Disclaimer: JKR owns everything.
To my grandfather. Miss you loads, and wish I'd gotten to know you better.
George Weasley glanced at the mirror on his bedroom wall. 'Handsome', it pronounced him, but then again, that could have been because he had long since charmed it to spout nothing but praise. Truthfully, his appearance that day was nothing short of bizarre. He currently wore mismatched Muggle clothing: a T-shirt of brightest yellow over an equally eye-watering pair of blue pantaloons. Xeno Lovegood would have been proud. And, he thought, a lump rising in his throat, so would Fred.
It was in tribute to his twin that he had donned such outlandish clothing on his wedding day. Fred's words rang out in his head as though he had just spoken them: "When I get married, I won't be bothering with any of this nonsense. You can all wear what you like, and I'll put a full Body-Bind Curse on Mum until it's all over."
Short of casting Petrificus Totalus on his mother (she would have killed him later), he had done almost exactly as his twin had wanted. Dress robes were banned. There were no seating plans and Flutterby bushes. And Firewhisky would flow freely.
Almost automatically, his eyes were drawn to the wall separating his bedroom and Percy's. Beyond the mountains of cardboard boxes on his side and the bed on his brother's, he knew that there was a window looking out to the garden. He could picture the view in sharp clarity in his mind's eye. The pond, the weeds ‒ and the garish purple headstone that indicated the place Fred now lay. He had insisted on the purple. He was sure his twin would have done likewise. A normal staid grey marker was simply out of the question.
He gulped. He and Fred had always shared a special connection, able to tell what the other was thinking with a simple look. He could picture him now, wide grin intact. Blimey, you're getting married? Mum must have her knickers in a right twist. It would have given him a real kick to be there right now. George could imagine him as a successor to old Uncle Bilius, spouting crude humour and generally being a total laugh. The best man's speech would probably have had everybody in tears of hilarity. But he wasn't there to be best man, same as he hadn't been there to see Ginny graduate and play for the Holyhead Harpies, or Weasley's Wizard Wheezes inaugurate a branch in Hogsmeade. No, he had been ripped away, derived of all those happy memories that they had always shared, but were now George's own.
Unbidden, he replied to the Fred in his head. "Wish you were here."
He almost felt the smack upside the head that this comment would have earned. Of course I'm here, you prat. How else are we even having this conversation? Now, on to more important things. Exactly how much Firewhisky have you ordered? Maybe you could even give ickle Teddy a taste of it. Imagining the wicked grin on his twin's face at this point was so painful that it was like a physical ache. Yes, giving Lupin's ten-year-old son his first taste of alcohol would be foremost on Fred's mind.
"Remus would kill you."
Too bad for him I'm already dead, then.
Of course, those words would be uttered in the casual and throwaway manner that characterized Fred, but they still hurt. Fred was dead. He was gone. Forever. And nothing would bring him back. Two had become one. Fred Weasley, his partner in crime and fellow genius, could talk no more.
If the hurt was supposed to heal with time, why did he suddenly feel so raw, as if ten years had fallen away and it was his twin's funeral all over again? The solemness, the tears; oh, how he hated the tears! Before, crying had been a sensation totally foreign to him, but after, he'd stopped even realising that he cried anymore, since tears dripped down his long nose so often. At first he'd been ashamed, because when had he and Fred ever cried? But then he'd learned to live with himself. He'd learned to celebrate his twin with every action he did, and to remember fondly rather than tearfully the times they'd spent together.
He supposed the words on Fred's tombstone said it best: Give her hell from us, Peeves. In life, and hey, even in death, he'd lived to make people laugh. Fred was the reason George worked so hard to come up with new things for their joke shop, even if he sometimes felt that nothing would ever be funny again. Fred was the reason he wore a fake ear that spouted jets of water if anybody pulled it in place of his old one. Because every time he was depressed, he could hear Fred egging him on, telling him to pull himself together and stop being such an ass.
Later in the day, Angelina walked down the aisle wearing a red pinafore dress that clashed brilliantly with his own, with the Weird Sisters playing in the background. When they exchanged their vows (George had half a mind to say 'no' just to see the look on Angelina's face, but decided that he'd probably end up on the couch that night if he did), George thought that if Fred was watching, he certainly would have approved.
And if they ever did meet again, he would never stop gloating for marrying the girl Fred took to the Yule Ball.