. Because staring back at him was a grinning, blue-haired Fred, laughing like this charm was a joke.
So he'd charmed his hair back to red and moved on.
The joke shop too was a bittersweet experience. Every little detail had Fred's touch on it. Half of the products had been Fred's idea and the new ones hurt just as much because George couldn't stand the idea that he might forget his twin. He was afraid to move on.
Years after even this, Fred still walked in his thoughts, but the world had gotten slowly better. He had started dating Angelina Johnson. She too was a memory of his dead twin, but he was learning to accept these memories as happy things and not sad things. Bittersweet, perhaps, but still… still sweet. And Angelina made him smile, made him laugh. She finished his sentences as Fred once had done, she reminisced with him. And when she smiled at his reflection, the ghosts vanished.
She made things not about the past, but about the present.
And there was still the dull ache in his heart, the faint pang when he looked in a mirror. The ghosts still walked his dreams, but they faded in the sunlight. And mirrors were slowly, slowly becoming something he could stand.
There was still a ghost in the mirror. But the ghost was smiling.