GEORGE? FRED?

He had only wanted rest. After the day and the week and the year he'd had there wasn't much else he wanted. But they were there when his feet carried him on instinct to the shared bedroom he hadn't stepped foot in since the death of his mentor; the three objects he'd separated and displaced in hopes that they would never be used for anyone's greed and gain again sat upon the red and gold comforter as if they were made to be there.

A hand, unsteady in its uncertainty, reached out to touch them, but at the very last moment it drew back, as if scared they might burn. The stone, the wand, and the cloak did not have minds of their own, or any other autonomy for that matter, they couldn't have made it here without aide from someone. But who had been there to see him drop the stone in a spot in the forest not even he could remember? To watch him tuck the wand back within the cold grip of the dead headmaster or the cloak into the beaded bag for temporary safekeeping? No one he had thought. And even if someone had been there to see all three acts, why would they return them to him? Why not claim the three undoubtedly powerful objects as their own?

Harry exhaled wearily, then finally shook off his inexplicable wariness to gather the three Hallows into his grasp. Perhaps his hasty plan of ditching the stone and returning the wand hadn't been the wisest, whoever had returned them had given him a second chance to truly makes sure they were safe and away from anyone's reach.

The wand went into his back pocket and the cloak around his shoulder. It would be easier to get out of the castle if he wasn't mobbed by adoring wizards and witches wanting to shake his hand, to kiss their babies, to thank him and tell him they'd never doubted him, when in truth every last one of them had been despairing over the fact that only a seventeen year old Hogwarts dropout stood between them and the Dark Lord. It wasn't that he didn't appreciate their gratitude, he did, but he had hoped that after the war he could just fade into the background, hoped that he could finally be Harry, normal, boring, ordinary Harry. It was a foolish hope, but he couldn't bring himself to stop.

The Resurrection Stone remained in his hands for a moment longer, flipped without any intent between his fingers. Remus was dead, Tonks was dead, Fred was dead. The list was long and devastating, but Harry felt no urge to call upon any of them. Their deaths had been ugly, brutal, unnecessary, the least he could do was leave them to the peace of the afterlife.

Finally the Stone joined its sister Hallow in his back pocket, a tight squeeze and not at all secure, but it would get the job done. He would need shoes, preferably with socks, both of which had been carelessly discarded in his eagerness to burrow beneath his somewhat dusty sheets. The overstuffed mattress of his four poster bed and the thick curtains that blocked out even the memory of sunlight were a luxury whose absence he'd felt every night he'd spent on the narrow, meagerly padded cots that the tent they'd called their home for the better part of a year had to offer. A luxury that he had been looking forward to reclaiming.

His left shoe was wedged between his headboard and the wall, Merlin knows how that got there, while the other was entangled in the velvet curtains hanging only partially open around the border of his four poster. His socks, unfortunately, were another matter entirely, the bloody things may as well have up and sprouted their own little legs with all the luck he was having finding them.

"Should have shoved them in my shoes," Harry muttered with his head shoved beneath his bed. He couldn't see a damned thing in the enclosed space, but maybe he could sniff them out, he couldn't remember the last time anything he'd worn had been properly washed. He cursed when a particularly deep inhalation drew a large clump of dust halfway up his nose. "Ah, shite. Where are the bloody things?"

The dorm was meant to be empty, Harry had only been talking to himself and his elusive socks, he hadn't been expecting an answer of any kind. So when his words were greeted by a low, almost eerie muttering, he reared back in surprise, which turned out to be a bad decision as his head was still buried beneath his bed and so came in jarring contact with the solid, wooden slats that held the whole thing together.

"Fuck." He clumsily extricated himself from beneath the wooden monstrosity and glared around the room with watering eyes. It was empty, just as he thought it had been all this time, but he'd heard something, he was still hearing something. A murmuring, nearly silent and impossible to discern, but undeniably there.

"Who's in here? It's probably in your best interest to stop hiding, I just finished fighting a war, I can and will curse you if you startle me, and I won't feel sorry afterwards."

Harry tilted his head and listened, the whispers, the muttering, whatever the hell they were had not changed in pitch, remaining at that same infuriatingly quiet volume that had his ears straining to pick up on the words being spoken. If he didn't know any better, he would think the quiet voices were actually the hissing of yet another monstrous creature lurking within Hogwarts' walls.

"Homenum Revelio." The spell swept through the dorm and the adjoining restroom, but it yielded nothing, he was alone in the room.

"Harry?"

The green eyed Gryffindor squawked in surprise and pivoted on the balls of his feet. "George? What?" He glared at the wand in his hand in betrayal, maybe the Elder Wand hadn't done such a good job fixing it, not if it couldn't manage a basic homenum revelio.

"They won't stop crying."

Harry frowned. "What? Who's crying? Was that you whispering?"

But no, he could still hear the voices, they were if only the slightest bit louder, their words were still indistinguishable, but the tone was clear. They sounded pleading. Lost. Desperate.

"All they're doing is sitting and crying and touching. Touching me. I don't like it, I want them to stop."

"I don't understand. Do you mean your family?"

"I tried asking them to stop, but they can't hear me, no one can hear me. Except you. You can hear me. You can talk to them for me."

This wasn't right. This wasn't George. The young man before him was a cheap, worn out version of what he had once been, as if he'd been churned about in the bloody seas of the war for too long only to be wrung out and hung up to dry in the stripping sun. His skin held no color, his eyes were devoid of the warm spark of life, and yet he was whole. Two arms, two legs, two ears. He was not George.

"Fred?"