A/N: A little magic goes a long way, so write me up if there's something you love or something I need to change!
Disclaimer: Still not my characters (unfortunately!), though I can pretend for a little while, right?
There are no mirrors in George's flat, not after the war.
He can't look in mirrors anymore, not when all he sees is his best friend, his other half, gazing heartbrokenly out at him from behind the thick sheet of glass, imprisoned in a world from which there is no escape.
He used to keep a hand mirror for guests, but he's broken that, too, multiple times, when he catches a glimpse of Fred's world in it. Almost no one visits him anyhow, so it's not even like there's anyone there to notice the bin full of silvered slivers and glittering dust creating and trapping the endless permutations of Fred in their very beings.
He doesn't know how to go on without his shadow, and despair crushes him as he stands at the sink in the bathroom, brushing his hair back without looking at the gaping mirror frame studded with glass shards that stands in front of him. Fred is looking out of those shards, and George can see glimpses of his red, red hair and his once-bright eyes, now clouded and dulled with loss, out of the corners of his own eyes. It's almost as though Fred is waiting there for George to notice him, waiting for George to free him from the sameness of the days that have passed, but George knows that can never happen, so he doesn't look, not if he doesn't have to.
It's the quiet that gets to him the most, though. There is an emptiness that yawns, cavernous, through the flat in Fred's absence. There are no explosions, no shared laughs, none of the singing that has (had, he reminds himself dully, I have to remember that it's had now) become their own secret and guilty pleasure. There is no Angelina with her clever fingers to play the piano as they sing together, to harmonize and learn the songs Fred's fingers could summon forth from the eager keys.
It is just him here, alone, the lesser half of a single soul, and he is lost. Fred is gone, and George is not, and somehow he will have to find his own way to break the waiting silence.
Silence might be golden, as they say, but it's slowly killing him, bleeding him dry, and he knows that there's no good way to keep pretending in this bitter silence that festers in his heart.
"Fred… why not me?" he murmurs, scarred hands gripping the sink tightly, knuckles whitening, wincing as his own voice, the only legacy that Fred has left him, skitters painfully off of the pale tile.
He can almost imagine his twin's sardonic grin, hear his manic laugh, and knows that the world is a poorer place for losing the best Weasley it ever had, knows that he is losing hold of reality because he can almost hear Fred's voice telling him that of course George has to live, because he couldn't very well die and take out both of the best Weasleys, now, could he?
He knows he's supposed to smile, that he would if Fred were really here, if he'd really said those words, but the problem is that he isn't here and he didn't say it, and George doesn't know how to live in the silence that Fred has left him.
There's nothing where his heart should be, and he doesn't know how much longer he can keep on pretending that one day he'll be able to breathe again.
