A/N: Thanks for all of your support! It really means a lot! Just one minor canon note-in the books, the twins are described as being 'stocky'-after seeing the Phelps twins play them, I just can't picture Fred and George being short. So in here they're always going to be described as tall. Thanks!
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He remembered waking up the morning after the battle in the Great Hall, every joint aching from sleeping on the stone floor. His body is clinging desperately to Fred, frantic in its need to not be separated. His fingers curl and close around Fred's sweater, gathering part of it up in a big bunch. He buries his face into Fred's side, trying to ignore whoever it is that is trying to remove him from Fred. Whoever they are, they need to burn in hell for all eternity.
"No," George groans, clinging tighter to Fred. He shakes his head, breathing in the slightly musty scent from Fred's sweater, the fabric scratching his nose. "No, no, no, no, no," he says, closing his eyes tightly.
"Mr. Weasley," a gentle voice says, and someone grips his shoulder, attempting to wrest him from the body. "Mr. Weasley!" the voice says, a bit firmer, but George can detect a note of familiarity in the voice. He grudgingly turns to see who it is, and is confronted with his former Transfiguration teacher's worried face.
"George?" she asked him softly, and George started at the use of his first name. He'd been under the impression that McGonagall did not know any of her students' first names, especially when it came to the Weasley twins. To her they were always "Mr. Weasley!" It didn't matter that both of them came running when she called out their name, because she didn't really want just one of them, she wanted both. It is this, her use of his proper name, more than anything else, that makes George get up to his feet and face his former Head of House.
"You should get back to the common room," she told him quietly, taking his elbow in a gentle grip and maneuvering him towards the door. George looks over his shoulder at Fred and stops in his tracks. McGonagall, for all of her formidable stares, is pathetically less physically powerful than he is, and futilely pushes him towards the door.
"I can't leave here," he tells her, his feet firmly digging into the stone floor. McGonagall looks into his face and calmly accepts his decision.
"Please come up to the common room soon," she says quietly before she leaves. "Your family will no doubt be frantic as to your whereabouts."
"They'll know where to find me," George mumbles, and turns back to the bodies. It's strange-he's been so determined to not separate himself from Fred that he has not even considered the possibility that others might have died in the fight. He notes the bodies of Remus and Tonks with a muted concern, pausing to consider what might happen to their son. Eh, he'll live with Harry probably, start off a whole other cycle.
George looked up as the sound of people approaching reached his ears. He could not deal with being with people right now; it quite simply wasn't going to happen. He looked desperately for a route of escape, and lost for a better idea, threw himself behind a tapestry that was, for the most part, still intact. He stood against the cool stone wall and tried not to breathe too obtrusively; terrified that someone might see him. Then he would have to look at the pity in their eyes, and also the half-hidden reproach: "We won! Voldemort's dead! The world is safe again! Be happy!" The last thing in this world that George Weasley needed was someone telling him that he should be rejoicing.
To his horror, the footsteps stopped right where Fred's body was lying. George could hear dry, heaving sobs and someone murmuring softly, trying to comfort the person crying. He bit his lip, wondering if he should try to see whoever it was that was crying, but then decided that solitude was best.
"Damn him!" Someone finally said, and George recognized the voice as that of Angelina. The person with her then had to be either Katie or Alicia. "Why did he have to be so stupid?"
"He wasn't stupid," Katie said soothingly, and George had to indignantly agree with her on that point. How dare Angelina say that Fred was stupid? Although, he had been wondering the same thing himself…Why hadn't Fred stayed with him? If Fred had stayed with him, as was their original plan, he would have been able to look out for him, would have been able to protect him, push him out of the way, would have been able to do something to stop this from happening.
"He was though," Angelina said miserably, though George thought that he could detect the slightest hint of a laugh through her tears. "Do you know that even though they were supposed to be in hiding he kept on writing me letters?" George recalled those times when Fred would shut himself up, away from any other members of the Order that were with them, for hours at a time. When he emerged he would have this smug, satisfied look on his face. George pestered him to tell him what was going on, but Fred merely smiled at him with an infuriating grin. Thinking back on it, George could safely say that this was the only thing that Fred had never told him. "If any of those letters had been intercepted…" her voice trailed off as she sobbed dryly again.
George felt almost guilty hiding behind the tapestry and listening, but now that he was here there really wasn't anywhere else for him to go. "I just can't believe that he's gone," Angelina said, her voice strangely muffled, as if she was speaking into Katie's shoulder. "I knew we were going to lose people, I'm not daft. But Fred…"
"Has anyone seen George?" Katie asked quietly. "He wasn't in the Common Room when we woke up this morning, and his family doesn't know where he is."
"I don't know," Angelina said, taking a deep breath and attempting to calm herself down. "If I had to hazard a guess I'd say he would be here with Fred. I don't know where he is."
"Do you think…is he going to be all right?" Katie quietly asked. Angelina sighed before answering.
"I don't know," she began. She hesitated, then threw caution to the winds and spoke her mind. "People have always thought of Fred and George as one person. That's wrong, but only up to a point. There's just something about them…did you ever notice that before they said nearly anything they'd look at the other one first? Just a glance, just for a second, but it was always there. You hardly ever saw them apart…I mean, that's unusual, even for twins really, look at the Patil twins."
George cringed behind the curtain. Angelina's words were hitting deeper than she knew. It was true: every time he'd had speak now, he'd always glanced beside him, only to find that no one was there. It felt strangely empty, even now, hiding behind the tapestry. This could have easily been their second year, Fred could have been right beside him, smothering his snickers in his hand and listening to Filch bumble along past where they were hiding.
George had to muffle a sigh of relief as he heard Angelina's footsteps start to move away. Her conversation with Katie swiftly dwindled into little more than quiet murmuring, and then nothing, as they went out of the Great Hall. George was inexpressibly glad to be alone once more. George waited until he was positive that no one else was in the Great Hall, and slid out from behind the tapestry.
"I was wondering how long it was going to take you to come out," a blunt voice said from beside him. George jumped nearly a foot in the air, and then turned to glare at whoever had spoken. Ginny glared back at him, her face pale and drawn, but her eyes determined.
George ran his hand through his hair before speaking. "What're you doing there?" he finally grunted.
"Waiting for you to emerge," she said, walking up to him and looking him in the eyes. "Mum's absolutely terrified George. You couldn't wait?" George felt a spark of anger underneath the fourteen layers of shock, denial, guilt and grief.
He struggled to find a comment cutting enough, and found that his intellect just wasn't up to it this morning. "You wouldn't understand," he finally mumbled, turning his back on Ginny. He hoped that this dismissal would be enough, but he should have known that he was joking. Ginny had, after all, grown up under his and Fred's tutelage.
"What wouldn't I understand?" Ginny asked, coming to stand in front of him. She grabbed his arm to hold him still, while he tried to look everywhere except in her eyes. Eventually he gave up and finally stared at her. Somehow, he couldn't find it in him to be exceptionally cruel. This after all, was the same girl who had helped in their greatest prank at the Burrow, by providing a valuable distraction while they went into Percy's room and systematically rearranged every single paper he owned, and then put a jinx on them, making it impossible for Percy to distinguish what they were, and where they were supposed to go. They'd let it continue until Percy was in tears and their mother was sending sparks out of her wand, she was so angry. George smiled in recollection, and then his smile dimmed as he realized that there would never be anything else like that, ever again. There would be no more secret looks, no conversations held merely with blinks and nearly imperceptible nods-there would be no more laughter. Now, more than ever, George felt as though something quite large and precious had been ripped out of him.
"Just…just forget about it, all right?" he finally said gruffly, pushing past her. Ginny, however, was not to be so easily defeated, and ran after him, finally resorting to clinging to his waist to slow him down. "Ginny, please!" George shouts, but her grip does not slacken any. It takes a second before George can categorize the strange shaking feeling that he has around his midriff, but he finally realizes that Ginny is sobbing into his back.
George turns around and hesitantly puts his arms around his younger sibling. It feels odd, because Ginny hardly ever cries, and she's never cried in his presence until now. Although, his entire world is changing, so why not his little sister? One thing that George has noticed, people seem to be bursting into tears at the drop of a hat lately. He is proud to say, however, that he really does not fit this description. He feels that the flood of tears will come later. Right now the pain is too close, too near, to trivialize with random bursts of sobbing.
"He was my brother too George!" Ginny finally chokes out. With this sentence, she continues sobbing, and George awkwardly pats her on the shoulder. He's proud of his self-control, because he almost spat immediately back out at her "But he wasn't your twin was he?" But it's strange, because when Ginny breaks down, George can feel his hastily constructed defenses crumbling around him, so he really wishes that she would stop crying and just be Ginny once more. After all, this was the girl who barely shed a tear when Harry broke up with her, so why is she crying now?
"He was my brother, and we've lost him, and I don't want to lose you too!" she finally says, burying her face into his chest. She takes a deep shuddering breath and looks at him through bloodshot eyes. "Just…please. Come up to the common room? Everyone's really worried about you."
"All right," George grudgingly agrees. He starts to go up the stairs, when Ginny surprises him by doing something that she hasn't done since she was about seven: she takes his hand in hers and walks with him. It's yet another thing in his world that's changing, but George can't say that he's entirely displeased by this change in events.
His shaky grip with relative apathy comes to a screeching halt however, when the portrait swings open and he is confronted by hundreds of people, completely ridiculous amounts of people. He knows that there really can't be that many in the common room, it's only so big after all, but there are still entirely too many people there. Worst of all, they all seem to be happy, even his family, those hypocrites. The reassurance that he had just found from Ginny disappears, leaving him with only the desire to scream and run as fast as he possibly can.
"George!" his mother cries, and envelops him in a tight hug. Bill claps him on the shoulder and Charlie ruffles his hair. When his mother releases him from her hug George's eyes automatically dart to his side to see what Fred thinks about all of this-then with a sinking feeling he remembers that Fred's not there to comment upon the obvious insanity of their family.
He's beginning to feel suffocated again. Everyone is just too caring, too involved, and too omnipresent. Worst of all, they all seem to think that more of this will help George to feel all right, when he knows that nothing in the world will make him feel all right. He would leave and go back to the shop or somewhere else, but Fred is here, and as long as Fred is somewhere, that's where George is going to be as well.
Angelina, Katie, Alicia and Oliver come up to him, their faces drawn. Whether it's from staying up late last night, worrying about him, or grieving for Fred, George doesn't know and he really doesn't care. All he wants is for them to just forget that he exists so that he can be left alone.
"Are you doing all right?" Katie finally asks softly. George nods shortly, unable to bear the concerned gaze of her blue eyes. Why doesn't anyone understand? Why don't they understand that this isn't like anything that they've gone through, that losing an ear was nothing compared to this? Instead of part of his body ripped away, it's like part of his soul is gone, the part that loved life and that wanted nothing more in the world than to wait for the next prank to be pulled off, hear the shrieks that told you that everything was successful. They'll never understand, he realizes, and he is filled with a slow despair.
They'll never know the agony of having a whole personality, and then to have half of it ripped out of you. They'll never know the pain of having your constant companion torn away from you while you were helpless to do anything. Worse, they'll never know the pain of having your life planned out for you, and then having the certainty and reassurance of always having someone to fall back on ripped away. Because no matter what happened, George always knew that Fred would have some sort of plan, as flawed and half-formed as it might be. Now he was alone, with no one to guide him, because the only person that had ever really understood him was no longer there.
"George?" Katie prods, and he realizes that he's standing in the middle of the common room, and he's not alone. His family and friends are looking at him in concern as his legs start to tremble. His head begins to spin and the room starts to blur around the edges as his breath starts to catch in his throat. Thank God Fred's not here to see this, I'd never live this one down, George thinks as his knees buckle and he begins to sag to the floor. He feels Bill's arms close around his chest and he hears Ginny scream his name before the entire world goes dark.
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There are muffled voices all around him, and he softly moans as they pierce the comfortable fog that surrounds his mind. But this moan only makes them talk louder. He attempts to push his ear into the couch in a futile attempt to deafen himself, but this only brings exclamations of excitement.
"I think he's coming around!" Ron shouts. If he could muster up the strength, George would hit him. There is a small stampede of footsteps as the whole world comes to stand beside George Weasley.
"Do you think it's the aftereffects of a spell?" Angelina asked anxiously. From the sound of her voice she was hovering directly over him.
"No, I think it's far more likely that it's just shock," he heard his mother say, although she sounded much too worried. George just wished that he could roll over and go back to sleep, but that would be well nigh impossible with all these people surrounding him. Don't they realize that they're the ones that are doing it all? Why can't they just leave him alone? He wonders if he'll spend the rest of his life living with this exasperation and desperate wish for all the rest of humanity to drop off of the face of the earth.
"I've just never seen anything like that before," Katie whispers, and George thinks that he knows what she's trying to say, because he's feeling it himself. Before today he'd never expected himself to faint. That was just too feeble, too weak, too pathetic. He feels sure that if it had been him killed Fred would not be fainting in the common room or hiding behind tapestries. He would be distraught yes, but happier that Voldemort was defeated and that his mother had shown the Wizarding world what she was made of by killing his most vicious disciple. No, Fred would have taken the blow much better than he was taking it. This revelation, instead of making him want to grow up and become a real man, makes him curl deeper into the couch. Perhaps he can just stay here for the rest of his natural life.
"George?" his mother asks softly, running her fingers through his hair. A small part of him rebels at her treating him like this; he's a grown man for Merlin's sake, not an idiot! Then, his mind rebukes him: Well, you're acting like a child, so you might as well be treated like one. "George, I know you can hear me," she says, and George takes a moment to sulk. It appears that after twenty years Molly Weasley has finally learned to tell when her sons are feigning slumber.
He slowly opens his eyes to see his mother's, Angelina's, his father's, Katie's, Ron's, and Lee's concerned faces looking down at him. This was absolutely mortifying. The last time that he'd felt this babyish was when Fred had to help him to the toilet when they were in the process of testing the Puking Pastilles. They'd gotten an ingredient wrong, and though they made him vomit spectacularly, he couldn't stop vomiting long enough to force the other end down. After Fred had levitated it into his mouth, it made absolutely no difference, except that his vomit was now a vivid violet.
He'd stayed in their room at Grimmauld Place the entire night, ignoring the anxious knocks of his mother, Lupin, and Sirius, with Fred at his side, occasionally Vanishing the bucketfuls of vomit that he kept on creating.
"It has to end sometime, right?" he croaked out in between attacks. It was safe to say that he'd never felt as badly as he did just then. Fred raised his eyebrows and shrugged as George leaned over the bucket again. He didn't even know that his stomach could hold what he was depositing into the bucket, although perhaps that was part of the enchantment that they'd put in there: no matter what, the sweet made your body expel everything. "Oh, it's easy for you to sit there," George snapped. "You did the Fainting Fancy. All you did was just sleep for two hours!"
"But just think that's two hours of my life that I'll never get back," Fred said earnestly as George retched yet again. George shakily brought his head back up from the bucket.
"And that's my entire digestive system that I'll never get back," he said shakily.
"Well, I've tried everything," Fred said bracingly. "There's nothing to do but wait until it stops, which I hope will be rather soon seeing as the room smells quite awful now."
"Sorry," George groaned, hoisting himself up by pulling the bucket. Fred shrugged, and started throwing out suggestions for improving the snackboxes, while George continued to vomit all night.
"Do you feel all right?" his mother asked, bringing him back to reality. He slowly nodded; wincing at the painful headache that was now making his head feel like it was close to exploding. He tried to push himself up on his elbows, but she pushed his shoulders, effectively pinning him to the bed. "No, I think it's best if you have a little bit of a lie-down," she said firmly. "We're going to go down to the kitchens and see if the house-elves can make us a little bit of breakfast. Why don't you just stay up here and we'll bring you back some breakfast?"
"I'll stay too," Ginny quickly volunteered. George almost rolled his eyes as, before he left, Harry went over to Ginny and squeezed her hand.
"Oh you prat, it's not like she's going to disappear," he mumbled to himself. "You've got the rest of your bloody lives, don't you?" Finally, everyone piles out of the common room, and George is left lying on the couch with Ginny sitting calmly on the floor, her eyes even with his head.
"They don't mean anything by it," she finally says quietly. "They're just trying to help. They don't know what to say because none of them know what it feels like."
"That's the first intelligent thing that anyone's said all day long," George grunts, pushing himself up on one elbow, then immediately regretting it thirty seconds later as his head begins to split open. He falls back to the soft couch, throwing a pillow over his eyes in an attempt to shut out the world. Ginny quickly tears the pillow off and George winces as her angry face fills his eyes.
"What can we do?" Ginny asks helplessly. "George, I don't know what to do!"
"You can all just leave me alone," George grunted, crossing his arms and staring studiously at the ceiling. Ginny's small snort told him that she had absolutely no idea of doing that, and he turned to look at her. "Look Gin, I know that you want to help, but there's nothing that you can do! Imagine if I ripped off one of your arms, your legs, and a few ribs. Oh, throw in the ear as well just to make everything even. Imagine how it would feel if I did that. Now multiply that pain and the loss by about ten thousand, and you'll get some estimate as to how I feel."
Ginny does not speak for a few moments, and George loves her all the more for it. But when she does finally open her mouth it's to say something that he would give his eyeteeth not to hear.
"They want to hold a memorial service."
He looked over at her, his gorge rising already. "What?"
"McGonagall, Flitwick…pretty much everyone really. It's just that the families are going to…they're going to be going home, and this is going to be our one chance to have everyone here."
George thinks back to Dumbledore's funeral, and how all the Ministry people came who were probably happy to see him go. He thinks about the entire Wizarding world coming to honor those who were lost at the Battle of Hogwarts, people that he knows that Fred's probably hated throughout the years. Roger Davies will be there, Roger who Fred hit with an Instant Scalping Hex in third year, causing all of his hair to vanish for three weeks, leaving nothing but shiny head and some rather unattractive stubble. There would be Penelope, Percy's old girlfriend. Inspired by Hagrid's first choice of textbooks, George had a flash of brilliance and Fred had run with it-with all her books under the same enchantment as the Monster Book of Monsters, poor Penelope's life had been rather miserable for a few weeks. Bookworms were all the same really-even though they knew that death, horror, and destruction awaited, they just couldn't keep themselves away from the musty old pages. It had actually been Hermione that Fred had suggested, but George balked at that idea, and so, Penelope was chosen.
These would be the kind of people attending the memorial for Fred: people who had never liked him, thought he was a nuisance, and were glad to be rid of him. George thought he was going to be sick at the thought of any one of them coming within twenty feet of Fred.
"No, no, no, no, no," he says over and over again until it becomes more of a prayer than anything else. "They can't do that, it's all wrong, the bloody wankers don't even care…" his voice trails off into a helpless whimper as he knows that he can do nothing to change anything. It's not even the kind of people that would come, because with Ginny's help, and maybe even Ron's help, he feels that he can make it at least rather uncomfortable for them to be there. It's the fact that once there's been a memorial service it will be permanent. He'll have to accept that Fred is gone, and no power on this Earth can bring him back. That thought is too painful to even approach at the moment.
Ginny stands up and embraces him, her arms tight around his neck. George puts his arms around her without really noticing what he does. His mind is reeling, gone headlong down the dizzying road to madness, and he is powerless to stop it, even if he wanted to. He doesn't want to think, doesn't want to concentrate on the powerless feeling of separation being much too close, of having someone slam the lid shut on the first twenty years of his life. He wonders whether this constant ache in his chest is because of his own grief, or if it's because of Fred, because he was hurting when he died, and this was just the residual pain. He likes to think it's because of Fred because that still means that there's something left of Fred in the world.
Ginny keeps on holding onto him, her small hands gently rubbing his neck. George finds more solace in this than he expected, though it's still just so unfamiliar from the Ginny that he knew that he finds himself continually shivering. They don't talk, and the silence is more reassuring than any words could have possibly been. Ginny decides that it's all right to proceed in telling him about the memorial.
"They're going to want you to talk," she says quietly. George stiffens. He's always known that the time for him to make a speech would come, but he's imagined it being his best man's speech, made to a group of admiring, giggling girls while Fred glares in the background, not a eulogy made in front of his weeping family. He's not even sure that he can form words about Fred, because they might end up being about him. They've shared everything for so long, even personalities, that George is finding it difficult to sort out where Fred ends and where George begins.
The portrait hole opens, and everyone tramps back in. His mother is levitating a plateful of food towards him, and though it undoubtedly smells heavenly to everyone else, eating is the furthest thing on George's mind. He looks straight at his mother and says "I'm not doing it." She looks confused for a moment, and then realization slowly dawns on her face. George feels a pang of loss yet again. It appears that he'll have to start explaining everything, seeing as Fred's not around to read his mind.
He can see Ginny shrug from out of the corner of his eye. His mother looks at him and kneels down next to Ginny. "Are you sure?" she asks quietly. "They're going to want someone to say something about everyone, and you were the person who…" Her voice trails off as tears fill her eyes. His father puts his hand on her shoulder and she grasps it tightly with her own. George wants to appreciate how hard this must be for them, losing a son, but he is still preoccupied with his own loss to worry about anyone else's.
There is something selfish about his grief, and he relishes in that fact. Growing up with six other siblings, three of those who were older brothers, and one of those who was his twin, George has had very little, if anything, that he could call his and no one else's. This horrible, aching feeling in his chest that spreads to every part of his body, this mental agony that he is in-this is his and his alone. George is absurdly protective of this feeling of having his soul ripped apart, because he is sure that no one else around him has this feeling.
"George, it would mean a lot to everyone if you spoke," Bill quietly says. George looks up at Bill, who used to be so handsome before he was attacked. Bill likes to joke about it, say that now instead of classical good looks he has more "rugged" charm, but George knows the truth-he and Bill are maimed. "And after all, you knew him the best…anyone else would just be wrong."
George stared straight into Bill's eyes, the man who had become almost a second father to him, and found only pain shining in them, almost as raw as the pain that he felt. Inexplicably, he felt himself nodding and a faint smile graced Bill's scarred face.
"After the service they're going to let the families take…well, we're all going home for the funerals," his mother told him quietly, her hand gently rubbing his shoulder in circular patterns. George's stomach immediately twisted into a thousand unpleasant shapes, as he comprehended what would happen when they went home. Suddenly, although he could hardly bear the place anymore, he never wanted to leave Hogwarts, because leaving Hogwarts would mean only one thing-eternal separation.
George nods, his mind a million miles away, away from the Gryffindor common room, away from Hogwarts. He tries to find a happy memory in his mind, but they all elude him, almost as if he was in a dementor's presence. He senses his family move away from him, and then feels the couch depress as someone else sits beside him.
"If you want me to, I'll talk tomorrow instead of you," Angelina says softly. George looks at her to see that though her face is impassive her deep brown eyes are full of tears. As he watches her however, her faces loses any semblance of vulnerability-her eyes harden into that glint that he remembers when she was particularly adamant about having her way, and her lips purse in determination.
"No, I should do it," George mumbles lowly. Bill was right-no one else was qualified, and if George heard anyone, even Angelina, talking about Fred, he might just rush up to the podium and beat them senseless. "I'm going to go to practice," he says, and gets up from the couch. He walks out of the common room, with no clear path in his mind. All he wants is to get far away from Angelina. Once he's in the corridor, he pauses, and then sets off with a firm destination in mind. Not to see Fred, although he knows that his feet will eventually take him that way-no, this time he has to see where it happened.
At first it's difficult to discover just where it happened: there are so many gaping holes in the wall that George wonders how they're ever going to make this place whole again, but remembering Percy's sobbing description, and drawing on his own knowledge of the school, he soon finds the corridor.
Rubble is scattered all over the floor, and sunlight shines in from a giant hole in the outer wall. George looks carefully at the stones littering the floor, and feels his stomach turn over when he notices a small, dark stain, almost a burgundy colour, on the floor. He kneels down, gently rubbing his fingertip over it. He tries to feel something, a spirit maybe, or at least some form of acknowledgement, but the corridor is just that-an empty, ravished hallway. George slowly pushed himself up and then whirled around when he heard light footsteps behind him.
His hand automatically groped for his wand and pointed it at the newcomer. "What the hell are you doing here?" he snarled at Draco Malfoy. Malfoy's wand is pointed at his face, though George notices his hand shaking slightly. He doesn't care. All he knows is that here's a Death Eater who somehow wasn't killed last night, and he needs to be brought to justice. But he doesn't want to just Stun and capture. No, he wants to kill, to kill everyone who might have had the least part in killing Fred.
Malfoy must have read the intention in his eyes, because he turns and runs in the opposite direction. It takes George a second to catch on, but he is soon sprinting right after Malfoy, the blood pounding in his ears as his footsteps echo through the hallway. All he can think of is Malfoy after Cedric Diggory died, crowing about Voldemort's return. He imagines that smirking face when he found out that Fred died, and he gains a huge burst of speed.
"Come on you little bastard!" he roars, the same fierce joy seizing him now as it did last night, as he gives his senses entirely over to rage. For a moment there is nothing but the chase, nothing but the certainty in his brains that his strides are longer than Malfoy's; that the pale boy cannot outstrip him for very long…
"George no!" someone screams, and Malfoy turns his head to see how far behind him George is. George feels the beginning sparks of triumph-he is very nearly behind him now. He dodges a spell that Malfoy sends over his shoulder, temporarily losing his balance. By the time that he has regained it, a jet of red light has hit him square in the chest. George looks down as the world stops for a moment. Bugger, he thinks, as, for the second time that day, he falls down to the ground unconscious.
"Get out of the way!" someone cries throughout the train. Fred and George look curiously up from the game of Exploding Snap that they were having.
"What in the world?" Katie asks, getting up and opening the compartment door. As soon as she does a wave of cold air hits them, making them suck in their breath and shiver.
"Shut the door!" Lee yells as the cold becomes close to unbearable. When it appears that Katie has been frozen George gets up to shut the door, but the second that he sticks his head outside he understands why Katie is frozen. The cold air hits his lungs, and he's fairly certain that it's punctured a hole in one of them. But that's not the worst part-no, the worst part is hearing Percy's voice jeering at him, a memory that he's tried to suppress from when he was only five.
"You'll never be a proper wizard; I bet you won't even get into Hogwarts!" George looks up at him, his eyes wide and hurt. All he did was accidentally set fire to Percy's desk, but this set Percy off on a rage at him that's ended with George in tears.
"Shut up Percy," George mutters, but seven year old Percy is on a righteous rampage and nothing, save the ocean rushing in and swallowing him up will stop him now.
"And if you do get into Hogwarts, I know you won't be good enough to get into Gryffindor," Percy sneers. "You'll have to go to Slytherin with the Malfoys!" George knows that to be put into Slytherin is a fate worse than death and Malfoy is the deepest insult that the Weasley boys can call each other.
"Shut up Percy!" Fred suddenly roars, and he appears beside George, a four foot two avenging angel, all fury and red hair. George feels a sudden rush of gratitude that Fred is never that far from his side as the twins now turn to face Percy. Percy does not appear intimidated by the twins standing side by side.
"Oh, you're not better than him," Percy scoffs, and Fred folds his arms viciously. "You'll both be expelled from Hogwarts before your second year and sent to live with the Muggles."
George again wonders why Percy hates him and Fred so. It's not like they really go out of their way to make him mad, normally it just happens by proxy. But Percy has decided to make Fred and George's lives miserable, so Fred and George retaliate the only way that they know how-by making his life miserable. Unfortunately, George has forgotten just how vicious Percy can be when sufficiently angered. Worst of all, their mother always seems to take his side, for reasons unknown. It is at times like this that George knows that Fred is the only one on his side, and he is the only person on Fred's side.
While Percy's words serve to make George want to curl up into himself and die, they only anger Fred. Fred launches himself at Percy, his small fists flying around his older brother. Percy's yells soon attract their mother and she-
"George!" he hears Fred shout. George looks beside him to see Fred standing there, his face unnaturally pale. Fred has pushed Katie out of the way and is trying to see what is on the train, though George has a sickening feeling that he already knows.
"Dementors," he whispers to Fred. Fred looks at him, his blue eyes wide with fear as he slowly nods. George remembers something his father said about dementors being posted at Hogwarts, but he was much too busy trying to find rude words that began with the letters 'H' and 'B'.
Someone bursts into their compartment with a wild yell and George looks down to see who it is. His lip curls in disgust when he sees Malfoy and his cronies huddling in the corner. Angelina moves away from them with a sound of disgust.
"What's he doing here?" Oliver asks, looking like he would very much like to hit Malfoy over the head with his copy of Quidditch Through the Ages.
"The dementors," Malfoy finally whispers, his grey eyes wide and frightened. Somehow, George can't find it within himself to be horrible to Malfoy, though he dearly wishes that he could. "They're on the train…they came into our compartment…" he lets his sentence end in a shudder. George glances at Fred to see that his snarl has diminished somewhat, though this could be less to do with pity and more to do with the fact that something huge, something deathly, is moving towards their compartment, no doubt drawn by the presence of so many people. George had known that it was probably a bad idea to try to fit him, Fred, Alicia, Angelina, Katie, Lee, and Oliver in the same place.
He feels Fred shrink back against him, and George wishes that he had his broom with him so that he could just fly out of the window. There's a strange keening, whimpering noise that he hopes is coming from Malfoy, but is, he realizes with some shame, coming from the back of his throat. Percy's sneers become louder in his mind, joined by his mother's reaffirmations that he and Fred will never be proper wizards, that they'll have their wands snapped by age thirteen, the night when Ginny had been taken into the Chamber of Secrets, and now he sees Mr. Malfoy's face sneering down at him and Fred when they accompanied their father to a Ministry event…he sees the contempt and dislike in his face and feels tiny, insignificant…
"George?" Someone is lightly slapping his face and he moans, and tries to bat their hand away as he slowly comes to. He cracks open his eyes and sees the stone ceiling of Hogwarts above him. Oh no. Not again. There's only so much humiliation he can take in one day. He looks around at the people who've found him, and his stomach settles down somewhat. Oliver and Bill. Well, it could have been worse. He doesn't know why he's worried, seeing as Fred would be the one that would never let him forget fainting and being Stunned by Draco Malfoy, but there's still an overwhelming need within him to keep up appearances, which means that Weasleys never faint, and they most certainly never get stunned by a little git like Malfoy. Speaking of…
"Where is he?" George snarls, trying to get up. He's restrained by Bill's gentle but powerful hand on his shoulder, effectively trapping him on the floor. George pushes on Bill's hand, but eventually gives up. Years of struggling have taught him that Bill always gets his way when it comes to winning physical struggles.
"George, you just need to calm down," Bill tells him. George can sense that there's something that Bill's not telling him, but he doesn't care. He just wants to hunt down Malfoy and pound his face into the rubble.
"Calm down?" George roars. "There's a Death Eater running around Hogwarts, in case you hadn't noticed! Why aren't you chasing after him?" A shadow passes over Bill's face and George looks at him beseechingly, trying to figure out why Bill, Bill who he trusts almost more than anyone else in the world, isn't hunting down Malfoy and strangling him with his bare hands.
"Harry doesn't want us to bother the Malfoys," Bill says quietly. Oliver makes a small noise of disagreement from beside George and George feels a sudden upsurge of affection and respect for his former Quidditch Captain. "Apparently Narcissa Malfoy saved his life in the forest."
"But…but…it's because of Malfoy that Dumbledore's dead!" George mouthed helplessly. "Are you joking? They get to get away with torture and killing people, all just because of the fact that Harry doesn't want them to be arrested?"
"Leave it George," Bill says quietly. "Leave it!" he says sharper, when George opens his mouth to argue more vehemently. "There's a lot to sort out-there's still Death Eaters to round up, the Ministry's still got to be taken down, and we have to…we have to have the funerals," he finishes quietly. He stands up and seizes George's hand and pulls him up, mercilessly ignoring the small whimper of pain that escapes from George.
Oliver was standing on the left side of George and he muttered something that George could not quite catch. "What?" he asked, inclining his head so that his right ear could catch what Oliver was saying. George saw Oliver's eyes perform the familiar sweep of the hole in the left side of his head; saw the revulsion in his eyes as he contemplated the injury. Oliver spoke again, raising his voice slightly.
"I said that Harry's a bloody idiot." Oliver sadly smiles at George, who smiles back, the muscles in his face almost screaming in protest. "We'll sort out everyone in the end, Malfoy included."
Bill, George, and Oliver climb back up the stairs up to the bloody common room once more. George is beginning to be rather sick of this room, not in the least because it is becoming rather too small and smelly. This time it is better, because everyone gives him a wide berth, anxious not to have an incident like the one that had occurred earlier.
George ends up on the floor, his back resting against Charlie's shins. Charlie, his mother, his father, and Percy are sitting on the couch closest to the fire. Ginny is sitting beside him, Harry beside her, and Ron and Hermione are stretched out in front of the fire. There is occasional soft conversation, usually about nothing important, certainly nothing that George wants to talk about. Everyone leaves him alone and he suspects that Ginny has something to do with this careful neglect. He is grateful for it, because it allows him to delve into his memories as he stares deeply into the flickering fire.
It's strange, but even when he's sitting; surrounded by his family and the defenders of Hogwarts, when the feeling of comfort has descended upon the Gryffindor common room like a warm blanket-he is unhappier than ever. Because without Fred at his side, he has never been more alone.