Thinking about his brother hurt George in a way that he couldn't quite explain, even to himself. The physical symptoms were easy; his chest would burn, his stomach would drop. Sometimes he would have trouble breathing, and if he didn't gain control over himself he would cry. But what it did to his head wasn't something he could put into words, much less explain.
It was like his mind was all fogged up in a way that sort of reminded him of the time he took Percy's glasses. He couldn't see very well, especially after he came in from the cold and couldn't see through the fog that formed on the lenses. It was sort of like that, where he could still think but there was still a barrier between him and his brain sometimes, where the only thing that could get through was the memory of Fred.
He used to feel no shame over what happened to him when he so much as thought of Fred, but after several years he started to feel like there was something wrong with him. Shouldn't he have moved on, even a little, like his family and friends all have? Why did the thought of Fred hurt him so badly after all this time?
Really, though, George knew the answer to that. Losing Fred was like losing a part of himself, a part that he couldn't just grow back. Maybe eventually it would heal over and wouldn't hurt as bad, but so far it hadn't and it worried him to some degree. He didn't want to forget Fred in the least, but even with all his grief he knew that it wasn't normal to not move on in the slightest.
George felt just as bad about what happened to Fred as he did the day he died. He hid it better from the people that cared about him because he didn't want them to worry, but the pain was still the same. Sometimes he considered talking to someone about it, since he knew they would care, but the last thing he wanted was for people to pity him anymore than they already did.
All the time George considered ending his life just so he didn't have to face this sadness anymore. Not an hour went by without him thinking about Fred at least once, and he was so used to the constant anxiety that he felt that he should be used to it by now. He wasn't used to it, of course, but he felt like he should be.
Not once did George make any attempt to end his life. Not because he was scared to, but because he knew what it felt like to lose someone and had to face the pain of it every day. He would much rather have this pain sitting in his chest for the rest of his life than to make other people feel it. He couldn't do that to his parents, or his brothers, his sister, his friends. He loved them all too much to leave them with the feelings that he wasn't strong enough to deal with on his own.
So George never ended his life, but he wasn't careful with it like he should have been. He never watched where he was going, didn't put as much effort into making his experiments as safe as they could be. Maybe he didn't eat every meal, only slept for a few hours each night and drank way too much coffee and tea.
But so what? At least he wasn't dead. Like Fred.
