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 Ginny's POV
"Why are you always sat at that table?" Ron asked, clattering down the staircase as I sat with a cup of tea and textbook in front of me.
"Because I am trying to do some work for when I go back to school." I answered glibly.
"Pfft…" He scorned.
"Well at least I'm trying to do something to work; are you going to come back to school?" I asked him, closing my book as he sat down at the table.
"Doubt it. I'm not really sure what I'm going to do. I don't think school is a priority right now – especially with Percy and George the way they are. I'd rather be at home." Ron was tracing a dent in the table top with his finger.
"I'm not saying that I don't want to help them- " I started hotly, but Ron cut in over me.
"I'm not inferring that you don't want to help them, I just don't think that I'll be going back to school – so there isn't really any point in me studying at the moment." He was shaking his head. "I'm just trying to put all of my brain power into figuring out what we can do to help Percy and George…" He sighed, "Not that I'm coming up with anything, mind you…" He added a lot quieter.
"I've been thinking about that too…" I said, "And about what you were saying, that Percy and George might be able to help each other…"
"Did you come up with anything?" He inquired.
"Well… I think they might be able to help each other, kind of… I mean, maybe Percy will stop threatening to kill himself if he realises that George doesn't blame him for Fred's death, but us telling him that isn't going to make an impact – but if George says it in person, then maybe Percy will believe it."
"But George isn't going to leave his flat, so how are we supposed to make that happen?" Ron interjected.
"I'm still working on that bit…" I muttered under my breath. "Haven't you had any ideas?" I asked him slightly exasperatedly, his reply was to stare back at me blankly.
"I'm no good at that sort of thing! You're the one who comes up with this sort of stuff!" Ron said shrugging his shoulders, I ignored him and re-opened my book once more. There was almost a full minute of silence between us as I stared fixedly at my book, not actually reading a word, but gazing into the white space around the black letters. "Could we trick him?" I heard Ron say.
"Who?" I asked vaguely, not looking up at him.
"The giant squid! Who do you think I mean?" Ron exclaimed sarcastically. "George!"
"Trick him? How do you mean trick him?" I asked, choosing not to retaliate to his sarcasm.
"Well, I dunno…"
"You're the one who suggested it!" I sighed.
"Yeah, I know… but I just thought we could maybe trick him out of his flat; I hadn't thought of logistics or anything." Ron was rolling his eyes at me. "Merlin's beard, Ginny! You ask me to come up with something, so I come up with something on the spot and you find fault!"
"I'm your sister, that's my job." I answered flatly. "And it's not a very good idea anyway…"
"What do you mean, 'It's not a very good idea'?" He asked sounding outraged, I closed my book again and placed it down on the table.
"Well… George has only started trusting us again. And he doesn't even trust mum and dad to not think he's being stupid." I replied calmly. "I don't think he would keep trusting us if we tricked him… I think he'd find out and then he'd cut himself off from everyone again."
"Good point… yeah, you're probably right." Ron's brow furrowed as he thought. "But how else are we going to get him out of his flat? I mean, there isn't actually a logical reason for him being afraid to leave, is there?"
"No… but I'm not sure that him being stuck in his flat is the actual problem, I think that it's just the result of it…" I voiced what I had been wondering for a while.
"So… no, all this thinking is too much work!" Ron said exasperatedly. "If him not being able to leave the flat isn't the actual problem, then what is the actual problem?"
Knock, knock, knock!
"Hello?" A voice came from the doorway, both Ron and I turned to look. Hermione was standing in the doorway, looking slightly sheepish.
"Hermione!" Both of us chorused at the same time. Ron stood up from the table the quickest I had ever seen and swept over to the doorway, I looked back down at my book while they kissed – knowing full well that Ron would get annoyed if I was watching them. I flicked my wand over my shoulder and the kettle turned itself on.
"I'm not interrupting anything, am I?" Hermione asked, "It sounded like you were discussing something important."
"Discussing and not getting anywhere…" Ron muttered.
"No, you're not interrupting anything!" I replied, guessing that Ron was going to keep mumbling to himself. "We were trying to bat some ideas about – but Ron, maybe Hermione will be able to help?" I suggested, staring at him as they sat down side by side at the table.
"Oh? What were you discussing?" She asked, Ron scowled as though I was taking away from his time with Hermione.
"George." I answered.
"And Percy." Ron cut over me.
"Yes, alright! I was getting there!" I exclaimed, "But we were mainly talking about George today…" Ron tutted and got up to make tea for himself and Hermione, so I addressed her instead. "I went to see George yesterday, and he was in a bit of a state… he said he'd written to Ron because he wanted to see someone; but he had gone out to buy milk, so that they could have a cup of tea, but he got outside his front door and had a panic attack and he's now too scared to leave his flat." I explained, pointedly ignoring Ron clattering around behind me, making as much noise as he possibly could. "I told him that Ron and I would help him if he wanted us to, and he agreed, as long as we didn't tell mum and dad anything… but now we're kind of stuck, because we're not sure what to do to help him… he probably needs professional help." Ron sat down with a cup of tea for himself and Hermione, who looked as though she was in deep thought herself.
"So he's afraid to leave his flat because he's scared that he'll have another panic attack?" Hermione asked.
"Yeah, I guess so…" I replied, "I mean, there's no other reason as to why he wouldn't be able to leave the flat?"
"Whatever his reason, most likely it's psychological…" She went on. "And it's important to break whatever the psychological reasoning is before it develops into full blown agoraphobia…"
"Agro-whatya?" Ron spluttered into his tea. "I thought that was what I had, with spiders…"
"Agoraphobia… not arachnophobia." Hermione corrected him calmly. "No agoraphobia is like an anxiety disorder that can end with people not being able to leave their house."
"Sounds like George…" Ron muttered under his breath.
"When I was about eight or nine, before I knew I was a witch, there was a woman in the street I lived on who hadn't left her house in nearly twenty years." Hermione said, "I remember my mum explaining it to me, because we knew everyone on our street; we used to have street parties in the summer, but I had never seen her… Her family would come and go, but she stayed inside."
"So what do we do to stop that happening to George?" I asked.
"Well, you said that George doesn't want you to tell your parents?" I was nodding. "He's not able to leave his flat, and he's scared that people aren't going to take him seriously…" She was speaking aloud to herself, working through the problems and barriers that George had placed around himself.
"So he's not going to accept proper help, and Ron's not coming up with any decent ideas – other than to trick him – but that might end up with him not trusting us all over again." I sighed heavily, Ron looked indignant, but didn't argue with me.
"So he's not going to accept professional help… so why don't you accept it for him?" Hermione suggested.
"What do you mean? How could we accept the help for him?" I questioned.
"Well, go and ask a professional what you could do to help him, and then do it." She shrugged. "Go to one of the St. Mungos healers and ask them what they would do…"
"We could go to Percy's healer – you know the guy that's looking after Perce – what's his name? Tablet or something?" I said quickly to Ron.
"Yeah, Healer Tabslett – do you think he would know what to do?" Ron replied.
"It's worth asking him for advice at the very least… I doubt he would tell us to do something that would make George worse…" I was convinced of that at the least. "That's a really great idea Hermione, I don't think either of us would have thought of that!"
"That's because she's so wonderful that these genius ideas just come naturally to her." Ron was grinning with a rather soppy look on his face, Hermione's cheeks tinted pink as Ron put his hand on top of hers on the table.
"Euch…" I cringed slightly. "Do you want me to leave you two alone for a while?" I asked.
"No, it's alright. We're going to go out for a bit." Ron retorted, "And when I get back we can go and pay a visit to Healer Tabslett, then George."
"Okay… have fun!" I said, opening my book again and staring into the white space around the words. I had never heard of agoraphobia until Hermione had mentioned it just there, but everything she had described sounded just like George and what he was going through.
After I didn't know how long I sat thinking round and round about the situation with George, and wondering what – if any – advice the Healer would give us about getting George out of his flat.
I was glad that Hermione had come to visit, neither Ron nor I would have thought about asking a Healer for advice on what to do about George.
Time is such a peculiar thing – I found myself having sat for nearly three quarters of an hour, just contemplating the past, the present… and the future. The War had only been over for a few months; the rebuilding of the world, of the entire community was commencing. The Ministry of Magic, under the wise guidance of Kingsley, had pledged to be much more forthcoming and honest about everything that had happened during the war; as well as everything that was affecting the community presently.
The majority of the Death Eaters who had not been killed or captured at the Battle of Hogwarts had been rounded up in the following weeks, to be tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity – not all of those trials were over yet… Dad was on one of the committees that were dealing with those who had been arrested. It was slow, and systematic, work he told us – it sometimes took a while to gather all the relevant information that they could find and bring it together before they could put someone on trial. They had dealt with the Malfoy family as soon as the tribunals had been set up – the only reason I knew that was because Harry had testified for them; he was adamant that Narcissa had saved his life and without her help he wouldn't have been able to defeat Voldemort. The Malfoy's had been acquitted by the tribunal… I was convinced that it was Harry's testimony that had secured that for them. But the trials were by no means over, there was lots of others whom they had not looked at yet, and were in Azkaban until their time of trial…
But it wasn't all bad… there had been a full apology issued to Sirius, and his name had been completely cleared; it seemed that Kingsley agreed with Harry – Sirius had spent too much of his life imprisoned, or on the run, and in death he deserved to rest in peace… Kingsley had also stripped the Order of Merlin, First Class, from Peter Pettigrew…
So many other families had encountered injuries or fatalities as well, there was no way that we were alone in what we were going through.
My mind went from Death Eater tribunals, to individual Death Eaters, to those who have been acquitted, to the other people that were suffering as a result of the War, the families that were grieving, like ours, those people who had been injured to the point where they would never fully heal… the I wondered whether George fell into that category; I greatly doubted that he would ever "get over" Fred's death, I didn't think it was fair of us to even expect that of him… so did that mean he was damaged beyond repair?
I thought about Percy… he had slid down since the end of the war – none of us had hated him before, we hadn't liked his decisions, his choices… but they were his, and not something that we had any influence over… and he had come back! When we had needed people, as we were preparing to fight, Percy had come back; and after he had done that, nothing else mattered. I wondered about the way things would have turned out if Percy hadn't come back to fight during the War… would he have come back afterwards? Would he be in the position he was in now? No… more than likely he wouldn't have been in St. Mungos after trying to kill himself… There were so many 'what if' scenarios that ran through my head… but I couldn't keep thinking about all the 'what ifs', if I did then that would surely drive me mad!
"Ginny." Ron's voice broke me out of my reverie. "Do you want to go now?"
"Oh! Wait a minute, I'll just get ready." I said, getting up from the table. "You didn't spend long with Hermione?" I was trying not to sound too questioning, or interested.
"Yeah, she's doing some stuff in the Ministry to help with the rebuilding and everything before you go back to Hogwarts." Ron explained.
"Oh right…" I nodded, jamming my shoes onto my feet roughly. "Let's go."
A/N: Sorry it's taken a little while to update this again – I'm still writing the next chapter, so it might be a couple of days before I update it again! In the meantime, I wouldn't say no to a couple of reviews! :)