A/N: I got this one out unusually fast! Thanks for the reviews everyone, I really appreciate them. Special thanks to the people that helped out with the mistakes I made. I don't have a beta, so it's hard sometimes.

Chapter 1

"Expectations"

There is nothing peaceful about sleep when you are actually doing it. Everything floats away and leaves you completely unknowing of the peace that you should have supposedly fallen into. Instead you are either left with a complete lack of any conscious feeling or drawn through a number of thoughts, memories and dreams that, more often then not, are complete nonsense by the time you process them in the morning.

No, the true moment of peace is that first moment you begin the gain consciousness before your brain catches up with the rest of you. There is no past or future in the moment, and only in that tiny span of time can you really feel truly at peace. Then it all starts to flood back and you are left again waiting through your entire day for the next fleeting moment when everything would be right in the world once more.

Lying in the grass, eyes still closed, George sighed deeply. He vaguely noted that his back and arms were slightly damp and he could see the deep scarlet of his eyelids in the rising sun.

Slowly peeling one dull blue eye open, he observed the morning sky. It wasn't as dramatic as the sunset had been last night, but there was a fresh sort of beauty to it anyway. Clouds floated lazily overhead, fluffy, soft-looking and slightly golden in the new light.

Opening his other eye, he propped himself up on his elbows to peer tiredly out at the land stretched in front of him. It was far greener than he had thought the night before, though still possessing a golden undertone. Varying grasses and undergrowth grew thickly over the softly rolling land stretched out in front of him, occasionally peppered with colorful wildflowers or a small tree of some sort.

Far in the distance he thought he could see the the faint figure of one of the women in the village kneeling in grass, gathering herbs.

Leaning back into the dewy grass, he closed his eyes again. He wasn't ready to be awake just yet. Everything was too glaring this time of morning.

Sleep eluded him, though. He lay still and quiet, but a thousand thoughts flitted unbidden across his mind. Everything he had tried to ignore, tried to forget, in the past couple weeks was spiraling around in his head in a wild sort of dance, growing every more tangled and awful with each second. No matter how much he tried to ignore the chaos in his head it stubbornly kept him miserable and totally awake.

"Oh. Good morning, George," said a breathy voice suddenly from just above where he was laying.

His eyes snapped open in surprise, then quickly closed when the glare of sunlight burned into his over-dilated pupils. Trying again more slowly, the silhouette of a slender woman appeared above him. She had a wicker basket clasped in her small, thin hands and was wearing a flowing white dress that was more like and an oversized peasant tunic then anything else.

He blinked a couple times, trying to center his overwhelmed mind.

"Luna?" he said, finally realizing exactly who he was looking at.

She nodded slightly, her long, tangled blond hair falling in her face. Without a word, she settled daintily onto the grass by his side, carefully setting her basket by her side. Her dress pooled around her as she stretched out her long, thin legs and wiggled her bare toes in the grass.

She said nothing. They sat together in silence, gazing out at the grassy fields in front of them waving in the wind. It was almost surreal sitting there with a girl he barely knew, just watching the world in comfortable silence.

His gaze shifted to the basket sitting between them, which appeared to be full of odd, compact yellow flowers. She had taken them out of the earth whole, root and all.

"What are these?" he asked before he could stop himself. While he was surprised by his own curiosity, Luna seemed to be expecting it.

"It's black medick," she said simply, "for a potion Daddy is going to make."

George had never heard of back medick as a potion ingredient or otherwise but chose to keep his mouth shut. He probably didn't want to know what Loony Lovegood and her crazy father were planning to do with the little yellow flowers.

"I thought I might have seen a flower fairy on one, but it turned out to be a most unusual beetle instead," she said, "Look."

She reached for her left shoulder, patted along it then up into her hair, searching, until she finally plucked something from the mass of hair behind her left ear. Seemingly not bothered by the fact she had just pulled a bug out of her hair, she opened her fist to show him a shiny red beetle. It had two lopsided black spots on its rounded back that gave off the odd impression of large, sad eyes gazing up at him.

"I've named him Harold," she told him, like she was introducing a relative, then offered him the hand containing the oversized ladybug.

George looked at the girl in front of him with dim amazement. She really was loony.

Seeming to realize he didn't want to hold Harold, Luna withdrew her pale little hand. Placing the beetle back onto her shoulder, she collected her basket to rise. Harold scurried frantically down her back as she stood.

Worried for a moment that he had hurt her feelings, he opened his mouth to apologize, but never got the chance.

"Well, it was nice seeing you George," she said in her normal dreamy tone. He could tell that she was being sincere, though he had hardly been good company. Then again, she always seemed sincere to him.

"Yeah, you too," he said, not sure if he meant it or not. It was vaguely interesting if nothing else.

"You should probably go home soon too," she called softly over her shoulder as she walked down the hill slope, swinging her basket by her side like a child, "Your family might be worried."

It wasn't until he was watching her shapeless white-clad form disappear behind a hill that he realized that despite being decidedly loony, his longtime neighbor was completely right. His mother was surely not happy to wake up and find him gone, and there was no way they could have seen him from the Burrow, facing away and surrounded by grass as he was.

Standing up and dusting the bits of dirt and plant off his trousers, he turned and gave his home a long look. He knew he needed to go back, but some part of him didn't want to. He would be scolded, and whispered about and pulled into forced conversations about things that didn't matter anymore... and he almost wished he could just leave it all behind. They would be okay without him eventually.

Shaking his head, he began to descend down the hillside towards his little, crooked house.

Someday maybe he would really do it... start walking away and never come back. But not yet. Even if it was only in body, they needed him home now so they could murmur quietly amongst themselves about how "at least we still have George."

As he carefully picked his way through the overgrown garden there was a great bang and a startled shout. George jumped slightly in shock, his feet trampling some of his mother's seedlings as his head whipped around in surprise.

His mother ran towards him, her arms thrown wide from her body and her skirt catching and tearing in the undergrowth. She looked utterly disheveled. Before he could react she was in front of him throwing her arms around him.

"George! Where have been?" she cried as she put a hand behind his head and squashed him against her chest. She patted his back and smoothed his hair down like she used to when he was a child. Pressed as he was into her chest, he was horrified to notice she was close to tears.

"Mum..." he murmured, trying to ignore the twinge of guilt he felt in his stomach, "I just feel asleep outside, is all-"

"That's ALL?" she hissed, her emotions taking a complete 180 degree turn. She pushed him away as suddenly as she had grabbed him and put her hands firmly on her hips, "You just fell asleep outside, IS ALL?"

George of all people knew exactly what the beginning of one of his mother's tirades looked like, and he instantly knew this was going to be a big one. He watched his formidable mother carefully. Her face was red and her eyes puffy, and he suddenly felt very far away from the situation. He should have felt awful for making her worry, but instead he suddenly felt very bored and a little angry.

"You know what it feels like to wake up and find you gone?" she cried, and he was reminded strongly of the time they arrived home after flying his father's car to free Harry years ago, "I can't believe you would do this to your family! Especially... e-especially since we just lost your brother! "

She lost her steam once the sentence was out of her mouth, seeming to realize what she had said. She placed her hand over her mouth in surprise.

"I'm not Fred, Mum," George found himself saying quietly, ignoring the falling look on his mother's face, "I'm just George, and my being here doesn't make him any less dead."

"Oh, George, I didn't mean it that way," she said sadly, reaching for his arm.

He jerked it out of her grasp and stepped around her. He knew it was cruel, but he couldn't look at his mother anymore. He pushed past her and into the house as quickly as he could.

He tore through the mud room and kitchen, ignoring the surprised look Ron sent him as he passed, dashing up the stairs to his room and locking the door.

As he stood with his back to the heavy wooden door, all the angry thoughts he had wanted to scream at his mother roared around in his head like an angry dragon.

He shouldn't have said anything, really, but it was so hard when he knew, he knew...

Some days they would stare and stare at him, their eyes devouring his every feature like they were starving for it. Those days he knew he wasn't just George to them, but a substitute Fred too. If they looked long enough, maybe they could even convince themselves that he was Fred, back from the dead.

Other days they avoided him altogether, unable to bear the sight of him. They did it as politely as they could, staring at his shoes when they spoke to him or busying themselves with some other task and never turning towards him at all. These days he wasn't George either, but nothing more than a sad reminder of what they had lost.

The only time he was truly George to them anymore was when he was in another room, and they could whisper in worried voices about why he wasn't grieving properly.

Slowly he slid down his door into a heap on the floor.

He couldn't be what his family needed him to be. He couldn't be both Fred and George; he couldn't even really be George anymore.

His family was asking for so much more than he could give. He thought he might hate them a for it little, and that terrified him.

A/N: So Luna makes a brief appearance! I'm taking it slow introducing her to the story for a couple reasons. Mainly because George doesn't know her very well and is too consumed by his grief to really reach out to her at this point. It'll take a while for her presence to make sense, but it'll come.

Anyway, hope you enjoyed this chapter. I'm not so sure about it. Anyway, thanks for reading, and I'd love to hear what you think.

-Vi