comic foil: n. One of two characters who create comedy by playing off differing personalities in a double act.
In that moment, crouching over Fred, there was nothing.
Nobody else existed, the battle didn't exist, his mother's tears, his father's shouting, all of them crowded around his twin - nothing.
Losing his ear had been okay. He could cope with that, and it made an interesting story anyway. Girls liked scars - he supposed it was a scar, anyway - and he could still hear. So it was no harm done.
Humor was a defense mechanism, it had always been. It cast light on the chaos of the war, so the pair of them had always been careful to keep a wisecrack up their proverbial sleeves in case things looked too desperate.
But his twin was on the floor, bleeding in a way that could never be funny. His twin - the double of himself who was so similar and so different in a thousand subtle ways, closer than a brother, because their heartbeats had always echoed each other's. He watched the life drain out of Fred's face and body, and felt himself dying as well. George wanted nothing more then than to fling himself next to his body and...
It hadn't been supposed to be this way. Percy had just come back, and though there was battle, and people were dying, they'd always known Harry would win. Then they'd all be a family. Death had always been all around them, but it wasn't supposed to be able to break their ranks, not this closely.
There was a ghost of a grin dying on his lips.
He closed Fred's eyes with a shaking hand.