The Great Hall was crowded as everyone enjoyed each others company. George looked at the scene before him. There sitting with pride next to sword of Gryffindor sat Neville with a few admirers. Ginny was right next to their mum with her head on her shoulder. Ron and Hermione were sitting side by side, but began to get up to leave, “No doubt to discuss what happened this morning with Harry,” George thought. At last his eyes laid on the Malfoy family. “They might be the only people in the Great Hall who feel as out of place as I do.”
Fred was gone. There was no way around it. It was a harsh truth, but a truth none the less. It was near impossible to say Fred’s name without following it up with George’s name, or vice-versa; Fred and George, George and Fred, the Weasley twins. However, only Fred’s name was going through the mind of George Weasley. His brother and best mate was gone. The thought didn’t really hit George like a ton of bricks, but rather it felt like a ton of bricks were weighing down his heart. George’s mind was racing as he sat there with a blank expression on his face.
“I can’t believe he is gone. I’ll never speak to him again. This hurts more than I would have thought. Well of course it does, I never thought I’d lose him. Sure, eventually one or both of us would get married and we would stop living together, but we would always be an apparation pop away from each other. Now we are a lifetime apart. I can’t stay in here, I’ve got to get out, get away from people.”
George stood up and left the Great Hall. No one really noticed him as he left. In fact no one really noticed him before he left; it was as if a piece of him was gone. The massive doors that stood at the main entrance of Hogwarts laid in splintered pieces on the ground. George really took no notice of them as he walked over debris and out the entry way. He continued forward though the courtyard and without really thinking much about where he was going George walked. He walked while his mind continued to race.
“What happens now? Voldemort is gone, but so is Fred. Everyone will celebrate the next couple of days and I will be lucky if I can even crack a smile. We have to bury Fred. This can’t be real; he can’t really be gone from me forever.”
The insides of George ached with pain, but it wasn’t a pain he had ever felt before. George had taken a few good shots from the bludger while playing Quidditch all those years and it had caused him some right awful pain. But the pain he felt now wasn’t in his bones or muscles. It wasn’t even a pain in his head. It was in his heart, in his soul. George rubbed at his chest, but it only made him frustrated. It did nothing to soothe the pain. Anger built up inside of George as he rubbed and scratched his chest. It was as if a monster was tearing apart the inside of him and there was nothing he could do to stop it.
Finally George lost it. He knew he was never going to free himself of the monster destroying him from the inside. He let out a scream. The scream echoed off the castle walls around him, but it didn’t make him feel any better. He screamed again, but nothing changed. So George screamed again and with as much strength as he could muster, he punched one of the outer walls of Hogwarts. The pain in his body only doubled.
George’s hand appeared shattered, but he didn’t flinch as he looked at it. It throbbed with pain, but to him it was a different pain. It was physical pain, but didn’t compare to the pain inside of him. The pain that felt like it was tearing his soul into pieces. To George it seemed like only a matter of time before nothing was left of his soul
George fell to his knees and finally let go of all emotion. It started with a single tear rolling down his left cheek. Then a second tear came and a third. Finally it was impossible to count the tears as they all followed the same paths down his cheeks.
“I never thought something would ever make me feel this way. I have no energy left. I’ll be lucky if I ever get up from this spot again. Listen to yourself George. ‘I’ll be lucky.’ ‘Be lucky?’ You are lucky that you are alive, but if this is what luck feels like then I’d rather be dead. I don’t know a life without Fred by my side or me by his. I don’t think I really want to know a life like that.”
George sat there with his head hung as he thought about everything he had ever considered unthinkable. As thoughts that scared George himself emerged from his mind, he let his head fall back. He gazed into the sky and stared into the endless blue above him. A light wind rustled some leaves around him.
“We flew off into that endless blue when we left Hogwarts; Fred and me, showing the world that we could make it. Us, the Weasley twins, who everyone thought underachieved and would never amount to much if they continued to act as if life was one big joke, proved to the world that they could amount to something. We had started the most successful store in Diagon Alley. Even when some witches and wizards were scared to go to Diagon Alley and everyone feared the rise of Voldemort, we still had booming business.”
A small smile cracked on George’s face for the quickest of seconds. The thought of what he and Fred had done, together, brought a glint of happiness into his soul. The monster tearing apart his insides seemed to get a little less destructive at that moment, but George hardly noticed, it still hurt too much.
“We had done all of that, but now there is no more we, there is just me.”
“I know I have to get on with my life, but I don’t know if I can. I don’t know if I would ever really enjoy it because he is not there to share it with. Almost everything in my life has been double the pleasure because Fred was there with me. Life, for me, has never been dull. Not with Fred around.”
Somehow, maybe it was a single ounce of strength gathered by remember the good times with Fred, George managed to muster up enough strength to stand and start walking again. He walked with a blank face showing no emotion. It looked as if his soul was slowly being taken away from him. A kiss from a dementor would have been a sense of sweet relief to George.
Before George knew it, he was on the Quidditch pitch. Once George reached the center of the pitch he came out of the thoughtless trance he seemed to be in. “When did I get out here,” George thought to his self. Being fully aware of where he was George looked towards the locker rooms. He hesitated for a moment as he stared towards them, not knowing if he should make his way over there. He knew what waited for him, and despite the fact that it terrified him; he knew he had to go to it.
“I don’t know why, but I need to see it,” was all George could think of as a good reason to walk towards the locker rooms.
George walked forward taking his time as he moved. “I know it is still there. Despite being young we knew the spell. Why do I need to see it? Because, something led me out here, maybe it was to see it. It’s not like it can make me feel any worse. Always the comforting thought.” As George’s mind debated with itself, his body eventually stopped. He was at his destination.
George was just outside the locker room. He was surrounded by the tall towers of the stands. He was facing an entry way to the stairs of the Gryffindor stands. The sky was still a clear blue and a little breeze blew through the dirty red hair of George. His hands trembled as he stared forward. His knees seemed weak and slightly bent. It was as if at any moment he would collapse under the weight of his own body.
However, if you asked George, his body didn’t seem to weigh too much, it was his heart that felt the heaviest. He had given up on trying to expel the monster inside his body ripping what felt like his soul to pieces. His rational was eventually there would be nothing left to rip apart.
After what seemed like several sunlit days George’s right foot began to lift off the ground. “It’s right around this corner. You can do it mate.” With his own words of encouragement George stepped through the threshold and made a sharp ninety degree turn. He was facing a wall.
George stood there for several moments. He just looked straight ahead, with his head bent at a slight angle downward. Everything in the world seemed to stop in those moments as he stared at the wall. It even seemed that the monster inside of him took a break from tearing his insides apart. The wind no longer flowed through the wooden boards that the stands were made of. The sun still shined, but it looked like a frozen light. Its rays stopped dancing in the sky. It was as if the world was holding its breath to see whether or not the wall George Weasley was staring at would break him or save him.
George exhaled. The breath inside his body came out as a slight gust and dust that had landed lightly on the wall in front of him was kicked up a bit. He still didn’t move though. His eyes fixed on something carved into the boards of the wall. In handwriting that seemed slightly elegant, a few words were carved:
Half of me is me
Half of you is you
But the other half of each other
Is a memory of his brother
Fred and George Weasley
Beaters, Brothers, and Best Mates
A crack in the wall behind George allowed for a single beam of light to shine onto the engraving. Slowly George lifted his right arm. His hand moved slowly as it crept into the single ray of light. Slowly he felt the rough surface of the wooden wall. He slid his hand across the engraving. He felt the indentations where the letters had been carved. George recollected the story behind the engraving to himself.
We were in our third year when we carved it. Fred had learned a permanent carving charm while looking up the proper way to cast the tripping spell. It wasn’t really our cup of tea, petty vandalism, we were more of pranksters. However, Fred decided that the charm might come in handy one day, so he took note of it. He didn’t really know what he would use the charm for, but it wasn’t long before he used it.
Fred and I turned thirteen that year. We were finally teenagers. It was a birthday gift for the both of us. We never really got each other gifts because we always shared our belongings, but Fred thought we should do something for our thirteenth birthday. A prank didn’t seem that special because we did them all the time. I mentioned that we should do something we would always remember, but we couldn’t think of anything that would really stand out and not get us expelled. Then Fred thought of it.
“Why don’t we do something we can always go back and see, and something people will always knew we did?”
I looked at him quite confused. “What are you talking about Fred?”
“Let’s carve our names onto something. No, wait. Not just our names, but something that makes people remember us too.”
“I like it. But where should we do it?”
“I know the perfect place.” Fred said it with a grin on his face that made me positive I’d like the spot too.
He carved it, but we both came up with what it would read. The entrance to the Gryffindor stands was perfect. It was a spot we passed by every time we went out onto the pitch, either to play or watch. It didn’t really jump out at you, which made it kind of respectable in our minds. We always touched the back of it when we went out onto the pitch to play. It wasn’t a superstition, it was a ritual. We knew together we would always be strong and never weak. You couldn’t bring one of us down, because there was always two of us.
“Always two of us.” The words echoed in George’s mind. His hand now rested on the names carved into the wood. “Half of me is me, half of you is you, but the other half of each other, is a memory of his brother. When we wrote that it wasn’t really a message to ourselves, but to everyone else. Together or apart you could never hurt us because we were forever a part of the other. That’s what a twin is, half you and half the other. At least that’s what we always told each other. It was the reason we always trusted the other, and, to us, it was the reason why we never were without the other.”
“But I am without the other. It’s not much of a message to everyone else if one of us is gone forever.” With a sigh of despair George let his hand fall back down to his side. Sorrow began to fill his body again. The monster inside of him began to trash about upon his heart, and George began to regret coming to this spot.
But something happened in that moment. A leaf was lightly blown against the outer wall the Gryffindor stands. It snagged onto a piece of splintered wood, and hung there. But it didn’t hang just anywhere, it hung slightly over the crack in the wall that allowed for the single beam of light to shine upon Fred and George’s engraving. Now only part of it was engulfed by sunlight. George’s eyes fixed on the only lines bathed in the light. He read them again to himself, “but the other half of each other, is a memory of his brother.”
A sudden feeling of clarity fell over George. He knew in that moment something had changed. Suddenly Fred wasn’t really completely gone. You could see something change in George Weasley at that moment. His knees seemed stronger and there was no doubt that he’d be able to hold himself up. His back slowly straightened, as if weight was being removed from his body. However, the biggest change took place inside of George. The monster that had before been tearing apart is heart was now replaced with something else, something that had slowly begun to pick up the pieces and assemble them back together.
“Fred isn’t really gone. Only half of him is. Half of me is me and half of you is you, but the other half of each other, is a memory of his brother!” Enthusiasm soaked the words as George thought them to himself. “Of course, we wrote it as a birthday gift to the other, but deep down we knew it was more than just an engraving, but also a promise. We would always be each other’s brother, but we would also always be a part of the other.
“Half of Fred was Fred, and half of me is me, but the other half of Fred, is a memory of me. Half of Fred is dead and with him half of me. But half of me is alive along with half of Fred. Fred will never be gone as long as I’m alive. We were never apart from the other because half of us was, and would always be, a memory of the other.”
George stood there and grinned as he stared at the engraving. As the smile on his face grew so did the wind outside. With a quick gust the leaf outside was picked up and dropped off somewhere else. The whole engraving was now once again bathed in sunlight. A single tear rolled down the left cheek of George and stopped at the bottom of his chin. It hung there for a moment, but once George’s grin broke into a full smile it fell to the ground. The monster that had been destroying George from the inside had been replaced by something that had put the pieces of George back together. It had been replaced by memory of Fred Weasley that would forever be a part of George.
“I will never let Fred die because I will always let half of me be a memory of him. People may always know I’m George Weasley because they know Fred is dead, but I know they will always second guess themselves because he will still live on through half of me.” With that thought George placed his right hand on the engraving and whispered, “Forever my better half will always be the memory of my brother.”
Half Of Me Is A Memory by Gary Potter
Chapter Notes: I really don't know what possesed me to write this one shot. I didn't really find any story that focused on George Weasley and what he had to be going through after the death of Fred. I just started typing and this is what I wrote, no planning, just typing. I hope you enjoy and let me know what you think.
Disclaimer: The world of Harry Potter belongs to J.K Rolwing, and for that I am Thankful