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It took two months after the battle for George to speak.
Two months after his world collapsed, two months after he was split in half, two months after his world lost colour and he forgot how to breathe.
He lay in his bed staring at the space that would never be filled again and waited.
He waited for Fred to jump up from some hidden corner and proclaim it his greatest trick. Georgie, you didn’t think you could get rid of me that easily did you?
It took a raven-haired boy to walk into his room, sit on the floor and say “It doesn’t hurt” for him to consider speaking again
Despite his confusion, George didn’t move.
He didn’t ask what Harry meant. He didn’t ask why he had come, or how he could look at George without seeing a ghost. His silence, however, didn’t deter Harry.
“Being dead I mean. Even in limbo, which is as far as I got, it’s warm and peaceful and nothing hurts.”
His voice was thick from disuse, grave and low and unlike anything he had heard echoing back and finishing his sentences when he spoke “... what do you mean?”
He sat and listened to the tale of hiding, forests, and running. He heard of basilisks and fire that burned hotter than any other.
He listened to the boy who took a killing curse to the chest and made the choice to come back and make sure the job was done.
He heard of Horcruxes and darker magic than he had ever imagined.
After his last words had hung on the air for a few moments, Harry began to leave.
And for the first time in two months, George didn’t want to be left alone, not yet.
“Do you think he would have stayed? If he had the choice, would he have come back?”
He heard Harry pause his movement, half-opening the door.
“Yeah, George, if he had the choice I know he would have stayed.”
He heard the door finish opening and steps walking out.
Despite the deep ache running through him, he didn’t stop Harry from leaving.
Harry didn’t come back to his room. He didn’t hear his voice flowing up the Burrow or see his shadow walk by the door. It took a few days for him to whisper to his mum as she brought him food to ask where the boy had gone, ignoring the tears he was sure were sprouting from her eyes as he listened to her response, “Travelling” she said. “The poor boy doesn’t seem to realize he can stop.”
He knows she desperately wants him to keep talking but just as quickly as the words began they stop and he sinks back into his thoughts. He pictured Harry wandering, seeing beaches, and jungles, sights he could never experience in Britain. The idea of Harry travelling didn’t fill him with the same dread it seemed to fill his mother with.
The first letter came a while later. It was two weeks to the day Harry had left when the owl flew into his room through the window Ginny had thrown open at some point. The owl looked haggard and practically landed on his head. He wanted to ignore it, just like he had ignored every other letter, but something about the familiar chicken scratch on the front of the envelope made him reach out and pry it from the bird.
The letter was filled with tales of Spain, the festivals he went to and the food that was so different from anything he had had before. How he had a conversation with a man who knew next to no English but somehow they came to an agreement that he could stay in the man's family's spare bedroom in exchange for working on his farm.
He spent the weeks working tirelessly and learning everything he could from the small town he found himself in beginning with translation charms, although he was still trying to learn the language. He writes how he’s decided this is how he wants to travel. Stay wherever he wants for however long and learn as much as he possibly can both magical and muggle in exchange for whatever work he can do. It's funny how not fearing for your life makes learning desirable, not just something that’s taking away from surviving.
By the time he reaches the end of the letter and he’s greeted with the scrawled Harry , George realizes his lips had quirked up, not a smile, not quite, it was still too jagged and raw, but it was something. He should probably respond, right? He didn’t have any parchment but maybe Fred-
George shoved the letter under his pillow and buried himself under the sheets.
The letters kept coming. Sometimes there’d be only a week in between letters, sometimes as many as three. But without fail, they would come and through it all George began to function again, he would go down and join his family for at least one meal and slowly they stopped looking at him like he was half of a whole.
George didn’t respond to the first, or the second, or the third letter. But finally, when the fourth came he managed to pen a response through shaky hands and a weak grip to ask where Harry planned to go next and more importantly to make sure he didn’t stop writing.
Harry didn’t shy away from talking about the war, not to George at least like so many others did, he talked about the nightmares, the guilt of surviving when so many others didn’t, and how he didn’t know how to exist without something to fight. It feels like I was born for a war. My whole life has just been surviving, and fighting. What do you do with a weapon after it's served its purpose? How do you stop it from rusting away?
George didn’t have an answer.
But he wrote about the good things too. About all the people he met, the novelty of walking through a crowded street without a soul recognizing him or trying to touch him, he wrote about the stars, and how he was teaching himself to be at peace in the quiet.
By early November George builds up the courage to walk through the doors of Wheezes and promptly regrets doing it alone but can’t imagine who he could stomach being here with.
The next month and a half leading up to the holidays George goes to the shop every day for a few hours. He puzzled through their inventory, which was littered with adapted defence products, it had turned into more of a war shop than a joke shop.
Christmas came and passed without sight of Harry in the Burrow, George didn’t even know if he was back in the country until Ron made a light comment about him staying with Teddy and Andromeda for a few days before leaving again. His relief overshadowed his disappointment that he wouldn’t have to address whatever he felt like he was forming with Harry. What was he supposed to say to the boy who had become his lifeline? His reminder that there was still a life outside of his pain? He didn’t want to damage whatever was going on especially as the grief that had finally begun to ease came back in full force when staring at the stockings and realizing Freds would never be filled again.
The Burrow was the quietest it's ever been yet it was the most suffocating it had ever been.
There was a ghost in the house, no one knew if they should address or ignore it.
On boxing day neither of their parents said a word when all of the siblings went to the nearest town and got pissed in the little pub. For the first time in ages, they told stories, laughed, and cried then kept drinking together.
He felt a crack that had formed and deepened over the past few days ease together again as he looked over the crowd of redheads that had overrun the pub.
Only when they were walking back, all way past the point of even considering apparating, did Harry get brought up. George was walking with Ginny and Ron while the other three were leading the way. Ron said something about how auror training was going to suck in the morning and a drunken confession of how weird it was to be doing it without Harry, how weird it was to do anything without Harry. And George who knew better than anyone else how hard it was to learn how to balance on your own asked why Harry decided not to join, because even though he had told him a lot of things they hadn’t touched on that or Ginny.
“He said he didn’t want his life to just be the war and being an auror felt like an extension of it. And I get it I do, the war only became real to me in fifth year, it had been real to him his whole life, he shouldn’t be expected to save anyone else but Merlin doesn’t change how weird it is to not have him by my side. But at least Dean’s not a total knobhead as a partner”
The conversation drifted on until Ron had some epiphany he had to talk to Charlie about, leaving Ginny and him alone.
They carried on whichever topic they had landed on before Ginny abruptly changed it.
“We tried to date again, right after everything. Harry and I. But over that year we both changed so much when it was over it was like we were strangers who knew each other in another life. I think we were both too tired, too destroyed to try and learn each other again.”
“Do you think you’ll try again? When he’s back?”
“I doubt it. I’ll always love him and the idea of him got me through some of the worst times with the Carrows but through it all, I think he changed from being a person to being a trophy in my eyes and when we were finally back together we each had new edges that didn’t fit.”
They were silent for a few more moments before Ginny voiced what had started this conversation. “Do you think I drove him away? That he’s not here because of me? Ron doesn’t think so but he’s also been complaining that when Harry does write it sounds like he’s avoiding some things. ”
George didn’t voice that Harry never sounded like that in his letters, or that he even sent him letters to begin with, and instead said “No Gin, I doubt it’s because of you. I think he just wanted to give us all space and be around Teddy. Even though he’s practically been a part of our family for years, he’s still… well he’s still an orphan and I think he wanted to make sure Teddy got to experience a proper Christmas.”
“Teddy, right, he- is it weird how easy it is to forget Harry’s an orphan? Or how shi-” her eyes drifted to George before quickly changing the sentence she was going to say “How he didn’t even know he was a wizard until he was eleven?”
He didn’t call her out on the change and instead pictured Harry. How magic practically rolled off of him and how loyal he was to those he cared about, George didn’t think about why that type of loyalty had to grow in a house where there were bars on his window, “He hides it well.”
There was silence then a quiet “Yeah I guess he does”
The next morning Molly seemed to make breakfast extra loud and ignored every groan from her children as they stumbled down the steps.
Percy, looking the worst George had ever seen him, sat across from him and despite the hangover reeking off of him told George he had something he wanted to talk about. Through stunted words and consistent insistence he wasn’t trying to replace Fred, Percy offered to help him with the shop, he felt like he was suffocating at the ministry, and he said he knew that he wouldn’t be able to help much with the invention aspect, but the rest, the books, the inventory, the talks with investors, that he could do.
Maybe before George would have been mad, he would have yelled and accused Percy of doing what he swore he wasn’t but this George saw how much Percy was trying and was selfishly relieved he wouldn’t have to do it alone, so with a promise to talk more about the logistics later while they both weren’t actively sweating out booze, George agreed to the offer.
The first letter that came from Harry after the holidays had a quick apology at the beginning that he didn’t see him or his family besides Ron while he was in the country but he just needed to focus on Teddy. Needed to make sure the little boy knew how loved he was, needed the reassurance that he hadn’t left another orphan with another Dursley family, needed to know it was ok he was focusing on himself for now.
George's mind drifted back to the bars, and how skinny Harry was at the beginning of each year. How hollow he looked at the train station when he had to leave with them.
Yeah, he understood why Harry needed that reassurance.
Something about the holidays must have made Harry sentimental because he went to India next. Travelled the whole country trying to find traces of the Potter family. Here he learned how to cook traditional foods, realized how pitiful his spice tolerance was and worked to build it up so he could truly enjoy the cuisine. He learned about the history of parseltongue in India, how revered it was and he learned parselmagic from ancient texts the locals were excited to finally have translated even though they were only useful to those who could speak the language.
He mentioned one of the legends the locals told him, a story about a young girl who could speak the tongues of serpents, who could fly on the backs of dragons and dance in fire made of snakes. Harry decided one of these days he’d visit Charlie and see if the legend was true, that parselmouths could be understood if not speak to dragons. Would have been nice to learn that before trying to outrun a dragon on a wooden broom.
And George, George begins to write back. Earnestly this time not just the half-scribbled notes he had in the past to make sure Harry didn’t stop, but actual multi-page letters like Harry had been sending him for months.
Somehow the holidays eased something in him and between opening the shop with Percy, looking for a new flat close to it- because the thought of living with his mother for another day was driving him mad but living where Fred and him had dreamed about their life was another form of torture- and talking to Angelina and Lee remembering Fred, not just mourning him, he realized how much he knew Harry yet Harry didn’t know much about him. Him without Fred. And he found that he desperately wanted Harry to know him.
So he wrote, he wrote about how Harry's letters had saved him, and how sometimes he felt so guilty that he was living while Fred never could that it paralyzed him for the rest of the day but he was learning to breathe again and that had to mean something. He couldn’t imagine Fred would want him to be in grief for the rest of his life so he was trying.
The next of Harry's letters came quickly, only five days after George had sent his own, and the tangle of nerves that had replaced his stomach for those five days eased as he opened the thick envelop and realized he hadn't broken some unspoken rule, hadn’t ruined whatever this was by responding.
His letter was mostly the same as his others, Harry told him about his travels, the work he was doing, and in the end, he responded to everything George had sent him. He said he started writing to George specifically, not any other Weasley because he looked how Harry felt and he remembered how it was after Sirius fell and how alone he felt, how much he couldn’t talk about it but still wanted someone there.
He apologetically confessed it was also because he was practically certain George wouldn’t respond, at least not for a while and Harry felt some kind of solace in the knowledge he wouldn’t have to answer well-meaning questions. Hermione said writing is supposed to help with PTSD, that’s what she thinks I have, no matter how many times I tell her it would be pretty hard to make it out of a war without being changed, she suggested a journal or something but as I’m sure you can imagine I wasn’t too keen on the idea. So I started writing to you.
Some part of him thinks he should feel a little peeved at being treated like a glorified diary, but the other, larger part of him can’t bring himself to care. He’d been around Harry long enough to know the boy's first instinct to the question ‘Are you ok?’ is to say he’s fine, no matter how not fine he is so if he needed to write to him without any expectation, any need to lie, George could live with that. Besides it gave him an understanding of Harry George was realizing very few people had.
In February Ron and Hermione went to visit Harry for a week in Kolhapur where Harry had spent a bit of time back in January and fell in love with. He wanted to ask to join them, but he knew he didn’t have the right to. They’d always have a bond that he would never belong in.
They come back and seem more at ease than when they left. Seeing Harry alive and apparently doing well calmed them and he wanted to pelt them with questions but the part of him that wanted to keep their letters private, something for just the two of them to hold on to made him choose not to.
They kept writing and George found himself opening up to Harry in a way he never had even with Fred. Because with Fred they knew each other so well he didn’t have to put it into words to be understood. But with Harry, he had to choose to open up, he had to choose to trust him.
With the weather warming, Harry was replacing the memories of hiding for his life between trees with ones of falling asleep looking at the stars and laughing with a group of backpackers he met in Thailand and joined for a few weeks.
George did his best to ignore the flare of jealousy that erupted in his stomach when Harry wrote about an Ian way more than the other backpackers.
He knew Harry out of everyone deserved to let loose and if that entailed late walks, skinny dipping, and Merlin knows what else with Ian . Who was George to say anything?
If he smiled and the tightness in his gut eased when the next letter came in April saying he had moved on from that group and had made his way to Brazil no one besides George needed to know.
Leading up to the anniversary of the battle George threw himself into work, he ignored every glance Percy gave him and spent every hour he could either helping customers or inventing new products, he even unpacked his last few boxes in the new flat and tried not to sit still for longer than a minute.
It seemed Harry had the same restlessness, or avoidance technique as George did because he moved from town to town faster than he ever had, barely staying for more than a night in each place. I’ve had no less than five requests from the ministry to give speeches, unveil a new memorial, or cut some fucking ribbon as if to remind everyone it’s actually over. As if I don’t have days where I wake up clutching my wand not remembering where I am, or that I don’t have to ward the shit out every room I sleep in, like every headache doesn’t send me into a panic that he’s back. Is it selfish that I just want to mourn this day alone? That for once I don’t want to be a figurehead who gets marched out when the time is right but ignored when I’m an inconvenience.
Sometimes it's hard to remember how much Harry has done for their world, he’s barely had a second to breathe since he was eleven. So no, George doesn’t think it’s selfish that he doesn’t want to give them anymore. And he writes just that.
On the actual anniversary, George doesn't open the shop and gives himself the day to yell and scream and miss Fred more than he thought possible. His family invited him to visit the grave, but he couldn’t, he couldn’t be around anyone right now. He suspected that wasn’t completely true but the one person he thought he could stand was kilometres upon kilometres away and dealing with his own shit George couldn’t consider begging him to come back.
Harry's letter arrived late into the night when George was halfway through a bottle of firewhiskey that Angelina had brought over a few weeks ago. He forced himself to put the bottle down and use the rest of his focus to unravel the words laid before him.
This one was shorter than his usual letters. He was making his way up through South America, with the goal of eventually hitting North America and going all the way up to Alaska. He said that he bought a muggle camera, the ‘for Colin Creevey’ went unsaid, and muggle because as cool as the moving pictures were there was something peaceful to Harry about just capturing one single moment in time.
The letter came with a picture, that he hadn’t noticed in his initial drunken investigation. It was of a campfire that took the shape of birds, magpies, and when he flipped over the picture and read what was on the back he couldn’t help but let out a bitter laugh. They tell stories through fire here, it takes a crazy amount of control that I’m trying but mostly failing at, it seemed like something Fred would like.
Yeah, yeah it was something Fred would like, telling stories through fire the theatrical bastard he was. He held the picture in his hand for a long time before succumbing to sleep.
The next day he went to the shop first thing, he enlarged the photo and hung it above the plaque he put up when they first reopened.
Starring at the picture and the words In Memoriam of Fred Weasley Who’s Causing Mischief in the Next Adventure , he doesn’t feel like he’s dying.
He may never laugh as easily as he did before, or look at the world in the same colours he used to but he feels like that may be ok. That he might be ok, and for the first time in a long time, he actually believed it.
The next seven months pass in a blur. While Harry is learning how to drive stick in Idaho, feel the earth like the Cree do in Saskatchewan, and the secrets of northern British Columbia from a park ranger's daughter, George debates what to do with the flat above the shop. After long talks with Percy and his dad, they ultimately decide to renovate it and add another level to the sales floor, George can never picture himself living there and right now it's only serving as a painful reminder of what once was. This means that he needs to clean out every square inch of the place. He finds old notes, forgotten trinkets, little things that would have sent him into a tailspin of grief but now just make him bitterly smile.
When it’s emptied, George doesn’t feel the sadness he was expecting. He feels nostalgic and he wishes it were different but it's not and he knows that.
It takes a while but just in time for the holiday rush they’ve finished the second floor and opened it to the public.
This year as Christmas looms closer and closer George knows he will see Harry. His mum had strongarmed Andromeda, Harry, and by extension Teddy into spending Christmas Eve to Boxing Day at the Burrow only flooing home to sleep. Originally she was convinced they could cram everyone into the house but ultimately agreed to the compromise.
George knows he will see Harry and he can’t help but be incredibly nervous even though he feels more whole and better than he has in a long time there’s still an uncertainty that their written ease won't translate to in person.
When Harry comes through the floo on Christmas Eve George's first thought is wow . His second thought is this visit won't help whatsoever with his jealousy the next time Harry writes about a backpacker or park ranger's daughter.
Harry doesn’t look like the tired, sad, broken boy that walked into Georges room to tell him dying doesn’t hurt. No, his shoulders have filled out, his already dark skin has tanned to a deeper, richer colour, his hair is slightly longer and curlier, healthier than it was, it seems he finally learned how to somewhat tame it and he’s sprouted a few inches, still shorter than himself but George thinks he managed to pass Percy.
He carries himself with a confidence he never did before and looks more alive than George thinks Harry has ever been.
George shakes himself out of his trance while Harry is dusting off the soot and hesitantly, more hesitantly than he has done anything in his life breaks the silence “Hey”
Harry smiles at him and wow has his eyes always been that green?
“Hey”
Harry goes to say more but then Andromeda steps through with Teddy who immediately reaches for Harry when he spots him, as Harry is taking him into his arms, Molly descends into the room with a flurry of movement then so do Ron and Hermione all eager to greet the boy who is overtaking Georges thoughts.
But even in the chaos, even while being pulled in a hundred different directions Harry finds George's eyes and smiles in a way that pierces his heart.
They don’t talk one-on-one for the rest of the night. Everyone is enraptured by Harry, and Harry obliges. He tells story after story of his travels and shows pieces of magic he has learned, distantly George wonders if he mastered the fire storytelling, all while holding Teddy, who changed his hair to match Harry's artfully messy locks, tight to his chest. Now and then Teddy would utter sounds that got closer and closer to ‘Uncle Hawwy’ throughout the night.
Most of the stories George had heard before, some he didn’t but the majority he recognized. They were filled with the jokes and dry comments he looked forward to. Yet, the stories seemed almost subdued to what he had heard, he was leaving out details he knew some wouldn’t want to hear. Like the reason why he scaled the mountain in Mexico- to remind himself he was alive- or how learning about snakes in India made him resent how he was treated in his second year that much more. As George looked around the table at the faces of curiosity, he realized no one else knew these stories, no one knew the details he was leaving out. Ron and Hermione knew a few but not nearly as many as George.
He tried not to feel too content about this realisation, that he had a part of Harry no one else did.
At the end of the night when the trio was making their way back through the floo, Andromeda holding a sleeping Teddy after Harry claimed he was not confident enough in his flooing ability to do it with his Godson, George caught his eye again and Harry said: “I’ll see you tomorrow, yeah?”
“I’ll be here”
With the same smile that pierced his heart a few hours ago, Harry steps through the floo behind Andromeda.
Laying in his old room George tried to ease his racing heart and figure out just when he had fallen so deeply in love with Harry bloody Potter.
The next morning Harry finds him sitting outside on the porch holding Fred's old stocking.
“Hey”
He managed to put a tired smile on his face as Harry sat beside him, shoulders pressed together.
“Hey”
Harry saw the stocking but didn’t make any comment, not even a pitying look just: “Is there anything I can do?”
“Just be here”
“I can do that”
They sat like that in silence for a while, before George voiced the question that had been on his mind since seeing Harry with Teddy because George couldn’t really fathom Harry leaving Teddy just because.
“Why did you decide to travel last year?”
Harry's shoulders, one still pressed tightly against Georges, rise as if bracing himself for an interrogation. George immediately wants to pull the question back, wants to bury it beneath jokes and illusions until Harry forgets he even asked it but then his shoulders drop, and he begins to talk and all George can do is listen.
“I don’t know, I just needed something to change I guess. At Remus’ funeral something someone said, I don't even remember who it was, stuck with me. They said how he would want us to be happy, that he would want us to be doing what we loved and to live. That night when I was lying in bed just staring at the ceiling I realized I didn’t know how to live. I didn’t know what it meant to just be alive outside of a war. Then I thought more and realized I didn’t even know who I was outside of the war.”
Harry paused for a few moments here and George lets him. This isn’t a moment to force conversation, this is one to accept the silence.
“As the weeks passed people just kept looking at me like some kind of hero, like I did something noble , like I didn’t kill a man- and I know he barely qualified as a person by that point but it still just felt wrong that I was being applauded for it, like they hadn’t all expected me to do it my whole life. With every congratulation and thank you I just kept feeling like I was dying and I decided I needed to leave. The day I came to talk to you was the day I submitted my last testimony and I just packed a bag, booked the first international portkey I could get, said goodbye to everyone, and the next morning I was gone.”
“And mum let you?”
At that, Harry let out a snort: “Barely, I think if I was even a fraction less determined than I was she would’ve locked me in the Burrow.”
“Seems like something she would do.”
George peeled his eyes away from Harry and looked at the clouds instead. “At least you knew what you needed to do. It took me months before I could even think”
His words hung in the air, floated around them with the heavy truth that George had been no more than a corpse for a long time. “Well we're a depressing pair aren’t we?” George couldn't help but laugh at the dry humour George hadn’t gotten to experience in person for so long.
And without thinking about it much, without remembering that this was his little sister's ex, the saviour of the wizarding world, or that he was leaving again in a few days, George dropped his head to rest on Harry's shoulder and said: “Yeah we are.”
Christmas dinner passed, it was a little lighter than last year, a little louder, a little less like everyone was walking on eggshells. If he sat a little closer to Harry than he should or smiled a bit too brightly watching him with Teddy, no one commented.
Boxing day the siblings turned their night of desperation last year into the beginning of a tradition, this time dragging along Fleur, Penelope, Hermione and Harry after Andromeda had to practically tear Teddy out of his arms and remind Harry he was still a teenager, who was allowed to have fun and wasn’t that a cruel reminder? How much Harry had gone through yet he hadn’t even cracked 20.
They all cramped into the tiny pub and began their night of alternating who was buying the next round. This year they felt less desperate, less hysterical.
He watched as Harry taught Hermione and Ron a drinking game he picked up in Peru that was way too complicated for George to follow especially if he was expected to focus on anything that was coming out of Harry’s lips without his mind wandering to what else he wanted to do to those lips.
He must not have hidden his smitten look very well, not that he was trying, when Ginny slid into the seat beside him.
“So, you and Harry seem rather cozy”
George took a long drink from his pint “We’ve been… writing” It sounded too juvenile, too relaxed for whatever they were doing, how George felt about the younger boy but it was all he could bring himself to say, still painfully aware Harry was her ex.
Ginny armed with a smirk and way too much amusement behind her eyes responded “Writing? For how long dear brother?”
Feeling a bit more at ease seeing there was no judgement pouring from Ginny he kept going “Yeah, pretty much since he left-” Seeing her eyebrows shoot up he changed course “-what?”
“Since… since he left?” at George's nod she continued “I’m just surprised I guess, he barely wrote to any of us for the first six months, mum was halfway to sending out a search party for him.”
He glanced back to Harry as the other boy was throwing his head back laughing while Ron was attempting and appeared to be failing at whatever task the drinking game required of him. “I didn’t know that.”
He could feel Ginny’s eyes jumping in between him and Harry.
“I’m happy for you too. You both deserve someone who gets it.”
Despite his curiosity, he doesn’t ask what she means by ‘gets it’, maybe because he already knows. They both carry a darkness in them the others don’t. “We’ve just been writing Gin”
“Can you really look at me and tell me you don’t want anything else to happen? Given the way Harry is around you, don’t even try and tell me he doesn’t want it either.”
Sighing he doesn’t try, they both know he’d be lying. “He leaves tomorrow”
“That doesn’t mean he won't be back”
They’re walking home and it’s all George can do to stop himself from wrapping an arm around Harry, pull him close to his side and remember that Harry is here. He is alive and he is living but he doesn’t. Because Harry has more to learn, more to see, and George needs to stay here, stay with Percy and Wheezes and keep going in a world without Fred.
They’re standing in the kitchen. “You’ll keep writing?”
Harry nods “I’ll keep writing.”
“Good”
He watched Harry step through the floo.
After that Christmas Harry would visit Teddy at least once a month normally when he was moving between countries but sometimes just because and George did his best to swallow down his jealousy because it was ridiculous to be jealous of a toddler. He’s had to restart too many letters where he asked Harry to come back.
He refuses to be another person demanding something from Harry. Because Harry will always give, he will run himself dry if his family ask for something, he won't say no he’s never been able to. So George is almost positive, that if he asked Harry to come back, he would, even if being in Britain would kill him. So he doesn’t ask, he doesn’t bring it up, he’ll wait, he’ll let Harry find himself again, and when… if Harry comes back, he’ll do something. Because growing up with as many siblings as he did he learned to grab the things he wanted before they were gone and he would be damned if someone else grabbed Harry.
He does not hit his brothers over the head if they ask a few too many questions about Harry, he does not.
Harry keeps writing just like he promised he would the holidays again seem to change how they write just a little. Instead of just focusing on the grand tales of his travels and the war itself, Harry starts writing a little more about his past. About the cold nights at the Dursleys, how they fostered a loneliness that never quite left him. He writes about how he practically became a murderer at 11, what it was like to believe he would die alone at 12, how he was terrified that it all damaged him, how some nights when he felt just a little too empty he wondered if it was because of the missing soul shard he lived the majority of his life with.
He confesses how Dumbledore had always known he’d have to die. How he’d been raised for slaughter and Harry sometimes wondered if Dumbledore left him in that house to make him more willing to die for a world he barely knew.
He admits he doesn’t think Dumbledore was bad but he wasn’t good either.
George feels a rage so profound he wishes Dumbledore was still alive solely so he could yell and make him regret ever leaving Harry in that place. Demand why he left children to fight his war.
He briefly wonders how much trouble someone could get in for leaving a present at a war hero's grave.
He doesn’t know if he says the right things, if he’s reassuring at all but he tries and he mainly thinks Harry needs someone to listen to him, to tell him he’s allowed to feel whatever he’s feeling. That it doesn’t make him bad, that it makes him human.
In March Harry ends up in Russia in a small northern village that reeks of dark magic Harry does one of the most Harry things and finds the source, a cave full of forgotten artifacts Harry guessed someone had smuggled into the country. Instead of calling for someone right away like any other sane wizard would do Harry began tackling the wards around the artifacts, nullifying the curses and the traps laid around them.
He operates on pure instinct, feeling the magic like the Cree people taught him, and focusing on containing the excess magic like he did in Asia.
When the Russian Aurors arrive they ask how long he’s been curse-breaking and when Harry says he wasn’t one they all look offended. One of them says he has an uncle working in Egypt and that he’s been looking for an apprentice. They refuse to let him leave until Harry agrees he will at least go and meet him.
I still don’t think what I did was that impressive. I mean it was just what anyone else would do right?
George can only shake his head in exasperation when he really wants to shake Harry until he realizes that no, most people wouldn’t even be able to sense magic in that way. He wanted to shake him until he realized how incredible he was, not because of what he survived but because he was so talented and humble and kind.
In the next letter, Harry concedes that Ok yeah maybe I have a knack for this. He’s working with the curse breaker Alexsei focusing on tombs which are plentiful in Egypt but tend to have the most unpredictable objects. The more ancient the more the strings of magic decay and the more unstable they become.
He’s been offered a fast-paced apprenticeship, he would have his mastery in two years and would be able to work practically anywhere with how highly the breakers from Egypt are regarded.
I think I’m going to take it. Not just because I’m good at it, but because it's mine. I feel like everything else in my life had been thrust onto me because people thought I should do it but this? This is all me.
He’s started learning Arabic and seems to be catching on quicker than he expected.
Harry thinks it's because he knows parseltongue, knowing two languages is supposed to make it easier to learn others apparently so that has to be why.
George thinks it's because Harry is way smarter than he gives himself credit for and he doesn’t do things by half. He throws himself so completely into things when he’s dedicated to them it's no wonder he ended the war.
Even though his heart clenches at the thought of Harry being gone for at least two more years, he’s happy Harry has found this. He remembers the day he and Fred realized they could turn their pranks into a business, how fulfilled he felt knowing he would be doing something he loved for the rest of his life if Harry is feeling even a fraction of what they experienced that day, George could put aside his heart and be happy for him.
He can push aside his wish that Harry’s passion was just a little safer, because who is Harry Potter if he’s not surrounded by danger?
Harry still visits Teddy every month, he’s only able to do so because of the absurd amount of magic rippling through him, George can’t think of another wizard who would be able to apparate so far just for a weekend trip.
Harry started coming by the shop while he was in the country. Sometimes with Teddy, sometimes without. Seeing Harry so much more is invigorating but it also reminds him how not casual George wants to be with Harry.
He can’t do once-a-month visits, he doesn’t want to have Harry unless he can have all of him all the time. So George learns how to be content with this level of intimacy.
And if the light smiles and lingering touches are anything to go by, Harry does the same.
In between visits they keep writing.
Harry never mentions another backpacker or park ranger's daughter, maybe because there actually isn't anyone with how busy he is or maybe Harry is giving him mercy by not telling him about them.
It's so hard for George to imagine a world where he wasn’t in love with Harry Potter that it’s hard to believe everyone else isn’t.
Time keeps passing. The shop is as successful as it has ever been, and Harry is thriving under Alexei's teaching. Alexei pushed him to become an animagus, he thought it was important for curse breakers to have every trick up their sleeve, he’s a falcon, an orange-breasted falcon.
Anyone who had seen Harry fly wasn’t even remotely surprised.
Birthdays pass, another Christmas, the Boxing Day pub trip, time keeps moving and George wonders if his heart will ever stop racing when Harry walks into a room. If he’ll ever stop instinctively looking for him or how easy it is to become enraptured by every word that falls from Harry’s mouth.
Winter turns to spring and eventually summer. For his own piece of mind, George tells himself he’s imagining the longing looks Harry gives every time he has to go back to Egypt. Not just directed at George but everything, Diagon Alley, the Burrow, and Teddy.
Somehow they’ve made it to Christmas again. They’re all sitting around the table in the Burrow when Harry asks if anyone knows someone who’s selling any property, preferably close to London.
Everything pauses before a flurry of noise erupts.
“Are you coming back?”
“Won’t you need to travel for curse-breaking?”
“Harry!”
George doesn’t say a word. He watches Harry with so much hope he feels like he’s going to burst while the younger boy quietly explains how the Gringotts London branch offered him a job. There was a section of the vaults that had been closed off since the war against Grindelwald, an experiment in new protections gone wrong interacting with ancient artifacts made the section practically a time bomb. They had no choice but to close off. The active magic had finally calmed enough and the structure reinforced that another accident wouldn’t cause the bank to completely collapse.
They suspected it would take years to piece through all of the interacting curses and hostile protections the goblins had placed before the accident and return the extensive section of the bank to its original state.
Gringotts wanted Harry to work on, if not head the project, it came as a shock to everyone that Gringotts was willing to trust such a new breaker with such an intense project but Harry came with a recommendation from practically every breaker in Egypt worth a damn and he really did owe them after the whole dragon incident: a story Charlie never failed to cheer at when it got brought up. Bill claps him on the back saying he never thought they’d dig open those vaults and Harry has to keep him updated on how it goes.
When the initial excitement died down and they all moved to the living room, George found himself sitting beside Harry again their shoulders pressed against each other and he couldn’t help himself when he asked “You’re really coming back?”
And with the same smile that had been piercing George's heart for years Harry said “Yeah, George, it’s time for me to come home”
Harry found a property east of London close to the sea. There was a backyard leading out to a forest. The cottage itself had three bedrooms, one that would be for Teddy, he had talked to Andromeda and they both decided they’d let Teddy decide who he’d live with when he was a bit older but for now, they’d do a fairly even split. As much as Andromeda tried to hide it, she was getting older and running after Teddy the little menace he could be was taking its toll on her, she didn’t hide how grateful she was for the help.
In the months leading up to Harry’s permanent move, George finds himself helping Harry move boxes and set the cottage up into an actual home.
Harry has one free week between finishing his mastery and starting at Gringotts. The first day is used to bring the last items he had collected in Egypt back to Britain, George helps him unpack the last box and looks around the cottage before landing his eyes on Harry.
“Do you want to get a drink?”
Harry’s face splits into a smile so wide it reassures George he doesn’t need to explain more what his intention is. “I thought you’d never ask.”
They’re walking back to George's flat in London after their drink had turned into hours of talking and laughing and more drinks.
They’re stumbling and laughing and George wouldn’t trade the past years for anything if it meant he gets to be this close to Harry all the time, with how well he fits under his arm George can’t help but think this was inevitable.
All of a sudden the younger boy turns and their lips are on each other and all George can think is Harry Harry Harry.
His lips are warm and it's not what he imagined, it's so much better, his hands are running through Harry’s curls and he feels like he needs to re-teach himself how to breathe.
The next morning he wakes up with a weight on his chest and hair tickling his chin. He hopes moments like these will never end.
They start showing up to Sunday dinners together and everyone is giving them knowing looks, they don’t bother to hide anything, it felt like everything had been leading up to this moment.
His mum looks like she’s about to cry and George makes a joke that she can finally say Harry’s her favourite child now that he’s officially a part of the family.
Ron and Hermione pull him aside at one point to promise an immense amount of pain if he ever hurt Harry. George who thinks he should probably be offended his little brother is giving him the shovel talk can only say he has no intention of letting Harry go.
It's Harry’s birthday when he shows up at George's flat with two bottles of rum asking to get pissed drunk. And who is he to deny the one thing Harry requested after refusing to acknowledge his birthday in any other way?
Hours later when they’re sitting on the little balcony overlooking muggle London, Harry finishes the majority of his bottle while George has only had a few sips of his, they finally speak, Harry being shockingly coherent given how much he’s had.
“I’m officially older than they were when they died. My parents” His voice sounds more jagged and broken than it had in a long time and it takes George a few seconds to realize what the other boy has said.
“I’m sorry Harry I didn-”
“They were just kids, we were all just kids.”
Again George finds himself hating Albus Dumbledore no matter how warranted his hatred is or is not.
George wraps an arm around Harry and pulls him securely to his side, he can’t do much in this moment, but he can do this. He can remind Harry that he’s there, they’re here together.
“Do you think I was an accident?” Unable to keep the slightly horror-stricken look off his face George can only turn to Harry with wide eyes “No really think about it, they were what 20? In the middle of a war. You cannot look at me and convince me they planned that.”
The words hang and then they're laughing at the absurdity of the thought because yeah it’s probably true and sometimes all you can do is laugh.
And he knows that Harry’s gonna be ok.
For the rest of their lives, they’re each going to have their good and bad days but through it all, they’ll also have each other.
And maybe that’s enough.