Grief
Summary: George Weasley is struggling to come to terms with the death of his identical twin brother in the Battle of Hogwarts.
Copyright: I am not J.K. Rowling and therefore do not own anything recognised as belonging to the Harry Potter universe story.
Grief
"When you experience loss, people say you'll move through the 5 stages of grief… Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance... What they don't tell you is that you'll cycle through them all every day."
― Ranata Suzuki
Denial
It was probably safe to say that George Weasley was never really in denial about the death of his twin brother Fred. How could he be when he felt it the moment it had happened? They had been separated. Fred was with Percy, and George had found himself with Bill and Fleur. It was just by sheer luck that they were in the middle of duel when it had happened. George will never forget the feeling of the moment, a crushing weight that took his breath away. It was only for a moment, but George had no other explanation for it.
His mission then was to find Fred, to make sure this feeling was not what he had thought it was, but unfortunately he never did, at least not alive. Perhaps that is what denial truly is, you know something is true but you just do not want it to be. Seeing Fred's cold, pale body on the floor of the Great Hall, George found himself crying 'no' over again, but he knew that wouldn't change anything.
The moment that clearly broke any denial was when Harry showed that he was alive after at all, where George turned to express his joy to his brother, only to realise that he was not there, and never will be again.
Anger
It was not long after the Battle that the anger set in. Despite the death around them, everyone else seemed to be celebrating the fact that the war had been won. To some degree George understood why, but he could not help but to think angrily about it. How they could they celebrate when more than fifty people had died in such a short space? Not to mention to all the death in the past three years since Voldemort's return?
George felt like not only had he lost his brother but also like he had lost a part of his soul, and you bet he was damn angry about that. He found himself slipping away from all of his friend and family, his disappearance had surprisingly going unnoticed – or so he had thought. He found himself in an empty classroom that somehow had remained unscathed, but not for much longer. He started to take his rage out on the furniture, kicking desks and throwing chairs and punching walls until he had finally worked himself into an exhaustion and collapsed onto to the floor. It was in that moment that someone had found him, and taken him into their arms where he let out hot tears of anger and depression.
George did not pass through anger quickly and as a standalone feeling, it would come and go in waves as he struggled through his grief.
Bargaining
It should have been me. Those five words haunted George's thoughts for some time, and was probably the closest he came to bargaining for Fred's life. He even ruined a family dinner when he said the words out loud. Why had Fred died, and why not George?
People had often thought that they were one and the same, identical twins with identical personalities, but this was not the case. Fred was born first. Fred was the one with all the big ideas, and George was able to make them happen. Fred was the one with confidence to do anything and George fed off that to be confident. Everything they did, they had done together and George felt as though Fred would have been able to manage without George, but was George was not so sure he could manage without Fred.
Besides, Fred had so much more going for him in. He and Angelina had been in the middle of sorting their problems out. 'When this war is over, I'm going to marry that girl', Fred had said just before that Battle had begun. Besides, even if that did not work out after all, Fred was still attractive and could have easily have found someone else. As much as he had joked about being the prettier one, George did not know if he would ever find someone who would love him and his scars. And besides, how cos they really fill the void that had been left by Fred?
George knew there was nothing he could do to bring Fred back but Merlin did he spend a long time wishing it had been him instead.
Depression
There was no denying that George Weasley was depressed. He was completely and utterly unmotivated for life. His depression was only occasionally interrupted by the fits of rage.
He had spent the first few weeks at the Burrow, too afraid to return to the apartment that he and Fred had shared, but soon the desire to be alone and isolated set in and he was gone. He could tell that his mother did not really want him to go, but he pushed her away, and everyone else.
He found himself drinking while alone, it helped him sleep better. In his sleep he would dream about everything he and Fred had done together but then he was wake and be depressed at the fact that his brother was no longer alive.
It takes a near death experience and a stint in St Mungo's rehabilitation section before he starts to dig his way out of his depressed state.
Acceptance
George slowly learnt to take every day as it came. He does not believe that he will ever truly be over the loss of Fred, but every day, it gets just that little bit easier. He waited more than a year before reopening the joke shop, and he does so with the combined help of all his family. He may have lost his twin, but he still had so much family he could rely on.
George could not bring himself to celebrate his twenty first birthday – the first birthday that he celebrated as single child, and not a twin – but by his twenty second birthday he was in much better spirits, and allow his mother to host a family dinner. Life was starting to show hope, there was things to be excited about. His oldest brother Bill's wife Fleur was heavily pregnant the first member of the next generation of Weasley's. George joked that maybe he was going to get a new twin, but no such luck as Fleur remained pregnant for another month.
In fact the arrival of little Victoire Ginevra Weasley had been a tough pill to swallow, for she had made her appearance in the early hours of the second of May, two years after the Battle of Hogwarts. The anniversary of Fred's death. George had gone numb when he received the owl. His plans for this anniversary were much like the last, to stay in bed and do absolutely nothing. Instead he found himself getting up, showered and dressed, arriving at St Mungo's rather promptly. He was nervous, as he had not entered the hospital since leaving rehabilitation.
It was all worth it, as he held his newborn baby niece in his arms. 'I can't wait to tell you all about your uncle Fred' he cooed at the infant. While he may never be fully healed, for the first time in a long there was hope, as George accepted that Fred died so that the world could be a better place for their niece and everyone else in the next generation.
Hello... so if this seems rushed at all, I wrote it in about two hours literally just before posting it. I am currently going through some of my own feelings of grief right now and thought that maybe writing this and falling into the universe that made me so happy growing up could give me some kind of release. I am so happy with some of it and a bit iffy with. Perhaps I am still struggling to find the words inside myself to describe some of these feelings. Maybe, in a few more months, I will come back to this and be able to write more. Maybe, sometime when it is not 2am, I will develop each stage into a full chapter, expanding on some of the ideas mentioned in briefly. I'm not sure, but for now I wanted to post it as it is in its raw form, and I would really love to know what you think.