"Eat, you'll feel better."
"Look at this!" George shouted above the din. "Just eat the other end to cure your sudden bout of upchucking!" To demonstrate, he tossed the proper half of the Puking Pastille to his 'test subject,' Lee, who promptly ate it and ceased spewing into a bucket. George bowed to the applause and stepped off the small stage into the back room of Weasley's Wizard Wheezes. He carefully replaced the hat and cape he'd been wearing on a special shelf with a gravity unlike his typical manner and settled heavily into a spare chair, tapping his foot on the floor. It was a gesture of impatience, but he was impatient for something that would never happen.
He carried himself all too heavily now. It tended not to resonate well with people anymore. Sometimes he was no longer the life of the party, but he never was all on his own. He always had his twin. George knew his new manner didn't exactly suit him, but that was the him that the public saw, he reflected. The real person was now one missing his best friend, his ally, the one that knew the words before he said them. And maybe it sounded sappy for such a prankster ("I swear, those Marauders have been reincarnated" was a phrase oft heard around the Weasley twins), but he missed Fred dearly.
Fred had been the one to invent the Puking Pastille. He'd discovered their little catchphrase ("Eat, you'll feel better," a quote stolen from Remus Lupin) and put the finishing touches on it before it went to market. He'd been inordinately proud of the little pill, as was George with his own charm for Nosebleed Nougat. Those were the only two projects they'd been rather separate for. Now they both sat on a special little shelf in a dark storeroom of a shop filled with light. The original drawings and prototypes for the candies were on the shelf, as were the first ones ever to be produced. The two of them had been rather sentimental.
Maybe that was why George was having such a hard time letting go. He reached over to the shelf and pulled the little wooden box housing the prototypes and pulled off the lid. The inside was ornate- they'd snitched it from Grimmauld Place once they were reasonably sure it held no Dark magic. The two brightly colored candies were in great contrast to the velvet lining, solemn and somber, not unlike George himself. A slip of parchment sat underneath the candy, with the harried penmanship of his brother inscribed on it in their patented Joker Ink. The message would change for anyone who read that was not the intended recipient. But he could read it perfectly.
"George,
If you find this, then something's happened to me. I know you've done the same for me, in case this war ruins the amazing duo of Gred and Forge. Anyway, if you ever read this, Volde-pocalypse must have happened because never in my wildest dreams would I possibly imagine our separation. Please keep running the shop.
Love,
Fred"
George swiped at one eye and heard the lock to the storeroom door click once. He hurriedly shoved away the papers and picked up a fake wand to 'examine' it. Lee entered and spotted him, then quickly made his way over.
"Something wrong?" he asked.
"I'm just impossibly upset that this fake wand won't work," George lied, dropping it on the counter with a grin and stretching as he stood. Lee shrugged.
"Alright, your loyal fans want another performance then," he announced. George clapped his hands together and gathered up some Canary Creams, then left the storeroom. Maybe if he are something to turn into a bird, to be a prankster again, he'd feel better.