Sorry for all the updates! I'm still figuring out how to use ffnet properly! :)
Disclaimer: I do not own the Harry Potter characters, they are only JK Rowling's. Sadly enough.
Author's Notes/Warnings: Inspired by a picture by Catching-Smoke on dA. This was probably the worst moment out of all the horrible tragic deaths throughout the seven books. I remember harbouring some serious homicidal thoughts towards Mrs Rowling for a long while.
Just outside the Great Hall's wooden door, George swayed on the spot, with Percy at his side supporting him almost completely, his horn-rimmed glasses askew. George stared dizzily into space, letting Percy's words sink in like icy daggers.
Fred is gone, Percy had told him. For a moment, George stupidly thought of asking exactly where his twin brother had gone. And most importantly why had he left him behind.
George felt his mouth go dry and his knees weaken as he finally muttered, "What… what happened?"
"There was a blast, up on the seventh floor. A—a wall came down and…"
George, his eyes still glazed and stuck on a far-off spot over Percy's head, cut in, "I want to see him."
Percy's eyes travelled to the door in front of them and then he lifted a slightly quivery hand from George's forearm to push it open.
The scene before their eyes was perhaps the most desperate they had ever witnessed. The four long Houses' tables were nowhere in sight, but fifty or so hospital beds had taken their places. People were huddled around them in small groups, cries of anguish at seeing their loved ones lay motionless before their eyes echoing in the vast Hall.
Percy's guts twitched as he drove his younger brother to a group of flaming redheads, all gathered around one single bed, on which laid…
"Fred…?"
George stumbled forward, a shaking hand raised tentatively in front of him. Percy's grip on his brother's arm tightened, as he threatened to fall sideways against him. Percy's own face was screwed up in agony, barely holding his tears in.
George looked down to the mirror of himself. The body on the bed looked exactly like him, but for the right side of his head, where a proper ear was sticking out, in place of a dark and creepy hole. He looked so peaceful, George thought wildly, almost as if he was only sleeping. Then why on earth was no one trying to wake him up?
His eyes were stuck on Fred's face, on his closed eyelids, on his mouth stretched in a funny way, like he was still smirking at all of them. George sunk to his knees, Percy's grip loosening, and rested his chin inches away from Fred's hand on the hospital bed. His eyes still couldn't leave Fred's face.
Everything around him was muffled and blurred, nothing existed or mattered except for the cold body against his cheek. He was vaguely aware of his mother's wails of sorrow coming from the other side of the bed, of his sister's broken sobs, but he himself seemed to have dried of any kind of liquid and was now unable to produce a single tear.
Even faced with the incontrovertible truth of his dead brother lying still before his eyes, his mind refused to process and acknowledge the fact that his inseparable twin brother had indeed left him for ever and there was no way of bringing him back.
He felt a hand on his shoulder, looked up in Percy's gleaming eyes and let out a faint strangled sound.
No words were needed, Percy sunk beside his younger brother and hugged him tightly, feeling his right shoulder dampen with the warm tears now streaming out of George's eyes as his hands clutched desperately the back of his older brother's robe.