For the majority of twenty years, Fred and George Weasley were inseparable. Their minds seemed to work as one. When Fred was starting to feel hungry, so was George. And when George got angry, so did Fred. They finished each other's sentences, and the conversations they shared only with each other were spoken in a code language they had invented to trick potential eavesdroppers.

So close were the twins that they were hardly aware of having separate consciences, and they thought alike as much as they looked alike. That is, until an old friend surprised them by responding to the "Help Wanted" sign in the window of Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes. She had grown in the three years since she had encountered the twins, or so it appeared. She hadn't gotten taller, but she seemed more confident and comfortable in her skin. She didn't slouch anymore or play with her hands to avoid making eye contact. Instead, she stood tall and strutted through each room as though she owned it. She had become more muscular, too, as the minor league Quidditch team she belonged to was keeping her in shape, and she spoke her mind in the most poised of manners.

Fred had always known her to be talented, and would admit that she was looking fit. George, however, was immediately taken by Angelina Jonson's presence. As Fred casually offered his new employee directions on what to label and how to arrange boxes in the storeroom, his twin brother rambled, mumbled, and stumbled over his words. Yet as hard of a time that George found concentrating near Angelina, he could always find excuses to spend even more time with her. He would offer her help with different tasks and ask her questions when she was helping customers. Even if Angelina was on the other side of the shop, George could not take his eyes off of her.

25 April, 1998

The second most drastic night of the twins' lives took place a week before the first. The setting was nothing out of the ordinary. The twins were each lying on their beds in the bedroom they shared above the shop. As Fred entertained himself casting various spells on a Pygmy Puff, attempting to turn it a masculine shade of dark blue, George sat with his elbows on his knees and his hands on either side of his head.

Angelina had quit her job at the shop that day. She had earned a position playing Quidditch professionally, as the boys always knew she was capable of doing, and was bound to move away any day. It was on this night that George realized how attached he had become to Angelina. He thought of her constantly, unable to stop the sound of her name from reverberating through his mind. Sitting in his flat surrounded by white noise, he emptied his thoughts of everything but Angelina, concentrating on how her voice sounded and how she moved when she walked.

However, it was this vacancy in his head that brought a new person into George's thoughts: Fred. He pictured his brother telling him to go and follow her, that he would be happy, and that his happiness meant more than anything. George imagined himself doing it, slowly walking away from Fred, saying goodbye over and over again and watching his other half fade into the shadows of the distance. He knew that, were he to follow Angelina, this would not be how it happened, but he could not get that scene- that vision- out of his mind. It filled him with terror and dread, the thought was unbearable.

It made George aware of how distant his obsession with a temporary employee had made him to his twin. Fred was not jealous. He liked Angelina, but not in the same way, and never concerned himself too much with women.

All at once, it seemed both twins had become unable to avoid the presence of a concept they never would have deemed possible: In the heart of one of them there was room for an ardent devotion, and in the other there was not. George was not sure quite how to handle the new prospect, because he could feel the pain it was causing his brother when distance started growing between them as a result of the woman who made him more happy than he could explain. It was all too complicated for him, and the frustration of the choice resting on his shoulders became too much for him to bear. So in one desperate, impulsive sweep, he tried to rip Angelina from his heart.

"Guess we'll have to pull the 'Help Wanted' sign back out, huh?" He offered with an exaggerated casualness to his brother, who was absentmindedly twirling his wand now.

"Angelina's just on the other side of the Floo Network, you know," Fred replied, though he lacked enthusiasm.

George crossed the room to sit next to his brother. "I won't visit her. She was fun while she was here, but I'm through with her now."

Fred sat still, muttering spells at the Pygmy Puffs for a moment before declaring "You didn't have to do that for me, Gred. I don't care if you visit her or not." His tone was startlingly angry.

"For you!?" George scoffed. "You're crazy, Forge. Why don't you believe me when I say I'm done with her?"

"No, it's okay. You love her. You don't have to change because of me."

"What? Love her? You must be crazy, Forge. I used to, it was fun, but it's over now. I don't love her like that." George's voice rose as he ranted on. "Now let's go to bed, you idiot."

Fred would not move for a moment, and the room was dreadfully silent, until he stood up abruptly. "I'm going to go out for a walk," he stated simply, his voice hollow and empty sounding.

"You're definitely crazy, now. You can't just take a walk, it's one in the morning! Look, I only loved her for a time, but I'm through with it all. There's nothing left."

Nevertheless, Fred stood up to leave. Halfway to the door, he said to his twin in so serious a voice it did not sound like his own: "You love her, and I'm in your way."

As Fred reached for the door handle, the Pygmy Puffs in their cage anxiously squeaked, frantically jumping on top of each other and trying to get out of their cage. The twins had always thought it must be hard, being a Pygmy Puff. Being a dumb little creature, bred in a bedroom, and always crying and screeching when the door opens. It would be a painful life, having such a small mind that you are always thinking that the ones you love will never come back to you.

Something in the Pygmy Puffs' frantic cries brought back the vision George was having before of his brother fading into darkness, and feeling like the two of them would never see each other again. He truly knew, then, how it felt to be a Pygmy Puff, and a voice in his head kept screaming not to let his brother go, and that Fred was leaving him alone forever. "Get back here, Fred!" He cried in a shrill voice. "Come back in and go to bed!"

Fred listened and retreated, and the Pygmy Puffs began to relax. "If you ever do want to, you know, get serious, it's alright with me. I swear, I'll be glad, Gred."

"No way. Gotta stay open, because you never know who'll come along. Obligations are a waste of energy," George replied, laughing at the mottos he and his twin had shared since they were Hogwarts students. "You're just getting crazy ideas because you're tired."
With that, the two went to sleep and beginning with the following morning, their lives went on as if the matter had never arisen.

1 April, 1999

Wearing a jumper with an F on the front wasn't the same without the game of guessing who would call him the wrong name, but George did it anyway. The past year had not felt like a year. Looking back, all of it was a black and white blur, and it seemed that nearly everyone was merely going through the motions, trying hard to go back to the way their lives were before the war and pretending not to be as heartbroken as they were. George had returned to managing Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes, with Lee and Ron helping out. He hadn't created any new products in a year, unable to find enough humor in himself to do it, but people were still buying just as much, hopeful to get a laugh out of one another to lighten the somber mood that had consumed the Wizarding World.

Every member of the Weasley family had grieved a different way, and some took the losses of the war harder than others. Eleven months after the war, they had mostly learned to cope. However, the first day of April was the most painful reminder they had experienced that things would never be the same.

George could not remember crying after he turned ten. Even after the war, he was more angry than depressed, and it took him two months to escape his state of denial. Yet, when April arrived, he condemned himself to his bedroom and wept. He sobbed and he screamed for hours, setting fire to all the birthday cards that arrived in the mail. It wasn't his birthday, he convinced himself. George did not have birthdays alone. That word, "birthday", seemed to surround him. Didn't everybody know that it was not a birthday for George unless it was also a birthday for Fred?

Though all of the Weasleys kept to themselves throughout the day, Molly had insisted on having everyone together for dinner at the Burrow. They did not sing "Happy Birthday", each of them knowing that the first of April would never be marked by happiness again, but Molly did make a small cake, not able to bring herself to skip the tradition.

"Ten candles," she explained to her family, gathered around the supper table, "because I know that's all that George will blow out."

George thanked her and hugged her, as tears fell down her face. If anyone associated as much anguish with the day as he did, it was his mother. He complied to her wishes and forced himself to sit at the table while his family ate for fifteen minutes, until he could no longer take their uncomfortable silence and fled from the room.

Racing around the side of the house, he grabbed his old broom, mounted it, and kicked off the ground into the dark sky. He flew as fast as he could, shooting up at such a sharp angle he was nearly vertical to the ground and had to cling to the piece of wood keeping him aloft with all of his might. George was so far off the ground that he felt the air get thicker as it whipped around him. No movement could be seen on the Earth below him, and he imagined everything down there was still. Although he was flying at a dangerous speed, George felt empty and light, as if he was just dangling in the air as the scenery flew past him.

Approaching trees and buildings, George let himself speed so close to them before swerving away at the last moment that he could feel the bristles of his broom brushing against them. As a numbness overtook his mind and body, he thought about how easy it would be to just stop steering. He imagined sharp wind in his hair, brilliant light glistening off shards of broken glass as he crashed into a window. There would be sounds of shattering and howling, of screams and sirens. Maybe they would break the haunting silence that he could not find an escape from.

It would be so easy, he told himself, approaching a tower at a rapid rate. He let his eyes close. Fast, painless, and-

"WEASLEY! WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU!?"

A shrill shriek caused George to instinctively jerk his broom upward, and he passed over the top of the tower. The words registering in his mind, he slowed his pace as a silhouette swooped down beside him. The dark outline belonged to none other than Angelina Johnson, and George only caught a fleeting glimpse of the panicked look of distress on her face before she replaced it with a harsh scowl.

"What the hell were you thinking?" she scolded, agony evident in her voice.

George did not say anything, unable to form words, much less come up with a response that would make sense. Honestly, he wasn't even sure what the answer was.

The two hung in the air beside each other for a few minutes, watching the headlights of cars streaking by below them. Finally, Angelina's voice covered the sound of the wind. "I know how it feels. I lost my mother in the war. Sometimes, like when something reminds me of her, I come out at night and just fly as high as I can... Helps me feel closer to her, I guess."

"And farther away from everything else," added George in a low, unfocused voice. The two continued to watch the cars pass below them as George relaxed, letting his legs swing back and forth as they dangled below him.

"I know what today is," Angelina said, more as if it was a thought that had escaped her lips than an attempt at conversation. "It didn't feel right to me, either. I was thinking about the parties you two used to throw in the common room, how you'd get the whole house dancing and celebrating until Professor McGonagall would come and..." she let her voice trail off.

"Yeah..." George smiled at the memory. "You were always the life of the party. I remember him always telling me that Swas would get everyone on their feet. We wouldn't have kept throwing those if you didn't make them so much fun."

Angelina laughed. "What did you call me?" she asked.

"What? Oh, 'Swas'? It became our codename for you in second year when we all joined the Quidditch team. We were really nervous for our first couple of games, you know? Oliver and Charlie made us so scared of Slytherin, and we thought we didn't stand a chance until we saw you play at practice. You completely tore up the pitch. You were all quiet back then, before Alicia came, but when you got on the pitch it was like you dominated it! So he told me that we could win the game, because Angelina was our secret weapon to annihilate Slytherin. Like, S-W-A-S. And it just sort of became our codename for you." George was rambling and mumbling, and Angelina could tell that he was lost in the memory; talking more to himself than he was to her.

She laughed. "Yeah, until the Nimbus 2001 incident. Bloody hell, that was so stupid."

Though it had been so long since he had done it that the feeling was almost foreign, George laughed too. "So Swas- Merlin it's so weird calling you that to your face," he chuckled, "do you wanna, maybe, come over for a Firewhisky or something?" George offered. It was not until he started asking the question that he realized the thing he was most dreading was going home alone.

"I'd like that," she responded, as the light from an airplane flying overhead reflected off of her eyes, making them shine.

The two flew slowly, taking a long, swerving route over forests and fields. They talked as they traveled, sharing stories and memories. It was the most fun either of them could remember having in a year, and George couldn't help but feel as if Angelina had, in the desperate cry of her entrance, reminded him how to breathe.

A/N: It's so hard to write about George post-war! I didn't think I was capable of it.

As always, feel free to share your thoughts with me in a review

. . o . .

Written for round two of the Quidditch League Fanfiction Competition, with the lyric prompt:

"Could I be, was I there?

It felt so crystal in the air

Still want to drown whenever you leave

Please teach me gently how to breathe"