Title: F + G
Author: calliopeinbloom
Length: 442 words
Characters: The Weasley clan, with Fred, George and Molly as the focus. Mentions of Gideon and Fabian as well.
Rating: PG-13, I suppose? There are heavy-ish themes.
Warnings: multiple canon character deaths, grief.
Summary: Molly flinches every time she looks into the face of her son.
Author's Notes: While I always thought the idea of finding it painful to look at George's face would be legit, I never really agreed with the reason as to why. No beta.
Molly Weasley flinches every time she looks into the face of her son.
This is understandable; he wears his dead brother's appearance at the same time as wearing his own. From the hair to the broad, Beater-perfect shoulders to the bitten-to-the-quick fingernails… they are, were identical to every last freckle.
Sometimes, when his back is turned, she almost forgets that he's on his own now. The familiar refrain of "Fred, George, whichever one you are, come and help me in the kitchen!" rises to her lips before he turns around and she remembers that it's only George, it's always going to be George and he's always going to be alone and the sharp stab of her heart skipping a beat is like Fred dying all over again.
She remembers it when he shakes back his hair, forgetting that there's now an ugly gaping wound where his ear used to be. All his jokes about having a reason for not listening to her go unfinished, because there's no-one who instinctively knows the punch-line. Molly pointedly ignores the fact that his hair is longer than she'd like.
She remembers it when George gets the haunted, faraway look that has no place in the eyes of someone so young.
This isn't why she flinches, though. It would be easy and far more rational to think that, but it's not the truth.
Molly flinches because George didn't die.
It sounds awful when put like that, so Molly does her best to ignore her feelings, because it goes against every maternal bone in her body, against her very identity as Weasley matriarch. But the fact of the matter is that Fred died and George didn't and he's here, slowly falling apart in front of her eyes and she's really not sure as to whether she can take any more of it.
When he shouts at her and tells her that she doesn't understand, she has stop herself from slapping him, because the terrible thing is that she does, she does understand. She remembers, underneath all the grief and loneliness and terror, feeling relieved that Gideon and Fabian were together at least. If she couldn't have them here with her, at least they had each other. They had each other to make mischief and merry; they had each other as guides if they got lost.
But George was here alone and lost. Who did he have?
The firm rebuttal would always be that he had her, and he had his father and Bill and Charlie and Percy and Ron and Ginny.
And she would do her very best to ignore the name that was missing from that list.