Yikes. Angst Central, Population - George Weasley
There's a lot of ideas here all meshed together and I don't think it came out well? I read through it a few times and changed up where I thought it was awkward, but um.

But if you squint, really, really hard, you may see that I slipped some angst in there. It's okay, easy to miss.
Felt I really had to get this out on 2 May of all days, and here it is.

I really want to hear your thoughts about this particular chapter, so please, I'd love if you reviewed. :)

In the span of time between Fred's death and his funeral, life at the Burrow came to an eerie standstill. It was all in our own minds, of course, as the tangible world around us bustled on in a fury of funerals, celebrations, cleaning up and the like, and it all moved forward far too fast for us to keep up. It was too much for Mrs. Weasley to handle, especially; on top of the stress from losing her son, she spent most evenings in tears as Ginny sat with her, gently whispering 'it'll be all right', even though she and Mrs. Weasley and the rest of us knew that everything was going to be far from all right. From my watching the family over the few weeks, it was clear, and understandably obvious, that George felt the worse of the effects and the tangible world joined our mental world in a painful halt the day of Fred's funeral. With the Weasley family huddled under tents to shield themselves from mother nature, talking grievously amoungst themselves, George just stared blankly at Fred's coffin, standing alone in heavy rain. George retreated into himself that evening as he remained the only one to watch as the polished wood box that contained his twin was lowered into the earth. As we pulled him away (forcibly, I may add) from the headstone, he muttered, "I'm sorry" in the quietest of voices; that was the last thing he said for seven months. He then proceeded to live as half of George Weasley, most days not bothering to get out of bed, and on those he did, he performed meaningless tasks in an attempt push himself past his level of physical endurance. He boarded up the shop he and Fred created - rather, Bill and Percy boarded it up while George stared, unseeing at the darkened building. Mrs. Weasley had all of us sit down to write a letter to Fred not long after his funeral, to help us feel better. Everyone agreed, of course, except for George, who stared at the parchment with a high disdain, never once making an attempt to pick up the quill. Staring blankly at everything around him had become a common habit in a very short amount of time. He never met anybody's gaze, never answered anybody's concerned questions; he just wanted to sleep.

Some days, he didn't try to hide his pain; I remember one afternoon, George managed to drag himself out of bed at maybe four o'clock - I think this was around the four month mark, where it seemed as if he glued his lips together to prevent the temptation of speaking; where he'd gotten so thin that if he lost any more weight, he'd probably disappear; where he'd register everything with his hollow brown eyes, though we knew he wasn't really seeing anything. Mrs. Weasley offered him something to eat, which he not-so-politely responded to by pretending he never heard her. Walking past her, he must have caught sight of himself in the mirror their mum had hung by the kitchen, because he suddenly stopped, and stared full on at his reflection. Mrs. Weasley and I watched him curiously as he stared at the mirror for the longest time; we both knew that he didn't see himself, but instead Fred, his twin, his best friend. I tried to imagine what George might be seeing: Fred, shaking his head with that smirk of his, looking over his brother. Bugger, mate, I could hear him say, you look like hell. And that long hair is not a good look on you, Georgie.

Just as we thought that maybe George would be okay, that maybe this was what he needed, his hand closed into a fist, and he punched the mirror. Hard. He looked completely unaware of Mrs. Weasley fussing over his bleeding right hand, and let her remove the shards of mirror still embedded into his skin before he pulled his hand away and went back upstairs.

George was just bloody pitiful and in a desperate need of some help; luckily, it was about that time when my mind developed the Fred-voice. I remember the first thing it said to me: Oi, would you get my pathetic sod of a brother a sandwich? He looks like an Inferi. Now it just seems strange, possibly plain mental, that I blindly followed a voice I heard inside my head; then, I was listening to Fred, and I missed him so much that I often felt the constant urge to blow something up just to cause mayhem. Fred would've appreciated it. Thanks to Fred's advice, and the realization that George would destroy himself if something didn't change, I began to force-feed the pathetic sod. For the first few days, I literally shoved food down his throat; I've never seen someone so opposed to eating Mrs. Weasley's soup. He eventually began to eat on his own, however sparingly. It was a start.

One night, I talked at George for a while as he ate, and he stared, begging silently for me to shut up. I obliged after a bit, camping out on the bed Fred once occupied and wound up falling asleep. George woke me up by none-to-gently pulling me off the bed, regarding me with those pitiful eyes in a way that said 'that's his bed'.

Fred's death hurt us, but George's reaction hurt us so much more. Watching him barely live, being a shadow of the George he was before the Battle...I knew he was hurting, and hurting bad, but that didn't make watching it any easier. It seemed he lacked the motivation to do anything other than eat and shower occasionally - he couldn't cope, and though it was always apparent, when we neared the one year mark, we couldn't pretend to deny it any longer.

I thought a lot about going back in time by the fourth month and nicked Hermione's Time-Turner by the fifth - I never really considered using it until George lost his will to live.

Ginny was the first to notice his absence - he had started joining us for dinner on a regular basis. Given his mental state the previous year, though, we didn't find it too unusual, but Ginny was the baby sister, and she knew something was wrong. She begged me endlessly to check on him, and I finally gave in: she was nearly as much a pest as Fred.

We walked in on the incident that changed absolutely everything: something I had never wanted to see, and something I wish I hadn't.

George sat on the edge of Fred's bed, holding one of Mrs. Weasley's larger kitchen knives over his left wrist, the right already disturbingly red due to the three deep gashes he'd already marked himself with. It was one of those situations I prayed wasn't a reality, just one of those awful nightmares a person wakes up from in a heavy sweat - but when we saw him actually pierce his skin with the blade, I knew I was out of my mind to think this was anything but painfully real. Ginny seemed to find reality about the time I did, as she found her voice, running down the stairs and shouting as loud as she could for her mum. It didn't even startle George, who just continued what he had previously been doing until he was losing a sufficient amount of blood, and finally looked to me - what in the bloody hell was I supposed to say? I couldn't say it's okay - that'd be downright insulting - because, here he was, trying to off himself, clearly it wasn't okay. We held solid eye contact until the rest of the Weasley clan, led by an absolutely frantic Mrs. Weasley, huddled into the small room to see just what Ginny had been going on about.

I had never seen a mother in so much pain before, not in the way Mrs. Weasley was when she held on to the son that was rapidly passing in and out of consciousness. I held on to the Time-Turner I had hidden under my shirt, the very one I would not hesitate to use if George was successful in ending his life.

"I'm sorry, mum," George said finally, in a voice painfully emotionless and rough around the edges. "I just wanted to be with him again."