Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.

One day George had passed by a storefront and spotted, out of the corner of his eyes, Fred. Disbelief registered in his mind, but he could not deny the desperate need for his missing half to be there, and whipped around. However, he found nothing but a window, mocking him with Fred's image warped in the glass.

Since then, George sought out his lost brother, and came to find him in a mirror.

It amazed George, as he looked into the reflective surface suspended over the sink he hunched over, what the mirror showed him. It was of Muggle make and free of any enchantments, but it showed him Fred. When George looked to Fred, he had seen himself, and now looking in the mirror he saw Fred.

But no, as he cocked his head a bit to the sight, disbelieving once more at the sight of his supposedly dead twin staring back at him, he saw the imperfection that belonged to himself; a gaping hole in the side of his head, the flesh uneven and ragged about it.

It hits George like a blow, that his brother, his reflection born into flesh, is gone. He is six feet under, a skull smiling in death stripped of any features to bring to thought the living man that he was, deep lines worn into a face weary in life. A thought floated at the back of his head, whispering unregistered to him in vague tones, if he would resemble Fred in death.

The lost ear was the first sign of the breaking between the two, and Fred's death was not the last. It is George's life, as he ages and realizes his brother will never mature like him, which George realizes.

Sometimes, he wants to take to himself a knife to himself, to stop this process that proves he and Fred are separated, gone. But no, he cannot. For if Fred cannot do this, then George must do it for him.

Fred had lived every day after death in the memories of his family, but especially in the mirror when only George was present. For George did not see George in that mirror like others did, but his brother, playing one of their mimicking games. George joked to the mirror, saying to his twin that he didn't have to be so serious about it that he'd cut off the same ear.

George came to live an extraordinarily long life, surpassing even Dumbledore's. When asked what his thoughts on this were on his deathbed, George replied that he had to live for his brother also.

It was George's madness that was the only thing that had kept him sane.