Archive of Our Own ^beta

Fred is dead.
George wishes he could be.

He wakes up in a world that echoes. Not with sound—but with silence where a laugh should be, with the empty space beside him where a presence used to live, breathe, exist. Everything feels misaligned now, a house built off one crumbling wall, and the wind won’t stop coming in through the cracks.

Fred is dead.
George wishes—no, he knows—that some part of him is too.

The funeral was a blur, the kind that fogs your glasses and never quite clears. He’d stood there in the swaying grass, the air heavy with magic and mourning, wearing a suit that didn’t feel like his, among faces that didn’t feel like home. Mum’s hands were trembling when she clutched his sleeve, her knuckles bloodless. Percy’s voice cracked mid-sentence. Ron tried to be solid, Harry tried to disappear, and Ginny stood between them all like a ghost refusing to haunt.

George didn’t cry. Not then. Not in front of them.

But his bedroom wall is damp with all the times he did after. He swears the shadows move differently in his room now—like they hesitate, afraid to touch him.

He doesn’t open the shop anymore.

The sign hangs crooked over the door of Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes, a laughing skull caught mid-chuckle, faded from rain and neglect. Inside, dust has started to web itself across the shelves. The joke boxes and fireworks look absurd in the quiet, like forgotten party guests still waiting for music that will never come.

He tried going in once.

He stood there, blinking against the sharp scent of stale sweets and wood polish, and then—he saw it. Their bench. The old one they built themselves in a back corner, hidden behind shelves, where they’d sit and test every prototype, every dud and disaster. It still had the ink-splotched cushion, the one Fred spilled Dungbomb dye on in third year and refused to wash because “it adds character.”

George sat there. Just for a moment. Just long enough to think he heard footsteps coming behind him, a voice saying, “Oi, scoot over, I’ve got a new idea for that Extendable Ear!”

He turned his head. No one was there.

He locked the door on his way out and hasn't gone back since.

His mother keeps asking if he’s eating enough. She brings stew, shepherd’s pie, slices of treacle tart wrapped in tea towels. She tries not to cry in front of him, but her eyes always shine like wet glass, and he can tell she’s waiting for him to say something. Anything.

Sometimes he does. Little things. Yes, Mum. Thanks, Mum. I’m all right, Mum.

He isn’t. But what else is there to say?

How do you say, I look in the mirror and I hate the sight of only one face?

How do you say, Sometimes I talk to his empty bed like he’ll answer back?

How do you say, I think I’m more ghost than wizard these days?

He tries not to say those things. But the words press against the inside of his skull like fists on a door.

It’s worst at night.

The flat he lives in now is quiet—too quiet. Fred used to snore, or mutter in his sleep, or hum the theme from that terrible Muggle soap he liked to watch on Saturdays. The kind of stupid sound you never think you’ll miss until the absence becomes unbearable.

George lies on his back, hands on his stomach, staring at the ceiling like it might open up and let him fall through. There are nights when he doesn’t even try to sleep. He just lays there, numb and heavy, remembering things that hurt.

Like how Fred’s eyes crinkled when he was up to something.

Or the way he’d say, “Oi, G, you think if we die in a prank war, Mum’ll still knit us matching jumpers in hell?”

Or how they once pinky-swore at age eight that neither would ever die without the other.

Liar, George thinks. You liar. You left me. You went first.

He tries to be useful. That’s what everyone keeps suggesting, in that quiet, worried way people talk to someone whose grief is now part of their name. George, why don’t you come help Arthur in the shed? George, you know Angelina asked about you. George, the Order could use someone like you. Sharp as ever, even if you’ve gone quiet.

He nods. Sometimes he shows up. Sometimes he doesn’t.

Angelina is the only one who doesn’t pity him with her eyes. She looks at him like she’s daring him to do something, anything, and when she hugs him, she doesn’t flinch when he doesn’t hug back.

One night, she comes over with firewhisky and says nothing for two hours straight. Just sits on his ratty couch, watching the flames in the hearth like they’re telling secrets.

Finally, she asks, “Do you ever talk to him?”

George doesn’t answer for a long time. Then:

“Only when I want to hurt myself.”

Angelina doesn’t cry. She leans against his shoulder, soft and steady. Warm.

“I do too,” she says. “When I miss his voice.”

There is a hallway in the Burrow that George avoids.

It’s narrow and crooked, like everything in the house, but it’s lined with photos—years of them. Children grinning with pumpkin-stained teeth, birthday parties, Christmas jumpers, school robes. In every other frame, Fred is there, usually beside George, one arm slung over his shoulder, mouths open in identical grins like laughter was stitched into their DNA.

Once, George found himself staring at one photo for so long his eyes went dry. In it, they were ten. Mid-prank. Mum chasing them with a ladle. Fred’s face was scrunched with delight, and George could see it now—how alive he was. How much light he gave off.

He reached out a hand to touch the glass.

But he couldn’t bear to see his own smile looking back.

He writes sometimes.

Not letters or even the journal entries. Just… words. Scattered things. Half-formed thoughts. He scratches them into scraps of parchment and tucks them into drawers, into books, behind picture frames.

Some are short.

I saw a kid laugh like you today. I almost wept.

Others are longer.

Sometimes I feel you in the room when I laugh, and sometimes I hate myself for laughing at all.

And some are not really words at all, but scribbled spirals, smudged ink, cracked doodles that fall apart in the middle.

He never reads them after. But it helps to spill something.

---

One night, he dreams of Fred.

They’re back in their old room, sitting on the floor, eating Fizzing Whizbees and planning a prank on Percy. Fred’s eyes are bright. His voice is clear.

“You’re not done yet,” he says, poking George in the forehead. “You’re still here, aren’t you?”

George looks at him, heart shaking. “Why?”

Fred shrugs. “Dunno. Maybe to keep the jokes going. Maybe to fall in love. Maybe to mess with Malfoy one more time. You always were better at the long game.”

“I’m not funny without you,” George says. “I’m not anything without you.”

Fred grins. “Sure you are. You’re George.”

And when George wakes up, he cries so hard his ribs ache. But it’s the first time in weeks he doesn’t feel completely empty.

The next day, he opens the windows.
He lets in light.
Dust dances like tiny ghosts in the sun.

He doesn’t smile. But he breathes.

And maybe—just maybe—that’s enough. For now.

But breathing isn't living.
Not really.

---

He wakes to light through the windows, his own chest moving like something being forced. Mechanically. Automatically. It takes him five full minutes to remember why he opened them in the first place. Then it comes back—the dream, the voice, the ache like something was ripped from him and replaced with warmth he didn’t ask for.

He shuts the window again by midday.

It’s too loud. The birds chirp like they’re mocking him.

The world doesn’t stop.

That’s the cruelest thing, isn’t it? The way people still buy bread and write letters. The way Ginny trains with the Harpies like nothing cracked. The way Hermione writes essays and Ron still gets grumpy in the mornings when the toast is burnt.

Even the rain doesn’t pause for grief. It comes and goes, like always. Pouring, misting, drizzling, sun-showers. It doesn’t care who’s missing from the world below.

George sometimes watches it from the attic window in the Burrow. He tells himself he’s just taking a break from the flat. But really, he can’t stand being alone in that place for more than a few days at a time. It smells like him. It smells like Fred.

He watches the rain and counts seconds between lightning and thunder. He doesn’t care about the distance, he just wants to fill the time. Counting is better than thinking.
One. Two. Three. Four—

The flash of memory comes like thunder before the lightning.

Fred, soaked to the bone, standing in the middle of Diagon Alley, arms flung wide, yelling, “Come on, you great crybaby sky! You can’t get me wetter than Goyle’s sweat glands!”

George had laughed so hard he nearly slipped. Fred had pulled him into a puddle.

He closes his eyes. The memory burns.

He sees his mother crying in the kitchen one night.

She doesn’t know he’s come downstairs. She’s holding one of Fred’s baby jumpers, the green one with a crooked “F” she made when he was a year old. Her thumb strokes the yarn like she can bring it back to life.

She’s humming something. Not a lullaby. Just a tune. Maybe something Fred used to sing. Her eyes are puffy. Her lips move around words that don’t come out.

George leaves quietly. He doesn’t want to make her stop.

Later, he lies in bed and stares at the ceiling again, counting how many cracks he can trace with his eyes.

There are thirty-two.

Fred would’ve called them constellations and made up new names for them.

“The Soggy Sandwich Nebula,” he’d say, pointing. “And right next to it, the Great Goblin Toe.”

George’s throat tightens.

Sometimes he speaks aloud, in the dark. Just small things. Things that feel stupid when said, but unbearable when kept inside.

“I found your old socks today. Still smell like bogies.”

“I hate the way Mum looks at me. Like I’m dying in slow motion.”

“Remember that time you hexed Percy’s planner to scream when he opened it? He found it in a meeting with McGonagall. She nearly snorted pumpkin juice.”

He waits after each one, as though a reply might echo back.

It never does.

There is a photo in the drawer beside his bed. It’s not one he shows anyone. It’s not even magical. Just a Muggle snapshot they took on a disposable camera Arthur had found once. The twins, sitting on the roof of the shed, legs dangling, cheeks sunburned. Both of them grinning wide and stupid, missing teeth.

Fred’s hand is ruffling George’s hair. George is swatting him away.

It’s blurry, but it’s real. It’s the only thing that doesn’t move when everything else shifts around him. When memories turn to fog and dreams unravel in daylight, this photo stays.

He kisses it, sometimes.
He presses it to his chest like a bandage that doesn't quite stick.

---

He sees Angelina again.

She finds him sitting in the alley behind Zonko’s on a Monday afternoon, a place they used to sneak off to during Hogsmeade weekends, back when everything tasted like butterscotch and rebellion.

She doesn’t say anything at first. Just lights a cigarette and offers him one.

He takes it, even though he doesn’t smoke. Just to feel something on his tongue.

She exhales slow. “You look like hell.”

“I feel worse,” he says, with the ghost of a smile.

They don’t talk about Fred until the third cigarette.

“He would’ve hated this,” she says. “You wasting away like some brooding Victorian widow.”

He laughs. It's more of a breath than a sound. “He’d probably haunt me for it.”

“He probably already is.”

There’s something about the way she says it—casual, almost bored—but her eyes glisten. Just barely.

George nods. “Good.”

And they sit there in the quiet. Her head finds his shoulder again. She doesn’t ask if he’s getting better. She knows better than that.

---

George dreams again.

This time, they’re in the shop. But it’s clean. Warm. Fred is organizing shelves, something he never did when alive.

George says, “What is this?”

Fred turns. He looks older than George remembers. Or maybe George just feels younger.

“This is what you haven’t let yourself imagine,” Fred says. “A future.”

George shakes his head. “I don’t want it without you.”

Fred shrugs. “You don’t get to choose. I didn’t either.”

George looks down. His hands are shaking. “I miss you.”

Fred’s face softens. “I know. But that doesn’t mean you stop making things.”

George looks up. “I don’t know how to make anything without you.”

Fred steps forward, touches his chest, just once.

“You’ve got half of me, remember?”

When George wakes, there are tears on his pillow again.
But this time, he doesn’t wipe them away.

He starts cleaning the shop.

Slowly. One drawer at a time.

He doesn’t throw anything away. He can’t. But he organizes. Dusted shelves. Re-stacked Skiving Snackboxes. Took inventory. His hands remember how to move through the space. His fingers find muscle memory in the cracks of the wood, the curl of the ribbons, the folds of old parchment.

Sometimes he talks while he does it. He tells Fred about the customers they haven’t had yet. About the way Diagon Alley still smells like roasted nuts and chimney smoke.

He says, “I’m not opening yet. Just… preparing.”

As if Fred needs an explanation.

One night, he finds a note. It’s hidden behind the frame of a mirror, slipped there during the war, probably when things were frantic and rushed.

It’s in Fred’s handwriting.

Oi, future George. If you find this and I’m dead, first of all—rude. But second, stop moping and go invent something that makes Mum blush. You’re the better looking one now, so use it wisely. Love, Fred (the superior twin).

George chokes on a laugh and sob in the same breath. His knees give out. He slides down the wall and presses the note to his forehead like it might seep into him.

Later that night, he sits at the worktable. Opens a blank parchment. Draws something silly.

A lollipop that makes your tongue sing in four-part harmony.

Fred would’ve loved it.

Somewhere in the attic of the Burrow, the wind whistles through a cracked windowpane. George hears it and doesn’t flinch.

It’s just the wind.
Or maybe it isn’t.
But either way, he’s still here.

Breathing.
Trying.
Hurting.
Healing.

---

The shop is cleaner now. Not bright—not open. But cleaner. A breath taken in and held.

The windows are still shuttered, the “Closed” sign swinging lightly in the breeze like a noose someone forgot to cut down. But the dust is gone from the shelves, and George walks its narrow aisles without flinching at every shadow.

He’s moved Fred’s things. Not packed them away. Just… rearranged. A quiet nod toward the living. His brother’s boots are no longer by the door. His toolset—half-broken pliers, enchanted screwdrivers, a wand with the tip chipped off—is tucked into a velvet box lined with tissue paper that smells faintly of lemon polish and burned sugar.

It feels like preservation. Like building a mausoleum from memories and sweet wrappers.

George eats now.

Sometimes.

It’s never a meal. Just scraps. Toast. A slice of pie when Molly insists. Tea he forgets to sweeten. He eats more when Angelina is around, though he doesn’t say so.

She brings him takeaway and never asks if he’s hungry. She just sets it down between them and starts eating like there’s nothing strange about picnic dinners in a shuttered shop full of ghosts. George finds he eats more when it’s dark, when the only light is a single lamp and the silence feels shared.

One night, she picks up a prototype from the counter—a Fanged Frisbee that sings instead of bites—and turns it over in her hands.

“I miss him every day,” she says softly.

George doesn’t answer. But his hand brushes hers when she sets it down.

She doesn’t move it away.

He visits Fred’s grave for the first time in months.

He brings nothing. Not flowers. Not a letter. Not even words.

He just sits.

The grass has grown tall. The earth has softened from spring rain. Someone—probably Ginny—has left wildflowers tied with twine. They’ve started to wilt at the edges.

George lies down beside the stone, cheek pressed to the earth. It’s cold. It smells of loam and moss and things that keep growing even when they shouldn’t.

“I can’t do this,” he whispers. “I’m trying, but I’m still broken.”

The wind doesn’t answer. The sky doesn’t crack open.

But somewhere in the distance, a bird sings once, then falls silent.

Fred is quieter in his dreams now.

He no longer talks as much. No more full sentences or cosmic advice.

Sometimes he just sits across from George at the workbench, chewing sugar quills. Sometimes he watches him wordlessly from the top bunk, legs swinging, eyes thoughtful.

One night, George dreams he’s eleven again, on the Hogwarts Express. Fred beside him, knees bumping, laughter loud and thoughtless.

But when George looks again, he’s alone. The compartment empty. His own reflection flickers in the glass.

He wakes up gasping.

The taste of peppermint in his mouth.

It is June when he touches his wand again.

Really touches it. Not just picks it up to light a candle or charm a lock.

He holds it in both hands like it’s a limb he lost and just remembered was there.

He carves into the old beechwood counter. Slowly. Carefully.

A half a sun. A fox’s tail. A pair of mismatched eyes.

Then, at the edge, small and slanted:

F. W.

He doesn’t cry. But something leaves him as he finishes. A breath, or maybe a piece of grief he’d been cradling too long. It bleeds out of him quiet as steam.

---

The first time he laughs again, it’s ugly.

Not beautiful. Not freeing. Not like light breaking through a storm.

It’s a bark. A wheeze. A sound pulled from the pit of his stomach because Ron said something stupid—really, deeply stupid—about Blast-Ended Skrewts and a broken wand and somehow Percy’s trousers caught on fire.

And George laughs.

It shocks him. Scares him. Makes him angry. And then he laughs again, harder, until he’s crying, gasping, falling into Ron’s chest and wheezing like a man who’s forgotten how air works.

Ron doesn’t say anything. He just hugs him, tight and clumsy and right.

Later, George goes back to the shop and tells Fred about it.

“You’d have pissed yourself laughing,” he says. “Wish you’d seen Percy’s face.”

The silence that answers is gentler now. Not empty. Just still.

He opens the shop on a Sunday.

Not for customers. Not officially.

He just… opens it. Unbars the windows. Unlatches the door. Lets the sunlight fall across the counter and stretch long across the floor like a cat finding its favorite spot again.

He doesn’t put up the new sign. Not yet, but he paints it. White letters. Gold trim.

Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes
(Yes, he’s still here.)

He thinks Fred would’ve liked that.

That night, he walks to the pond behind the Burrow. The one where they used to skip stones and dare each other to touch the bottom in winter. The water’s warm now, surface calm, insects skating its edges.

George strips and steps in.

The cold bites him first. Then it cradles.

He floats.

Above him, the stars flicker. Below him, mud and memory and lily roots.

He closes his eyes and lets himself remember.

The shriek of laughter when Fred pushed him in one summer.
The way the water swallowed them, spitting them up together.
The way Fred pulled him out, coughing and grinning and saying,
"We go together, yeah?"
"Always together."

George opens his eyes.

The stars are still there.

So is he.

Some days are worse again after that.

Memory is not linear. Healing isn’t either.

There are days he can’t get out of bed. Days he burns toast and hears Fred laughing behind him and has to sink to the floor just to stay upright. Days he walks into the shop and nearly says “Morning, Freddie” before the silence stabs him in the ribs again.

But there are other days, too.

Days he sketches new inventions. Days he writes notes on receipts. Days he lets Angelina kiss him on the cheek and doesn’t flinch when her hand finds his.

One night, she falls asleep on his couch, head in his lap.

He strokes her hair and whispers, “He’d have teased me for this.”

And for the first time, he thinks maybe Fred would’ve approved, too.

George walks past the mirror one morning.

Stops.

Turns.

Looks.

It still startles him. Seeing only one face.

But now, he touches it. Just once. Lightly.

“I’m still here,” he says aloud.

The mirror does not answer.

But he holds his gaze anyway.

---

There are days George forgets, and then remembers, and the remembering is worse.

Not because he forgot, but because he dared to. Because, for one careless moment, he let a smile linger too long on his mouth. Let the sun warm his back without flinching. Let the hush between words stretch without panic, like he trusted the silence again.

And then a smell—a laugh from across the alley—an old jingle from the shop’s music box someone charmed years ago and forgot to disable.

And it’s back.

Not Fred.
But the loss of him.
And that’s worse, somehow. Because it has teeth. Because it waits. Because it knows George now—knows his weak points, his soft tissue, the blood-beat behind his ribs—and it strikes like a memory with claws.

Molly asks him to stay for dinner again.

He doesn't want to. He never wants to.

But he goes.

The Burrow is too full and too quiet all at once. There are voices and cutlery clinks and chairs scraping the floor, and it still feels like someone’s missing. The space at the table where Fred used to sit is filled now, sometimes by Ginny’s boyfriend, sometimes by a casserole dish, sometimes by Percy shifting awkwardly like he doesn’t want to admit he still thinks about it every second.

But the ghost of Fred never moves. It sits right there, where he always sat—back of his chair tipped precariously, foot hooked under the table leg so Molly would shout, fork poised like a wand.

George doesn’t say much. He pushes peas around his plate. He laughs, a bit, when Bill makes a terrible pun. He nods along when Arthur starts talking about plug sockets again. He kisses his mum’s cheek when he leaves.

He doesn’t go back to the shop that night.

Instead, he walks through the orchard until the wind has scraped the warmth from his bones, and then he lays down in the grass and stares at the sky until he forgets what he came out here for.

The letter arrives on a Wednesday.

It’s not from Fred. Of course not. But for a moment, the handwriting tricks him—looped, cocky, a bit too much flair on the Fs.

It’s Lee.

Mate,
Was thinking of you. Been dreaming about the old days. Hogsmeade. Hogwarts. How Fred once turned Snape’s robes into a kilt and tried to teach him to riverdance.
Hope you're breathing. No pressure to write back.
But if you want to.

I still remember every word of our radio broadcasts. You were brilliant. You both were.

Anyway. I’m here. If you need.

–Lee

George folds the letter carefully. Presses it flat. Places it in the drawer next to Fred’s baby socks and old joke prototypes and the half-burnt birthday card he still can’t throw away.

He does not write back. But he thinks about it.

Sometimes, he speaks to the empty flat like it’s a person.

He talks about nonsense. The weather. A customer’s reaction to a Puking Pastille prototype that turned their face blue. A new prank Ron tried to pull that backfired with a bang.

But sometimes, when it’s late and the world has gone soft with darkness, he whispers truths he’s too tired to carry alone.

“I don’t remember what your voice sounds like anymore.”

“Everything tastes dull now.”

“I laughed yesterday, and I hated myself for it.”

“I’d give anything—anything—for five more minutes.”

He never expects an answer.
But he hopes.

God, he hopes.

He dreams again.

Fred is sitting on a dock this time, legs in the water, whistling a song George can’t place.

George sits beside him. They say nothing.

And then Fred turns. And says, “You’re doing better.”

George looks down. “Am I?”

Fred nods. Smiles. But his smile is sad, like he knows something George doesn’t.

George reaches out—but the dock is empty again.

He wakes with a wet pillow, a sore jaw, and a pulse that feels like it’s breaking out of rhythm.

He writes a letter. Not to send. Not even to read.

Just to write.

Dear Fred,
I don’t know who I am anymore. I used to be loud. Funny. Unstoppable. With you.

Now I’m just… still.
Like a painting in a frame nobody looks at anymore.

I want to do something that would’ve made you proud. I want to invent something that would’ve made you wheeze from laughing too hard. I want to be the half you left behind and still make it good.

But it’s hard. So hard.

Some nights, I wish I’d gone with you. But then I think of Mum. And of the shop. And of her.

And I stay.

Not always because I want to. But because I know you’d tell me off if I didn’t.

I miss you. I love you. I’m still here.

Your other half,
George

He folds the letter. Doesn’t seal it.

Burns it in the fireplace, watching the words curl black and vanish into the ash.

---

The first time he says “our shop” and doesn’t correct himself, it catches him off guard.

He’s talking to a little girl who wandered in with her father—a wide-eyed thing with a squeaky laugh who buys a Nosebleed Nougat and tells him he has “sad eyes but happy hands.”

George laughs. Really laughs.

When they leave, he sits behind the counter for half an hour, staring at the wall.

Sad eyes. Happy hands.

Maybe that’s all he is now.

One night, he finally tells Angelina what he remembers most.

Not the big moments. Not the fireworks or the battles or the Ministry break-ins or the exploding toilets.

But something small.

It was second year. George had broken his wrist during a Quidditch scrimmage. Fred snuck into the Hospital Wing in the middle of the night with a bottle of Butterbeer and a deck of Exploding Snap. Sat on the edge of George’s bed, cursing quietly when the cards went up in flames and Madam Pomfrey yelled.

They laughed so hard George forgot the pain.

Angelina listens without speaking. Then she threads her fingers through his and says, “That’s how I remember him, too.”

George kisses her, gentle, like he’s afraid she might vanish if he does it wrong.

She doesn’t.

It rains again. Not the hard kind.

The soft kind. The kind that feels like the sky is tired and just crying quietly into its hands.

George walks through it. No coat. No wand. Just lets it soak him until he’s shivering and breathless and new.

At the edge of the hill, he stands, drenched and blinking against the wind, and whispers:

“You still with me?”

There is no thunder. No flash of light. No sign.

But the breeze wraps around him just once, warm where it shouldn’t be.

And it feels like yes.

---

The days keep coming, uninvited.

That’s the worst part, maybe—not the ache itself, but the fact that it softens. Not all at once. Not in a way he can measure. But in the silent way snow melts—incremental, unnoticed, until suddenly there’s grass beneath your boots again and you don’t remember when it changed.

George resents it.

He doesn’t want to feel better. He wants the grief to stay loud, sharp, unbearable. Wants it to rip him apart the way it did in the first days, when people couldn’t look him in the eye without swallowing hard.

Now, they smile at him.

They smile.

And he smiles back, because it’s easier than explaining he still feels like he’s made of broken glass. Easier than telling them that beneath the smile, beneath the skin, there is a scream pressed against his ribs like a second heart.

The shop opens for real in late July.

Not with fanfare. Not with fireworks. George simply unlocks the door, flips the sign, and waits.

People trickle in. Old customers. Curious kids. Even McGonagall, once, who buys a decoy detonator for reasons she refuses to explain.

Angelina helps behind the counter, sometimes. She restocks shelves and greets customers and makes the place feel warmer, less haunted.

They don’t call it Fred’s shop anymore. But his presence is stitched into the walls. The laughter lines in the paint. The burn marks by the testing station. The crooked shelf he never fixed, claiming it had “character.”

George doesn’t fix it either.

He finds one of Fred’s old notebooks.

It’s under the floorboard of their old flat, wrapped in a Chudley Cannons jersey and stuffed behind a loose plank. The pages are crinkled, the ink smeared. Fred’s handwriting is a mess of doodles and ideas and half-written spell theory, jokes scrawled in the margins.

There’s a list near the back:

Products to create if George dies before me:

– Reversible ghost costume (includes detachable ectoplasm) – Fake gravestone that moans when people walk past
– Candle that smells like George’s worst farts (for memory’s sake)
– A recording of my voice saying “You forgot me, didn’t you?” every time he enters a room
– A fireworks display that spells out: “YOU THOUGHT YOU COULD ESCAPE ME?”

George reads it in silence, then laughs so hard he cries. His shoulders shake. His breath hiccups.

And then he hugs the notebook to his chest and says, “You absolute arse.”

---

The mirror in the flat no longer startles him.

He stands in front of it one morning, toothbrush hanging from his mouth, and studies his reflection like it might give something back. He sees the tired eyes. The faint creases at his mouth. The scar on his wrist he doesn’t remember getting.

He sees himself.

Just him.

For the first time in a long while, he doesn’t look away.

They visit the grave again in August.

This time, he brings George Weasley’s Firestarter Fizz—Fred’s favorite joke drink that turned your teeth red and your tongue invisible for half an hour.

He pours it on the grass. Watches it sizzle. Watches it soak in like the earth might remember him better if it tastes him.

He sits down, picks at the grass, and says, “I hate that you’re missing this.”

He means everything.

The shop reopening. The way Ginny glows now. The way Ron and Hermione still dance like they’re pretending they’re not in love. The way Mum has learned to laugh again, but softer, like it might shatter if she pushes too hard.

“You’d love all of it,” George murmurs. “You’d hate all of it, too. You’d call Percy a git and call me one right after.”

He lays down in the grass.

“Wish you could’ve stayed just long enough to hate it with me.”

Some nights, he talks to the ceiling.

He pretends Fred’s up there, floating on some celestial mattress, arms crossed, making fun of him.

“I know you’re watching,” George says, picking at a spot of jam on his shirt. “Bet you’re laughing your ethereal arse off.”

There’s a creak in the wood above him.

Probably the wind. Or maybe a mouse.

But George smiles like it means something. Like it’s a message. Like Fred’s still there, just out of reach.

He doesn’t always need answers. Just the maybe of it.

---

Angelina stays the night more often.

She doesn’t ask. She just brings her toothbrush. Her shampoo. Her book of poetry she never reads but refuses to leave behind.

She crawls into bed like she’s always belonged there and doesn’t flinch when George wakes from dreams with clenched fists and damp sheets. She just pulls him close and hums tunelessly until he breathes easier.

“You don’t have to fix me,” he tells her one night.

“I know,” she replies, fingers stroking his hair. “I just want to be here when you learn how to carry yourself again.”

He writes again.

Not letters. Not product descriptions.

Real writing.

Jokes. Poems. A short story about two twins who invent a machine that can split laughter in half and keep it bottled for rainy days.

He doesn’t show anyone.

Not yet, but he keeps them in a notebook next to his bed. Bound in red. Smudged in the corners from where he grips too hard when the words won’t come.

It’s something.

It’s more than nothing.

And then one morning, he wakes up and realizes he hasn’t cried in three days.

He counts again.

Still three.

It makes him feel strange. Guilty. Like he’s cheating. Like he’s letting Fred go.

He walks to the fireplace. Stares at the embers.

Then he says, “You’re still here.”

He doesn’t mean the ghost. Doesn’t mean the memory.

He means the laugh he still hears sometimes when he gets a product just right.

He means the way his hands move like Fred’s when he gestures, careless and expressive and alive.

He means the pieces.

The pieces that never left.

---

There is a kind of mourning no one teaches you how to name.

The kind that doesn't scream. That doesn't sob. That doesn’t even speak.

The kind that settles into your bones and makes a home there.

George wakes into it, every day.

Not like a sunrise. Not like a fresh beginning.

But like a door creaking open to the same familiar, stale air.

It’s September again.

The kind of early autumn that tastes like apples and brittle wind. The kind that reminds you of school robes and Quidditch tryouts and Honeydukes. The kind that used to make Fred beam like the whole world was a dare.

Now it’s just… colder.

George closes the shop early on the first day of term. Sits alone behind the counter. Watches as the sky turns that particular shade of bruised blue he’s always associated with endings.

He thinks about what Fred would’ve said.

“Bet the new first years are all pants-wettingly terrified of the hat.”

Or, “Think we’d have been professors someday? God help them.”

Or maybe, quietly, just, “Miss it, don’t you?”

Yes, George would’ve said. I do.
I miss the way we were. I miss the stupid pranks and the way people stared at us like we were a single, wild thing. I miss the thrill of it all.

But mostly, I miss having you to share it with.

He keeps finding Fred in the corners of things.

In the way a kid throws their head back laughing at a Fanged Frisbee.
In the scent of cinnamon and ash that clings to the back storeroom.
In the way Percy talks now, soft and broken sometimes, like he’s learned how fragile things are only after they shattered.

Once, George swears he hears Fred’s voice in his dream—not loud, not distinct, just a hum.

A question, maybe. Or a name.

He wakes up with his own name in his mouth. Whispering it like he’s trying to remind himself that he’s still here. That he is, in fact, only George now. Not and Fred. Not one of the twins. Just George.

And it tastes like paper. Like dust.

Like absence, folded in half.

Angelina finds him on the floor of the shop one night, surrounded by bits of broken product prototypes and old receipts and a single photograph.

Fred and George, seventeen. Sunburned. Laughing. Matching bruises from a failed spell on their arms. That grin—that grin like nothing in the world could touch them.

George is clutching it too tight.

Like it might bleed if he lets go.

“I’m sorry,” he says when she kneels beside him. “I was trying to clean.”

She doesn’t answer right away. Just takes the photograph from his hand, smooths the crease with her thumb, and says, “You don’t have to keep pretending you’re okay.”

George nods.

Then shakes his head.

Then says nothing.

She wraps her arms around him, and they sit there like that for a long time. Two people in the wreckage of memory, holding what’s left.

Molly sends him a jumper.

It’s navy blue, plain, no letter.

No F. No G.

Just wool. Just warmth.

Just love she doesn’t know how else to give.

He wears it for three days straight. It smells like the Burrow. Like fireplace smoke and baked bread and tears wiped with the corner of an apron.

When he finally changes, he folds it carefully and places it next to Fred’s things in the bottom drawer.

He tells himself it’s not a shrine.

But it is.

---

He goes to visit Ginny.

She’s sitting on the back step, knees pulled to her chest, watching the wind stir the grass.

They don’t say much.

But when George lights a stolen cigarette and offers her one, she doesn’t hesitate.

They pass it back and forth in silence, eyes on the sky, and George realizes: she’s just as haunted. Just as tired. Just as stitched back together with something that doesn’t always hold.

“He’s not coming back,” she says, softly.

George closes his eyes. Breathes the smoke in too deep.

“No,” he says. “He isn’t.”

They sit there until the stars come out.

He goes through Fred’s drawers at the flat again.

Not to find something.

Just to remember what it was like to know him.

There’s a letter tucked behind a sock.

Addressed to George. Unsent.

Scrawled in Fred’s handwriting.

Oi, tosser—
If I die first, you better keep the shop running.
And don’t get all mopey. You’ve got the better cheekbones, people’ll still want to shag you.
Promise me you’ll laugh, alright? Even when it’s awful. Even when it doesn’t feel fair. Because you’ve got the better laugh, too, and it’d be a bloody waste if you stopped using it.

I’d haunt you.

Swear I would.

—F

George reads it until the ink starts to blur.

Then he tucks it into his wallet and carries it everywhere.

---

The shop gets busy again.

School's in full swing, and students pour in during weekends, eyes wide, pockets full of galleons saved over summer.

George starts testing a new line of products. Silly things. Slightly dangerous. Fred would’ve loved them.

He almost names one after him.

Almost.

But stops himself. Not because Fred doesn’t deserve it. But because he knows he’ll never stop if he starts. Every joke will be a gravestone.

Instead, he names it Cackling Conundrum.

It explodes into glitter and fog and a high-pitched giggle.

The kids love it.

George watches them leave, eyes bright, and wonders if this is what healing is: letting people laugh again, even when you don’t feel like you can.

That night, he dreams of a train platform.

He’s not waiting for anyone.

He just sits there.

Fred’s nowhere in sight.

But he hears a laugh echoing down the track, faint, like it’s being carried on the wheels of memory.

He doesn’t chase it.

He just listens, and wakes up smiling, and aching, and whole, and ruined.

All at once.

---

George doesn’t expect it to get easier.

And it doesn’t. Not really.

It just… changes shape.

The grief, once sharp and unbearable, has dulled into something heavier. A quiet stone in his chest. Not piercing, not screaming—just there. Always. As constant as breath, as daylight, as the shop bell ringing each morning.

He begins to notice the absence in new ways.

Little ways.

There’s no one to throw paper balls at him when he’s working too long.
No one to whisper commentary during boring staff meetings with Zonko’s representatives.
No one to rearrange the shelves into inappropriate messages when he’s not looking.

The silence is clever now.

It doesn’t make noise—it just waits until George notices what’s not there.

He walks into the joke lab one morning, looks around, and says, “Alright, what’d you nick this time?”

The room doesn’t answer.

He lets out a breath that almost sounds like a laugh.

Almost.

Mum comes to visit the shop.

It’s the first time since the war.

She brings a basket of treacle tarts and something knitted—bright orange socks, with little “G”s stitched on the ankle.

She doesn’t ask to see Fred’s old room.

She just stands at the register with her hands folded in front of her, watching George work.

At one point, she starts to say something. Stops. Starts again.

“You look like him,” she says, at last.

George swallows.

“I know.”

She nods, slow. Eyes wet. “But different, too.”

He doesn’t ask how. He’s afraid the answer will sound like a loss.

Later, she hugs him at the door.

She’s smaller now, somehow. Like the grief took part of her, too, and never gave it back.

“Are you eating enough?” she asks.

He lies.

She lets him.

---

The days blur.

Some are better than others.

Some feel like breathing in water.

On the better days, George makes people laugh. He writes a new slogan. He whistles while sweeping the floor. He even lets Angelina talk him into a dance in the middle of the shop when a good song comes on the radio.

On the worse days, he forgets why he’s doing any of it.

He sits behind the counter, staring at the shelves, unable to remember what made this life feel worth building.

Sometimes, he pulls Fred’s old jumper from the drawer and presses his face into it. It doesn’t smell like him anymore. Just dust, and time.

But he imagines it does.

He pretends.

Angelina finds him on the roof.

Not for the first time.

He’s lying on his back, arms crossed over his chest like a corpse, staring at the sky with unblinking eyes.

She lies down beside him.

They don’t talk.

Until she says, quietly, “Do you think he would’ve stayed, if he could?”

George doesn’t answer for a long time.

When he does, his voice is quiet.

“I think he would’ve raised hell to get back.”

Angelina nods. “Then you have to live like he meant to.”

He starts writing to Fred again.

Not letters he’ll send. Not even things he plans to keep.

Just scribbled notes on napkins, on receipts, on the backs of inventory lists.

Made a new laughing gas. Turned Percy’s eyebrows blue. You would’ve cried laughing.

Missed you today. You were in the dream. Just your shoes, though. Weird.

Didn’t feel sad for a whole hour. Felt wrong. Then I cried in the loo. So. Balance, I guess.

Still love you. Still hate that you left me.

He doesn’t keep most of them.

Burns a few. Loses others.

But sometimes, they come back. Found in coat pockets or under the bed, like Fred's answering.

Ginny sends him a photo.

It’s from years ago. Christmas.
All the siblings crammed onto the Burrow’s old couch. Charlie’s arm thrown around Ron’s head, Percy trying to fix his glasses, Fred and George mid-laugh—one of those belly-deep, whole-body laughs that made everyone in the room look over.

George stares at it for a long time.

Fred’s hand is resting on George’s shoulder, like an anchor.

Or a promise.

He frames it. Quietly. Doesn’t tell anyone.

Puts it on the shelf in the back room, behind the Sugar Quills.

Safe. Out of sight. But always there.

That winter, it snows early.

He opens the shop late on the first snowfall.

Just stands outside for a while, coat open, head tilted back, letting the flakes melt on his cheeks like they belong there.

He remembers how Fred used to insist snow was “unnecessarily dramatic.”
“How do you make water pretentious, George? How?”

And George would laugh, and Fred would shake snow off his hat like a wet dog, and they’d spend the afternoon pelting Percy with snowballs until he went inside muttering about “immature hooligans.”

George smiles.

Let’s the snow cover him like a soft answer.

That night, he dreams of a forest.

There’s laughter in it.

Familiar.

He follows it.

It leads him to a clearing.

Fred is not there.

But there’s a bench. A twin of the one in their shop, back when they were kids, when they used to sit for hours making sketches and snorting at their own jokes.

George sits.

Waits.

The laughter fades.

But the feeling remains.

Not quite peace.

But something like it.

Like memory. Or love.

Or maybe just the part of him that still believes Fred might walk out of the trees at any moment and say, “Took you long enough, slowpoke.”

George wakes up.

There are tears on his face.

But he’s smiling.

---

There’s a kind of silence that doesn’t hurt.

Not because it isn’t lonely.

But because it’s honest.

It’s the sound George learns to live with.

He doesn’t know when the panic stops.

Not really.

It used to grip him—sudden and sharp—whenever he heard someone laugh too loud, or when he opened the shop and instinctively turned to say “morning, Fred,” before remembering. The wrongness would flood his throat. A taste like ash. Like forgetting was betrayal.

But now, the forgetting comes softer. Not erasure—just… reprieve.

Sometimes, he wakes up and it takes him five full minutes to remember what he’s lost.

That’s its own kind of horror.
But also, its own kind of mercy.

He keeps writing letters.

Not to Fred anymore.

To himself.

Short ones. Quiet ones. Folded like prayers.

Today, you breathed.
You made a kid laugh so hard he fell over.
You looked in the mirror and didn’t flinch.
You still miss him. That doesn’t mean you’ve failed.

He keeps them in a box labeled: Not for Burning.

Angelina finds it once. Doesn’t say a word. Just presses her lips to his temple and walks away.

That’s the thing about people who’ve seen grief. They don’t ask for explanations. They recognize the shape of survival.

---

Spring comes slow.

But it comes.

The air softens. The snow melts. Shoots of green start poking through the cracks in the alley beside the shop.

George starts walking home again. Through the longer way. Past the little bookshop Fred used to tease him about. Past the café where they got kicked out once for enchanting the sugar cubes to sing opera.

He pauses at the door.

Goes inside.

Orders a tea. No sugar.

Sits by the window.

Watches the people outside, all moving, all alive.

And feels—not better—but open.

Like maybe he could feel joy again.

Like maybe joy isn’t disrespect.

One afternoon, he finds a box under the floorboard in the attic.

He doesn’t remember hiding it.

Inside:
– A broken Sneakoscope.
– A deck of Exploding Snap cards singed around the edges.
– A bottle of cologne that Fred claimed was “irresistible,” and which made George sneeze every time.
– A crumpled note: Idea for new prank: What if we make a chocolate that makes you speak in rhyme for an hour? Rhyming Rumballs? Too much?

George holds the bottle to his nose. Sniffs. Sneezes.

Laughs. A real one.

Then cries.

Then laughs again.

The sounds echo in the attic.

He doesn’t try to muffle them.

Ron writes to him.

A real letter. Not a Howler. Not a scrawled note on a napkin. An actual letter.

George,

I know we don’t talk much. I’m shite at this. But I saw the new ad for your shop and it made me smile, and I guess I wanted to say thanks. It’s weird, but… seeing you still doing it? Still making things? Makes it easier to believe we’ll all be okay.

Fred would’ve been proud. I know that’s not enough. But it’s something.

Love you.
Ron

George rereads it a dozen times.

Then frames it next to the Christmas photo from Ginny.

It’s not a shrine, he tells himself.

But it is.

A quiet one. A living one.

]

---

He sees Neville in Diagon Alley.

They talk. About plants. About peace. About the students at Hogwarts and how some of them don’t flinch at loud noises anymore.

Neville looks older, too. In the eyes.

But steady.

“Do you ever feel guilty?” George asks him, softly, when the crowd clears.

Neville doesn’t hesitate. “Every day.”

George nods.

“I think it means we remember,” Neville adds. “I think it means they mattered.”

George blinks hard.

Then asks, “Do you think they’d want us to forget the guilt?”

Neville shrugs. “I think they’d want us to live.”

---

Angelina kisses him on a Thursday.

It’s not romantic. Not at first.

Just a moment. Just a brush of her lips against his temple after he drops a jar and it shatters and he sinks to the floor and says, “I can’t do this without him.”

She kneels beside him. Picks up the pieces.

Says, “You already are.”

And then the kiss.

Soft. Steady. Not asking for anything.

Just reminding him that he’s still here. That people still love him, even the broken parts.

Especially the broken parts.

He lets her stay the night.

Not the way people assume. Not yet.

She falls asleep on the couch.

He sleeps in the chair beside her.

When he wakes up, she’s draped a blanket over him and made coffee.

They don’t talk about it.

They don’t need to.

Some grief is spoken in gestures.

---

June arrives with thunderstorms.

George lies in bed one night, staring at the ceiling, listening to the rain.

He thinks about all the things he’ll never hear Fred say again.

Then thinks about all the things he did get to hear.

And wonders if maybe… maybe the love doesn’t die. Just shifts.

From voice to memory. From hand to echo.

From presence to meaning.

He says out loud, into the dark, “I love you.”

No one answers.

But the thunder sounds like a heartbeat.

And George imagines Fred, somewhere, grinning.

He puts a new sign in the window:

“Still Here. Still Laughing. Still Yours.”

Customers don’t ask what it means.

But they smile when they see it.

And George thinks: That’s enough.

---

Grief has seasons.

Not like the ones outside, though those matter too.
It has its own calendar.
Its own sky.

George wakes to a blue morning.
No reason.
Just… soft light on the ceiling. Rain from the night still glistening on the windowsill. The air smells like clean laundry and fresh parchment.

And for the first time in years, he doesn’t feel like he’s drowning.

He doesn’t feel healed.
He doesn’t feel whole.

But he feels here.

And that is something.

He opens the shop early.

Lets the door stay ajar while he sweeps.

Waves to the bakery girl next door. She waves back.
A little boy peeks inside and asks if they sell Fainting Fancies. George nods and gives him one for free.

The boy’s mum mouths thank you. Her eyes are tired. She’s carrying too many bags. She walks slower on the way out.

He doesn’t need to know their story.
He just knows what it’s like to carry something heavy and invisible.

There are more photos on the wall now.

Not just Fred.

Fred’s still there, of course.
Laughing. Throwing up two fingers behind George’s head in every picture. Smudged ink on his cheek. Always caught mid-joke.

But now there’s Ron and Hermione at their wedding.
Ginny flying, hair wild, eyes bright.
Angelina holding up a fireworks prototype and yelling, “You absolute menace!”
Lee Jordan teaching a workshop for Hogwarts kids who want to make their own joke products.

George never thought the wall would grow again.

But here it is.

Growing.

Like a second heart.

On the anniversary of the Battle, George goes back to the Burrow.

The table is set. Mum’s made too many pies.
Charlie brings something from Romania that hisses when touched.
Bill says, “Not near the baby,” about five times.
Percy tries not to cry, fails, and cries anyway.

There’s a chair for Fred.
There always will be.

They raise their glasses.
They tell stories that are equal parts hilarious and devastating.
Arthur tells the one about Fred trying to enchant the toaster to shout compliments.

George laughs so hard he almost falls out of his chair.

After dinner, he sits alone in the garden.

Ginny joins him.

She hands him a butterbeer and says, “He’d hate this weather. Too sentimental.”

George smiles.

“He was a sentimental bastard.”

She laughs.

Then silence.

Then—softly—she says, “I’m proud of you, you know.”

George looks at her.
Doesn’t speak.

But she sees it in his eyes.
Thank you. I’m still trying.

That night, he dreams again.

He’s on the hill behind the shop.
The one where they used to light fireworks when no one was looking.

Fred is sitting beside him.

He’s older. Still seventeen, maybe. But aged in some strange way.
Not worn.
Just… peaceful.

They don’t speak for a long time.

Just sit.
Let the sky move.

Then Fred says, “You did alright.”

George snorts.

Fred grins. “I mean, your hair’s gone to hell, and you dress like a sad librarian—”

George punches his arm.

Fred laughs. “There he is.”

George stares at him.

Says nothing.

Then—quietly—asks, “Why didn’t you stay?”

Fred shrugs.

“Wasn’t mine to choose.”

George’s throat aches.

“I miss you,” he says.

Fred looks at him. Soft. Steady.

“I never left.”

And then—

George wakes up.

And he believes it.

---

Angelina moves in.

It’s not a decision.
It just happens.

Her toothbrush in the bathroom.
Her scarf on the chair.
Her laughter in the kitchen, louder than anything’s been in years.

They don’t label it.

They don’t rush.

Sometimes, he wakes up and she’s beside him, still asleep, mouth open, hair a mess.

And the sight hurts. But also heals.

Because love, it turns out, doesn’t replace.

It just expands.

And grief makes room.

---

The joke shop survives.

Then thrives.

They release a line of products called “Legacy.”
Each one inspired by Fred’s ideas. His scribbled notes. His absurd, brilliant mind.

The tagline:
"Because laughter lives longer than we do."

Customers cry.
Customers laugh.

Kids who never knew Fred say his name like he’s still here.

George finds himself smiling when he hears it.

Sometimes, at closing time, George talks to the shop.

To the shelves.
To the ghost of a voice that once filled this place.

“Hey, idiot,” he’ll mutter. “Missed you today. Got through it anyway.”

Other times, he just looks at the photo.
Touches it gently.

And lets himself be full of love.

No bitterness.
No rage.

Just that ache that never really leaves.

The kind of ache that proves something beautiful was once here.

Years later, when a reporter asks him how he got through it, George doesn’t know what to say.

He thinks of broken glass and laughter.
Of writing notes and burning them.
Of grief like a second skin.

He thinks of Angelina humming off-key in the shower.
Of Mum’s hands still smelling like pie crust.
Of Ginny’s head on his shoulder.
Of Ron’s letter.
Of the smell of that awful cologne.
Of a dream on a hill with a brother who never really left.

At last, he says:

“I kept waking up.”

That night, he closes the shop, lights one last firework, and whispers:

“I’ll see you again, Fred.”

And for the first time in a long time—

he means it.