Hours passed with Fred frozen above him. George couldn't feel his own pulse. His throat had closed over. Breathing was impossible. It would never happen again if Fred weren't there. For one of them to breathe out, the other had to breathe in. That was the way the world worked. George didn't exist without Fred. Fred was his satellite orbit, half of his being.
Fred was falling.
With the world turning to syrup around him, George saw with astonishment that someone was holding out his wand and pointing it at his brother. For a split second he heard someone yelling,
"Wingardium Leviosa!",
then realized he himself was screaming the words. Pain flared through his knees as he fell gasping to the stone floor, and stared bug eyed at Fred who was now floating upside down a few feet off the ground, blinking, cloak flapping around his head.
"Thanks, George." Fred's voice was hard to hear. "You ok?"
George opened and closed his mouth a few times. Then, just as suddenly as it had left, the rest of the world came back. Air came rushing into his lungs, cracking open his frozen self at the seams. His thoughts came into focus and he realized that Fred was hard to hear because of the siren roaring its intruder warning. The sharp pain in his back wasn't part of the aftershock; it was the pointed end of a wand. The extra feet in his peripheral vision most likely belonged to Ministry security guards, no doubt called by the alarm he'd just cleverly triggered.
He expected that one day he would probably look back on all this and laugh. He expected that any minute now he'd remember which part of his audacious plan this was, and how it involved being yanked off the floor to face down a security guard who'd obviously been crossed with a Norwegian Ridgeback. He thought he might even recall the brilliant and daring escape plan he'd come up with for just this situation.
Or, he might just throw up.
And so he did.
Pity, thought George through the haze. That looked like it had been quite a nice uniform robe.