In the castle of Hogwarts, George Weasley looks out the window of the North Tower, standing still.

The night is moonless and surrounded by absolute silence.

He has his eyes fixed on a distant point, without actually seeing it.

The fight that he has hired a month before with himself, when Hagrid reported that the Centaurs have perceived a great movement of Dark Magic, is coming to an end.

The wall he patiently built around his heart over the years as a defence for not going crazy, begins to crumble.
Images, voices, faces encased in the most hidden corner of his heart are struggling to get back out and he now finds himself helpless and unprepared for make them go away.

George leans against the balcony with a sigh, defeated. With his fists clenched, his head bowed and his eyes closed, he let the memories overwhelm him.
.
.
.
Fire and dust. Noise and shouting. The wall that bursts. Fred lying on the ground lifeless. And the rest disappears in the fog of a pain that takes his breath away and breaks his spirit.

George sees no more fighting, no longer follows with concern the final duel between Harry, brave heroic Harry, and Voldemort, does not prove the joy of victory over the forces of evil.

Fred is gone. The other half of himself flew away.

He holds his twin's hand getting colder and strokes his hair, while the world crumbles around him, and then reborn.

George doesn't notice.
He doesn't know where he is and who he is.
He collapses into a black hole of despair without tears, which knocks him.

Time stands still there.

Then there is a vacuum .

The days pass, one like another. In vain Ron, Hermione, Ginny, Harry and all the other members of the Weasley's family try to shake the torpor that surrounds him.
Seeing them does not help George, to the contrary exacerbates the pain: Fred is not there with them.

There are times when he seems to hear the voice or the laughter of his brother. Stabs to his heart by which he doesn't know how to defend himself.

He still doesn't know how he did not go crazy . How did he find the strength, months later, to say "STOP IT". How he realized that the only way to regain a semblance of balance was leaving.

Simply it happens, thankfully .

George gets up one morning with a clear head for the first time in months and prepares the suitcases.
No one stops him: his family knows that for him it is the only chance of salvation. They are very worried, but let him go.

He spends months and years travelling the world, in the most inaccessible and dangerous places.

He looks for and locates the last Death Eaters remained free.
No one escapes.

The light-hearted and cheerful boy is gone. Only red hair remember that guy: now George Weasley is a man.
A hard and dangerous man.

One day, a defeated Death Eater lets slip that Bellatrix Lestrange left a daughter with great magical powers and that thanks to her Dark Magic will triumph.

Find this witch becomes George's mission: he wants to erase from the face of the Earth the last drop of blood of Bellatrix.

But time passes and there is no trace of her, although more than once he has been near to find that witch.

This search becomes an obsession, a mirage that fades and goes away with every step.

One morning George opens his eyes and he seems to have just awakened from a hypnotic sleep lasted years. Suddenly no longer finds in himself the anger and resentment that made him travel and fight tirelessly for so long. Vanished. What remains is an empty space and a high wall around his heart and his memories.
He realizes clearly that he can go home.

However it is not easy to resume with a more or less normal life. His parents don't know how to help him, because they don't know the man who is now, with iced glance and of few words.

So when he receives a letter from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry where they offer him the chair of Defense Against the Dark Arts , after a moment's reflection he decides to accept even though he knows how hard it will revisit those places.

But now he has learned to close the heart and not to lend listening, to go on letting the feelings in the deepest recesses of his soul, in a place where they can not be heard.

Life at the Castle runs quiet, a balm for his wounded soul.
The students feel in awe of this young professor, talented but aloof and taciturn; they hardly connect him to the legends that still roam the school on the exploits of the Weasley twins and on the legendary pranks of Weasley's Wizard Wheezes.

George thinks he is healed and the wound has healed, but still he can not go to where Fred was killed.
He can not even approach the thought of what happened that night.
After all that's okay. He found a semblance of balance and peace, and he doesn't want to lose them.

A news reported by Hagrid let him know how much he is still vulnerable.

Dark Magic. Once again.

The wall built so carefully around his heart slowly begins to crumble, memories resurface, the pain returns, strong and sharp as before.

The nights become a nightmare: the dreams in which revises flash Last Battle restart.
So George gets into the habit of not going to bed, but to turn to the Castle with the excuse of controlling the corridors, until fatigue does not guarantee him a kind of rest without dreams.

One night, during one of his walks aimlessly, George arrives in the point where Fred died.
The moment he realizes it, he stand still and would like to run away.

Instead he forces himself to remain there.

George takes a few steps uncertain and touches the wall now rebuilt.
Then his legs give way and he stays there, on his knees, with his head resting on the stone.

And finally some tears fall from his eyes closed.

"No Dark Wizard will ever win, Fred, I swear." He whispers through pursed lips.

Suddenly a feeling of peace is whithin his heart, as if his brother is still there with him.

From that moment, he gets used to go there every night.
The other professors know it, but they permit him do it, hoping that it might serve for George to learn to live with his wound.

It' s an endless stream of days, waiting for "something" that sooner or later will happen ...
IF something is going to happen.
.
.
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George opens his eyes.
No news , no confirmation that the Dark Wizards are regrouping.

Like every time he thinks about it, he caresses the hypothesis that the Centaurs are wrong and that peace is not in danger.

"Professor Weasley , finally! It's hard finding you!" Nearly-Headless Nick flies toward him. "The Headmistress asked to go to her urgently."

George looks at him quizzically.

"It seems we have visitors."