A/N: Thank you so much for the reviews! Hope you all had a wonderful holiday season. Happy Kwanzaa, which is still going on, and Happy New Year if I don't update until next year. :) And I hope Santa or whoever brings you your holiday gifts brought you all your lovely Fred Action Figures as I'm sure you were all good this year. Here's chapter 4.

His head was throbbing. He had just landed, or rather was just slammed against some hard surface. His head hurt too much to open his eyes and he wasn't exactly sure he wanted to. George had felt himself leave Angelina and the darkness swallowed his body to...where?

This wasn't how it was supposed to happen. He knew that. Harry mentioned nothing about pain so something had to have gone wrong. He lay on the ground trying to figure out if he should just keep his eyes shut tight or flip the stone over in his hand again. He closed his left hand over...nothing. It was gone. The stone was gone. Did he drop it? Maybe it was only laying a few feet off and he could feel around for it with his eyes closed. He didn't want to open his eyes. He was afraid of what he might see. But why exactly was he afraid?

Did he think he was going to open his eyes and see Fred? But not the Fred that Harry had said he would see, but a dead Fred? A rotting corpse? His heart was beating faster and faster and faster until suddenly...

"George!?"

...It stopped.

For a split second George's heart stopped. He knew that voice. A voice he had heard for years, a voice that...

"George!"

...a voice that interrupted his mental thoughts...

Cautiously, George opened his eyes, one by one. The sight reduced him to tears. Because standing in front of George was a very alive-looking Fred Weasley.

"George!"

George quickly covered his ear. "Why are you screaming at me?"

"I die and then you somehow get to me and you ask me why I'm screaming at you? This is certainly a joyous reunion brother."

In a single movement, George was off the ground and hugging his twin. And he was solid. Completely. George held Fred at an arm's length to get a good look at him through teary eyes. As he had already noted, Fred was solid. He didn't have any shiny, outer glow or aura. He also didn't look ghost-like in the slightest. The only thing that was different was that he was just a little more pale than he had been the last time George had seen him alive.

"George!"

"Fred!"

"George!"

"Stop yelling."

"I'm not...I'm...oh."

"No you're, Fred."

Fred laughed and pulled out a flesh-colored something from his pocket. George looked closer and when he realized what it was, he started to laugh.

"An extendable ear? Brother, haven't you heard the phrase 'you can't take it with you'?"

"No it's yours."

"I didn't bring..."

"No it's your real ear."

George got even closer and took the ear from Fred and he was right. His ear! His little ear that had been cursed off. But how? Why?

"I'm not yelling, your hearing is just a lot better because your ear is here. Or at least your ear's soul."

"But you're not a soul. You're back! I brought you back with the Resurrection Stone! I turned it in my hand three times in the Forbidden Forest. That must be it! That must be why you're solid! You're alive."

"No, I don't think that's it. We're not standing in the forest. We're at the stop."

"What stop?"

"The stop."

When George looked at him curiously, he continued.

"It's like the wait at the pearly white gates before heaven or... where You-Know-Who is. You sit or walk around or play chess, but you wait until you go up or down."

"Wait! There's chess in heaven?"

"I don't know, but there's chess at the stop. There's no food. But I guess you don't really need to eat when you're..."

George nodded, taking this all in. He said quietly to his twin, "I'm sorry you're dead. I...I should have..."

"No. No, you couldn't have done anything. I died fighting. Anyway, I was in denial at first but when I saw Dumbledore..."

"Dumbledore! Dumbledore will know the answers! He'll know why I'm here! He'll know what happened!"

"Dumbledore went up a few days ago. He had some unfinished business with Harry. Started going on about King's Cross and then he just went right up. I guess he'd been at the stop since last year. I think that's how it works. You're here until you finish your business."

George looked around. Now he could see everything. It was a gloomy-looking place. Everything was shadowy and there was the faintest light coming from somewhere he couldn't quite see. The ground was rock hard and it looked like they were in some giant cave made completely out of grey rocks. All grey. It reminded him a lot of his Aunt Muriel's cooking. There were a few couches and a couple of Chess boards made of the same rock. There was a hallway that looked like it kept going and going.

"What's down there?" George asked, pointing.

"More people I think."

"You don't know? You haven't explored?"

"No. I've just been sitting here talking to your ear. He can't talk, but he's a great listener."

"That's why I've been hearing voices! I've been hearing you!"

"That's impossible. You don't have the ear anymore. Cursed off by Dark Magic, remember?"

"But I heard you talking!"

"Okay then what did I say?"

"Something about missing me and something along the lines of figuring out how to come back."

"Okay fine you did here me."

"And something about snogging Angelina..."

Fred was silent.

"Yeah Angelina and then...Angelina! Angelina came with me. But I left her. I turned the stone and then...and then everything went dark and I couldn't breathe and I was dizzy. Everything was leaving me and then..."

Fred put a hand on his brother's shoulder. When George saw the look in his eyes, for the first time since they were born, he pulled back.

"What?"

"George," he said seriously. "I think you're dead."

A/N: Thanks for reading! Hope that's a good cliffhanger for you all. Have a very Harry Holiday! See you in the next chapter! Please review and let me know what you thought!