Lying in bed was right out, he thought the next morning lying in bed. For the first time in as long as he could remember he actually wanted to get up, start the day, tuck in to a hearty breakfast and do something. Productive. Surprisingly, he wasn't tired in spite of walking until after two in the morning before finally setting his feet homeward bound and crashing hard.

He hadn't walked himself to sleep since the early days of Fred's death. He shuddered just remembering those years. He had been newly married to Angelina then and the marital bed had been far from the comfort he'd been promised it would be, had believed it would be, when he agreed to the preposterous idea of marrying Fred's on-again off-again girl. He didn't want to think of Angelina, didn't want to think of their soiled bed. He rolled over onto his back and thought instead of how when he wasn't walking the tread off his boots he was standing very very still in the freezing drench of anguish those years, how he had just not been able to breathe out of his nose for days at a time after each repeated breakdown. He became used to being permanently stuffed up with tears.

For some reason he flashed on a Christmas dinner, two years after Fred was killed and how he suddenly got up from the Weasley commotion, walked outside and sat on the frozen snowy ground, furiously waving off anyone who dare approach him, crying until the early evening darkened the day and then he walked inside up to the old room he had shared with his brother and curled into the sheets and wept himself into a nightmare from which he could not wake for what felt like hours but was only minutes. Finally he allowed his mother to come into the room, lay down beside him on the narrow bed, and she held him and he slept. He begged Charlie to take him abroad, begged his father to let him stay, begged Ginny to send Angelina home without him. All to no avail. That was the day she had announced she was carrying the child she would name after his father's identical twin brother.

He stood quickly. Enough of that. He dressed, washed his teeth and face in the basin in the room and readied himself to walk down the hallway to the loo. He threw open the sash and looked out at the late summer day.

He was whistling when he returned from the communal bath and the sound trilled then died behind his teeth. Ron was leaning against the wall outside his door. Ron saw him and straightened, taking a tentative step towards him and what could he do but keep moving forward. "Fuck me," he said softly.

"Not why I'm here." Ron answered darkly but it made George smile.

"No?"

Ron laughed. "Decidedly."

The two men stood squared. George said firmly, "If you want something from me you've got to tag along. I'm off for breakfast."

"I've had."

"Of course. They'll pull you a pint."

"It's nine in the morning."

"Milk then. Let's go."

A quarter of an hour later they were sharing a table downstairs in the pub, George tucking into a full Scottish, looking at his brother between forkfuls.

A false start, then Ron cleared his throat. "I'm sorry George." His voice was filled with a choked sound of hesitation, sincerity and grief.

George put down his fork, sat up straighter and looked across the table at his brother. "Go on."

"That was terrible. Just terrible. And we shouldn't have asked you," pause, "to do it. Not for any reason."

George nodded slightly, looking down at his brother's hands nervous on the scarred tabletop. He wondered if he had ever known their hands were exactly the same. Long fingers, long square nail beds, smattering of freckles and the riot of red-gold hair along the masculine knuckles. He looked down at his own hands, fingertips pressed against the edge of the wood, tense. He looked back up into Ron's eyes.

"Thank you. It was terrible." He cocked an eyebrow. "I made it worse for all that, but still…"

"Yeah, 'bout that. After you left, that woman, girl really, she kind of freaked out and we all ended up staying and talking about her job and the group. She's quite new, I guess, that was just her third meeting or something. And the Ministry gave her that group because….well…"

"Well, because that lot is right as rain, been meeting for twenty years. Their dead are long gone and in the ground. Safe in a way. Sorting them would be as easy as pie." George smiled ruefully. "I'm guessing last night was a first bad night in a long time."

Ron shrugged. "You threw her for a loop, that's for sure. She wants to talk to you, apologize or get you to apologize. Not sure. I didn't tell her where you are."

"Good. She doesn't need to talk to me although I do probably owe her an apology, or one to the group at least." He picked his fork back up.

"George?"

"Mmmm."

"Is that really how this is for you? All the time like that?"

He ate in silence, one bite then another, then swopping it all up with a thick piece of toast. Ron waited. He pushed the plate aside and reached for the tall glass of orange juice. "Yeah. It is."

Ron closed his eyes, opened them wet and blinked them dry. "I can't imagine. I didn't know."

"It's different for the rest of you, eh? It took me years to get that. Years. It's like it got better for everyone but me."

"Not better. Easier. It never gets better."

"But it did get easier? How?"

"Well, I know you said time doesn't heal, but it does. It did. The sharp pain of it faded, the impossibility of wanting things to be different just had to be given up, let go of."

"In order to get on, to move forward?"

"Exactly. Yes."

He drained the glass and set it beside the plate, wiped his mouth with the cloth napkin and folded it into a long rectangle and dropped it on top of the plate. "You see, Ron, I made the decision to not keep going. To step off. To exist in the pain and the regret. The horror." He lowered his eyes, watched his fingers twist around one another. "I wanted, needed, to feel that longing. The impossible longing."

Ron swallowed, the sound audible. "George."

Now it was his turn to shrug, eyes fastened to his brother's wounded gaze. "I couldn't let go of. I just could not."

It was dark. Early evening becoming middling. He was striding towards The Three Broomsticks. He stopped in front of the low slung pub, close enough to touch it far enough to have to lean to do so. He closed his eyes and breathed in a thousand thousand memories. With a single exhale, he let them go, reached out and pushed the door open.