I Saw My Lady Weep

A/N: This chapter and the next occur simultaneously.

Chapter 16: While The Final Rattle Rocks...

The air around Ron Weasley cracked as he appeared from nowhere in the middle of Diagon Alley. The Alley was dimly lit this time of night, but wizards being what they were, it never truly closed. Passers-by took note of his arrival, but just as quickly dismissed him as just another night visitor to the Alley.

Ron sighed as he approached the door to Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes. The front window was still boarded up from where it had been broken in by one of Voldemort's followers. The boards blocking the broken window had the phrase DEATH TO MUGGLE-LOVERS! Burned into them... but over that someone had charmed the words HARRY POTTER LIVES! And to Ron, the second phrase more than made up for the first.

But the boards still weren't a good sign. The war had ended four months ago... George had plenty of time to get his window repaired and get the shop opened, but it was obvious nothing had been done. George lied to me, Ron thought to himself. Every time Ron had asked about the shop, George had reported that business was picking back up.

He's obviously using a definition of the phrase 'picking back up' unknown to the rest of the world, Ron sighed again. This has to stop.

Ron tried the door and was unsurprised to find it locked. He peered past the fading paper adverts covering the door to see into the shop's showroom. Dirt and dust were everywhere. Racks empty. Piles of merchandise from fallen shelves still on the floor... The place was a disaster area.

Ron removed his wand and tapped the knob. "Alohomora," he intoned. The comforting click of the lock opening was conspicuously missing. He tried it again, this time giving the thought a bit more force. Still nothing. Well, I never really figured it would be that easy, now, did I, he thought.

Ron stepped back from the door and looked around. There were only a handful of people walking by, and none of them were paying too much attention. He looked toward the windows of the flat above the shop, where the twins... and now George by himself... lived. There was a flickering light up there that might be a lamp...

Ron stepped back to the door. If this doesn't work, I can always try a blasting spell, he thought. He tapped the doorknob again, muttering, "Evanesco." The doorknob disappeared, leaving an empty hole. Ron nodded and pushed on the door a bit tentatively. It swung open freely.

He pushed the door closed behind him and looked around. From the inside, the shop looked in even worse shape than from out. There were scraps of parchment everywhere, rubbish scattered about... and a rather foul smell coming from the shelves that normally housed the Pygmy Puff cages. Shaking his head, Ron stepped into the backroom. He noted the lines of identical footprints going from the fireplace hearth to the door leading to the flat and back... but there were no lines of footprints leading into the shop itself.

Sighing at the squalor -- Ron couldn't seem to stop himself from sighing near continuously - he opened the door to the flat and climbed the staircase. At least this looked a little better. Instead of the vacant dankness of abandonment displayed in the shop, the flat had the feel of grunge-filled neglect. Dirty clothes were in piles everywhere. Take out boxes and bottles - some empty, some only partially so -- covered nearly every flat surface. There were spills and stains everywhere, and from the acrid urine smell coming from somewhere in the flat's sitting room, someone or something hadn't quite made it to the bathroom.

"Ah, George... what are you doing to yourself in this place?" Ron asked the empty room. He found himself incapable of wrapping his mind around it. He's screaming for help, but not in public, Ron thought. We should have noticed... He felt ashamed at the notion that perhaps George hadn't been totally wrong; things had become involved, and the family had ignored the troll in the room.

Ron tucked his head into the bedroom. The contrast was remarkable... one side of the room was the same wreck as the rest of the apartment. The other had the clean, sterile look of a well-maintained shrine.

Still no sign of George.

The bathroom was less disgusting than Ron feared it might be. Dirty clothes were all over the floor, but at least the toilet had been flushed. Ron even peeked into the closets, looking everywhere he could think of that could hide a man of George's size. Finally, he opened one closet door only to find it wasn't a closet. The door hid a set of steps. Ron did some quick calculations in his head. If the store only has the two stories, this must go to the roof... He shrugged to himself and started up.

The staircase did, in fact, lead to the roof. Ron took a quick look at the moon, hanging over the shadowy outline of Gringotts, and the stars -- he had never been as appreciative of the night sky as Hermione, but he still thought it could be very pretty on occasion.

"George? Are you up here?" He stepped out, spinning in place to take in the whole rooftop. He spotted his brother immediately, sitting on the ledge with his legs hanging into the back alley. "George?"

"So... you're who Mum and Dad sent? I figured one of them would come themselves." George tipped his head back, emptying a bottle of something down his throat, and then tossed the empty down into the alleyway where it smashed loudly.

"I volunteered." Ron approached slowly. Harry had said that George was drunk already, and finishing off a bottle on top of it while sitting on a precarious ledge couldn't be a good thing.

"Ah." George swung around faster than Ron liked, tipping dangerously before getting his feet back on the roof. "Come to tell me off? Come to stick up for your mate? Tell me how I'm wrong?" George leaned toward the rooftop and picked something up. It was only then that Ron spotted the bottles lined up against the roof's short retention wall. There were at least five or six left.

"Want one?" George asked. "The Leaky Cauldron won't sell Firewhisky in bottles past eight. But there's this charming little package store out on Charing Cross... Fine bloke... Hindu, I think... He set me right. Majestic something-or-other..." George twisted the cap off the bottle and pitched it over his shoulder.

"George... what are you doing?" Ron asked sadly. "You've got an entire lifetime to live and you're..."

"I don't want it." George's words brought a chill to Ron's spine. "I don't want it. I want it the way it used to be."

"George, there are things in this world we have no choice over. Things that we never want to happen, but have to accept when they do. Things that we don't want to ever know, but eventually have to learn. And there are people we believe we can't ever live without, but eventually have to let go." Ron swallowed, doing his ever best not to cry. "And that's Fred. I didn't want him to die, but he did. I didn't want to have to learn to live without him, but I'm going to have to. And I don't want to let him go, but I will."

"Yeah, well that's you, right? I'm not letting him go, ever. I loved him. Guess you didn't."

"George... I think you've had enough, mate," Ron began. George's words had begun a slow burning, and Ron didn't want it getting out.

"I'M NOT YOUR BLOODY MATE!" George stood suddenly and threw the bottle at Ron, who ducked quickly. The bottle smashed somewhere behind him. "I was HIS mate! Not yours! You're... you've... you don't even care anymore. Like he never existed to you."

Ron stepped forward. "George, come on. Let's go home. You need to..."

"Shut your gob, Ron! I don't need my ickle brother trying to come off all like my dad!" George was nearly screaming. "Don't talk to me like you know anything, Ron! You don't know shit!" George tried to step around Ron, heading for the flat.

Ron grabbed George by the arm, swinging him around with the momentum. "Come on, George... calm down, yeah? Everybody's hurting from Fred's death. Everybody."

"My arse you are. You and Ginny and your engagements... like it's just a lah-dee-dah... You don't know what it feels like to lose..."

That was as far as George got. Without really realizing he was going to do it, Ron hauled back and punched George right in the teeth. George stumbled backward, finally tripping and falling flat onto the roof. Ron stood over his older brother, taking big gulps of air. Tears flooded his eyes. "Don't you dare say I don't know what it feels like to lose a brother, George. Don't you fucking dare. Not if you don't want another knock in the gob."

"What's the matter, Ron? Cut a little close to home?" George's smile was bloody and awful. He climbed to his feet as quickly as he could, considering his lack of sobriety. "So little brother wants to play, does he? Okay, I'll play." The fist George threw was so slow and uncoordinated all Ron had to do was step back to avoid being hit. George spun in place and fell again. Ron could hear George's head bounce off the roof's tiles.

"Auh..." George sat up, slowly. He shook his head twice, then spit a mouthful of blood and spit to the side. "Well... guess that was the wrong thing to do. Never was much of a fighter..." He looked up at Ron and grinned. "I think I might be a little pissed."

Ron stared for a moment, and then chuckled. He lowered himself to the roof, sitting next to his fallen brother. "You all right?"

"Yeah... just... pissed off... missing Fred," George spit again.

"Yeah. Us too, you know. We're all missing Fred. All of us," Ron said. "We haven't forgotten him, George."

George stared at Ron disbelievingly. "You certainly don't act like it. You've been quite busy getting engaged and making plans to go to Australia and going back to Hogwarts. None of you have shown any sort of grief over Fred."

"Think so, do you?" Ron was tired of the entire who-is-grieving-more-deeply-than-whom game. "Let me tell you something, George... I can keep a stiff upper lip and pretend nothing's wrong with the best of them. But then I see something -- someone makes a joke, or I see something that reminds me of Fred, or I even see one of your bloody adverts hanging on a post - and I collapse into tears like I was a baby."

Ron's voice was quiet. "We're not going to get into who's feeling worse than who, George. I'm not going to do it. Because what you're mad at isn't that we aren't grieving... It's that we're not allowing it to stop us dead in our tracks." He ran a hand through his hair. "That's you, George. You need to pick yourself up and stop all this."

"That's a laugh. It's right easy for you to say," George said. "You've got Hermione. I see how you lean on her. She gets you through things. She's like a crutch for you."

Ron shook his head. "No, George... we get each other through things. We lean on each other. That's what family's for. That's the entire point of being a family in the first place... You pick each other up when you fall. "

"I've been a right idiot, haven't I," George asked. "I expect Harry wants to hex me into next week. I deserve it. I've been a prat tonight."

"I'm not the one you need to apologize to." Ron rubbed his eyes. "Besides, I don't think they'll get too mad at you. It's not like the entire family isn't in pain, just like you are."

George gave a little laugh at that. "Yeah..." He ran a dirty sleeve under his nose. "But you've got better things to do than hang out with a waste like me, Ron. You've got that trip to Australia day after tomorrow. And I'm sure Hermione's got better things to do."

Ron sighed for what might have been the hundredth time that night. "George, just listen to me, all right? Listen. I love you. I'll always love you. You're my brother, and I love you. But this... This has all got to stop, George. No... It's not easy. It's damned hard. The hardest thing I've ever done in my life is wake up, every day, and tell myself to carry on. And that's what you have to do. You have to carry on."

George looked sick. "It's hard, Ron. And I'm afraid, I guess. I don't know what tomorrow is going to be like."

"I know, George. If there's one thing I've learned in the past year, it's that. The hardest thing in this world is to simply live. Especially when all you want to do is curl up into a ball and die. It really is a scary thought." Ron looked at the scars on his forearms. "And I know scary thoughts. It's okay to be scared. But we're Gryffindors, remember? We're the guys who keep going, even when we're terrified. If we let fear of the unknown stop us, we'd be Slytherin."

George smiled at that, the first real smile of the night.

Ron slowly stood, then extended his hand to George. "Come on... let's go back down to the flat."

George took his hand. He was unsteady on his feet. "So... just live? That's your great advice to your older brother who's coming apart at the seams? Just keep living?"

"It's a start." At George's dubious look, Ron shrugged. "Well... let's start smaller. Let's get you downstairs and into a shower. Try and sober you up." Ron took his wand out and looked over his shoulder. With a wave, the bottles all vanished. "I think you've had quite enough to drink tonight."

As they approached the stairs, George suddenly turned to his younger brother. "Why are you so eager to help?"

"You're my brother, George. I think you're a prat sometimes, and right now I think you're a great bloody idiot, but you're still my brother." Ron hitched George's arm around his shoulder. "And because something Hermione told me last week. She found a book by some American wizard named Robinson. This bloke Robinson said that shared pain is lessened, while shared joy is increased. We need to get you some joy, mate."

George staggered, but Ron caught him. "Some joy would be nice for everyone, I guess.