Written for the Quidditch League Fanfiction Competition

Seeker, Wigtown Wanderers

Prompt: "The Show Must Go On" by Queen — "Outside the dawn is breaking."

Word Count: 1024

Outside the dawn is breaking.

A few small birds sing their morning songs. He can hear a light breeze rustling through the trees in the back garden, and he knows that soon his mother will be awake. He'll listen as she has her morning cup of tea and bustles around the kitchen, making breakfast for the rest of the family. When she's finished, she'll set the dishes to washing and call her brood to the table.

He doesn't answer her call. He hasn't since he lost the other half of himself.

George tries to summon the energy, the will to get out of bed and go downstairs. It's been almost a week, and he knows he can't go on like this—he knows Fred wouldn't have wanted him to stop living at all. But that thought sends another fierce punch of grief to his gut, and George curls tighter into himself. Fred is everywhere in this room, everywhere in this house, everywhere inside of George, and for not the first time he wishes he could escape his brother's memory, if only for a few moments. And he feels guilty for wishing it.

Angie is coming to visit tomorrow. She'll probably come up to his room and try to coax him back into the land of the living. She'll try to get him out of bed. She'll try to make him eat. She'll try to make him try.

George squeezes his eyes against the forming tears. Maybe it will work. Maybe he'll try living again tomorrow. He hopes that he won't and he hopes that he will. Either way, it will hurt.

The midday sun burns through the open window.

He's finally made it downstairs. It took a month—a whole month without his brother—but he did it. His mother pushes him to go outside, to take advantage of its warmth and healing properties, but he always pretends not to hear. All he wants to do is sit by this window.

The entire Weasley clan is outside, having a picnic and soaking up the last few golden days of summer. He feels the late summer breeze on his face, and he wants to smile. He's sure the bright sun could burn away some of his grief, just like it was for his family right now, if only he'd allow it.

From where he sits, George can see the makeshift Quidditch pitch where they spent so many hours learning and practicing and spending time together. He can see the pond where they learned to swim the summer they were six. There's the tree he broke his arm falling out of when he was ten. Fred had made him laugh through the pain by offering to do the same so no would be able to tell them apart. It was their shtick, he'd said, and he was fully committed to it. Unfortunately their mum had overheard, and then they'd both been in trouble—him for climbing a tree, Fred for such a dumb idea.

The memory makes George laugh. When he realizes what he's doing, he stops and puts a hand to his lips. He hasn't ever laughed without him.

Perhaps, he thinks, he still hasn't.

Dusk has fallen around the Burrow.

He had a good day in the garden, clearing the rust-colored leaves and making sure all the gnomes were flung over the stone wall. Lee came over to talk about the shop and the possibility of creating a new line of fireworks for those more sensitive to intense lights and sounds. He doesn't have to say it aloud—George knows they're for people who still have flashbacks from the war. People like him.

George knows he's lucky to have such a good friend and now business partner. Few other people would have been willing to step up and run a business while its owner grieved. But then Lee Jordan wasn't most people.

He's been back to the shop a few times. Everytime he turned the corner to a new aisle, he'd expected to see his brother looking back at him. With every strange noise coming from the back room, he'd expected to hear Fred's voice calling out to let him know everything was alright. But none of it would ever happen again.

Somehow he is learning to live with it.

Midnight is quiet, but he doesn't mind the quiet anymore. Mostly.

It was one of the hardest parts of adjusting to being without his brother. Together they had been so boisterous, so full of joie de vivre and pranks and the sheer force of life. And then his life had suddenly gone silent. Their constant connection, the "freaky twin thing", as Ginny called it, no longer ran through his mind in a constant comforting hum. For the first time in his life, George was completely alone with his thoughts. And in the quiet of his own mind, he couldn't escape the resounding, ceaseless chant of Fred, Fred, Fred.

Until he could.

It's late fall now, and somewhere along the way George has gotten used to the silence. He loves the small moments late at night when he's the only one awake for what feels like miles. He can make a cup of tea and sit on the back porch and just enjoy feeling the world around him. George has learned to love the solitude. He's alone with his thoughts, but he's come to understand that doesn't mean he's completely alone.

Sometimes, when he tiptoes down the stairs, he finds his father in the kitchen. Sometimes his father finds him. It doesn't matter either way. They smile at each other and pass the pot of tea back and forth, never saying a word. There's a solidarity in knowing that they don't have to speak to acknowledge that the memory of Fred is keeping them both awake.

He was used to living in a world where noise was a given, a constant, a comfort.

Maybe the silence has its comforts too.

Outside the dawn is breaking. It's a new day, and there is no Fred in it. But George finally thinks it could be a good one just the same.