Left Behind (A Fred & George fanfic)

16. Forever Young

Hellooo! 

I'm sorry it took such a long time to write another chapter, I've been quite busy with school and stuff... So yeah. 

Anyway, this chapter is dedicated to a dear friend of mine. Fran, thanks for keeping me writing. :)

I listened to 'Forever Young' (the one by One Direction) while writing this and I thnk it suited quite well, so that's why I added that song as a video. Make sure you check it out!

Hope you enjoy this chapter, let me know what you think!

~ Priscilla

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 Everybody always says that life is hard, that it's a constant struggle with choices between what is good and what is easy. Everybody always says that death is peaceful, that it's easy – but it's not. In fact, it's just the other way around. Life had just always seemed to come to Fred naturally; he smiled when something went wrong, people smiled along with him and everything turned out just fine. Of course there were times when it hadn't been that easy, when even he and George had trouble finding a way out, but they'd always manage.

For example during the Second War, everyone was down and the twins saw the last bits of hope ooze away. The Boy Who Lived was nowhere to be seen and nobody knew what to do, except for waiting and watching as Voldemort turned their world into a terrible place. People disappeared, some died without a proper explanation, though of course everyone knew what had happened to them. Both Fred and George realised they had to do something, they were the jokers, they had to keep the hope alive. So they had started Potterwatch.

It had been a really good idea, Fred realised. They had fun while broadcasting and they made other people laugh again, real honest laughs, not the forced ones they had seen the weeks before. The feeling he got when he saw that people dared to hope again... That had been wonderful.

And now he missed that feeling.

He had felt happy and delighted when he was with George again, of course, but he didn't feel that everlasting carelessness he used to feel when he was still alive.

Still alive. Gosh, that sounded weird.

He knew he wasn't alive anymore, and not just because everyone had changed, had grown older, except for him. George had told him he still looked like his 20-year-old self, unchanged. He himself couldn't see how he looked, because when he looked into a mirror, he saw everything except for his own reflection. Yeah, crazy right? He joked about it, saying he must be some kind of vampire. Forever young, how great was that?

But deep inside, he was slightly scared. What was happening to him? Was he supposed to stay like this for the rest of his … Well, for the rest of forever?

To be honest, he wouldn't mind staying with George, if only that nasty scary feeling would go away. It was like a black hole was forming in him, like some big depressive cloud was slowly trying to destroy him from the inside out. And it scared him. It scared him to bits.

He wanted to feel normal again, to be happy and alive. Even though he knew that wasn't possible, even magic couldn't bring back the dead – If dead is what he was.

This was so annoying – more and more questions kept popping into Fred's head, but he couldn't find the answer to any of them. He was frustrated, which only made that black hole inside of him grow even bigger.

But he wouldn't show George how he felt. He wanted George to be happy, when he still could. And if that meant he had to hide part of his dead self, who cares? This was the only thing he could do for his brother, so he'd give it his everything.