The four men arrived just outside of George's front door, everyone landing gracefully except for Harry, who lost his balance on entry and would have fallen face first if Severus hadn't been there to catch him. Reluctantly pushing away from the man, Harry pulled himself from Snape's unintentional allure and stepped up to his grieving friend's stoop.
He had to focus.
George probably wasn't expecting any visitors, but surely it would be fine if he just knocked…
He glanced behind at his companions, who nodded reassuringly, then firmly rapped on the door. Harry listened closely for any sounds of movement from inside, but heard nothing aside from their own breathing. Could he be asleep? He tried again, all but pounding. Perhaps he was shopping for supplies.
The young Gryffindor turned to shrug at the older men behind him, but was shoved aside as a body hurled itself at the door blasting it open the old fashioned way. Harry stared in shock as Malfoy picked himself up from the dirty floor of George's home and brushed himself off. Steel blue eyes met emerald green as he shrugged off the new pain in his shoulder. "Guess he's not home."
Arthur was the first to shake himself of his surprise. "Well done, Draco!" Lifting his pant legs to avoid snagging on broken wood, Mr. Weasley stepped into his son's room, scouring the furniture for any signs of life.
Harry felt a hand on the small of his back as Snape stepped past him as well, his touch disappearing as quickly as it had appeared, much to his confusing dismay.
George's living space could barely be called as much. The floor was littered with food wrappers, none of which should be relied upon for any sort of sustenance. Severus could never remember a time that he had to live off of snack food for survival, not even when he was a child living with a broken mother and a drunken father. He stepped carefully over the debris and headed straight for the cauldron at the center of the room to examine its remains. Unfortunately, there was very little left of the potion the young man had been working on.
Harry examined the writing desk, brushing his finger tips along the stray papers and scattered quill nibs. It seemed that George had been working very hard on something for a very long time. The illegal potion no doubt, but Harry also saw evidence of other potions as well, things that would potentially sell quite well in the shop. Good. He still has a will to live. That was one thing Harry had been afraid of since hearing about what happened to Fred. He couldn't imagine having a part of himself ripped away like that. Voldemort's Horcrux inside of him was probably nowhere near the same thing, as he was quite happy to see it gone.
Many of the papers had begun to collect dust, a clear indication of a severe lack of habitation. Many were slightly crumpled or ripped in one corner or another, and more still seemed to have been written on and immediately put aside, possibly never to be looked at again. Harry's eyes perused the parchment pieces for any clues, but found very little to work with. One piece described the effects of a new potion, another was a schematic of some kind, and yet another piece was simply a grocery list, which mainly consisted of granola bars.
A small piece of parchment finally caught his eye, sitting alone at the corner of the desk. He picked it up, but found only a few words written on it:
Dear Fred,
Mischief Managed.
George.
His hand shook as he struggled with the pain and emotions that accompanied those few words. He could feel the despair behind them, and his heart broke for his friend all over again. George must have been drowning in his loss. He saw a man with a lot to offer the world, unable to function with half a shattered soul to guide him.
Harry gently replaced the precious letter, careful not to disturb anything else in the process. "We'll find him, Fred." He whispered quietly. "We'll help him heal." He hoped they would be able to find a way to do just that. It was one thing to heal shattered bones, but Harry didn't know the first thing about healing a pain that ran so deep. Even so, he would do whatever he had to in order to see George smile again.
Malfoy poked his head out of the loo and shook it despondently. "He isn't here. It doesn't seem like he's been here at all at least in the past couple of days."
"We're too late."
All eyes turned to the Potions Master as he gripped the edge of the cauldron, holding in his frustration in a desperate attempt to keep calm. "He's taken the potion already. We're too late." He watched Harry slowly step over to the cauldron and pick up an empty vial that had rolled underneath it. It had once held the Forget Me potion, no doubt, dropped in a confused panic during the after math of the potion's effects. The George they knew was gone. The question was, who was he now?
The younger men glanced at Mr. Weasley, expecting a break down, but the man simply pulled himself up straight and nodded. "Right then. We'll regroup back at the Burrow and figure out our next step." His fingers painfully gripped his son's abandoned bed post, the only tell tale sign of his distress. "We'll find him. It's never too late."
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George stared up at the star-filled night sky, his eyes brushing softly across the constellations. There was something about the stars that he felt he had forgotten, something important, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't remember. It was almost as if they were calling out to him, somehow. Perhaps he was an alien? That seemed silly, but he felt like he wasn't far off the mark, really. He might not have been from outer space, but there was definitely something different about him, something that made him special...if only he could remember what it was…
Brushing his hands on his pants, he stepped off of the small rock formation and returned to his seat by the fire. "I don't know what's going on." He rubbed his arms for extra warmth and settled back into his thoughts. He remembered very little about who he was, for some reason. He knew he was from a large family, but he couldn't seem to remember any of them specifically. He also remembered attending a school, and of course he knew he was a wizard, that fact hadn't even surprised him, so he wasn't that far gone. "Maybe someone Obliviated me."
A couple of days earlier, he recalled waking up on the floor of some sort of small cottage. His head had a lump, probably from hitting the cauldron he had woken up beside. He remembered being filled with a deep sadness and a lot of anger, and of course he knew his name was George Weasley. That was really about all he knew. Upon that realization, he had panicked and run out, but without any idea of where he lived, he simply ran until he couldn't run anymore, then built a fire and tried to remember what happened to him. Perhaps he had been Obliviated so thoroughly that he had been knocked back into the cauldron and had blacked out. That sounded plausible.
"What do you think, F-"
He blinked at the emptiness beside him. He kept doing that, nearly talking to someone named "F." He had no idea who they were, and he couldn't remember their name, but it must have been someone he talked to quite often. Well, no big deal, he would find them again eventually.
His head perked up as he recalled a memory of a battle. Someone had shot a spell at him…he had been flying with someone, perhaps with 'F,' when a spell had hit him in the ear...He reached up and felt at the side of his head only to discover his ear was missing. Fear shot through his heart as he recalled the man who had given him the wound. "Professor Snape!" That must have been the person who destroyed his memory! George must have caught him making an illegal potion, that's why the cauldron was there, and Snape had shot the spell at him to make him forget! "And he must have taken 'F!'"
He still couldn't seem to remember who 'F' was, but he was sure he would recall with time. George gripped his wand in anger, the same anger and grief he had woken up to, feelings that seemed to be seeped into his very bones. All of his problems, all of his emotions, seemed to come from one source, and he'd bet everything he had that it was all Snape's fault.
"I'll get you back, 'F,' if it's the last thing I do!"
