Sometimes

A/N: Well, I started thinking, there are so many George-centric, post DH fics now, what about Fred's point of view? I don't know if anyone else has written a story like this, but, like most of my ideas, it ran away with me and became this rather short one-shot.

xXx

This place he's gone, it's different than the places he used to know. Some things are the same, but only sometimes. Tonks is here, and Lupin, and they wander together, hand in hand, both with tears glittering almost violently in their eyes. But Fred doesn't feel like crying.

Sometimes, Lupin reaches out to him, and his eyes soften, the folds under them still grey, like his hair, like they always were. Sometimes, Fred goes to him, and Lupin rests a hand on his shoulder and then Tonks hugs him and they seem to be comforting him, but he doesn't know why.

Dumbledore is here too, and sometimes, when Fred sees him talking to Sirius or Snape, his eyes twinkle just like they always did when he would catch Fred-

Fred doesn't know what he was caught doing, doesn't remember. He remembers people, he recognizes people from Hogwarts, like Colin Creevey, the annoying kid with the camera, always snapping pictures of Harry, and that complete berk Crabbe from Slytherin, who hung around with Malfoy. He recognizes Lavender Brown, who used to date Ron, with her soft brown eyes and hair to match, wearing a pale purple dress. Everything, brown and purple. It's like her name was some kind of particularly horrible, dual-chromatic curse her parents bestowed upon her when she was born.

She comes up to him and lays a hand on his arm, looking deep into his eyes. It's obvious she expects to see something there, but he has no idea what.

"Cry," she tells him, but Fred doesn't know what he's supposed to cry for.

Sometimes, Fred thinks he has forgotten things. He looks down at his jumper and sees the large "G" knitted into it, and wonders why. Sometimes, he catches flashes of things in his memory that he doesn't quite understand, like the explosion of fireworks and huddling behind a tapestry and laughing with someone. Someone with hair as brightly orange as his own.

Sometimes, he thinks it is one of his brothers, but he can tell even by the brief glimpses he gets that it is not Bill or Charlie or Percy or Ron. Sometimes, Fred remembers other things, things that don't make him smile like the memory of fireworks and laughing, because even though he doesn't understand it, he knows it was happy.

Sometimes, he remembers splashes of blood and screaming, and a dark blot in the midst of the Weasley hair he can't identify, and Fred fingers his own ear and tries to figure it all out.

And sometimes, Fred thinks he might know what, or who, to cry for after all.