Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter and will never make any money out of this WHATSOEVER!

A/N: After the War the Weasley family are reeling from Fred's death, from the point of view of George, Ron and Percy – following the twists and turns of their life as they learn to live without. NOT SLASH! Rated M for some explicit language and dark themes. Will contain references to self-harm and suicide, so could be triggering. Keep yourself safe and I hope you enjoy :)
I wouldn't mind a review (or 20) ;)

This Chapter is in Ron's POV.

Flick! The kettle turned itself on as I waved my wand in its direction and sat down heavily at the kitchen table. I rubbed my hand roughly across my face and sighed. It was only then that I spotted a discoloured piece of parchment on top of a pile of other random bits of paper; my name was scrawled on the front of it. I picked it up with my left hand, flicking my right at the kettle, which poured boiling hot water into the mug that I had left there, and levitating the mug of tea over to me. I fished the tea bag out, whilst trying not to burn my fingers; and opened the scroll and scanned the words.

'Ron, sorry for throwing those cups at your head. I'm not really sure why I did it. George.' I sighed heavily and continued to stare at the parchment; but I was distracted by a loud clattering and the kitchen door opening and closing.

"You've been a long time." Ginny announced, placing her hand on her hip in the same sort of way that mum did when she was annoyed. "Did you go and see Hermione?" She asked me.

"No." I replied wearily.

"So where were you all this time?" I felt like I was under some kind of interrogation.

"With Percy." I answered, taking a long gulp of tea and scalding the inside of my mouth and throat as I had forgotten how hot it would be.

"For all this time?" She inquired sounding incredulous. "You left really early this morning!"

"Yeah, I know." I placed my mug down on the table – George's letter was still firmly grasped in my other hand. "He… I think I had a bit of a breakthrough moment with him." I expanded. "I got a bit annoyed with him; he was saying that he just wants to be let out so he could go back to his own flat."

"Tssk! As though mum and dad would let him do that!" Ginny stated quite abruptly, she was putting the kettle on again and making herself a cup of tea.

"That's what I told him; especially after what he did…" Ginny sat down across the table from me, warming her hands on the outside of her tea mug. "But he just kept saying how he'd rather be at home… I kind of snapped at the end and had a bit of a go at him…" Ginny raised her eyebrow as she looked at me. "I said that I'd gladly swap – with our wreck of a family who would actually voluntarily want to live here?"

"I know." She sighed. "I don't think I've ever seen them closer to a nervous breakdown." By 'them' I knew instantly that she was referring to mum and dad. "Everything has finally caught up with them and it's taking its toll… they need to have time to relax, they're still all wound up, but we're not fighting anymore…." She shrugged.

"But you know why they're still wound up…" I retorted simply. "George and Percy haven't exactly made it easy for them to relax, have they?"

"They're not doing that on purpose though…" Ginny said sensibly.

"No… but it's not helping, is it?" I shrugged.

"But that's why we should be doing our best to help them both, so that mum and dad don't have to do so much." She said, I nodded slowly and looked back at the letter from George. "I told Percy that if he didn't start co-operating with the healers then they were going to send him home." I told her. "I think I maybe got through to him…" I paused as she took a drink. "He asked if we were angry…?"

"Angry?" She put her cup down looking puzzled.

"Like if mum and dad were angry about what he had done." I explained.

"What did you tell him?"

"The truth! That no, they're not angry as such, more upset that they haven't been able to help him. I also told him that he's been ignoring all of us, and everyone else." I answered, "I kind of had already gone on a bit of a rant and, I was sure I'd put my foot in my mouth by that stage – so I was being brutally honest. But it seemed to work on some level because he said that he was going to find out why the healers were saying he hadn't been co-operating; he said that he'd sort it… he seemed pretty serious."

"Well that's promising!" Ginny exclaimed.

"Yeah…" I murmured.

"What?" Ginny questioned, sounding suddenly suspicious. "You don't sound convinced…"

"Before he came to the conclusion that he had to do something to sort it, there was just… just something, it's quite hard to explain what I mean." I closed my eyes and rubbed my eyelids with the tips of my fingers, I took quite a pause before opening my eyes and beginning to explain. "When I was talking to him, there was something about his eyes… he just seemed blank – like there was a chasm, like this blackness in his eyes. I don't know if that explains it very well... But it, he looked really lost, and only at the end when he said that he would make a change that there was something different in his eyes, like there was a spark of something… Yeah, I know that description is vague – that darkness is quite unnerving, I have no idea what's going on inside his head... Like he said to dad that he'd just try again when he was let out."

"But it sounds like he's starting to do something at last." Ginny nodded, I looked back down at the mug of tea and the letter. "George has written to me…" I told her blankly, looking down from the words on the parchment to Ginny sitting opposite me.

"I know." She replied, suddenly breaking eye contact with me and looking at the wooden top of the table.

"How do you know?" I asked, she was looking incredibly shifty all of a sudden.

"I, um, well I read it before you got back…" She admitted, then before I could answer she added: "It was the handwriting! I recognised it but I couldn't tell exactly whose it was! So I checked and it was George's… then, I kind of thought that he was writing to you because he wanted someone to visit him and reckoned that you would once you got that letter…. So I went to visit him, and I think I was right about him wanting a visitor…" She said this all very quickly, as though trying to get it all out before I could get annoyed with her.

"Right…" I reacted slowly. "Well, alright… what do you mean about him wanting a visitor?"

"Well I went to see him, I thought I had woken him up at first…. But no." She explained shaking her head. "He looks awful! But there was, just something not right… so I just kind of waited for something to happen…" She shrugged, "He was trying to pretend that everything was alright at first, but I told him to stop pretending; eventually he did."

"What happened?" I asked, feeling slightly relieved that Ginny had been to see George because I wasn't sure whether I could cope with any more confrontation today.

"He's struggling, he feels like he's lost his identity. He was one half of a duo that is no longer a duo." She replied, "But that wasn't the most worrying thing – he nearly had a panic attack at one point. He told me that he had written to you, and he expected that you would come and visit when you got the letter, and he knows you take milk in your tea, so he decided to go out shopping for milk as he hadn't done any shopping in a while." I could tell this re-accounting of the story was going somewhere but I couldn't quite tell where. "But he had gotten outside his front door, and the way he described it was like the world was going to collapse in on top of him. Everything was going fuzzy, and he felt like he couldn't breathe, and his legs got so heavy that he could hardly move them… it kind of sounds like a panic attack that he's had, but now he feels like he can't leave his flat without this happening again." She sighed and looked instantly exhausted. "I've never seen him like that, he was hysterical, he looked distraught!" She shook her head.

"What did you do when you finally told you this?" I questioned after a short pause.

"I told him we would help him…" She grinned sheepishly. "He didn't want mum and dad to know, he thinks they'd tell him he was being stupid… I think we shouldn't tell them either, but not for those reasons… I don't think we should be giving them anything else to worry about…"

"Uh-huh." I nodded, "Yeah, I get what you mean… but doesn't it sound like he needs proper help? Not the kind that we can give him."

"Probably, but if I had said that straight out then George wouldn't have wanted to know any more, would he?" Ginny said wisely.

"Hmmmm…. That's where you get this stuff more than I do! You know what to do and say in these kind of – delicate situations…. I just say the first thing that pops into my head, and more often than not it's exactly the wrong thing to say…" I admitted to her, watching her drinking all that was left in her cup. She stood up to refill her cup:

"But that's where you're wrong – I don't know what to say, I just think about how they're feeling and how they'd react if I did put my foot in it…" She retorted, "You're lucky, it sounds like you being brutally honest was the exact thing that Percy needed to hear; he needed something that would kick him into action. But I think George would have broken down and gotten more panicked if I had reacted in that way to him."

"Hmmm…" I hummed thoughtfully. My brain was reeling with thoughts of Percy and George, with the two of their situations – both brought out by the same set of circumstances. I rubbed my forehead with my hand; it was physically beginning to pound as I thought of that dark chasm that I had seen behind Percy's eyes. "Do you think…" I verbalised very slowly, as I was still formulating exactly what I was thinking. "Do you think that maybe Percy and George would be able to help each other?"

"You really think that would be a good mix to try? They're both as volatile as the other…" Ginny commented, "I'm not sure they'd be good together… George thinks he's lost his identity and Percy thinks it's all his fault that Fred is dead. I think they'd just wreck each other emotionally."

"Maybe not just now – not right at this very moment…" I replied scathingly. "In a little while – once they've done some talking about stuff, once they've opened up a bit. Don't you think that they might be able to help one another figure stuff out?" Ginny didn't look convinced but she seemed to consider it for a few moments, staring blankly off into space.

"I guess it would be worth a try once they're a bit more stable. Hopefully once Percy isn't threatening to kill himself every time someone goes and sees him, and once we've managed to get George out of his flat without passing out, then we can reconcile them, of sorts…" Ginny spoke slowly, thinking about what she was saying before she said it.

"That sounds like a fairly solid plan…" I agreed nodding. "but how are we actually going to stop Percy saying he's going to kill himself and get George out of his flat?" I hoped that Ginny maybe had ideas about how we could achieve these goals, but she looked as clueless as I felt.

"I have no idea…"

A/N: If you've got this far, thank you for reading! :) I'll try and update very soon, but uni coursework and work is piling on top of me – in the meantime, I wouldn't say no to a couple of reviews ;)