A/N: Merlin, I feel like I haven't been on ff net in forever. Here's me (hopefully) making a comeback. To those of you who have requested pairings, I'll get right on that ASAP. To those of you who follow my MC The System, I promise you I'm now making a real effort to get chapter 16 finished after a month of being too preoccupied and stressed with uni work (sorry x amilliontimes).

So this is pretty George Weasley-centric. My first attempt at writing him so I hope it's okay :)

Genre: Family/Angst

Word count: 1762

Summary: Months after the war, George still struggles to come to terms with Fred's death. "You get your first kiss first and you get to die first?" he said to the mirror, sniffing back tears but unable to hold back a melancholic grin. "Jammy git."

[You can skip to the story now]

Written for: QLFC Finals rnd 1 [Harpies, Beater 2: "It was gross at the beginning, but you kind of get used to it" - tear - aquamarine - George Augustus Moore quote (stated below the title)]; HP Chapter comp [PoA - Mauarders Map - write about the Weasley twins]; Hunger Games comp [Rue - a character whose death saddened you]; Disney comp [Sven - write about twins]; Pokemon [fic 3]; Chocolate Frog ; Represent that character

Mirrors

"A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it." George Augustus Moore, The Brook Kerith

XXX

"George! Breakfast is ready!" Molly Weasley's voice called up the stairs of Shell Cottage.

"Yes, come down 'ere soon or else eet will get cold!" Fleur chimed in. George could just make out the sound of a brief muffled exchange before the French girl added, "Or Bill says zat 'e will eat eet for you!"

A faint smile passed George's lips as he lay in bed. He rolled onto his left side and opened his mouth with the intent of making some kind of joking remark to Fred about how their brother must be hungry like a wolf, but both George's amusement and smile faded when he saw no bed on the other side of the room.

Fred wasn't there.

George was alone.

He mentally kicked himself for forgetting. Again. Months had passed since… the war, and yet, George felt like pretty much the entire family was moving on faster than he was. Well, perhaps 'moving on' was the wrong phrase for it; everyone was still devastated about losing Fred, but nevertheless George couldn't help but feel like he was being left behind; coping worse than everyone else.

He couldn't even look in a mirror without mistaking his own reflection for that of his twin. In fact, Ginny had once found him kneeling on the floor in front of one, crying and talking to his reflection as if it were Fred. George never saw her there, but the next day he had woken to see that every mirror in the house had been covered up. Ginny never directly told him that it had been her doing, but by the small concerned glances she'd shoot his way whenever he approached a mirror, George figured it out pretty quickly.

He'd been filled to burst with gratitude and love for his little sister after making this discovery, and had silently thanked her by giving her the biggest hug he could physically manage. Looking back on that now, George felt his stomach twist in knots. He realised that the exaggeration of his hug must have been a subconscious impulse for him to try and compensate for Fred's absence…

When they were children, he and Fred used to hug Ginny together, squashing her between them in the process. As they grew older it became more of an act of endearment than mischief, and perhaps it had been the unfamiliar absence of one twin in that hug that had made tears spring into Ginny's eyes. She never cried in front of George, but he could tell she'd been desperately and stubbornly fighting back tears after she bade him goodnight and scurried away.

George couldn't deny that it felt strange on his part too, but he found that on that occasion, he wasn't as upset as Ginny. She had never really known anything else other than being hugged by both twins at the same time, so it was understandably a shock to her when it had just been one of them. For George, though, hugging someone without Fred was no new thing.

Contrary to what most people assumed, he and Fred hadn't done everything together. It would have been impossible, in fact, for them to do so; especially when it came to 'first times'. Even for twins, the chance of experiencing something for the first time simultaneously was very slim. Sometimes George beat Fred to the punch with experiencing something new; sometimes Fred beat him. Though it did feel unfair at times, they would always tell each other what their new experience was like, so the other didn't feel too left out. It was difficult to explain, but George felt that, as twins, he and Fred were part of the same person, two halves of the same whole. Consequently, it always felt imbalanced whenever one of them did something before the other, so they always shared.

It'd been Fred who experienced what some may think of as a landmark 'first time' before George. Upon hearing that Fred had had his first kiss, George remembered feeling a bizarre sense of defeat, as if he'd been unknowingly competitive about the whole thing all along. But at the same time, he felt relieved, thinking that Fred could have made the amateur mistakes on behalf of them both, and fill George in on what it was like. If there was anything George had wanted to be prepared for, it was making a quick get-away from the scene of a risky prank, and kissing a girl for the first time.

Unfortunately for him, Fred's feedback had been vague and rather unhelpful. When asked by Lee Jordan if it was gross at all, he replied:

"It was gross at the beginning, but you kind of get used to it."

'Gross at the beginning'? 'Kind of get used to it?' Suffice it to say, George had prioritised pranks and tomfoolery over girls for a long time after those lukewarm sentiments.

"GEORGE!"

Molly bellowed up the stairs, interrupting George's train of thought. He blinked, clearing his glazed-over eyes before rubbing them with the heel of his palms, wiping away a tear or two he did not recall shedding in the process.

"Yeah, Mum. I'm coming!" George called back half-heartedly. It always did something strange to his gut, hearing his mum call only his name. Usually, she'd say "Fred and George!" or "Boys!" Now he was just 'George', and it made him feel so isolated and incomplete.

Finally conceding that he couldn't hide away in his room forever, George hauled himself out of bed before sloping into the hallway and down the stairs, all the while keeping his eyes firmly planted downwards. As sweet as Ginny's gesture with the mirrors had been, George felt incredibly selfish inconveniencing the rest of his family in such a way. Plus, with The Burrow still in disarray, he didn't think it was especially nice to repay Fleur's kindness and patronage by preventing her from looking at herself. The witch would probably have a mental breakdown eventually, so George practically demanded that all of the mirrors be uncovered again.

Looking at the floor whenever he left his room was the only way George's willpower could hold out, as walking normally would only allow the reflective glass to beckon to his peripheral vision, coaxing him to look in one and come face to face with a figure he'd mistake to be Fred.

"Here 'e is," Ron said through a mouthful of scrambled eggs upon seeing his brother appear in the doorway.

Everyone at the table looked up. George smiled vaguely as to address the whole room, and watched the way his mother's eyes surreptitiously travelled up, hovering momentarily above his head before they met his.

George couldn't help but feel a little embarrassed: around the time of the 'uncovering of the mirrors', he'd found the perfect coping mechanism in the form of some hair dye he found in his Dad's collection of Muggle jumble. He reasoned that if he didn't have the famous Weasley red locks, then he'd no longer see Fred in the mirrors. The only downside to his plan was that the dye turned out to be a garish aquamarine colour. Molly had received quite a shock the next morning, and heavily persuaded George to use magic to make the colour slightly less… outrageous. The only issue was that George hadn't really used that much magic since Fred died. After attempting and failing to produce a Patronus, he'd sort of become reluctant to use it.

"Come and have something to eat, dear. Grab what you want and I can warm it up for you," Molly smiled kindly, having now accepted that the more outrageous George's hair colour was, the less like himself (and Fred) he looked.

"Cheers, Mum," George replied, walking over to the table and sitting down in between Ginny and Bill. Even something as simple as this, eating a meal with his family, felt so wrong now that Fred was not sitting beside him.

Suddenly, he felt his appetite disappear, and George forced down a few mouthfuls of his breakfast before excusing himself from the table. He really didn't want food, but he knew everyone would start to worry about him if he refused to eat, and he didn't want to cause anyone anymore stress than they were already dealing with.

After climbing the stairs, George set about wandering around the cottage. He did that a lot now: just wandered, as if he was searching for something. The truth was that he felt incredibly lost these days, but he'd searched high and low for anything that could make him feel happy and together again and nothing had really helped fill the void he felt inside himself. Not entirely, anyway. His family was the thing that was keeping him from completely falling apart.

With his mind preoccupied with what felt like a million thoughts, George's body moved of its own accord, turning into his room and walking to the far side, where a large rectangular mirror stood. This was the only mirror in Shell Cottage that was still covered, and George absently reached out and took hold of the sheet. Before his conscious mind could engage again, he pulled it off, revealing the glass of the mirror.

George blinked, focusing back on reality. He stared at his reflection, noticing immediately that the hair dye had almost completely faded. He then looked at the left side of his head, where an ear used to be. This was the only thing that separated him from Fred, so he continued to look there. The more he focused on that spot, however; the more his mind started to play tricks on him. He started to imagine an ear that shouldn't be there in the reflected image, and soon, in his mind's eye, Fred was standing before him, grinning mischievously.

"No," George shook his head, snapping himself out of it. He watched the smile fade from the reflection too, and that's when he realised that after all this time avoiding mirrors, they were just what he had needed all along. As painful as it was being reminded of Fred in such a real way, George noted that whilst he looked at the reflection, he no longer felt lost or incomplete.

"You get your first kiss first and you get to die first?" he said to the mirror, sniffing back tears but unable to hold back a melancholic grin. "Jammy git."

A/N: Thank you for reading, let me know what you thought :D