[blurb] Another Man's Armchair [Harry Potter 7+]

[rex_sun]

A change in style for me. I am planning something with this. It will be an experiment.

All the surfaces in the shop had a fair layer of dust, and all the shelves were empty, but still Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes retained its charming, mischievous air. The bins were still peppered with broken bits of merchandise; the till was still open from the last time it had been hurriedly empty. The motes floating through beams of sunlight seemed in themselves to inhibit the spirit of the gone, lost Fred Weasley. To Ron it felt as if any moment his big brother would come sliding down the banister of the stairs to the upstairs apartment, smile in place-- the very smile he had died with.

But there was no sound forthcoming from the overhead, from the far depths of the shop, or from George next to him. Ron sidled into the shop, tense, unused to this new quietness that had settled on George. "Shall we go up?" he tossed over his shoulder.

George said something like, "I suppose", when he should have, would have, said something like, 'No, I was hoping to sleep in the old fireworks boxes, you?' Ron looked back at him in time to see a painful shadow of one of his old, roguish grins that quickly faded into the now semi-permanent grimace. Often Ron had the throw-away thought that his brother had become a sort of living representation of one of those drama masks, the comedy and tragedy.

George stepped past without sparing much time for Ron-- probably George didn't want people to fuss. He had, after all, greatly opposed Ron's coming to live with him. Their mother had been torn-- on one hand, she was beside herself with grief for Fred and worry for George; on the other, she both wanted to keep her elusive son Ron close by and also wanted him to finish his schooling. But nearly everyone else in the family had thought it a good idea, and even Molly capitulated at last.

(Percy, Bill later clued Ron in, had had vague stirrings of wanting to offer himself to live with George; but he had dropped it quickly when the idea was greeted very lukewarmly. The Weasleys were taking great pains to include the estranged Percy in all family discussions nowadays, and Percy was eager to be included again, but nevertheless, George and Percy had never exactly got on, and Percy had spent three years as a stranger. He was not, even in his own admittance, the best candidate to support their despairing brother.)

The older family members had sat Ron down seriously and gave many warnings. He wished very much that Hermione had been there with him, because mum and dad and Bill and Charlie all spoke vaguely, gently, quietly. They did not want to say aloud the things they were all thinking about George, as if they were afraid their words would be taken even by each other as accusations or criticisms against George, and that was the last thing any of them wanted to do. The result was that Ron was often asked, "You understand, don't you?" and Ron, really only halfway there, would nod silently.

Now as he reached the top of the stairs and was met with George's somehow depleted form, Ron plotted to contact Hermione immediately. She was good at feelings and stuff. She could tell him what the rest of them had meant, what they were saying about George. Hermione could explain why George was suddenly, disturbingly, looking a mite more cheerful as he took in the familiar apartment.

It was very cramped here-- George had said that much of the floor above the shop proper was used for storage and experimentation. There were two armchairs near the fire. Two wooden chairs next to a very small dining table. In the closet-sized bathroom, two towels had been left when Fred and George had fled. The bedroom had two beds, separated by a nightstand, upon which only a single alarm clock perched.

Suddenly the enormity of Fred's death hit Ron like a well-aimed bludger knocking him to a fifty-foot drop.

Fred and George had most likely never spent a moment apart in their entire lives. They were born together; unable to have separate rooms, they had slept together as children; at school they had been placed in the same house, the same dormitory; in class they had most likely sat one beside the other, and had teachers ignorant of their differences refer to them as a unit or else mix one up with the other; and after so long, they decided to live together outside of school. They ate together, slept together, woke together, worked together. They had always worn the same haircut as each other, worn the same clothes. In the past, no one said, 'Have you seen George?' They had said, 'Have you seen Fred and George?' And sure enough, where one was, so was the other. There was nothing George had accomplished without the help of Fred; there was no trait you could list about George that could not be listed about Fred.

George lowered himself with a sort of vacant smile into one of the armchairs. Ron was left to wonder which of his brothers that particular chair belonged to, and when and why had he signed up to fill another man's armchair.

Posted via LiveJournal app for iPad.