Warnings: Rather major spoilers for the 7th book, obviously

Disclaimer: If I owned the Harry Potter books and franchise, this drabble would not need to exist because the dead person in question would be very much alive.

Notes: This was written to the song Brothers as performed by Vic Mignogna. I’m aware that it’s actually a FullMetal Alchemist song, but it really fit. This particular death was spoiled for me, very much against my will a few days before the release, and I persisted through the bulk of the book determined that it was only a rumor. I’ve never cried over the books, I rarely cry at all, but Fred’s death scene hit me like a punch in the face and I stared at that paragraph, my heart pounding, resisting the temptation to hurl the book across the room. This little drabble bit is my way of mourning the death of one of my two favorite characters.

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“If any of you lot come to the funeral dressed in mourning, I’ll Transfigure your clothes into something cheerful, down to your underpants,” George warned his family, standing at the kitchen table. For all his calm demeanor, the hands on the edge of the wooden table were white at the knuckles.

They had discussed it, once or twice, up in their flat above the shop. Death had touched everything in the past few months, taking no exceptions. Such matters had to be discussed and arrangements made. Any money would go straight back to the Burrow, of course. And the hell they would have a black funeral. If they had to die, they were going to face death the way they’d faced life: removing sorrow, not causing it.

These discussions, forcibly serious, had never really considered only one of them not surviving. It had never occurred to them that something might split brother from brother because nothing ever had. They would either live or die together, not one and one. From the time they’d grown together in Molly Weasley’s womb, they had rarely, if ever parted. A situation that prevented one from being able to at least spot the other had made them uneasy. The separation, sudden and cruel, kept George from sleeping the last few nights, too unnerved by the silence in the empty bed across the room.

Fred was his best friend, his only intellectual match, and his twin brother. Now George was confronted by a loss he had never considered because he’d been so sure it would never happen. But damned if he wasn’t going to smile, even if he had to fight for it. Damned if he wasn’t going to keep the shop going because right now that was what the world needed and what Fred would have wanted. He owed it to Fred’s memory to surpass previous ventures, to keep laughing, to live.

“Of course,” Molly said, voice firm. “We’ll go in colors. He’d have liked that.”

“Thanks Mum.”