Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.

A/N: Hello, and welcome to my new story! I was pondering the difference between the Weasley twins, and what I really wanted to do was write a story that shows that. Hence, my first ever AU. I think it ties in quite well with my story When the Sun Breaks Through (which will be updated at some point), to show how I think events happened in the canon universe. This story started out as a one-shot, but judging by the length of the first part I thought it would work better as a multi-chapter. To end my rambling, I hope you enjoy it!

Seven Days

i.

"I'll take left," Fred says, and his hands are shaking and his eyes are stinging and he's trying so hard to keep his voice steady.

George smiles and squeezes his hand. "I've got it," he says. His eyes are tender, his smile warm: he looks strong, Fred thinks, as if fear isn't eating him up from the inside.

Fred wraps his arms around his twin, burying his face in George's shoulder. "Take care," he mumbles, because there isn't much else to say.

"You too," George whispers, and maybe his voice is breaking after all. "I love you."

"Love you too," Fred echoes.

George steps back, breaking the embrace, and manages a wonky half-grin. "See you later," he says, and then he beckons to his team and they take the left turn at the branching of corridors and – and leave.

Fred stares after them for a long moment before turning to his own team, Alicia Spinnet and Oliver Wood and Seamus Finnegan and Hannah Abbott, and silently leads them down the right corridor.

The silence doesn't last for long, because they're in the middle of a battleground and Fred can't afford time even to worry for his twin. He's just Stunned one Death Eater and nearly been killed by another one, and Alicia is screaming and Seamus stares blankly at his broken wand in his crushed fingers. Fred's surrounded by destruction, breathing death, and yet he hasn't felt this alive in a long time.

"That's all of them," he says, voice rough. "Good job."

Alicia sits up, though the Cruciatus has left her pale and shaky. "What next?" she croaks.

Fred closes his eyes. The fighting has paused and already the familiar fear is snaking its way back through his heart, paralysing him. "Let's keep moving," he says. "Find some more. There's a secret passage behind that statue of the goblin—"

"The statue of the goblin is gone," Hannah points out.

Fred turns to see a mound of rubble where the figure was; a stray curse must have caught it. He sighs and walks over to inspect it, but the entrance is completely blocked by debris. "So we'll get through the corridors," he says. "Fight them in the open... it'll be fine. We're on the sixth floor, right?" He doesn't know why he's asking – he knows every inch of this school like he knows the Burrow or their flat above the shop. Better, even. "There's a tunnel that'll take us down two floors there, they won't even see us coming—" He's babbling, now, trying to hide his fear behind empty words and emptier smiles. "Let's get moving."

"My wand," Seamus moans, and Oliver snatches up a wand from one of the Death Eaters on the ground and hands it to him. Seamus grimaces, but takes it in his good hand. Nobody likes fighting with another's wand, but beggars can't be choosers.

Fred glances at them all: Alicia white and unsteady, Hannah favouring her right leg, Oliver bleeding from the head and Seamus trying not to let the pain of his broken hand show, and nods. "Come on, then."

But before they can do anything there's a sound like the world breaking and everything explodes into colourful, fiery pain. Stones are falling from the ceiling and dust fills the air and Fred doesn't think he's ever screamed this loudly, but it feels like all his limbs have been severed and his brain is being pulled out of his skull. It feels like (the unthinkable).

"Fred!" Alicia reaches out to shake his shoulder. "What's the matter?"

The world comes back into focus, although not the way it was before: there's a large crater in the ceiling just a little down the corridor and rubble has piled up on the floor beneath it. "What happened?" Fred asks hoarsely.

"There must have been an explosion," says Hannah. She frowns. "I hope no one got hurt." She's Hufflepuff all the way, always thinking about others. Fred couldn't care less if someone got hurt. He cares if the hurt person is his, his parents or brothers or sister or (twin).

It isn't just the crater, he decides: everything seems aligned wrong, as if his eyes have been adjusted differently, as if (something isn't there that used to be). Clenching his fingers into a fist so that they scrape his palm, he says, "Is – is everyone okay?"

Alicia motions towards a pile of loose stones dividing the corridor in two. Behind the barrier, they can hear Seamus and Oliver calling.

"We're okay!" Hannah shouts through a chink in the rocks.

"Same here," says Oliver. "Guess we'll have to split up, then."

Hannah bites her lip. "See you, then," she says, turning away. "Stay safe."

"Fred?" Alicia reaches out to squeeze his shoulder. "I think... I think maybe we should split up, too. You're distracted. Try and find George, that's the only way you'll be able to do anything." She knows him so well, but he can't explain to her his growing fear that (he'll never find George again).

"Alright," he manages. "Stick together, both of you." It's oddly freeing to turn away from the pair of girls and make his way quickly down the corridor by himself. He wasn't made to lead people, wasn't made to care about them. He knows he should be worried about his team but all he can feel is indifference.

George is different. George's heart is open and his smile is bright; George doesn't know how to hate. George is kind, and perceptive, and Fred wishes he could be the same but sometimes it feels like his twin is the only person who matters and it doesn't matter if the whole world has burned to the ground as long as George is there, and it's selfish and it's wrong but there's no space in Fred's heart for loving anyone else.

Sometimes I think you love me too much, George whispered to him a few months ago, during yet another episode of late-night terror; Fred was crying enough that he could pretend not to hear, and George pretended to have said nothing. Fred knows it's true, and he's beyond terrified that tonight is the night George's prediction will come true, that tonight is the night that Fred will fall apart at his seams and—

(But George has to be alive.)

He's almost forgotten that Hogwarts is a warzone tonight, and splitting up with his team doesn't necessarily equal being alone. He Stuns a few Death Eaters and rescues an underage girl from the clutches of another, not sticking around to hear her gasped and shaky thanks. Keep moving, keep fighting. Find George.

He isn't sure how long he's been wandering solo before Voldemort's voice echoes around the castle again, telling them that they have a one-hour ceasefire. He then goes on to issue an ultimatum to Harry, at which point Fred stops listening. Harry won't go, can't sacrifice himself for nothing. Voldemort knows better, surely.

He's wandering towards the Great Hall, heart quickening and palms becoming clammy. His parents could be hurt. Bill, Percy, Ron, Ginny could be hurt. Angelina could be hurt. (George could be dead.)

He pauses in the doorway, scans the room, and oh Merlin there's a crowd of redheads gathered in one corner. He should have known, should have understood he wasn't getting out of this without losing one of them, but which one, which one?

He can tell Ginny apart easily; her hair's loose, hanging limply down her back. There's his father standing to one side, his face a picture of horror, grief. There are Bill and Percy with their arms around each other and Fleur hovering helplessly near them. So it has to be his mother or Ron. George is probably hidden by the mass of grievers but he's there, of course he's there, face soaked with tears and eyes shattered but alive.

Fred breaks into a run.

It's Ginny who sees him coming first: she glances over her shoulder and goes white. Then she's breaking away from the huddle, revealing their mother bent over the body on the floor. So it's Ron, then, it must be Ron. Process of elimination. George is probably... probably coming from somewhere else in the castle...

Ginny slams into him, hides her face in his chest and sobs. Fred tries to stroke her hair, to comfort her, but she's inconsolable. He catches "sorry" and "wish" and, most terrifyingly of all, "George".

Lying isn't enough. Pretending isn't enough. Fred wrenches himself away from his sister and sprints the last stretch to his family. They part to let him through and—

No.

Not true.

Not possible.

Fred's vaguely away of screaming, vaguely aware of falling to his knees, vaguely aware of reaching out to the body on the floor and shaking it and begging. It doesn't matter, it won't work, because George's eyes are open and empty and George has never looked like that in all his life before, but George isn't alive now, he's dead, he's dead and that changes everything.

There's a strange keening noise coming from Fred's mouth, a wail of grief that goes on and on and on with no respect for his parched throat or hoarse voice. He draws the body close and cradles it, but George does not wrap his arms around him or lay his head on Fred's shoulder: his muscles are slack and his head falls limply back, brown eyes staring upwards unseeingly, and Fred doesn't even realise he's sobbing until he sees the tears landing on his brother's face.

"Who?" he rasps, because it's suddenly, all-consumingly important. "Who did it?"

"I was there," whispers Percy. "And Ron and Harry and Hermione. It – it was my fault, I distracted him, and the wall blew and – there was nothing I could do—"

"Who did it?" Fred repeats, quick-burning anger beginning to kindle.

"Rookwood," Percy says through trembling lips. "I – I tried to chase him but he got away—"

Fred's lips give up on speech in favour of the wail again; George is growing cooler in his arms, his face paler, and Fred holds him close in the hope that he can share the heat from his living, beating heart with his twin. But he's still alive; why is he still alive? He's the older one, he should have been the first. It was one of the only things that could comfort him on the days when the nightmares were bad, that he was born first and he has to die first too, that George will be the one to bear the burden of this terrible grief because that is the way it has to be.

George is the stronger one, the one who can move on, the one who can fall in love and have a family and make the shop hugely successful, the one who can live. The one who deserves to live, because Fred's just the selfish, cruel shadow of his bright-and-brilliant twin and—

Augustus Rookwood, he decides, the tears still falling thick and fast onto George's cheeks, will die.

At some point he thinks Ginny's snatching at his hand and dragging him away from his brother's body to the front of the castle. There's something about Harry being dead and Voldemort having won, and he vaguely registers his little brother and sister screaming as if there can be no tomorrow, something he thought only he had realised. Then they're fighting again, and the rage is burning too hard and fast to be controlled and he isn't even sure how many times he points a wand in a man's face and says, "Avada Kedavra." Rookwood is the first, he knows that. Then Harry's alive again, which is good, because surely George will be too then, and Voldemort is dead and the sun breaks through the windows of the Great Hall, as if promising that there will, after all, be another day.

He slips off to where he left George, hoping knowing believing that his brother will have got up and walked away, and it hurts almost as much as the initial blow to see him still lying on the cold floor, not smiling or laughing or doing anything, just lying there and he'll never do anything again, never, never, because he's dead.

He wants to cry but he's not sure he remembers how to – all of a sudden the pain's too deep for tears or screaming. He thinks he's kneeling again, and gathering his brother up in his arms and just sitting there, and how can victory possibly feel so wrong?

He hides his face in George's hair: it's still soft and red and it smells like the shampoo Fred uses, which it should, because at the moment they're both using the same bottle – it will take him longer to finish the bottle by himself, Fred thinks somewhat distantly, and it's at this point that he starts laughing because the thought is simply too bizarre.

Hands are wrapping around his wrists, saying things like "shock" and "it'll pass" and "best let him lie down for a bit", and then someone tries to prise George away and it's at this point that Fred starts to scream. How dare they, how dare they? Who do they think they are?

"NO, NO! BRING HIM BACK!"

He's crying again: the dam has broken and everything's flooding out. He hates them, he hates all of them, and he tells them so in no uncertain terms, fighting against restraining arms to reach his twin but there are simply too many of them.

"It's okay," someone is saying. "It's okay." Fred's eyes are too blurred with tears for him to see, but he thinks it's Bill leaning over him. The strangeness of the comment makes him laugh again.

"If... you think... that," he manages to choke out, "you're living on a different planet. "

"You're hysterical." Bill's voice is cool and controlled, and Fred wants so badly to rely on him, but he can't bring George back, can he? He's inconsistent, just like the rest of them. Making promises and then breaking them. George never broke his promises – except the last one, the casual See you later—

Fred suddenly feels very ill.

"Come on." Bill hauls him to his feet and Percy puts a steadying hand on his shoulder, and Fred is too drained and shocked to fight them.

"Everyone's gathered in the common room," Ginny's saying softly. "We can get some rest."

They pull him along the ruined corridors and up the cracked staircases, and Fred doesn't fight them. He doesn't fight them when they help him through the portrait hole (the Fat Lady has fled) and he doesn't fight them when they push him backwards onto a sofa. He doesn't fight his mother when she wraps her arms around him and whispers, "My baby, my baby," and he doesn't fight when she lays his head in her lap.

But his eyes are still wide, wide open, and much later when the rest of the world is sleeping he gets up again and slips back to the Great Hall. The fifty or so bodies have all had blankets wrapped around them, but nothing they can do can stop the spreading cold in their fingers, faces, hearts. Fred spots Remus's pain-lined face and Tonks's bubble-gum hair, but he's suddenly too numb to feel anything.

He finds his brother at one end of the hall, looking very pale and small. "Hey," Fred says quietly, sitting down beside him. "I... I thought you might be lonely."

George doesn't answer, just lies there as dead as ever, and Fred reaches out to pick up his hand. It's cold, and stiff. A corpse's hand. But somehow it still manages to soothe Fred's racing heart, and for a moment he feels almost as if George has just slipped his fingers through his own. Fred's hand curls reflexively around his twin's, and he doesn't think he could let go if he wanted to.

He sits there for hours, feeling what little heat is left in George's body slowly drain away. Sometimes he cries, and only the dead can hear him, for the rest of the castle's occupants are sleeping far away. Sometimes he talks, but his voice is too small and too broken to fill the massive hall. Every now and again the pain is too much to bear and he screams – how does it matter, anyway? Only the dead can hear him.

The sun is far past its highest point in the sky and blood-red streaks are beginning to paint the floor when he feels the castle beginning to stir again. Fred's cradling the body of his brother again, tucking George's head into the space between his chin and his shoulder. They've sat like this so many times before that maybe the familiarity will wake George up, and Fred is just waiting to feel warm breath on his neck as his twin stirs.

Charlie enters the hall cautiously, tentatively: it is the realm of the dead now and his beating heart has no place here. But once he spots Fred he moves more confidently, never taking his eyes away from him as he picks his way between bodies. Fred waits and watches. There is nowhere to run, after all.

His brother's hair is tousled with sleep, but his eyes are wide and alert. "Where have you been?" he hisses. "Mum's frantic."

Fred shrugs, trying to seem detached, but the deathly calm that has descended on him is breaking. They will take him away from here, away from the silence and the cold and George, and he can't do it, he can't do it, he has to stay here.

Charlie seems to notice George's body slumped against him because he bites his lip and moves to shift it away. Fred wraps his arms tight around his twin, trying to fight the surge of panic. "Don't touch him."

Charlie's looking at him so pityingly. "We have to go home now, Fred. Back to The Burrow. You can get some rest, and something to eat, and it'll seem a bit better. Okay?"

Fred shakes his head. "I'm staying here."

Charlie kneels down on the cold floor and reaches out a hand. "Mum's so worried about you. Just – just come home and let her take care of you for a bit."

"You're one to talk." Fred's speaking distantly, absently; he's not even paying attention to the words. "You haven't been home in years."

Charlie closes his eyes, but not in time to stop a tear running down his cheek. "Please, Fred," he whispers.

"I'm staying here."

Charlie takes a deep breath. "You can come willingly, or we can Petrify you and drag you along. You choose."

They don't understand – they're all selfish and cruel and the only thing they want is to see he's safe. What if he doesn't want to be safe? What if he just wants to be free?

"Decide, Fred," Charlie says quietly.

Fred meets his gaze. "Can George come too?"

Charlie looks sickened, but he nods. "Of course. We won't leave him here."

Fred closes his eyes, hating himself, hating everyone, and nods.

Charlie forces a smile and reaches out to ruffle Fred's hair. "I'm going to fetch everyone else," he says. "Will you wait here for us?"

Fred nods, and Charlie hurries out of the hall. But the peace and calm is broken again a moment later, when a tall, dark-skinned woman (girl, really) slips around the edge of the doors.

She spots him easily and breaks into a run, but her eyes are always on George. They always have been.

"I'd heard," she whispers, skidding to a halt. "But I had to... had to know for myself..."

Fred's heart has no business skipping a beat, but it does, and there's a painful twinge in his chest as Angelina starts to cry, reaching out to cup George's cheek in her hand.

"It should have been me," he says leadenly, once she has composed herself.

Her eyes pool with tears again. "No. Don't say that." But there is no conviction in her voice.

"It's true. I... I can't..." The sentence dies before he even knows what he planned to say. Or maybe he does: I can't do this without him.

"Fred." Angelina's voice is, miraculously, steady. "I loved George, yes. That doesn't mean I would swap you for him. It doesn't."

Fred nods. "Of course."

Angelina sighs. "I'm going home now. I... I'll drop round The Burrow sometime and see how you're getting on." She can't seem to be able to look at George now.

As she's walking away, Fred calls after her. "Did you ever kiss him?"

Her shoulders stiffen, but she does not turn around. "No."

"He loved you, you know."

"I know."

Then she is gone.

Soon after, his family returns, and his brothers are pulling him to his feet and someone picks George up and cradles him rather than simply Levitating the body, because they can't bear to let him go, and Fred wants to struggle back to his twin but there are too many arms around him.

They guide him out into the Entrance Hall, through the great doors, into the open air and through the gates, and then the tightness in his chest becomes yet tighter as he Apparates, and then he is home.

(But it will never be home again.)

He keeps his eyes always on his brother's body, following Percy as he carries George into the little side room off the sitting room and lays him on the floor there. Fred sits down beside George and reaches for his twin's fingers again. He doesn't understand how they can still comfort him when George is gone, but they do.

George is gone.

"Fred," Percy murmurs, sounding close to tears. "Shouldn't... shouldn't you go to bed? You haven't slept all day."

He shakes his head wordlessly, and mercifully Percy does not press the point but leaves him. Then Ginny slips into the room for a while, wraps her arms around him and rests her chin on his head. He can feel hot tears dripping into his hair.

"Sorry," she whispers, but she doesn't explain what she is apologising for, and Fred cannot bring himself to ask her. "Sorry..."

After a while she leaves, too, and Fred watches as the warm rosy light filtering in through the curtains darkens to deep purple and then vanishes. His family have gone upstairs: perhaps to sleep yet more, or more likely to cry into their pillows until the morning comes.

Fred lights his wand and stares at his brother. George's eyes are open still, staring at the ceiling, and it is easy enough to pretend that he is just resting, deep in thought. Fred curls up beside him, slipping an arm around the body, and watches the changing patterns of light on the white-plastered ceiling. But he does not sleep.

George's eyes stay open. So do Fred's.

A/N: I hope you enjoyed the first chapter, and please leave a review!

~Butterfly