Do you stop being a twin when there's only one of you left? This was the first thought that popped into George's head when he awoke a full day after the Battle in his old single bed at the Burrow. Across the room a form rustled and shifted under the covers on the other single bed. George held his breath and his heart paused with it, but it was only Charlie. Ron and Harry were occupying the attic room that once belonged to Bill and Charlie, and Charlie had not given George a minute alone to do anything but take a piss since they left Hogwarts. The battle had raged into the early morning hours and by the time everyone had been collected and families reunited as best they could, it was already late the next day. Ginny and the boys probably would have kept going until they collapsed, trying to fix the castle or clean the grounds or do something to help, if Molly had not insisted they all go back to the Burrow and finally get a full meal and a good night's rest. George hadn't had a good night's rest since his fifth year when he and Fred first started concocting Weasley's Wizard Wheezes.
"I have to open the shop," he said out loud, not even sure if Charlie was awake yet.
"The shop can be closed for another day. George you just lost-"
"He would want me to open," George said, cutting Charlie off, "We've been closed long enough, and people need a laugh now more than ever." George grabbed the battle worn clothes he had left in a pile on the floor and apparated without even bothering to put them on.
Arriving in his flat above the shop, the early morning light filtered into the living room in streaks of swirling dust. George dumped his clothes on the floor and headed to the kitchen to see if there was any tea left from before the whole family had gone into hiding. It had been months since anyone had stepped foot in the flat, he was glad to see all the wards against unwanted guests had held. The kettle finally whistled and George poured boiling water over two tea bags, extra strength to start his day. He jumped at the sound of a creaking door in the flat and froze, his hand reaching out for the wand he had left on the counter, but it was only Angelina. George let out the breath he hadn't realized he was holding, and placed his wand back down on the counter.
"George," she said flooded with relief. She rushed to his side and wrapped her arms tightly around his middle. "I waited here for you after the battle, but you never came."
"Mum made us all go back to the Burrow to eat, I crashed there for the night," George supplied, not mentioning that he hadn't been ready to return to an empty flat the night before, or that Charlie hadn't let him out of his sight all night as if he were afraid George might try something. As the initial shock of someone else being in his flat wore off, George wrapped his arms around Angelina as well. "I'm sorry I didn't send an owl," George said, his mouth pressed to Angelina's cheek. She had tears trailing down her face, but she pulled back and shook her head a few times, "No, no, it's fine. There's been a lot going on. I'm just glad you're here, and that you're alright." George pulled her back into a tight embrace and bent his head to kiss the crook of her neck, grateful that the flat hadn't been empty after all. He checked his watch and realized that by the time he went to bed the night before, and the fact that it was barely past six in the morning he had only gotten a few hours of sleep. The shop wouldn't even need to be opened until ten. Somehow sensing what he was thinking, Angelina took the tea George had brewed and said, "Go back to sleep, George. I'll open the shop and you can come down whenever you're ready." George was grateful that he didn't need to explain to Angelina that the shop needed to be open now more than ever. Fred and George had tried their best to keep spirits high in the rapidly decaying mood of Diagon Alley, but eventually they too had to close up shop when the Weasley's were publicly named as wanted Blood Traitors. They had returned to their mail-order business, and threw themselves into PotterWatch with Lee, but there wasn't a day that went by at Aunt Muriel's where Fred didn't talk about how great it would be to open the shop again. Angelina knew how much people needed their business through the war, and the aftermath would be no different. It would be a long time before things returned to normal.
George headed for his bedroom, not feeling the slightest bit tired, but for Angelina's sake he would try to sleep. He heard her moving around the flat getting ready and laid in bed wide awake until he heard her leave. A few minutes later George heard the tinkling of the bell that hung over the shop door and he got up and paced around the flat. George was exhausted, deep in his bones, he could feel it. His eyes burned, his back and arms ached, his body was caked in dust and dried sweat, and probably somewhere a little blood, but he could not fall asleep. He resolved to at least take a shower and try some healing salve on the worst of his aches and pains. He had hoped the hot water would calm him down, but he felt even more wired than before. He brewed another cup of tea and this time actually got to drink it. He tried in desperation to fall asleep in bed, or on the couch, or in the arm chair his father always dozed off in when he came to visit after work, all to no avail. He finally resolved to just get dressed and head down to the shop, but when it came to actually leaving the flat, George found himself stuck. The rest of the day passed in further attempts to go downstairs, but George never made it and for a brief moment, after his seventh caffeinated beverage of the day, when he was able to get a moment of rest, Angelina found him passed out on the sofa fully dressed in his Weasley's Wizard Wheezes robes. She picked up takeout from the Leaky Cauldron and roused him on her return to coax him to change into pajamas and eat the food she had brought him.
Sleep that night was fitful, filled with repetitive visions of the battle, some from reality and some stitched together based on events he learned about after it was all over. One dream he kept waking from and returning to the moment he slipped back off to sleep was of him crying over Fred's body in the corridor after the blast had killed him, but in reality George hadn't been there when it happened, he had been guarding a different secret passageway. George hadn't even seen his twin until Percy had brought Fred's body to the Great Hall. The worst part was not knowing. George always thought that if Fred died before him that he would feel it, that he would know, but Fred was gone in an instant and George hadn't even realized. Throughout the night the dream would change and it was Percy crying over Fred, and George was just silently watching from a distance, unable to react. Each time George awoke the images blurred and ran together and the lack of sleep created a haze in his mind that made ciphering through what were memories and what were just dreams impossible.
In the morning George peeled himself out of bed, having successfully dozed off around dawn. He somehow felt worse than he had the morning after the Battle, like how he used to not be able to feel the labors of an especially grueling Quidditch practice until a few days later. Angelina was brewing coffee in the kitchen and George watched her quietly before making himself known, wondering if this would be the time she'd stay for good. "I don't want to live with you and Fred!" she'd squeal as George would try to drag her back to bed in the morning, but she'd always make her escape and disappear for weeks at a time with the Falmouth Falcons.
"I'll mind the shop while you get things in order with your parents. Lee has offered to help as well," Angelina said, pouring coffee into a mug and handing it to George.
"Right," was all George could say in regards to spending the whole week with his mum and dad planning his own brother's funeral.
Customers came in droves at the news of the re-opening of Weasley's Wizard Wheezes, one of the first businesses to return to Diagon Alley after the fall of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. Knowing he was truly dead didn't make saying his name any easier, after months of worrying about a slip of the tongue landing Snatchers on your doorstep. When George wasn't out getting Fred's affairs in orders, he would sit in his flat and listen to the tinkling of the bell above the shop door and the gleeful sound of customers trying to return their lives to normal. Three days passed and George had still not been able to step foot in his own shop. Since the first meeting with the funeral director George had spent all hours of the day wracking his brain for something to send his brother out with a bang. George scribbled ideas on parchment like a maniac from the early morning hours into the late evening, but each idea had to be scrapped as the image of his mother weeping in the front row of the funeral came to mind. It was a fine line George had to walk to think of something Fred would have liked that was also tasteful, a fine line that Fred would have happily danced all over.
Frustrated with his lack of a viable option, and with the dread that he may have lost his greatest muse forever, George headed down the back stair to rummage around in the workshop. There were dozens of half-baked inventions down there that might spark an idea or at least be worth attempting to finish. Fred was always coming up with a new idea that needed immediate attention, so George would stop what he was doing and try to complete working out the solution to Fred's latest fancy before Fred could think of something new. George bumbled around the workshop trying to find anything that could become something. Fred's funeral was only in a few days, and if George didn't come up with something fast- he couldn't even think about letting Fred down, so he pushed through and continued searching. He stumbled upon an undeveloped vial of Weasley's Wildfire Whiz-bangs powder that George had never been able to tweak enough to satisfy his brother. Fred just kept saying it needed something more.
"I want people to cry when they see these fireworks," Fred had said. George never understood if he meant it as a joke or not, but George was a lot better with stuff that went bang and thus the responsibility of fulfilling Fred's dreams of the perfect fireworks fell on him. George would never know what Fred meant by that statement now, but when he went to return the vial of powder to the shelf, he knocked over a glass potion bottle. He swore as the glass shattered at his feet, and a heady aroma drifted up from the spill. It smelt something like the sulfur from the wet-start fireworks Fred could never get enough of at Zonko's, a sweet scent that reminded George of the first batch of Puking Pastilles they made back in school, and a hint of bat spleen, a smell George couldn't stand, especially as an ingredient of a terrible cologne Fred always wore when he met with investors he had no interest in doing business with. George dropped to the floor and inhaled the scent to be sure. Was it an abandoned prank on George that Fred had forgotten about? A potion that smelt just like him? Amongst the minuscule remains of the glass bottle was a large shard only held together by the label. George picked it up tenderly to see that the label read: Amortentia. Now George knew it had to be a prank by Fred. Maybe by offering it to a pretty girl, or giving it to George to mix into their love potions, knowing that Amortentia for George had smelt like broom polish and Angelina's shampoo since Sixth year. He dipped his finger in a droplet that clung to the glass and tasted it. It tasted exactly like the potion, and when he checked his reflection in the mirror at their work station he found that his pupils were dilated, as they should be after a taste of Amortentia. George scoured their potion station for another bottle and uncorked it and took a big whiff. Sulfur, Puking Pastilles, and Bat Spleen. Perhaps in his heartbreak and longing for his brother, the scent of the potion had changed. Maybe romantic love wasn't the only kind of love that Amortentia could replicate. This gave George an idea.
Hundreds gathered along the edge of the Black Lake for a memorial service to honor all the lives lost in the final battle, as well as the whole war. The service was led by the newly appointed Minister of Magic, Kingsley Shacklebolt, the first Minister in George's lifetime he was actually in favor of. Harry, who was sitting between Andromeda Tonks and Ginny, handed Lupin's sleeping son off to his grandmother before getting up to speak. He gave a thoughtful and stirring speech about sacrifice that had no doubt been edited by Hermione. Hermione, George was pleased to see, had her head rested on his brother's shoulder. Took them long enough, he thought. At his own side, grasping his hand and crying silently was Angelina, which had taken him long enough too.
All of the fallen Order members would be buried today, along with a special service for Mad-Eye whom they had never had time to properly mourn due to the chain of events that rapidly happened after. After today, Harry would have many more funerals and memorial services to attend, and George felt for him and the terrible burden Harry had been carrying for all these years. He was just a kid still. George and his siblings were hardly any older, and yet they had been through so much. He was glad that Harry had Ginny, easily the toughest of the Weasley's, for support. After Harry's speech, Shacklebolt returned to the dias to dedicate the stone memorial beside Dumbledore's newly repaired tomb to all those lost, and then in front of everyone cleared the name of Sirius Black. He awarded medals of outstanding service to the wizarding world to Harry, Ron, and Hermione, as well as recognition of service to all the members of the Order of Phoenix, and Lee for managing Potterwatch. Kingsley placed a medal around each of their necks and presented Andromeda with two medals, one for Tonks, and one for Lupin. George watched from down the line as Andromeda brought both of the medals to her mouth to kiss then held them up toward the sky. When Shacklebolt handed George a second medal for Fred, George just quietly said, "Thank you," and avoided looking Kingsley in the eye.
One by one they laid to rest and honored their friends, with Fred's funeral coming at the end of the day. George stood between his mother and Charlie on the receiving line, shaking hands and accepting condolences for Fred. Every once in a while Charlie would bump George's shoulder with his own, or whisper something in George's ear about their extended family in hopes of getting the slightest laugh, but George was numb to it all. He had spent days planning his brother's funeral. Fred laid just behind him in a casket looking no different from all the times he had fallen asleep at his desk in the workshop in the back of Weasley's Wizard Wheezes. How cruel that George had had Fred to navigate every moment of his life with, but after today, Fred would be out of his reach forever. Every day after today would be a day George would have to navigate without his twin.
When everyone had settled, the services began. George held his mother's hand in his left, and Angelina's in his right, and felt their tears soak through the shoulders of his robes and basked in the warmth. Every moment of every day since the Battle had ended had been occupied with a task that needed to be done, but all George had to worry about in this moment was how he would move forward without Fred. He wept with some control, knowing full well he couldn't just loudly sob in the middle of the service, and the only thing that kept him from breaking down completely was the thought of Fred ribbing him about crying.
Just as Fred was lowered into the ground, there came a loud bang and a whistle from a short distance away. Everyone's heads snapped up to see a firework whizzing through the air and bursting just above the congregation. Molly jerked her head off George's shoulder and gave him a stern look. All of his siblings, Lee, Angelina, Harry and Hermione had all turned to look at George, but he just shrugged with a small smile and turned his gaze to the sky. The fireworks were spectacular, like nothing him and Fred had ever managed before. The colors more vibrant, the flashes and sounds somehow softer and sweeter than their normal batch. Everyone watched with rapt attention as a golden spark started to scroll the names of all those they had buried that day as well as other friends they had lost along the way. The words hovered for a moment over the crowd, then burst into a golden dust that fell down upon everyone's head and shoulders before disappearing. The faint smell of George's secret ingredient lingered in the air as silence fell, only broken by the sound of sniffles and shuddering gasps.
"Amortentia?" Angelina whispered in George's ear, and he simply nodded. George and Angelina had been partnered up for that lesson in Potions not long after Fred had taken Angelina to Yule Ball on a whim. It was then that George and Angelina realized it was them who liked each other.
"He would have loved it," Angelina whispered with a squeeze of George's hand. On his other side, his mother cried even harder, like he had feared, but she took a deep breath in order to tell George that she thought the fireworks display was beautiful. The crowd erupted into applause, broken up only by people wiping away tears, and George realized he had been able to achieve Fred's strange dream of making fireworks that could make people cry.
After the service, everyone went back to the Burrow where Molly had cooked up a tremendous amount of food that she insisted everyone eat. Angelina and Lee argued about something going on at the store, but George tuned them out. Across the kitchen Charlie was standing with Percy who turned to George and smiled tentatively and nodded. They hadn't spoken much since Percy brought Fred's body into the Great Hall, but Ron had told George that the last thing Fred had ever done was laugh at a joke that Percy had made. It would take a while for George to completely forgive Percy for what he had put their parents through. Sure Fred and George had given their parents years worth of trouble, but they had never turned their back on their family or Harry for a promotion. In the end, though the loss was clearly greatest for George, Percy had lost a brother that night too, and he had to be the one to tell the family what had happened. They would make their amends soon enough. George looked around for his mother, whose back was to him at the kitchen sink, and reached for a gingersnap cookie, which he thought would pair nicely with his glass of Firewhiskey, in the stack that Molly had explicitly told him she was saving for later.
"George Fabian Weasley, what did I say about the desserts?" his mother's voice came from across the room.
"I swear your mother has eyes on the back of her head, like Quirrel," Harry said lowly from a few feet away. He was nursing a glass of Firewhiskey himself, and to George's knowledge had only had it one other time after the seven Potter's incident.
"Right," George said a bit confused, guessing Harry might be drunk.
"You know like Quirrel had Voldemort's eyes on the back of his head," Harry said, as if that explained it. George must've still looked confused, because Harry said, "Did I never tell you about that?" George shook his head.
"Voldemort wasn't just possessing Quirrel. His face was literally on the back of Quirrel's head! That's why he always wore that stupid turban. You didn't know?"
"What?!" George exclaimed, his jaw going slack.
"Yeah, it was honestly pretty gross and terrifying. Really messed me up until, you know, worse things kept happening to me," Harry said calmly sipping his Firewhiskey.
"Harry," George said in absolute disbelief at what he had realized, "Fred and I bewitched snowballs to bounce off of Quirrel's turban in the winter of our third year. Are you telling me we were bouncing snowballs off of the Dark Lord's face?"
"NO," Harry shouted.
"YES!" George shouted back, and they both started howling with laughter.
"And Fred didn't know?" Harry asked.
"If I didn't know, he didn't know," said George, knowing his brother wouldn't have kept that to himself.
"I wish I could've seen the look on Fred's face if he'd found that out," Harry said still laughing.
"Here's what it would have looked like," George said pointing to his own face, making a gleefully shocked look before laughing with Harry again. George pulled Angelina and Lee into the conversation and recounted what Harry had just told them and they all laughed so hard they got tears in their eyes. Soon everyone was sharing stories of things that Fred had done and everyone was laughing so hard they cried, and George felt like Fred wasn't completely gone as long as his antics had left a lasting impression on those that were still around.
George had insisted on apparating to the Leaky Cauldron for another drink before heading home, but when they arrived, fatigue hit George like a bludger. Angelina was happy to just pass through and walk back to George's flat without stopping. It had been a long day for everyone and what they both really needed was a good night's sleep. Angelina also knew George hadn't slept all week because he had been in the workshop at all hours working on what she now knew were the fireworks for Fred's funeral. She headed for the door to the stairs up to the flat, but George lingered by the door to the shop.
"What is that?" he asked, peering into the window. Something was glowing inside the store.
"Maybe Lee forgot to extinguish all the lamps," Angelina suggested, but before she could worry that maybe it was someone's wand light, George unlocked the shop door and stepped inside.
He hadn't been in the shop since before the war. Even with everything in him, he had not had the strength to step within his and Fred's greatest creation since he had come back. Now, bone tired, a little delirious from a lifetime's worth of emotions compounded into a week, George had just gone right in to inspect the light that glowed dimly from the back of the shop. He followed the soft glow, after all this time away he could still weave nimbly through the shop without lighting his wand to guide his way. There, at the back of the shop near the till, on a shelf below a framed front page of the Daily Prophet featuring a picture of George and his late twin, was a lit candle. George could feel Angelina come up alongside him as he bent forward to blow out the candle.
"Oh," he and Angelina both said in surprise. The candle did not go out, but the flame, which had been an ordinary yellow, was suddenly a vibrant red. George and Angelina looked at each other and George attempted to blow out the candle once more, with more force, but the light wouldn't budge and was now distinctly purple in color. George blew again much harder this time, but the flame didn't even wobble or flicker, it merely turned blue. George looked back at Angelina confused.
"Did you put this candle here?"
"No, you know I hate candles. They could burn the bloody building down," Angelina said warily eying the mysterious candle. George licked his index finger and thumb and reached out to extinguish the flame but just as Angelia said, "Don't!" the flame did not go out, but turned green instead.
"It wasn't even hot," George said incredulously, inspecting his fingers. He grabbed a flyer from behind the till and held the corner in the flame, but it did not catch fire. "Curious thing," George said placing the flyer on the counter, "Ang, are you messing with me?"
"No, I swear, it wasn't here when I closed up. It must be some kind of charm, but I've never seen anything like it. Should we Floo Hermione?"
George shook his head, "I don't think it'll burn down the shop. It's late, we can deal with it in the morning." George looked up at the photograph above the Daily Prophet article of he and Fred gleefully standing outside the newly opened Weasley's Wizard Wheezes. The light from the candle cast the men in a glow and they walked closer to the frame and looked down, as if to see the candle for themselves. Photograph Fred looked at real George and mimed zipping his mouth, locking it with an imaginary key, and tossing the key out of frame somewhere. George figured photograph Fred would let on if something nefarious had happened in the shop under his nose. George took once last look at the candle and realized a muggle trick called a whoopie cushion was out of place on the shelf, probably abandoned by some lazy customer. George grabbed the whoopie cushion and tossed it in the bin by the other muggle pranks, Fred's favorite part of the shop, then indicated to Angelina it was time to go. Hopefully he'd sleep well that night, exhausted from the week's events.
The next morning George is up bright and early, feeling well-rested for the first time in nearly a year. He heads down to the shop with Angelina and feels a warmth spread through him when the bell over the shop door tinkles and they start up all the lights and charms and moving bits and bobs that fill the shop with a vibrant cacophony of motion and sound. It feels good to be back, though the hollow feeling of enjoying anything without Fred creeps in, George knows Fred wouldn't want him to wallow forever. "The show must go on," Fred would say when discussing re-opening post-Voldemort. When news that George is back in the shop makes the rounds, nearly everyone he's ever known stops by to say hi. Ginny and Harry brought lunch for George and Angelina, and Lee stopped by in the afternoon to help with the closing shift. George showed all his siblings and friends the strange candle throughout the day, but no one let on that they knew anything about its sudden appearance. Hermione determined it was most likely harmless, though curious nonetheless. George hadn't even considered trying to move the thing until Hermione and Ron stopped in, but they discovered it was immovable.
"I don't like that thing," Ron said after the third charm the attempted to move the candle didn't work. "Spooky, that is, just showing up like that." George felt inclined to roll his eyes at his brother, but held back when he considered the kinds of things Ron had seen in his young life. He was still skeptical about the candle himself, after all, but Hermione's assessment put him at ease.
When George, Lee, and Angelina closed the shop at the end of the day and did the kind of tidying you could only do after the last customer was gone George made his way back to the till, passing the candle for what felt like the hundredth time that day. Lee came over and started blowing on the flame over and over, watching the colors change with delight.
"Sure is something," Lee said, as George and Angelina counted the money in the tills. "Oh man, I remember when Fred brought one of these to Potions in fourth year and put it on Flint's seat." George looked up from what he was doing to see what Lee was referring to. On the shelf beside the candle, in nearly the exact place as the night before, was a muggle whoopie cushion.
"Put that back with the others, will you?" George said.
"That's what I was trying to do but it's stuck to the shelf," Lee said tugging on the rubber, showing George that it still stretched, but would otherwise not budge. George came out from behind the register to try and give it a go, and sure enough the whoopie cushion was stuck.
"Finite incantatum," George said, pointing his wand at the whoopie cushion, hoping that it would end whatever sticking charm was attached to it, but the cushion did not unstick.
"Angelina, I am in a fragile state, if you are messing with me-" George said, only half-joking.
"You think I stuck one of those silly muggle fart makers to the shelf? Have you seen how neat I've been keeping this place?" Angelina waved her arm around the significantly better organized shop. "Let me give it a go." She yanked and she spelled, but the whoopie cushion would not move.
"Leave it for now. I'll stop by Flourish and Blotts in the morning to see if there's some home remedy charms book to unstick it. I want to have a pint in celebration of getting George back in the shop," Lee said, trying to wave his friends away from the candle and cushion that had taken up residence on the shelf. "One whoopie cushion out of place in a shop like this will probably go unnoticed," he said after grabbing George and Angelina's coats from the back room and ushering them towards the door.
"Lee, are you messing with us?" George asked, suspiciously eying his friend.
"No," Lee said as if it were obvious, "you know I don't have a head for pranks, I just like to watch when you do 'em- now let's have that pint!" George was the last to leave the shop and, after turning off the lights, looked back at the glow from the candle one last time before locking up and following Lee and Angelina to the Leaky Cauldron.
A few days passed and nothing else unusual happened around the candle and the now permanent whoopie cushion, but George couldn't help but pass the shelf as he made the rounds, occasionally tugging on the whoopie cushion or waving his hand through the color-changing flame. One day on his return from lunch, George noticed a bunch of kids lingering around by the register, but when he asked if they needed to be rung up the all scattered. George made a mental note to start going over inventory with Angelina before the Quidditch season started back up and she'd have to leave. Assuming the kids had probably knicked something, George didn't notice until hours later that a used and worn down muggle hand buzzer and an empty box of chocolate frogs had been left alongside the whoopie cushion and had all been adhered to the shelf with some type of magic. George glanced up to the Daily Prophet photograph and his and his brother's likeness just smiled and shrugged back at him. George was exasperated and confused by this, but very soon, while being wrapped up in the goings-on of the store, the odd collection on the shelf had doubled.
Weeks after the mysterious candle had appeared, worn out pranks and broken toys filled the shelf. Not long after these items appeared, so too did old Skiving Snackbox wrappers with messages and doodles scrawled on them. George stopped fighting whatever was happening and when the shelf was running out of space he found himself moving the remaining products on the shelf to a different part of the shop. As the shelf filled, items began crawling up the wall and when George found a note thanking Fred and George for being a light in the darkness, he finally got it. These were offerings. The shelf had become an alter of sorts after the first candle had shown up and George would get excited when he noticed a new item plastered to the edge of the shelf or occasionally hanging beneath it. There were other notes that showed up too, and most of them were written to Fred. On more than one occasion George would find himself reading an anecdote about Fred from a customer that he had never known about. It was amazing to him that Fred could be gone, but there were still things to learn about his twin. One of George's favorites was an animated drawing on the back of a flyer for U No Poo of him and Fred flying through the Great Hall with a note saying "Fred and George made this year worth getting through!" So much of what George did he did for his and Fred's enjoyment. He had loved hearing Fred laugh even if it was at his own expense when one of their inventions backfired, but Fred had always gotten his joy by seeing complete strangers enjoy their products.
"Isn't it amazing, Georgie?" Fred had said in a full store in their early days. "All those teachers that said we were too much trouble, our own Mum telling us we'd never amount to anything if we didn't get serious. But these people," Fred said waving his arms around at all the customers laughing and chatting gleefully around the store, "They get it. They get us." Fred would have loved seeing all the well-worn Weasley's Wizard Wheezes products that were slowly taking over this corner of the store.
George hadn't looked at the photograph of him and Fred above the alter much when he first returned to the store, but when he had stopped worrying about all the clutter appearing on the shelf and started looking forward to new additions, photograph Fred would try to point them out to George. Sometimes through the excitement of seeing new junk stuck to his wall, the regret of never getting a proper portrait of the twins in the shop would slip in. This little picture on a newspaper was all George really had of Fred. At least a portrait would be able to talk to him or to the customers leaving items on the shelf. But it would never be Fred, so George had to accept it was for the best. In like a wave would come those feelings of regret, of missing Fred, of knowing he would've loved all the stuff their customers were sticking to their shelf and wall, but never getting to see his true reaction. Most days all those bad feelings could be flooded by the overwhelming support of George's friends and family and all of the loyal patrons of Weasley's Wizard Wheezes. The bad feelings would probably always creep up, but as long as George appreciated what he still had and the legacy and memory of Fred that he had the fortune of being reminded of in his shop every day, maybe he could find a way to float over all the bad feelings, instead of letting them drown him.
Fred always loved attention more than George and loved when people made a fuss about Birthdays and other celebrations. George insisted his mum not do anything at all when he had finally realized that even if Angelina was often gone for Quidditch, she was never going to really leave him, and finally popped the question. His mum, in turn, insisted on doing something, but promised to keep the engagement celebration small. Of course it was impossible to keep anything truly small in the Weasley family. After an elaborate dinner, they all sat around the long table sipping tea and chatting while his mum prepared dessert. George zoned out a little, holding Angelina's left hand and absentmindedly twisting the ring he had given her on her finger. He tuned in and out of his siblings' conversations, and watched as Teddy Lupin, with a full head of red hair, happily bounced on his father's knee while Andromeda helped his mum with dessert. Harry, Percy, and Hermione were all complaining about someone at the ministry while their dad listened and nodded. Bill and Fleur were talking with mum and Andromeda about how well Teddy and Victoire had gotten along during their first playdate. Ron was telling Angelina how he was seriously rethinking being an Auror after being in grave danger for his entire adolesence. George listened attentively to the conversation Angelina was having with Ron when she broached the idea that since she was always away for work, perhaps Ron could lend a hand at Weasley's Wizard Wheezes. Hermione had stopped by the shop one day during lunch to buy a birthday present for Ron, but instead spent most of the hour complaining about how much Ron had been complaining about being an Auror after training was done. George had suggested to Hermione that Ron work at the shop, but Hermione said, "He'll never take that suggestion if I say it," which was true. Fred and George had always enjoyed not letting Ron know how fond they actually were of him and George wasn't going to give up on that now, so this all turned into an elaborate plan for Angelina to get Ron to think it was his idea, for George to begrudgingly agree, and for Hermione to get a little more peace in her relationship.
George tuned out again, letting Angelina take the reins on this and focused in on the conversation Charlie was having with Ginny across the table. During the war Charlie had been trying to get a transfer to a closer dragon sanctuary, but when his position in eastern Europe was useful to Dumbledore he weathered the majority of the storm from a far. Painfully far from his family. After a year of trying, he was finally able to transfer to a job in Scotland that focused specifically on Hebridean Black dragons. Charlie was certainly full of interesting knowledge, but much like Percy, he could go on and on without noticing people had lost interest, but Ginny, bless her heart, always stayed attentive. George was reminded of the time several Christmases ago when Ginny had let Charlie talk about how you could tell if a dragon was sick by examining their dung for at least thirty minutes. Fred and George would follow Ginny around for weeks after that asking all sorts of specific questions about dragon dung. George smiled at the memory, as Charlie told Ginny about the orphan dragons they had recently rescued from a creature dealer.
"Sometimes the females in the herd won't accept the orphans and we have to raise them and care for them ourselves. But we have this charm that mimics mummy dragon fire to get the hatchlings to trust us," Charlie said.
"What do you mean?" Ginny asked.
"Due to temperature or breed an adult dragon's fire can be any number of colors, so we have a charm that creates a harmless flame that can be any color." George's jaw dropped and almost as if on cue, Charlie looked at him across the table and winked then continued talking to Ginny about his job. George had just been telling Charlie he had to stop by the shop sometime to see how much the collection for Fred had grown and that smug bastard never took any credit for it. George shook his head and smiled again thinking of Fred and how a giant pile of junk started by a small candle had helped him find peace in the loss of his other half. George would miss Fred everyday for the rest of his life, he had no doubt, but it didn't always have to hurt. George could miss Fred by remembering the good he had done with his short life, and George could savor the good moments with all the people who were still in his life. This quiet, pleasant evening with the family was exactly the kind of thing Fred and George would have tried to disrupt or make more lively, but a lot had changed over the past year and George was grateful for it, and even looked forward to more nights like this. Engagements and marriages and children were coming and the Weasley family would grow, and as the alter in the shop grew, the memory of Fred would grow with them too.
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