George walked back to his room up in Gryffindor Tower—not his dorm room, he couldn't bear to live there anymore and besides, he had technically dropped out—with a heaviness in his step. He wondered if he were doing the right thing, because a part of him agreed with Sirius. To drag someone into a different world to fight a battle they hadn't asked for was a terrible thing to do. Maybe even unforgivable. But that part of him, the part that questioned the morality of swelling up Dudley Dursley's tongue for a lark or testing products on firsties, had quieted since Fred had died.
Don't think about that, he told himself. Don't think about that. He was so absorbed in his thoughts he didn't notice Daphne Greengrass, the snake, passing him in the corridor.
But telling himself to think about it was like telling someone not to think of a purple elephant—it just made him think about it more. Fred would've appreciated the comparison, George thought wryly, then dug the blunt fingernails of his hand into his palm. The absence of his twin felt like a gaping wound in his side. Everything reminded him of Fred.
Sometimes he would look out of one of the windows in the tower and wonder what it would feel like to jump out of it. Would his stomach drop to his feet? Does the wind when in free-fall feel like the wind during Quidditch? Would anybody see him go? But the thought would leave as quickly as it came, because Fred would have never wanted him to. George had something to fight for, too—people to fight for. He couldn't imagine what it would do to his mother if both of them were gone.
And, God, what kind of a brother would he be if he didn't avenge Fred, didn't avenge Harry, who had been his brother in all but name? Didn't avenge Ron, the little brother he had picked on for years but would have done anything for?
Harry had died in the Department of Mysteries, pushed through the Veil by a spell meant for Sirius. He had heard the story of Harry's death from Luna, teased it out of her in short snippets on the days when the rain didn't seem to end. "It was Bellatrix," she had said in her high, dreamy voice. "She shot a red spell at Sirius and Harry shoved him out of the way like one of those heroes from storybooks. But it pushed him through the Veil…"
"And then?" George asked, desperate for more details.
Luna, who had been on her tiptoes trying to reach for a book, dropped back onto her heels. "Ron yelled something," she said. "I don't remember what he said, it's all a blur."
"Try to remember, Luna, please," he begged.
Luna looked at him once, searching his eyes for something. She found it, he supposed, because she nodded and continued. "It sounded a bit like a broken 'no', to be honest." She noticed the stricken look on his face and winced slightly. "I'm sorry if I sound cold," she said then. "I'm trying to dissociate right now and I'm not very good at it. Otherwise, I might start crying and then you'll never know what happened."
George flinched slightly. "I'm sorry." What was he doing, making the poor girl relive that terrible night?
Luna smiled wanly. "I know." She went back on her tiptoes, scanning the book titles. "He ran at Bellatrix Lestrange, his wand out...there was a brain clutching at his arm, lashing it to his side. He was all groggy and confused and his voice was all raw from screaming."
George listened raptly, horrified but feeling the need to know all of it. He needed to know.
"She laughed," Luna said. "She laughed and it was terrible, and she Crucio-d him right there and then. It must've been that last spell that killed him, already dying from the brains. Hermione was screaming too." She chanced a look at George again before quickly looking away, her blonde ponytail swinging. "One of the Death Eaters grabbed her and in the chaos after, we lost her."
"So she's dead, then," George choked, the tears making a lump in his throat. He hadn't known Hermione well, really, but she was just a kid. Ron was just a kid, Harry was just a kid. And so was Luna, standing there in all her 14 and a half glory.
Luna shrugged, then added ominously, "Or worse."
And then Fred had died, and his world, which he had been putting back together with paste and willpower, crumbled again.
Two months after the Battle of the Department of Mysteries, Voldemort and his followers had attacked Hogsmeade. It was just a raid, just Voldemort giving Dumbledore the bird and causing some more chaos, but the Order wouldn't stand for it.
Kingsley's lynx had bounded into the Order meeting in Dumbledore's office. In his deep, commanding voice, it said, "Death Eaters at Hogsmeade. Send help, and quickly!"
George remembered the way the headmaster had stood so quickly he knocked over his chair. All of the members of age had reached for him, touching his robe as Fawkes flew to him. Fred, with that cocky, familiar grin, had grabbed George's hand and then onto his mother's robe. They were flashed to a scene straight out of a nightmare. Houses were on fire and Death Eaters ran through the streets, cursing civilians with impunity. George saw, briefly, what looked like Madam Rosmerta and Aberforth Dumbledore standing back to back and dueling three masked men at once.
"FRED!" Molly Weasley had yelled, "GEORGE! What—"
"We can help," Fred had said firmly.
"You're not of age," she tried, but his twin had already run into the fray with all the impulsiveness of the older brother and all the false invincibility of someone on the cusp of adulthood.
George remembered that Fred led them both into Honeydukes, which had smoke billowing out of the door. "Come on!" he yelled, and grasped his brother's hand. He could hear screaming coming from the floor above and took the stairs two at a time. They burst through the hallway door to see a Death Eater standing over a woman, her body twitching from what George guessed must have been a Cruciatus. "Stupefy!" Fred yelled, throwing his wand arm out like he held a sword. The Death Eater dodged to the left, the white mask glinting eerily in the flames from outside.
"Protego," George muttered, the blue shield flickering into existence to cover Fred's unprotected side. His entire body was stiff with adrenaline and nerves.
"Blood-traitors," the Death Eater grunted, and laughed. He circled them, forcing them to move until his back was to the destroyed hallway and theirs were to the window.
Fred's eyes flickered to the woman on the floor and the Death Eater took his chance. "Bombarda!" he yelled, and George's eyes widened fractionally as he sent more magic into his shield spell. But the Blasting Curse was meant for the wall, which exploded in a cloud of splinters and plaster. Suddenly George was falling back, Fred beside him, into open air. Fred yelled something unintelligible.
"Spongify!" George roared, pointing his wand at the ground. The two of them bounced ten feet into the air before landing again.
"Thanks, brother," Fred said, shooting George a grin. He sent one of his own back and looked up. The Death Eater was nowhere to be seen, having disappeared into the smoke.
"On to the next one, then?" George remarked, breathing hard.
"You read my mind."
The two of them ran into two more Death Eaters soon after and began dueling in the middle of Hogsmeade Square. The two of them stood back to back, with George playing defense and Fred shooting off offensive spells. Strengthen shield, drop for Fred's attacks, grab debris to block an Avada, and over again. But George felt himself tiring and knew Fred was, too. So when he next dropped the shield he shot off an offensive spell of his own. "Diffindo!" George yelled, aiming at the taller Death Eater.
The man was taken by surprise and reeled backwards, bright crimson blood dripping from his wand arm. He swore at him and made a move as if to cast, but Fred saw how the female Death Eater next to him glanced quickly at the wound and took the opportunity. "Levicorpus!" Fred shouted, and the woman was yanked up by her ankle into the air. George Stunned the woman and Fred let her drop to the ground. The man had recovered to cast more spells, but the spells were sloppier now, his movements looser.
"We got him!" Fred said, his smile spreading across his sooty face. He let out a gleeful laugh.
"Yeah?" the man growled. He planted his feet and swept his wand in a strange outward motion and George hesitated.
"Fluctus Inpulsa!" the Death Eater screamed, and the resulting shockwave hit their shield and shattered it in a starburst of blue light, smacking George like a blow to the chest. But that was nothing compared to how the spell hit Fred, who had unconsciously gotten in front of his twin. George would never forget the sound of three of Fred's ribs cracking.
"Fred!" George yelled, and cast out with his wand blindly. He wasn't sure what he did but the knockback of the spell pushed the Death Eater to the ground.
He needed to finish this, needed to get his twin help, so he cast the first spell that came to mind with a slash of his arm. Luna's words came back to him. "Sectumsempra!"
When the Death Eater's chest opened up in a spray of red George barely felt anything, watching dispassionately as he slumped to the ground. Right now, he needed to focus on his brother. He dropped to his knees and wracked his brain for the Diagnostic Spells he had seen Madam Pomfrey cast. "C'mon, c'mon, stay with me, Fred," he begged, seeing his twin's eyelids flickering. "Hurts," he groaned, a tried to bring a hand to his side. "You'll be fine," George promised, speed-reading the words that floated in front of him. "Three broken ribs and—" he cursed. He could keep Fred's ribs from moving around but he had no idea how to fix internal bleeding.
Fred coughed and blood came up from his lips, dripping onto his blue sweater. "Must've punctured a lung." He tried to smile but couched again.
George cast a Patronus, the coyote bounding from his wand. "Get Madame Pomfrey, anybody!" he told it. "Get Mum, even! Tell them Fred's bleeding out and I don't know what to do—"
He cut himself off, eyes widening. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the antidote to Nosebleed Nougat. "Please work," he mumbled, "Please work." They had designed it to slow down excessive bleeding but it was still in its early testing stages, far too early for consistency or even efficiency.
Fred swallowed it down with difficulty and George crossed his fingers, casting another diagnostic. "Please, please, please," he breathed, watching the words and numbers floating faintly in the smoke. He cursed and emptied out his pockets, looking for another antidote, but there were none left.
"S'okay, George," Fred whispered, his white fingers clutching George's left hand. "S'okay. Tell them I love them, yeah?" He smiled weakly. "Love you."
George didn't even blink. "Love you too," he said.
Later, when the Death Eaters had fled and the smoke was cleared, when the clean-up had begun, Madame Pomfrey rushed over to George saying "I just got your Patronus, dearie." He looked up at her from where he knelt on the ground, gripping Fred's hand like a lifeline—ha, ha—and still, he didn't blink.
Madame Pomfrey's startled "Oh," would echo in his mind for hours after. He remembered Mum rushing over, remembered seeing her face fall into lines of grief and pain. He remembered standing, covered in dust and soot and blood—Fred's—and stumbling away from the scene and up the path to Hogwarts. George walked the entire way, trusting his mother to take care of Fred's body.
Tonks had approached him afterward and passed him a single piece of parchment. She wasn't smiling either.
George unfolded the scrap and read the name inside. "Travers," he said aloud in the empty corridor. "Travers."
And he kept walking.
George remembered seeing Fred's casket being lowered into the ground at the Weasley family plot and cringing inside. He wouldn't have wanted that, George thought numbly, and recalled a conversation they had had years ago when they were both firsties.
"I don't think I ever want to get buried," Fred said, leaning back onto the couch in the Gryffindor common room. "All that dirt and dead things surrounding me. No thanks."
George laughed. "Y'know, I'd be dead too, Gred. I wonder how big the coffin'd have to be for the both of us?" Because then, it seemed inconceivable that one of them would die before the other.
"Nah," Fred decided. "Someone'll put our ashes in a Zonko's firework and we can go whistling across the night sky."
"That's deep," George said, snickering. His twin's face adopted a horrified expression. "Reckon I'm turning into Percy, then? He's always reciting poetry and things."
"Cor, now that's a fate worse than death."
They had laughed together, sitting lazily in the common room, but George forcibly pulled himself out of the memory. He didn't want to think about that. But he still had to say something, didn't he?"
They called him up and he stood there with his hands in the pockets of his robes. "Fred—" his voice cracked. He cleared his throat and tried to speak around the press of tears in his throat. "Fred was the best," George said. He wondered how he would condense all that was his brother into words.
"He was my other half. They say your spouses are your better half, right?" He tried to smile but his face wouldn't twist the same way it used to. "Fred was my better half. I'm not sure what I'm doing here without him."
He coughed. He told himself not to cry, not here, not now.
"Fred was a firework whistling across the night sky," he said hoarsely. "And I miss him more than anything."
A/N Last chapter's reference was the name "Hyperion Greengrass", from Shayalonnie's The Debt of Time. It's absolutely brilliant, and if you're a fan of time travel and Hermione/Marauders you'll like it. No reference in this chapter, unfortunately.