Author's Note: Yeah, I'm sorry about this one.
Prompt: "You're alive?" with Fred and George Weasley.
Hogwarts's Finest Jokesters
The air is stagnant, no longer alive with the electricity of magic, of curses slicing through and cutting the sky into two. It smells of nothing, so noticeably devoid of scent that it makes George crinkle his nose. Absent is the putrid smell of burning flesh, of metallic blood slicked over the floors. It's entirely static, as if the battle has been put on hold, paused for this very moment.
And so is George, his breath held in his throat as his chest and stomach clench involuntarily at the sight before him. The sight he thought he would never again be graced with.
"You're alive?" he says, and yet his voice seems to not carry, lost in the void of the stagnant world where his head is buzzing and waves are crashing over him, echoing in the caverns of his skull so he can hear nothing, see nothing. Pinhole vision honing in on the form of his brother. His dead brother who he was mourning only moments earlier, mourning during the lull in the battle that had dissipated around him. He could still taste blood in his mouth, like dirty pennies on his tongue, from where he bit so hard on the inside of his cheek and his throat was still raw from where he had yelled and scream and No, this is a prank. This is a terrible joke, and it isn't funny Fred. No one is laughing, it isn't funny, so stop it now. Mum and Dad are crying, and she will kill you for real when you sit up and tell her it was a joke.
And he is angry, because it was a joke all along and it wasn't funny and he was crying instead of laughing and how could he do this to them? But his anger is gone as swiftly as it has come, another twinge in the prison of his chest where his heart pulses erratically from the curses he has been dealt and from the emotion. And he is awash in relief, he is so happy that yes, he's laughing now. It wasn't funny at first but now it is, and his eyes prickle from the tears that break free, he bends at the waist as he rests his hands on his knees. It is so funny now.
"You must not have seen Mum. You would definitely be dead then if she knew you were faking," he says, and Fred only grimaces, the smile lines permanently etched into his face gone as he grits. His lip trembles and why aren't you laughing Fred? Wasn't it funny?
And Fred is crying now too, but it isn't like the tears of relief drawing from the well of joy and mirth that fill George's eyes. They are bitter and George imagines that he can taste the salt on his own lips even as they slide down the familiar curves of Fred's face. "I-I'm sorry," he says, through a broken sob and the sound is so wrong and foreign on the other Weasley twin that it instantly silences George's laughter.
"It was a bad prank, but nothing to be sorry for," he says, stepping tentatively forward. And he is suddenly aware of how empty it is- of how not even the sound of his shoes on the floor make an impression in the voice. There is no echo to follow them, no clamor of war to pulsate from the walls. He can no longer hear the curses being spoken. The spells being screamed above the flashes of reds and greens and purples. Air on fire.
How long was he unconscious from the curse that still remained clutching onto his heart, like icy fingers around the organ? Was it over? Did they win?
And then he sees someone else, a figure jumping down the steps of a staircase that was perfect and whole and not crumbling around him like everything else. A mop of messy black hair bounces as he takes them two at a time, a hand raising to push the glasses up the bridge of his slim nose and again George is laughing, forgetting the solemn tone lacing Fred's words. Forgetting everything except he is alive.
He is alive, he is alive, he is alive.
"Harry!" he says, waving over the wizard who looks surprisingly clean and not disheveled and uninjured. "Fred! It's Fred!"
And as if remembering his brother, he lunges forward, arms wrapping around him and pulling him in tight. The embrace is not returned, hands raising to grip his elbows as he begins shaking, trembling beneath the arms as his sobs become louder and more incessant. He does not know why Fred is crying, but he doesn't care. The prat deserves it! He should be cursed to cry the amount of tears he inspired with his cruel prank.
Harry is moving closer to them, cautiously approaching the pair with a smile that is skewed to one side and Harry never smiled like that. His smiles were wide, toothy grins, green eyes sparkling. But the lopsided smile does not belong to Harry, and it isn't Harry at all because his eyes are no longer the color of a forest on a bright spring day but hazel. They are fractured, like a kaleidoscope of honeys and browns and blues and gold. But not green.
His arms fall, suddenly heavy as if weights had been tied to them and he looks from the Not-Harry to Fred, who is no longer crying but is still looking at him with sad eyes.
He is not alive. Fred was killed.
He is not alive. He is not alive.
This is not Harry, this is not Harry.
"I'm sorry," Fred says again, and this time he understands that it is not because of a joke that wasn't a joke after all.
-xXx-
Author's Note: I'm a monster.
Request at Tumblr: Reneehartblog