The walls are closing in on him. The sound of his mother's sobs in the other room keeps him awake. Not that he'd be able to sleep anyway. The forced smiles of everyone around him, attempting to mask the emptiness falling over the house, only suffocates him more. Three days after the battle, he returns to the shop, unable to stay with them any longer.

It looks just as they'd left it: products stocked in an orderly fashion on the shelves, a polished countertop and a new display of fake wands they'd put up just a few days before the battle. He wanders around for a while, breathing in the aura of his brother. For all this place is showing, he could be just around the corner, working on a new version of the Skiving Snackbox.

Fred's voice is an echo around him; his spirit is dancing in this room, filling George with rushes of joy- almost an urge to laugh- and then draining it away. He sits on the floor and closes his eyes, conjuring up the image of his brother to sit beside him, to put his arm around him, to tell him he's here.

"I know you're there," he says into the emptiness of the shop. "You can't have left me completely. There's no chance... You've come back as a ghost, and you're here. You're waiting for me to find you."

The door creaks open by a centimeter, a soft breeze hits his face and for a moment it feeds his hope. Hope that his brother is back; might be back for him. But it's just the wind.

"Fred," he's begging now, eyes wide in desperation. "I need you to be here. I can't live like this. I can't be alone. Please. I know you're here."

Tears well up in his eyes, but he makes no move to wipe them away. He's up on his feet, frantically searching around the shop. He pushes displays to the ground, breaking bottles and cases, shoving open doors and cabinets. He's mouthing, whispering, crying, calling, screaming for his brother. "Fred! I'll kill myself for you, I swear! I'll do it to be with you! I can't be alone, Fred!" He stops, uniting with the empty silence for a single moment. The thought that something in him might still believe Fred is alive crosses his mind, and the reason escapes his lips before he can stop to ponder it.

"I can't be alone."

He pushes another table to the ground and collapses beside it. Hats fall like black parachutes around him, and he lets loose a sob. It occurs to him that he came here to find his brother, and he wonders how stupid he must be to believe that Fred's still hiding here, somewhere. He's holding on to the hope, such a contradictory, impossible hope, that there's no way Fred could have left him- no way, because he can't let him be alone.

He can't live without him.

But there's no sudden voice saying his name, laughing, calling "gotcha!". There's no red hair appearing around the corner, no freckled face smiling at him from the top of the wooden staircase. Fred is not coming back. He betrayed him. He moved on, leaving his brother behind, to scream "HOW COULD YOU?!" into the loneliness. To demand that the smell of him disappear, that he be forgotten, never thought of again. How could he have betrayed his own brother like this?

The tears leave his face red and hot, and his eyes tired, almost painfully so. Slowly, he rises and observes his surroundings. He contemplates his options.

Fred will never return.

There's no way to bring him back.

It is impossible to forget him.

So he must remember. Fiercely. Angrily, if needed. He must give the world a memory of Fred, not the man who died in war, but the man who loved, lived and brought happiness to everyone around him, and was murdered in battle against Lord Voldemort.

There aren't many options for him, but a new shop product is not enough, nothing near enough to honor his brother. He must live on in this street forever, or his death will have been pointless.

The sun sets on Diagon Alley as the redheaded owner of Weasley's Wizard Wheezes carries paint tins from the storage room of his shop. He lines them up on the street and sits with his knees on the ground. He dips a large paintbrush into the scarlet paint, and it catches the colours of the dying sunset as he smears it onto the path.

Within an hour, he's used up all his reds. He knocks on the door of the baker's house and asks for his husband, who he knows is a street painter. Wordlessly, he beckons for his help. The man nods, and soon he's out in the dark with his cart, silently following George back to his starting point.

They work their way up the street, finishing the reds and turning to the orange. The painter's husband calls him home for dinner and he apologizes, leaving George with a cart of paint tins and used brushes. At sunrise, the painter returns with a thermos of tea to find him still working sleeplessly.

The shop owners' children run out of their houses and pick up paintbrushes, splashing each others' noses and arms green. The painter finds more paint- conjuring it up, making it, mixing it into creation. He's drawn into the silent cause, knowing that whatever happens, the man from Number 93 Diagon Alley mustn't stop.

The pile of empty paint tins at the entrance to Weasley's Wizard Wheezes grows. George silently acknowledges the man, the laughing children, the woman who owns the magical jewelry shop across whose name he'd never thought to ask, the new Gringotts assistant, the customers who had intended to shop but decided to join him instead.

There's no control over the opening of paint tins, over who has which brush, or who's in charge of where. Everyone's spreading colour, in circles of pink and drops of indigo, lavender stickmen and turquoise houses. People pull out their wands to help the paint dry faster. Others use them to add patterns to the mix: golden vines and silver footsteps, flowers, stars and suns and moons. The smell of fresh paint fills the air as trees grow their way up the pavements in every colour but green, and copper sands stretch across Diagon Alley.

There is no plan, no grand design. Only people, paintbrushes, and a colourful grief that drives them together without need of acknowledgement. He builds castles of colour; a magnificent, sloppily painted Hogwarts in front of the Owl Emporium; a wand duel of robed stickmen splashing one another with bursts of ruby and emerald as they guard the entrance to Ollivander's; a small army of ginger children clutching mugs of Butterbeer right outside the Three Broomsticks. Amongst them is a pair of identical smiles, foamy mustaches visible just above their lips.

War is an open wound, shaking the ground on which we stand, until safety is but a dream of the past. Hatred travels through our bones, reminding us of our enemies. Their faces haunt our nightmares. Children will live their entire lives feeling unsafe because their parents went off to battle when they were ten. Families are broken, death of our loved ones is a real fear.

The war is never simply over. It haunts.

But in this moment, Fred Weasley haunts no one. In this moment he shines through the faces of the paint-splashed children of Diagon Alley, colouring the world with his memory, as his brother clutches the ground in tears. There are tears of relief, and of sorrow.

Fred is in the air and inside the shops, the faces of the people and the footsteps on the ground, hiding behind the houses and looking through the windows.

"See, George?"

His voice is almost real; a whisper that seems to carry itself through the darkening street, and George can almost feel the smile in his words.

"I am here. I did come back."