“George?”

George barely reacted as the door clicked open and Harry’s voice came from the doorway. He just jerked his head, to indicate that Harry could enter the bedroom.

It had been two weeks since the Battle of Hogwarts, where Fred had been killed. Harry hadn’t seen George since just after Voldemort had fallen. George had been sitting by his dead brother’s body, too sad and exhausted for tears. Harry had placed a hand on George’s shoulder, offered a sad smile and then gone again.

Since then, they’d had no contact.

And now Harry was here, he had no idea what to say. George was curled up on a chair by the window and Harry slowly lowered himself onto the bed. He looked around him.

“The joke shop stuff’s gone,” he said. Indeed, the crates of untested magical products that had littered the bedroom were no longer there.

George sighed. “I couldn’t carry it on,” he said. “I’ve found a buyer for the premises, even the mail-order service is gone… too many memories…”

“George…” Harry said gently. “I’m sure Fred would have wanted you to carry on…”

“HOW SHOULD YOU KNOW?” George exploded suddenly, springing up off the chair with a rage in his eyes that Harry had never seen there before. “HOW SHOULD YOU KNOW WHAT HE WOULD WANT? HE WAS MY TWIN BROTHER AND MY BEST FRIEND, AND I KNOW WHAT HE’D WANT ME TO DO, HE’D WANT ME TO DO WHAT I GOD-DAMN LIKED!”

There was silence.

“Sorry, mate,” George said. “It’s just – I – I just… I’ve never been alone. Never. He was always there. And now -” His voice shook slightly. “Now I’m on my own.”

Harry nodded. “When Sirius died, Dumbledore tried to tell me he knew how I was feeling.” He smiled as he recalled out loud, “I thought he was talking codswallop.”

“He always was a complete nutter, that guy,” George said, a tiny flicker of a smile flitting across his face.

In that moment, his eyes connected with Harry’s and they understood each other perfectly. Fred had been the closest family George had ever known, and Sirius had been the only family Harry had ever known.

George smiled as he looked away. He scraped back his long red hair and felt where, a long time ago, there had once been an ear. “I wouldn’t want it back now,” he said. “Even if they could somehow, I wouldn’t want it.” He pulled back the hair on the other side of his face to reveal his one remaining ear. “There were two, now there’s one. Seems appropriate, you know?”

Harry said nothing. There was nothing to say.

“You remember, when I lost this,” George gestured to the hole in his head where his ear had been. “You remember the first thing he did when I woke up?”

Harry shook his head. A lot had happened since then, and he couldn’t remember anything about that night. Only the hungry look in Lord Voldemort’s eyes…

“He told me off,” George said, bringing Harry startlingly back to reality.

“What?” Harry said, having been lost in his own thoughts.

“He said my joke was pathetic,” George said, grinning. “Saying I felt holey. Remember?”

“Well,” said Harry, re-finding the track of the conversation. “You’d just lost an ear and bled half to death. It was better than I could have come up with.”

George smiled a gloomy sort of smile. He stared out of the window at the sky. Finally, he said, “Do you think I can do it, Harry? Run the business without him?”

Harry considered what to say. “I think you could,” he said slowly. “Kids still want the stuff you sell.” Harry paused for a minute, wondering if he could say what he was thinking without George flying off the handle again. Finally he said, “There’s a new generation of pranksters out there, George. It… It didn’t all end with Fred.”

George turned around, and Harry thought for a moment that George was going to shout again, but he only took a deep breath and bit his lip thoughtfully. Eventually, he said “Yeah, I think I will carry on with the joke shop. You’re right, Harry, there’s kids out there who need Wealsey’s Wizard Wheezes, and Fred wouldn’t want me to leave them in the lurch.”

Harry just nodded again. He stood up and offered a hand to George, who took it, then pulled Harry into an awkward one-armed hug.

“Look after yourself, mate,” Harry said.

“You too,” said George, “and be careful what you get up to with my sister!”

Harry laughed and left the room.

George went outside, into the garden. Fred had been buried at the Burrow, because he’d never really liked graveyards. George went to the grey and white stone that marked where Fred lay. He ran his fingers over the words engraved on the stone:

George smiled at the epitaph. Fred had told him long ago that was what he wanted on his grave. He had only been joking, but George could think of nothing more appropriate to describe his twin brother’s life.

Slowly, George knelt down by Fred’s grave, feeling the cold earth as he picked it up and let it run through his fingers. “I’m going to carry on the joke shop, Fred,” he said quietly.

And, if George hadn’t known it couldn’t be, he would have sworn he heard Fred whisper on the wind, “Good. Can you imagine Slughorn’s face when people start puking into his cauldrons?”