Harry Potter Oneshots

George Weasley - Broken Families, Healing Memories

A wail ripped out of my throat without my consent, and I'm going down down down. I can feel the hot trails of tears running down my face, and there was nothing I could do to stop them. I didn't even know if I wanted to stop them. I can't deny this as a dream, I can taste my tears, they've woken me like an antidote I didn't want to take. Their saltiness is like a poison, it burns, everything burns, everything hurts and aches and I'm spiraling down down down, until I can't tell right from left, up from down, and white from black, until everything is mixed into me, and my being, because I'm alive, but my other half isn't.

I don't know when consciousness changed to sleep and dreams, but I'm suddenly walking down Hogwarts. I'm in my second year, Dora is walking right by me in her seventh year. Two boys in ginger are tumbling down the hallway in boisterous laughter ahead of us.

It was the day I met the two Weasley twins, who changed my life each in different ways. I was so much more innocent when I was younger. I dreamed of fairytale endings, princes on horsebacks, happiness for the rest of my life. I had no clue about the impending doom in the coming years. How naive I was back then.

The twins had fallen on me that day, and have never left my side since, at least after Dora had given them a scolding. Dora never left me either, so when I had told her about my not-so-small crush on George Weasley in my 5th year, she expressed her mild distaste, but was happy the twins treated me fairly. By my 7th year, my family were familiar with the Weasleys, and Dora approved of the twins more than she did before.

It wasn't long before I was brought back from my memories by my tears. I didn't want to wake up, but I had to. At some point, I had to realize those dreams happened once upon a time, and now I need to come back to the present and face what it has in store, whether I wanted to or not. There was no sense of closure, only the empty feeling of sadness. I didn't want to cry anymore, I just wanted to exist. I didn't want to remember, I wanted to forget. I wanted to find a friend, I wanted to talk to someone, but who? I couldn't go to George. Even if we're friends, I couldn't add my pain to his. So who else?

The Hufflepuff Common Room was cold to me now, and I felt the need to leave, but a guilt weighed me down and I hesitated at the door. It felt like I was leaving something behind, that if I were to step outside, I would be dishonoring my sister's memory. Memories that I didn't want to relive, but defined so much of who I was.

Would I ever stop crying either? I still felt exhausted. Everything was eating me from the inside out, and I dropped by the entrance of the Common Room, curling in on myself. This isn't fair, where was the happily ever after I searched for in the winding hours of the day when I was younger? All the imaginations of a soulmate, the dreams of having my first kiss taken by the perfect guy, I wanted to return to those times, because then I wouldn't have to realize how cruel life is to take something I treasured more than anything else.

I acknowledged however, that I needed to get away from my own mind. It was toxic; if I didn't stop, I was going to take a darker turn, and I wasn't like that. Dora wouldn't want me to be end up this way, I wouldn't want her to act this way had it ended differently. I ran out, even when my self-imposed guilt told me to stop running from something I loved.

My feet again, moved on their own, and I found myself in front of Gryffindor Tower this time. Gryffindor Tower had less memories of my family, but there were memories of friends that I would never see again. I realized rather guiltily that even when I knew it was wrong, I unconsciously wanted to stick with George, I wanted to be by him, to stick with him, to know that at least he was ok, and just feel his presence. That's why my feet left me here, at the Gryffindor Common Room.