around 450 words.
contains: fred&george.
comments adored.
the collection
by
selfsame.
in the back corner of the space in my closet, in the crook where one wall meets another, I've got a battered old cardboard box stuffed under a pile of moth-eaten quilts, placed strategically behind a stack of old textbooks, all to make sure that Fred never finds it.
it's overflowing, this shoebox, and to keep the lid on tightly enough I've got to tie and then double-knot a pair of shoelaces around it every time I shut it again. sometimes I dunno why I bother, really, but then I think of what's in the box and how silly it is that it's there and what sort of mocking grin would open up on Fred's face if he ever got wind that I was keeping it. my tatty old collection is ridiculous: half-melted Ton-Tongue Toffees, crumpled up bits of paper scribbled full of designs and diagrams, a variety of mismatched socks with holes in the toes, a cracked trick wand, experimental patents written on newsprint, empty wrappers still stained yellow from when they bore their Canary Creams.
all of it I've snatched from Fred's end of the room, from hallways after he's walked through them, from the kitchen table after he gets up, from his bag after he steps out of the room. all things that he's been about to throw out; things he's forgotten, things he considers just rubbish.
I've been at this collection since we were around eight, and whenever I think it's time to toss it, I run across a discarded glove, a ripped parchment of wrongly done homework, a scrap accidentally torn off the corner of one of his Quidditch posters.
I'm not usually this picky and obsessive about things; just when it comes to Fred. we're together all the time, like; and when we're not it just feels funny. feels like the half of me missing is taken up by this awkward silence that doesn't laugh when I trip over a chair leg, this empty space that doesn't snicker something nasty in my ear when somebody we don't like passes by. I don't know what I need the box for; he's nearly always there; but I feel like, I need to keep filling the box, just keep filling it up no matter how much it overflows, just in case he ever isn't there— in case I ever need a shoebox full of little bits of him when he's not around.
Fred's not like this, not at all; I bet he never worries that maybe something might happen and I might not be there anymore, but even so, whenever he goes off and leaves me, even for only a few minutes, it feels like he takes little bits of me along with him.