The First Day

Harry cracked open the door and peered through the small gap he had created. It was early. Molly hadn't even gotten up yet. He ran up the stairs, wincing as they creaked loudly in the still house. He cast a guilty look at the partially open door of Percy's room, where he knew George slept. Of all the family members, he had avoided George the most. He knew how much his losses had hurt, but he couldn't begin to imagine how George felt. He and Fred had been virtually inseparable when Fred was alive, and Harry thought George seemed to be lost without his twin. Harry continued up to the third floor, his eyes on the worn carpet runner that lined the stairs. He didn't look up until he slammed into someone coming down the stairs.

He looked up into George's pale face, stunned. Neither of them said anything, and Harry's hands convulsed on the clothes in his hands. George gave him a veiled look, one that Harry couldn't interpret. He ducked his head and ran up the rest of the way to the bathroom, shutting the door. Harry locked the door and placed his clothes on the edge of the pedestal sink. He stripped his pajamas off, and tested the lock. He sank to the edge of the tub clad in his boxers and let his head drop into his hands. A soft knock interrupted the swirling thoughts that never seemed to leave. 'Harry?' George called hoarsely through the door. 'I'll blast the damn door off, if you don't unlock it.' Harry didn't move. George rattled the door, then muttered, 'Right, then.' Harry heard him leave then in a moment heard him mutter, 'Alohamora.' A loud squawk reached Harry's ears. 'What the hell?' George breathed. 'Who the hell switched my wand?'

Harry stood up, and unlocked the door. He opened it to discover George staring at a floppy rubber chicken. 'Percy. Last month.' When George opened his mouth, Harry quickly added, 'I don't know why.' He started to close the door again, but George put his hand up to keep the door from closing.

George stepped through the door. 'Look, I know you're beating yourself up about everything.' Harry's head snapped up, but he didn't say anything. 'None of it was your fault. You didn't ask for any of it. You didn't ask us to be there. We chose to go,' he continued thickly. 'It wasn't your fault.' He left, closing the bathroom door softly.

Harry stared at the doorknob. He wanted to believe George. He remembered the way it had felt when Molly hugged him last year on his birthday. He wished he could do that now, to throw himself into Molly's arms and cry. He couldn't face them just yet. It was much easier to continue in this way, drifting from one day to the next. It didn't hurt as much.

*****

Ginny sighed and kicked the sofa. Ron and Hermione had disappeared again. They had taken to leaving the house after lunch and going to Merlin-knew-where for hours. They came back to the house just before dinner with slightly bashful expressions on their faces. Ginny was bored without them. She was hot and dying to go swimming, but she hated to go swimming alone. If Ron and Hermione had been around, she could have seen if they wanted to go with her. She impatiently huffed and dropped to the sofa. 'All right, Ginny?' Molly settled on the other end of the sofa with her knitting.

'Yeah...' Ginny held up one end of the jumper Molly was knitting. 'Christmas jumpers already, Mum?'

'Mmm-hmm. Have eleven to make this year,' Molly said. She blinked and the color in her cheeks faded slightly as she realized that it would be only be ten jumpers under the tree at Christmas. 'One will be for Teddy,' she added quickly.

'Of course, Mum,' Ginny said smoothly. She hadn't missed Molly's mistake, nor her deliberate attempt to cover it up.

'We ought to think about getting your things for school soon,' Molly said, in an attempt to change the subject.

'Got plenty of time, Mum,' Ginny replied, picking up a skein of wool, and digging through Molly's basket for a set of needles. 'Which ones do you have made?'

'Just started your father's.'

'I'll do Fleur's,' Ginny murmured, looking down at the skein she held in her hand, and realizing the dusky pink would look good on her.

Molly's needles stopped for a moment, then continued. 'That's nice of you. I know the two of you haven't always got on well.'

Ginny shrugged and leafed through a pattern book. 'It's all right.'

'You don't have to stay inside all the time, Gin,' Molly said, glancing at her from the corner of her eye.

'Where would I go?' Ginny huffed. 'Can't leave the house or garden unless you want to be accosted by the wankers who think there's a story here,' she sniffed contemptuously. 'I hate reporters.'

'Ginny! Mind your language,' Molly corrected automatically.

'Sorry, Mum.' Ginny found a pattern that would suit her sister-in-law and began to cast the first row of stitches. They sat in companionable silence for a moment before Ginny ventured, 'You wouldn't happen to know where Ron and Hermione go, do you?'

'They can't go far,' Molly remarked. 'I don't think either of them want to face the barbarian hordes.'

Ginny snorted. When they had come in the night before, Ron's shirt had been buttoned up wrong, and both of them looked rather disheveled. 'They certainly go far enough,' she muttered.

'What was that, dear?' Molly asked distractedly.

Ginny shook her head. 'Nothing.' Being the youngest of seven - -Six now, she thought - had given her valuable insight of when to fink on her elder siblings and when to keep quiet. If she breathed a word of what she guessed Ron and Hermione were up to, Molly would come down on all of them. She knew Hermione had been sneaking up to Ron's room at night, after everyone was asleep. She liked to think they weren't doing anything besides holding hands. Or maybe snogging a bit. It made her less nauseated that way.

*****

Hermione pulled Ron's t-shirt over his head and tossed it aside. 'So... How far did you go with Lavender?'

'Is now the time?' Ron asked irritably.

Hermione sat back on her heels, pulling the open edges of her shirt closed. 'As good a time as any.'

'Fine. Then you're going to tell me about Krum.'

'Are you barking?' Hermione exclaimed. 'That was more three years ago!' she spluttered.

Ron stubbornly crossed his arms over his bare chest. 'I want to know. If I'm going to tell you about Lavender, then you have to tell me about Viktor.'

'Bloody hell.' Hermione threw Ron's shirt at him. 'Put that on. I can't talk to you like this.'

Ron yanked the t-shirt over his head and scowled at Hermione. 'Nothing happened,' he snapped. He looked at her suspiciously. 'Why? What did she say?'

'Nothing,' she replied. 'She complained you wouldn't do more than snog her, but what with the way you two acted in the common room, people thought you did more.'

'Believe me, Hermione; I never knew what color her knickers were.'

'Charming,' she spat.

'What do you want me to say? Did I want to shag her -'

'Well, did you?' Hermione interrupted.

'I'm not a saint,' Ron growled. 'I could have. Dozens of times. It wasn't like she didn't want to, but Mum and that damn sense of honor!' Ron kicked at the blanket. 'I couldn't do it...' he admitted.

'I never kissed Viktor,' Hermione said softly. 'He wanted to, but I couldn't.'

'Really?' Ron looked up, his eyebrows rising into his fringe. 'But you... He... Why the hell not?' he blurted.

'It would have been like kissing Harry,' she informed him, with a quirk of her mouth.

'Ew.'

'Yeah.' Hermione pulled Ron down to the blanket. 'I'm getting worried.'

'About Harry?'

She nodded. 'Hermione ran her hands through her hair. 'I don't know what to do about him.'

Ron shrugged. 'I don't either. I've never seen Harry this bad before.'

'Are there wizard versions of psychologists?'

'A what?' Ron looked down at her quizzically.

'It's like a Healer, but they work with the mind, rather than the body.'

'I dunno,' Ron sighed. 'What do they do?'

'Well, you go and talk to them.'

Ron burst into laughter. 'You'd have to get Harry to talk first.' He saw Hermione look at him disapprovingly. Sobering, he continued, 'Really, hen, he'd never talk to someone like that. And we both know it.'

'I'm running out of ideas.' Hermione gnawed a ragged fingernail. 'He only comes out when nobody else is up and about. He's becoming nocturnal. I don't think he wants to bother with any of us.' She sniffed and rubbed her nose with the back of her hand.

'I don't think it's that. Did you see him at Remus and Tonks' funeral? What he said to Mrs. Tonks? He's not going to forgive himself any time soon.'

'But it wasn't his fault...'

Ron scrubbed a hand over his face. 'I know that. You know that. Even he knows that. It's just going to take...'

'Time,' Hermione finished.

'Yeah.'

'What if your mum and dad...?'

'How are they going to talk to him?' Ron ground out. 'He hardly leaves the room as it is...'

'I don't know...' It galled Hermione to not have an answer for something.

*****

Katie elbowed her way through the ring of reporters at the front garden gate of the Burrow. One of them gave her a rude look and snidely asked, 'Don't you work at Witch Weekly?'

Katie scowled. 'And your point?' Most reporters felt Witch Weekly was nothing more than a gossip rag, a few notches above The Quibbler. She put a hand on the gate.

'Ye're no' goin' ta get in there, sweetheart,' one the male reporters called out. 'They hae'nt let us, now. I dinna see how a chit like ye's goin to get in.'

Katie pulled her wand out. 'I'm not here for the magazine,' she told him coldly. She tapped the gate with her wand, and when it began to glow with a dark red light, she laid her hand on it. The gate opened with a loud click. She slipped through and shut the gate behind her. Her eyes widened when the clamor of people faded and the house swam into view. The Weasleys had effectively blocked out anyone they didn't want. Ron, Hermione, and Ginny were arguing whether or not it was possible to send a gnome through the wards, oblivious to the commotion on the other side of the fence.

Ginny saw her approach the house. 'Katie! What are you doing here?'

'I owled your mum yesterday. Asked if I could come see George.'

Ron and Hermione exchanged a look. 'He's not doing so good,' Ron offered. 'He pretty much stays in his room most of the time.'

Ginny nodded. 'Doesn't eat much, either. Does that thing where you move it around the plate.'

'I don't think he sleeps all that much,' Hermione piped up. At Ron and Ginny's questioning glances, she replied, 'What? You have to pass his room to get to the bathroom. The light's on at five in the morning...' Ron coughed and blushed. Five was when Hermione snuck back down to Ginny's room.

Katie gave Ron a strange look, but nodded, and went into the house. Molly and Arthur were in the sitting room, listening to the wireless. 'Hello, Mrs. Weasley.'

Molly and Arthur stood to greet Katie. 'Hello, dear,' Molly said warmly. 'George is upstairs.'

'Second floor,' Arthur supplied. 'The door on the left.'

'Thanks.' Katie gestured to the stairs. 'I'll just...'

'Go ahead, Katie,' Molly said.

Katie walked up the stairs and stood in front of the door for a moment, wondering if he would even bother to open the door.

*****

George slid off the bed, and went to the wardrobe in the room. When Percy and Ginny had brought his things over from the shop, he had just crammed the bags into the wardrobe, not bothering to look in them. He opened the wardrobe door, and crouched down to pull out the bags. He sat on the floor, and pulled the zipper tab slowly. Reaching into the bag he pulled out the dragon hide jackets they had bought when the shop opened. They had been a belated eighteenth birthday gift to themselves. Fred had surprised him with them one morning, a month after they had opened the shop in Diagon Alley. George laid them aside and reached into the bag again.

His hand closed around soft wool. He pulled out a bright blue pile of woolen yarn and spread it out over his lap. How old were we when she made these? Thirteen? Yeah, it was our third year, so thirteen, almost fourteen... George traced the G knitted on the front with a trembling forefinger. He reached into bag and pulled out the matching jumper. It had an F on the front in the same sunny yellow yarn. We were so small... I don't remember either of us being so small... George lifted the jumper to his nose and inhaled the scent of Fred that he fancied still lingered in the wool. The shop had been an idea, even as far back as then. Fred had wanted to be bigger than Zonko's. A lofty and seemingly unreachable goal to the thirteen year-old George. But Fred had been adamant.

George knew he ought to think about doing something with the shop. It had been shuttered since Easter when Arthur, Molly, Ginny, Fred, and he had gone into hiding at Auntie Muriel's. He couldn't see himself doing anything else with his life. Being a Ministry drone was not his idea of a good career. But he couldn't see himself doing the shop on his own. It had been Fred's idea from the beginning. From their first visit to Hogsmeade and Zonko's. In their dormitory that night, Fred had bounced excitedly on the foot of George's bed. 'I know what we can do! We can have our own joke shop! With premises!' George hadn't been so sure, but under Fred's relentless pressure and his own desire to do something different, George agreed, and by the end of their third year of school, they were researching products. It consumed them to the point where they all but ignored their studies, except the ones that would help them the most in the shop: Charms, Transfiguration, and Herbology. They figured that anything they needed to know in Potions would have been covered by their fifth year.

The soft knock on the bedroom door didn't surprise him. Molly usually checked on him after dinner. To see if he was hungry or needed anything. George knew she was worried, but it irritated him that she wouldn't leave him alone. He hauled himself to his feet and yanked open the door, the jumpers dangling from one hand. 'I'm fine, Mum...' He gaped at the young woman standing on the landing. 'You're not Mum.'

Katie crossed her arms over her chest. 'No, I'm not.'

'Why are you here?'

'I came to see how you were doing,' Katie said.

'I'm fine,' George muttered defensively.

'You look like hell,' Katie said bluntly. George's eyebrows rose. Katie reminded him of a painting from that Muggle fairy tale book Arthur had given Ginny when she was seven. She looked like one of the fairies, slightly ethereal and almost delicate, but she could be as blunt as Ron when she wanted.

George shrugged and went to sit on the edge of the bed. 'Really, I'm fine.'

Katie snorted, and walked into the room, closing the door. 'You don't look fine. You've lost weight. I ran into Ginny, Ron, and Hermione on the way in. They said you haven't been eating or sleeping and that you've barely left the room.'

'So?' George laid the jumpers across his pillow.

Katie sat next to him on the bed. 'You're hiding.'

George picked up Herman, and began to worry the end of his tail. 'Does it matter?'

'Only if you intend to stay in here forever.' Katie scooted further back onto the bed, so she could lean against the wall.

'I don't know,' George admitted. 'I don't know what to do.' He shifted back to sit next to Katie. 'I don't think I should reopen the shop without Fred...'

Katie gave him a look that reminded George uncomfortably of his mother. It was like she could tell what he was thinking. He refrained from squirming under her gaze. 'Why?'

'It doesn't seem right.' George slouched against the wall. 'It was all his idea and I don't feel like I can do it alone.'

'Who says you have to do it alone?' Katie touched the back of his hand. 'You told me that you and Fred thought about asking Ron to come in with you.'

George shrugged. 'I don't think he'd like it. Probably still wants to be an Auror.'

'You'll never know if you don't ask,' Katie said practically.

'I guess.' George looked down at the battered dragon in his hands. 'I really miss him.' He swallowed, trying not to cry.

'It's okay to miss him,' Katie murmured. 'It's not okay to shut yourself away from everyone.'

George nodded, blinking rapidly. He couldn't stop the tears that slid down his face. He pulled his knees into his chest and buried his face against them. He didn't feel Katie's arms slip around his shoulders. Dimly, he realized it wasn't the same kind of crying he had done immediately after the funeral. That had been raw grief and loss. This was the knowledge that Fred wasn't coming back and whatever identity George had before the battle had to change.

Katie worked one hand into her back pocket, and pulled her wand out, whispering a Silencing charm at the door. She rocked George slowly, one hand stroking his hair. He slid down until his head rested in her lap, and his arms wound around her waist. He slowly stopped crying, and took a few deep breaths. Just when he thought he had regained his composure, or what remained of it, tears began to slip from beneath his closed eyelids again. He shuddered and gave up trying to stop crying.

When he finally managed to stop crying, George slowly sat up, wiping his face on the shoulder of his shirt. 'Stop that,' Katie chided. He shrugged apologetically, and patted his pocket, looking for the handkerchief he knew he didn't have. 'Here.' Katie held out a folded square of linen, with a dark blue K embroidered in the corner. 'I get loads of them from my gran. She thinks it's inappropriate for a young lady to be without one.'

George sheepishly took the handkerchief and swiped it over his raw cheeks and eyes. He looked around the room, noting how dark it had gotten. 'What time is it?' he asked mortified.

'Nine-thirty.'

'Blimey, I'm so sorry, Katie...'

'Hush, you. It's all right. If you can't get snot all over your friends, who can you do that to?'

George twisted the handkerchief in his hands. 'Thanks...' He fell over onto his pillow, closing his eyes painfully. His head was felt like pixies were using tiny pixie-sized hammers to pound his head. He felt Katie slide off the bed. 'Don't go,' he implored, cracking his eyes open.

'I won't. I'll be back in a minute.' She quietly left the room and George pressed his fingers into the ridge over his eyes. He thought his head was going to fall off his neck. He slowly exhaled, and rolled over on his back. He hadn't broken down in front of anyone since the funeral. Especially not his family. The solicitous concern smothered him sometimes. He knew they were worried, but the last thing he wanted was for them to feel like they had to follow him everywhere with a butterfly net.

Katie walked back into the bedroom, carrying a tray with tea, a small vial with a dark blue potion, and a wet face cloth. 'Drink this,' she ordered, holding out the vial. 'It'll help with your head.'

Without opening his eyes, George held out a hand for the vial. He tossed it to the back of his throat, making a face at the taste. 'Why does it have to taste like sweaty socks?'

Katie set the tray on top of the night table. 'How do you know what sweaty socks taste like?'

George's mouth curved slightly. 'Fred dared me to lick one of Charlie's. When we were eight.' He sat up carefully, minding his still-pounding, but more manageable, head. He paused, waiting for something, and when it didn't come, his eyes filled. 'We tried to get Ron to lick one of Bill's, but he was wise to us,' he choked thickly. 'It just feels weird. To talk about something we did, and know he won't start the next sentence. It was always spiffing to try and trip up Mum at dinner.' He started to smile, but stopped, guilt shadowing his features.

'It's okay to talk about it. And it's okay to laugh or smile when it's funny.'

George rubbed Katie's handkerchief under his nose and nodded. 'But we got Ginny to do it. She was still pretty gullible. She was only four.'

'Ugh.' Katie handed George one of the cups of tea. 'That ought to take the taste out of your mouth, then.'

George cradled the cup between his hands. 'Thanks.' He took a cautious sip. Katie held out the face cloth, and George traded the empty vial for it. 'I just feel so guilty...'

'Because you survived?' Katie guessed shrewdly.

'Yeah.' George gingerly ran the wet face cloth over his face, mindful of his stinging skin. 'I keep thinking that he's going to walk in the door, and tell us it was all a horrible mistake. I won't go downstairs for dinner, because when I sit down for a meal, I keep looking for him at the table. And we can't eat, because he's not there yet. But when Dad starts eating, I realize he's not going to show up.' He fell silent as Katie sat back on the bed, moving to make room for her.

'It's going to take time, George.'

'I know,' he acknowledged. 'But sometimes, I want to wake up tomorrow and be fine. Like I keep telling everyone else I am.' He leaned against Katie, talking like they had before he left school. He found himself talking about Fred with her, telling her things he thought he had forgotten. When he heard himself grow hoarse, George tilted Katie's wrist and gasped at the time. It was after one in the morning. 'Oh, shite...' he muttered. 'I'm sorry.'

'For what?'

'Keeping you up late like this.'

Katie snorted. 'Remember that night we went out with Fred and Angelina, and went up to your flat for coffee and while you and I were making coffee, they disappeared for hours, and didn't come out until three?'

The corner of George's mouth curved up slightly. 'Yeah. You and I ended up drinking all the coffee, then eating an entire tin of chocolate mint biscuits. Then stayed up talking, buzzed on sugar and caffeine.' George slid off the bed. 'How'd you come in?'

'Front door.'

'Come on, I'll take you out back where you can Disapparate home away from all the commotion.'

George led Katie out the back door of the house and walked with her down to the end of the paddock. He helped her over the low stone wall, through the wards. 'Katie...'

She paused and looked at him over her shoulder. 'Yeah?'

'Thanks.'

'No problem.' Katie disappeared with a soft pop, leaving George standing in the meadow. He turned around and slowly walked back into the house.

George slipped inside the kitchen, and began walking up the stairs.