Disclaimer: If I owned Harry Potter, I wouldn't be having to write this. In other words, it all belongs to JK.
Gone. What a bloody final word, thought George. I mean, how do you expect me to cope with 'gone', Fred, you git?
Trust Fred to go and become gone, just like that, and leave him here on his own. His own. George tried whispering the words to himself. They felt strange on his tongue, and came out sounding a bit odd, like he shouldn't have spoken them about himself. He quickly decided to think of something else.
George was, at this point, sat in an armchair in the Gryffindor Common Room, immersed in his own mind, which had been travelling in constant circles since the Battle of Hogwarts. Since… He shuddered, as the memory flooded through him.
George walked into the Great Hall, bobbing up and down on the balls of his feet, feeling the last remains of adrenalin from the battle fizz through him. He looked around for his family and for Fred, and smiled, imagining what Fred's expression would be like when he found out how George had dealt with that one Death Eater, who now resembled a cross between a cactus and a blueberry. With whiskers.
After a few seconds, he caught sight of a cluster of red-haired figures. He turned, ready to make his way towards them, but all at once he could see that something was wrong. His family had the unmistakable air of loss surrounding them. Their arms were around each others necks for support, their cheeks glistening with tears. He counted heads, beginning to run.
"No, God, Merlin, no. Please, no," he muttered as he flew towards the Weasleys, only half noticing the other bodies he passed. Tonks' shock of pink hair. Remus, his eyes wide open and lips slightly parted. Little Colin Creevey, who was bleeding from a cut running down the side of his face, and whose fingers were curled stiffly, as if they were still clasped around the camera he always carried.
And then George's worst fears became his reality. He stopped instantly, standing motionless and staring down at the shockingly familiar ginger at his feet. Not Fred. No, not Fred. It couldn't be. He couldn't take it in. But there Fred was. George heard Bill gasp as he saw him, and reach out a hand to grasp George's. He didn't care; he sunk to the floor at his twin's head, somehow simultaneously feeling numb, and feeling as though a huge electric shock had just been zapped through his body. His fingers felt slightly tingly as he reached out to gently trace the lines of Fred's face.
It was cold. Tears stung George's eyes immediately. He bent down, pressing his forehead into Fred's hair, blinking rapidly and starting to tremble. He felt his father's arm around him, but he shrugged it off.
The world had ended. He'd never experienced agony quite like this. His whole future stretched out ahead of him; bleak, depressing, Fred-less. His whole past seemed to be a lie, because what was the point in going through all those motions of life when he was just going to have Fred taken away when they were meant to be celebrating the end of the war and the new freedom that came with it? And his present? It was just a tear-soaked mess of hazy, blurry pain, which throbbed in his temples and stabbed him all over, in his throat and his eyes and his heart.
And he couldn't cope. He couldn't cope with seeing his twin still and cold in front of him, he couldn't cope with his family's tears, and he couldn't cope with this constant torment. So he pushed it away. He suppressed all emotion and refused to acknowledge it, or anyone else. He barely even knew what was going on around him as he sat on the floor with his eyes closed, clutching Fred's hand until it felt warm and he could imagine that Fred was just very deeply asleep. Or something like that.
Of course, he'd had to give up the pretense that Fred was alive pretty quickly, when they'd taken him away and refused to listen to George's pleas. But still George furiously held back tears, clenching his body in an iron repression. He just stared into the fire, not really seeing the flames, which had been lovingly stoked by the House Elves a couple of hours earlier in a fruitless attempt to make the Common Room feel comforting and relaxing. His face was pale. No, not just pale, but blanched white, his expression as tight and unseeing as his twin brother's. He was biting his bottom lip so hard that he could feel beads of blood beginning to form, and his eyes were wide and unblinking.
However, despite the apparent stillness in his expression, he was shaking violently from head to toe, as if his body wanted to fall apart and he was holding it back, trying to keep the pieces together, fiercely refusing to give in and let it go… Let Fred go. His hands were clenched painfully tightly (he welcomed the physical pain now – it provided a distraction) around the arms of the chair, his knuckles standing out white.
"George?" It was Percy. He must have come downstairs from a dormitory to see how George was doing. Probably on his mother's orders.
George vaguely noticed that Percy's voice sounded cracked and slightly strained. But what was the point in replying? Percy would be dead too one day and then nobody would care about one more time that George didn't listen to him. George would probably be dead as well. A twitch of a smile nearly made its way onto his lips at that thought. Who would have realised that the idea of death would become such a relief to him? Certainly not George. But he hadn't thought Fred could be gone either, and look how that turned out.
"George, I'm sorry." Percy again. Bloody Percy, why couldn't he leave him in peace to think about his twin? "George, say something. Please, George, please."
Interesting. That was most definitely a note of fear in Percy's voice. George tried to laugh, but the noise caught in his throat and refused to make itself known. He couldn't blame it. He didn't particularly want to make himself known either, not without Fred, so why should his laugh? It was probably a good thing though. He thought the laugh would have come out sounding slightly hysterical, and that might have scared Percy even more than his current silence.
Percy had crept round behind George's chair while he was thinking, and he laid his hands gently on George's shoulders, almost recoiling as he felt how hard his little brother was shivering. George jerked in his seat at the touch and nearly threw Percy off again. He spun in his seat, and was taken aback to see a tear drip from the end of Percy's nose. The tear landed on George's hair.
With that, the spell was broken.
"Percy?" George's voice was hoarse and croaky. He looked up into Percy's shining eyes, and then down at the floor, his eyebrows creasing. Suddenly everything felt clear and cold and bright, and he was hit by a fresh crippling pain that left him wanting to gasp. "Fred," he mumbled, trying to put everything into the one word.
"I know," said Percy. George closed his eyes in relief - he'd understood.
Then Percy reached out a hand and pulled George to his feet. George crumpled into his arms, hardly noticing Percy stagger in shock at this sudden display of emotion. After a moment, George felt the grip around him grow firmer, and he buried his face in Percy's jumper, his throat beginning to tighten uncomfortably and his eyes prickling. He inhaled deeply, only to be bombarded with the smell of his mother's knitting, at which point he finally broke and let out a muffled sob, starting to shake uncontrollably again as his mind was assailed by the image of a jumper with a yellow 'F' emblazoned on it.
"He's dead, Percy," George choked, twisting in Percy's grip to try and find a comfortable place. He didn't fit into Percy's embrace like Fred's; Percy was too tall, and too thin, and not enough Fred. He finally settled with his arms tightly around his brother's neck, his head tucked beneath Percy's chin.
Tears streamed down George's face, blurring his vision. He gasped for breath between his suddenly racking sobs, and hunched instinctively, trying to protect himself from the absence of his twin. After standing like that for a couple of minutes, he felt a wetness on the top of his head, and became aware with a shock that Percy too was crying silently. He looked up into his brother's face, his realisation confirmed.
Strange. Percy wasn't meant to cry. Percy was meant to say something intelligent and infuriating about how Fred had died for a noble cause and how he had known the risks and it was how he would have wanted to go. And then George was meant to yell at him for being so intelligent and infuriating and above all, right (though only in the most horribly insensitive way) and then Percy was meant to shut himself huffily into an empty room and glare at George all through dinner. But that didn't appear to be what Percy was planning on doing.
"I'm so sorry, George. It was my fault. I shouldn't have been there," Percy said. He drew back from George slightly, as though expecting him to lash out.
"What are you on about? I knew it, you've finally cracked. We – I – always knew the Ministry would drain those last dregs of sanity out of you." George winced internally at his pathetic attempt at humour, feeling slightly guilty for even trying to crack a joke without Fred. However rubbish the joke in question may have been.
But if George was feeling guilty, it was nothing to Percy. "I'm serious. I distracted him." Remorse was etched all over Percy's tear-stained face, and he was twisting his hands in his shirt, unable to make eye-contact with George.
"Perce, please. I don't want to hear it. You didn't distract him, OK?" George felt suddenly very tired, and the last thing he wanted to do was speculate over the cause of his brother's death. He wiped his sleeve across his eyes before fixing Percy in one of his most sincere gazes. "Really. Now let's go to bed."
Percy hesitated, and then said gratefully, "Thank you, George." It really did look like George's assurances had taken a weight off of Percy's shoulders. He crisply held out a hand. George took it and shook it solemnly, forcing a laugh, which caught in the middle but made him feel a bit better anyway.
They were an unlikely pair, but the two of them seemed to provide a strong source of comfort for each other, probably the most affected out of the Weasleys by Fred's death. So that was how, when Molly came down to the Common Room the next morning, she found Percy stretched out on an armchair snoring softly by the dying embers of the fire, with a sleeping George curled catlike into his side. Dried tear-tracks were visible on both their cheeks, but Percy's arms were draped gently over George, and there was a natural trust to the picture.
Because what other choice did they have with Fred gone?
Gone. What a strange word.
Author's Note: Another story to add to the collection of George post-Fred fics! Not the most cheery topic, or the most original one, but I wanted to write this. It's a totally different style to my usual one, and I'm not too sure about it, to be honest (I suppose that's what I get for writing it at one in the morning on Fred and George's birthday – lovely way to celebrate it, I know…) so please review! I'd really appreciate some feedback.