Sorry this is a day late, everyone! I had some unexpected company yesterday and worked today so I didn't have a lot of writing time. But I hope you enjoy it now that it's here! Special thanks for the third time to LittleLionGirl for her request! Also, special thanks to every single one of you who read this story last week. We nearly hit 100 views that one week, which was more than half the total number of views on the story before. So thanks! It means so much to me :).

**Word: Potatoes** This drabble is post-series, set maybe a week or two after the final battle. I have been dying to write something from George's POV about living without his twin, and with this word I finally found my inspiration. I hope I got George's tone right (another difficult character for me to write) and that you all enjoy reading it!

I sat on the bench in the backyard and stared into the mass of vegetation my mother called a garden.

Vines tangled around the other plants and bushes. Weeds covered every inch of dirt. Thorns swayed threateningly in the breeze. Gnome holes were scattered throughout the chaos.

This was not a garden.

Well, maybe it was a garden, but Weasley-style.

Everything was always positive in our house. Those raggedy old clothes were of the finest quality. The house wasn't tilted, it was styled. And that wasteland of plants? That was a garden, dammit.

Mum led this optimism brigade. I think she was just really determined that if the family couldn't afford nice things, we would at least appreciate the things we had, and not wallow in self-pity. Didn't work so well on Ron and Percy, but the rest of us were okay with it. We let Mum have her way and force her delusions on us because we honestly didn't mind the poverty. All it meant to me and Fred was that we had to work to make our own names in this world and we didn't mind that. We wanted to gain our success by our own doing anyways. And besides, in order to have more money, we would have had to have had fewer siblings, and neither of us would've ever traded anything for our siblings.

Just as long as no one told them that.

And so, by Mum's demand, the garden was a garden. Lately though, Mum's cheery train had gotten a bit derailed. Just this morning in fact, she had actually asked me if I was okay, instead of informing me I was with a scowl that dared me to argue. And not only had she asked, but she had asked in a whisper, tentative, scared. It was unheard of.

But I suppose you change when one of your sons dies.

I never answered Mum's question, and she hadn't seemed surprised. Or maybe she just thought the answer was so obvious that I didn't really have to give it. Of course I wasn't okay; my twin had just died.

Whatever her reasons though, Mum let me escape the kitchen without harassment and make my way out of the house. Blindly I walked and somehow found myself here, staring at weeds and thinking about Weasley-style gardens. It was the only coherent thought I could think, because my emotions were a mushy bog of uncertainty and I couldn't decipher any of them. Mum's question had hit me hard, because I realized that I didn't know the answer. But my twin had just died. How could I not be sure I wasn't okay? Why was I sitting in the garden, thinking about plants?

What the bloody hell was wrong with me?

My breathing hitched and finally one of my feelings bubbled up. Guilt. I should know I wasn't okay.

I tried to make myself feel better by telling myself that it wasn't that I was okay, per say, but that I didn't understand what I was feeling. My emotions were confused and messed up and drowning me. And I supposed that was an appropriate feeling to have in response to my twin's death.

My breathing slowed.

And then I really started to wonder about the question.

Was I okay?

I considered it systematically. On one hand, no, I was quite certain I was not okay. I had spent my entire life with Fred. Every decision I made, every thought I had, I considered him, because he was implicated by default. I had never imagined a life without him. Never even thought it was possible. We were one and a whole, never meant to be separated. From the moment our zygote (thanks Percy, for the grade 10 biology lesson) split, we seemed to be trying to return together, to merge back into one person.

We almost succeeded too, as much as one could without super glue. Fred and George. George and Fred. Our names were always together. Though his tended to go first. I wondered why that was and sent a quick glare to the sky, where I imagined him sitting laughing at me for feeling all… well feelings-y. But then I shook my head. Back to the question.

No one ever expected to see one of us without the other, probably because we never were. We shared a bedroom, a dorm room, a quidditch locker room. Friends, relatives, enemies. Dreams, goals, plans. The shop. In a way, we could have been the same person, and I hoped that nobody would miss Fred less because they still had me and so it was like he was still here.

I shook my head sharply again, this time imagining him snorting condescendingly at me. I could nearly hear him say, Come on, don't be stupid. They couldn't forget me; I'm the good looking one.

I smiled. No, no one would ever be able to forget Fred.

But I wondered what that meant for me. If I could never forget my twin, would I ever be able to move on with my life? How could I ever get married without him as my best man? How could I ever have kids, knowing they could never meet their Uncle Fred? And how could I possibly run the shop, and make inventions, and make a god damned career without him by my side?

I'd never had to make decisions on my own before. I'd never had to live on my own before.

But now I would have to. I would have to run the shop on my own. Because I would never be able to talk to him again.

My twin was dead.

Fred was dead.

He was gone.

And with that thought, my emotions began to surge up through my stomach, into my throat, choking me, and finally hitting my eyes, making the ridiculous tears well up and slide down my face.

The emotions, once so confusing and unnamed, presented themselves to me, flipping by so fast I barely had time to catch them all.

Confusion. Fear. Sadness. Grief. Misery. Loss. Anger. Terror. Panic. And pain.

Most of all, pain.

For a long time I sat on that bench, my face clutched in my hands, rocking back and forth as I sobbed loudly. I was aware of nothing except my own agony. I was blinded by panic and pain. I wanted my twin.

I just wanted my twin back.

Oh God, please just give him back.

I would do anything, anything.

Oh God, Fred.

My twin.

I have no idea how long I sat there, hysterical, and generally making a mess of my face, but at some point I heard the patter of feet. I looked up, glaring, ready to tell off whatever family member it was who was intruding on my grief.

But when I gazed around the yard, I didn't see the Weasley trademark flaming red hair. In fact, I didn't see anyone. My crying softened in my confusion and I was able to hear the noise again. A faint patter, but definitely of feet. I followed the noise down to the ground, near the garden, and saw a particularly fat gnome attempting to catch a beetle that was running away from it.

I watched the gnome chase after the beetle and listened to his mini feet, smacking sharply against the ground.

And I realized I must be really out of it because since when could any Weasley patter? If anything, we stomped.

The gnome leaped forward to land on the beetle, but tripped and rolled down a small hill. His robust stomach burst free of his tightly tucked shirt and spilled over his pants. He started swearing and began to tuck his belly back in to his clothing. It looked like quite the challenge.

I couldn't tell you why exactly, maybe just because it was the sort of scene that once would have had me and Fred rolling around in hysterical laughter, or maybe just because it was so normal, so innocent, after all the horrible things that had happened, but suddenly the other side of my emotions began to stir, and I realized why I wasn't sure I wasn't okay. Because I was feeling things that were good, too.

Hope. Trust. Love. Affection. Happiness. Freedom. Warmth. And amusement.

Most of all, amusement.

I wanted to understand these emotions better. I wanted to know how I could feel this way with my twin dead. So, before he could even finish tucking in his belly, I scooped the gnome up by his ankle. Sure, I could have done it easier by magic, but that wouldn't feel right. Fred and I had always caught the gnomes by hand, ever since we were children.

The gnome struggled in my grasp. His belly had fallen out of his shirt again when he was flipped upside down, and that seemed to annoy him more than anything else. His swearing got even more colorful and he gnashed his teeth, trying to get his little chompers into my finger. His roundness got in the way though, and he couldn't quite reach. That would teach him to snack on so many beetles.

I took my seat again on the bench and examined the small, struggling creature, trying to figure out what it was about him that had brought up these positive emotions.

He seemed rather unremarkable for a gnome, which meant remarkably ugly. Dark brown mottled skin, stubby little limbs, dirty green clothes, and a big, bald, potato-like head.

I wrinkled my nose at the little round dirtball. They really were ugly things. But that was part of what made them so fun.

I remembered a Christmas many years ago, when Fred and I were only five, and we were just starting to hone our joke instincts. When Mum had sent us out to help our older brothers for the first time with the Christmas morning make-the-house-look-nice-de-gnoming, we were so excited we could barely sit still. Charlie caught the first gnome and showed it to us, and I can still remember the wonder I felt, mirrored in Fred's face. They were ugly. They were mean. And they were marvelous. Fred and I loved them from first sight. All little boys loved gross things and the amount of practical jokes we could pull with such creatures seemed endless.

So once Percy gave us a lecture on how to catch them and Bill had taken over and actually shown us how to do it, we set our minds to the task and set about catching the gnomes. Fred and I were not stupid. We were just lazy. But when we wanted something, when we set our minds to it, we could really accomplish things. It wasn't by accident that we would eventually become the best gnome catchers in the family. Whenever one of our older brothers was watching we would dump the gnomes over the garden wall, but they weren't watching much. Catching gnomes could be very frustrating, and they were chasing the creatures all over the place. And so Fred and I kept a secret stash of gnomes, shoved into an old rusted cauldron in the yard.

That night, we painstakingly stuffed the gnomes into a large cloth potato bag. It wasn't easy; they were quite determined to not go in the sack and both Fred and I ended up with hands covered in gnome bites. Fred even managed to get one on the end of his nose somehow. But eventually we had a potato sack stuffed so full of gnomes that they could barely squirm. And when you looked inside, well, it looked exactly like a sack of potatoes, what with their giant potato heads and all. Then we dragged the bag downstairs, waited for Ginny to start to wail (she always did at that age- what a set of lungs that girl had), and then slipped into the kitchen once Mum left. We swapped the bag of potatoes she had dug up from the garden to cook for Christmas dinner with our gnome sack and then snuck out, giggling in whispers.

For hours we watched Mum in the kitchen, waiting for her to get to the potatoes. And the prank never once lost its appeal. We were so excited, we thought we were so clever, that nothing could dampen our spirits. And eventually we were rewarded for our patience.

Mum dumped the bag of potato-gnomes into a large pot of boiling water, only to have the gnomes, now free of the bag, and none too happy to find themselves being boiled, leap every which way out of the pot and into the kitchen. Mum screamed. The rest of the family came running. Ginny wailed some more. The gnomes ran wild, destroying and trampling whatever they met. And Fred and I sat, crouched in the hallway, laughing hysterically at the chaos.

Finally Dad immobilized the gnomes and Mum swept them outside with a broom. None of them had been harmed (besides a scalded behind or two) and the kitchen, while a mess, was not too damaged. Really, in comparison to some of the pranks we would pull in the future, it was nothing, but it was the first, and so the punishment was worse than anything we would receive when we were older. Mum shouted. Dad scolded and acted disappointed. Mum shouted. Percy yelled that the gnomes had ruined his favorite book. Mum shouted again. And then we were bustled off to our rooms without dinner Christmas night.

But we thought the scene had been so funny that we really couldn't regret it. Every time we looked at each other we burst into laughter all over again. And once Bill snuck us up some food and our stomachs stopped grumbling, we really started to be proud of ourselves.

"Hey, Georgie?" Fred whispered to me late that night as we lay in our beds in the dark.

"Yeah, Freddo?"

"What do you think… about opening a joke shop. Just the two of us. Well, maybe Bill would get a discount since he brought us food."

I was silent for a moment. "Fred… we're five." I even held up five fingers to emphasize my point.

Fred threw a shoe at my head. "Not now, stupid. I mean, when we're older. As a job."

I thought about that. "Are you allowed to own a joke shop for a job? I thought jobs were supposed to be boring, like working at the ministry."

"Nah, that's just Dad. Look at Mr. Fortescue. He owns an ice cream shop as a job."

I grinned at him. "Good point."

"Well?"

"Well what?"

"What do you think? About owning a joke shop?"

I threw the shoe back at him. "Well duh we're gonna do it."

I brought myself back to the present and watched the fat gnome I held now, still squirming and trying to sink his teeth into my hand. I wondered if he cared that it was one of his kind, the first gnome shown to us that day by Charlie, which had started mine and my twin's lives on the path we had taken. I wondered if he could possibly understand the significance of that moment to me, to Fred.

But of course he couldn't, he didn't, because he was just a gnome. Just an ugly, angry, simple, absolutely hilarious creature that Fred and I had both always loved.

It may not make much sense to anyone but me, but it was right then, sitting on a rusting bench in a Weasley-style garden, holding the fattest gnome I had ever seen upside down by the ankle, listening to it curse me with every swear word it knew, that I finally came to terms with my twin's death. I had my memories of Fred that couldn't die. That wouldn't fade. Our first prank would be blazed in my mind until I was grey-haired and deaf. And Fred would always be waiting for me, watching, laughing at my idiocy and my walking stick. Until I crossed over myself and beat him with it, that is. With Fred's memory, I would get by. I would tell the stupid stories I knew he would want to tell at my wedding. I would read my children bedtime stories about mine and their Uncle Fred's best pranks. And every decision I made in our shop, I would make remembering the shared dream we had at the age of five.

Finally, I had an answer to that damned question.

I wasn't okay. Not yet. Maybe not for a while. But someday I would be. And I knew that when that day came, Fred would be okay with it too.

I stood, a grin on my face, and chucked the gnome over the garden wall.

AN: For some reason I'm oddly fond of that last sentence. It just seems very Fred and George-y to me to nonchalantly chuck a gnome after having a deep thought :). Well, I hope you liked it! Please leave me a review letting me know what you thought! I love to hear it! And any word requests are always welcome too. Thanks everyone! I'll be back next week!