A/N: I don't want Fred to die! It can't happen. So I wrote this for people who felt the same way I did when reading the doomed chapter in the book :)

Harry sighed and sat down on one of the many stairs of Hogwarts.

Only seconds later, Ginny sat down next to him.

"Well done," she whispered in his ear.

Harry nodded dully.

"Ginny, I'm… I'm so sorry about Fred," he murmured.

Ginny felt tears streaming down her face again. Every time someone mentioned Fred's name, she started crying. She covered her face in her hands to hide her sobs.

Harry slung his arm around her and hugged her in comfort.

And that's how the Weasleys found them, hugging each other and both crying. Not one face, apart from George's, wasn't wetted by tears. George, on the other hand, looked rather as if he was in shock and he stared at the floor without seeing anything.

Mrs. Weasley pulled Harry and Ginny onto their feet. "Oh, Harry," she sighed and gave him a hug. She hadn't seen him after he had defeated Voldemort yet and she was glad that at least he survived the war. Her face, too, was covered in tears for Fred, though.

"Let's go home," she told her family. Mr. Weasley nodded; he was holding George upright by his shoulders.

There was nothing for them to do at Hogwarts anymore. Fred's body had never been found; it was probably blasted into pieces by the explosion and then covered in dust and gravel. It had took them a while to get George away from the place of the explosion. But when after half an hour of searching the only thing he'd found of Fred was a finger, he had accepted that his dear twin brother was indeed shredded into pieces.

Sobbing, the family apparated at the Burrow. All of them sank down in an armchair in the living room, apart from George.

He looked at his family and Harry, and for the first time tears began to well up in his eyes, as though it had just sank in that Fred wasn't with him. He turned away from his family, not because they weren't allowed to see his grief, but because they wouldn't understand it. They'd never lost a twin brother.

Shaking, he walked up the stairs towards his own room. He wanted to drown in tears by his own; he didn't want anyone to see it. Only Fred was allowed to see that.

The Weasley family didn't call him back. They followed him with their eyes until he disappeared out of their sight, their gazes full of pity. They knew they had no idea what he was going through now.

George stopped at the door of his room. It was strange to think that this room now only belonged to him, instead of him and Fred. 'Visitors, beware', they'd once carved in the door. Their mother had been fuming.

He opened the door but stopped dead before entering his room. There, on one of the two beds, sat Fred! George sighed: he was probably beginning to hallucinate. The Fred-hallucination looked up when he entered and smiled weakly. Then he drew his worried gaze back to his hand, where he had a finger missing.

"I splinched, Georgie. I splinched! It's never happened before!"

He looked up at Georges face again, only to notice the grave expression on the latter's face. And then he noticed the tears.

"George! What's happened? Did someone die?"

George, however, still couldn't speak again. He only looked thunderstruck at the Fred-hallucination. Why was his mind making it worse? Why was his mind making him go through this? He wished the Fred-hallucination would disappear. On the other hand, he didn't want the Fred-hallucination to disappear. He wanted him to stay forever.

Fred, meanwhile, got up from the bed and took George by the shoulders. He looked him solemnly in the eyes. "George, please tell me what happened," he pleaded.

By the touch of his twin brother, George couldn't hold it anymore. "You died," he whispered weeping to the hallucination, barely audible. He felt horrible for saying the words out loud, as if they were the ones who made it happen.

"Me?" Fred asked. "I didn't die, Georgie. Look at me, I didn't." But George shook his head. "You're just a hallucination of mine," he retorted. "You died in the explosion. I dug in the gravel for half an hour, Fred! You're dead. How could you? How could you leave me?"

Fred looked at his sobbing brother and pushed him down on his bed. Then, he lifted George's head while he sat down on his own and looked his brother in the eyes.

"George, listen to me. I'm not dead. At the moment of the explosion, I saw I was in the wrong place at the wrong moment. There was no time to run away or hide, so I disapparated to the first place I could think of – home. However, because I took the decision so quickly, I didn't concentrate hard enough and I splinched. I left my finger. It hurt so much I fainted right after I came here. I just woke up and was planning on going back to see if the war was still going on and whether I could help, when you came in. And as far as I can tell from your face, the war is over, and someone has died. But not me, George, not me."

George looked at his brother hopefully. "So you're not a hallucination?"

"I solemnly swear I'm not."

At that magical sentence, a smile began to light up Georges face and he embraced his brother.

"Never do that again to me, Freddie!" he said while tears stroked his face again. Tears of happiness, though.

"Never," Fred promised.