"FRED! GEORGE! GET DOWN HERE THIS INSTANT," Snickers escaped the through fingers tightly pressed to our mouths, "I WON'T TELL YOU AGAIN! GET. DOWN. HERE. NOW!" We exchanged glances and grinned, crawling out from underneath our beds and sidling towards the door. Barely stifling giggles, we braved the stairs, gaining enough composure to plaster 'butter wouldn't melt' looks onto our faces.

"Yes Mummy?" We said, in unison. Mum fumed.

"Don't 'yes Mummy' me!" She fumed, over the sobs of our younger brother, "What on earth did you think you were doing?"

"Well," he said, "We were peeling the potatoes-"

"-Like you said-" I continued,

"-and then Ron came over-"

"-and started annoying us-"

"-and then-"

"-somehow-"

"-the potato peeler lodged itself up his nose."

"Wh-wh-?" stuttered Mum, disconcerted, though liable to explode again "Why? You could have seriously hurt-!"

"Mum! Mum, it's Ok!" He said, "It's not like it was the sharp end-"

"NOT LIKE IT WAS THE SHARP END!"

Bet the tosser knows exactly what he's putting me through. Bet it's a right laugh for him. Honestly- I wouldn't be surprised. He was like that, see.

"Don't. He wouldn't want you to think like that."

Bullshit. Don't give me that! Don't tell me what he would have wanted. Don't tell me how to think. Who the hell could have known what he wanted or what he would have thought better than I do?

I'm…I don't know. I'm, I, me….that's the thing, it was always us. We were never separate entities. Like fish-and-chips, bread-and-butter. One without the other is all the plainer in the other's absence. It's disconcerting, like losing a limb. I keep going to jerk my head to the right, where he'd stand, wait for him to pull no punches and pull out the punch-line.

And then I have to do it.

Because Fred isn't there.

I go to bounce off him, or wait for him to bounce off me. I wait for someone to finish my sentences or else I wait to finish of his. But they never come.

And when I laugh, it's like half a harmony. I can still hear him, but not properly. I hear him like an echo down a corridor; there and yet not there.

It's funny how it's only now I feel like half a man. I've never been my own man, now I'm even less so. And now I've got to run a bloody joke shop. Alone. It's my life that's the joke. I've spent just under two decades as a double act and am now perusing a less than successful solo career. I can't come up with any new ideas for products. Headless hats, skiving snack boxes…that stuff just isn't funny. Not anymore. I keep getting these half-formed flashes of inspiration and then nothing.

It's like I'm waiting for somebody to finish my-

A/N: Not much to say. Reviews would be nice. :D